May 6, 2020 • 49 mins
Throughout the season, we have had the pleasure of interviewing some incredible trailblazers. We decided to do a mash up of three business founders who started companies that changed the game. Jack Conte, Reed Duchscher, and Ian Hecox are from very different worlds, yet they are all connected by their bravery to innovate. All three have founded very unique brands that have shaped today's world. On this episode, we explore what it takes to launch a brand with major influence in any industry.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart
Radio and t DC Media. Read Duke Shure and I
did not correct your last name. A lot of a
lot of people struggle with that outside in North Dakota.
But that was good. You were on point, very good. Okay, right,
well what it's kind of out of ten already, Ian
(00:26):
he talks, is in the house. Guys, Hello, you don't
know who Ian is? What do you know? I know
that was aggressive, but if you don't know that name,
we got to reevaluate life. I mean, the Internet is
a big place. I never assume anybody. You're pretty good
Internet a video of mine. So, Jacob Kanje has started
(00:47):
a small platform called Patreon. We all know it, we
all want to be on it. It's the reason so
many creators are able to create. And you are such
an inspiration because I was telling Jack this before the interview.
As you guys know, Behind the Influence is all about
people who are literally behind the influence, the people who
create the platforms that allow social media influencers to be
(01:10):
social media influencers or creators. And Jack also happens to
be very musically talented and has a creator passed and
present so you fall on two sides of the coin.
How does that like, how do you even balance the two?
It's really hard. The first five years of the company,
I didn't nail it. So actually that was a real
struggle for me. And actually it was probably a little
(01:31):
bit of there was some darkness there for me trying
to figure out how to balance it because I felt like,
oh god, I'm giving up my creative career and I
love being a creator, and so it was really hard
because you know, I was becoming like a you know,
an operator and building a company and I actually kind
of had to stop creating for a couple of years.
So that was that was pretty rough. But then in
the last three years, I've really found a way to
(01:51):
to still be prolific and make things. I fly down
to l a once a month now and I do
four music videos with one band for with another band,
and then we you know this point, now I'm releasing
eight music videos a month. So that's a lot. How
do you find the time and you're the founder of
a massive, massive platform that you're very much involved and
it's not like you've just stepped aside. Now that's super successful. Yeah,
(02:12):
I mean I'm I'm there, you know, of course every
single day, and I'm working more than every day, you know,
on on the making Patreon a thing. Yes, starting a
company is a is a triple time job. It's not
the kind of thing you can just kind of not
to because you can't have asked these things. No, it's
you can't. And yeah, it's been you know, I've I've
(02:34):
worked more in my life, you know, on Patreon that
I've worked ever on it. I mean it's been so intense,
so so yeah, that has been you know, rewarding hard.
Recently being able to in the last three years, being
able to combine it with being a creator again has
made me feel like so I feel like I got
my pilot light, you know, turned back on. You know,
(02:54):
it feels nice. We're really excited to have you here. Obviously,
you represent the to me of what we cover on
this show, people of influence, and you are a person
of influence because you are behind these people and helping
them groom into these mega stars overnight. And literally we're
going to talk about the numbers of all the people
that you have brought forth to us. Yeah, lots of growth,
(03:19):
and I think I think it's because of you. I
don't know if it's all like. We have an amazing team.
I got into this industry four and a half five
years ago by myself out of my bedroom, and to
see what night Media has blossomed into today's have been incredible.
I think we're just to throw out some numbers. Were
over a billion views a month through ten clients, across
ten clients, and I believe we're at about that eighty
(03:40):
eight million subscriber range. And that's pretty impressive when you
consider it's only ten individuals. You represent more than ten people,
that's just your top ten. We actually just have ten.
So we keep it so Night Media's philosophy just to
get into this a little bit, so we usually only
work with family friendly creators, so we don't work with
a ton of people that actually we don't have any
creators that really swear on their channels. It's something that
we're we're not necessarily against. We just don't like to
(04:02):
promote it to children. And the second ones, we only
work with with creators that want to be entrepreneurs and
business people. And you know, we found ten that you know,
want to dig into this industry and want to keep
YouTube at its core and want to do so much more,
and that's why we stayed small. The reason you're here
is because of that. You were one of the pioneers
in the YouTube space. And not only did you pioneer
(04:22):
in a world that a lot of people didn't understand
back in two thousand five, by the way, when people
weren't really doing the YouTube thing. Yeah, I mean YouTube
wasn't really a thing. It wasn't a thing. It just recently,
I think, in the last decade, has become a thing.
In two thousand five, starts with a little, a silly video,
just you and your friend. And did you ever know
that it would turn into this empire that has employed
(04:46):
so many people and made so many people so much money.
And yeah, we had no no idea whatsoever. It was
just us, you know, messing around with a webcam. We
started with lip syncs. We did the Power Rangers theme song.
That was our first slip sync, and then we did
Mortal Kombat and then Pokemon and then the Pokemon theme
song music video was the video that like really really
(05:06):
blew up and for I think a year and a
half it was the most viewed video on YouTube. And
back in the day, there was no discover ability on YouTube.
So the only way that you could find quote unquote
quality content, which that video looking back is not the
only way you can find quality content is if you
went to the most viewed page like most people of
(05:27):
all time. Okay, so all those videos that had the
most views must be the best videos on YouTube. That
would be the theory. But you know, our videos up
at the top, and it was think, why do you
think about so many views? Because nothing else like that
was on YouTube, and you guys were just kind of
creating your own lane. And people were curious because that's
(05:48):
what I would think. Yeah, I mean I think music
is universal. I mean that's why all the top view
videos are are music videos. So I think that's one
thing Pokemon is, you know, the sort of global unifier
who doesn't like Pokemon. At that time, a lot of
people were doing lip syncs, but a lot of people
were just kind of standing there and just lip sinking.
(06:08):
But we were also throwing in jokes into it, so
like kind of like criticizing the Pokemon while we were
singing the song. Just the fact that they like Pokemon
in a strange way is like animal abuse. So we
had some like jokes I never thought of it. I
don't need to laugh, but I never thought about it. Yeah,
I mean, you're you're forcing it's it's it's no different
(06:29):
than a than a dog fight, and we don't allow that.
So we, uh, we kind of made some some jokes
in the video. I think that's what kind of made
it stand out from the other sort of lip syncs
is we actually had a take on it. I'm not
saying like it's supreme art. But also, back in the
days of YouTube, you're not really competing with that much
(06:51):
quality content. Anything that's like sort of above like the
worst quality ever would automatically rise above everything else. So
you have of ten of the most subscribed to followed
YouTube personalities in a time where YouTube is it's hard
to navigate right. People die on YouTube, but I don't
(07:12):
mean actually die, but their content dies on YouTube because
they're not switching it up enough or whatever. The reason is.
Is it that you've found people who have staying power,
or is it that you have come up with a
strategy for that staying power? Man, I don't know how
much I want to say here. I think most of
it is just lack of understanding of how YouTube actually works.
Most of our guys focus on a few things, and
(07:33):
yes they switched their content up. Yes they don't do
the same video ten times in a row like some
creators make that mistake. But you know, we really understand
that a good video starts with a good title and thumbnail,
and then once you get people to click on that video,
it's all about getting them to stay and watch that video.
So it's really just a combination of high click through
rate which is CTR and high average uderation. So that's
(07:54):
the two things that we really focus on. And as
a creator, when those two dip, that's when it time
to either switch it up or say, Okay, my fans
aren't clicking on this video. Why are they not clicking
on this video? Or why are they not staying and
watching this video? For the duration we're going to get
into a little bit of your back story before we
give away all the secrets. But there was a time
when all of this clicked for you, and there had
(08:16):
to have been moments in the journey where you figured
out the secret sauce and and to even figure out
to work with influencers. Would you remember a time in
your career that this all kind of came to fruition
for you. There there's a few. I honestly don't even
think we're a first space yet, Like, we have so
much more to accomplish as a company. And yes we
work with some of the most influential people on the Internet,
(08:37):
but there's a lot that we have to accomplish with
those individuals, and we really dig into their businesses. But
when I was I was an NFL sports agent before
I got into this industry, and I met Dude Perfect.
So this was two thousand and fifteen. Dude Perfect was
still small, not the Dude Perfect we know today. They're
like two million subscribers. And I met them, and at
the time, we were working with large NFL clients. We
(08:58):
had Odell Beckham jew a year and Richard Sherman and
Marcus Allen and Barry Sanders and so like, we were
at the top of this NFL chain and it was
a lot of fun. But when I met Dude Perfect,
advertising agencies and brands were asking me questions that they
weren't necessarily interested about Odell and Richard. They were going,
tell us more about Dude Perfect, or those trick shot
guys are really interesting. Why don't you come to the
(09:20):
office and tell us more and that was kind of
like my first AHA moment was Okay, people are actually
looking at this to be a viable marketing you know medium.
I left three months later. People still thought I was
crazy at that time, like nobody's gonna buy a Dude
Perfect video, Like people aren't gonna spend money on YouTube.
But eventually, after pitching it for six to eight months,
people started to spend money. And that first one was
(09:42):
Callaway Golf. Callowe Golf came in in a very conservative
golf industry that's predominantly marketed towards older individuals, came in
and bought a Dude Perfect video and this was the
first thing I had done with Dude Perfect. And then
they came back for a second video, and that's when
I knew, Okay, this is something that's going to be
massive for people who don't know who did you do
(10:02):
the video with? Yes, So I did the video with
my childhood friend Anthony. We met in like the sixth
grade and we did a share boredom. We just graduated
high school. I was seventeen. He might have been seventeen
as well. Yeah, at the time he was also seventeen.
You guys, go to the same high school. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah,
So we went to the same elementary school and middle school,
(10:22):
high school, best friends, and we're both bored. All of
our friends were going off to real colleges. We were
staying in Sacramento and we're going to go to a
community college. So we were pretty bored. Over the summer.
We had actually started making videos and posting them on
my Space before we even knew what YouTube was. And
the only reason we found out about YouTube so early
was because somebody had stolen our video and uploaded on YouTube. Yeah,
(10:48):
so that's how we actually found out about YouTube, was
because somebody had ripped our content. So we started upload
kind of a compliment, Yeah right, yeah, so we started
uploading on there. It started the views, and to us,
over a hundred views was insane. And at that time,
you could just refresh YouTube and see the counter go up,
(11:08):
so we would just like refresh and see like, oh
my god, there's five more views. Oh my god, there's
ten more views. So that was that was a weird
experience for us. You know how some artists become managers
of other artists and they're like, now, where's where's my moment?
Where's my stage? You know, like I would imagine that
it could be hard to see other people creating when
you really want to create, but you're also creating something
(11:30):
but on a different level. Absolutely. Yeah, before I figured
out a way to kind of be a creator and
do the business, well, let's see, the secret was amazing
working with amazing people and letting go a little bit
of all the details. It was really hard because as
a creator, as an artist like I, you know, when
(11:51):
we when Pablo originally was making music, I was, you know,
doing all the instrumentation, all the mixing, all the mastering.
