Building A Multi-Million Dollar Business From $0 | Daniel Thrasher

Daniel Thrasher 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. So far, this podcast has made uh 2 bill468,9.70. Very close. farthest actually we've ever done it. Yeah. So, you get an award for that. Yeah. Well, $260,138 [clears throat] I think is what it is. Wow. My real my legit guess would have been like a million dollars. No. Are you serious? It's ad revenue. Just ad revenue. Just ad. Oh, that doesn't include sponsors on this. No. No. We keep it. 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. [laughter] Thanks so much for coming on. and I really appreciate it. I've watched your videos for I don't 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 uh at an angle that really not many people have done before, have they? Yeah. I mean, like, you know, Seth Everman sort of kickstarted this like memeified 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. Um, 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, uh, like I would have to play every single piano I saw cuz I needed to know how they sounded. And my parents saw that and, um, gave me a keyboard, a little Casio keyboard when I was seven. Um, and so I've been obsessed ever since pretty much. Self taught. Uh, yeah. I mean, I I took piano lessons for maybe two years. Um, then in 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 grown 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 7:00 in the morning, 6 or something. It was insane. And you know, um, shout out to Jennifer for letting me do that. Um, but I, yeah, mostly selftaught back then. I also played bag pipes competitively, which was weird. Are you serious? Yeah. Very weird. Competitively. Competitive pipes. Uh, insert photo. [laughter] Uh, yeah. How does that happen? Um, how do you pick the bag pipes as a kid? Like I want to play that. Well, I didn't just like one day be like, you know, be nice, [laughter] you know? It it's my middle school. Duneden Middle School in in Florida. [clears throat] Um, Duneden, Florida is like the sister city to Scotland is what they say. I don't know if there's a Duneden in Scotland or if I don't know, but but we had pipes as an option. And so I played bag pipes under uh Mr. Sandy Keith, who was my uh angry Scottish piping instructor who called me a ninny far too frequently. [laughter] Like and like the word ninny really is an insult from a Scotsman. What does it mean? Like idiot ninny. I think so. Is that offensive if you call someone an I don't think it's I don't think it's offensive in like you know you can get cancelled for it kind of a thing. But I think it's offensive in in terms of like just when someone sincerely calls you a ninny 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 ninny. He said cancelled. Yeah. Yeah. [laughter] It's acceptable now. Just wait. Yeah. And everything comes out of the wash. So you had friends that played bag pipes or your parents played bag as a group. There's a Yeah, it was like the middle school. Yeah, man. Um Yeah. Like we all wore kilts and went out and kilts. Of course. Wow. Did you [laughter] get bullied as a kid? Not enough. I don't like if I got bullied just a little bit more, [laughter] I probably wouldn't be on this podcast. No, I I No, I was I was always the class clown. U 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. I picked the biggest loudest instrument I could in middle school. Did you do marching band at all? No. So you never got around to the S? No. No. No. No. I I had no interest in doing that because I think practice started around like 6:00 a.m. 6:30. Like it was really early. But I also did the jazz band, but the jazz band was uh I think after school, so it started at like 3:30 or 4. So you could have theoretically been there from 6 o' to [laughter] 11 hours of school and music. Yeah, I enjoyed it but not enough to pursue it. Yeah. What did you What other hobbies did you have in 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 Jazz drum is hard. Yeah, it's fun. Can you still do it? No. [laughter] I forgot it. I forgot it. I thought you play drums all the time, though. No, I play every now and then, but I'm nowhere near as good as I used to be in high school. You went from the the bag pipes into playing piano. Yeah, I I you know, I always played piano, but but I played bag pipes and piano and at the same time, I think I was a drummer in a in a church band like um 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. um 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, [laughter] "Let me show you." And then I'll like do something try to do something fancier. What's interesting is I I never like Okay, so I I ended up going to a performing arts high school. So I went to a high school for musical theater. Um which was great. And then after that I went to SCAD, the Savannah College of Art and Design for Performing Arts. 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. Um but now that I'm older I realize that's like a producers's job. Uh but anyway, it's a lot of a lot of paperwork. Um, 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 um, being creative versus uh, like piano. People think I majored in piano in college. I didn't. I'm an actor first, which is weird. Um, and uh, or I have the most training in in acting. um piano just sort of was the way like the tool that I could use that would reach the most eyeballs um to help me tell jokes with What did you do right after college? Right after college. So So you know I majored in performing arts. I was lucky enough to be selected for the SCAD showcase. So they took me to LA, New York, and Atlanta um to like do scenes in front of agencies and management and stuff like that. my manager found me in LA and wanted to sign me immediately. Um, and you know, she represents like Nathan Crest, Freddy from My Carly. Yeah. And so he's in a couple of videos of mine for that reason. Yeah. 