How I Built This with Guy Raz - HIBT Lab! Hevesh5: Lily Hevesh

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Lily Hevesh never could have imagined that the videos of domino tricks she started posting for fun at 10 years old would eventually evolve into a thriving business.Fast forward to today and Lily’s YouTube channel, Hevesh5, has almost 4 million subscribers. Her videos, which showcase the toppling of countless intricately designed domino setups, have more than a billion views and counting...This week on How I Built This Lab, Lily recalls her path to becoming one of the best-known domino artists in the world. Plus, more on Lily’s recent expansion beyond digital creation — launching her own line of dominoes and starting her own agency to take on large-scale domino projects. Also, Lily explains why she will prioritize her craft over business objectives as she looks to the future. This episode was produced by Sam Paulson and edited by John Isabella, with music by Sam Paulson and Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineer was Neal Rauch.You can follow HIBT on Twitter & Instagram, and email us at [e-mail] Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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It had tall windows, beautiful old details, and plenty of space for all of us. And being in that home on Airbnb, right in the middle of Vienna, walking distance from so much of the city, made it feel less like a visit and more like we were actually living there. Plus, taking a trip is the perfect time to host your space on Airbnb. Your place with all of its personal touches and its amazing location could make someone else's vacation even better. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at Airbnb.ca.com slash host. Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. Lily Hevesh is probably one of the best-known domino artists in the world.

Her YouTube videos get millions of views and her channel has millions of. subscribers. Lillies built elaborate domino setups for the Tonight Show, for music videos, and for films, including the opening scene of the movie Collateral Beauty. You should check it out. Will Smith looks like an amazing domino artist. Anyway, Lillies also built a pretty significant business around her work, and she started all of this when she was just nine years old. So I was adopted from China when I was one and grew up in New Hampshire. I have a brother a sister and my parents, we all lived in one place. And it was kind of a rural area, you know, not really much going on. There was like one small pizza shop in the whole town. And, you know,

I was a kid that just really loved building things. I loved using my hands and creating whatever I could, whether it was with Legos or, you know, ticker toys or just crafting things out of paper and gluing stuff together. Yeah. I was really into just being creative and, you know, it really spurred from there. Yeah. So when you were a kid, you'd build like elaborate Lego villages or like, did you ever do Lincoln Logs? Is that stuff? Oh, yeah.

I totally. I did all of that. I have like even the large like Lego Duplos when I was like super young and then graduated to the smaller Legos. And I just make the most elaborate things with it. Yeah. You know, I was looking through like a photo album of myself and when I was a kid. And I used to build these elaborate Lincoln Log and Lego villages. And the thing is, is that I just have the patience for, like, building it according to the kits.

Yeah. You know, I relate to that. Like, I didn't really follow a ton of directions. I'm the kind of person that likes to just kind of form my own thing. And if you're, if you give me the materials and, like, I'll kind of just figure out a way to use it. And sometimes even go off how you're supposed to use. use the structures or the bricks because I just find it more fun to kind of experiment. And I think that's how you learn the most, just kind of learning on your own. Yeah. All right. So you were

like a builder and you'd make Lego villages or like Lego buildings and Lincoln Logs and other things. And eventually, which I think is a natural progression, you came across the dominoes. And there are those dominoes that I think most people think of like the like for game, for the games, like with the dots on them, right? And did you have a set of those dominoes at home? So I did. And the way it started is I was at my grandparents' house. And, you know, everyone really has like the small 28 dotted domino pack.

And one day I was super bored. So I was like, oh, I'm just going to set up these dominoes for fun, knock them down. And I really loved watching them fall. It was just like super satisfying to see them like go in a chain reaction. Like, it actually did something. And that led me to go on to YouTube. This was, like, 2008, I think, way back in the day. I was nine.

I was very young child. This was when YouTube was pretty new. And I just searched Domino's because I was like, you know, if I really love watching Domino's Fall, maybe there's some videos that I could see. Yeah. And I found the most amazing community of domino builders who, like, all around the, the world were making thousands upon thousands of dominoes and knocking them down and beautiful structures. I remember watching one video. It was the Mona Lisa in dominoes in like 4,000 pieces and it completely blew my mind. I had no idea that you could even build dominoes in this way.

