Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York Stock Exchange at the corner of Wall and Broad Streets in New York City, you're Inside the ICE House, our podcast from Intercontinental Exchange on markets, leadership, and vision and global business, the dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs, and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSE and at ICE's exchanges and clearing houses around the world. Now welcome in Inside the ICE House, here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental Exchange.
Josh King:
So folks you've arrived at the fourth in our special series of Inside the ICE House episodes about connecting people with opportunity, our companion project, with a featured cast of ICE's new Make the Connection global marketing campaign. Now art in imitates life, the great thinkers have said, but in filming ICE's ad, it's also an example of life imitating art. To give you some context, let's turn back the clock to last fall when we were story boarding what the ad was going to look like. Some of the ideas that were put on the table didn't float as it were.
Josh King:
ICE's founder, Jeff Sprecher turns out a little jaded by what he sees on the commercial airwaves. He's a fairly rapid fan of native original, authentic YouTube content. This is giving him some ideas. When that happens, it means that the team's going to go through some hoops. Jeff wanted us to try something different. "Don't tell people about ICE in business terms," he said, "but how ICE fits into everybody's lives in a more storytelling way." A couple of us got this treatment.
Josh King:
Jeff tells you to go on to YouTube and search for a show called Odd Life Crafting. It's the journey of a Brazilian couple Duca and Roberta who revealed their lives as they're restoring refitting and bringing to life an old sailboat. Their videos have a hypnotic quality, watching passionate people do hard work, engineering solutions to tough problems, loving their newfound lives on screen. Equipped with a DSLR camera, a GoPro, and the occasional drone, these two engineers open themselves up to a quarter of a million of subscribers on YouTube. They've traveled the world, built a tiny home, refitted a sailboat, and are beginning to hoist, anchor and set sail on a new adventure.
Josh King:
Jeff invited Duca and Roberta to New York. We had them here on the podcast, and then he said, "Let's put them in the ad too. They're passionate problem solvers, just like the people at ICE." Just like that, they were cast. Duca and Roberta would represent in our spot those seemingly unattainable goals and the engineering that has done the seemingly impossible, that have been at the heart and soul of ICE for over two decades, from automating energy trading to digitizing the mortgage industry. Duca and Roberta's can do attitude mixed with perseverance, ingenuity and a lot of elbow grease, made them the perfect depiction of ICE's culture.
Josh King:
But in art, as in life, there's always a hitch. There was no way during COVID to bring a crew down Brazil to film Duca and Roberta in situ, as they say. We had to bring them to us or at least halfway, even if it meant leaving their lovely orange keeled boat, Odd at home. Here's where art and life really mix. When in New York, Duca and Roberta told us of new friends, new connections that they'd made at their visit to Annapolis Boat Show, Brett and Jade Evans stars of Expedition Evans, another YouTube channel with a very similar story arc to Odd Life Crafting. Brett and Jade dream big finding a salvage sail ship that they rebuilt from the ribs up to serve as the vessel of their own adventures. Sound familiar?
Josh King:
ICE was now in the middle of yet another important connection. Two sets of seafaring sailors with cunning and ingenuity to find opportunity through technology, in this case YouTube. We'd shoot our ad off the coast of Florida and Duca and Roberta would be at the helm of Brett and Jade's boat. It sounds like an elegant solution, but again there was a hitch. We needed to get ahold of the Evans which proved a little complicated given that they were at that moment at sea off the eastern seaboard. But rejiggering their calendar, they sailed down the east coast from Annapolis and allowed us to use their intrepid craft ever in our spot. Along the way, we all got to know the content creator is behind Expedition Evans a lot better.
Josh King:
Brett and Jade come from landlocked Arizona, but have been drawn to the ocean and new experiences. In August 2020, just as that pandemic shut down many of our lives, they found and bid on a battered, beaten, bashed, and broken 2008 49-foot Beneteau sailboat sitting on stilts in a new England shipyard. Over the last year and a half, they've documented the rebuild and repair of their ship and the beginning of their journey around the world. Circumnavigation has been a feat that explorers have long relished. Ferdinand Magellan, the 16th century Portuguese navigator, led the first circumnavigation to find faster passage to the Spice Islands. In the pages of Beloved fiction, Phileas Fogg journeys around the world in just under 80 days to win a 20,000 pound wager.
Josh King:
Many of us look at these two examples with the same set of deference and incredible feat, but one incomprehensible to regular folks like you and me. Not so for Brett and Jade Evans. Throughout their relationship, they've realized that the two of them took each other's crazy ideas and as they said, compounded them into a new shape. Watching their show, they're very much learning by doing, showing their 100,000 followers along the way their successes, their setbacks, and all the little things in between.
Josh King:
Although Eva, their 49-foot Beneteau definitely has the starring role in our ad, you can also find Brett and Jade in their cameo appearance as Thomas Healy, the CEO of Hyliion that's NYSE ticker symbol HYLN, walks us through his vision to drive a greener energy future. Our conversation with Brett and Jade Evans is coming up right after you hear once again, ICE's Make the Connection spot featuring Zak Brown, Egypt Sherrod, Peter Tuchman, Rose Han all of whom you've already met in previous weeks. Let's take a listen.
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Connecting the opportunity is just part of the hustle.
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Opportunity is using data to create a competitive advantage.
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It's raising capital to help companies change the world.
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It's making complicated financial concepts seem simple.
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Opportunity is making the dream of home ownership a reality.
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Writing new rules and redefining the game.
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And driving the world forward to a greener energy future.
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Opportunity is setting a goal.
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And charging a course to get there.
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Sometimes the only thing standing between you and opportunity is someone who can make the connection.
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At ICE, we connect people to opportunity.
