Digital Social Hour - Leaving the Pro Gaming Space, eGirls & Making Insane Money From Streaming | DSH #252

Episode Date: January 29, 2024

Michael Kurylo comes on the podcast to discuss his transition from eSports, the business of live streaming and what he does these days with girls. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Girls come over and they play video games naked. So they're fully naked and can the chat make them do things? Kind of combine the high level editing with nudity. And so I think no one's ever really done that mix before. And I'm just trying to pick and choose different things on how to make good content with that. And are you naked next to them? Sometimes, yeah. Wow.

That's a good life, man. It's fun. You get paid to do that. Yeah, it's awesome. Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm. It helps us get bigger and better guests, and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting, and here's the episode. Welcome back, guys. Got an interesting guest for you guys today,

professional esports player, Michael Currillo. How's it going? It's going pretty good. How are you? I'm good, man. I'm good. You playing 15 hours a day still or not? Not anymore. But those days were definitely fun. Yeah. Super nerd days. How many years did you do that straight? Oh, boy. I tried. I did 15 hours while I was in high school, too. Wow. I just slept more and went to high school late. That's impressive in high school because school is like eight hours. Yeah. I showed up for probably four of the eight. And they didn't care?

They did. I got yelled at. Your parents didn't care? I got yelled at by them too. Life of a pro gamer. Yeah. Lots of video games. Weird thing about gaming is you think a lot of them would be fat because they sit all day and eat but a lot of them are skinny i think it's like an unhealthy skinny though yeah too skinny right yeah

yeah yeah i was like hell like 50 pounds underweight also yeah i'm trying to put on some weight going to the gym now it's tough though man when you're tall and lengthy like to put on weight yeah but no it's hard you got to just shovel your mouth with food over and over and over yeah i'm struggling right now because i'm 66 170 oh yeah what are you uh i think 63 180 okay so you're probably average but i remember when i was in the gaming days i was like 155 soaking wet that's crazy what was that first game where you became a pro off of um it was league of legends i mean i played halo pretty seriously but i wasn't crazy good or anything i got on like a team or went to an event didn't do anything crazy but league of legends was the big one where it kind of just took off were you naturally good

at that game or it just took years of um's something called ranked anxiety where you get afraid to play in ranked games because it'll mess up your rank. So I didn't play many games, but I got really high rating for the amount of games that I played. So I'm curious how I would have been early on if I played more. Does that make sense? Yes, you were scared for your rank to drop. Yeah, because it was my first time playing ranked the first season. I played like 18 games i won 15 out of the 18 so my rank was really high for the amount of games

i played but i didn't want to keep playing because i didn't want to drop rank but got it that goes away after a while so is your ranked based off games you're winning because it's a team game it's an elo based system so you know like how chess works yeah when a game go up lose the game you go down it's like that i play chess every day that's awesome but the thing with league though is it's five on five right yep so even if you lose you could still be good oh yeah that's where people get pissed right yeah so were you like experiencing that at certain points i feel like at a certain point you just become the team therapist not so much a player and you try to type to them and say hey guys it's gonna be okay we can win this yeah and you're doing more typing them and say hey guys it's going to be okay we can win this

yeah and you're doing more typing to the players to get them to try instead of you trying oh okay wait you weren't on voice chat saying it no it's only typing yeah oh in league yeah that's pretty crazy so even in the pro competitions people are oh that's all on comms linked up with okay but solo queue where you do build your rank it's all random people through other teams just typing only got it which lane were you the best in um i was the guy that would be the right hand man of the person that does all the damage okay so i was his so you would follow the strongest player and just keep him alive yeah no keep him alive heal him do whatever i can to have them you were like the support yep okay that was me interesting i guess you could uh you could

get really good at that right yeah people make fun of the sports they don't do anything but they're they need some skill guys come on yeah um and you were able to make some money off of league yeah it varies a bunch it's actually it's so crazy looking at the time span of how money's working on it right now where i feel like early on when i first started it was extremely low and then it rapidly shot up like too high like nba teams would be buying these pro lcs teams which is like the nfl of nerds yeah they would be buying these teams dumping millions of dollars into players and then fast forward a few years and they're like guys the money's not

really coming in how can we keep justifying these purchases and whatnot yeah so it went way way up and now i think it's on a mega deeps oh yeah yeah damn so did you catch any of that up at all or um i was on like the ramp here if i would have kept going here would have been nice but content creation is a whole nother level which i was happy I was able to get into when I was. I feel like it's a less stressful route, and even though it might not pay as much, it's sustainable, right? Yeah, I think it just varies so much.