This was truly an art form in the sense that you can make designs, you can make different pictures, you could even stack them to make towers and structures. You could even stack them to make towers and structures. And from my knowledge, like, at that time, I only thought you could make a domino line. So to see all of these, like, different tricks and just ways you could topple dominoes just completely blew my mind. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I need to try this. I need to get dominoes. So, like, immediately from there, I got all the dominoes that I had in my house and just started setting them up and, you know, copying some of the tricks that I saw online. And, you know, And at the time, people didn't really have a lot of tutorials.

So I remember I'd have to like zoom in on screenshots of videos and like look at how people were building these structures and try to copy that to see, you know, if I can make a 2D pyramid or a large structure. And it just really became an obsession for me. So most people think of dominoes as, you know, these things with the dots on them. But there are these brands that make these specialized dominoes for toppling. And I guess when you were like nine or ten, you asked for one of these professional domino brands. Yeah.

So as I got into dominoes, I noticed like regular toppling dominoes weren't as suitable for toppling. You know, just because the corners were kind of rounded, which didn't make it as stable for setting up structures. And, you know, other types of dominoes were better for, you know, actually toppling. They were designed with the right surface, the right texture, the right dimensions and weight in order to topple in a perfect chain reaction. So, all right, so you get this first set of dominoes. And a lot of these companies were making them in like Germany. They're like precision crafted dominoes. And so I guess you start to what, just experiment even more with building these elaborate domino chain reaction.

type things? Yeah. So getting more dominoes opened a whole new avenue for making things like giant 3D pyramids or, you know, I'd even make logos or people's faces out of dominoes and spell out different types of words. And with traditional dominoes with the dots, they typically only come in one or two colors or it could be wooden. But with toppling dominoes, I had a whole color palette. So it was really like I was painting, but with dominoes. And that allowed for so many different combinations and color patterns and, you know, different types of shapes. It's, it's really something that I never could have imagined was possible. But I kind of fell into this new form of art. And it just, it just completely captivated me. All right. You posted your first video to

YouTube in 2009. I've seen the video. You were 10 years old. Just do it. Wow. What you're saying on my phone right, Mom? Go. Oh, that was cool. And this was a very, these were very basic kind of like domino-topling videos. And at that point, I mean, it was, I mean, I'm assuming you were just kind of doing it for fun. You were, I mean, you were so little. You weren't thinking necessarily, I'm going to start a YouTube channel. When I first started YouTube, I had no idea what it would turn into.

I was just as a kid posting down into videos for fun because I saw other people posting videos. And I was like, you know, I want to be part of that. I want to be part of this community and share what I've learned. And, you know, maybe people will watch it. If not, that's also cool. But I'm having fun. So might as well just post stuff. All right.

So you start posting videos and making more of these videos. And I guess at a certain point, you start to get inquiries from businesses who want to work with you. Yeah, I remember my first business inquiry was when I was 13 years old. It was a spec commercial for Campbell's Soup, and they wanted me to build the soup can out of Domino's. And, you know, at the time, I'm 13 years old, and I'm getting this job offer. So my dad takes a look at it, and now, you know, he's my chief operating. officer now. But it started as like a parent helping in when I was 13. He would screen all the emails, make sure it's legit, and get on phone calls, and we'd talk to them to make sure that we'd

get the design right. And it was really quite a learning curve because I did not expect any of this to, you know, turn into something more than just for fun as like just a hobbyist YouTuber, right? A YouTuber didn't even exist at that point. And at this point, I was a teenager, and people started contacting me now to make commercials or do things for TV and film. And after a couple of videos went viral on YouTube, just so many people had eyeballs on my work, and it just snowballed into more and more opportunities. Yeah, I mean, it makes so much sense. Like, if you had a sort of an elaborate domino setup that, you know, people are going to, you know, want to see that. And so if it's a video, a music video or an advertisement, like, it makes

sense that brands and individuals would want to work with you because it gets attention. I mean, some of your videos have like 180 million views. Yeah. The thing about Domino's is that once you see it fall, it's like you have to watch it till the end. Yeah. Right. You can't just like drop off in the middle of thousands of pieces falling down. It's just, it's too satisfying and too addicting. Yeah. The first video that kind of went viral was it's called insane domino tricks really cool um it got a post to the front page of reddit this is in 2013 in november um and it in like the first couple days got three million views but you were not in any of your videos initially you were not it was just videos of the dominoes

