The Iced Coffee Hour - Building A Multi-Million Dollar Business From $0 | Daniel Thrasher

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

SUBSCRIBE TO DANIEL THRASHER: https://youtu.be/165kMdtfp00 Check out the Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/icedcoffeehour  Add us on Instagram:  https://www.instagram.com/jlsselby https://www.instagram.com/gpstephan https://www.instagram.com/alex_nava_p... Official Clips Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeBQ... For sponsorships or business inquiries reach out to: [e-mail] GET YOUR FREE STOCK WORTH UP TO $1000 ON PUBLIC & SEE MY STOCK TRADES - USE CODE GRAHAM: http://www.public.com/graham  MY NEW COFFEE IS NOW FOR SALE: http://www.bankrollcoffee.com/ The Equipment used: https://tinyurl.com/y78py5g2 Audio Equipment Used In Podcast: Shure SM7B mics, cloud lifters, rodecaster pro audio interface The YouTube Creator Academy:   Learn EXACTLY how to get your first 1000 subscribers on YouTube, rank videos on the front page of searches, grow your following, and turn that into another income source: https://bit.ly/2STxofv $100 OFF WITH CODE 100OFF  For Podcast Inquiries, please contact [e-mail] *Some of the links and other products that appear on this video are from companies which Graham Stephan will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. Graham Stephan is part of an affiliate network and receives compensation for sending traffic to partner sites. The content in this video is accurate as of the posting date. Some of the offers mentioned may no longer be available. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's more to life than finding the perfect car. But finding the perfect car can help you get the most out of life. Like the SUV that handles everything from drop off to off road, and the car that hulls groceries and hockey teams, or the van that's gone from just practical to practically family. Whatever you want, wherever you're going, start your search at autotrater.ca. Canada's car marketplace.

Daniel Thrashar is a YouTuber with over 3 million subscribers, and trust me when I tell you, he is one of the most unique people we have ever spoken to. From creating simple YouTube videos out of a passion with just his piano that consistently went viral over and over again, to now having a full-on team working on his million dollar empire, making masterfully produced skits on YouTube about some of the most odd things you'll ever see, it's safe to say that Daniel is one of a kind. Well, in this video, we get an exclusive look into Daniel's extremely unique growth strategies. His unbelievable attention to detail and some other really unique aspects that you wouldn't believe. So if you're interested in this and you want more content exactly like it,

make sure to subscribe because we post a brand new episode every single Sunday. So we'd love to have you a part of it. And now let's start the podcast. But before we go on to that, on a more serious note, we got to thank our sponsor, FTXUS. They've been a serious supporter and believer of the podcast, and they've made an effort to sponsor almost every single one of our episodes and be a fantastic company to work with at the exact same time. time. Now, for those that aware, they're one of the largest U.S. regulated cryptocurrency exchanges

in the world with millions of users who buy, sell, track, and trade both crypto and NFTs all in one place with fees that are up to 85% lower than the top competitors. And I think especially with crypto, a lot of people don't understand exactly how much money they're spending on fees, because sometimes it's just baked into the price. But on FtXUS, they really do their best to bring down the cost as much as possible to save you more money. They are soon launching FTCs stocks, where you're going to be able to trade stocks, crypto, and NFTs all in one platform. It's really going to be an incredible app. You guys should definitely check it out with that link down below. And just to circle back, seriously, guys, they've been supporting this podcast for a very long time. And it means a lot.

They help us do what we do for you guys every single Sunday. So if you guys want to help us out, you guys want to help FTX out, please download the app with that link down below in the description. And again, there's also a bonus of all the way up to $100, depending on how much you trade. So you may as well take advantage of that. It's pretty much like free money. So enjoy. The link is down below in the description. And now let's get back to the podcast. Welcome back to the Ice Coffee Hour. My name is Daniel Thrasher.

And so far, this podcast has made $2,468,900,0.70. Very close. I think that's the farthest, actually, we've ever done it. Yeah. So you get an award for that. Well, 260,138 dollars, I think is what it is. Wow. My real, my legit guess would have been like a million dollars.

No. Are you serious? Yeah. Add revenue. Just add revenue? Just add revenue. Yeah, just add revenue. Oh, that doesn't include sponsors on this.

No, no. We keep it at, we've kept it ad revenue from the very beginning, so it's consistent because that's how we started. That's fair. I like that. Well, tomato tomato. Thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. I've watched your videos for a few years now.

I've really enjoyed them. Because you're one of the first people, at least as far as what I'm aware, creating kind of skits around music and taking the music element into comedy at an angle that really not many people have done before, have they? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, Seth Everman sort of kick-started this, like, meme-fied piano playing thing, but, but I didn't notice anybody playing multiple characters around an instrument, and that's sort of the gap I wanted to fill. Like, I wanted to make sketch comedy for a long time, like, I was stuck at 50K on YouTube for a while, um, doing really, elementary level, like, sketch comedy with my friends, but everybody kept commenting, like,

play more piano. And once I combined, those two things, what I wanted to do with what they wanted me to do, that's when like something really cool happened. Tell us your background. You go to college, we're always really good at the piano. How did this happen? Yeah, I mean, I, you know, when I was a kid, like I, whenever I would pass a piano store, which exists, I guess, like, I would have to play every single piano I saw because I needed to know how they sounded. And my parents saw that and gave me a keyboard, a little Cassio keyboard, when I was seven. And so I've been obsessed. Ever since, pretty much.

Were you self-taught? Yeah. I mean, I took piano lessons for maybe two years. Then middle school, I played in, like, the jazz band, which was fun. My sister, begrudgingly would wake up. She was in high school, and I was in middle school, and my school started before her. So she would have to groan, wake up and, like, get me to school before school even started, so the jazz band could practice.

They always do it so early. It always starts at, like, seven o'clock in the morning, right? It was like six or something. Oh, geez. Yeah. And, you know, shout out to Jennifer for letting me do that. But I, yeah, mostly self-taught. Back then I also played bagpipes competitively, which was a weird.

Are you serious? Yeah, very weird. Competitively? Competitive pipes. Insert photo. Yeah. How does that happen? How do you pick the bagpipes again?

I don't want to play that. Well, I didn't just like one day be like, you know, it'll be nice. It's my middle school, Dunedin Middle School, in Florida. Dunedden, Florida is like the sister city to Scotland is what they say. I don't know if there's a Dunedin in Scotland or if, I don't know, but we had pipes as an option. And so I played bagpipes under Mr. Sandy Keith, who was my angry Scottish piping instructor who called me a ninny far too frequently. And like the word ninny really is an insult from a Scotsman. What does it mean? Like idiot. Nini? I think so. Is that offensive if you call someone in

I don't think it's offensive in like, you know, you can get canceled for it kind of a thing. But I think it's offensive in terms of like just when someone sincerely calls you a nitty and you're 14. Like it's probably not. Just wait 10 years. 10 years from now, we're going to look back and be like he said the word ninnies. He said nitty. Yeah, yeah. It's acceptable now.

Just wait. Yeah. And everything comes out in the wash. So you had friends that played bagpipes? Yeah, it was like a group. Yeah, it was like the middle school. Yeah, man. Yeah, like we all wore kiltz and went out and competed.

Of course. Wow. Did you get bullied as a kid? We're not. Not enough. If I got bullied just a little bit more, I probably wouldn't be on this podcast. No, I, I, no, I was always the class clown. So I think I was able to get away with a lot.

Did you know I played tuba? No, that makes sense, though. Yes, from sixth grade through, I think 11th grade, I played the tuba. Really? You give me tuba vibes. Yep. Yeah. the biggest, loudest instrument I could in middle school.

Did you do marching band at all? No. So you'd never got it around the Susan? No, no, no, no. I had no interest in doing that because I think practice started around like 6 a.m., 6.30. It was really early. But I also did the jazz band, but the jazz band was I think after school. So it started at like 3.30 or 4. So you could have theoretically been there from 6 o'clock to like 5. It's horrible. Eleven hours of school and music. Yeah, I enjoyed it, but not a enough to pursue it. Yeah. What did you, what other hobbies did you have at that time in your life?

Gosh, drums. Really like drums. Yeah. I actually did drums in the jazz band from seventh grade through, I don't know, ninth grade, something like that. That's sick. And, uh, yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's fun. Can you still do it? No. I forgot. I forgot. I thought you put drums all the time, though. No, I play every now in it, but I'm nowhere near as good as I used to be in high school. You went from the bagpipes into playing piano. Yeah, I, you know, I always played piano, but I played bagpipes and piano. And at the same time, I think it was a drummer in a church band. And so I was just constantly, you know, wanting to jam, I guess, with people.