A pro player can make $4,000 a month or $150,000 a month. And same thing with content creation, too. It's so much variables. Yeah, it depends on what games are trending, I guess. If you caught that Fortnite wave, you could have made millions. But if you missed that, I don't know what's popular now. I don't even watch esports anymore.

I've actually done a pretty rapid transition myself. Into what? I have girls come over and they play video games naked. I post that on my own website that people pay to see wow yeah that's like kind of like what vitality did back in the day kind of yeah pretty similar he's like more prank related i'm more video game related wow so they're fully naked and can the chat make them do things if they donate no it's just like a video i kind of combine the high level editing with nudity and so i think no

one's ever really done that mix before and i'm just trying to pick and choose different things on how to make good content with that nice and are you naked next to them sometimes yeah wow yeah it's a good life man it's fun you get paid to do that yeah it's awesome so it's your two favorite things video games and girls found a way to combine them, right? Yeah, I mean, I think, I forget who it was, but they were like, whatever life you want, just make a business around it and it'll happen. It'll be great. That's sick, man.

And a lot of these gamers, they're kind of nerdy, but you're able to still pull some girls, it looks like. That's cool. Yeah, it's fun. I think a lot of girls think I'm kind of unique, where like a nerdy gamer with some confidence, they're very confused. I don't think I've ever seen that.

I can't think of any gamer that has IRL confidence, like with girls especially. How did you build that, I guess? Was it natural or just striking out so much that you just got confident? I think when you just do what you love and you get successful at it it kind of puts like a chip on your shoulder almost and it kind of gives you a layer of confidence right i mean been going to the gym a little too

recently that helps as well but for sure yeah yeah i uh back when i was nerdy i didn't pull any girls man i think that's the story of everyone yeah my high school was basketball video games nothing else yeah oh you could hoop yeah a little bit okay yeah i mean even that itself basketball team and playing video games that's a rare combo you're different man i would have uh i was in like the pro league at the time in my high school damn and i was on the basketball team and i would have asians walk by me and they would walk by me so slow like this because they they would recognize me from seeing me playing online yeah but they wouldn't put two and two together because like i'm on a basketball team i don't look like i'm on a professional gamer team that's unheard of they go bunny like looking like i'm an alien or something yeah that's

wild what position were you in basketball um probably a forward not center but not powerful yeah yeah because you're like six three you said six three yeah yeah that makes sense you still play or not uh i want to more but i'll bring you to a lifetime oh heck yeah they play on the weekends we'll do it um so what games are like making the most money i guess is it still league of legends right now um like said, it's in a difficult spot right now. I feel like for investors, they love dumping, oh my God, they dump money into it. I remember.

But at a certain point, they're going to want their money back. And sponsors are having a tricky time right now getting their money back. So I think it, is it true, do you know how about NBA teams, how you make money off of, you buy a team and you lose money every year, but you sell that team five years later.

That's how you make your money. Is that kind of how that works for owning an NBA team? I don't know, but my buddy just sponsored one of them and it was like 15 million a year just to have a patch on the jersey. So I have trouble believing they would lose money. I think where owners are making money is through that model, which is the weirdest model in the world. Wow, I didn't know that.

You buy a team, you operate at a loss, and then you sell it down the road for more money. You know what? It might be true because they pay the players so much money, like $150 million a year or something crazy. But that's such a weird and risky way to make money, it seems. It's ridiculous. It does sound weird on paper, but over time, NFL and NBA teams have gone up.