that's correct yeah i was anonymous for about six and a half years i didn't show my face i didn't speak and that was largely because you know i was still a kid back then and i was still a kid back then and I didn't really feel super comfortable showing my face. And I didn't honestly think it was necessary to be in my videos when I wanted to just showcase my domino art. But then, as I was watching YouTube videos and the landscape of social media, I realized that a lot of channels who showed their face and who were personalities had really high engagement. Like the amount of comments they'd get, the amount of views per their subscriber ratio was really high. And I started to see this trend that being alive, like living human in your videos, could have this great impact. But not just that.

Like I really, after a while, was starting to feel like not being in my videos was limiting and that I couldn't talk to my audience. I couldn't share tutorials with them. I couldn't really interact with them. And so finally, after so many years of hiding myself, I decided to do this. big, grand reveal by doing what's called the Draw My Life video. Essentially, you narrate over whiteboard drawings, the story of your life. But instead of my life, I told my domino and YouTube story. It's been six and a half years of me posting videos anonymously. And, well, it's time to change that. And then at the very end of it, I look at the camera and I say,

I am Hevesh V. And it's this big reveal. And I remember, like, when that video came out, I was almost in tears from the reaction. Like, people, first of all, most people assume that I was, like, some middle-aged guy just, like, setting up dominoes in the basement. But then they see I'm just this young teenage girl who just loves dominoes. And, you know, the support that I got in the comments was really overwhelming. And I was really happy to finally just share who I am and be able to talk to my viewers. I think that decision alone was one of the greatest things I've done for the channel.

Like just having a face that people can see and people know like, oh, Lily is behind Heavish 5. We're going to take a short break, but when we come back more from Lily Heavish on her journey from casual domino hobbyist to one of the best known domino artists in the world. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab. One more thing, before we get back to the show, please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. It's usually just at the top of the app. And it's totally free.

Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. My guest today is Lily Heavish, the creator behind the popular Domino Art YouTube channel, Heavish 5. Really, you have to see these videos. Anyone listening needs to go and just find your videos and watch them because they're incredible. But let me talk about the mechanics of it.

Firstly, the filming of them. When you started out, how did you film them? I mean, did you just use like an iPhone initially? So when I first started, I filmed on a really crappy point-and-shoot camera. I honestly think it was like 12.5 frames per second or something. And you would just follow the dominoes as they fell? Yeah. I would just click record and follow it with my camera.

At first it was pretty shaky. I didn't really know what I was doing. And it was definitely a learning process as I was building Domino's learning how to record my videos, how to edit them, how to put together the video. And that just came from practice, you know, watching videos and starting on Windows Movie Maker and then working my way up to different types of software. But I learned that filmmaking is actually a really great hobby for me as well. Like in addition to the dominoes, it's something that I kind of fell in love with and wanted to learn more. So that in turn helped with the YouTube videos. So as these domino setups got more and more elaborate, were you starting to design them like on a computer first?

Like is that how the process starts? Yeah. So sometimes I will use a computer to design the projects. There's a couple of programs, one on Excel and a couple that are coded by, domino builders, like from scratch, where essentially you can insert an image and that will transform it into a pixelated version of what you're trying to build. And that'll be based off of like all of your domino colors. So if you enter in like you have 400 white, 400 black, 300 red, for example, it'll take what your inventory is and you'll be able to convert that image into the exact size

that you want, almost like a pixel art grid. And then you can, like, change the colors. You can do manual designs. You can do it all from scratch. It's, like, very flexible. So tell me about the process. Like, bring me into the process of making your videos. I mean, do you have a crew that helps you set them up?

I mean, if you're doing, like, I don't know, tens of thousands of dominoes, is it just you? I'd say for most of my videos, it is just me. but there are events here and there where I'll get together with builders all around the world and we'll set up hundreds of thousands of dominoes with 20 builders. Those are only a couple times a year, but I have a home studio. I live and work in the same place, so we've kind of just, you know, taken out all the furniture and I've used that to build dominoes. And I'd say it's pretty chill where I am right now.