You know, Um, it was of a partnership with Natalie,
but but I had full I had my hands. I
was sculpting the whole thing, from the video to the
editing to everything. And um, now Papa Mouse is like
(12:11):
fifteen contractors right and like and we've slowly let go
of like Okay, we're letting go to the video editing, Okay,
we're letting go to the audio mixing. Okay, we're letting
go to the mastering. Okay, now we're gonna let go
some of the production. And like one step at a time,
you kind of take a step back, but you still
get to do the things that are exciting to you
as an artist and that give you a voice as
an artist. So I still feel like, you know, before
(12:31):
we were able to do that, I kind of felt
like I didn't have vocal chords anymore. I was like, oh, ship,
like somebody took my vocal car I can't speak anymore.
And now I feel like I got my vocal chords back.
And even though my voice is a little different than
it used to be in some ways, it's like even
more exciting and more beautiful and more fun because it
combines the creativity of other people too. It's not just
my soul vision. It's like the vision of this wonderful
(12:53):
group of fifteen people, and they get to be creative
and do their thing. So it's been really wonderful. And
so you leave the sports world behind, Yeah, I did.
I packed up my car. I worked so hard to
get into the sports industry to everyone's hard. That's a
hard career to kind of break into. It's almost impossible
to break into because there's not that many sports agents.
It's very difficult. It's easy to get a certificate to
(13:15):
be a sports agent. It's very difficult to represent a
guy that actually makes an NFL roster. And so I
saw the movie Jerry McGuire, just like everyone else did
when they were younger, and I thought it was a
sexy industry. I lived in Las Vegas, and I used
to travel back and forth in Las Vegas to l
A and literally just sit in lobbies like c A
and athletes first, and like all these different lobbies. I
(13:36):
would just sitting wait for agents to come out, and
then I would hand them my resume and I'd be like,
just give me an opportunity, like I promised, like it's
going to be worth it. What was monetization like back that?
Did you guys even think that this was something you
can make money from that early on? There's no way
of montization. I mean, like I guess we we had
sort of like the first Patreon in a sense where
(14:00):
we just not like solicited our viewers for donations, but
we said, like, hey, we want to film with more
than just a webcam that's tied to the computer. We
we would like a handicap. So people actually donated money
to us to buy a handicam so that we can
actually go beyond Anthony's bedroom, and then we put their
names and they're like, donation. I think we can put
(14:22):
their donation amounts like on the screen of our videos.
So at the end of the video, it's like, thanks
to this person for donating thirty So ahead of the
times because I feel like that was a very early
iteration of what actually ends up happening. In a sense,
you were living it because you this was something that
was missing from your life. You didn't just create Patreon
(14:42):
because you were like, oh, this is a really cool
idea that you'll see like on some home shopping network
that you thought was some great invention. This was something
that would affect your life directly. Yeah, I as an
as a creator. Um, I had just finished a music
video that I spent about ten thousand bucks on. I
drained my savings account, I maxed out to credit cards
(15:04):
to make time. I was twenty eight. Were you married
at the time? Now, I wasn't married. So it's a
video called Pedals and it's on my personal YouTube channel.
You will love this. Stephen Stephen, our camera guy DP
master of all Things. But yeah, it's awesome. It's it's
a wild video. Yeah. I literally built by hand. I
built a replica of Lennium Falcon cockpit to be the
(15:26):
set for the video. I mean, like I built the
whole thing, like hot gluing things, and like it took
me three months. I mean I was working nineteen hour days.
My hands were like cracked and bloody and painted and
like I was, I mean, I was all in on
this video. It's a lot of money for I'm thinking
about when I was twenty eight dropping ten stacks on
something like that's insane. It was insane. I it was
(15:49):
not a good idea. I mean it was it worked out,
It worked out. It was illogical, though, and I knew
that going in. I was like, you know what, I'm
going to be illogical right now because my life just
lets there you go. I was like going to home
Depot and Joann's Fabrics and like it was a crazy time.
But the idea something. I mean, the whole reason that
(16:11):
Patreon came up was because I was about to post
this video that I like poured my soul into. When
I posted videos at that time, they got about a
million view So I knew I'd get about a million
views and I came with this video and I'd get
my ad revenue check for me to be a hundred
and fifty bucks, and I couldn't stomach the idea of
having spent ten grand on this thing that's going to
reach a million people. It's not like I'm a starming artist,
(16:33):
and I'm like, I can't find an audience, Like I
found my crew on the people who like what I
have to say, and I put that on the web
and then I get a million. I've reached a million
people around the world and I get paid a hundred
and fifty bucks. Like what the funk kind of system?
It's bullshit, total bull And that that was the thing.
I thought, There's got to be a better way here.
There's gotta be a way, like if you involve fans,
(16:55):
fans want to help, they want to support, you know,
you know that. I sort of sketched out the side
da for a membership platform like k Q e D
or you know, um W B e Z in Chicago
or SF Moment where people, you know, the fans of
a thing can pay five bucks a month or ten
bucks a month in exchange for exclusive access or whatever,
and uh and it worked, and here we are. Once
(17:23):
the Pokemon theme song music video was removed for copyright infringement,
we were like, hey, you know, we should probably start
making more original content that's not using other people's stuff.
And so from that point on, pretty much we were
we were wholly original content, not using copyrighted music or
you know, images or whatever. So we then sort of
transition to sketch comedy, and that's kind of the road
(17:45):
we went down. So sketch comedy for the first few
years of YouTube was kind of like the king of YouTube,
Like everybody wanted to do sketch comedy, and you know,
there's channels like Balloon Shop. It really pays me off.
Why would you knock the drink out of your hand?
What would you do that? Why would you do that?
The Lonely Island Lonely Island obviously, Andy Sandberg, Kiva and Jorma,
(18:06):
who then went on to SNL and then bigger and
bigger things. Hello, welcome to the party. Hi, I've never
met you before, you know, just two guys and we're
having a good time. Derek Comedy is where Donald Glover
Child's Gambino came from. That was the day everyone and
a sad only to you too, Sir sat opposite day,
Sir James, good evening, Sir, Can I not ask you something?
(18:32):
About opposite day. No, but sketch comedy is really hard
to continue and it's expensive. It's more expensive than just
doing a vlog, Like you need to like hire people
and you know, writing sketches and shooting it and editing
it takes a little bit longer than normal kinds of things.
So a lot of people burnt out on making sketches.
(18:52):
I packed up my cars, like, Mom, Dad, like, I'm
driving to Dallas. We're dude, perfect is Base. I'm leaving
for Smartin Management, which is the sport station Seaton. Like wait, what,
I thought. You've worked a year and a half to
get this job. You've done it for nine months, and
now you're gonna leave. I was like, yeah, I think
I can do this, and like, well, you know, we
trust you and good luck and you know they supported me,
which you know, it was number one and then number two.
(19:13):
It was then figuring out who were the next big
channels that are going to pop up on YouTube, And
luckily then met typical gamer who was live streaming Grand
Theft Auto and saw him pulling five thousand viewers to
eight thousand viewers to twelve thousand viewers, and you just
continue to grow and that's when YouTube gaming became a thing.
So then was your full time focus just kind of
(19:34):
scouting this, this next crop of influencers and mega digital personalities.
And how did that day look for you? Were you
just sitting there on YouTube all day? Not really. I
was sending a lot of cold emails at that time
because I was working pretty closely with Dude Perfect, and
I was trying to bring in business for them. Wasn't
really interested in signing a ton of people. I always
(19:57):
understood that talent management wasn't scalable, it wasn't a galable
business model. For me, it was I just wanted to
work with individuals that I enjoyed working with, and then
I wanted to become business partners with them and do
something much bigger than just create YouTube videos. And for me,
that was always, you know, where I wanted to take this.
But at the time, there were so many different people
popping up on YouTube it was hard to keep up
like it is today, It's like there's so many channels
(20:18):
with a million subscribers, how do you figure out which
one to work with? So I was just getting to
know people, sending a lot of cold emails, talking with
advertising agencies, and really just building my rolodex. So at
that point, what was the game plan for you? Did
you think you we're gonna start an agency? Is was
night Media? Even in the no, it wasn't even really
a thing yet. I just was enjoying what I was
(20:39):
doing and I was going to eventually figure out how
to make it a business. But at the time, I
wasn't even thinking that. I was just thinking, Man, I'm
not making any money. How do I convince CALLOWE Golf
and BMW to spend money on Dude perfect so I
can actually bring in some income. That's really all I
was concerned about at the time, And then it eventually
to now what Night Media has become is pretty crazy.
I think I never matched. And yeah, so a lot
(21:01):
of things happened between that first deal and today. Um
today you represent ten huge personalities. We were going over
your your top five and that doesn't mean they're your
favorite gonna get me in trouble not. I wouldn't say
top five because they're all incredible. But you've got Preston
Mr b Sunday unspeakable. You can look at it in
(21:22):
a few ways, views per month or subscribers or social reach.
I guess we're looking at facts. We're not asking the
godfather to pick the favorite child that I love them
all today. Yeah, of course you do. And they're all
really talented. So you get this roster? How does how
does this happen? So? Okay? So I was working with
dude Perfect. Then I met typical gamer Twitch and we
talked about you had someone on from Twitch. Earlier Twitch
(21:43):
was obviously taking off an Amazon had just acquired. It
was called justin TV. YouTube Gaming then starts, and I
was starting to work with some of those live streamers
that were popping up on YouTube that were just live
streaming on the platform. And that's really how it started.
And then two thousand seventeen. But February two seventeen, I
met an individual real name Preston Get a Minecraft channel
called Preston Plays about three and a half million subscribers.
(22:04):
We were in the same city. I was living in Dallas.
I had no idea he was in Dallas, and a
friend of mine who's also a YouTuber, Nico Vald, introduced
us through Twitter d m s. I do most of
my business weirdly enough, through Twitter Dms've never recruited anyone
know they slide into mine. I've never like recruited a
person to sign them. It's usually them coming to me
(22:24):
and asking questions, is how it usually starts. Hey, I
saw you work with so and so, Like, can you
tell me a little more? And that's how it works.
With Preston, he introduced us. We went out to coffee,
sat there for about four hours and just kind of
talked about family and faith and business and you know,
just had a good time. And eventually, about thirty days later,
him and I started working together and that's when night
media took off. Right out of high school. What makes
(22:47):
you think I'm qualified to be doing sketch because, like
you said, it's not just about hiring people like you
could have the money. I know people who have all
the money in the world. But if you're not a
good writer, if you don't have good ideas, it's not
gonna fly. So how did you guys get to the
place where you were qualified enough to do successful sketch comedy.