I know. For now, it's good, but there might be a plateau. I wonder when that's going to be. I mean, I think we might be seeing it now in esports because I think a lot of the ways that NFL teams and NBA teams, they make their money is obviously through ticket sales. Yeah. Right. And broadcasting rights.

Do you know it's like $600 to buy the NFL package to watch every game? Are you serious? I did not know it was that much. I just watched the highlights on YouTube. Right, yeah. So esports doesn't have that angle in to make money right now where everyone will watch it for free. It's great.

It'll get a bunch of millions of viewers, but no one's willing to throw down some cash to watch the game they don't have a network deal yeah so that's what they need probably to get to the next level and i don't know how they're going to get that viewers so if they have the viewers they have the viewers is it enough to get a tv uh channel though to pay them you know what i mean people love watching it for free but they're not willing to put some cash down to washington it's kind of like those boxing fights that everyone illegally streams like jake paul fights yeah yeah yeah yeah because people are smart and just go on reddit and find a link or whatever so what's what's your theory how to fix that they're gonna have to

start with some i think they take the impractical jokers route they go to some network no one's ever heard of i'm not trying to throw shade on that network, but they go that route, prove the concept out, become the best show on that network, and then they'll have some negotiation power to get on ESPN or something. You know what I mean? I think everyone was so excited for gaming's the next new thing, but then they put it behind these paywalls

and people are like, oh, not that interested. But they're interested when it's free, so it's a weird mix there. Yeah, they're going to have to figure it out, man. But I was addicted on watching Fortnite videos for, I'd say like a year straight back during that peak oh yeah like it was fun every morning watching tfue ninja or whatever i still love that game to be honest i mean i have such an addictive personality i know i should not start playing let's play basketball and fortnight all day long basketball i don't mind playing why because it's healthy it's healthy and it's fun

yeah it's competitive but yeah with video games you gotta be careful man because you could get lost in the sauce oh yeah yeah i mean you got out of it which is cool to see but some people their whole lives i think that's why a lot of pro gamers got good they just got addicted to the game yeah and they fell in love with it yeah it's crazy to watch how calculated they are you ever see those uh speed runs on youtube oh yeah those are hilarious. Those are to the T. Dude, one mistake and it's over.

Yeah. I think some stat that some people, the viewers might find interesting is, what's like the prime age for an NFL player, you think? Probably like 24. Is there a range or just straight 24? I'd say low 20s, maybe. For pro gaming, the prime is about like 17 to 19 or 20 oh yeah isn't that crazy that's young that's young young yeah yeah i wonder why it's so young i think it's

because um these owners and team members they like molding players to fit with their team and they like molding their lifestyle they like molding their eating habits just so they can build like the perfect pro player essentially because they need 12 hours a day of their attention every single day right so were you on like a strict regimen when you were pro like diet like mindset stuff i got into it pretty early where i saw a rise of like um gaming houses happen and it was very like organized but not organized yeah now it's more go to the gym here eat food here do this theater i was on like the uprise of that where we just threw them in one house and just played all day that makes sense yeah those houses yeah those clans were you part of a clan uh i was in a few team houses where i lived

in the closet and half the people in my house barely spoke english they're from like asia right oh yeah so good those asians are i love asian food now everyone oh have you been to chinatown here oh of course fire i'm going after this bro fire you try uh china mama oh yeah dude soup dumplings yeah amazing bomb yeah i love asian food man asian people are pretty pretty respectful too yeah i people make fun of me i say i'm fluent in every language now because i just i say the very important words that they need to know and i think i learned that from communicating in league so i come in now i gank for you oh so you could speak a little mand? No, Konglish. Konglish?

Korean English. And it worked out great because you got to just simplify the words so you guys can communicate on a level where you guys can both understand it. What's it like in those gaming houses? Everyone just gaming nonstop? Do you do anything else? Nonstop. It's kind of like a toxic environment a little bit where if you're not practicing,

your team's kind of looking down on you. You're like, what are you doing? We're trying to win here. You're going to play 12 hours? You're going to slack off a little bit. Seven days a week? Oh, yeah. It was a lot, dude.