But piano, I started, I was always pretty good at it and very competitive. And so I would like, whenever I would see another kid in jazz band walk up on the piano, I'd be like, let me show you and then I'll like do something try to do something fancier what's interesting is I never like okay so I ended up going to a performing arts high school so I went to a high school for musical theater um which is great and then after that I went to SCAD the savannah college of art and design for performing arts but I started as a film major at SCAD because I you know made videos um in middle school for like English assignments and I really liked it and I thought I wanted to be a director um but that was way too much paperwork

Apparently directors have to do a lot of paperwork and permits and, like, licenses and, you know, renting vans and stuff. I hate that. But now that I'm older, I realize that's, like, a producer's job. But anyway, it's a lot of paperwork. So I went back into performing arts in college, and I wanted to build on top of a skill set that I already had. And by performing arts, I mean, like, acting and being creative versus, like, piano. People think I majored in piano in college. I'm an actor first, which is weird.

Or I have the most training in acting. Piano just sort of was the way, like the tool that I could use that would reach the most eyeballs to help me tell jokes with. What did you do right after college? Right after college. Work a job. So, you know, I majored in performing arts. I was lucky enough to be selected for the SCAD showcase. So they took me to L.A., New York, and Atlanta.

to like do scenes in front of agencies and management and stuff like that. And my manager found me in L.A. and wanted to sign me immediately. And, you know, she represents like Nathan Cress, Freddie from Mike Carly. Oh, wow. Yeah. And so he's in a couple of videos of mine for that reason. No way. And so, you know, and I grew up watching him and had a big crush on Miranda Cosgrove.

And I was like, I was like, yeah, I want this one. Yeah, I was lucky enough to be offered. management in all three cities. But L.A. just made the most sense. I'm from Florida. Florida boy. I love palm trees and stuff, you know. So L.A. was the move. So I was signed in L.A. If I wasn't signed in L.A., I actually had a job lined up in Korea. Really? I was going to be one of like 13 people in the world hired for this thing called English Village. So basically, in South Korea there is a little town

modeled after like colonial Virginia where it's just a bunch of white people because foreigners are rareish out there that all speak English and so essentially I would be a musical theater Dora the Explorer for Korean kids

I'd be like what color is the backpack I know red that's right that would have been my gig it was a two-year contract that I almost signed, you know, and as an actor, like getting a job fresh out of college is rare. Yeah.

You know, an acting job? Of any kind, of any kind is rare. And I was offered like this two-year contract. Like, that's crazy, you know? So was a pay good? For, for theater. I mean, it was fine. Like, I would have had housing accommodate.

I think it would have been like $30,000 a year or something. Maybe I could be wrong. Sorry if I'm giving way too much info. I don't even know if the company is alive anymore. But yeah, I mean, that plus. like, you know, weeks of paid vacation, weeks of sick leave, like, you travel all around Asia. Like, that would have been a great gig fresh out of college, like young, you know, bright-eyed actor. Like, that would have been great.

But then I got signed in L.A. and I was like, I'm going to do L.A. And it sucked for a couple years in L.A. Like, I worked in coffee, I worked in ice cream shops, coffee shop jobs, restaurants, stuff like that. And I kept auditioning and I kept getting really close to stuff. And I wouldn't get it. and then I would, you know, so... Could you tell us something you got really close to? Is there anything that we would know?

Yeah. Like, he got passed up and then like Daniel Radcliffe got it instead. The boys. No way. Yeah, for the lead guy. Wasn't that like a recent thing? Relatively recent. I mean, the, um...

What is that? Something quayed. The boys on Amazon. That was the thing Michael Reeves made the baby video for? Oh, no way. Yeah, yeah. The guy who loses his girlfriend in the first episode. I had to do that scene at the audition,

but I made it to the producer level. So you had, did you cry and whatnot? Try to. Yeah, but yeah, in the tape I did. And then, yeah, I think I had three auditions for that. And then, no, I mean, I've gotten close for a lot. I mean, like, I'm really close right now to something that if I don't get it, I'll be surprised, but I can't talk about it.

Is it big? It's very big. But it would be cool if it happens. And if it doesn't happen, that's cool, too. I know they're watching my every move. So I'm being very vague. We're going to make you look good. Don't worry about it.

I've, it's all good. Please don't see this and freak out. I'm not going public about anything. You're still trying to do the acting thing, like mainstream. I mean, you know what's weird is like I don't need to, right? Like I make enough money and I, and I'm, you know, recognized on the street and stuff. And like, this is going to sound really hokey. But it's true.

It's real. Every, like, birthday I've had, every 11. 11-11 I've ever seen every like little dandelion that I blow on or eyelash that you wish on. Ever since I was 16, I watched this video from this guy. Maybe you know him. He's the, he's the bald guy, bright blue eyes. I think his name is Stefan James or no, no, no, no, no. Is that his name?

Yeah, this project life mastery. Shout out project life mastery. I watched this video when I was younger that he said like your life should have a mission statement behind it. Like you should have a mission statement for your life. distilled into one sentence, like, what you really want to do while you're alive. And I found it years ago. And that sentence was, in my life, I want to inspire and entertain millions of people to lead better lives for themselves and for others. And that's it. That's the sentence. And I, and that's my wish at 1111 and all this stuff. Again, really hokey, whatever. But, you know,

I just want to have a good impact. And so I thought that was, that meant, you know, I would have to be on a TV show. or I'd have to be Dora the Explorer in Korea, you know, or like whatever. But turns out I get to do that. And based on all the DMs I see at my Instagram, and I'm sure you get the same thing, you know, where you're turning people's lives around financially. And, you know, I'm, like, inspiring people to pick up the piano or, like, if they have a hard day, they're watching my content.

Like, I now no longer feel the need that it has to come through as an acting job on, like, FX or Fox, you know? like for me it's it's now like I'm living it now the the there are just like little itches I kind of want to scratch now so like if I do get this mainstream thing then that sort of scratches that itch and it will help me connect with people to to entertain even more like it'll be like a different expression of that and so that's great because I sincerely want to keep doing what I'm doing. And I think spreading out and like touching all, you know, platforms.

Like even on a microscale, like, you know, I've only been doing YouTube for so long. But now I'm like picking up numbers on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and stuff. So, you know, to reach over to like mainstream TV or film would just be another expression of like. The ride that steals the spotlight every time it hits the road. That's the Volkswagen TIG one. Its sleek exterior makes a first. impression you can't ignore. Step inside to find available

full leather seats and wood accents. Under the hood, the available 201 turbocharged horsepower engine gives it a fun to drive edge. The refined Tigwan, you deserve more style. Visit vw.ca to learn more. SuvW, German engineered

for all. I don't need it, but I, it'd be cool. Tell us about your career on YouTube and how you begin to grow that. Jeez. Okay, well, created it when I was 13, January 6th, 2007, I think is the date, 29 now, so I've been on there for a while. I was able to quit my day job as a coffee shop guy on February 26, 2019, so it took a long time for me to figure out what I was doing. How it took off was I had a video called How I accidentally wrote The Office theme song.

I remember that. I saw that. Yeah. I think everybody saw that. Big video. It's like 25 million views now, right? Is it? Jeez. Something crazy. Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, that was a big thing. How'd you come up with that video?

It was a real story. I wasn't like, I wasn't meming. I wasn't like, yeah. I thought you were just making that up. No, I had a chord progression forever, and it's a really common chord progression I realized now. But back then I was 19 and I made this video in college and I was like, I want to tell the story about how one day I was playing this chord progression that I've been playing for years. Every pianist can relate to them. I think you go down, you sit down at the piano, and you play the thing that you know or the thing that you wrote just everywhere you go.

It's like the first thing you sit down and play because you're expecting someone to be like, what is that? And they'll be like, oh, it's something I wrote. And so that was the thing that I did for a long time. And then I realized it was the office theme song. Did you realize that or to some point? I realized it because I heard it on the TV and the living room. And I didn't watch the office back then. I really didn't.

But yeah, what's funny about that is that truly was an accident. And then I did the how I accidentally, or my new series, when you accidentally write songs that already exist. So now I'm like purposefully doing it. But back then, that was truly an accident. So when you're making a video like that, do you reverse engineer it? So you hear the song first? And you're like, oh, this would be a good song to make a video about.

Or just like a poppy song. Yeah, I mean, I'll listen to like toxic by Britney Spears and I'll be like, how do I make that sound completely different? Or like, how can I surprise somebody or trick somebody into listening to this and going like, oh, that's cool. And be like, surprise, it's this. And that's the format of the video.

Those videos are really fun because they're easy to do and they're gamified. So like the person watching like gets to, you know, guess what the next song is. I think that's a really fun, like, game that can be interactive and, you know. So what happened after that video got a ton of views? Did you realize, like, wait a second, I quit my job.

I could start doing this now? So the first, like, office theme song thing was me doing, like, that video was at 600,000 views because it was posted on Reddit and probably got 600K views in a couple of months. That's when I was stuck at 50,000 subscribers. And I was doing regular sketches. And at that point, everybody was like, just make more piano stuff.