Like, I'm filming it all. I'm doing the domino building. Occasionally, I'll have a friend come over and, you know, set up another camera. But it's mostly just myself right now. And, I mean, presumably there are multiple cameras. Like, do you have them up set up on rigs, you know, or on tripods that are different parts of the setup? Yeah, I film with between six and seven cameras. I got one GoPro camera on the overhead.

Lots of different tripod stationary cameras, and I'll also be following it handheld. So you also walk along as they're toppling? Yeah, I think it's really important to have at least one handheld camera if it's a big project, just because it feels more dynamic as you're watching the movement. So, and then you can edit it all together in the end and make sure that every single part of that toppling can be seen. Exactly. Yeah, stitching it together is something that I think. think about even before I'm filming, as I'm building the setup, I'll even build in spots to put

cameras or I'll build it in a way that I know it's facing cameras. So it'll be really easy for the viewers to see it topple. Do you ever have to redo them? Yeah, plenty of times, actually. I mean, what happens if you spend like 20, 30 hours building something and you have to redo it? Yeah, it's, it's really sad. It's happened quite a lot of times. but, you know, it's just part of the process with building. I learned that really early on too. I used to set up maybe like 50 dominoes. It would knock over by accident.

And I'd get so upset and have to take breaks in between and come back to it later. But, you know, now it's happened so many times. I kind of just, you know, take a moment, take a deep breath, and do something else for an hour, and then, you know, come back when I feel ready. and I kind of see it as like, even though it's a failure, I can rebuild it. Like, at the end of the day, it's dominoos.

This is all fun. Like, I can set it up again. I can set it up in a better way the next time and use that kind of as like an opportunity to learn, you know, even though there's a lot of failure involved, I try to see it as something that will get me better. You know, maybe I'll learn how to set up the dominoos better or prevent fails by making safety gaps and all that kind of stuff. I think one of the, I mean, you've now worked with tons of celebrities.

We'll get to that in a moment. But I think the first kind of big turning point was in 2016, the producers of the film Collateral Beauty reached out to have you set up Domino's for the film's opening credit scene, which is, it's awesome. Will Smith, like, sets off the Domino's and they go off. And so do you remember when they contacted you? And were you like, wait, what? You want me to work on a movie with Will Smith and all these people?

Oh, yeah, it was wild. I remember I was a senior in high school, and they contacted me. I believe it was Warner Bros. And essentially, they wanted me to be on set for two weeks, setting up these elaborate domino projects for Will Smith and kind of teach him how to build dominoes and have him go in and pretend to knock them down. And it was such a big project that actually had to hire some of my friends who are also domino builders to help out and build these domino projects. And I remember literally taking off two weeks of school in the middle of senior year to just be on a movie set.

No big deal. But it was the most incredible experience. I had never been on a Hollywood film set. And everyone there was so nice. We got to see all the behind the scenes of how they put together the film. And one thing you might not even see in the movie is we had to make props by gluing together domino structures piece by piece. So they could bring them in and then take them out when they needed it. So we didn't have to rebuild it each time.

Oh, wow. Oh, so you, it's like you had to sort of build what it looked like, but it was glued together just so they could have it while they were filming. because if they toppled it over, they'd have to redo it. Exactly. Yeah. So there was a glued version and then we did it for real. Wow. All right. You get into college after your, after high school, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, really great school. You're there and you're in your first year and you decide after your first year that you really, this isn't making sense because you're getting all these inquiries and partnership inquiries and you can't, you can't run the channel. and build dominoes and I guess be a student as well. So you decide to to leave school. Right. It was pretty quickly, actually, within a couple of months of being in college, I was like, why am I here? I'm passing up all these opportunities to do projects for companies

and people wanted me to do different events. And, you know, being in school, while I did really enjoy it, I was studying design and product design. I just didn't feel like what I was meant to do. And prior to going to college, I actually took a gap year to just make as many videos as possible so that when I did go to college, I'd have a backlog to post. And during my gap year, that was kind of like my taste of what it would be like to do domino art and YouTube full time. So I rented out a studio and made as many domino projects as possible. and I absolutely enjoyed that year's so much, was able to accomplish a lot.

And when I went to college, I really miss kind of having that lifestyle and just being creative. So very quickly, I called my dad. I was like, I think I want to do dominoes. And my dad was actually like, yeah, Lily, there's no way you're going back to school, like in a fun way. Like, he was pretty supportive. And my mom, while she was sad that I wouldn't be staying for all four years, she totally saw it coming. And, you know, she didn't want me to pass up this opportunity of, you know, pursuing my dream and becoming a full-time domino artist. So after that one year, I decided to leave school.