I don't think we're qualified at all. Well something made
(23:10):
you think you were. I mean, it's really we just
kind of paid attention to the feedback on YouTube, and
I know that's not always the best idea to read
the comments. But some people have some pretty constructive criticism
that are acting sucked in our ideas sucked. So we
continue to go to community college, but only in classes
that applied to whatever we were doing. So we took
some acting classes, we took some writing classes, we took
(23:32):
some improv classes, took some film classes, and then once
we burned out on those. Once we did all those classes,
we just left. But with with sketch comedy, you know,
it takes a lot of time. We were out of
high school, so we're living in our parents house and
you know, start to have bills, so you have to
find some way to create an income. And so the
(23:53):
choice was either well you try to find a job
and then find some time to make sketches, or you
can commit fully to creating sketches and try to build
a business doing that. So that then turn our focus.
What did family think about? That family was totally don
they were down there anything better? Well, because I think
now it would be a lot easier for you know,
(24:14):
a fifteen year old or sixth year old to convince
their parents like, look, Jake Paul's making two million dollars years,
so can I two thousand five thousand and six. Whenever
you were doing it, that was not the case. So
you don't have a case study to point to and say,
these people are making a living doing this, I'm gonna
build an empire. You had literally nothing but your own
drive and an idea. Yeah, and we had viewers. You
had viewers. I think my dad's an accountant, so he
(24:37):
kind of understands business, and I think we had viewers.
So that had to event something. It's like, oh, well,
if we're getting similar views to like a local TV
show or something like, that's gotta that's gotta mean something like,
there's gotta be a way to to monetize that. There
was no way at that time in regards to add revenue.
(24:58):
I remember our first brand deal we did for five dollars.
That was a big deal to us. But we we
found other ways of monetizing. We uh started selling merch
and I think we were some of the first people
on the platform to do that. We knew this like
guy that worked out of a warehouse down the street
that was a screen printer. Pretty sure he had one leg,
(25:18):
but he never showed us. Um, but uh, I need
to find out. So we so then we started like
marketing our merch and like these little sort of like
funny commercials at the ends of our videos. Oh my god,
yess what what look at my shirt? Oh my god,
stoppers small shirt. We would have this guy screenprint all
(25:39):
the shirts. Then Anthony had a program that would take
all the orders in with like their names and their addresses,
and then we would package all the shirts ourselves. That
we would then load all the shirts into his car
and then we would drive to USPS and get very
ugly looks from the workers there because we'd be mailing
out maybe hundreds of shirts at a time. My god.
(26:00):
But that was the way that we first sort of
supplemented the income for the business. That was that was
so entrepreneurial. I knew I was going to suck that up. Yeah,
every time I tried to say that one. But you
know what I mean, guys, entrepreneurial of you. Yeah, I
mean we didn't have any I mean, we didn't have
any choice. It was like that was our only option.
(26:22):
It was trying to sell merch to create an income,
to stay out of a job or work a job
and not be able to create content. So and you're
so young to figure that out. Yeah, well, I think
I think I probably had some advice from my dad
to we didn't really have any other choice. It's just
like that was the only way to do it at
the time. And you're still going to school at this point, Yeah,
and what were you majoring in? Was it anything to
(26:43):
do with this world? That was just general ad We
didn't really know what we wanted to do. I think
Anthony thought he would get a business degree, but I
think he didn't really know quite what that meant. He's
just like, I don't know, business sounds nice. And he
was already he was running the website on his own,
and so he kind of already had like a knack
for entrepreneurial kind of like, look at you. He just
(27:05):
said it the first time, Did I do it? Like?
It was like, Butter, I'm really jealous. You know. We
we didn't have any sort of set plan, and our
parents didn't have any expectation for us to become lawyers
or doctors, so there was nobody pushing us in a
specific direction. So that kind of allowed us to kind
(27:26):
of just see that this is a big opportunity that
it was our only chance to possibly take. So we
just kind of went full into it. So I've interviewed
a ton of YouTubers who are wanting to leave YouTube,
and they're very, very honest about it. And it's because
of what you just said. They put their heart and
soul into these the content that they make, and content
(27:47):
is getting really good. You know, people are putting a
lot of money into their content. And then so many
of them have said to me, that's why I put
content on Patreon. I put my quality content there. It's
like their entrepreneurs of their own world. And that's why
companies like Patreon work. And that's why companies like fan
joy work. Which I interviewed Chris who is the founder
of fans Why am I stuttering? So I interviewed Chris,
(28:11):
the founder of fan Joy. That's why it's hard founder
of found the fan joy of founder. Yes, yes, that's
basically was his business model too. It's like these creators
are making more money selling T shirts and hoodies than
they are on YouTube, which is like, what the hell
(28:33):
year are we in and what what system of converting
content into paychecks for the people who make the content
have we built and deployed globally such that your best
chance at making it as a creator is freaking putting
your logo on a T shirt and selling a T shirt.
That's not what That's not why you're valuable in the
world because you make T shirts. You're valuable because you
(28:53):
tell stories that people love that resonate with your fans. Like,
we should have a system where the stories that creators
tell that resonate with their fans, where that is their
business and you don't have to do all the other
extraneous bullshit to kind of cobble together a living. That's
a dumb system. And unfortunately that's the reality for creators
right now. I mean, at the end of every YouTube video,
(29:14):
it's like swipe up for this merch. It's like that's
how Joejoe's bows for Jojo Siwa, and like all the
hoodies that Jake Paul sells, that's how they're making their money.
And I think what we've essentially, yeah, the the kind
of state of the industry that we're in right now
is we've figured out in order to zooming way out
for a second, in order to kind of put up
the first phase of the web, we basically made the
(29:37):
web free, right We said, the web is free. You
pay with your attention and with your privacy, because what
we essentially do to we track every movement you make
on the web, and then we sell information about you aggregated,
but we sell information about you two people who want
to change your behavior, advertisers. You know, Um, I don't
know how deep I can get. I'm loving it from
(29:58):
someone's smartest talking. But that's essentially what I just described
as the economic engine that drives the production of content
on the web. Right now, consumers pay with their privacy
and with their personal information and with their attention, and
that gets converted into the paycheck for creators. But it
turns out that essentially that's a very inefficient system and
(30:19):
it takes millions of people, millions, because advertisers are interested
in reaching millions of people. It takes millions of people
in order to convert to a paycheck for a creator.
Whereas if you have ten thousand people who listen to
your show, that's a basketball stadium full of humans who
love what you have to say. Like, in what world
(30:39):
should that not be enough to make a living like that?
We need a system on the web where ten people
is enough. And that system is more like a consumer
payment system, it's more like heck, freaking Disney is doing
it now, Disney plus New York Times is doing it.
They have a subscription portion of New York Times which
is now bigger than their advertising business. So consumer payments
(31:01):
is you know, going back to what I said before,
you know, in terms of phases of the web, that
initial phase the web where the primary economic driver is
this advertising model. We're shifting to a new phase. I
think over the next you know, decade or two, ten
to twenty years, we're going to see consumer payments start
to be I hope. So yeah, I think that's gonna happen.
I mean, it's already happening. It is, it is, and
(31:23):
you're one of the driving forces in that. So you
should be really happy about that. Yeah. For people who
don't understand how Patreon works, would you mind us giving
a high level explanation of the platform. Yeah. So, the
way Patreon works is a fan can pay five bucks
a month, ten bucks a month, hunter bucks a month, honestly,
whatever the tears the creator creates. Fan can pay a
(31:45):
subscription pledge to a creator in exchange for exclusive community,
early access, extra episodes, behind the scenes, interviews, extra photos,
basically extra content and community and Interaction, Um and Patreon
is this system that allows creators flexibility to build and
run whatever membership they want if they want to have,
(32:06):
you know, five dollar, ten dollar, hundred dollar, if they
want to have twenty five fifty two hundred dollar, and
then you can load whatever benefits you want into those
tiers early access, exclusive access, exclusive community. We have integrations
with community platforms, all this kind of stuff, so you
can kind of do whatever you want to do as
a creator. And for creators, it's an amazing way to
essentially build a super close fan base. You own your
(32:27):
audience as a creator, like you get their email addresses,
Like on what other platform do you get the email
addresses of the people that are actually like fans of you,
and you make so much more money than you would
buy ad revenue. We have creators making literally fifty to
two hundred times what they make through ad revenue by
just letting their fans contribute five bucks a month for
(32:48):
an extra episode. What did you do? What was your
secret sauce and what was your offering to these people
that helped them go from three million to say twenty
million subscribers. Well, it ultimately falls on them to produce
good content. It. The one thing that that we really
focus on that we understand is it's a business. And
so most of these YouTube creators that you meet and
this was, you know, two thousand ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
(33:10):
YouTube was just an individual in front of a camera
editing his or her own videos and creating their own thumbnails.
That is not YouTube. You have to have a creative director,
a post production manager, head editor, like you need to
have specific people on your team to help where you
can kind of take a step back as a creator
(33:30):
and just focus on, Okay, what's today's video, Okay, what's
tomorrow's video, and that creative director really needs to help
you flesh out like, Okay, what do my fans want
to watch? Right? So what we've really focused on is
helping them build teams internally so they can just be
talent and that's what they should be. They shouldn't have
to play fifteen different roles. And as we're looking to
start other businesses or whether it's a consumer product or
(33:51):
we're starting a mobile gaming company, they can't focus on
that things. If they're editing their own videos and making
their own thumbnails and coming up with all the creative
it's just not feasible. And so for us, you know,
most of our clients now have taken a step back
hired the specific individuals that they need on the team,
and then they also understand the data behind why YouTube
videos perform. Well, what what is the common thread between
(34:14):
all of these talent all of this, you know, the
digital personalities versus the other ones we're seeing on YouTube.
So for us, like we focus on two things. This
is what we're talking about a little earlier. The first
pillars that they need to be family friendly. We only
work with family friendly creators. It's a little differently if
your audiences in their twenties and thirties and forties. But
most of the audience that we have for creators is
(34:34):
like six to twelve years old. Some of them sew
a little older, like Mr Beast and many Latin typical gamer.
But for the most part that's where we sit. And
so family friendlies one, and that second one is we
only work with creators that want to be more than
just YouTubers. They want to have to be business people.
They want to be entrepreneurs. They're really good at using YouTube,
is that core and then building businesses from that? If
(34:55):
that makes sense. So those are like, as I look
at all of our clients are are clients. That's two
things that they all have in common, is they really
want to do more than just be a YouTube creator.
It doesn't really sound like you necessarily had an agenda either.
It wasn't like some people start a YouTube channel because
(35:15):
the ultimate goal is to be an actress, a series regular,
or they want to break into music. It just seemed
like you guys were throwing things to the ceiling and
seeing what's stuck that you enjoyed doing. But it didn't
seem like you had a well we're doing this because
we want to be, you know, movie stars in five years. Yeah.
I'm a very much go with the flow kind of guy.
So for me, I didn't have aspirations. I guess I
(35:40):
wouldn't say like, well, they'll look at you. It just
fell into a lot of success. I don't know, but
I think you worked very hard for that. I didn't have.
I didn't have any I didn't feel like I deserved anything.