When I did my first video where I played multiple characters around the instrument, it was called When You're a Show Off, which was based on a true story, where I pretended not to know how to play the piano and then just went nuts. That getting 80,000 views in like a week or a month or something at the time was huge because I was only doing two or three thousand views. So what I did was I followed the data and I replicated that type of video. And within a couple of months, I was getting some sponsorship offers and stuff. I did an affiliate marketing deal with this company that still to this day pays like

a thousand or two thousand dollars a month. But back then that was as much as I made in the coffee shot. From the same video. Yeah, from the same, from like, you know, who's the, who's the affiliate? Uh, flokey. Flokey. Yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a piano learning software. Huh. Seems like a perfect affiliate. It was perfect, yeah. And, and it's, um, you know, and it's been a very long relationship with them and I still, you know, I do sponsors with them still. They were my first ever. They're the reason why I was able to live. leave my coffee shop job. But when I did that, and then suddenly I'm making as much money on my side gig as I am, my coffee shop job, I only made $1,600 a month. Which coffee shop was it? Tiago on Hollywood

and Libreya. Okay. And I love them. I love them so much. The jumping point was I got like a brand deal. I think it was like $3,000 or $4,000 for like NordVPN or Audible or something like that. and it was my first sponsor sponsor. And when I was like, oh, I'm making now double on my side job as I am in my main job, that's when I had to go to my boss and be like, I think I got to quit. Like, I'm sorry. I think I have to go because then they locked in a second sponsor a month later. I was like, I'm good for the next six months.

I now have to, you know, and my boss was like, okay. And then I said, well, what? What happens if I'm terrified? Like what happens if I if I don't make it? And he goes, well, you just come back. That's nice. That's really cool. Yeah.

And his like ability to shout out to Santiago. Tiago coffee shop on the corner of Hollywood, LaBreya. It's his coffee shop. It's his coffee shop. He's the owner. And I love that place to death. And their food is really good. And their coffee's really strong.

If you use the code thrashers, 50% of your first coffee. Don't tell him that because it'll tell you no. What did your parents think? about this whole thing. They, my dad didn't understand it. My mom, you know, they didn't really, they were supportive-ish, but it wasn't until a cousin of mine, who did not know that he was related to me, freaked out around my dad, around

Christmas time. My step-sisters were passing around a phone with like a new video of mine, and my cousin was coming down the stairs, and he was like, oh, I know that guy. That's, you know. Like, that's the funny piano guy. And they were like, that's our brother. He was like, what? And my dad saw that.

Back then I had 100,000 subscribers or so. My dad saw that and was like, oh, maybe my son is a, you know, maybe something's happening. It's when, yeah, it's when your relatives, it's one of two things. It's when they see people freak out about you, that they go, oh, okay, he's a thing. Or it's when they see the money. Is acting kind of similar to being a professional musician where you have to continually practice music? to improve your skills? Like, what is practicing acting look like if you have to do that?

That's a great question. Yeah, I think, yes, you do have to practice it. It's a couple of things. One, it's being comfortable when somebody calls action, and you hear that, you know, on the camera, like, and just being able to be all in. So, yeah, that's a skill you have to keep going. Otherwise, you get, like, anxious if you don't do it for a while.

But I think in my job, like, doing sketch comedy, opposite myself gives me a huge opportunity to keep doing that, you know. And I have a team now that films me and, and I watch the edits and stuff. So I feel very confident and like that I'm still practicing, you know, but I do have an acting coach as well. What does that look like to practice something like that? Like, does he give you some sort of script and he's like, okay, in this scene? Oh, the coach? Yeah. Well, I mean, I still audition as an actor out here in L.A. So like I'll, you know, do, I'll get an audition every once in a while. And I haven't been coached in a minute because I'm very like up to speed in terms of like knowing how to sell a joke and stuff just from my own creative process.

So you think that's enough practice right now just like right now. Yeah, I would say so, yeah, because I write the script and I analyze it and I think how am I going to play this and then I do it. And then off the feedback on the audience, whether a video does well or not, I sort of am able to see like, okay, did I do? well enough or whatever. And I, it's just a matter of like being very confident with the material and understanding it deeply. So like, if you get a script and you don't fully understand it and you fake it, you're a bad actor. Like, if there's a word in a script, like, let's say, let's say you have to say the word, like, stop being so obsequious and you don't know what the word obsequious means and you say it without knowing what it means. Chances are you're not, you're not a strong actor.

You have to like understand the intention behind what you're saying, why you're saying it, what every single word means and what you're being told as well. And do you break out like, the actual acting skills as though you would be doing a big production in your YouTube videos? Or is it a different sort of like YouTube acting? On the good ones I do. So on the videos that perform the best, those are the ones that I actually am working on. And like, I think the last time I did like proper like actor work on a script was the kid who could do this is dead now. It is a video that I shot in a church.

Did a million views. It did well. But I think it did well because I actually like. sat down and, like, did actor work on it. And, like, developed characters and stuff. But, no, I think I'm, I think I'm just, like, so instinctive in the characters that I've created and have played for so long that I, that it's much faster and instinctive. That's interesting.

You know, Graham's actually a pretty good actor. Oh, no. I start laughing too much. He can put on a face while we're filming and he can, like, definitely get intense at times. I am, on the other hand, a terrible, terrible. terrible that of you yeah see i like to play jokes but uh i start laughing dang no you start laughing if i start laughing you're good you get mad at me because i'll laugh and then you'll laugh and then we'll ruin this yeah like even today i called jack 10 minutes

before i got here i'm like hey man we can't film here they're not letting us in they're telling us to leave yeah but that's the worst joke ever because like why would eric kick us out he's a good friend of ours yeah just like a stressful like yeah he shows up and like the guest just canceled. Oh, man. Yeah. Go of all the way here. They canceled.

See, I usually believe it at first. And then I think about it. I'm like, okay, that doesn't actually make sense. So you're acting as good. It's just the joke itself. I could probably improve on that. Yeah. You just need a writer's room.

Yeah. That's what you know, to just pitch you practical jokes all day. My favorite is to hide behind a door and then film. And then when they come over, I'll be, it's pop out. I like that a lot. Give people scares.

That's very cute. That's very cute. I love you got me. I think I've seen videos of like puppies doing that with their owners. That's a very true. That's what I do. You're going to be such a cool dad. Oh my gosh.

It'll probably be terrible. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower. Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stocked up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Haboniero? More like habanier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. You think?

Yeah, I love, like, the scaring. No, I love the scary. No, control, no. I love the scaring aspect. I put on a mask. Yeah. He wants to horrify people. He doesn't want it to be like a joke.

So let's continue with the story. Yeah. Let's. In West Philadelphia. Born and raised. Born and raised. Sorry. Which story?

Where was I? What were we talking about? You're finally becoming financially stable with this and you quit your job. Yeah. Yeah, I was able to quit my day job. My boss was super cool with it. And then I started getting sponsors every month. Every sponsor I've ever worked with has renewed at an increase.

Every sponsor. Yeah. Yeah. For a couple of years. Yeah. It just kept going up. up and up. And then I got to a townhouse. I was like, okay, well, I'm making a lot of content, but at the time, I was sharing a tiny little, you know, a thousand square foot apartment in

Hollywood with two other people. And, you know, rent was cheap. It was 800 bucks a month on my end, but suddenly I was making like, you know, way more money. And I was like, I need, I need to isolate myself because the last sketch that I shot in that apartment, there were four helicopters above my apartment, like ruining the sound. And I was like, I got to go. Like, like I had my digital piano in my bedroom. My editing desk was in my bedroom. My bed was in my bedroom. You know, like, and so I was shooting all my videos in my bedroom until I had like 500,000 subs, 600, 7, like it was all, maybe more. But when I left, I actually got this townhouse, a three story townhouse that I was renting. in Eagle Rock, and it was a really cool spot, but it was very quiet and very isolated.

And I moved there intentionally because it was quiet in a quiet neighborhood in February of 2020. Wow. So I was looking up articles before I moved to that townhouse about isolation and creativity. Because I saw a Bow Burnham special where he talked about like, you know, at the top of the special, he'll be like, isolated himself for five years to focus on his comedy and I was like, I think I want to do that. And there's a book called The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle that talks about Ray LaMontaine, the singer, who pretty much locked himself up in a house for like six months to a year with nothing but like old Ray Charles albums and Otis Redding albums and he like became this crazy musician.

So I had this, I sort of fantasized about, about isolating myself and like going crazy for YouTube. And so I got this really quiet three-story townhouse. in Eagle Rock, and the pandemic happened in March of 2020. And what was elective isolation turned into forced isolation. And so I got kind of agoraphobic after a while. But aside from that, I had really good content for a long time. That's how the accidentally series happened.

So when you were isolating, were you like not talking to people or were you not going outside? Like, how did that work? I mean, you know, when you're in a tiny apartment with two other, people and you walk to the grocery store and everything's close by. I walk to the coffee shop. I walk to the gym. Blah, blah, blah, blah. In Hollywood versus everything is a five-minute drive. Even going to Starbucks would be like a five-minute drive. You know, the grocery store was like 10 minutes away. For me, that was very isolating. And, you know, back then I would deliver groceries through Amazon for us and stuff. So I was just very, you know,

I was just very isolated and crazy. And when I hired my assistant, at the time my first hire ever, Lee, that's when I started chipping out of the isolation a little bit. But yeah, no, it's pretty wild. What was your work schedule like? My work schedule was like I would try to write in the morning from 10 to 2 p.m. And then I would try to shoot from 3 to 5. So I would give myself four hours to write the script and two hours to shoot it.

