Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - 239: Our Full Story: From RhettandLinKreations To Mythical Entertainment | Ear Biscuits Ep.239

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

Packed with some never-before-heard details, listen to R&L discuss the entire story of how Mythical Entertainment came to be as it is today and the valuable lessons learned along the way in this episode of Ear Biscuits. Thanks to Dell for sponsoring today’s episode! To find more participating podcasts, search Dell Technologies Small Business Podference at the end of this episode To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is Mythical. Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. This week at our respective tables of our individual homes, yes, we're still at home. I gotta stop saying yes, we're still at home. Hey, we're still at home, like it's a good thing.

We are discussing the topic, a topic that we've briefly touched on many times while discussing other things, but we've never devoted an entire episode to unpacking this topic, and it's the business side of things. How did Mythical Entertainment develop as a company? Yes, and you know, when we started doing all this,

we didn't have a business in mind. It wasn't like, we're starting a business. It was, we're just, we're gonna create things. But slowly over the years, it's gone from two guys making things on YouTube to two guys leading a team of over 80 people and it's just definitely a business at this point, even though it was never our intention and we never thought of ourselves as CEOs.

So we're going to kind of unpack that process and touch on some things that we've talked about briefly, get into some new things, but mainly we want to focus on the lessons that we have learned along the way. Yeah, and if you're particularly interested in business, then maybe you own a company of your own or you aspire to one day. Maybe you can learn a thing or two as we share the things that we've learned.

Or if you're really not into that, we think there's still, you'd be interested in finding out the path that we took. And I think there's applications outside of business as well. So thanks for coming along for the ride no matter what your interests are yeah i mean the truth is you know we never thought of ourselves as ceos or we never said we want to be ceos like you said but it when you when you talked about that it did remind me of when the fine brothers made that video where kids react to Rhett and Link, and one kid described you as the businessman and described me as the boy. So we became the businessman and the boy?

So those are now our official titles. The official titles, like when you look at like a legal document that I have to sign, it says Rhett McLaughlin, the businessman, and Charles Lincoln Neal III, the boy. I mean, I don't, I mean, and that makes me think, you know, when we sign things,

technically I'm president, and you're- Yeah, you have me to thank for that. And you're what? You're not pres- You know what? I don't even know- I what? You're not president. You know what? I don't even know. I'm vice president. Vice president. You know why? You have my wife to thank for that

because I was having a conversation with our very first lawyer and he was like, and that was the point in which I basically, I think maybe because my dad was a law professor, I just handled all the business interactions. Like I wrote the agreements and he was like, you weren't there and he was like, okay, so just for legal purposes, one of you needs to be president and one of you

needs to be vice president. And he was like, so just think about that. And I was like, okay. And so then I'm just kind of telling Jesse about the meeting or whatever and I'm like, so telling Jesse about the meeting or whatever. And I'm like, so one of us has gotta be president, one of us is gonna be vice president, and it doesn't mean anything.

Cause I think we asked, could we be co-presidents? But it's kind of weird because we're- But I think he was like, that's a lot more complicated, it's not worth it. Yeah, and we're like 50-50 owners, and we have 50-50 interest, and we have, it's always 50-50. And Jesse was like, well, since you're the one making the decision,

you should make Link president because it would sort of be, you know, a butthole move to be the one making the decision and to make yourself president. So now, you're the president of Mythical Entertainment. The lesson that I learned is that- I'm actually the vice president and secretary. You don't wanna be the president. All it means is that I have to sign more blanks than you

on things that we still both have to sign. Because that was when we created, our first business entity was called Rhett and Link Creations where the K at the end of link became the beginning of the word creations if you misspelled it with a K. And another lesson learned, oh, we're full of them, is that if you name your business something people can't understand how to immediately spell,

you're going to be frustrated a lot. It's like Rhett and Link is one word and creations as part of it, but the K is shared and I know that's not how you spell creations. I mean, we've changed the name of our company to Mythical Entertainment. Is it just Mythical now?

It's still technically Mythical Entertainment. Business name is still Mythical Entertainment, but yeah. And we kept me as the president, so I still gotta fill in a few more blanks than you, but yeah, it's just pomp and circumstance. It was a real smart move on my part because I don't like signing things. Okay, but the first real lesson that we learned

beyond those that I think is sort of was the operating principle that got us off the ground as a business is we had to find the intersection or the nexus, if you want to use a word like that, of our ability and our opportunity. Yeah, I mean, we don't need to rehash how we got from point A to point B to point C, from being engineers to then working for crew and then hosting a television show called Online Nation. We shared all of that in episode one of our Lost Years series.

So you can go back and watch that if you wanna know how we got from point A to point B to point C. But if point C is we were hosting this show, Online Nation, and it got canceled, and we were flying out to LA to shoot it, and then we find ourselves back in our little basement where we were making videos, back at square one,

making videos again, but we had no income anymore. We just had the money that we made off of that show, and we were living off of that while we figured out what it was we were going to do. We had to develop an entirely new business plan. And there was no, it's important to note, no one was making money on YouTube directly. There was no YouTube partner program,

so you couldn't just make a video and then see money roll in. So really, there was no such thing as a professional YouTuber. So it's a really interesting idea that we were like, we're going to have a career, because we were like, let's make this YouTube thing a full-time thing, but yet no one was making it a career.

But again, we were like, what two things exist here? We know that we can write a funny song. We can make a funny music video. We had had success with that. The Facebook song had gone really big. And the second piece of the puzzle was, is we knew that there were businesses out there who wanted people to know about them.

So it was like, okay, can we put those two things together? Can we put our ability to write a funny song with a company that wants to advertise and put that on YouTube? And it was really just an open question at the time. And there weren't a lot of big companies that were sponsoring videos. I think there was some of that.

It's not like we came up with the idea out of absolutely nothing, out of thin air, but there definitely weren't big companies investing a lot of money in this platform where no one understood YouTube or digital video that well. But it seemed like our best play because the thing that we wanted to make is the thing that we could also sell or at least sell ad space in. And we thought we could do a good job of making it an integration so that it made sense that the ad was a part of it. It wasn't like a lot of videos today where you could, you know, you would be vlogging or doing whatever you're doing in your video.