You know. I think a lot of people actors, you know,
they put a lot of time into this dream of
becoming an actor, and then when they get sort of
(36:02):
a taste of success, then they feel like I deserve this,
Like anything anything that comes my way, I don't feel
like I deserved it. I mean, I worked towards it
and it happened, and then I just try to, you know,
not take anything for granted. And that's just kind of
been the way that I've always kind of looked at
our career. It's like just kind of go with the flow,
go with like wherever this crazy thing is taking us.
(36:25):
Would you say that that has a lot to do
with the fifteen plus years of success this brand that
wasn't a brand at the time has seen because of
your mentality and because of your attitude towards everything you
were doing every day. Yeah, I think so. And I
wasn't looking to use Smash as a platform to become
(36:45):
television actor or you know, a director or anything like.
To me, all those things are awesome and I love
doing them and I'll take those opportunities if they come.
But Smash has all he's made the most sense to me,
as like, that's my sort of base. That's what I understand,
(37:06):
and it's what I think that we're good at. And
everything else is is nice, but there's probably other people
they're better at it than me. So you're creating content,
you're making you're getting little brand deals here and there,
you're selling merch just to keep things afloat. When did
it become something that you felt like wasn't a hustle struggle.
(37:27):
It was more of like, Okay, we have a system
going and this is this is a real business. Was
there like a video that went viral? Was there a
moment a validation? Can you remember a time when it
felt real, because I'm sure it took a while to
feel like a real quote unquote real Job's say, in
like two thousand seven, we were contacted by um, this guy,
(37:52):
Barry Bloomberg. He was a Disney television executive that had
left Disney and he was kind of looking for the
next thing to folk us on and he sort of saw,
you know, online media as being this sort of next thing.
So he started working with us and was like, if
you guys want to do this for a long time,
you need to start thinking of Smash is like a
(38:13):
comedy brand. So it was now small at this point
you had evolved into Smash. Yeah, I mean Smash was
a name that we had actually had since sophomore year
of high school. Okay, so that was not like evolved
into the name Smash. You guys always kind of called
it Smash. Yeah, that really worked out because, like at
the time of like the beginning of YouTube, everybody was
like their channels were just like their names. If we
(38:35):
didn't have Smash, we might have called our channel like
Ian and Anthony Productions, which doesn't exactly lend itself to longevity.
But luckily we had this great name because it was
a it was an inside joke that our friends that
came up with, and then Anthony created a website for it,
and then when the YouTube video started picking up, we're like, well,
let's just continue to have it tied to this smash name.
(38:59):
At that time, it was just Anthony and myself as
the faces of Smash, and it was Barry that you know,
sort of said, if you guys wanted to be doing
this ten years, twenty years, whatever years down the road,
it needs to be more than just you two. It
needs to be a brand. And that's something that we
weren't thinking of the time. I don't think that was
something anybody's thinking about at the time. Nowadays, every Instagram
(39:22):
model is like, this is my brand everything and beauty
and positivity. Everybody's thinking like what their brand is now,
but back then, it's like, no, our channel is, like
we're just like two guys. But it made a lot
of sense to say that we always just kind of
like went by the flow that I guess that's not
completely true. Like we we did have this vision of
what smash could become. I mean just from the beginning,
(39:44):
you screenprinting your own merch. You may have been going
with the flow and attitude of like where this goes,
but you were very much proactive in everything that you
guys did, like the merch, the Patriot, your own version
of Patriot. Yeah, that ended once we started, like I
actually getting money from merch. We're like, okay, we can't
just ask for money from them. We can't just be like,
can I have five dollars? We can give you a
(40:06):
shout out at the end. Yeah, we stop. We stopped
doing that. We're like, okay, that's just kind of wrong.
And I'm not I'm not talking Patreon. I think Patreon
is great, but you were not. I mean, you were
just saying five dollars please. Yeah. Yeah, We're like, hey,
we'll show you on the video if you give us. Okay,
so you have such an eye for talent. Is there
anybody on YouTube right now that you're kind of that
you're not that is not signed to Night Media? Someone
(40:28):
on YouTube you've got your eye on. You think that
they have something going. I know you have. They're honestly,
isn't like I'm trying to think I don't watch a
ton of content outside of our clients because you don't
even have time to think about signing anyone else. Yeah,
it's I'm pretty focused on our ten individuals. Are there
some creators doing some awesome stuff? Yes, there is even
(40:51):
people that we don't represent, Like, I think David's content
is amazing, it's very authentic. Why do you think people
watch David jo Brack. He's funny, he's supporting cast is
also awesome. Like they're just fun individuals and they're at
that age where they're like eighteen to two years old,
right in that college age. They have a large fan
They have a large fan base of probably sixteen to
(41:12):
twenty four, maybe younger. I don't know. It's just something
about his four minute videos too. They're just easy to consume.
So there's all these like there's a Cloud Gang, there's
Team ten there's you know, David's career already forgot what
they call? Oh yeah, how could I forget the vlog squad?
How come you guys don't have a gang name. We
don't need to have a gang name. I don't know,
(41:32):
like we're successful without it. I actually Preston, So Preston
used to have the pack. It was Vick Star, Lachlin
Musel No no no, no, Vick Star, Laughlin Beijian Canadian and
Rob and Preston. They were called the Pack. That was
a Minecraft blew up. But they've all kind of said,
gets a smart marketing play to have your little squad
and do collaps? Do they collab? We don't really do collabs.
(41:55):
Night media clients clab internally with each other, but we
don't do a lot of outside collabs. There's a few
reasons for that. One is we don't want people subscribe
to our channels that aren't going to click on videos
and sub boxes. So, for instance, if Jimmy would go
do a video James Charles and two d fifty thousand
James Charles fans would subdim Mr Beast, then that video
hits sub boxes and those two people don't click on it.
(42:17):
That hurts our ctr So that's why we don't That's
why we don't do collabs outside of our genre. Right,
So Preston will do collabs with other kids creators because
he knows that, oh, those fans will click on my videos.
But we don't do like David Doll refer instance, like
I don't know if we'll have to do a collab
with David because we don't know if he his fans
would click on our videos. YouTubers don't think about it
like that, but they should be because the goal is
(42:39):
to have a hundred percent active subscribers. When you post
a video, all of them click on your video, Hence
you have a high ctr When you just inflate your
subscriber numbers by doing collapse, you're actually hurting your channel.
What advice would you give someone who wants to go
on and Patreon and be a successful creator on the
on the site? Step one is make great stuff that
(43:02):
your fans love. Um, if you don't quite have a
fan base yet, uh, Patreon doesn't work as well for you. Um.
It's really a membership platform. It works great for creators
who are who have already kind of found what they
want to make and then seen that reach people. So
this isn't like a throw ship to the ceiling and
see what sticks. This is like a come with your audience. Yeah, exactly.
(43:25):
And it's not UM, it's not that we don't care
about solving that particular problem, or it's not that we
don't want to help folks find fans. It's just we're
being at a startup. You have to prioritize, and so
we're saying, Okay, you know the problem, we're gonna solve versts.
So you're getting a bunch of views on YouTube, but
you're not making any money. That's the problem Patreons focused on.
But yeah, advice, make great stuff that you love, that
(43:48):
your fans are passionate about UM, and just make it awesome.
And then when you when you're proud of it and
when you see it resonating with other folks, start a
Patreon page and honestly, at that point, just be be yourself,
be honest, tell your fans what's going on, invite them
in on the journey. UM. The creators who love their
fans and whose fans love them back, they do the
(44:10):
best on the platform. And then advice for somebody who
is in your shoes now not a creator, but somebody
who wants to represent creators. Yeah, just to add value
that when I first started in this industry, I didn't
even take a commission. It's like I will literally work
for free. I will do a good job, I will deliver,
and then we'll talk about it. So it's like you
need to provide value before you can just go to someone,
(44:30):
throw a contract in front of them and say hey,
let me take X percentage of your revenue. So it
just doesn't work like that. And there's a lot more
competition in the space, and there used to be when
I got started. When I got started, there was probably
two or three people that were trying to manage digital influencers,
especially in this town. So I think if you're a
young kid, find someone that you get along with, that
(44:50):
you think you can work with for the next decade,
and then provide value. Don't try and sign thirty seven
people right out of the door, because it's you're not
gonna last. You seem too good to be true that
you have all these knowledge nuggets, plus you have this
incredible roster of talent. I'm really excited to see what
they all have going on. I know you couldn't tell
(45:11):
us much. Is there anything you can tell us? Just
give us one little, you know kind of thing. You know. Well,
we talked about the tree video, so we're going to
see a lot of YouTubers be a part of this
Mr Beast Tree challenge. So it's a dollar to planet tree.
So he did get other YouTubers involved. We're gonna have
a ton and it's not within the your community, your well,
(45:32):
all the night media clients will probably get involved. We
have others. I won't say anyone's name yet. We'll wait
for those announcements, but some people that have been on
this podcast are probably going to be involved. So yeah,
and like I said, the goal is to plant twenty
million trees by Earth, so we'll start out so Mr
Beast will start out with probably a million trees and
(45:53):
then we'll go get nineteen more million planet and yeah,
it'll be a that's it. That's crazy. So in hindsight,
fifteen fourteen years later, you can whisper into young Ian's
ear and tell him one piece of advice that might
make things transition smoother, business deals better. Would there be
(46:14):
something that you would in hindsight tell younger Ian. I
don't think so I mean I think obviously there was
there was things that didn't work out, but that's still
worked out in a sense. Yeah, I mean, whether it
was like a bad brand deal and we got backlash
or you know, some sort of bad business deal, or like,
oh we hired this person and they weren't great. Like
(46:36):
that's all part of learning. So whatever bad things happened,
they happened, and we became better because of it. Absolutely,
it actually shaped your journey and probably taught you, you know,
how to get over the hurdle. And you guys are thriving. Now,
how many I think I've saw twenty four million subscribers
across and might I might even be think we're twenty
(46:59):
five some Yeah, I'm sure changed. We were. We were stuck.
We were stuck at twenty two million for like, I think,
like a year because just our content was not was
not in the right place. And then once once we
got things correct and we started doing the things that
we felt like we needed to do, it immediately changed.
(47:19):
Can you wrap your head around it's a big number,
twenty five million people wait for your content. Well, I
mean that's a lot that's subs and that's also people
that subscribe maybe eight years ago that are that moved on,
so it's not necessarily million people that are watching. Fine,
but still, I mean, starting from a couch doing lip
(47:40):
singing videos, fast forward fourteen years, you've built an empire
that huge beheamoths of companies have wanted to buy it
started on a couch, you and your best friend. That's
got to be a pinch me. It's weird. It's pretty weird.
I mean, you're so in it. It's your life, so
you probably don't see it that way, but from the
outside it's an insane story. I agree, it's insane, and
(48:03):
thank you for sharing it with us today. I'm really
excited to see where Smash goes in the next couple
of years. Do you have any do you have a
vision for what you think? Let's not even do a
big one, but like, where do you see that? Where
do you see Smash in the next year. Let's go
like super small. Yeah. Well, we we got back on
our feet in February with Mythical and if these past
(48:25):
four months are indicative of where we're going, then I
feel very, very positive about our future. It's been nothing
but good ship. The ship is going to get better.