And then the next day I would try to edit the whole thing in eight hours. But those were when my videos were a lot shorter. They're a little bit longer now, but that wasn't sustainable. Because when I was completely by myself before I got my assistant, I, the reason when I asked Lee to join the team, it was because I was like, I have one week left in this month. I have four sponsors and four. videos to make. So I had nothing done. I have ADHD really bad, which is why I drink cold brew all the

time. I feel like it medicates me. Shout out bankroll coffee co-bay, baby. This is from my house, by the way. I brought this. He didn't tell me to bring this. He was surprised I brought this. Yeah, I saw this. I'm like, wait, what? That's so crazy. That's so cool you brought it. Yeah, he sent me like a gift basket kind of a thing of all of his stuff. And so, I love this thing too because the straw doesn't fall out. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, get these. They're so good. Even just for drinking water. It's great. Bankroll coffee.com. Yeah.

I'm going to always be plug in. So I was really procrastinating and I was a horrible, I was a horrible employee to myself. And then that's when I started outsourcing. But yeah, it was wild. What did your first assistant do? Like what was part of the job description? Everything, man. Everything, man.

Everything. He, you know, he was a writer himself. Lee is very talented. He's a writer. He's a voice actor. He's very funny. And so he would help me write scripts. he would help me generate ideas.

He would also help, like, clean up the house with me. He would help give me feedback on my editing. Like, you know, does this joke land? Does that land? He was just an all-around dude, you know? Was he just Monday through Friday, like 9 to 5 type deal? Or was it more like that? At the time, I think it was four days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.

Because I realized I wanted Wednesdays off and Saturday, Sundays off. But it took a long time for me to, now I have a team of six. six people. Seven-ish, if you include, I had an intern for a second, which is cool. But, you know, and those are full-time employees. Those don't count like the people from mythical and like my brand manager and stuff like that. So now I actually feel like I have a work-life balance, but it took me years to find a good work-life balance. I hear seven people, I'm like, what do they all do? What do they do? Yeah, I can tell you. Okay, that's here, yeah. So I have a production manager.

Jackie, she's great. And what does she do? She, so, so I'll just outline the title. So I have a production manager and assistant, um, a creative producer, two editors, a videographer.

Okay. So that's the six. That's the main six. Um, and so Jackie, my production manager, she goes through and she, she schedules everybody to do everything and she'll check in with

the editors. She'll be like, where are we on this? Where are we on that? And she talks to my brand manager. She's like, when do you need the, these deadlines by and it's so frequent it's so many phone calls so many and i'm horrible like ever since

i was a kid my teachers would be like he's terrible with time management i need somebody who's really good at it to be you know and we flew her out from we found her in orlando we flew her out from orlando she lives in l.a now she's fantastic i would be you know horrible like she's been such a great addition to the team um and so she makes everything easy lee my assistant like my like you know he does a lot of assistant stuff, but he also does a lot of creative stuff. So right now he's sort of helping, like I'm going to drop merch pretty soon. I've never dropped merch ever. I have a collective audience of over five million people now, and I've never done a solid merch run. Sure. So he's helping streamline that with like, he's helping like hire graphic artists for that. And

and there's another side project that he's doing. And also, you know, stuff like, like talking to the housekeepers to go by the house and make sure it's clean because if it's dirty then I can't think and I'm not, you know, just all kinds of. He's like kind of a house manager also. Like we had solar panels installed. I can't keep getting on the phone with the electric company, just stuff like that. He handles that. Jackie handles doing everything employee related. My creative producer Scott helps generate ideas and he'll sometimes write a first draft of a script and then I'll go through and talk to him about it. And he gives notes on all the videos. My pipeline right now is don't show me anything. until it's the very best version you think is possible.

And then I will give you notes on it. But until then, I don't want to hear anything until it's done. Because I have, like, really bad attention problems. See, but the thing is, it's like, I put myself in that position. And I think if I were responsible for writing scripts and stuff like that, I feel like I could do like three a day. You know what I mean? But then I look at your video output and it's like, what is it at?

Like, one a week. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, are you just extremely selective? Does he present you with a ton of ideas and you just pick like one of 50 a week or something? Yeah. On my phone I have a, and also my scripts are highly scripted. Like set up, punchline, set up, punchline, set up.

You know, it's, it's, jokes to me are like math. You know what I mean? Or music. It has to sound just right. It has to, one word too many will ruin a joke. And, you know, not that my stuff is heady or anything, but just to like get a good laugh out of somebody, it's got to be clean, it's got to be perfect. Anyway.

But I have this, I have a, can you show us some examples of like, like, this is a, it's a thousand video ideas. What? Can I just take a look? Yeah, go ahead. Can we, can we read off a video idea? One random one? Sure. Okay, yeah. 5-7-3. Straightening my hair and making a sketch about it. Explain atop that quarantine has made your hair hell along and there's nothing you could do about it. So now you want to straighten your hair, see what it looks like and make a sketch based on the character you come up with. And I did make a sketch based on that character. His name was Breiler and that video got a couple million views. Wait, so why a thousand? Is this just like what you built up over time? Yeah. So, so anytime I have an idea. I love this one. 827, when you change an instrument and it changes your whole personality. Did you do that one? That's actually really, I never made that one. You should. You think so? Oh my gosh. That's a really good one. You could do so much with that. That's a bigger. From like the saxophone and like being really good at math. Let's just say. And playing the tube on be like, oh, it's an all you could eat buffet. I'm going to go there. That's perfect. car and like have like five women just like pandering yeah that's great drummer talking over everybody yeah so the bass player alone in the corner dude you can do so much of that i'm cool all right that's a great idea i love that idea all right let's let's pick one more all right that was my favorite one so far sure sure

oh my gosh you have more than a thousand yeah and this is just mine i have a team of people who have ideas on separate platforms as well like on google docs the law school amber herds lawyer too. Yeah, that's, yeah. Yeah, that's pretty obvious why I didn't make that bit, because everybody was making that. Yeah, yeah. When you suck at setting boundaries. I mean, there were, there are some really, I love the instrument changing personality. Yeah. Because I feel like you, every, everyone who plays an instrument is going to want to watch to see what's my personality. What do? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I think, I think for me, like my big thing with my team also, like when we're brainstorming ideas is get, get, even the horrible ones, write them down. Because there's a reason why,

you thought of the horrible one. You know, like, like, like, just write your worst ideas down. And I bet you can't have 50 terrible ideas in a row. I bet you can't. One of them is accidentally going to be pretty good and then build on top of that. You know, I challenge you to write 50 horrible ideas back to back to back, because one of them is going to be amazing. That's my creative process. So how does your schedule different now than it was back in? How much were we working back then versus today. Back then I was killing myself. I was I was working until I would forget to eat and I would be nauseous because I forgot to eat. Like it's horrible. Now that I have two editors, well, two and a half editors. My videographer is a flex PA type situation. How's the schedule different? Is that what you

said? Yeah. Like how many hours are you working? How many days? So we do a different thing now. But like shout out to mythical, good mythical morning, mythical entertainment. They invested in me. and help guide me to, like, create a better work-life balance. And, like, part of that was hiring my production manager. And they, I don't know if this is secret sauce or not. I don't think it is, but they want me to do batch shooting. So, like, it'll be three weeks of prep and then one week of shooting. So I only have to pulling out the camera gear and then putting it away every single day

was more taxing than I thought it was, I guess. So if we have three weeks of prep, then we could really really. comb through the scripts and comb through the music and make it perfect. So that way when we shoot, we're much more efficient. And then, you know, we'll come out with like five videos in that week. And then I hand it off to the editors. And then they do that. And then I have three weeks of prep slash reviewing edits from the last month. So that's my new, my new schedule. So if you film for one week and you get five videos out of that, it's like one video per day? Yeah, for that week. Yeah. But what we do is on Monday, we shoot all the ads. I probably have

about four ads a month, so I'll shoot all my advertisements on Monday. And then on Tuesday, we have a long time to focus on the script in the morning and then shoot the main video Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. So it's... But your videos are like three, four minutes long, so that's like... I'm very particular. Many, many takes of each. Yeah, I'm really, really particular, by it. Wow. A two-minute video is probably two and a half hours of footage. Really? See, for me, I would film for probably about an hour and I have two hours for a 15 minute video. That's insane.

But maybe I'm just not as picky. Or do you, like, do you ever mispronounce words or no? No. No, it's just a matter of like, like, okay, I just, well, because it's all me, right? I'm not interacting with somebody else. It's all me going like, okay, how did I say that? And, and like, because if, let's say I do it take seven, seven different ways. The following take of the different, of the next character has to make sense. It has to seem, I'm very proud that.

my videos seem conversational. I get a lot of comments that say, like, I forget that it's the same guy. Yeah. And the reason for that is because I try to map out the funniest way to present something from this direction. And then how would a human actually respond visually, you know, like listening to someone say something?