And then you could just insert an ad in the middle and people would understand that. And here's a coupon code and here's, coupon code and here's you know here's what here's who my sponsor is kind of thing so we wanted to do something that was that was thoughtful that we could be proud of but also make money and feed our kids because we already had kids at the time that's if you want to if you want to really be driven to succeed at business, have children. Have children first, yeah. Have children first, that's what. Because they tend to be hungry and demanding

and you come home to them and you're like, man, I gotta get after it. Well, it's one thing to be a starving artist, it's one thing to have a starving family. So when you put other people or something, you're responsible for them, yeah, that's definitely a great motivator. So what we did is we wrote the cornhole song

about the classic game, beanbag toss game, that was really popular in the Midwest at the time. An Olympic sport by 2024. We're only four years away. Yeah, we got two more years to find out. So, and we cold called, we would literally look up people who were selling cornhole equipment and we would just find the number or the contact email

and we would send a message or call them. Because they were internet businesses. It made sense. Yeah, all of them. They probably don't understand. And they were all small. That we're an internet video because they're an internet-based business. We weren't gonna call. An internet video because they're an internet based business.

We weren't gonna call like Coke. Right. And say, hey we've got an idea, we knew that there was no way for us to go to a Fortune 500 company and get our foot in the door, but maybe we could find somebody else who was trying to do what we were doing. And after a few different phone calls

that didn't lead somewhere, we had talked to a mom who was selling cornhole equipment out of her garage. And she was like, I love the idea, but I just can't afford any advertising. We finally connected with the guys at AJJ Cornhole who were about our age. It was three of them. They were starting their business in Ohio. They were exactly at the same place as we were, and they were trying to just get it off the ground

and do something interesting, and they loved the idea, and they became the sponsor. Again, at the time, I wrote the contract up just based on some guesswork, as like how much do you get paid to do this? I don't know, you get some initial fee, and then you get some money based on how well it performs. That makes sense to us.

That was like, they paid us a few thousand dollars. And then we knew that CPMs were a thing. We knew that there was a way to get paid based on performance because of Revver. That website at the time was actually paying people for their videos and their performance, which no one was watching our videos over there. But we knew that there was the concept of this cost per million views or whatever, getting some

money back. Yeah, so we did that. We wrote a song about how iPods die called the Dead iPod Song. We asked our friend iJustine to collaborate in the video so we could get more views. I think we even shared, I don't know if we shared some of the integration fee with her or if she just did it as a favor, but it wasn't that much either way. I think we even shared, I don't know if we shared some of the integration fee with her, or if she just did it as a favor, but it wasn't that much either way. Oh, I think we did.

iRescue.com repairs iPods, so that was perfect. Yeah, they got us off the ground. They were the only ones besides ourselves who believed in us, but then from there, we got a call to be a part of an Alka-Seltzer campaign, which was a bonafide ad agency. Well, that was a big transition. That was a big transition.

That was a transition from us having to go out and find these people ourselves to doing it the way that we've done it ever since, which is fielding the opportunities, usually either directly from a business or through an agency. And that one in 2008, 21 videos for the Alka-Seltzer Great American Road Trip where we went along,

we took an RV across the United States and made 21 videos that were food themed. And that was the beginning of us kind of understanding like, oh, okay, once you get your work out there and people see that you're incorporating companies into it, maybe the people will come to us with the integrations. And that's what happened. And we basically have never looked back.

I think that nexus that you're talking about was that we were able to do it in a way that wasn't cringy. And we were communicating with our audience at the time. We were telling the Mythical Beast, hey, we wouldn't be able to to make this level of content with this type of production value if we didn't have the sponsors so go support them and it was we were very grateful for the sponsors and we conveyed that to the audience and i think that you know i that it was it was it was in no way cringy. It worked for everybody.

And so it led to more opportunities. Once you start working with agencies, that thing starts happening. When we started making, I mean, Commercial Kings wouldn't exist if it wasn't first for a sponsor, MicroBuilt. You know, the CEO was a fan. He started communicating with us.

He sponsored one little video, it went well, so then we hatched the idea to start making intentionally bad local commercials for his customer base who were small businesses. Yeah. And who knew that a few weeks later we would be interviewed on CNN and then, you know, talking about selling furniture.

Yeah, the vice president of Rhett and Link Creations on the line. So that led to everything. That led to Commercial Kings. That led to us moving to California. So again, I think that if you're out there listening to this and you want your particular skill to be translated into a business opportunity,

I do think that, and this is not a simple question, it's a simple thing to ask yourself, it's not a simple thing to do, but just do you have something that people, that you can do that you're uniquely good at that people are willing to pay for? It sounds almost too simplistic, but we had to start there

because we didn't have a choice except to go back and try to use our engineering degrees again, which wasn't something that we were interested in doing. Shop Best Buy's ultimate smartphone sale today. Get a Best Buy gift card of up to $200 on select phone activations with major carriers. Visit your nearest Best Buy store today. Terms and conditions apply.

All right, let's get into the next lesson. I think one of the ways that we tended to approach everything, and maybe this was born out of desperation a little bit, was we were always looking for another opportunity that we could seize. Once people started coming to us and asking us to do things, it was not that we said yes to everything, but that we had this belief that not doing something won't lead to anything. It's doing things that will lead to things. I would be more specific and say that we didn't,

at the time, we didn't know that, we've learned that lesson looking back. I don't think we understood that at the time. Because typically, with a couple of examples that we'll talk about, we started to do things with some kind of intention, right? We thought that something might come from them. Yeah. And it was very rarely the thing

that we intended initially that was the result. It was almost always just the decision to do something that then led to the thing that we actually ended up doing. Sure. I mean, we didn't know that taking the sponsorship to make local commercials would lead to us having a television show on IFC and moving to Los Angeles. But we never would have realized that