And I moved into the house that my dad grew up in, converted that into a studio and started my YouTube channel for real. as a full-time content creator. Give me a sense of like time scales. Like when you, you know, you've got, I think the most dominoes you set up is 32,000. And, you know, if you do the math, and it's like maybe 10 seconds a domino, depends on the domino.

I mean, that is dozens and dozens and dozens of hours, you know, how do you sort of divide your time? I mean, are you working on setting up dominoes? for eight hours a day? Yeah, it's really difficult because it's not just the dominoes that I have to think about. I'm also thinking about creating the video and filming and doing social media and emails and all that kind of stuff. So I'll admit, I don't set up dominoes every single day, but what I'll try to do now

is I'll try to partition my day. So it's like one day I'll focus on building and maybe I'll set up, you know, a couple thousand dominoes over a period of five hours. And then the next day, I'll have an admin day and I'll focus more on doing emails and catching up and doing strategic planning and thinking of video ideas, more computer-based work. So I kind of like separate and have to shift gears because when I'm switching in between, it's hard to kind of focus on one thing. Yeah. And while you're building a project, you're also presumably chronicleing that for your YouTube channel and your vlogs and other places where people can sort of follow you, I guess.

Yeah, everything I do is pretty much documented. I'm always filming stuff for behind the scenes, doing tutorials and teaching people how to build the dominoes. And, you know, when you do social media and YouTube, it's kind of like, it's kind of a 24-hour job in a way, just documenting and sharing things. But I've become kind of used to the process, just capturing little, you know, know, seconds of video here and there as I'm building so people can see the progress, doing time lapses, and through that I'm able to make a lot of content.

And here you are now with 5 million subscribers across your channels. We've had other content creators who've, you know, Marquez Brownlee and others who've built teams, right, to help them make more content. It sounds like you are still primarily the main person. You're building, you're filming. Your dad helps you. Do you have anyone else you brought on to help you kind of grow your business? Yeah.

So we have expanded the team a bit. My dad is the chief operating officer. He's full-time. He does everything related to the business, like taxes, financials, payroll, logistics, getting on conversations to see if an opportunity is worth pursuing. He sort of vets the opportunities and deals with the potential. and then the negotiations over how it's going to work. Exactly.

Yep. Yeah, he is a huge part of the team. He's like the business manager. Yeah, business manager. But way more than that. He's just a huge support. And, you know, he has a marketing and sales background. So his skill set really was perfect for when I needed help to launch this channel and growed into what it is now.

So he was able to quit his job and do this full time. and I in turn am able to focus on the creative, he does the business, and it's just a really, really great partnership. But on top of that, I also have a part-time video editor. I have a part-time community manager, a part-time social media manager, and we just hired a project manager to help out with my dad. Because sometimes there's projects we'll get, you know, people will hire me as a traditional artist. And because I'm focusing so much on making videos and content, I'm not able to take on all of

those opportunities. Yeah. So we've started an agency, the Heavish Five Domino Agency, where if companies want a Domino art piece, I can hire, you know, my friends who are Domino builders and we'll subcontract them to carry out the project through our company. Yeah. So it's able to sustain itself through other avenues without me having to have my complete involvement in it. We're going to take a short break, but won't we come back more from Lily about growing the Havish Five audience and taking on new business ventures. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This Lab.

Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz, and today I'm speaking with Lily Havish, who turned her childhood domino hobby into a multifaceted, multi-million dollar business. So one of the things that you did very wisely was in 2020, you launched your H5 branded dominoes we do with Spin Master. You know, it makes sense from a branding perspective for you to put your name and face on Domino's. I've seen it and it looks really cool. But, you know, what was the value proposition here besides your name and your brand? So it's important to note that there actually weren't

toppling dominoes in retail. They only had game dominoes in stores. So a huge factor that we tried to break to the table was we can get precision engineered toppling dominoes in retail and back it by a domino artist who at the time, and still now, was the number one most subscribed domino artists on the web. And Spin Master, they really believed in the proposition that a YouTube content creator can create a product and promote it with their following, but also have having someone who's an expert in dominoes who knows how to make something designed for toppling was a huge, huge factor. And people might not know this, but dominoes are really technical.