Like, you need a listening take. You need like a, you know, I call it a what take. I always have a what take in a video. Like, what? Like, you know, if somebody says something ridiculous and you got to catch a, it. And also you've got to figure out where they're standing in relation to the camera and all this stuff. It's like, it's very like in depth to make it believable. The number one thing I tell my editors when they're going through is like bare minimum, like the script does all the heavy lifting

of the of the jokes. But in the performance, minimum, it needs to be believable and it needs to be intelligible. Can you hear what I'm saying? Can you hear the setup to the joke? Can you hear the punchline of the joke? And does it seem like two people are actually having a conversation Outside of that, the script does all the heavy. So I take you just sit in the same spot or stand in the same spot, go through all of those scenes in that one take and then move to the different one and then enter. So each character is about a 30 minute take. So Daniel's sitting at the piano.

Daniel's my straight man character. Where's this black v. Neck usually sitting at the piano. That'll take 30 minutes or it'll take an hour and a half if I have to play piano because then I'm also really particular about how I sound on the keys. Piano video has always take much longer. but they get more views generally, not anymore, but anyway.

But yeah, it takes a long time. So I'll do one rolling take for half an hour where I'll just go through the first line. I'll scrub through that five times. I'll go through the next line. About five times, I'll go through the next line. And I just methodically go through the whole thing. It's probably,

um, my editor might just be pulling the first take of each and then I go back and be like, there's a better take in there. So maybe there's a better way for me to do that. But, you know, what would probably, probably be easier for me is if I actually look at the script because like I just write it until it's done and then I shoot it.

What would be easier is if I actually, if I did actor work like actor prep work and sat down and circled lines and wrote about it and stuff, then it would be a much more efficient shooting time. But now that I bought a red camera, which is oodles and oodles of data, like terabytes of data for minutes of footage essentially, I should be more particular about doing prep work so that way we don't waste rolling time. Yeah, here I am thinking like, oh, these are such easy videos to make three minutes.

Why do you need so many people? I would just sit there and like bang out a video a day, like so easily. I probably could. I probably could. If I were, and I probably should. But I'm so, you know,

I really like where I'm heading now. I think the direction that I'm going is strong and I think people can tell that I'm, like for example, I made a video, spoofing Hamilton. And like that video, it's called how Lin-Manuel Miranda orders a pizza. And that was the first video I shot on a red. And like, I rented out of theater. I hired four other actors. I choreographed them just to help me do an imitation of Lindemoiselle Miranda ordering a pizza on the

phone. And, and I like taking stupidity so seriously. I think it's great. I will say I didn't know who that was. And that deterred me from watching the video. Okay, that's cool. But part of it was like, I saw the title, I'm like, I don't know who Lynn Manuel is. But it's also kind of funny that I don't know who he is. But it's like such a unique. He's the guy who wrote Hamilton. Okay. Yeah.

So Hamilton's like huge. You know, it's a big Broadway thing. Anyway, but, uh, but those who do like saw it and were like, what the hell? Like, you know, but I, I really like where I'm going. And so I bought, I bought the red camera because I wanted to be able to have like a, like a weapon if I needed it, you know, I think of everything as a tool to tell jokes with. You know, you know, on SpongeBob where, like, it's just the regular animation, and then suddenly they have, like, stream close up of Squidward's nose and, like, so detailed.

Yeah, that's kind of what, yeah, and that's kind of why I got the red camera. That would be funny. It's because, like, you know, sometimes to punctuate a joke to just make it look like real life, it's like, whoa, now I'm uncomfortable. Now I'm, like, looking at it from a different angle, you know, I just want to have, like, a tool belt, just a big old tool belt to tell jokes with. Which was that camera? $40,000. $40,000? A car. Yeah. Yeah. I bought in cash. Could you not get like 98% of the same thing with a $3,000 camera? Yeah. I mean, my Canon R5 is like an amazing camera. Shoots an 8K also. The average person can't tell the difference. But if I want to be able to submit to like Netflix one day, like I want to be able to have that in house. My dream is to just rent like a house in the middle of nowhere.

take my whole team with me, maybe a makeup person, a sound person, and a lighting person, and do something that's an hour long and just make it crazy. Like, what's up with me in isolation? But I really want to like just make something with that red camera and just sell it somewhere. Just put it on like HBO or like, you know, I'm so like excited by the idea that I can make something that could theoretically play in IMAX. because the camera's so ridiculous, you know? That's just really exciting to me.

It's inspiring. I think, you know, if you get gear that, like, inspires you to think outside the box and, like, do something that pushes you, that's cool. But if you're getting gear because everybody else has it, like, these, like, tech YouTubers who, like, all have the same, like, neon backdrop and the same, like, you know, like, stick around or, like, or, like, the same dinosaur skull. Let's jump right into it. You know, like, what's up you guys?

Like who says smash that like button? Like, what a loser. For the algorithm. Yeah. But, but, but no, I, I'm, I'm really stoked with like this like sort of machine that I'm building now. And like, and that's why I'm also excited about I just finally got approved for monetization on Facebook, which is so sick. And I think of, I think of money now as like, who can I hire with this to help me to, tell better jokes and to like help me make better content.

Because the goal, again, at the end of the day is to like make people feel a little bit easier. And also I get to drive a Mercedes, so that's nice. That's your daily driver, Mercedes? Yeah. What kind? E450. Coupe. I like it a lot.

How did good mythical morning happen? You know, Link reached out to me on Twitter. I guess his daughter is a big fan and she showed him one of my videos. and he did a, he's like, hey, let's have a meeting. And I was like, okay, sure, you know. I thought he wanted me to, like, guest star on, like, an episode of Good Mythical Morning because they just did that with my friend Charles Cornell, who's a jazz pianist. He's very funny.

I was like, oh, cool. I think I might be on Good Mythical Morning. But that's not what the meeting was. It was him and Rhett sitting on Zoom opposite me and my assistant Lee. And Link goes, what do you want to do? and I was like, you mean like in a video or like, he's like, no, just with your career, what do you want? And I was like, oh, you know?

I was like, well, I sort of am modeling my career after this person and that person and I want to do this and I want to do that thing and I'm working on this and blah, blah, blah. And goes, great, you know, and then he, this was a year and a half ago. This was a long time ago. and they developed this like creator accelerator program. I'm only one of two people who are in it. And I'm fairly sure I was the first guy they came to. But it's like this really awesome mentorship thing where they're just showing me like what works for them.

And they're guiding me in the right direction to like, they basically said like, you know, it seems like you don't have a strong work-life balance right now. I was like, I don't. And they're like, we know how to, they're engineers. They went to engineering school together. So they sort of created this machine of content creation that's automated and still very good to where they're able to have a life, you know. And I think the thing about being a YouTuber is it is very stressful and you will burn out if you're not careful. Like if you're not outsourcing at all and you think you have to do everything yourself, you're going to burn out for sure.

It's just a matter of time. And so now that I have a team of six to help, like, catch the net, it's great. It's so much better now. So how does it work with them? Do they own a percentage of the channel? Yeah. Okay.

So they own a percentage in exchange for, like, cash. And then I use that cash in specific ways hiring people, giving my current employees, raise is part of that, which is great. They encouraged me to give my employees raises. Not that I was against it. It was just like, it was just, I was highly against it. It was just, I didn't know the rate. Like, I didn't know the going rate and they helped me schedule and give people proper titles and like incorporate well and like, you know, tax stuff and all this. And like, was that like them or was that some part of their team or someone on their team that

was helping you through that process? It was, it was, um, so they had, um, so they had, have a rep who I talk to every week, and then I talk to them at least quarterly, and I'll have lunches with them and stuff. So everybody knows what everybody else is doing. And it's amazing. It's really great. And so they sort of, like, and their rep talks to them as well as the, you know, producers with Mythical, to be like, what do you think about this? What do you think, you know? And so I get the whole sounding board of like this 100 plus team who's been doing this for years to help me hire somebody, like to help me like figure out what's the going rate for this. What's the, you know, what should I call this person? Like, how do I do this? Basically, we're getting to a place to where I can just go, I want, you know, a book. I want to write a book. Then they'll go, okay, this is what you do. You know, go, go ahead and write it. and then we'll send it over here. I'm like, sweet.

It's great. It's really nice. I want merch. And then they'll go out and try several different merch providers, or whatever you call that, merchandisers. Merchantizers. Merchants. They like merchants.

You know, it's really nice because I've been doing it by myself for so long. Now I actually feel like I can. relax a little bit. I'm approaching 30. Like one day I would like to have a family and like and like and like in every other relationship I've ever had. It's always been a problem that I'm working all the time like like like on Thanksgiving day even even familial relationships like like if I on Thanksgiving day for the past like several Thanksgivings I've been editing on Thanksgiving thinking like if I make just this right video about this turkey like that I'll get a million views and everyone will love me and like that's not You know, we're crazy.

Like, don't date a YouTuber, please. Like, you know, don't, unless they have a team, you know, like Graham and I are fine. But, well, don't, you know, don't go for either of us. But, you know, it's insane. Like, like, it's crazy. But I'm very grateful that now I can relax a little bit. I think I answered a question. I don't know if I did or not.