if we didn't give everything we got to those commercials. Some of which, you know, a few of them sucked, but a few of them really popped and it made all the difference in the world. Good Morning Chia Lincoln is another great example. Good Morning Chia Lincoln, 2011. We made the decision to start what was a daily show, the two of us sitting at a card table talking about whatever we had been talking about

when we came into work. We made the decision to do that simply because we had already decided that we were gonna go and shoot Commercial Kings and we thought, well, this might be this opportunity to make a television show and we're gonna move to California. A lot of things were up in the air,

but we knew that was a very real possibility. We didn't know what that was gonna mean for YouTube, but one of the things that had been happening over the past couple of years on YouTube that we had never participated in at all was a regular daily video. People were doing daily vlogs at the time and their audiences and their views

were increasing exponentially because it seemed like people wanted a daily point of contact. Now, we knew we didn't want to make daily vlogs or family vlogs at the time. Right. But we were like, what can we do every single day? And the answer was, good morning, Chia Right. But we were like, what can we do every single day? And the answer was Good Morning Chia Lincoln.

But we said from the beginning that it would end only as long as a Chia Lincoln would stay alive, which is about 40 days apparently, which is how long the show lasted. Because we knew we'd be working on the pilot to Commercial Kings. And also we didn't want people to get attached to it if it wasn't something that we were gonna continue forever.

So we just kind of put an end date at the beginning, knowing that if we wanted to continue it, we could. Of course, we didn't continue it until after Commercial Kings wasn't reordered for a second season. We found ourselves living in Los Angeles, feeling like we were back at square one again, trying to develop a new business strategy.

And that was going back to sponsorships and getting that role in again with music videos, but then also developing contact with the Mythical Beast and reinstituting Good Morning Chia Lincoln as Good Mythical Morning, again, not knowing what it would lead to, except that it would span the gaps in between our high production music videos

where we were actually making money. Well, one thing I think we did know, we had begun to learn that lesson a little bit having done Good Morning Chia Lincoln, and we knew that people responded to it, and we knew that we were good at it. We knew that we could sit down and we could talk about something for 10 minutes, right?

Yeah. We kind of discovered it by trying it. So when you watch that first episode of Good Mythical Morning, I actually saw somebody tweet just this little slice of the video. The very beginning of the video, we have this, we're talking about Good Mythical Morning

in this aspirational way, and we're saying, you video, we have this, we're talking about Good Mythical Morning in this aspirational way and we're saying, you know, we hope that this is the beginning of something special, something that you will make a part of your daily routine. And I think the reason that we were saying that is because we actually believed it based on this previous experience.

Yeah. That hey, our audience has connected with this and now we're kind of formalizing it and saying that we're making an indefinite commitment to doing this show for however long, and we're still doing it. And it was based on that having just made the decision to do Good Morning Shea Lincoln.

But there's the, but the sort of a huge piece that's a part of the story is, you know, we started doing GMM, but then after doing a couple of seasons of GMM, YouTube came to us with the Creative Innovation Program where they were basically giving people money to make things. And we had a pretty good relationship

with YouTube at the time. They said, hey, do you guys have any ideas? And we reacted to that by saying, yeah, we got an idea to do a variety show called The Mythical Show. It's a half hour long show featuring sketch and music videos and weird games and stuff like that. Taking everything that we had done thus far on YouTube

and combining it into one product. And at that point, we, of course YouTube and combining it into one product. And at that point, we of course needed help to make the show. So we, that was when we hired Stevie, who then hired some other people to then build the team out for that. Cause we had a budget. All of a sudden we were given a chunk of money

for the first time upfront to make, we were commissioned to make a show and not just to make an integration with a sponsor youtube was investing in order to learn to see what they could learn from longer form content on on the platform so uh we hired stevie just to make those 10 episodes and we also hired her than 12 and then to build out the team. So she immediately turned around and hired Ben, who's still working for us,

and is starting to build out the team from there. Well, I specifically remember 12 because just, this may be of interest to you if you're in the video world, but I remember me and you sat down, cause they were like, well, come up with a budget. Like how much money do you need? And we sat down and we like budgeted everything out. Now we had been making videos for nothing, right?

So we budgeted everything out, and then we added like a 20% buffer, and we still landed at $100,000 total. Which may sound like a lot of money. For 12 half hour episodes. But that's nothing for 12 half hour. It's not a lot of money as we discovered very quickly for a half hour of what is essentially television,

which at least in the first episode had a studio audience. So we quickly took the studio audience out. We didn't kill them, but we took them out because no one liked it. We could have probably benefited from some advice around pricing of that type of thing because we negotiated. We should have consulted someone. Yeah, like, I mean, Stevie is a producer.

We didn't bring her on until we had negotiated. We didn't, we came up with a budget. Oh, you know what YouTube was thinking when we said $100,000, they were like, we could have said $500,000 and they would have probably still thought it was a deal. We just didn't know. Okay, but we thought just, if you go back, you can still find the mythical show.

There's still our hardcore fans still like the show and see it as sort of a sweet, awesome time. I know you like it. But the reality is is that we thought that we had come up with something that wasn't just a good product. We thought that we had come up with something that was going to change the landscape of YouTube.

In fact, the tagline of the show was, "'Your half hour of not having to click around "'on the internet.'" We thought we were gonna change the habits of people on YouTube. And at the time, in 2012, people were making three minute videos. If you went above three minutes, it was like,

ah, this is kinda weird, I don't know if I can hang on. Now, nowadays, people will make 20 minute videos and everybody watches them. But at the time, everybody was doing these short videos, so we were going against the grain. We thought we were gonna change the way people behaved, but it didn't happen. No one really cared about the show

beyond our immediate fan base. But again, it's the only reason that we started growing from that point on because we had to hire Stevie who then had to hire a team. And that was really the beginning of the totally new phase of business, which was when we began to delegate responsibility and have a team.

Yeah, I think that's the big lesson that we had to start learning, which was we had to learn to trust others with our vision. And, you know, with Stevie, with Ben, with hiring, you know, we hired Jen to start helping tweet for us and do social media. It's like, oh, we can't do everything anymore. And we started building the team from there.