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 want um I was I was lucky enough to be offered management in all three cities." Um, but LA just made the most sense. I'm I'm from Florida. Florida boy. I love palm trees and stuff, you know. So, um, LA was the move. So, I so I was signed in LA. If I wasn't signed in LA, I actually had a job lined up in Korea. Really? I was going to 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 cuz cuz foreigners are rarish 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 [laughter] red? Red. That's right. Yeah. like that that would have been my gig. It was a 2-year contract um that I almost signed, you know, and as an 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 2-year contract. Like that's crazy, you know? So, was the pay good for for theater? I mean, it was fine. like I would have had housing accommodation, 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, brighteyed actor. Like that would have been great. But then I got signed in LA and I was like, I'm going to do LA. Um, and it sucked for a couple years in LA. Like I worked in coffee uh I worked in ice cream shops, coffee shop jobs, restaurants, stuff like that. Um 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? Uh, relatively recent. I mean, the the um what's his name? Something. Quaid, the boys on Amazon. That was the thing Michael Reeves made the baby video for. Oh, no way. That show. Yeah. The guy who loses his girlfriend in the first episode. I had to like do that scene at the audition, but I made it to the producer level. So, you had Did you cry and whatnot? Tried to. [laughter] 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 like I'm 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. Um I know they're watching my every move, so I'm being very vague. And uh we're going to make you look good. Don't worry about it. I've I've It's all good. [laughter] Please don't see this and freak out. I'm not going public [clears throat] about anything. you're still trying to to do the acting thing like mainstream acting. I mean, you know what's weird is like I don't need to, right? Like I 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. Um, but it's true. It's real. Every like birthday I've had, every 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. Um, maybe you know him. He's the He's the bald guy. Bright blue eyes. Um I think his name is Stefan James or No, no, no, no, no. Is that his name? Yeah, it's Project Life Mastery. 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 and I found it um 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 11-1ven and all this stuff. Again, really hokey, whatever. But, you know, I just want to have a good impact. Uh um and so I thought that was that meant, you know, I would have to be on a TV show or um or I'd have to be Dora the Explorer in Korea, you know, [laughter] or like whatever. But [snorts] turns out I get to do that and and based on all the DMs I see at my Instagram and I'm sure you get the same thing, you know, where I'm 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 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, um 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 a different um expression of that. And so that's great because I sincerely want to keep doing what I'm doing. And I think I think spreading out and like touching all you know platforms like like even on a micro scale like you know I've only been doing YouTube for so long but now I'm like picking up numbers on Tik Tok and Instagram and Facebook and stuff. So you know to reach over to like mainstream TV or film um would just be another expression of like I don't need it but I it'd be cool. Tell us about your career on YouTube and how you began to grow that. Geez. Okay. Well, created it when I was 13. January 6th, 2007, I think is the date. Um 29 now, so I've been on there for a while. Um I was able to quit my day job as a coffee shop guy. Um on February 26th, 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. I think everybody saw that. Yeah, big video. It's like 25 million views now, right? Is it something crazy? Yeah. I don't know. But yeah, that was a big thing. Um, and how'd you come up with that video? It was a real story. I wasn't like I wasn't memeing. 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 realize now, but back then I was 19 and I I made this video in college and I was like I was like, I want to tell the story about how one day I I I was playing this chord progression that I've been playing for years. Every pianist can relate to this. 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 cuz you're expecting someone to be like, "What is that?" And they'll be like, "Oh, it's something I wrote [laughter] like whatever." And so that was the thing that I did for a long time. And then I realized it was um The Office theme song. [laughter] Did you realize that or did someone point out? I realized it um cuz I heard it on the TV in the living room and I didn't watch The Office. uh back then. Um I really didn't. Um but yeah, what's funny about that is that truly was an accident. And then I did the how I accidentally or uh 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 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, you know?" Uh, yeah. I mean, I I 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 do I 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," you know, and that's the [clears throat] format of the video. It's those videos are really fun cuz they're they're easy to do. Um, and they're gamified, so like the 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. Yeah. 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 the um first like office theme song thing was me doing like like that video was at 600,000 views cuz 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 um 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 Showoff, which was based on a true story, um, where I pretended not to know how to play the piano and then just went nuts. Um, that getting, you know, 80,000 views in like a week or a month or something at the time was huge cuz I was only doing 2 or 3,000 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,000 or $2,000 a month, but back then that was as much as I made in the coffee shop from the same video. Yeah. From the same from like, you know, who's the who's the affiliate? Uh, Flow Key. Flow Key. Yeah. 