And better, like the biggest best ship you've ever seen. Yeah.
(48:56):
Behind the influence of the production of I Heart Radio
and TDC Media, the st
Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart
Radio and t DC Media. Read Duke Shure and I
did not correct your last name. A lot of a
lot of people struggle with that outside in North Dakota.
But that was good. You were on point, very good. Okay, right,
well what it's kind of out of ten already, Ian
(00:26):
he talks, is in the house. Guys, Hello, you don't
know who Ian is? What do you know? I know
that was aggressive, but if you don't know that name,
we got to reevaluate life. I mean, the Internet is
a big place. I never assume anybody. You're pretty good
Internet a video of mine. So, Jacob Kanje has started
(00:47):
a small platform called Patreon. We all know it, we
all want to be on it. It's the reason so
many creators are able to create. And you are such
an inspiration because I was telling Jack this before the interview.
As you guys know, Behind the Influence is all about
people who are literally behind the influence, the people who
create the platforms that allow social media influencers to be
(01:10):
social media influencers or creators. And Jack also happens to
be very musically talented and has a creator passed and
present so you fall on two sides of the coin.
How does that like, how do you even balance the two?
It's really hard. The first five years of the company,
I didn't nail it. So actually that was a real
struggle for me. And actually it was probably a little
(01:31):
bit of there was some darkness there for me trying
to figure out how to balance it because I felt like,
oh god, I'm giving up my creative career and I
love being a creator, and so it was really hard
because you know, I was becoming like a you know,
an operator and building a company and I actually kind
of had to stop creating for a couple of years.
So that was that was pretty rough. But then in
the last three years, I've really found a way to
(01:51):
to still be prolific and make things. I fly down
to l a once a month now and I do
four music videos with one band for with another band,
and then we you know this point, now I'm releasing
eight music videos a month. So that's a lot. How
do you find the time and you're the founder of
a massive, massive platform that you're very much involved and
it's not like you've just stepped aside. Now that's super successful. Yeah,
(02:12):
I mean I'm I'm there, you know, of course every
single day, and I'm working more than every day, you know,
on on the making Patreon a thing. Yes, starting a
company is a is a triple time job. It's not
the kind of thing you can just kind of not
to because you can't have asked these things. No, it's
you can't. And yeah, it's been you know, I've I've
(02:34):
worked more in my life, you know, on Patreon that
I've worked ever on it. I mean it's been so intense,
so so yeah, that has been you know, rewarding hard.
Recently being able to in the last three years, being
able to combine it with being a creator again has
made me feel like so I feel like I got
my pilot light, you know, turned back on. You know,
(02:54):
it feels nice. We're really excited to have you here. Obviously,
you represent the to me of what we cover on
this show, people of influence, and you are a person
of influence because you are behind these people and helping
them groom into these mega stars overnight. And literally we're
going to talk about the numbers of all the people
that you have brought forth to us. Yeah, lots of growth,
(03:19):
and I think I think it's because of you. I
don't know if it's all like. We have an amazing team.
I got into this industry four and a half five
years ago by myself out of my bedroom, and to
see what night Media has blossomed into today's have been incredible.
I think we're just to throw out some numbers. Were
over a billion views a month through ten clients, across
ten clients, and I believe we're at about that eighty
(03:40):
eight million subscriber range. And that's pretty impressive when you
consider it's only ten individuals. You represent more than ten people,
that's just your top ten. We actually just have ten.
So we keep it so Night Media's philosophy just to
get into this a little bit, so we usually only
work with family friendly creators, so we don't work with
a ton of people that actually we don't have any
creators that really swear on their channels. It's something that
we're we're not necessarily against. We just don't like to
(04:02):
promote it to children. And the second ones, we only
work with with creators that want to be entrepreneurs and
business people. And you know, we found ten that you know,
want to dig into this industry and want to keep
YouTube at its core and want to do so much more,
and that's why we stayed small. The reason you're here
is because of that. You were one of the pioneers
in the YouTube space. And not only did you pioneer
(04:22):
in a world that a lot of people didn't understand
back in two thousand five, by the way, when people
weren't really doing the YouTube thing. Yeah, I mean YouTube
wasn't really a thing. It wasn't a thing. It just recently,
I think, in the last decade, has become a thing.
In two thousand five, starts with a little, a silly video,
just you and your friend. And did you ever know
that it would turn into this empire that has employed
(04:46):
so many people and made so many people so much money.
And yeah, we had no no idea whatsoever. It was
just us, you know, messing around with a webcam. We
started with lip syncs. We did the Power Rangers theme song.
That was our first slip sync, and then we did
Mortal Kombat and then Pokemon and then the Pokemon theme
song music video was the video that like really really
(05:06):
blew up and for I think a year and a
half it was the most viewed video on YouTube. And
back in the day, there was no discover ability on YouTube.
So the only way that you could find quote unquote
quality content, which that video looking back is not the
only way you can find quality content is if you
went to the most viewed page like most people of
(05:27):
all time. Okay, so all those videos that had the
most views must be the best videos on YouTube. That
would be the theory. But you know, our videos up
at the top, and it was think, why do you
think about so many views? Because nothing else like that
was on YouTube, and you guys were just kind of
creating your own lane. And people were curious because that's
(05:48):
what I would think. Yeah, I mean I think music
is universal. I mean that's why all the top view
videos are are music videos. So I think that's one
thing Pokemon is, you know, the sort of global unifier
who doesn't like Pokemon. At that time, a lot of
people were doing lip syncs, but a lot of people
were just kind of standing there and just lip sinking.
(06:08):
But we were also throwing in jokes into it, so
like kind of like criticizing the Pokemon while we were
singing the song. Just the fact that they like Pokemon
in a strange way is like animal abuse. So we
had some like jokes I never thought of it. I
don't need to laugh, but I never thought about it. Yeah,
I mean, you're you're forcing it's it's it's no different
(06:29):
than a than a dog fight, and we don't allow that.
So we, uh, we kind of made some some jokes
in the video. I think that's what kind of made
it stand out from the other sort of lip syncs
is we actually had a take on it. I'm not
saying like it's supreme art. But also, back in the
days of YouTube, you're not really competing with that much
(06:51):
quality content. Anything that's like sort of above like the
worst quality ever would automatically rise above everything else. So
you have of ten of the most subscribed to followed
YouTube personalities in a time where YouTube is it's hard
to navigate right. People die on YouTube, but I don't
(07:12):
mean actually die, but their content dies on YouTube because
they're not switching it up enough or whatever. The reason is.
Is it that you've found people who have staying power,
or is it that you have come up with a
strategy for that staying power? Man, I don't know how
much I want to say here. I think most of
it is just lack of understanding of how YouTube actually works.
Most of our guys focus on a few things, and
(07:33):
yes they switched their content up. Yes they don't do
the same video ten times in a row like some
creators make that mistake. But you know, we really understand
that a good video starts with a good title and thumbnail,
and then once you get people to click on that video,
it's all about getting them to stay and watch that video.
So it's really just a combination of high click through
rate which is CTR and high average uderation. So that's
(07:54):
the two things that we really focus on. And as
a creator, when those two dip, that's when it time
to either switch it up or say, Okay, my fans
aren't clicking on this video. Why are they not clicking
on this video? Or why are they not staying and
watching this video? For the duration we're going to get
into a little bit of your back story before we
give away all the secrets. But there was a time
when all of this clicked for you, and there had
(08:16):
to have been moments in the journey where you figured
out the secret sauce and and to even figure out
to work with influencers. Would you remember a time in
your career that this all kind of came to fruition
for you. There there's a few. I honestly don't even
think we're a first space yet, Like, we have so
much more to accomplish as a company. And yes we
work with some of the most influential people on the Internet,
(08:37):
but there's a lot that we have to accomplish with
those individuals, and we really dig into their businesses. But
when I was I was an NFL sports agent before
I got into this industry, and I met Dude Perfect.
So this was two thousand and fifteen. Dude Perfect was
still small, not the Dude Perfect we know today. They're
like two million subscribers. And I met them, and at
the time, we were working with large NFL clients. We
(08:58):
had Odell Beckham jew a year and Richard Sherman and
Marcus Allen and Barry Sanders and so like, we were
at the top of this NFL chain and it was
a lot of fun. But when I met Dude Perfect,
advertising agencies and brands were asking me questions that they
weren't necessarily interested about Odell and Richard. They were going,
tell us more about Dude Perfect, or those trick shot
guys are really interesting. Why don't you come to the
(09:20):
office and tell us more and that was kind of
like my first AHA moment was Okay, people are actually
looking at this to be a viable marketing you know medium.
I left three months later. People still thought I was
crazy at that time, like nobody's gonna buy a Dude
Perfect video, Like people aren't gonna spend money on YouTube.
But eventually, after pitching it for six to eight months,
people started to spend money. And that first one was
(09:42):
Callaway Golf. Callowe Golf came in in a very conservative
golf industry that's predominantly marketed towards older individuals, came in
and bought a Dude Perfect video and this was the
first thing I had done with Dude Perfect. And then
they came back for a second video, and that's when
I knew, Okay, this is something that's going to be
massive for people who don't know who did you do
(10:02):
the video with? Yes, So I did the video with
my childhood friend Anthony. We met in like the sixth
grade and we did a share boredom. We just graduated
high school. I was seventeen. He might have been seventeen
as well. Yeah, at the time he was also seventeen.
You guys, go to the same high school. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah,
So we went to the same elementary school and middle school,
(10:22):
high school, best friends, and we're both bored. All of
our friends were going off to real colleges. We were
staying in Sacramento and we're going to go to a
community college. So we were pretty bored. Over the summer.
We had actually started making videos and posting them on
my Space before we even knew what YouTube was. And
the only reason we found out about YouTube so early
was because somebody had stolen our video and uploaded on YouTube. Yeah,
(10:48):
so that's how we actually found out about YouTube, was
because somebody had ripped our content. So we started upload
kind of a compliment, Yeah right, yeah, so we started
uploading on there. It started the views, and to us,
over a hundred views was insane. And at that time,
you could just refresh YouTube and see the counter go up,
(11:08):
so we would just like refresh and see like, oh
my god, there's five more views. Oh my god, there's
ten more views. So that was that was a weird
experience for us. You know how some artists become managers
of other artists and they're like, now, where's where's my moment?
Where's my stage? You know, like I would imagine that
it could be hard to see other people creating when
you really want to create, but you're also creating something
(11:30):
but on a different level. Absolutely. Yeah, before I figured
out a way to kind of be a creator and
do the business, well, let's see, the secret was amazing
working with amazing people and letting go a little bit
of all the details. It was really hard because as
a creator, as an artist like I, you know, when
(11:51):
we when Pablo originally was making music, I was, you know,
doing all the instrumentation, all the mixing, all the mastering.