Josh King:
Our guests today, Brett and Jade Evans are the explorers, content creators, and couple behind Expedition Evans, a wildly popular YouTube channel that has tracked their adventures from buying a salvage dream sailboat to completely gutting and repairing it to their current adventures on the high seas. Together with their trusted pets, Dingo and Penny, they're planning to sail the world on ever that 2008 Beneteau. Welcome, Brett and Jade, Inside the ICE House.
Jade:
Thank you so much for having us.
Brett:
Yeah. Thank you. Thanks for the introduction of Dingo and Penny as well. I'm sure they appreciate it.
Josh King:
Of course, they do. So for our listeners who might not yet be part of the more than 100,000 strong Expedition Evans crew, how do you explain yourselves when you pony up to a bar and it's five o'clock somewhere?
Brett:
So just having a following at all is actually still a new thing. We're still trying to understand what that really means. It's interesting to have people sometimes recognize us. We don't feel like we're anybody, but sometimes we'll get a look and somebody will look at you as you walk by or sit down at a bar or whatever and think, "They probably know who we are." That's a new feeling that we're still trying to understand.
Josh King:
But when they recognize you or when they don't, you guys are very social extroverted folk, but people said, "What are you doing?" Or they see you filming an episode or they see you birthed in the dock in Fort Lauderdale route on your mooring and you say what you're up to. How do you describe what it is?
Jade:
I think in today's day and age, you see people out there filming all the time. So it makes the introduction a little bit easier, but it usually makes sense to people when we explain that we're out here doing this crazy dream, living on the sailboat and making sure that we film it so that we can share it with other people who never have the opportunity to do so. So what we're out there doing with the camera filming the adventures is basically making a seemingly unattainable dream accessible to people who might be landlocked in North Dakota or too old to be out there on their own. That's really what we're doing is connecting this adventure with all of those people.
Brett:
I think it has helped that YouTube has become so popular now and TikTok and Instagram, that when we tell people that we're content creators, most people are like, "Oh, okay." That they get it.
Jade:
I think the bigger explanation of our lives comes when we try to explain the sailboat. That we live on a boat and that we're planning to sail it around the world all the time. That usually leads up to so many follow up questions. We have to-
Brett:
But what do you do for work?
Jade:
Yeah, or where do the dogs go to the bathroom?
Brett:
Oh yeah.
Jade:
There's so many things that people are just curious about the simple day-to-day life things of living on a boat that is really fun to explain to people who've never heard before that you could even live on a boat at all, which was us a few years ago.
Josh King:
So that was a couple years ago, Jade, but let's actually get into some breaking news or at least breaking news the way it's presented on Expedition Evans, which is delayed by the number of weeks that you are in arrears almost through needing to edit the different parts of your life as they unfold for you. Episode 73, perhaps the first major injury a year and a half while you were on board. What happened and are you okay, Brett?
Brett:
I am okay. Yeah. So what happened is we were installing a washing machine into our boat which is actually... That's a luxury on a sailboat especially in most... A lot of sailboats don't have washing machines, but we had the space and we really wanted one. So we decided to splurge and get a tiny little Korean washing machine and install it. While we were installing it, I think it was like 4:00 in the morning. I'd been working all day on it and I really just wanted to get it in. It was frustrating me. There's no straight walls on our boat. Everything is curved in some different direction.
Brett:
So I'm having to build a mount and adapt it and build another mount and have it angled. I'm using a pocket knife to whittle away at a piece of plastic to get this mountain and all of a sudden that knife lock just gives away and the knife closes on my finger and just slices it. I could tell immediately it was bad because it was really sharp knife and it was instantaneous. I just saw blood just immediately started gushing out of my finger. I just grabbed it and told, Jade, "Hey, I just cut my finger." Just calm like, "Hey, this just happened." It wasn't like oh man. It wasn't a frustration. It was like, "Hey, this happened big deal," and I think she kind of got the memo right away.
Jade:
Yeah, I definitely did. Right now, we are still in Florida finishing up the final preparations to make the sailboat capable to be off grid long term. So we're in Florida. We have access to a friend's truck. It's the middle of the night and he cut his finger what looks like to the bone. So our first reaction, of course, the normal reaction I think is, okay, well let's go get you stitches at the hospital. But would we go to the hospital from a sailboat, it's so many more steps because the first thing we have to do is we have to climb up the stairs out of the boat and then climb into the dingy, turn on the outboard. It was low tide. So we get to the sea wall and we have to tie up our outboard and basically rock climb our way up to get to land with his hurt finger, make it to the truck, make it to the hospital.
Jade:
We get all the way there and they were so backed up because of all the COVID regulations and everything. It was going to be a couple hours before they were going to be able to give him stitches. So we end up opting to go home and do the patch up ourselves.
Brett:
Which is good practice. That's something we should be able to do at home anyway, because if something happens while we're away from land, we need to be able to handle it. We did have pretty much everything we needed on board. I think it was kind of a good practice, a good trial run and-
Jade:
Definitely a good wake up call about our medical abilities.
Brett:
For sure.
Josh King:
My wife and I do watch Outlander pretty closely. Brett, you might have seen it too, but a lot of it is field medical surgery. How do you feel about not being able to just tackle a gash on a finger, but something more serious if you guys are underway?
Jade:
There are so many great resources for sailors that are available to us as far as kits and medical guides. So we've been kind of accumulating all of that as we're preparing to cast off because as soon as we leave the United States, we're not planning to come back probably until we go all the way around. So obviously we'll be in other places where we can get medical supplies, but a lot of that time we're going to be on these uninhabited islands out in the middle of nowhere with nobody around. So being able to be competent in medical care is important. So we've got these guides that we're following and we're definitely learning. But that's one of the more fearful aspects, I think, of sailing away is you lose that comfort that you've had while living so close to medical centers.