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 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? Thiago on Hollywood and Labraa. Okay. And I love them. I love them so much. The the the jumping point was I got like a brand deal um I think it was like $3,000 or $4,000 for like NordVPN or Audible or something like that. And um it was my first sponsor sponsor. Mhm. And when I was like, oh, I'm making now double on my side job as I am in my main job. Yeah. 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. Uh cuz then they locked in a second sponsor a month later. I was like, I'm good for the next 6 months. Um I now have to, you know, and my boss was like, okay. And then I said, what? Well, what happens if I I'm terrified. Like, what happens if I if I don't [snorts] make it? And he goes, well, you just come back. That's nice. Yeah. And his like ability to do shout out to Santiago. Thiago coffee shop on the corner laba. It's his coffee shop. He's the owner. That's cool. And and I love that place to death and their food is really good and their coffee is really If you use the code thrasher, [laughter] 50% off your first coffee. Don't tell him that cuz he'll tell you no. But 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 supportiveish, but it wasn't until a cousin of mine um who did not know that he was related to me freaked out um around my dad around Christmas time. Mhm. My my stepsisters 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, huh, maybe something's happening." It's when, yeah, it's when your relatives either, 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. Um yeah, I think yes, uh you do have to practice it. It's it's it's a couple of things. One, it's being comfortable when somebody like calls action and you hear the you know on the camera like and just being able to be allin. 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 uh I have a team now that films me and Mhm. 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. And what does that look like to to practice something like that? Like does he give you some sort of script and he's like, "Okay, in this scene." Yeah. Well, I mean, I still audition as an actor out here in LA, so like I'll you know, do I'll 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 just from my own creative process. So, you think that's enough practice right now? Just like Right now, yeah, because because I Yeah, I I would say so. Yeah, cuz 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 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 uh 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 like so 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 is a video that I shot in a church. Did a million views. did it did well, but I think it did well because I actually like sat down and like did actor work on it. Mhm. Um and like developed characters and stuff. Um 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, not going to lie. Like sometimes 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 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 [laughter] you get mad at me cuz I'll laugh and then you'll laugh and then we ruin the scene. 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 is the worst joke ever because like why would Eric kick us out? Like he's a good friend of ours. Yeah. just like a stressful like a lot of those jokes on or he shows up and like the guest just canled. Oh man, I drove all the way here. They cancelled. See, I usually believe it at first and then I think about I'm like, "Okay, that doesn't actually make sense." So, your acting is good. It's just the joke itself. I could probably improve on that. Yeah, you just need a writer's room. Yeah, that's okay to just pitch you practical jokes all day. My favorite though is to hide behind a door and then film and then when they come over, I'll be just pop out. I like that a lot. Give people scares. That's very cute. [laughter] Very cute. I think I've seen videos of like puppies doing that with their owners. Like that's very [laughter] true. That's very sweet. That's what I do. Yeah. You're going to be such a cool dad. Oh my gosh. I'll probably be terrible. You think? Yeah. Because I I love like the scaring I No, I love the scare. [laughter] No, control. No, I love the scaring aspect. Like I put on a mask. 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? What were we talking about? Like uh you're finally becoming financially stable with this and you you dropped, you know, you quit your job. Yeah, I was able to quit my day job. Um my boss was super cool with it and then I uh then I started getting sponsors every month. Every sponsor I've ever worked with has renewed at an increase. Every sponsor. Yeah. Um, yeah, for a couple of years. Yeah, it just kept going up and up and up. And then I got to a townhouse. I I was like, "Okay, well, I'm making a lot of content." But at the time, I was sharing a tiny little, you know, thousand square foot apartment in Hollywood with two other people. Um, 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. Um, 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, 700, 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's very quiet and very isolated. And I moved there intentionally because it was quiet in a quiet neighborhood um in February of 2020. Wow. So Okay. I was looking up articles before I moved to that townhouse about isolation and creativity because I saw a Bo Burnham special where he talked about like, you know, at the top of the special he'll be like Bo isolated himself for 5 years uh to focus on his comedy and I was like I think I want to do that. And there's a book called um The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle that talks about Ray Laontaine, the singer who um 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 Reading albums and he like became this crazy musician. So I had this I sort of fantasized about about um isolating myself and like going crazy for YouTube. And so I got this really quiet three-story townhouse in um Eagle Rock and then the pandemic happened in March of 2020 and