I had to sleep with wrist guards on to stop carpal tunnel happening from gaming so much. Holy crap. Wait, so what's carpal tunnel? If you're like this all day and your mouse is like up like this and you got this little arch going. Yeah. You'll start getting pain after months of doing it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Damn, I didn't even think about that. And your eyes must be strained. That's the other thing too. Oh my God. I had blue light glasses on always. Yeah. So those actually help. Are you interested in coming

on the Digital Social Hour podcast as a guest? We'll click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about business and life. Click the application link below. And here's the episode, guys. They help me. Yeah, I always buy them and I'm too lazy to put them on.

But I have some people have hit or miss comments on those. Yeah, I like them. Maybe I should start. I mean, blue light is pretty bad for you, especially hours a day put on flux i don't know if you guys have heard of that like turn your screen i got on the mac right yeah that helps a lot yeah i got that so when you retired was it by choice or you just kind of just happened so there's a situation where i was on a team for a while, the starting player. I went to probably one of the biggest teams in the league,

and then they brought in a substitute to switch time with me to I'll play some games, he'll play some games. And then they ended up making the decision to go full-time with him. And being on one of the top teams, it's nice, because any of the bottom teams will want you on their team yeah but going from having like a family of five other players six other players a coach that you see all day every day you interact with them you eat with them and then being ripped out of that after a year and just placed into another one it's a lot it's like what the my world just flipped upside down off a drop of a hat so one of my teammates was huge in content creation like one of the biggest switch streamers

yeah and so i said do i want to join one of these other teams that are willing to pick me up because when you come from a top team other teams love to pick you up or do i want to try this content creation route so i was like dude i don't know if i want to go down this route of just like re-plugging myself into different teams different environments and it being the most stressful thing in the world because you play bad for two weeks and boom you're gone wow so that's where i decided i'm like you know what i'm gonna go full-time twitch and i have someone who's able to mentor me help me give me viewers i mean his stream schedule was about like 6 p.m to midnight so i would actually fire it up at 11 p.m and stream all throughout the night till like 10 a.m damn after he would send me 20 000 people every single night to just watch me to boost up

wow that's dope oh yeah because you could it's called a raid right yeah yeah yeah host raid wow so you'd pull an all-nighter oh yeah damn so you're nocturnal just to help fit that schedule to get whatever kind of eyeballs i could wow so you were willing to just sacrifice your whole schedule oh yeah get to that next level that's cool damn nocturnal man i think starting out in content creation you have to pretty much dedicate your life because if you're going to build a community whether it's what's on stream you got to be live for people to be there you know right you're not live they're not interacting with each other and building that community and that's kind of why i turned away from streaming in general is because it is such a grind i get people coming to me all the time they're like buddy should i start

streaming i say i wouldn't at least you're on it but there is something powerful about that live that you mentioned like you're seeing these big numbers with xqc and aidan that they're getting now yeah and it's like damn a lot of people like that live interaction as well i'm more of a youtube guy where i can put an hour two hours three hours into the greatest video i can right and have the editors chop it up make it look nice and then post that and have the interaction through the comments just because like i said on stream it's still a seven day a week job i feel like if i leave for two days i'm like oh my god i'm gonna come back and my life's gonna be over you know but with youtube you can get a little ahead you can post videos over a certain amount of

time and it's i like it that way a lot no i know you mean that man whenever it feels like you have to do something like it feels like a job and you don't have control over it i don't like that feeling and i'm kind of dealing with that now with sponsors and they're like yo i need this up by a certain date and i'm like uh it's kind of feeling like a job now you know yeah yeah so i like to be more low-key i mean made my money now just want to have fun at this point nice sounds like you're in a similar situation yeah i was lucky enough to have a friend where when i was doing the 10 hours of streams every single day he opted to call with me and he said buddy you're doing it wrong he showed me he made a hundred grand on youtube in one month