Brett:
One of our boat neighbors here in this anchorage had an accident on their boat where they had a fire and the man got really burned like second to third degree burns. All of the anchorage kind of teamed up to take care of him until we could get him to a hospital because it was bad enough that it was hospital worthy and he stayed overnight. But that was a huge eye opener for all of us because we all pooled everything we had. We brought all of our first aid kits to one boat and we all were trying to help this guy. I think all of us had our eyes very opened that while we did have a lot of supplies, we need more and different ones. So we're definitely learning as we go realizing, okay, we do need some bandaids, but really we also need splints and potentially a tourniquet, some different supplies and things that you normally, living in the suburbs, you wouldn't have to think about.
Josh King:
So for those of us who have watched you now for a long time, despite the emergency room setbacks, your mantra as a couple is let's, as in let's go for it. How did you come up with that philosophy and how do you make sure you embrace that ethos every day even when you're sitting in the waiting room of the ER?
Brett:
I don't know if there was ever like a... I don't know. Maybe you have a moment of when it came, like that always became our mantra, but it was something that we always had from very beginning. Very early on in our relationship, we always started having these dreams and these conversations. Pretty quickly we realized that there really isn't a whole lot of reason why we couldn't do whatever it is we were talking about, whatever dreams we were talking about. There's really no reason why we couldn't. I think it started with something pretty simple of "Hey, let's go rock on this weekend." "Oh yeah, that'd be fun. Well let's do it." "Okay." So it started pretty simple and I think it's grown from there to now let's sail the world.
Jade:
I think that the beauty of it where it all started, it started in just the simple day-to-day things. As we keep it up in the simple day-to-day things, that's when it grows into something bigger. We just are two people that want to get the most out of the life that we're living. So, as we're sitting here thinking it would be fun to do that, Brett said, we decide to go for it and then the dreams get bigger and the dreams get bigger. Then suddenly we're moving to Hawaii or we're living in a school bus or we buy a wrecked sailboat. Right. It all starts though from the day-to-day mentality of deciding to go for the opportunities when we have them.
Josh King:
I mean, talking about getting the most out of the life that you're living, you mentioned moving to Hawaii, but our listeners should know that you grew up in Arizona, landlocked desert. Sailboats and circumnavigation aren't necessarily the first things people talk about in Tucson and Phoenix. They picture the Grand Canyon state. Where did you develop this love of the water and sailing?
Jade:
We both grew up really loving the desert. We would hike and rock climb. But after a while, I think, we were both craving some greenery, some different mountains. So we ended up in Hawaii and that was where we really learned to love and appreciate the ocean. Fun fact is that I actually worked as a dolphin photographer one summer in college and not just I'm going down. It was a W-2 employee. I would go on dolphin tours in the ocean. My whole job was to photograph these wild dolphins. I'd be down there with this underwater housing. We really got into free diving that way, a lot of ocean experiences there in Hawaii. I think that's really where the love for the ocean caught on.
Brett:
I think the bug though, for me at least, and the idea of circumnavigating actually came from YouTube because, like you said, growing up in Arizona, I literally didn't know that you could circumnavigate the world as not a retired person with millions in the bank. That was who I thought could buy a sailboat and sail around the world. I realize that that's not true now, but at the time that was my worldview is that you had to be old with a ton of money and nothing better to do. Then on YouTube, I saw that there were people that looked like me and they had bought a boat and they were doing it. I thought, "Why can't I do that?"
Brett:
So I think that kind of planted of the seed or put the bug in my ear and then everything kind of escalated. We went to Hawaii. We went on a little sailboat with a friend. We went on a bigger sailboat with a friend. We bought our own sailboat. We learned a sail and it was pretty quick that we were like, "Yeah, we're doing this."
Jade:
I think you can definitely look at Hawaii as a trial run. We kind of set the goal. We knew we wanted to travel the world. We wanted all the travel experiences, but we also really liked minimalism and tiny living and the idea of being able to travel with your home. So there's fan life. There's those tiny home trailers with the red doors that you see people building, lots of really cool opportunities there. But when we were introduced to the sailing world, it just seems like the perfect way for us to accomplish that dream of international travel while also taking your home with you. It's the perfect blend. So when we went to Hawaii, we're like, well, do we even like sailing? Do we even like the ocean? So when all of those boxes checked as yes, it started falling into place as we put the plans and the money together to start the sailboat life.
Josh King:
I hear you talking, Jade, about your early work as a dolphin photographer. When you watch expedition Evans over 70 some odd episodes, both the backstory that you guys show of your earlier lives, but also the real artistry that comes through your cinematography, your editing, your music selection. I mean, it's not a surprise when I would tell our listeners that you are trained as an artist, specifically oil painting, but have looked at many other mediums. Beyond the outdoors stuff that you guys just talked about, Jade, what drew you to the arts?
Jade:
I think I was born into it. I come from a long lineage of artists, my grandfather, my father. Of all my siblings, I have four sisters, I think that I caught the bug from a very young age ever since I was first asking kindergarten, what do you want to do? I'm like, "I'm going to be an artist. I'm going to be a creator." I've really stuck with that I think in the same way that Brett's always known he wanted to go into aviation for his career. I think that the way I look at the world, I just see so many opportunities to create. I see so much color that I want to share. Having the camera and the YouTube channel it's just one form of medium that I can use to share and be creative, give a field of view into my life and the way that I see things. So being able to craft that story and get that shot and get the colors and the sunset, being able to put that all together into one little video diary. It's just a really beautiful outlet for me, I think.