what was elective isolation turned into forced isolation and so I got kind of agorophobic after a while. But aside from that, I had really good content for a long time. That's that's how the accidentally series happened. And 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 in Hollywood versus everything is a 5-minute drive. Even going to Starbucks would be like a 5minute drive. Um, 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 um through uh Amazon Fresh and stuff. So I was just very, you know, I was just very isolated and crazy. And um uh when I hired my assistant um at the time, my first hire ever, Lee, that's when I started chipping out of the isolation a little bit. Um but yeah, no, it was pretty it was pretty wild. What was your work schedule like? My work schedule was like I would try to write in the morning from 10 to 200 p.m. and then I would try to shoot from 3:00 to 5. So I would give myself 4 hours to write the script and 2 hours to shoot it and then the next day I would try to edit the whole thing in 8 hours. Um, but those were when my videos were a lot shorter. They're they're a little bit longer now, but that wasn't sustainable because because when I was completely by myself before I got my assistant, um 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 day coffee.com. 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 and uh it's so I love this thing, too, cuz the straw doesn't fall out. Anyway, yeah, get these. They're so good. Um even for just for drinking water, it's great. Yeah, bankroll coffee.com. Yeah, got to always be plugging. So, I was really procrastinating and I was a horrible I was I was a horrible employee to myself and then that's when I started outsourcing. Um, but yeah, it was it was wild. What did your first assistant do? Like, what was part of the job description? Everything, man. Everything. He, you know, he he was a writer himself. Lee is very talented. He's he's a writer. He's a voice actor. Um, uh, 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. Um, uh, 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 it just Monday through Friday, like 9 to5 type deal, or was it more like at the time? I think it was four days a week, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday. Um, cuz 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 people. um sevenish if you include um I had an intern for a second which is cool. Um 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? Yeah, what do they do? Yeah, I can tell you. Yeah. So, I have a production manager, Jackie. She's great. And what does what does she do? She So, so I'll just outline the titles. So, I have a production manager, an assistant, um a creative producer, two editors, uh 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 LA 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 um like I'm gonna drop merch pretty soon. I've never dropped merch ever. I have a collective audience of over 5 million people now, and I I've never done a a solid merch run. Sure. So, he's helping streamline that with like he's helping like hire um graphic artists for that. And and there's another side project that he's doing. And also, you know, stuff like like um talking to the housekeepers to go by the house and make sure it's clean cuz 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, um, 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 cuz I have like really bad uh, 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? You know what I mean? Like 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 um and also my scripts are highly scripted like setup, punch line, setup, punch line, setup, you know, it's it's it's jokes to me are like math, you know what [clears throat] I mean? Or music. It has to sound just right. It has to one word too many will ruin a joke. Um and you know, not that my stuff is heady or anything, but but just to like get a good laugh out of somebody, it's got to be clean. It's got to be perfect. Um, anyway, but I have this I have a Can you show us some examples of like a like this is a it's a thousand video ideas. What? Can I just take a Yeah, go ahead. Can we Can we read off a video idea? One random one. Sure. Okay. Yeah. 573. Straightening my hair and making a sketch about it. Explain at top that quarantine has made your hair hella long 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 Bryer. 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. I should. You should. You think so? Oh my gosh, that's a really good one. You could do so much with that. That's from like the saxophone and like being really good at math, let's just say, and playing the tuba and be like, "Oh, it's an all you could eat buffet. I'm going to [laughter] go there with the guitar and that like had like five women just like pandering. Yeah, that's great. The drummer talking over everybody. Yeah, the bass player alone in the corner. Like, [laughter] dude, you could do so much with that. I'm cool. All right, that's a great idea. I love that idea. Let's Let's pick one more. That was my favorite one so far. Sure. Sure. Uh 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 Herd's lawyer went to. [laughter] Yeah, that's Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty obvious why I didn't make that because everybody was making that. Yeah. Yeah. When you suck at setting boundaries. I mean, there there are some really I love the instrument changing personality cuz I feel like you every everybody who plays an instrument is going to want to watch to see what's my personality, what what do I 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 cuz 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 toback because one of them is going to be amazing. That's my creative process. So, how's your schedule different now than it was back then? Oh, it's like how much were you working back then versus today? Back then, I was killing myself. Yeah, I was I was working until I would forget to eat and I would be nauseous because I forgot to eat. Like, it was horrible. Um, now that I have two editor, well, two and a half editors, um, my videographer is a flex PA type