You know, Um, it was of a partnership with Natalie,
but but I had full I had my hands. I
was sculpting the whole thing, from the video to the
editing to everything. And um, now Papa Mouse is like
(12:11):
fifteen contractors right and like and we've slowly let go
of like Okay, we're letting go to the video editing, Okay,
we're letting go to the audio mixing. Okay, we're letting
go to the mastering. Okay, now we're gonna let go
some of the production. And like one step at a time,
you kind of take a step back, but you still
get to do the things that are exciting to you
as an artist and that give you a voice as
an artist. So I still feel like, you know, before
(12:31):
we were able to do that, I kind of felt
like I didn't have vocal chords anymore. I was like, oh, ship,
like somebody took my vocal car I can't speak anymore.
And now I feel like I got my vocal chords back.
And even though my voice is a little different than
it used to be in some ways, it's like even
more exciting and more beautiful and more fun because it
combines the creativity of other people too. It's not just
my soul vision. It's like the vision of this wonderful
(12:53):
group of fifteen people, and they get to be creative
and do their thing. So it's been really wonderful. And
so you leave the sports world behind, Yeah, I did.
I packed up my car. I worked so hard to
get into the sports industry to everyone's hard. That's a
hard career to kind of break into. It's almost impossible
to break into because there's not that many sports agents.
It's very difficult. It's easy to get a certificate to
(13:15):
be a sports agent. It's very difficult to represent a
guy that actually makes an NFL roster. And so I
saw the movie Jerry McGuire, just like everyone else did
when they were younger, and I thought it was a
sexy industry. I lived in Las Vegas, and I used
to travel back and forth in Las Vegas to l
A and literally just sit in lobbies like c A
and athletes first, and like all these different lobbies. I
(13:36):
would just sitting wait for agents to come out, and
then I would hand them my resume and I'd be like,
just give me an opportunity, like I promised, like it's
going to be worth it. What was monetization like back that?
Did you guys even think that this was something you
can make money from that early on? There's no way
of montization. I mean, like I guess we we had
sort of like the first Patreon in a sense where
(14:00):
we just not like solicited our viewers for donations, but
we said, like, hey, we want to film with more
than just a webcam that's tied to the computer. We
we would like a handicap. So people actually donated money
to us to buy a handicam so that we can
actually go beyond Anthony's bedroom, and then we put their
names and they're like, donation. I think we can put
(14:22):
their donation amounts like on the screen of our videos.
So at the end of the video, it's like, thanks
to this person for donating thirty So ahead of the
times because I feel like that was a very early
iteration of what actually ends up happening. In a sense,
you were living it because you this was something that
was missing from your life. You didn't just create Patreon
(14:42):
because you were like, oh, this is a really cool
idea that you'll see like on some home shopping network
that you thought was some great invention. This was something
that would affect your life directly. Yeah, I as an
as a creator. Um, I had just finished a music
video that I spent about ten thousand bucks on. I
drained my savings account, I maxed out to credit cards
(15:04):
to make time. I was twenty eight. Were you married
at the time? Now, I wasn't married. So it's a
video called Pedals and it's on my personal YouTube channel.
You will love this. Stephen Stephen, our camera guy DP
master of all Things. But yeah, it's awesome. It's it's
a wild video. Yeah. I literally built by hand. I
built a replica of Lennium Falcon cockpit to be the
(15:26):
set for the video. I mean, like I built the
whole thing, like hot gluing things, and like it took
me three months. I mean I was working nineteen hour days.
My hands were like cracked and bloody and painted and
like I was, I mean, I was all in on
this video. It's a lot of money for I'm thinking
about when I was twenty eight dropping ten stacks on
something like that's insane. It was insane. I it was
(15:49):
not a good idea. I mean it was it worked out,
It worked out. It was illogical, though, and I knew
that going in. I was like, you know what, I'm
going to be illogical right now because my life just
lets there you go. I was like going to home
Depot and Joann's Fabrics and like it was a crazy time.
But the idea something. I mean, the whole reason that
(16:11):
Patreon came up was because I was about to post
this video that I like poured my soul into. When
I posted videos at that time, they got about a
million view So I knew I'd get about a million
views and I came with this video and I'd get
my ad revenue check for me to be a hundred
and fifty bucks, and I couldn't stomach the idea of
having spent ten grand on this thing that's going to
reach a million people. It's not like I'm a starming artist,
(16:33):
and I'm like, I can't find an audience, Like I
found my crew on the people who like what I
have to say, and I put that on the web
and then I get a million. I've reached a million
people around the world and I get paid a hundred
and fifty bucks. Like what the funk kind of system?
It's bullshit, total bull And that that was the thing.
I thought, There's got to be a better way here.
There's gotta be a way, like if you involve fans,
(16:55):
fans want to help, they want to support, you know,
you know that. I sort of sketched out the side
da for a membership platform like k Q e D
or you know, um W B e Z in Chicago
or SF Moment where people, you know, the fans of
a thing can pay five bucks a month or ten
bucks a month in exchange for exclusive access or whatever,
and uh and it worked, and here we are. Once
(17:23):
the Pokemon theme song music video was removed for copyright infringement,
we were like, hey, you know, we should probably start
making more original content that's not using other people's stuff.
And so from that point on, pretty much we were
we were wholly original content, not using copyrighted music or
you know, images or whatever. So we then sort of
transition to sketch comedy, and that's kind of the road
(17:45):
we went down. So sketch comedy for the first few
years of YouTube was kind of like the king of YouTube,
Like everybody wanted to do sketch comedy, and you know,
there's channels like Balloon Shop. It really pays me off.
Why would you knock the drink out of your hand?
What would you do that? Why would you do that?
The Lonely Island Lonely Island obviously, Andy Sandberg, Kiva and Jorma,
(18:06):
who then went on to SNL and then bigger and
bigger things. Hello, welcome to the party. Hi, I've never
met you before, you know, just two guys and we're
having a good time. Derek Comedy is where Donald Glover
Child's Gambino came from. That was the day everyone and
a sad only to you too, Sir sat opposite day,
Sir James, good evening, Sir, Can I not ask you something?
(18:32):
About opposite day. No, but sketch comedy is really hard
to continue and it's expensive. It's more expensive than just
doing a vlog, Like you need to like hire people
and you know, writing sketches and shooting it and editing
it takes a little bit longer than normal kinds of things.
So a lot of people burnt out on making sketches.
(18:52):
I packed up my cars, like, Mom, Dad, like, I'm
driving to Dallas. We're dude, perfect is Base. I'm leaving
for Smartin Management, which is the sport station Seaton. Like wait, what,
I thought. You've worked a year and a half to
get this job. You've done it for nine months, and
now you're gonna leave. I was like, yeah, I think
I can do this, and like, well, you know, we
trust you and good luck and you know they supported me,
which you know, it was number one and then number two.
(19:13):
It was then figuring out who were the next big
channels that are going to pop up on YouTube, And
luckily then met typical gamer who was live streaming Grand
Theft Auto and saw him pulling five thousand viewers to
eight thousand viewers to twelve thousand viewers, and you just
continue to grow and that's when YouTube gaming became a thing.
So then was your full time focus just kind of
(19:34):
scouting this, this next crop of influencers and mega digital personalities.
And how did that day look for you? Were you
just sitting there on YouTube all day? Not really. I
was sending a lot of cold emails at that time
because I was working pretty closely with Dude Perfect, and
I was trying to bring in business for them. Wasn't
really interested in signing a ton of people. I always
(19:57):
understood that talent management wasn't scalable, it wasn't a galable
business model. For me, it was I just wanted to
work with individuals that I enjoyed working with, and then
I wanted to become business partners with them and do
something much bigger than just create YouTube videos. And for me,
that was always, you know, where I wanted to take this.
But at the time, there were so many different people
popping up on YouTube it was hard to keep up
like it is today, It's like there's so many channels
(20:18):
with a million subscribers, how do you figure out which
one to work with? So I was just getting to
know people, sending a lot of cold emails, talking with
advertising agencies, and really just building my rolodex. So at
that point, what was the game plan for you? Did
you think you we're gonna start an agency? Is was
night Media? Even in the no, it wasn't even really
a thing yet. I just was enjoying what I was
(20:39):
doing and I was going to eventually figure out how
to make it a business. But at the time, I
wasn't even thinking that. I was just thinking, Man, I'm
not making any money. How do I convince CALLOWE Golf
and BMW to spend money on Dude perfect so I
can actually bring in some income. That's really all I
was concerned about at the time, And then it eventually
to now what Night Media has become is pretty crazy.
I think I never matched. And yeah, so a lot
(21:01):
of things happened between that first deal and today. Um
today you represent ten huge personalities. We were going over
your your top five and that doesn't mean they're your
favorite gonna get me in trouble not. I wouldn't say
top five because they're all incredible. But you've got Preston
Mr b Sunday unspeakable. You can look at it in
(21:22):
a few ways, views per month or subscribers or social reach.
I guess we're looking at facts. We're not asking the
godfather to pick the favorite child that I love them
all today. Yeah, of course you do. And they're all
really talented. So you get this roster? How does how
does this happen? So? Okay? So I was working with
dude Perfect. Then I met typical gamer Twitch and we
talked about you had someone on from Twitch. Earlier Twitch
(21:43):
was obviously taking off an Amazon had just acquired. It
was called justin TV. YouTube Gaming then starts, and I
was starting to work with some of those live streamers
that were popping up on YouTube that were just live
streaming on the platform. And that's really how it started.
And then two thousand seventeen. But February two seventeen, I
met an individual real name Preston Get a Minecraft channel
called Preston Plays about three and a half million subscribers.
(22:04):
We were in the same city. I was living in Dallas.
I had no idea he was in Dallas, and a
friend of mine who's also a YouTuber, Nico Vald, introduced
us through Twitter d m s. I do most of
my business weirdly enough, through Twitter Dms've never recruited anyone
know they slide into mine. I've never like recruited a
person to sign them. It's usually them coming to me
(22:24):
and asking questions, is how it usually starts. Hey, I
saw you work with so and so, Like, can you
tell me a little more? And that's how it works.
With Preston, he introduced us. We went out to coffee,
sat there for about four hours and just kind of
talked about family and faith and business and you know,
just had a good time. And eventually, about thirty days later,
him and I started working together and that's when night
media took off. Right out of high school. What makes
(22:47):
you think I'm qualified to be doing sketch because, like
you said, it's not just about hiring people like you
could have the money. I know people who have all
the money in the world. But if you're not a
good writer, if you don't have good ideas, it's not
gonna fly. So how did you guys get to the
place where you were qualified enough to do successful sketch comedy.
I don't think we're qualified at all. Well something made
(23:10):
you think you were. I mean, it's really we just
kind of paid attention to the feedback on YouTube, and
I know that's not always the best idea to read
the comments. But some people have some pretty constructive criticism
that are acting sucked in our ideas sucked. So we
continue to go to community college, but only in classes
that applied to whatever we were doing. So we took
some acting classes, we took some writing classes, we took
(23:32):
some improv classes, took some film classes, and then once
we burned out on those. Once we did all those classes,
we just left. But with with sketch comedy, you know,
it takes a lot of time. We were out of
high school, so we're living in our parents house and
you know, start to have bills, so you have to
find some way to create an income. And so the
(23:53):
choice was either well you try to find a job
and then find some time to make sketches, or you
can commit fully to creating sketches and try to build
a business doing that. So that then turn our focus.