Josh King:
Brett, Jade mentions that you always had this love of aviation on your website. Your bio talks about the fact that as a kid, you dissembled the oven door at your parents' house. More recently, you took your computer apart to make it work better. Has the curiosity and reverse engineering mentality served you as you've worked on the boat and begun this series?
Brett:
Oh, absolutely. That serves me every single day. I think there's not a day that goes by living on the boat that I don't have some tool in my hand. I take something apart or tighten something or move something because yeah, it's-
Jade:
Man, I got out of the shower yesterday and I came out and he had the AC completely disassembled all over the little room. It's a daily occurrence for us.
Brett:
It's a daily occurrence. Yeah. So I would say absolutely, it served me. I just think all of my childhood and young adulthood of taking apart computers or whatever, just those understandings of electronics and circuit boards and capacitors and all the different things that you just learn as you try and fix whatever thing you want to work. It all kind of accumulates and then you can and understand other things.
Josh King:
So let's go back then to 2020, the pandemic is setting in, people like me are starting to work remotely and your existing careers, businesses are probably not what you thought they would be at that point. People are not taking flights, Brett, and Jade, they're not having weddings that you're going to be able to photograph and make a living from. Was there a moment or a defining catalyst when you decided now's the time to pursue this dream of finding a beat up sailboat?
Jade:
I had just gotten accepted into a great art school in Barcelona for graduate school. So we were very excited. We wanted to do the sailboat thing. We'd gotten a lot savings together. We were pretty much ready to buy probably a bare boat charter boat from probably Croatia, Greece. Those areas, you can get a really good deal on a boat. So our original plan was to go over to Spain, Barcelona, get me set up in school and to buy one of these boats over there to upgrade over the few years that I was in school. But then we were waiting on our visas, the pandemic started, everything was canceled. I get an email from the school that's like, "Hey, school's canceled for the foreseeable future." So we had just sold everything we owned to move to Europe and we're on a trip visiting family when everything locked down.
Brett:
In Arizona.
Jade:
In Arizona. Yeah. So we're like, "Mom, can we crash on your couch for a little while? We just don't have anywhere to go. At this point we just uprooted everything for this big move." Then we were just sitting there, Brett got furloughed from his job and obviously no weddings for me to photograph, but we had all of our money from selling everything we owned. So we decided since we couldn't do our original plan, instead of getting down about it, we would take the punch and figure out how to adapt to the new situation. That looked a lot like figuring out how to get a sailboat and give ourselves something good to do during the time. That's how we end up looking at boats in the US and how we ended up finding our salvage sailboat was listed on the auction website.
Jade:
When we saw that and we saw how much amazingly free time we suddenly had and this great boat, we've always loved working on things. We've always loved projects. So it just seems like the perfect way to spend our time and to save some money on a boat. So we end up going for it. Honestly, I feel like the universe conspired and everything fell in line just in time for us to be able to get our final bid in and to win it. Then we were boat owners, all of a sudden, of a boat that hardly floated.
Josh King:
You call it a great boat, Jade, but you really had your work cut out for you. This three-cabin, two-head ship bought at auction without ever meeting the owner. On your channel, one of the videos documents, Brett's quick trip to just see the boat and this nerve-wracking bidding war to actually buy it. We all know there's a surplus of boats out there. How did you know that this was the one for you?
Brett:
This one checked all the boxes. Well, we had looked at a lot of boats. We had looked at a lot of boats online, virtually. We'd actually gone to a playground or a basketball court one time and chalked out the outline of a different boat so we could see how big is the living space, where are the heads, where are the cabins, and it was another 49-foot boat. So we had looked at some boats like that and had a list. We had made an Excel sheet of maybe 10 or 15 boats that said we would be happy with any of these boats. It didn't really matter necessarily which one because they're all so comparable. So when this one popped up, this one was really high on the list. It was like, hey, this is the boat.
Jade:
Like all right. Deal.
Brett:
If we could get the boat, like this is it. So yeah. I was able to see it. I was able to go look at it and go through it briefly and made a mental list of all this stuff that I knew we'd have to fix. I assumed, okay, it's probably two to three to 10 times more than what I know we're going to have to fix and thought, okay, we could do that. I think we could do all that. So yeah. It really was just talking left brain, right brain. For one, it was emotional. You're seeing the boat in person and it looked good. But then also it was very much mathematical. Yeah, this fits the bill. This will do it. This can circumnavigate. This has enough space, that has enough tank storage capacities and we can afford it.
Josh King:
You also have a new set of friends, a whole new community beyond the people that you've got to know through your various lives up to that point. You've spoken about this incredible sense of community in this sail and boating realm. Why do you think that this particular group of people lends itself so well to this, such a strong feeling of belonging or connection in such a way that this Brazilian couple that comes into your lives, you'd never met them, but suddenly you're fast friends?
Jade:
The boating world is so isolated. Everybody's out there on their own and the only people, a lot of the time that you have, are the other people in boats around you that happen to be at the anchorage at that time. So at some point or another, you're going to need them and they're going to need you or they have the tool that you need. Or somebody gets hurt and the whole anchorage comes together and dumps iodine, stains somebody's cockpit, right. There's always something. I think it's kind of like a Volkswagen. I think that there's that old saying that if a Volkswagen pulls over to the side of the road broken down, another Volkswagen's going to stop and help them because they know they need to have it paid forward later down the road when they break down. That always made me laugh when I had a Volkswagen, but it's similar with the boating world. Everybody needs each other and also it's a bunch of like-minded people who want to be out there exploring.