Trust was incremental, right? I mean, Stevie was gonna do those 12 episodes, but then we started to discover that, hey, we work well together. She brings a lot of strengths. She thinks through things in a way that we don't, and she executes things in a way that we couldn't. And it frees us up in a way that we only dreamed about,

or we didn't even give ourselves permission to dream about. That was not an easy thing. No. And as we've talked to creators over the years, especially when we, back on this podcast, on Nearbiscuits, when we used to interview other creators, what we learned is that this is the common challenge for every creator, which is trusting somebody else.

If you keep doing- Something as simple as trusting somebody with an edit, right? If you keep doing it, you're gonna always be doing it. You never learn to stop, you never learn that someone else can do it unless you give someone else a shot at doing it. And you may have to go through a few people. But we didn't know that.

We didn't know that. I guess what I'm saying is I think the Mythical Show was the beginning of that lesson learned because for Mythical Show, we were over the shoulder of the editor. We were making very specific decisions about the edit. We put our heart and soul into that. But then by the time we got to the end of that, almost by necessity, we were like, this is too much content.

Like we can't do everything and we can't be responsible for everything. And by the way, everything that Stevie has come in and contributed to and sort of overseen, she's done an incredible job. So then once the Mythical show was over and we made the transition back into Good Mythical Morning, it was easy for us at that point to say, you know what?

I don't think we're going to actually watch the edit. I don't think, because this is a daily show. I mean, this is gonna be a big part of your day if you're gonna be responsible for making the show and then sitting down and helping to put together the edit and improve the edit. At that point, after the Mythical Show, we set that aside. And again, we saw the show continue to grow

and to get better and to grow audience without having to be super involved in every single aspect. Jason, who was working for us through the Mythical show, and then when we restarted Good Mythical Morning, like I said, we were over his shoulder, like you said, as he was editing. And so that was an incremental level of trust that then with Stevie, we were able to build on that. And then you add more people to

the team and you start to realize that people can do things better than we can. And slowly, you move to a point where you start to, we were able to start to focus on the things that we wanted to do and the things that we wanted to bite off and try to figure out. And it drove us to trust people even more because we had started to learn that lesson. And I think that in some ways, we're constantly learning and applying that lesson of what else do we want to be doing with our time that we will be the best at? What else are we doing right now that we can ask someone else to do and give them an opportunity to do it better, to delegate?

So it's- Well, we've asked ourselves that question. I would say one of the biggest exercises, the most important exercises that we do every year, we do it multiple times a year, but there's a time every single year where we kind of sit down and we look at everything that we've done.

We look back at our schedule and we think, what did we do this year that we don't have to do this year? What did we do last year that we don't have to do this year? So it's like, at one point it's like, if I'm sitting there and I'm like, why am I sketching out a concept for a t-shirt

when that's not what I really wanna be doing right now, I can get excited about it. And we're also not good at it. And we're not, yeah, we're not, we're definitely not as good at it as Caleb, who's working for us now, and Feldman, who's working with him and that entire team with Dana and then hey you got this team you need someone to start to manage this team so you bring in somebody like Raz and you

start to build a team of people who can give focus and they can also pour their passion into it in a way that we were just trying to get it done. And if we poured too much passion into it, it would be the wrong type of investment. So- Well, it's the transition from getting people to do exactly what you want them to do, to getting them, to inspiring them to do what they can actually do better and that they want to do to getting them, to inspiring them to do what they can actually do better

and that they want to do. And that's been a slow incremental process, but now using merch as an example, we see the t-shirt designs when you see the t-shirt designs. We see them when they're in the store most of the time. And in multiple things, it's like, you know, I've got the three different Good Mythical Morning mugs right here.

And again, these were on the desk. And I know you tend to want to be, you have to, it's more difficult for you to take yourself out of the details. But for me, the first time I saw these mugs was when they were on our desk on the show. Yeah, and I saw them once, and I gave a limited amount of notes,

but that was a level of discipline that I've learned. And I've also learned to trust them that they can design something that is gonna connect with Mythical Beast even better than I can. And that's just something I had to change my mind about, you know? And I think it may seem weird to say that.

It's like, well, people are attracted to what we're creating, but we just try to be, it's what our, I'm proud of what we as a team create. And I also trust them to come up with the stuff that's gonna connect and they prove themselves again and again. And that doesn't mean we're not involved.

I do wanna, like you said, because there is a balance here. So the thing is is that, again, still using this whole merchandise thing and really you can use anything as an example because we're not making films, we're making internet content. So if we see something and it gets out there on the internet, and then we are like, I don't like

the way that looks, or I don't like the general direction that this is going, that's actually where we get involved because we are watching a lot of stuff that we're doing. We're analyzing people's reactions to it. And so when we think that there needs to be a shift in a certain direction in any one of these departments, we do get involved at that point. So it's not like we're completely hands-off, but the development and the execution of those things on sort of a very minute level

is something that we have necessarily removed ourselves from and we're sort of just managing it from a higher vantage point. I think you're also touching on the fact that we're not just developing, let's say, a T-shirt design. We're developing a T-shirt designer who can then embody mythicality from scratch

and Caleb can express himself and have fun collaborating with his team and with his team leader and present something to us that is surprising and that connects, but also sometimes doesn't. And then that's a lesson. You just can't, you can't tell somebody something and then learn something. You've got to experience that.

You learn that as parents. At some point, the kid's gotta jump out of the nest. I have a nest in the backyard. I make my kids jump out of it. It's kind of a bird analogy. I thought you're talking about your birds. I thought you were talking about your family of birds that you've been raising.

No, it's my family of humans. I make them, to learn how to jump out of the metaphorical nest, I push them out of a physical nest that I've built in the backyard. That sounds like a good, that sounds like a product that we could sell. Think about Mythical Kitchen. I think that's another very current example

of that team developing content within certain parameters and vision that we've helped set up, that in order for Mythical Kitchen to really develop a life of its own, it needs to be an expression of Josh and that team working together to passionately put stuff out into the world, to recreate the experience that we've had

and we continue to have on the content that we're directly working on. You know, if we just- Yeah, not only do they know the kind of content that would work from a culinary entertainment standpoint better than we do, because that's what Josh sort of lives and breathes. They're also better at executing it, right?