I think that was the question. Now, what happens if you went for them and then a month later, you're like, ah, it's not working out or like six months in and you want to back out of a deal. Was there a clause in there that allowed you to do that if it wasn't a good fit for you? I don't know what I'm allowed to talk about. I do know that I felt very safe to take the risk. Got it. And there was like some protective provisions to where it was only a win-win, which is great. Can we talk a little bit about finances? Sure. Let's talk about finance. I notice at the end of almost every single one of your videos, you have a sponsor. Yeah. Right. That's a lot of.

like that's like what 85% of your videos 90 at this point probably 99 that's impressive in the past two or three years only two videos have not been sponsored so you must be you know pulling in a little I'm doing some gravy yeah I'm doing I'm doing pretty good I'm very fortunate and and I found a way to have a sponsor in every video without it being annoying yeah you have the skit after skit yeah and now for the sketch after the sketch that happens to be paid for you and like I only have You know, my videos are only three minutes long. So chances are most people are going to be there, at least at the start of the ad. That's true.

And so, yeah, and brands have been really, really responsive to that. And they like that a lot. And I like that. They like that. Yeah. How much of that are you saving? Well, now that my overhead is so much. I mean, I don't know.

My overhead's pretty high now. I think just to maintain everything, like my house and my employees and stuff is probably like 30 grand a month, just to just to operate and stay afloat. So I have to do more than that a month to profit. Sure. And then so, and then also I buy stupid stuff a lot. Not, I mean, now I do. Now I do. It took me a while.

But now I'm like, these shoes aren't. $1,000? Wait, no. Are you serious? You're kidding me. Did you actually buy a thousand shoes? I've only done that twice in my whole life. Which shoes?

The Montclair shoes. And I bought them for a red carpet event, so they're taxed right off. Okay. You have a dinosaur skull in your house. It's a replica. It's a replica. It's a replica. The first one I bought from Wayfair, and then I found a cheaper version, I think, at

Walmart. At Walmart? Yeah, Walmart. So I did a reverse image search. Oh, my God. Because Wayfair stopped selling that exact dinosaur skull and sold something slightly different. So I reversed image search the first dinosaur skull and went back through my email, found it. And then found it, I think it was Walmart that sold the exact same thing, but it was even cheaper.

Yeah. So they all outsource us from the same spot. You know what I will say, though? Like this whole idea of like spending to like present yourself a certain way or whatever. I will say this is like a real thing. Like the like me driving my car, my Mercedes, right? it's a lease. It probably costs $1,500 a month with

insurance and the lease. Oh my gosh. I mean, combined, you know? Probably, maybe less, maybe less. Okay. I think it is less. I think it's 13 or something. Or 12. Anyway, but like the whole thing about like driving to an audition or driving to meet an executive,

I think in a subliminal way, it would instill just a little bit more confidence being like that guy seems confident and like powerful and like you know it i know that's so shallow but i live in la you know what i mean like it's an l a thing it really is like if you live in any other town like like like florida nobody cares dude you know like like but in l a i if you're meeting with like an executive of like a major network and you show up in like a 2001 honda civic where it leaks when it rains my old car like right before i got this one you know then they're going to be like i don't

know, can we like trust this guy? Like, it's very silly. It's very silly. But, but you do have to play those like, I noticed that as a real estate agent. Yeah. I was driving a Prius for the longest time. Yeah. And in the beginning, Jason Oppenheim would let me drive as Aston Martin. And he had to vanquish. And so if he wasn't driving, $200,000 cars, right? More. They're handmade, aren't they? The MSRP of that car, I think it was like 350. There's something crazy like that. But half the day he wasn't driving the car. And so if I had a showing, I would just take a, you his car and I noticed a huge difference when I pull up in that car versus the Prius. Yeah, man. Could be the same clients, but when you show up to a really expensive house, all of a sudden

people took me a lot more seriously. That's real. Yeah. When I was buying houses, when I was looking for the house that I bought, like not buying multiple houses. Like when I was shopping for houses, I noticed that, you know, well, I mean, I hadn't had the alternative alternative in my old Honda, but like if I pull up in a Mercedes like and I walk out they're going to show me the house they're going to like walk with me and look around and treat me like a serious dude because I'm a I'm a goofy guy who looks like I'm 20 something oh well I am 20 something looks like it looks like 29 like I'm 21 like you know I look I look like a scrawny kid you know who's just geeking around and but if they see me pull up in in this thing then they're like okay let me give you my card let's talk about it

you know, let's, I will tell you how many offers we got on this thing. I will tell you, you know, it's a weird game. Like, it's weird. That's true. Yeah. Could you tell us about the house you bought? I don't know if you want to discuss that. Yeah, I bought a house from a guy who was in very famous commercials. And, uh, I bought his house. That was really cool. Did you know which his house going into it? Yeah. Did that make you want to buy it? Yeah. because what's interesting is like advertiser money bought that house for him and advertiser money bought that house for me and what's really funny about it is like after it's it's it's Isaiah Mustafa it's the guy who like was the old spice guy who's like look at your man now back to me now back at your man now back to me I bought his

house from him like which is so sick and like in the guest bathroom um his he or somebody left behind two old spice body washes underneath the sink and so I have them on display and that bathroom now. But this house is sexy. Like, it's so cool. It's a really neat house. I barely had to do anything with it. And like, it's such a beautiful house. And I'm so grateful. But like, it's a fun story too. Like, it's just cool to have like this guy's house. Like, you ever meet him or no? No, but he follows me on Instagram, which is cool. Why didn't you get to meet him? You would think that usually once the all contingencies are removed to go through a final walk through and the cellar's there to like greet you. I think he's just busy. And also he didn't know who I was at the time. Like, like if I, you know,

I would not want to sell anything to a geeky YouTuber. Like, no way. Like, you know. He sees your offers like, not, not. If I was like an Emmy award-winning actor, like, no, I, you know, but he's like a big, he's a big movie star now. Where did he move to? Do you know?

I don't know. Some place where he could have land. I think he has like horses now or something. I'm not sure. Wasn't there an ad of him as a horse, though? Oh, no, on a horse. On a horse. So now he did.

I remember that. Yeah. That is something I do remember. I'm on a horse. Yeah. Yeah. Your tickets are now diamonds. Yeah.

That's so cool, man. because that's a funny ad. And like that was inspiration for me to start making my sketches, my sketches after the sketch, like funny ads that aren't just an ad read on a teleprompter. It's more so like, you know, I'm like,

how do I make this interesting? And my brother and I, my brother Dylan and I, when we were kids, we would play this game called sell this or whatever. And so we would pull out like a Coke and we would make like goofy jokes about Coca-Cola and try to figure out like,

how would we sell this to people. And so now I do that for a living. That's how I make a majority of my money. That's really cool. How long do you? you expect to keep this house for? I want to keep it as long as I can. I want to use it as a rental. If I book this thing that I'm currently running for, I'll be away from the house for a while. But I have employees so you can't rob me. Ha ha. But like I would keep it and maybe rent it out as an Airbnb or do long, long term rental.

Because I want to hold on to it. I really love where it is and just what it is. Got it. I got a random offbeat question, but why? don't you, or why didn't you stretch out your videos to eight minutes to throw on mid roll ads? Because all of your videos are very, very short. Comedy is all about trimming the fat. If you add too much fat, like S&L sketches, the ones that aren't funny are because they went on too long, you know? And I'd rather, I'd rather tell stronger punchier jokes. Like even three minutes for me is pushing it. You know, it's hard to keep somebody's attention, especially with TikTok now. They get the funniest thing in less than 60 seconds. That's why. I, on the video,

is where I do go past eight minutes. I do get double ad rev, but, but a lion's share of my income, most of my income is from sponsors. So it doesn't really matter as much. Can you allocate some percentages to where your income's coming from? I would say, uh, I would say 75% of my income is from sponsors and 25 is ad revenue. Yeah. And you have no other sources of income? No. I mean, because I don't do merch. Yeah. I'm going to. Yeah. But that's where mythical comes in, they're helping me turn on all the faucets. In last week, I just got monetized on Facebook. And just in a week on Facebook, I'm already paying for one of my employees full time. That's incredible. Just in one week. You know why? Because your videos are so short and they apply to

anybody. I remember for the first six months, I started posting videos on Facebook and I was paying a company out of pocket to post these videos. And they take what's already on the channel, but condense it down at subtitles. So they take a 10 minute video, take it down to like five, six minutes. and it bombed. The finance videos, because it's only U.S.-based, English-speaking, and a very narrow focus on Facebook, where Facebook content tends to be global. So your content is way better than mine is for Facebook.