What did family think about? That family was totally don
they were down there anything better? Well, because I think
now it would be a lot easier for you know,
(24:14):
a fifteen year old or sixth year old to convince
their parents like, look, Jake Paul's making two million dollars years,
so can I two thousand five thousand and six. Whenever
you were doing it, that was not the case. So
you don't have a case study to point to and say,
these people are making a living doing this, I'm gonna
build an empire. You had literally nothing but your own
drive and an idea. Yeah, and we had viewers. You
had viewers. I think my dad's an accountant, so he
(24:37):
kind of understands business, and I think we had viewers.
So that had to event something. It's like, oh, well,
if we're getting similar views to like a local TV
show or something like, that's gotta that's gotta mean something like,
there's gotta be a way to to monetize that. There
was no way at that time in regards to add revenue.
(24:58):
I remember our first brand deal we did for five dollars.
That was a big deal to us. But we we
found other ways of monetizing. We uh started selling merch
and I think we were some of the first people
on the platform to do that. We knew this like
guy that worked out of a warehouse down the street
that was a screen printer. Pretty sure he had one leg,
(25:18):
but he never showed us. Um, but uh, I need
to find out. So we so then we started like
marketing our merch and like these little sort of like
funny commercials at the ends of our videos. Oh my god,
yess what what look at my shirt? Oh my god,
stoppers small shirt. We would have this guy screenprint all
(25:39):
the shirts. Then Anthony had a program that would take
all the orders in with like their names and their addresses,
and then we would package all the shirts ourselves. That
we would then load all the shirts into his car
and then we would drive to USPS and get very
ugly looks from the workers there because we'd be mailing
out maybe hundreds of shirts at a time. My god.
(26:00):
But that was the way that we first sort of
supplemented the income for the business. That was that was
so entrepreneurial. I knew I was going to suck that up. Yeah,
every time I tried to say that one. But you
know what I mean, guys, entrepreneurial of you. Yeah, I
mean we didn't have any I mean, we didn't have
any choice. It was like that was our only option.
(26:22):
It was trying to sell merch to create an income,
to stay out of a job or work a job
and not be able to create content. So and you're
so young to figure that out. Yeah, well, I think
I think I probably had some advice from my dad
to we didn't really have any other choice. It's just
like that was the only way to do it at
the time. And you're still going to school at this point, Yeah,
and what were you majoring in? Was it anything to
(26:43):
do with this world? That was just general ad We
didn't really know what we wanted to do. I think
Anthony thought he would get a business degree, but I
think he didn't really know quite what that meant. He's
just like, I don't know, business sounds nice. And he
was already he was running the website on his own,
and so he kind of already had like a knack
for entrepreneurial kind of like, look at you. He just
(27:05):
said it the first time, Did I do it? Like?
It was like, Butter, I'm really jealous. You know. We
we didn't have any sort of set plan, and our
parents didn't have any expectation for us to become lawyers
or doctors, so there was nobody pushing us in a
specific direction. So that kind of allowed us to kind
(27:26):
of just see that this is a big opportunity that
it was our only chance to possibly take. So we
just kind of went full into it. So I've interviewed
a ton of YouTubers who are wanting to leave YouTube,
and they're very, very honest about it. And it's because
of what you just said. They put their heart and
soul into these the content that they make, and content
(27:47):
is getting really good. You know, people are putting a
lot of money into their content. And then so many
of them have said to me, that's why I put
content on Patreon. I put my quality content there. It's
like their entrepreneurs of their own world. And that's why
companies like Patreon work. And that's why companies like fan
joy work. Which I interviewed Chris who is the founder
of fans Why am I stuttering? So I interviewed Chris,
(28:11):
the founder of fan Joy. That's why it's hard founder
of found the fan joy of founder. Yes, yes, that's
basically was his business model too. It's like these creators
are making more money selling T shirts and hoodies than
they are on YouTube, which is like, what the hell
(28:33):
year are we in and what what system of converting
content into paychecks for the people who make the content
have we built and deployed globally such that your best
chance at making it as a creator is freaking putting
your logo on a T shirt and selling a T shirt.
That's not what That's not why you're valuable in the
world because you make T shirts. You're valuable because you
(28:53):
tell stories that people love that resonate with your fans. Like,
we should have a system where the stories that creators
tell that resonate with their fans, where that is their
business and you don't have to do all the other
extraneous bullshit to kind of cobble together a living. That's
a dumb system. And unfortunately that's the reality for creators
right now. I mean, at the end of every YouTube video,
(29:14):
it's like swipe up for this merch. It's like that's
how Joejoe's bows for Jojo Siwa, and like all the
hoodies that Jake Paul sells, that's how they're making their money.
And I think what we've essentially, yeah, the the kind
of state of the industry that we're in right now
is we've figured out in order to zooming way out
for a second, in order to kind of put up
the first phase of the web, we basically made the
(29:37):
web free, right We said, the web is free. You
pay with your attention and with your privacy, because what
we essentially do to we track every movement you make
on the web, and then we sell information about you aggregated,
but we sell information about you two people who want
to change your behavior, advertisers. You know, Um, I don't
know how deep I can get. I'm loving it from
(29:58):
someone's smartest talking. But that's essentially what I just described
as the economic engine that drives the production of content
on the web. Right now, consumers pay with their privacy
and with their personal information and with their attention, and
that gets converted into the paycheck for creators. But it
turns out that essentially that's a very inefficient system and
(30:19):
it takes millions of people, millions, because advertisers are interested
in reaching millions of people. It takes millions of people
in order to convert to a paycheck for a creator.
Whereas if you have ten thousand people who listen to
your show, that's a basketball stadium full of humans who
love what you have to say. Like, in what world
(30:39):
should that not be enough to make a living like that?
We need a system on the web where ten people
is enough. And that system is more like a consumer
payment system, it's more like heck, freaking Disney is doing
it now, Disney plus New York Times is doing it.
They have a subscription portion of New York Times which
is now bigger than their advertising business. So consumer payments
(31:01):
is you know, going back to what I said before,
you know, in terms of phases of the web, that
initial phase the web where the primary economic driver is
this advertising model. We're shifting to a new phase. I
think over the next you know, decade or two, ten
to twenty years, we're going to see consumer payments start
to be I hope. So yeah, I think that's gonna happen.
I mean, it's already happening. It is, it is, and
(31:23):
you're one of the driving forces in that. So you
should be really happy about that. Yeah. For people who
don't understand how Patreon works, would you mind us giving
a high level explanation of the platform. Yeah. So, the
way Patreon works is a fan can pay five bucks
a month, ten bucks a month, hunter bucks a month, honestly,
whatever the tears the creator creates. Fan can pay a
(31:45):
subscription pledge to a creator in exchange for exclusive community,
early access, extra episodes, behind the scenes, interviews, extra photos,
basically extra content and community and Interaction, Um and Patreon
is this system that allows creators flexibility to build and
run whatever membership they want if they want to have,
(32:06):
you know, five dollar, ten dollar, hundred dollar, if they
want to have twenty five fifty two hundred dollar, and
then you can load whatever benefits you want into those
tiers early access, exclusive access, exclusive community. We have integrations
with community platforms, all this kind of stuff, so you
can kind of do whatever you want to do as
a creator. And for creators, it's an amazing way to
essentially build a super close fan base. You own your
(32:27):
audience as a creator, like you get their email addresses,
Like on what other platform do you get the email
addresses of the people that are actually like fans of you,
and you make so much more money than you would
buy ad revenue. We have creators making literally fifty to
two hundred times what they make through ad revenue by
just letting their fans contribute five bucks a month for
(32:48):
an extra episode. What did you do? What was your
secret sauce and what was your offering to these people
that helped them go from three million to say twenty
million subscribers. Well, it ultimately falls on them to produce
good content. It. The one thing that that we really
focus on that we understand is it's a business. And
so most of these YouTube creators that you meet and
this was, you know, two thousand ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
(33:10):
YouTube was just an individual in front of a camera
editing his or her own videos and creating their own thumbnails.
That is not YouTube. You have to have a creative director,
a post production manager, head editor, like you need to
have specific people on your team to help where you
can kind of take a step back as a creator
(33:30):
and just focus on, Okay, what's today's video, Okay, what's
tomorrow's video, and that creative director really needs to help
you flesh out like, Okay, what do my fans want
to watch? Right? So what we've really focused on is
helping them build teams internally so they can just be
talent and that's what they should be. They shouldn't have
to play fifteen different roles. And as we're looking to
start other businesses or whether it's a consumer product or
(33:51):
we're starting a mobile gaming company, they can't focus on
that things. If they're editing their own videos and making
their own thumbnails and coming up with all the creative
it's just not feasible. And so for us, you know,
most of our clients now have taken a step back
hired the specific individuals that they need on the team,
and then they also understand the data behind why YouTube
videos perform. Well, what what is the common thread between
(34:14):
all of these talent all of this, you know, the
digital personalities versus the other ones we're seeing on YouTube.
So for us, like we focus on two things. This
is what we're talking about a little earlier. The first
pillars that they need to be family friendly. We only
work with family friendly creators. It's a little differently if
your audiences in their twenties and thirties and forties. But
most of the audience that we have for creators is
(34:34):
like six to twelve years old. Some of them sew
a little older, like Mr Beast and many Latin typical gamer.
But for the most part that's where we sit. And
so family friendlies one, and that second one is we
only work with creators that want to be more than
just YouTubers. They want to have to be business people.
They want to be entrepreneurs. They're really good at using YouTube,
is that core and then building businesses from that? If
(34:55):
that makes sense. So those are like, as I look
at all of our clients are are clients. That's two
things that they all have in common, is they really
want to do more than just be a YouTube creator.
It doesn't really sound like you necessarily had an agenda either.
It wasn't like some people start a YouTube channel because
(35:15):
the ultimate goal is to be an actress, a series regular,
or they want to break into music. It just seemed
like you guys were throwing things to the ceiling and
seeing what's stuck that you enjoyed doing. But it didn't
seem like you had a well we're doing this because
we want to be, you know, movie stars in five years. Yeah.
I'm a very much go with the flow kind of guy.
So for me, I didn't have aspirations. I guess I
(35:40):
wouldn't say like, well, they'll look at you. It just
fell into a lot of success. I don't know, but
I think you worked very hard for that. I didn't have.
I didn't have any I didn't feel like I deserved anything.
You know. I think a lot of people actors, you know,
they put a lot of time into this dream of
becoming an actor, and then when they get sort of
(36:02):
a taste of success, then they feel like I deserve this,
Like anything anything that comes my way, I don't feel
like I deserved it. I mean, I worked towards it
and it happened, and then I just try to, you know,
not take anything for granted. And that's just kind of
been the way that I've always kind of looked at
our career. It's like just kind of go with the flow,
go with like wherever this crazy thing is taking us.