I think that our role in that was just knowing that we wanted to develop our culinary team to the place where, you know, they're not just making food for Good Mythical Morning, but they are also, this is an opportunity to create content that a whole new fan or also existing fans could connect with because people like this kind of food-based content. And then sort of helping to empower Josh

to see his potential as somebody who could have his own audience. Like that was pretty much the vision, that the sort of nebulous vision that we had, but then the specific execution of, well, what is gonna be on the channel and what are the nature of the videos going to be? That's the Mythical Kitchen team,

you know, with the help of Stevie kind of leading things creatively and them kind of working together as a creative team. Like that is something that we're just sort of shepherding loosely and it's a better product because of that. Because as soon as, I mean, have you spent a bunch of time watching recipe videos on the internet? No, have I? No. Maybe more than you have, but not enough. Right. It's not like I'm an expert on that. But now we can kind of see what the content is and we can kind of offer some feedback.

But again, that we don't have the time or the ability, it wouldn't happen if we insisted on being the ones who were involved, it would never happen. And if it did happen, it wouldn't be as good as it is right now. I think another shift that we've made just to move to a new lesson learned is shifting from being solely reactive

just to being proactive. I guess it's not saying much to say if you're running a company, you should have a plan and you should think into the future. It's been extremely difficult when, as you're walking on the sidewalk of entertainment, it's you can see it forming right beneath your toes. You know, there's not a lot of people that have gone before us that we can emulate. to take a long-term approach or to have that proactive stance

when it's like, I don't know what the next opportunity is and we just need to say yes because saying no leads to nothing. You know, it's like, well, at a certain point, we gotta think more forward. Yeah, and as difficult as it is to develop a three-year or a five-year plan, we are getting better at sort of laying out

our long-term vision, knowing that it's gotta be flexible given the environment that we're in. develop a three-year or a five-year plan. We are getting better at sort of laying out our long-term vision, knowing that it's got to be flexible given the environment that we're in. But I think an example of this that sort of crystallizes it down is the way that we have grown in terms of the physical space that we're in as a team, right? So going from, of course, we had the basement and then the studio in Fuquay, but moving out to California where all of a sudden the mortgage on my home was, or the rent on my home was five times

what the mortgage on my home in North Carolina was, or six times. Things were suddenly very different and it wasn't like, oh, I can pay this rent and also we can have a studio. Like, no, we weren't making enough money for that. So we thankfully had a garage that we were in at the time. And of course it was the two of us and Jason in there.

And then even the first meeting that we had with Stevie or the first day of work, she was in there with us. And we were very quickly realizing this is not gonna cut it. We gotta have a space. But we were so conservative in the way that we sort of estimated what we're gonna have to pay. And we were kind of operating, I would say kind of fear-based.

It was practical, but it was a little bit like, don't bite off more than you can chew. So do you remember that first time that we went out and looked at different spaces in Burbank before we found the first spot? I don't know what street it's on, but it's like a storefront.

Like it has like a glass front. It looks like a hair salon and it's on a major thoroughfare that people could just walk in, which incidentally is what we had in Fuquay, but Fuquay is not Los Angeles. And I remember seriously considering that. And of course what we ended up going with was a very nondescript place that no one would ever,

even though people did knock on the door every once in a while, I don't even know what that place was, but. Yeah, it was a dedicated place where we could go downstairs and film episodes of the show. And then we could go back upstairs and just work at our desk. It's not like we had to turn the camera in,

and it's not like we had to set up the camera so that our desks were in the background. I mean, this was definitely a step up. And we got to a place within a few years of being in that spot where, you know, everyone was working pretty much on top of one another. We didn't, we had not literally stacked desks on top of each other, but that was the only

logical place to go next. And so we were like, okay, let's look for a new space. And I, do you remember the place that we were very close to renting? Yeah, the guitarist for The Doors, like the Jim Morrison band, The Doors, was renting a storefront. We never met him, but the agent showed us around,

and in the back, it was just like a cement slab, and it was on air conditioned, but we were like, well, we can build two sets back here. I mean, it's on air conditioning, so it's gonna get to like 110 degrees. It was very warehousey. There was a giant beam that went through it. Remember there was this conversation

about what we could do with that giant beam because it was gonna be in all the shots. It was just storage. They were shipping stuff, they had shelving. It would have been horrible. It would have been a downgrade, but we were seriously considering it. But we were, no, we weren't just seriously considering it.

We got down to the place where we said, if this guy's willing to do this, if the landlord is willing to do this one alteration, then we'll rent it. In the meantime, when we were waiting on an answer back for that, we went to the studio that we're rent it. In the meantime, when we were waiting on an answer back for that, we went to the studio that we're currently in.

And now this was a legitimate studio. It had a real set with soundproofing. Television shows had been shot on this set. It had a recording studio. It had all these things that we needed and wanted, but we were looking at it, not, we weren't really looking at it to consider it. We were looking at it because, you know,

our realtor was like, okay, here's another spot. This is way out of your price range, but you should look at it just and see what's available. And I remember walking around our space and thinking, man, this is awesome. But I can't imagine, I can't imagine filling this place up with people. I can't imagine getting to a place,

how could we ever get to a place where we would have enough people to work in this place? And then I think me and you were on the same page, which was we can't afford this and it's too big. And then Ben, who was working for us at the time, I remember he kind of pulled us aside and he was like, guys, I know that the place that we looked at,

because everybody, we all went together to look at the places because it was our very small team. I know that the place that we looked at yesterday is kind of like the Ferrari of studios, at least in our minds. And I know that it seems like it might be too much, but I just want to say that,

I can't remember his exact words, but it was essentially, I know that we could use it and I believe that we could do great things there. And I just want to, almost from a technical perspective, as your cinematographer, you know, the guy who makes things look a certain way, I just want to let you know that this would be the real deal. And we ended up doing it. Yeah, and he was right. You know, we ended up when the other side of the building came up for lease, we had a different mentality.