Jade:
There's always good conversation. Everybody has a boat to talk about. So there's so many points of contact and ways to talk. Then there's the other aspect of it is that a lot of us are out here not talking to anybody, but our partners on our boat with us for extended periods of time. So we're just really excited to see other humans every now and again.
Josh King:
I mean these like-minded people, even if they're really come from a whole different hemisphere, Duca and Roberta, they decided last minute to come to the Annapolis Boat Show, staying as guests on your boat. Curious, had you seen each other's work before you rendezvoused in Annapolis? Then how did the relationship continue there to the point that you're traveling up with them to New York City?
Brett:
Yeah. We'd watched some of their videos beforehand before we even knew that we were going to let them stay on our boat. We'd watched some of their episodes and some of their Instagram and different stuff and got to know them virtually at least what they shared. So we were pretty confident that we would like them in person. I think for the most part, and we can niche it down even further, most sailors but then especially if you are a YouTube sailor, you get even more in our realm of people that we can have conversations with and relate with because we have more and more in common. So we thought yeah, we'll get along with them and we like them. They have a lot of similar jokes and a lot of sarcasm that we could get across from their videos. We're going to like these people and sure enough we did. We really liked them. We've had a lot of fun getting to know them. I think we ended up chatting with them a little bit ahead of time, not video or anything but just something like Instagram Messenger.
Jade:
Me and Duca were messaging on Instagram. I think that's the extent of it.
Brett:
That was the extent of our actual communication before we actually met them. Yeah.
Jade:
I think going into the boat show too, there were so many YouTubers being involved. There were so many events going on. We both knew that if we were to open up our boat and have some people stay with us, that that would be a really good way to ingress into all of the events and to help encourage us to be more involved on the day-to-day, to go to all the things rather than just going home at the end of the night. I think that's definitely true being. It was definitely a conscious decision we made, like we'll have people over and we are going to let's, the model. We are going to be fully immersed in this boat show experience. So when they, "Hey, maybe we'll come," we're like, "You should stay with us." They were like, "Okay." So when they came over, it ended up being just a really good time. The boat's a small space for that many people. I think at one point we had seven people board.
Brett:
So in the back cabins, we have two back cabins. We had Odd Life Crafting in one and then we had Sailing Zephyr staying on our boat in the other cabin. The division between those two cabins is legitimately a three quarter inch piece of plywood. So it is not a whole lot of privacy and they're actually even bent in that plywood. So they were very cozy, the four them but I mean we all got along. I think we all had a great time. We had a lot of fun and it's like you said, we're all like minded. We all have similar stories. We all have a similar background. We can all talk about similar things. We all couldn't joke about the lack of privacy or the noisy water pumps or the rocking of the boat or the whatever.
Brett:
So it's a lot of things we can just talk about, even if there's language barriers or there's culture barriers or whatever. We all have so much we can talk about and share stories. I think that's the best part is we can share, "Oh yeah, when I was doing this with mine, this happened." "Oh yeah, that happened to me too." So there's so much to just keep the conversations going.
Jade:
Specifically with Roberta and Duca, we kept joking the whole time as we found so much in common with each other, that they're the Brazilian version. We're the American version. But basically we're the same people. We've got the same boat story. Me and Roberta are the exact same height. Duca and Brett are the exact same height. All of these silly things that kept lining up. So we kept telling people like, oh yeah, we're the same. When we introduced each other to people at the boat show, somebody that would follow their channel, they'd be like, "Oh, this is our American version," or vice versa. Somebody that would follow our channel would be like, "Oh, here meet these guys. They're our Brazilian version." So we had a really good time with that.
Josh King:
And also as you'd watch your feeds, both of their feeds, one commonality is this learning by doing and you don't always get it right. Mistakes happen. Sometimes they happen a lot and you've been really honest with your viewers when something goes wrong or unexpected from either losing your DSLR camera to a Massachusetts dock or not putting enough coating in the bottom of the keel. Why is sharing the good and the bad so important for the two of you and your viewers?
Brett:
I think just honesty. We don't want to mislead people. I think our viewers, the people that watch our channels, don't want to see just the fluff. They want to see. Of course, we do skew it to positive, I would say, a little bit. We focus on the positives in our own life as well. If there's good and bad that happens to today, let's talk about the positive things. So I think we do the same thing with our channel. But yeah, we show a lot of the bad. We show when I accidentally cut through the hole and we have to patch it or whatever it is because that stuff happens. It's important to know that we're real too and that this is real life and we make mistakes and sometimes, like you said, we make a lot of mistakes and we slice our finger open or whatever it is because it's real.
Jade:
I think that there's definitely a time and a place for the beautiful storyline that's been all planned out and everything goes perfectly. It's just an aesthetic experience to watch a video or a movie or a TV show. But I think that on our YouTube channel, we've really leaned into a different sphere, which is authenticity and connection because by being that authentic and by being vulnerable enough to be like, oh yeah, we really screwed that up or this didn't go very well or we're sick today or whatever it is. Just being that transparent and vulnerable in all of these areas opens up a different kind of opportunity for human connection. Because it's in those vulnerabilities that people start to relate on a deeper level and start to see themselves or at least just get to know us more on a friendship basis.
Jade:
So we ended up with a lot more connection and a lot of people online that really feel like connect to us as though we're friends in real life. I think that's the beauty of YouTube and what you were saying at the beginning where the CEO Jeff Sprecher was so interested in with YouTube is that it was just made by people doing real life and showing all of it.
Josh King:
Showing all of it. Authenticity and connection in very much the trademark of Expedition Evans. After the break, we're going to talk with Brett and Jade about their experience working on the ICE commercial, how they built trust with their audience, what Jade was just talking about, and also their plans to set sail on the next phase of their adventure. That's all coming up right after this.