Like, it seems just like a simple rectangle, but there's a lot that goes into creating a domino. Like, the surface texture that we have on the dominoes are very grippy in a way, so that it doesn't slide and hit other dominoes by accident. And the size of the domino really makes a difference. It has to be a perfect two by one ratio. And the corners have to be really square in order to build them as tall as possible. If you have rounded corners, it's not going to be very stable. And the weight is also really important, too.

If it's too heavy, it's not going to topple right. And if it's too light, certain tricks aren't going to work either. So there's a lot of iterations, a lot of tests and prototypes that we went through. with different materials, you know, how to place the H5 watermark on it, and getting the colors as vibrant as possible. Like one thing that we saw with previous dominoes is that the colors were really inconsistent. Like you would buy one batch of dominoes in one color and then get the same color, and it would be a completely different shade.

And that just wasn't great for setting up dominoes. And I knew, like, as a domino artist, not even to like have a product attached to my channel, Like, I could make a better domino. And I want to make a domino that is for domino builders. And I was uniquely in such a great position with my YouTube channel to be able to make this happen. And Spin Master was one of the few toy companies that saw the vision. I'll admit, we did partner with a couple of others previously, but those fell through for various reasons. It was like a three-year process of trying to get these dominoes made.

Oh, yeah. It took a while. You know, we would go to the toy fair and go up to different companies and literally pitch the idea to create my own line of dominoes talking to all these people. And my dad threw a lot of research and just networking. He finally made contact with the right person at Spin Master and put together this long document just, you know, delivering the value prop. And that led to a meeting with Spin Master. And, you know, they even came to my house and had a meeting and saw my studio. And they really saw the vision.

And from there, it just kind of took off. And presumably they, because of their scale, they were able to find a manufacturer that could make this. Because as you mentioned, they have to be precision crafted. They can't, like, I guess it's, you know, it's plastic, right? And it's a certain weight of plastic. and it has to be, I guess, injection molded, but you can't have any, like, seams. You can't have, it has to be perfect.

Yeah, it has to be so precise. And something that I communicated to them was the idea of Lego, you know, how Lego is such a perfect Lego piece. Yeah. You get a Lego, you know, 20 years ago and now, and they're exactly the same. No, and there's never a flaw. I've never had a flawed Lego ever.

Yeah. The color, the shape, everything's perfect. Yeah, so that's exactly what we're trying to do with Domino's. We're trying to standardize it and make it as precise as possible so that when you're setting up the dominoes, you don't have to worry about it, you know, having an extra piece of plastic or the color is changing. It's a quality, consistent domino that works perfectly for setting up and knocking down. One of the other sort of partnerships that you put together is a TV show that you end up working with a Dutch production company. It's a show. I think right now, mainly, you can see mainly in the Netherlands. And it's like Lego Masters, but it's like a bunch of domino builders are competing against each other.

And you are one of the main judges. Yeah. It's called Domino Challenge. And this is literally Lego Masters, but with Domino's. Yeah. And I was actually the only judge. But I was judging people based off of creativity and their construction technique. And the builders there were all from the Netherlands. in varying levels of experience.

And it was the coolest thing ever. You know, just to see a show dedicated to Dominoes blew my mind. And they had a giant set made for setting up Dominoes with giant teams of people working on, you know, up to 30,000 dominoes per project within a couple of days. It was really incredible. Wow. So, all right, first of all, from a business perspective,

from what we understand from other conversations we've had with YouTubers, even with like tens of millions of views, it's still very hard to just make a living off the revenue you get from ads on YouTube. Is that fair to say? Yeah, I would say so. It's really important to diversify so you're not relying solely on the ads. And do you do ads embedded in the videos or are they just the ads that YouTube runs in front of your videos? Yeah, I do both. So once in a while, I'll do sponsored videos and make a whole, video for a brand themed around their product. And, you know, it could be for a movie. It could be for a toy. Whatever it is, I try to make sure it fits with the theme of my channel. And, you know, that can be a

pretty significant chunk of the entire business as well. But the thing about what you're doing is you can't scale Lily Heavish, right? You can appear in videos, but you yourself cannot make everything, but you can have other people set up, you know, these elaborate pieces of domino art that you probably could have a hand in designing. Exactly, yeah. So sometimes, you know, I'll plan something and then I'll have someone else build it and carry it out. And I can even train people to set up dominoes. Some types of tricks are a little more easy to set up than the structures, for example. So it is possible to, you know, gather a larger team for the bigger projects. All right. So give me a sense of where you sort of want to take this business that you've built, right? I mean, Brand Studio, TV show, a product, obviously just the standard, the videos that are still where most of your subscribers are watching you make content. Where do you sort of see this going and growing?