We were like, okay, when will there be an opportunity to rent the contiguous space and double our capacity? It will not happen again if somebody else scoops this up. So it was like, that really worked out. And we didn't have an idea at the, again, we didn't, by that time, like you said, our mentality had changed. We got into the space, we used it, we kind of quickly got to capacity there because that seems to be what always happens. And then when that space

next door became available, we didn't have any plans for expansion. We didn't have any specific ideas to fill it. Right. But we did it, we did it, it was one of the first things that we've done that was sort of a bigger things that we've done that was sort of a bigger risk that was very proactive. And it wasn't waiting for somebody to come along with an idea or an opportunity that we could then execute in that space. It was very much, let's get the space and let's expect the opportunity. And lo and behold, right after we started renting it, like literally months after we made the decision to rent it, YouTube came along and said, hey, we want to fund a bigger version of GMM.

And that was when all of a sudden we had to hire like 50 people and we had to put them somewhere. And lo and behold, we had this space next door. Yeah, and just to move on to the next lesson, it's interesting how our culture evolved and how our understanding of what it meant to be leaders in a growing company and how, you know, how to tackle the challenges of actually providing leadership and how to give our vision to our employees and then empower them. So that, so that, and then just shape a culture where we could continue to work together and achieve our goals.

And also the ideas that they could come up with. There was a lot of adjustments in there that we really started to come to grips with. We are running a business here. And I think a lot of it in there that we really started to come to grips with, we are running a business here. And I think a lot of it came out of the culture. The lesson very specifically is that we learned that we had a culture. Yeah.

That wasn't something that we had ever thought about. We had been two guys who were executing a vision, trying to create things and hiring people to contribute directly to that and empowering them and delegating. But it wasn't until we got to about 20 people when it started to really hit us. I mean, I remember we were still doing things like,

still doing the books ourselves. And just, we didn't, it was like we were unwilling to admit that we had a business, that we had a, it was a small business, but we had a small business and that we had intentionally or otherwise, we had established a certain culture and people could kind of read it, but it wasn't something that we were doing on purpose.

It was something that was just kind of happening based on our personality. Yeah. And I think when we hired Brian, I mean, a very strategic hire for us as our chief operating officer and head of business development, he was able to bring a perspective into all of the conversations that we would have in terms of opportunities to start to understand and reshape our culture. Because, you know, we had this family atmosphere when, you know, you would just hire people and they would be just as much friends as they would be employees. And like you said, when you get to that about 20 people, you start, I mean, we personally don't know what every person's working on and, you know, from day to day, um, it, we're

zoomed out from that. Right. And we started to become interested in instituting another level of accountability where it's not just, Hey, if we hire you, you're a member level of accountability, where it's not just, hey, if we hire you, you're a member of the family, no matter what, you can, basically, accountability was lax, and there wasn't specific goals in mind.

So there was a shift that Brian really helped us lock into from moving from a family culture to a team culture. Yeah, and that can sound, just to want to acknowledge, if you're, you know, that may sound, oh, that sounds a little bit harsh. You mean it's not a family anymore? But I think that this was a helpful way for me to understand it because I was initially

sort of resistant to the idea because we're nice guys, right, and we like being, we're actually pretty conflict avoidant and we're very loyal. And I think that those can be good to a certain degree. But what we were finding is that if you think about a family like, okay, here in my family, especially as we're sort of isolated here, it's like everybody's kind of expected to do things.

And like, you know, the kids have their days where they're supposed to clean their rooms or, you know, unload the dishwasher and they don't always do that, right? No, they don't do that. Does that mean, and even if one of my kids decided that they were gonna refuse to ever do their part, would they no longer be my son?

No, they're still gonna live here and we'll get through it. They're still part of the family. But if you run a business like that, you run into some pretty obvious problems, right? But if you shift to a team mentality, it's like, okay, when you think about an athletic team, it's like, okay, the people who are on the team are the ones who believe in the vision,

are team players, but also can execute and do things well. It's like you get to be a part of the starting five if you're one of the best players and you get to be actually on the team if you're a contributing player. And if you can't contribute or if you just refuse, there's no birthright to being a part of the team. It means that we might have a difficult conversation

and we might have the ultimate difficult conversation, which is to say, we're gonna have to part ways. Yeah, and I think we learned that there is such a thing as a cultural fit that not every single person that we think will work, will work, you know? And just as often, that person would be the one to discover, you know what, what I'm actually interested in

and what I'm most gifted at and where I want to invest my passions is not in alignment or it doesn't, it's not, I'm not a puzzle piece that fits here. As we started to discover that, we started to set expectations. So when we would bring someone new onto the team, we would say, okay,

our policy is there's basically a six-week trial. At the six-week mark, we're going to have an assessment and it's going to be a conversation both ways just to know if this is going to work or not. Because you just can't hire somebody even in the most diligent way and know if it's gonna work out. That's just, it's not reasonable. But I think that we were bringing this mentality that, hey, if you're here, you're here for life. And it was just, and we got that feedback

from some people that we brought on, on like a contract basis just to work, or that's how they wanted to work, you know, especially in this town. So we learned from that, and I think we started to benefit from that expectation that six weeks in, we're gonna have this assessment to see if this is a good fit for everyone.

Well, and another piece of that is this idea of very direct, candid communication. Yeah. Which was not, and continues to be a difficult thing for us to do just naturally because we're not those kinds of bosses. But it's an important thing. Again, if you're the coach of a team

and you're watching your player do something or you're watching the tape back, you wanna be like, hey, come here, take a look at this. You see what you did there? I'd rather you do this. That's not the way you communicate with your family. Cause if you do, if you try to, and I'm guilty of this sometimes,

and I'm sure you are as well. Sometimes I'll go into business leader mode in my family and trying to get my kids to do things. And it doesn't work in a family atmosphere where everybody knows that they're going to be here forever. But on the team atmosphere, it's like, hey, listen, no, this is actually your compensation and your longevity at this company are kind of are based on your contribution to the bottom line in a lot of ways. And so we're going to have to have some difficult conversations from time to time.