damn and i was like well i guess i'm a youtuber this streaming thing i'm over it 100k in a month is crazy on youtube yeah this was years ago yeah so i think that just gave me the blind faith in myself to just dump everything into it and try to get to that level of success yeah by just trusting him that he got there i could ask him any question i want whenever i want and it ended up working out pretty well myself too so that's where there i could ask him any question i want whenever i want and it ended up working out pretty well myself too so that's where whenever i was on stream i was like guys the live content's the boring stuff go watch this and just send them all to my youtube that's dope sounds like having a mentor having a friend there that had experience really helped you

oh yeah i think often you just need that little like confidence boost or push or whatever it is. Even if they're not even giving you a day-by-day, step-by-step, just knowing someone else did it that you know is all you need really sometimes. Huge. Yeah. I saw one clip of you. Is it true you had 30 computers in your house? That's like the meme.

I think it's about 20. Okay, that's still insane. And they're all gaming ones? Yeah. That's like 20 Gs. You insane and they're all gaming ones yeah that's like 20 g's you want one i'm down okay i need to hear why and how this happened though um i had a lot of people helping me at one point which ended up in not the best situation definitely a big learning lesson there okay but it was actually a lawsuit involved i can't even go too far into it but um that was a pretty expensive

learning experience for me does it involve crypto mining no okay you know like 30 computers that's what i think of when i hear about a whole setup don't you need like a perfect air regulated temperature a lot a lot of stuff yeah i remember like briefly briefly looking up to it because i had so many i was like yeah i wonder what i could do with all these don't people do it in like alaska or something yeah in vegas it'd be tough because the energy is the highest in the country i believe nevada energy is ripping us off i think i'm paying like 800 a month in energy bill have you done a lot of it that kind of mining not mining no i get offered all the time our friend todd probably gets offered it too i mean it's something that's there but yeah i always thought that was super interesting it is but i feel like we're too late now if you did i know you probably talked to some people

that were like the first to the dude i had this kid in my high school everyone made fun of him and i'm like oh this is kind of interesting you're crazy until you're a genius yeah and now he's a millionaire he was mining in high school in 2014 oh my god off his just one computer at home i think he might have had two but that's awesome making millions off that um i mean you do so many podcasts here what are some of the other crazy stories you hear of like the first in line to make millions yeah i mean there's a lot of crazy ones man these girls are making a million a month yeah i mean there's a midget making 20 million a year it's like dude there's a lot of weird ways to make money. This guy earlier was making $5 million a year doing some patio cover business.

It's the most random things. I think my favorite quote is, you're crazy until you're a genius. It's like, what are you doing? You're wasting your time. Then five years later, oh my God, I knew you had it the whole time. You're so smart.

I got bullied in high school for being an entrepreneur. I'm sure you might have dealt with this too. five years later oh my god i knew you had it the whole time you're so smart it's hilarious i got bullied in high school for being an entrepreneur i'm sure you might have dealt with this too and now they're all hitting me up like i believed in you like you stole my candy when i was trying to sell in high school it's like really dude but that's how you know you're kind of onto something when other people are like making fun of it or hating on it you know and i'm sure like you going into esports at the time that wasn't a cool thing to do back then i know it's it's weird because i got to experience the get bullied side and the cool side it was the weirdest thing i was at the cusp of that where it was awesome yeah because yeah at first you were probably getting bullied

but then it became cool like halfway through it was so random how it just suddenly became cool. Nowadays, I'm sure they're the coolest high schoolers. Dude, now they're pulling tens. What's that one guy, Clicks, I think, or something? He's pulling all these girls on a stream. It's like, dude, 10 years ago you'd be getting made fun of. It's nuts. That's kind of how entrepreneurship in general is.