Yeah. So my vision is to really future-proof domino art. as an art forum that's just as popular as Lego or another building toy. Like, I really see Domino as something that anyone can enjoy and not just learn from, but also have fun building in a way that's very educational. You know, I've seen so many people, they watch my videos as kids, and they get inspired to set up Domino's, and we've gotten so many emails of people saying that building with Domino's has helped their child, learn how to become patient or learn how to use their hands and make elaborate things and become

very precise. Like, I really believe there's something with Domino's that helps people in, like, very deep ways, like, knowing how to persevere and how to overcome failure when something goes wrong and thousands of Dominoes crash over by accident. Like, I'm one to really understand that. And I want to try to spread that message on a much broader and global scale. You know, there's so many benefits to not just setting them up. Like there's team building involved. There's creativity. You're learning about physics and design. And I think there's so much opportunity to just get it into schools and have the H5 Dominic creation sets, get into classrooms, start workshops, library programs. But we're just trying to get Domino's out there and show them like this is an art form that is great for

the world and, you know, teach him how to do that with tutorials and the product as well. Lily, when you think about some of the other content creators, and let's talk about the biggest one, Mr. Beast, obviously, you know, hundreds of millions of followers, he's built out a massive company, or you've worked with Dude Perfect, right, and they have a, you know, a significant business. Do you look at those content creators and think that's where I want to go? I want to have this huge brand with a huge team, you know, making tens of millions of dollars a year? Or are you more focused on keeping it where it is, you know, sort of relatively manageable, a small team, but, you know, something that isn't super crazy huge?

You know, that's a really good question because I had tossed and turned on this for a very long time. And it wasn't until later last year, I wrote down the options that I could take. One of them was what I would call essentially the empire approach where I'd have a huge team running all the businesses. And we'd have people on site to build the dominoes and carry out the projects and have live events there and do the YouTube channels and everything under one roof. And then on the other hand, there's another option where I kind of niche down and become, you know, more of a solo artist where I'm focusing on the true art and the passion projects and spending more time on one piece of work, not necessarily for the goal of getting the most views, but something that

just really speaks to me. And that, in a sense, is a slightly different business model. But when I really looked into my soul and thought about the options, I landed at the conclusion that I would be most happy being a solo artist. And this was actually a pretty big revelation for me because for a while I thought I was going to do the empire approach. I was going to make it this big thing. But for me personally, at the end of the day, I've got to be honest. And I'm an artist first and foremost. I'm a creator, and building Domino's brings me the most joy.

And if I was doing the empire approach and managing things and, you know, trying to coordinate with all these different people, I really think that would eventually wear me down. And I probably wouldn't even have time to build Domino's at that point. So in the interest of, you know, longevity and keeping what I love doing, I now am focusing a little more on being the builder. being the artist behind the channel and delegating the other stuff, you know, like editing and the business end to other people so I can focus on what I do best because that'll make me the most happy. And I think that'll drive the whole business in turn. So I think it's just really

important to make sure that whatever avenue you choose, it's sustainable for you and that you really like it. Yeah. And you've built presumably a sustainable business that you you know, you can make a pretty good living off of. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a dream job for sure. And to be able to do this with my dad and people that I really care about is just the best thing in the world. Lily Havish, thank you so much.

Thank you so much. It's a pleasure. That's Lily Havish, the creator behind the Heavish Five YouTube channel. Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built This Lab. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And it's totally free. This episode was produced by Sam Paulson with editing by John Isabella.

Our music was composed by Sam Paulson and Ramtin Arablewe. Our audio engineer was Neil Rouch. Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Elaine Coates, J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Kerry Thompson, Carla Estevez, and Kira Joaquin. Neva Grant is our supervising editor. Beth Donovan is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.