And the more that that can become just an expectation and a part of your culture, the healthier everything's gonna be. Yeah. Not easy to get there. I think we got into problems when we wouldn't, we wouldn't think someone was a good fit or they wouldn't be, their performance wouldn't, it just consistently wouldn't think someone was a good fit or they wouldn't be, their performance wouldn't, it just consistently wouldn't meet our standards

or our goals, then it was hard to have those conversations. But when we didn't have them and we skirted the issue, it made everything worse. And then we're talking about parting ways and somebody feels blindsided and it's, you know, sometimes you have to learn lessons. We had to learn some lessons in a more painful way. And it's not, you know,

there's a right way to talk about it, but not talking about it is bad news. I think another thing that we had to come to grips with was we weren't just, we couldn't just lead by osmosis of what our demeanor was and the fact that we would show up as performers because people would interact with us when we were performing, shooting Good Mythical Morning and other things.

But there was also an interaction that we needed to have as leaders and being visible as our company grew, especially to 80 people of, okay, they are providing leadership. I understand what this company is ultimately interested in and made up to be and what is the culture and what's the vibe and what what do we what what does the company care about because what a rent link care about and do they care about me all of those things led to making practical decisions like having a company-wide meeting every month that for month after month, we would have to convince ourselves

that we needed to keep having it because we had to realize there was value in everyone hearing from us and then realizing there's things that we could bring to the table in terms of giving perspective on these are, here's an anecdote that we heard from a mythical beast. We're going to share it with all of you in order to help you understand the difference that all of the work that we're doing makes in people's lives. Even if some people knew it here or there, it's helpful for them to hear it from us and just to kind of hear and experience our passion for what we're working on, but also to have a little bit of fun. I mean, I don't know how we started opening every meeting

with people share, if they've had a run-in with a celebrity, like a fight. Like a lot of people who work for us, they get in brawls with celebrities. No, they just spot celebrities. So I wouldn't call that a run-in. I think somebody just told a story at one point and then, yeah, now it's how we open every meeting.

And there's always, I mean, when you got a company that size and you're in Los Angeles, without fail, someone has seen a celebrity and it's almost always a funny interaction or situation. And it's fun and it's connecting. And then we go through an agenda of, you know, all the different areas and what, you know, milestones and things that we're excited about.

And it took a while for us to realize that there was value in that. Well, it took us a while to realize there was value in it because we, again, there's been a slow transition over the years of us seeing what we were building at Mythical Entertainment as a vehicle to allow us to do the things that we were most creatively excited about.

Again, we didn't get in this to be business people. We got in this to be creators. But then once you realize you've got this business that needs to be led and you have to be involved, sometimes you have to say, okay, well, I'm actually not going to be able to just throw myself into this creative project and just be the artist guy all the time that can come in when he wants to and just waits until he's inspired. It's like, no, you actually have to provide the structure and the leadership for a company to be healthy.

And so those are two different things and two different modes. And so a lot of this just comes down to scheduling for us and making sure that, okay, no, we've got the meeting, we gotta be ready for it. That being said, do you think that, because I've never asked him, but do you think that when we have our

company-wide meeting and there's the big boardroom table and everybody's around the table and then the bleachers behind the table and here we are both seated next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, behind the table, facing them, not unlike we would sit behind the GMM desk and then there's like the business banter version of Good Mythical Morning. Do you think, I wonder if they feel like it's a bit of a business show. Not that it's fake or that it's insincere.

I don't think they would think that, but just that it's a bit like the business version of GMM. I'm sure that it's a little unusual for like an intern who has been watching the show and then they come to the first meeting and they're like, oh, they're just kind of sitting at a desk like they do on the show. I never really thought about it, but yeah,

but it's not as entertaining as the show. No. For sure. No. And it doesn't need to be, that's not what it's about. Right. I'd say another aspect of this is that, okay, so we're still learning a bunch of lessons about that, about what it means to try to be creative and try to lead a company.

And we have a lot to learn. But because we have kind of sorted out some of this and learned some of these lessons and put some of these things in place, and we felt like we had gotten to a place where it was like there's a nice balance of having creative freedom, but being able to provide leadership,

but also being able to entrust people to lead teams really efficiently and to create a great product. That made the decision to acquire Smosh last year an easier decision for us. Again, not something we ever set out to do. We never thought we were going to be acquiring other internet businesses. And even if you had asked us at the beginning of the year that we did that, we would have been like, no, what? That's not something we're interested in. It was serendipitous.

We told that story about how everything lined up perfectly, but because we had a culture and we had a system in place, it wasn't that big of a stretch to incorporate a whole other team, a whole other company into our company and sort of apply a lot of the same principles because we had gotten to a place where we were comfortable with people who had their own creative vision. and sort of apply a lot of the same principles because we had gotten to a place where we were comfortable with people

who had their own creative vision. In fact, that was what we were after. And we just were like, but here's the business structure and the sort of the production side of things that you can kind of put in place to make your content dreams come true. But you guys are the ones that are gonna have to be in charge of the creative.

You know, your fan base, you've, you've got more subscribers than we do. You've, you've been doing this for longer than us. And that was an interesting experiment of just being able to say, all right, let's take the things that we've learned and apply those lessons to this acquisition, but we've already got creatively motivated people in place. And I think that that's one of the reasons that it's worked so well for both, both sides. And I think that that's one of the reasons that it's worked so well for both sides. And I think it's hearing feedback from Ian and from Smosh,

it makes me feel good when they talk about the contrast from their experience before to being under the wings of Mythical because they describe it as a different experience being in a creator-led company you know i and i really think it comes down to there's definitely business accountability and there's there's lots of structure um and there's a there are course corporate aspects to what we do now i I mean, with this many people, there has to be. But it's all built on the foundational belief that if you're passionately expressing yourself in a way that's committed to reaching your audience and connecting with them honestly,

audience and connecting with them honestly, and you've got a proven track record, that's earned trust. So the creative quotient is a lot higher than in some companies where it's just, okay, we might, you know, I don't know how other companies would do it in terms of how they would calculate and factor in creative decisions but there's just a level of trust and belief there that um subject to parameters and this doesn't this doesn't just apply to smosh it applies to us and we just convey it to them as well that um that's what that's what leads to success you, you can't underestimate the creative component and the passion involved in it. Yeah.