I'm really excited about it. And I hope to continue growing on Facebook. I've heard from several creators saying that Facebook ad revenue is higher than YouTube ad rev. So if I can do that, then suddenly I'm paying for all my employees just within Facebook, and then merch comes in and then if I do a book or whatever tour again then all of that sort of will pay for like cooler projects I could rent out locations and like get a crew can you talk to us about your thoughts on potentially maybe doing creator clash yes I I may or may not be involved

in that but there's a lot of things on my plate right now to where I don't know if I am even able to but I thought about it and I do did do boxing lessons for a bit but my when I toured just now my shoulder tore up

just from me carrying around a keyboard so it's probably not the best move that's convenient which is so I know I know but we talked about it when you came over to my house I told you did you do it but you had to be dedicated to it yeah and like we'll see

I don't know if I end up doing it cool if I don't also cool. Like, but it would be, it would be fun. And also it's in my hometown. It's in Florida.

Like, like I was supposed to be there, um, to watch your fight. Um, at the Youngling. Yep. Center,

right? And I'm from St. Pete, Florida, which is right next to Tampa. And, um, you know,

and I hung out with, uh, moist critical, just a couple weeks before that happened anyway. But I was, I was asked to, to host the commencement address at my college, um,

that same week. Oh, so. But that was, so cool. Like, that was cool. I got to introduce Amy Polar. Like, that's sick. That's cool. Cool story, bro. I can't wait for the next creator clash, though. That'll be cool. I'll be there. Like, I would, I'd watch it at least, depending on where I am in the world. I bet he'll be able to surpass the first one. It's really hard to like make it better than the first, but I think he could do it because the first one people didn't know what to expect.

That's what it is, though. Yeah. Yeah. But now, the second one is going to be a, like he's got to hit that second one. I'm sure he did. I think a lot of big creators saw the first one. They're like, wow, that was a success. I want to do it. So he can have access to higher talent. For sure.

For sure. Yeah. Shout out to him. Yeah, raised a lot of money for charity. That's great. He'll be able to grow this into something huge. Imagine this. He could take it now every year and do a creator clash,

but take it bigger and bigger and bigger and like, you know, go to 15,000, people stadium, 20,000. Arenas. Yeah. And he'll be able to get better in each one. A million percent, you know. And it was already a proven concept, this whole idea of like celebrity death match, right? Like it's, it's already been proven.

So he just took it. He's like, this is an idea. Let me use this for good. And then make a monster out. But the crazy thing is that, you know, the Logan Paul one, Jake Paul, had been successful. But then afterwards that, what was the Ace family one? Just seemed to bomb. It was so bad.

But they make contact for kids, right? Oh, is he an Ace family guy? Yeah. He was he fought Bryce Hall and I think nobody, nobody watched it. Nobody got paid. It was such a disaster. Well, everyone illegally streamed it. Yeah, but there was a lot of skepticism, I feel like after that where Ian had to overcome those

obstacles of just like that was the last perception that people had of boxing. It was like, oh yeah, Bryce Hall, Austin McBroom. Nobody watched. There's a difference between like YouTubers and TikTokers, though, I think. Like, Bryce Hall is mainly a TikToker, right? Yes, but he's pretty big. Yeah, but I feel like YouTubers have like a stronger connection with their audience. I don't know.

Or are there something about it? And also like Bryce Hall probably appeals to a lot of like children, right? Like I don't know. Well, he's going to call you out, man. Whatever. He's going to box you. Call me out, dog. Whatever.

Like, anyway. I don't know who is science. Children. I don't know. It's like kids, right? I don't know. Let's talk a little bit about the tour. Sure.

So you went and played live in front of audiences? Yeah. I did a, it's a really crazy interactive show that I do with a projector and it's very planned out and I interact with a projector and it's very like, you know, it's written like a play and it's an hour 15 and there's a lot in time for me to improvise with the audience and do fun stuff. Like I have clips on Instagram doing millions of views because from me getting random words and making up songs about those random words like it's sick. I love it so much. And I only did a five city leg, but I'm going to. I would like to do it again. It was insane. What are the economics behind it? Isn't that a really high overhead? It is, yeah, it's really high.

And I went into it thinking I was going to lose money. I went into it being told that I would be in the red. But I came out, I doubled every expectation they had, which is great, because I would rather not be in the red. But it was very, I did not do tour for the money. I did it because I wanted to meet people and I wanted to practice being funny in front of an audience to like sharpen the sword, you know? Because like if you're in that bubble of the internet and you're reading comments, you don't know. But hearing an audible laugh after a joke tells me, okay, my instincts here, I can use that in the next video and I can use this and that.

And it just made me a better comedian, I guess. but when I do it again, it's a lot of overhead. But now I know, now I have the data to be like, okay, I sell to about this size house. How many people were showing up? There's about 300 a venue, something like that. Ish, 3-2, 300. But everything was like 80, 85, 90% sold out, which is good because there was cancellations because I had COVID and then, you know, people would refund and then new people would come in.

but it ended up being okay. But now that I have like more of an audience on Facebook and Instagram, the challenge is like what really sucks is people will watch my videos and go, I didn't even know you were there because like it's hard. I hate promoting. You have to. You know, you have to for live stuff and like next goal around, I would rather like really focus on targeted Facebook ads for people who are likely to know who I am. Because they don't, even like fans who have known me for years, like they're not going to watch every video. So chances are they're not going to watch the one video where I talk about going on tour. and then they're going to miss it

and it's in their hometown, you know? So that's the big challenge that I have with touring is like... Danny Duncan seems to put it at the very end of his videos is like a card where it says like tour dates and he puts all the dates in the cities on the end of every one of his videos when he's going on a tour.

That's smart. See, that's what I kind of had something similar-ish but I think I need to... I'll get better about that too, especially for TikTok and Instagram Reels maybe. Yeah. Are you pretty strict on your... yourself with regards to retention. So for example, if you threw that in at the end of the

video, would you worry that that could somehow lower the retention and hurt performance? It would be three seconds or less. I am strict on it. But yeah, it would be really quick. Or you could make it a posable moment where I just go and it's the card and then leave it alone. So that way, maybe there's an uptick in retention for people who want to go back and gamify it and pause it. That's probably what I would end up doing next time. It'd be funny to put in a free ticket somewhere in every video, but they have to find it. It just flashes on screen so people have to find it and then pause it, or they have to watch it at like 0.25 speed. Yeah.

It's on there for like an eighth of a second and they have to find it. That's brilliant. I might do that. I would try to see what happens. One free ticket per video. That's so cool. Yeah. And you could always pin a comment at the very top and just reiterate, hey, it's a ticket in here.

Yeah. Got a screenshot it, type in a code. And pinning comments are so good for call to action for like follow me on Instagram, follow me on da-da-da. I love pin comments, man. Now, why put so much emphasis on like TV or Netflix versus just doing what you're doing on YouTube? Because you could do, you could get probably just as many views on YouTube, have full

control over it, make all the money, not get the rights away. On all platforms, I'm doing at least 30 million views a month. and that's better than a lot of shows you know yeah um so honestly just to meet the right people to enable me to tell later better stories later because i i look young right now and that's great for the internet but maybe i won't 10 15 years from now and i don't know how appealing that's going to be to the people on youtube instagram ticot i would like to make a movie um myself so i guess like like me starring in a show or a movie would be me entering on the ground floor, which is so backwards. But that would be my way of like meeting the right people, shaking the right

hands, learning how to be a showrunner, learning what, what it takes to create a successful work environment and also who to hire like gaffers and like DPs and stuff to be able to create something fantastic. I really love how Donald Glover, aka Childers Gambino, used to have the number one sketch comedy channel on YouTube. A lot of people don't know that. He had a comedy channel called Derek Comedy, which had like 160,000 subs back then. He was above Smosh, you know, for a while. And then he was able to leverage that and get a writing job, you know, on 30 Rock, and then he, like, became a star on community, and now he created his own show on FX.

Atlanta has a smash hit. But his trajectory was, you know, he shook the right hands and he knew the right people to where he was able to make something substantial. and respected and critically acclaimed. And so, like, it's not, and me wanting to do that is not a matter of me just wanting to make something critically clamped. Honestly, I want to just hire more artists. Like, I want to hire more actors and more people, more writers and people who are good at what

they do, but don't know how to monetize it. Like, I want to find those people and give them jobs. That's kind of why I want to scale up versus, like, you know, doing it all myself. I could technically edit. it and write everything myself. But I like the idea of like, you know, a guy who would be working as a, like my creative producer, his last job was doing the census, like knocking on doors. Really? Yeah. He's from Harvard. So he probably felt like he was doing a service to the

world. I'm sure he was. But like, you know, now he gets to write jokes. I had one of those census people come up to the house so many times. That's probably him. Yeah. That's probably Scott. I forget if I would just not be interested, but then they would just come back. over and over and over and over. It's a hard job. You just sign your name on the paper? No, it's like a survey that you fill out.

They want everyone to fill it out. It's how the government like figures out how many people are living in areas and stuff and what their income is and just getting demographics. What's one thing you think you could do better with your current business? I think I need to be more involved. I always feel this way. But I think I, which is so ironic because I just talked about outsourcing everything. But I think like, it was one thing I could do better.