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Josh King:
Welcome back before the break, we were talking with Brett and Jade Evans about their motto let's and their journey in finding and restoring their vessel, Eva, and the opportunities and challenges that they were facing along the way. At one point in one of your episodes, about six or seven episodes ago, you shared that while your mom has been with you in Florida, and Jade met your mom recently in New York, she was hell bent on making sure that you hit 100,000 subscribers on YouTube and was even approaching strangers in the Fort Lauderdale streets before Christmas to try and get you over the hump. Besides having your mom as your wing person, how do you think about building the Expedition Evans community on the internet and the help that family and friends, like your mom, have offered?
Jade:
I think our family and friends really got us off the ground. Initially when we launched our YouTube channel, there was trepidation. We were nervous that people were going to think we were cringey or that they weren't going to like our channel. We're putting us ourselves out there and we're like we don't want-
Josh King:
Being vulnerable.
Jade:
Yeah, being vulnerable to all of our friends and family that are going to be able to see the videos. But I feel like they surprised us in such a good way by being so receptive and excited about this new life and our channel. So all of a sudden, we had our friends and family, they're sharing it with their people at work. They're sharing it with random traders at the grocery store. That, in the first few weeks of launching our channel, got us off the ground initially. Then after that, I think the rest of the channel growth that happened very quickly in the beginning was because people were very interested in how the project was going to go and it got picked up on some forums. But through it all, we've been really amazed at how connected our friends and family, the close people in our life prior to starting the channel, have been, even though it's so different from the lives they're leading.
Josh King:
Look, the episodes seem to make you really happy as well. Jade, I was remarking when I saw you re recently on one of your recent episodes, you guys are the recipients of a whole new set of spear fishing gear and free diving wetsuits and equipment, and you're off using it. You've created a whole episode around that. You guys joined us on a panel at ICE Mortgage Technology Experience 2022 event in Las Vegas recently. You talked about how you're thinking about partnerships and brands and the trust that you've built up with viewers over your last two years. Jade, you talked about as influencers, your biggest commodity as an influencer is that trust that you have with your viewers. If you lose it, you basically blow your entire Expedition Evans brand. How do you think about building relationships with brands and companies and sharing that with your viewers?
Jade:
Right now, a lot of companies are beginning to understand, more and more all the time, how valuable YouTube and influencer advertising is because that's a connection with people that the brands can't necessarily develop themselves. There's that level of trust. So it's very valuable to them to have us advocate using that trust with our audience to get people over to their brand. There's a lot of really good things that come to brands from that. And because of that, we have a lot of brands that are interested in working with us, that do want to get in front of our audience. So I definitely think that we have our fair pick when it comes to choosing brands. So as we're sifting through, we really prioritize a few things.
Jade:
The biggest thing is that we want to make sure it's a brand that we would want to work with even if we didn't have the channel. A product we would want even if we were just doing this on own without any social media, for the practicality of it but also because it just seems a lot more authentic. One thing to keep in mind on a sailboat, especially with a lot of these product sponsorships, is that it's really difficult for us to get packages. We don't have an address. So we're trying to time packages to show up somewhere. So we really just narrow it down and only take the cream of the crop, I should say, with things that are really good to have on the boat, quality things that we know our audience will like because we know that we want it and like it as well.
Josh King:
On the same level, I mean building trust with your viewers and patrons is an essential component to the work that you do across the web. As you are taking on these projects, how do you make sure that you're being authentic for your viewers? Maybe after you gather all the video in place and come to that final edit before the package goes out and you press the upload button, what's the last sort of safeguards when you guys look each other in the eye and say we're putting out something that reflects who we really are?
Brett:
We do a lot of back and forth when it comes to the editing. We trade off a lot. By trading off a lot, when you spend so much time staring at the screen all by yourself, you get really pigeonholed and then it becomes something that you didn't necessarily intended to become. If you walk away and then you come back, it's like doing a puzzle. You're doing a puzzle and you walk away and you come back and immediately you see the one piece that you've been looking for the whole time. By us trading off, we're able to keep it authentic and real. One person might have cut something out because they didn't like how they said that word or whatever, but that word or that sentence actually adds a lot to the story. So the other person might put it back in because hey, that's actually really important. They really do need to know that we felt angry about that or whatever.
Brett:
So I think us working together, it helps the video to be better, but it also helps us be more honest. It keeps us honest by keeping the story clean and authentic. I think is probably-
Jade:
Yeah, I guess you could say the Expedition Evans' government has a checks and balance going on.
Brett:
Once we're all done, we post it. Then usually Jade's mom watches it before we make it live, just to make sure that it checks with not just us, with audience as well. I don't think she's ever like turn something down, but it always-
Jade:
She has good input though.
Brett:
Oh yeah, for sure. But it is good to get an external voice and somebody that is willing to say, "Yeah, you shouldn't have said that," or something.
Josh King:
After you sailed Eva from Annapolis down to Fort Lauderdale, we all got together. I remember that very early morning probably meet up at 4:45 on the dock five o'clock on the dock, cruised through the intercoastal waterway under the bridges out into the Atlantic. Can you tell us what it was like filming the ICE ad from your perspective and having this enormous film crew invade your little vessel?
Jade:
What you have to remember is that we film all the time. We are always having our own production going on. So there was a huge juxtaposition with this 50 man film crew, these three support boats. We've got so many people involved. We've got all the tech and the sound and the special effects. It was the first time that either of us had really had an in depth look at the behind the scenes of these large productions, these really nice productions. It was really interesting seeing all of the working pieces and how much goes into it beyond just vlogging, walking around like what we do. It was a fun comparison.