situation. Um, 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. Like, shout out to Mythical um, uh, Good Mythical Morning, Mythical Entertainment. They invested in me and, um, and helped guide me to like create a better work life balance. Um, 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 3 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. Um, so if we have 3 weeks of prep, then we can 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 they do that and then I have three weeks of prep slashreing 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. Uh yeah, for that week. Yeah. But but what we do is on Monday we shoot all the ads. I probably have about four ads [clears throat] a month. So I'll shoot all my advertisements on Monday. Um, 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 um, but your videos are like 3 4 minutes long. So that's like many many takes of each. Yeah, I'm really really particular about it. A 2-minute video is probably 2 and 1 half hours of footage. Really? Yeah. See, for me, I would film for probably about an hour and a half, 2 hours for a 15minute video. That's insane. But maybe maybe I'm just not as picky or do you like like do you ever mispronounce words or No, no. It's it's just a matter of like of like okay I well cuz 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 cuz if cuz let's say I do a 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 my videos seem conversational. I get a lot of comments that say like I forget that it's the same guy. 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 how would a human actually respond visually, you know, like like listening to someone say something like you need a listening take. You need like a you know, I call it 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 it and and also you 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 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 punch line of the joke? And is 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 inter. Okay. So, each character is about a 30-minute take. So, Daniel sitting at the piano. Daniel's my like straight man character. Wears this black V-neck usually sitting at the piano. uh that'll take 30 minutes or it'll take an hour and a half if I have to play piano cuz then I'm also really particular about how I sound on the keys. Piano videos always take much longer. Um but they get more views generally. Not anymore, but anyway. Um but yeah, it takes a long time. So, so I'll do 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 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 somewhere. So maybe there's a better way for me to do that. But you know what would probably be easier for me is if I actually look at the script cuz like I just write it until it's done and then I shoot it. Um what would be easier is if I actually if I did actor work, like actor prep work, and sat down and and circled lines and wrote about it and stuff. Then it would be a much more um efficient shooting time. But now that I bought a RED camera, [laughter] which is oodles and oodles of data, like like terabytes of data for minutes of footage essentially, um I 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 3 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 um if I were and I probably should, [laughter] but but I'm so, you know, I really like where I'm heading now. I think the the direction that I'm going is strong. And I think people can tell that I'm like like for example, I made a video spoofing Hamilton. And like that video, it's called How Lin Manuel Miranda Orders a Pizza. That was the first video I shot on a Red. And like I rented out a theater, I hired four other actors. is I choreographed them just to help me do an imitation of Lin Manuel Miranda ordering a pizza on the phone. Um, 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 like I saw the title like I don't know who Lin Manuel is. But it's also kind of funny that I don't know who he is. But it's like such a He's the guy who wrote Hamilton. Okay. Yeah. I don't know. So Hamilton's like huge, you 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, um 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 like it's just the regular animation and then suddenly they have extreme closeup of Squidward's nose and so detailed handsome Squidward. Yeah. And that's kind of why Yeah. And that's kind of why I got the red camera is cuz like is cuz like you know sometimes to punctuate a joke to just make it look like real life is 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. How much was that camera? $40,000. A car. Yeah. Yeah. I bought it. 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 in 8K. Also, um, 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 cra like like what's up with me in isolation? Like, but I 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 I I'm so like excited by the idea that I can make something that could theoretically play in IMAX because the camera is so ridiculous, you know, that's just really exciting to me. It's inspiring. I 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 if you're getting gear because everybody else has it like these like tech YouTubers who who like all have the same like neon backdrop and the same like you know like stick around or like the same dinosaur skull. Let's jump right into it. Like [laughter] um you know like what's up you guys? Like who says smash that like button? Like what a loser. [laughter] But but um but no, I I yeah, I'm I'm I'm really stoked with like this like sort of machine that I'm building now. Um and like and that's what 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 tell better jokes and to like help me make better content. Um uh cuz 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 too. That's your daily driver Mercedes. Yeah. What kind? E450 coupe. Um I like it a lot. How did Good mythical morning happen? You know, Link reached out to me on Twitter. Um I guess his daughter is a big fan and she show she showed him one of my videos and he did a he was 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 cuz they just did that with my friend