Well, definitely like now that I'm improving my gear, I think I need to start really looking into, like a lot of my team I sort of trained up from a base knowledge. I think the next time I hire somebody, it's going to be somebody who has way more knowledge about something than I do. Like a director of photography, like a good DP, like who knows how to light a scene, you know, versus me buying the lighting gear and being like, what if I bounced it off the roof? You know, that's something I could be better at is outsourcing to people who are really strong. at things. So they pull you up rather than you come pulling up. Rather than me training people up.

Right. If that makes sense. And merch. I'm figuring out merch. That's something I haven't really accessed yet. But I'm working on it. But in terms of content. Yeah, I don't know, man.

Probably title thumbnail game, probably. Because on TikTok. Thumbails are a bit blurry, I've noticed. Do you think? Blurry. Interesting. Hmm. Lin-Manuel, a little niche, I feel.

Maybe not. Maybe he's extremely famous. The thing is that video on TikTok, two million views. That video on YouTube, 500,000. So, definitely what's limiting me on YouTube right now is my title thumbnail. Do you need to know who Lynn Manuel is to make it funny or no? You tell me. I think I don't know.

I don't watch that. I think you need to watch it. It's so stupid and ridiculous. Got it. Okay. That I'm really curious, actually. Okay, I'll let you know. Yeah.

Yeah. It's very silly. But I'm excited to keep like, no, making really stupid, big, content for no reason at all. Generally, I found that the more generic you are and broad-based, the better the videos you're going to do. Like the instrument personality thing, anyone who's ever played an instrument would watch that video.

Interesting. I always try to think, at least for my titles, every word you put in distills the audience just like a little bit. So the more I could convey with fewer words, the better. Fascinating. Like, let's just say like, invest in. for beginners. Now everyone who's not a beginner's not going to watch the video. Investing for beginners. How to start a Rothye right now you've distilled it even more. Now it's like, oh,

beginners who want to invest a Roth. So I really try to make it as broad as possible. That's interesting. I find that when you go really specific, like I did a video called when you make a tritone in medieval times, when you hit a tritone in medieval times, that's a very specific joke. Yes, but it's, but But everyone knows the medieval times. Yeah. So I still think it's... But not everybody knows what the tritone is. So, like, that video did like seven million views or something like that.

But... That to me seems a good title. I made a super general video called How to Play Piano. And I thought... And everybody on my comments has been asking me how to play piano, didn't even hit a million. No. That could long tail, though.

That's probably going to do really well over a year too. That's probably right. Yeah. That's probably right. So that's, you know, I don't know. It's a weird game. YouTube's algorithm... I don't know if it's an algorithm.

algorithm thing or, you know, I'm sure it's my bad and how I'm packaging it, but I think TikTok does such a better job at just like shotgunning content to everybody. And if it's good, it gets rewarded on TikTok much more easily than, like, I'll know a video wasn't good if it does 400,000 views on YouTube and 400,000 views on TikTok. That's when I'm like, okay, that's where it lives, you know? Yeah. But if a video did 400,000 views on YouTube, but 15 million on TikTok, then I'm like, it's a packaging problem. Yeah, no, sometimes I've had videos do well on one, but not the other. Like some do really well on YouTube, bomb on TikTok and vice versa.

I cannot find any correlation that says one will do better than the other. That's why it's so important to be on Facebook and TikTok and Instagram and Snapchat and, you know, YouTube because... There's too many platforms. I know. I think eventually it's going to all condense down to one. But the fact... Disney Plus Plus. Yeah.

But if you do like a... Disney squared. Disney squared. That's really funny. Someone will do that. They'll steal that. But like the idea that you can quadruple dip content right now and earn 4X the ad revenue on it, that's something that I'm really excited to like get into.

So that way I can employ more people and make better stuff. This should be a platform that aggregates all the social medias together in one. Oh, that would be smart. You type in Daniel Thrasher and it shows like your Instagram post, Snapchat. So it just shotguns it to all these different platforms? No, just so. You're talking about it on the receiving. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I'd be able to. search as a user one person, but get all of their content in one page. Wow. Because there's so many different platforms. It would be cool to just drag a video and title it and describe description and it just puts it on every single platform. That would be sick. They have that already for the podcast.

We use Anchor, the streaming service, and it already puts it on Google Podcast, Apple Podcasts, does everything, and I upload it to one thing. But it would be cool with actual video content. Wow. I hope I'm not being. We just came up with something. That's a great idea. I hope I'm not being boring, by the way.

No, this is great. I feel like I'm, I feel like I'm so, like, insane. on the internet and now I'm sitting down here I'm like drive a car I love it tell us a joke be funny make us laugh okay you ready for this one it's a knock knock joke you start ready knock knock knock

I'm not gonna answer the door you're gonna get the door there who's there what knock knock who's there this joke is just for the audience it's not a good one am I not getting the joke it's not a good one yeah

this joke yeah let's move on. Is this a joke over? The joke's over. That was a joke. I started weeping and like, I'm like, all right,

that was our podcast to everybody. I'm just like, I'm failed. It wasn't meant to be funny. Anything you want to bring up, anything you want to talk about, like any topics that you feel we didn't cover, anything you want to mention?

World peace. What's your biggest insecurity? What is my biggest insecurity? I feel more secure now than ever. That's a great question. I've never been asked that question before. outside of romantic partners. I feel so secure right now because I have a team.

I guess my biggest desire, I guess, is to be respected by my peers, you know, sincerely respected by my peers. Because there was a period of time there where I felt like comedy people thought I was using music as a crutch and music people thought I was using comedy as a crutch. So like I was like weaseling my way in, you know?

And so my biggest desire, like my hope is to be respected by people. people that I also respect. And I think I'm getting there, but I'm not quite there. So maybe that's my my soft spot. You know, if somebody that I really like was like, yeah, the video did well, but I don't think you're funny, you know, or whatever. Like, like, I don't want to be labeled as like an Instagram comedian type guy who's like, boi-o-y-o-y, you know, like looking at like butts and stuff. Like that's so, you know, I really hope people don't think that. Because whenever I meet people, they assume that my demo is like children. And I'm like, why? You know, why do you think that?

Do you not like, you know, do you know what I mean? So like, maybe that's, maybe that's a little bit of an insecurity. But I, you know, I hope to keep evolving and like get better at that. That's cool. So that's, that's, yeah. I'm very, I'm in a very, like, lucky, great. I'm very, very grateful. And I, and I hope to do this at least be an entertainer for the rest of my life.

And I know I will be because I'm so incredibly careful about who I surround myself with. Having friends like you, people who are level-headed, like, I know, a lot of people in the comedy world and the music world turn to substances and, you know, vices and stuff like that. And I'm very much not that type of person. So I really am like, I'm like singularly focused on entertaining people until I crook. So that's, I'm very grateful that I'm that type of person. My parents are nurses. My mom is a nurse and my dad is a nurse.

They both worked in hospitals their whole lives. My sister's a nurse. My other sister works in the hospital, you know, like everybody in my family's in medicine. and they were very good about raising me well and not being silly. You know, so like when I moved to L.A., like, there was very little concern of me, like, doing... Getting caught up. Stupid L.A. stuff. That's good.

Clubbing. Yeah. And I've literally been to clubs maybe twice in my entire life. And people think I'm a crazy guy. And, like, you know, they could be like, hey, it's 9 p.m. like you want to come meet us at this bar? No, I have no, I'm comfy in bed. Like, I'm reading on my Kendall.

Like, leave me alone. You know, like. I like that. Yeah. All right. I think we're good. I have one more question. Okay.

Yeah, sure. What's one thing everyone should do in their life, at least once? Hit the like button. No, no. Don't subscribe. Don't subscribe. Follow me on Instagram. That's what they should do.

But what else? A bonus is to hit the like button and subscribe for the YouTube algorithm. Um, what's one thing everybody should do in their life? I'd say learn an instrument. I was kind of baiting you into answering that, but let's see, like, if you can answer. I don't think that's the answer. Some people should not ever touch an instrument.

One thing is... Is that a diss at Nickelback? Dude, listen. I'm kidding. You listen to me. My freshman year of high school, I was listening to the Dark Horse Nickelback album on repeat. I was trying to convince people like, no, this nickelback album is really good. But that's a byproduct of me being from Florida, okay?

What's something everybody should do in their lives? I think make an attempt to sincerely try for something you might fail at. Because some people live their whole lives playing in the safe zone. So I think everybody, just to be as vague as possible, but everybody in their life should make a sincere attempt at something they're afraid to do. Whatever that means for you. read the book The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield

and that will highlight more of what I'm talking about so I think everybody should read The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield. Great answer. Thanks so much for coming on, man. Nice meeting you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Thanks for doing this. I've met you before. One time. Do we make out at the end? How does this work? That's how we end it. Yeah. All right. Lean in.

And ready. We're going to turn out the cameras. Thank you guys so much. But first we'll get a free stalk down below the description when you sent up for public.com. down below. Delicious. Shout out. Daniel, check his stuff out down below. Thank you so much for watching.

And until next time. See ya. Thanks, folks. That was awesome. Thanks so much for doing this. That was fun.