Brett:
Yeah. What came to my mind when you asked that question was organized chaos. That's how it felt to me and that's how it felt our life was because like you said, it was 4:30 in the morning that everyone met up. That meant that we had to be at the boat before that to make sure the boat was ready, to make sure the systems were good to go, to make sure everything was ready because they can't start loading stuff on the boat until we get there and open it up and everything. So it was multiple days of very little sleep, fairly high levels of stress and energy to make sure everything got done and make sure that the boat didn't get damaged. Make sure nobody got hurt on the boat. Make sure people didn't their hand where they shouldn't or step on something that they can't step on or-
Jade:
Or fall off.
Brett:
... or fall off or hey you can't put your gear there. That's not solid. There's a lot of pieces of logistics. It was exhausting, but it was incredible. It was so much fun. I think it was just seeing the cameraman and the drone pilots.
Jade:
Oh, yeah. My favorite part was those FPV drones. We would be sailing and you'd just hear them buzz and buzz the water and the water would sprag. They're getting that close to the surface. It was really incredible. I do think the highest stress point for us was making sure to mitigate and manage all of the film crew that had never been on a boat before. They're there just trying to do their jobs, but all of a sudden the ground's moving underneath them. A lot of people were taking... I think one of the boats, everybody was pop in sea sickness medication.
Brett:
Yeah. Fell asleep.
Jade:
But that makes you drowsy. So then right afterwards, people are falling asleep. It was a really, really interesting time.
Josh King:
I don't think I've asked you this question together. I'm not sure what was going through your mind. But when you first saw the finished spot lot and have seen it subsequently lately, I'm curious what your impressions are about seeing all of your sweat equity reflected there on screen, the way it's reflected on screen. Did you think that all the effort that was poured into retrofitting that ship would eventually lead to Eva being on a national ad campaign?
Jade:
It never crossed our mind before.
Brett:
No, I don't think I knew to dream in that direction to be honest, but it was incredible. Seeing that shot was, I think the best word I can think is emotional. I think that the production company did an amazing job and the final cuts and the color grading, everything, it's amazing. I love it.
Jade:
And to just see our work, our actual sweat equity, everything that we've put into this boat show up on screen and the boat just looks beautiful. Eva's just gliding through the water, white. It just is stunning. It was only possible because that whole thing, Eva's new life because we were able to rebuild this boat, and now there she is.
Brett:
Well, we joke sometimes. We'll be sitting in bed or making food or whatever. We'll think, do you remember when we bought this and this boat was leaking or do you remember when this boat didn't have a mast or a keel? Do you remember when there was a three foot hole in the bottom of this and now we're doing this. So it was one of those moments, seeing it going through the water, seeing it in the commercial, do you realize that that's that same boat? We did that.
Jade:
It's the same boat. Yeah.
Brett:
Yeah, we did that. It's cool.
Josh King:
It was an interesting shooting day. Really, we've only been talking about the half of it from being called at 4:30 in the morning. We also asked you to be part of the second part of the day, more of a land-based shot, where the CEO of Hyliion, NYSE ticker symbol HYLN, in a sort of simulated TED Talk inspired conference hall presents the idea of driving to a more sustainable energy transition. What was the experience like of being filmed, surrounded by 30 or so other extra actors as you applauded the end of each take. You are not the star of this show the way you have been on Expedition Evans. You are not out in the bright sunshine. You're in this darkened, misty, smoky conference hall.
Brett:
Not being the star, not being the focus, just being there, it was just fun. It was fun to see it from the other side of the camera, I guess you could say. Just obviously we were more than spectators, but being able to just be there and see it.
Jade:
Be immersed.
Brett:
Yeah. Yeah. I had a lot of fun talking to all the people around us like, "Hey, so what do you do? What's your normal job?" They were everything, the extras, all the other people that were there to be in the crowd. I had a lot of fun just getting to know all them because they were just there to be part of the commercial and do a little bit of work, but they were all different occupations for their real life.
Jade:
My favorite part of that shooting period was just prior to our hair and makeup and going into the crowds to do our clapping scene. There was this woman going around with this cart full of Cuban coffees, giving them to everybody. We were hanging out with Roberta and Duca and a few other people from ICE and none of us actually knew what a Cuban coffee was. I don't think. So we all had a few. They are incredibly strong. So we were all wired. We were so caffeinated that by the time we went on there, I think I was just trying to hold still.
Brett:
Yeah, it was that clap. You were clapping a lot.
Jade:
Yeah. I was really clapping. No, we had gotten up at 4:00 AM, 3:30 AM to get to the boat that morning. So we were all a gung ho for the extra coffee, but I think that was a really fun... I think that's my most memorable experience from that day for sure.
Brett:
Yeah.
Josh King:
Having followed your journey from the beginning with all the sanding, the grinding of the fiberglass, the gel coat, the rebuilding and of the structural integrity of the keel that was sort of this massive accomplishment. Now you're more into storytelling of life as you begin the circumnavigation. How do you go from this major initial effort where people say the voyage from point A to point Z through getting it from the shipyard in Rhode Island to actually out into Narragansett Bay is sort of the massive challenge that Brett and Jade are taking. Now they're basically sailing and enjoying themselves, but how do you keep going and where do you find the motivation and the new stories to tell?
Brett:
I think that's the beauty of it is that from the beginning, we weren't necessarily trying to tell a specific story. We were just sharing our lives. So that hasn't changed. We're still just filming what we're doing in our life. I think that's, what's intriguing is that we're doing that. It's just so much different than other people's life. So it's captivating. People are watching us go buy groceries. We have a TikTok as well, and that's honestly our most popular TikTok is us getting groceries because it's so different because we do live on a boat. We have to use a dingy and we use our one wheels and we went at night because the tide was right and whatever it is. It's so different that that's all we're doing. We're just sharing our life. We're sharing how do we get groceries, how do we cook food, how do we go to a new place, how do we go to dinner, how do we catch dinner, whatever it is, right? So we're just sharing life.