(36:25):
Would you say that that has a lot to do
with the fifteen plus years of success this brand that
wasn't a brand at the time has seen because of
your mentality and because of your attitude towards everything you
were doing every day. Yeah, I think so. And I
wasn't looking to use Smash as a platform to become
(36:45):
television actor or you know, a director or anything like.
To me, all those things are awesome and I love
doing them and I'll take those opportunities if they come.
But Smash has all he's made the most sense to me,
as like, that's my sort of base. That's what I understand,
(37:06):
and it's what I think that we're good at. And
everything else is is nice, but there's probably other people
they're better at it than me. So you're creating content,
you're making you're getting little brand deals here and there,
you're selling merch just to keep things afloat. When did
it become something that you felt like wasn't a hustle struggle.
(37:27):
It was more of like, Okay, we have a system
going and this is this is a real business. Was
there like a video that went viral? Was there a
moment a validation? Can you remember a time when it
felt real, because I'm sure it took a while to
feel like a real quote unquote real Job's say, in
like two thousand seven, we were contacted by um, this guy,
(37:52):
Barry Bloomberg. He was a Disney television executive that had
left Disney and he was kind of looking for the
next thing to folk us on and he sort of saw,
you know, online media as being this sort of next thing.
So he started working with us and was like, if
you guys want to do this for a long time,
you need to start thinking of Smash is like a
(38:13):
comedy brand. So it was now small at this point
you had evolved into Smash. Yeah, I mean Smash was
a name that we had actually had since sophomore year
of high school. Okay, so that was not like evolved
into the name Smash. You guys always kind of called
it Smash. Yeah, that really worked out because, like at
the time of like the beginning of YouTube, everybody was
like their channels were just like their names. If we
(38:35):
didn't have Smash, we might have called our channel like
Ian and Anthony Productions, which doesn't exactly lend itself to longevity.
But luckily we had this great name because it was
a it was an inside joke that our friends that
came up with, and then Anthony created a website for it,
and then when the YouTube video started picking up, we're like, well,
let's just continue to have it tied to this smash name.
(38:59):
At that time, it was just Anthony and myself as
the faces of Smash, and it was Barry that you know,
sort of said, if you guys wanted to be doing
this ten years, twenty years, whatever years down the road,
it needs to be more than just you two. It
needs to be a brand. And that's something that we
weren't thinking of the time. I don't think that was
something anybody's thinking about at the time. Nowadays, every Instagram
(39:22):
model is like, this is my brand everything and beauty
and positivity. Everybody's thinking like what their brand is now,
but back then, it's like, no, our channel is, like
we're just like two guys. But it made a lot
of sense to say that we always just kind of
like went by the flow that I guess that's not
completely true. Like we we did have this vision of
what smash could become. I mean just from the beginning,
(39:44):
you screenprinting your own merch. You may have been going
with the flow and attitude of like where this goes,
but you were very much proactive in everything that you
guys did, like the merch, the Patriot, your own version
of Patriot. Yeah, that ended once we started, like I
actually getting money from merch. We're like, okay, we can't
just ask for money from them. We can't just be like,
can I have five dollars? We can give you a
(40:06):
shout out at the end. Yeah, we stop. We stopped
doing that. We're like, okay, that's just kind of wrong.
And I'm not I'm not talking Patreon. I think Patreon
is great, but you were not. I mean, you were
just saying five dollars please. Yeah. Yeah, We're like, hey,
we'll show you on the video if you give us. Okay,
so you have such an eye for talent. Is there
anybody on YouTube right now that you're kind of that
you're not that is not signed to Night Media? Someone
(40:28):
on YouTube you've got your eye on. You think that
they have something going. I know you have. They're honestly,
isn't like I'm trying to think I don't watch a
ton of content outside of our clients because you don't
even have time to think about signing anyone else. Yeah,
it's I'm pretty focused on our ten individuals. Are there
some creators doing some awesome stuff? Yes, there is even
(40:51):
people that we don't represent, Like, I think David's content
is amazing, it's very authentic. Why do you think people
watch David jo Brack. He's funny, he's supporting cast is
also awesome. Like they're just fun individuals and they're at
that age where they're like eighteen to two years old,
right in that college age. They have a large fan
They have a large fan base of probably sixteen to
(41:12):
twenty four, maybe younger. I don't know. It's just something
about his four minute videos too. They're just easy to consume.
So there's all these like there's a Cloud Gang, there's
Team ten there's you know, David's career already forgot what
they call? Oh yeah, how could I forget the vlog squad?
How come you guys don't have a gang name. We
don't need to have a gang name. I don't know,
(41:32):
like we're successful without it. I actually Preston, So Preston
used to have the pack. It was Vick Star, Lachlin
Musel No no no, no, Vick Star, Laughlin Beijian Canadian and
Rob and Preston. They were called the Pack. That was
a Minecraft blew up. But they've all kind of said,
gets a smart marketing play to have your little squad
and do collaps? Do they collab? We don't really do collabs.
(41:55):
Night media clients clab internally with each other, but we
don't do a lot of outside collabs. There's a few
reasons for that. One is we don't want people subscribe
to our channels that aren't going to click on videos
and sub boxes. So, for instance, if Jimmy would go
do a video James Charles and two d fifty thousand
James Charles fans would subdim Mr Beast, then that video
hits sub boxes and those two people don't click on it.
(42:17):
That hurts our ctr So that's why we don't That's
why we don't do collabs outside of our genre. Right,
So Preston will do collabs with other kids creators because
he knows that, oh, those fans will click on my videos.
But we don't do like David Doll refer instance, like
I don't know if we'll have to do a collab
with David because we don't know if he his fans
would click on our videos. YouTubers don't think about it
like that, but they should be because the goal is
(42:39):
to have a hundred percent active subscribers. When you post
a video, all of them click on your video, Hence
you have a high ctr When you just inflate your
subscriber numbers by doing collapse, you're actually hurting your channel.
What advice would you give someone who wants to go
on and Patreon and be a successful creator on the
on the site? Step one is make great stuff that
(43:02):
your fans love. Um, if you don't quite have a
fan base yet, uh, Patreon doesn't work as well for you. Um.
It's really a membership platform. It works great for creators
who are who have already kind of found what they
want to make and then seen that reach people. So
this isn't like a throw ship to the ceiling and
see what sticks. This is like a come with your audience. Yeah, exactly.
(43:25):
And it's not UM, it's not that we don't care
about solving that particular problem, or it's not that we
don't want to help folks find fans. It's just we're
being at a startup. You have to prioritize, and so
we're saying, Okay, you know the problem, we're gonna solve versts.
So you're getting a bunch of views on YouTube, but
you're not making any money. That's the problem Patreons focused on.
But yeah, advice, make great stuff that you love, that
(43:48):
your fans are passionate about UM, and just make it awesome.
And then when you when you're proud of it and
when you see it resonating with other folks, start a
Patreon page and honestly, at that point, just be be yourself,
be honest, tell your fans what's going on, invite them
in on the journey. UM. The creators who love their
fans and whose fans love them back, they do the
(44:10):
best on the platform. And then advice for somebody who
is in your shoes now not a creator, but somebody
who wants to represent creators. Yeah, just to add value
that when I first started in this industry, I didn't
even take a commission. It's like I will literally work
for free. I will do a good job, I will deliver,
and then we'll talk about it. So it's like you
need to provide value before you can just go to someone,
(44:30):
throw a contract in front of them and say hey,
let me take X percentage of your revenue. So it
just doesn't work like that. And there's a lot more
competition in the space, and there used to be when
I got started. When I got started, there was probably
two or three people that were trying to manage digital influencers,
especially in this town. So I think if you're a
young kid, find someone that you get along with, that
(44:50):
you think you can work with for the next decade,
and then provide value. Don't try and sign thirty seven
people right out of the door, because it's you're not
gonna last. You seem too good to be true that
you have all these knowledge nuggets, plus you have this
incredible roster of talent. I'm really excited to see what
they all have going on. I know you couldn't tell
(45:11):
us much. Is there anything you can tell us? Just
give us one little, you know kind of thing. You know. Well,
we talked about the tree video, so we're going to
see a lot of YouTubers be a part of this
Mr Beast Tree challenge. So it's a dollar to planet tree.
So he did get other YouTubers involved. We're gonna have
a ton and it's not within the your community, your well,
(45:32):
all the night media clients will probably get involved. We
have others. I won't say anyone's name yet. We'll wait
for those announcements, but some people that have been on
this podcast are probably going to be involved. So yeah,
and like I said, the goal is to plant twenty
million trees by Earth, so we'll start out so Mr
Beast will start out with probably a million trees and
(45:53):
then we'll go get nineteen more million planet and yeah,
it'll be a that's it. That's crazy. So in hindsight,
fifteen fourteen years later, you can whisper into young Ian's
ear and tell him one piece of advice that might
make things transition smoother, business deals better. Would there be
(46:14):
something that you would in hindsight tell younger Ian. I
don't think so I mean I think obviously there was
there was things that didn't work out, but that's still
worked out in a sense. Yeah, I mean, whether it
was like a bad brand deal and we got backlash
or you know, some sort of bad business deal, or like,
oh we hired this person and they weren't great. Like
(46:36):
that's all part of learning. So whatever bad things happened,
they happened, and we became better because of it. Absolutely,
it actually shaped your journey and probably taught you, you know,
how to get over the hurdle. And you guys are thriving. Now,
how many I think I've saw twenty four million subscribers
across and might I might even be think we're twenty
(46:59):
five some Yeah, I'm sure changed. We were. We were stuck.
We were stuck at twenty two million for like, I think,
like a year because just our content was not was
not in the right place. And then once once we
got things correct and we started doing the things that
we felt like we needed to do, it immediately changed.
(47:19):
Can you wrap your head around it's a big number,
twenty five million people wait for your content. Well, I
mean that's a lot that's subs and that's also people
that subscribe maybe eight years ago that are that moved on,
so it's not necessarily million people that are watching. Fine,
but still, I mean, starting from a couch doing lip
(47:40):
singing videos, fast forward fourteen years, you've built an empire
that huge beheamoths of companies have wanted to buy it
started on a couch, you and your best friend. That's
got to be a pinch me. It's weird. It's pretty weird.
I mean, you're so in it. It's your life, so
you probably don't see it that way, but from the
outside it's an insane story. I agree, it's insane, and
(48:03):
thank you for sharing it with us today. I'm really
excited to see where Smash goes in the next couple
of years. Do you have any do you have a
vision for what you think? Let's not even do a
big one, but like, where do you see that? Where
do you see Smash in the next year. Let's go
like super small. Yeah. Well, we we got back on
our feet in February with Mythical and if these past
(48:25):
four months are indicative of where we're going, then I
feel very, very positive about our future. It's been nothing
but good ship. The ship is going to get better.
And better, like the biggest best ship you've ever seen. Yeah.
(48:56):
Behind the influence of the production of I Heart Radio
and TDC Media, the st
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!