Now it's cool to start your own thing but back then you were like you're not getting a job you're not going to college yeah i was so embarrassed like the normal conversation when you're a senior in high school was where are you going to college i would just be like ducking yeah you were like total go to college yeah it was the weirdest thing and little did i know they were just brainwashing people basically so you didn't go at all no thank god i hated school that was the word you graduate high school barely yeah like a 1.8 i would rank up my friends in league and they would like help me cheat on tests i had the coolest systems of cheating to all share this with anyone so i was lucky enough my friend had a last name that was right behind me like with the numerical letter or whatever yeah and so

here put your feet out you guys can't see what we're doing but for number five he would tap my left foot five times yeah and then tap this foot three times for number five is c smart and so i would just be sitting like this the whole time. He's tapping my feet, giving me every answer. I didn't even look at any question. That's genius. And I couldn't get too good of a score or else the teacher would know. So he would give me like an 80 or 85, 75, depending on how hard the material was.

That is the most brilliant thing I've heard of. I loved it. Yeah. Yeah. That beats my technique, which was those see-through binders. You remember those? Like with the, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So you couldn't see the paper unless your shoe was like on it so every time i need to look at the notes i would press you were one of those water bottle kids huh were you like unravel that was a good one too but people caught on to that yeah kind of had to adapt

i never got caught cheating though which was good i didn't do it often i feel like this sounds weird but i feel like i learned more through cheating in school than actually learning the the quizzes because you would get thrown so many curveballs on yeah okay you know when they would have like four different type of tests and you couldn't cheat on the person next to you yeah you got to think outside the box you gotta like go grab a tissue and do a little peek over there you got to really get creative with it yeah they did that with the sats and i was pretty upset when they announced that one i actually started like looking at their number 17 and be like oh that's my number seven okay that was that was a good one did you even take the sats because no you didn't go yeah you didn't go to college that was a big

one for us yeah i think that was a really hard to cheat on too i would have been really hard because a lot of it was writing yeah and then the year after i i graduated they removed the essay part i'm like seriously dude it was the hardest part man and then college writing five page essays every week you didn't have to deal with that you're lucky oh my god it sounds miserable yeah if anyone has any interesting ways on how they want to learn how to cheat on test in school i got you i'll give you all my techniques dm michael guys and if you get caught don't snitch it's all my fault um so where do you want to take everything are you going to continue with the content you're doing now or you want to do some new stuff um i'm having a fun time doing the bun censored stuff

buncensored.com that's where i post like the naked girls playing video games and whatnot that's super fun and whether it makes a million dollars a month or 10k a month i am super happy doing it i am enjoying it right now i think it's so much fun where if you're lucky enough to be able to put yourself in position where you can do what you do without it feeling like work boom right you're in there yeah um but i know the kind of money that you make from it, it doesn't last forever. Whether it's YouTube, content creation, streaming, or whatever. So I pretend like I make $1,000 a month, eat food, love food. That's where all my money goes.

And then I just dump it all into real estate because it's more of a forever thing. Nice. So you live frugally and you're just buying up houses? Yep. Cool. In Vegas? Yeah. Nice.

I think it's cool how so many things are coming here i think it's awesome with dude yeah nfl teams mlb teams nba teams that's just like everything coming here i just see the money signs in my head i'm like wow yeah man all the big conferences are here events i think twitch con is next month i mean there's always popping things here airbnb is going to be my next project um so they're actually strict with that in vegas did you know that yeah it's really bad yeah like apparently you can't have within i think 500 meters or something there's so many rules and regulations it's nuts so my friend just did one it's been a total be prepared for that but yeah if you do find the right properties it's good cash flow for sure yeah i'm excited about that so you're just sitting on the

houses right now you're not doing anything they're all long-term rentals so it's nice like low passive income but it's nothing crazy but yeah passive income one dollar from passive income feels like a better than a hundred dollars from earned income to me so right because you just wake up and it's there yeah yeah i feel that well dude it's been super fun anything you want to close off with our remote um if you guys want to watch the nerd side of me it's uh bunny food on youtube if you're in the league of legends or tft if you want to watch crazy side where girls get naked and play video games it's bun sensor.com that stuff is fun awesome hope we'll see you there all right thanks for coming on brother heck yes yeah let's get some

chinese chinese food oh my god asian food all day i'll be there in 10 minutes when you text all right let's do it all right guys catch you later peace adios