And sort of the latest aspect of this and recognizing that you have a culture, embracing that culture and trying to shape that culture, that's been put into a bit of a test with what's happened with the coronavirus. Yeah. And, you know, we're very much, as you can tell by the fact that we're at home, we're obeying the social distancing requirements and no one is working at the office.

Everybody's working from home. And that's created its own unique challenges from a technical perspective, which we've kind of overcome. But it's been a unique challenge in terms of the cultural aspect of the company, because what is the culture now when everyone is just at home all day and communicating via video conference? So, I mean, I think one of the things that we decided to do early on is like, okay, well, let's have our company-wide meeting, but let's do it as a big Zoom call and everybody's gonna be on there.

And it was interestingly or surprisingly connecting and we got a lot of feedback from people. You know, we did the thing that we always do. We started it off asking people to tell celebrity spotting stories. And there was actually, there was actually one, somebody saw Jon Hamm on a balcony. You know, and it's like, it's a sort of a different flavor

when we're all social distancing. But there was a, what we realized is that having made the decision to set up this regular touch point where we're communicating with our company and our company is communicating with each other, it wasn't a difficult thing to carry that into this weird time. But there wasn't.

We're just talking on video. There was an added weight to it. Like I definitely experienced an added level of nervousness to say, okay, this is a leadership moment. This is a time when we need to step up and we need to communicate what the plan was and give as much as we could a sense of security that like, okay, we are moving forward.

This is a difficult and trying time, but we're in this together. And so yeah, there was, okay, it's like, I feel needed as a leader. I feel like this is an opportunity for us. And it's not easy. I think when you look at this scenario or looking back on everything, there was never a point where we felt fully ready. You know, I mean, saying that we were kind of blindsided by the CEO-ness of it all, is something that you just, you take every day

and you take every opportunity for what it is and we learn from our mistakes and we try to learn from everything. Like I think these lessons again are still for us as we're continuing to learn and hone those and um i don't know i just i especially in light of what we're dealing with now i just have this added perspective of it's it's a privilege to be able to lead a company even though i never knew i wanted to do that and sometimes it's still very frustrating and it doesn't seem like the main thing that I wanna be working on,

I do have this sense that it's not only a weighty obligation but it's a privilege to do that and to shape a culture and a company that not only cares about what we're creating but it cares about and we care about all the people that we're working with. And certainly as I'm as grateful as I've ever been for everybody who works for us, given what we're going through right now.

And I think that's a good way to wrap it up with one final lesson. And that is we're having to learn to always be looking for the lesson that we're currently learning, right? A lot of these lessons are things that you don't see them until you look back, until there's some perspective after the fact. But I think that over time you get a little bit better at being like, oh, oh, actually there's a lesson happening right now. If I can actually figure out what it is and anticipate it and learn it right

now, then we can begin to apply it. And I think that this crisis and this change, the way that our company has been forced to adapt, we're learning new lessons. I mean, sort of the big thing that we've been trying to do in more recent years is figuring out what does mythical mean beyond just the two of us, right? What does it mean in terms of content? What does it mean in terms of just the company and the leadership?

And there's only so much that the two of us can accomplish as leaders and as creators. of us can accomplish as leaders and as creators, but the concept of mythical, thanks to our incredible team and also to the incredible fans who have kind of bought into what we're doing, it's given us, we're learning this lesson that, hold on, whether we want it to be or not, this is already bigger than us. But how do you sort of manage that wisely? And how do you continue to grow it in a way that you don't, it doesn't lose what makes Mythical mythical and continues to give us opportunities to, you know, we still wanna personally create

things that are awesome, right? We're not done creating new things. It's not like we're about to walk off into the sunset and say, hey, we made, this is what we made and now we're done. Like we still, and we probably always will think this way, we still think our best work is ahead of us, but we're also, we've kind of been forced

to embrace the fact that, oh, this mythical thing has kind of just happened and it has a lot of potential. Let's do this wisely. Yeah, and I- Let's deliver. I think our best work now that we come to grips with it also includes prioritizing not only our own health,

but the health of our team. And that they're not just employees, but they're people. And that if creating a culture is something that, I mean, I am increasingly passionate about because it's a great opportunity and also to continue to make things that make a difference. It's not just making the stuff we wanna make, but making it in a way that continues

to make a difference in people's lives. And can, like you said, continue to learn lessons along the way from our, not only our successes, but our shortcomings. So, I mean, it's an amazing position that we find ourselves in and I'm very grateful for it. Very, you got any other lessons? Or you just have a wreck?

Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, just to get very practical, I mean, at the top of the year, we took all of our team leaders and we said, hey, let's go through a book together that we can discuss and how we can all be better leaders. And so I recommend that book to you. It's called The Making of a Manager by Julie Jo. Last name spelled Z-H-U-O. So if you're interested in tackling some of those issues about how to inspire the best as you manage people or manage people who manage people or you're managed by people the making of a manager is i think it's very helpful especially for people who kind of find themselves uh thrust into a new position of having to lead which is something that starts happening as companies grow you go from

everybody kind of doing their own thing to like oh i've now i've got a team yeah uh it's super super practical easy read read, very helpful. I also recommend it. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks for coming on this business journey with us. Use hashtag Ear Biscuits, as always, to continue the conversation. I'm curious what stood out to you or how our conversation has been mirrored in your own experience. Or I just gave you food for thought, even outside of the business world.

Yeah, and also let us know, you know, just as a concept of getting into this kind of thing, which, as Link kind of hinted at the beginning, it isn't necessarily for everybody, right? Not everybody is directly interested or involved in this kind of thing. But did you find this information intriguing or interesting, even if you don't have a business of your own? Because we could keep talking about lessons that we're learning in the future. All right. Well, we'll speak at you next week. You're fired. Just kidding. We've never actually said that to anybody.