Jade:
And because it's always been that way, I think that a lot of the people who started watching the project, because they're interested in the project, they wanted to see if the boat could be restored. They wanted to see how damaged it was. That kind of thing. A lot of them came for the project and they've stayed for us because while doing the project, they've gotten to know us and our personalities and they realized they like hanging out with us for 20 minutes a week. So we still have a lot of that, no matter really what we like doing, especially because when we first started filming, it was during the COVID lockdowns. For most of the growth of our channel in the beginning, everybody was at home and not a whole lot that they could do. So it gave them a way of their own apartment or their house or their lockdown situation where they could just hang out with us out there, having a good time, even when things were kind of hard. So we've got a lot of that too.
Josh King:
As we've watched the last couple episodes guys, and we're coming down to the end of our conversation, you've shared that you are planning on charting this course for The Bahamas, as one of you said the gateway drug for sailors. Your goal, as we laid out an intro is ultimately to circumnavigate the globe. Are there any plans to start this journey soon, and where do you think the journey is going to take you after you get through The Bahamas?
Jade:
Yeah, I think the journey's already started when we set sail originally from Rhode Island. Once we head off to The Bahamas, then that's when some decisions will have to be made because there's a few different routes we can choose. It kind of just depends on what order we want to see the world because for circumnavigation, at least the areas around the equator will all be in our path. So I think we'll decide whether or not we want to do the Caribbean first and go that way. Or if we want to skip, go through the Panama Canal and head to the south Pacific. But either way, I think it's going to be a lot of the same places. I think what we need to decide is the order we're going to see them in.
Brett:
And how much time we spend in each place. I think that's one of the big year conversations. We'll play that by ear. If we get to some island, we really, really like it, we'll stay there for a little while, weather permitting obviously on everything. I don't think we have a definitive timeline other than storms and weather. Hurricane season is not too far down the road. So that is definitely a pressure thing that we're feeling the pressure of, of hurricane season will be here in a few months and we don't want to get hurt by that. So that's really the biggest deciding factor for the upcoming future.
Jade:
With sailing around the world, sailing in general, one of the biggest, I guess, intentional paradigm shifts that we've adopted is being okay with the uncertainty because they say sailings 95% bliss and serenity and 5% chaos. We never know when that chaos is going to show up and you also never know when the weather's going to give you a good pathway. You don't know how much you're going to like an island or if something's going to break. So as we've been so intentional about our job and our savings and our plans and getting the boat, learning how to sail, now we're here sailing and we've had to shift our whole life mindset surrounding our ambition, I guess, to making things get done on a certain timeframe. Just being okay enjoying the moment as it goes.
Josh King:
Guys, we've spent a wonderful hour together. Maybe people getting to know Brett and Jade Evans through the different medium of a podcast, and they've certainly met you in other ways as well. But if someone is just kind of cluing into expedition Evans through listening to this conversation, give us a little primer on the best and different ways to sort of monitor your life as I have now over the last six months.
Brett:
Yeah. So we are the same Expedition Evans on pretty all of the social medias that we use. So we do YouTube, TikTok, Instagram. We do have Facebook and a website, expeditionevans.com. So really any of those, you look up Expedition Evans, youtube.com/ExpeditionEvans or TikTok Expedition Evans, or any of them, that'll pull us up. So I guess your drug of choice, follow along. We post regularly on pretty much all of those. Longest format is obviously on YouTube. Those are videos are roughly 20 minutes long weekly, and the other ones get posted weekly or so, just as different content is available for pictures or short form videos for TikTok or whatever it is. We post them there.
Josh King:
How's merch sales going?
Brett:
Merch sales, we actually have just started working with a new company because they're doing right. We sold through our first inventory of t-shirts. We have Expedition Evans t-shirts and let's shirts. We had a lot of people that have jumped on the let's stream. Those sold out fast.
Jade:
They did. At the boat show, that was the first time we sold them in person at the booth at the Annapolis Boat Show. We were the first channel that came along, that all of a sudden everybody was buying t-shirts. It was chaos because they would come say hi to us and then they'd go to the t-shirt booth and they're trying to pull out the sizes. So it was really fun seeing people wearing them. We definitely want to expand that. I have a lot of t-shirt designs in the work. So keep an eye out for those. Those will drops soon.
Josh King:
We will indeed, Jade, and other people will probably catch a glimpse of Eva and you on ICE's ad. But as they say in the navy, as you begin to embark from Florida to The Bahamas and points unknown before that, fair wins and following seas. Thanks so much for joining us Inside the ICE House.
Jade:
Thank you so much.
Brett:
Thank you.
Josh King:
And that's our conversation for this week. Our guests were Brett and Jade Evans, the crew creators and stars of Expedition Evans. If you like what you heard, please rate us an iTunes so other folks know where to find us. If you've got a comment or a question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at [email protected], Twitter us @ICEHousePodcast. Our show is produced by Stephan Capri with production assistance from Pete Ash, Ken Abel, Ian Wolf. I'm Josh king, your host signing off from the library of the New York Stock Exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
Information contained in this podcast was obtained in part from publicly available sources and not independently verified. Neither ICE nor its affiliates make any representations or warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of the information and do not sponsor approve or endorse any of the content herein, all of which is presented solely for informational and educational purposes. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell, a solicitation of an offer to by any security or a recommendation of any security or trading practice. Some portions of the preceding conversation may have been edited for the purpose of length or clarity.