Charles Cornell, who's a jazz pianist. He's very funny. Um, I was like, "Oh, cool. I think I might be on Good Mythical Morning." Um, 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, [laughter] you know." I was like, "Well, I 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." He goes, "Great." You know, and then he, this was a year and a half ago. This was a long time ago. Um, and they developed this like creator accelerator program. I'm only one of two people uh who are in it and I'm fairly sure I was the first guy they came to. Um, 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 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 were like we know how to they're engineers. They went to engineering school together. So they sort of created this machine of content creation. um that's automated and um still very good to where they're able to have a life, you know. Um 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. Um 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 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 um in exchange for like cash um and then I use that cash in specific ways, hiring people, giving my current employees a raise as part of that, which is [clears throat] great. They encouraged me to give my employees raises. Um, not that I was against it. It was just like it was just I was highly against it. Yeah. It was just it was just I didn't know the rate. Like I didn't know the going rate and and they helped me schedule and give people proper titles and like incorporate well and 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 have a rep who I talk to um every week and then I talk to them at least quarterly and I'll have like lunches with them and stuff so everybody knows what everybody else is doing and uh it's amazing. It's really great and and so they sort of like and their rep talks to them as well as the 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 um 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 um how do I do this? Basically, we're getting to a place to where I can just go, I want, you know, a book. Uh I want to write a book. Then they'll go, okay, this is what you do. you know, go ahead and write it and then we'll send it over here. I'm like, sweet. It's great. It's really nice. Uh, I want merch. And then and then they'll go out and try several different um merch providers or whatever you call that. Merchandisers. Uh [laughter] merchandisers. Merchants. They like merchants. Um, you know, it's it's really nice. um because I'd been doing it by myself for so long now I actually feel like I can um 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 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 then I'll get a million views and everyone will love me and [laughter] like that's not you know it's a we're crazy like don't date a YouTuber please like, you [laughter] know, don't unless they have a team. Uh, you know, like like Graham and I are fine, but um, well, don't, you know, don't don't go for either of us. But, [laughter] you know, it's insane like like it's 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 I think that was the qu. Now, what happens if you went for them and then a month later you're like, "Ah, it's not working out." Or like 6 months in and you want to back out of the deal. Is 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. Um um 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 Laney because [laughter] I notice at [clears throat] the end of almost every single one of your videos, you have a sponsor. Yeah. Right. That's like that's like what 85% of your videos? 90 at this point. Probably 99. That's impressive. I've only in the past two or three years only two videos have not been sponsored. So you must be you know pulling in a little bit. [laughter] 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. The the And now for the sketch after the sketch that happens to be paid for. Yeah. and and like I only have, you know, my videos are only 3 minutes long. So, chances are most people are going to be there at least at the start of the ad, you know, that's true. And so, um Yeah. And brands have been really really responsive to that and they they 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 uh I don't know. Uh my overhead's pretty high now. Um 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. Mhm. Um and stay afloat. So I have to do more than that a month to profit. Sure. And then um so and then also I I buy stupid stuff a lot. Um not I mean I mean now I do No idea. Okay. All right. It took me a while, but now I'm like, "These shoes are $1,000." Wait, no. Are you serious? You're kidding me. Did you actually buy I've only done that twice in my whole life. What shoes? The Monontlair shoes. And I bought them for a red carpet event, so they're tax. Um, [laughter] okay. You have a dinosaur skull in your It's a replica. It's a replica. And I bought it. I bought the first one I bought from Wayfair and then I found a cheaper version I think at Walmart. [laughter] Seriously, it's Walmart? Walmart? Yeah. So, I did a reverse image search because Wayfair stopped selling that exact dinosaur skull and sold something slightly different. So, I reversed image searched the first dinosaur skull. I 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 outsourced from the same spot. You know what I will say though, like this whole this whole idea of like spending to like present yourself a certain way or whatever. I I will say this is like a real thing. Like the like me driving my car, my Mercedes, right? Um it's a lease. It probably costs, you know, $1,500 a month with with insurance and the lease. Oh my gosh. Well, I mean 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. Um anyway, but like the whole thing about like driving to an audition or driving to meet an executive, it it 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 Like it really is like if you live in any other town like like Florida, nobody cares, dude. You know, like like but in LA 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 and uh in the beginning Jason Oenheim would let me drive his Aston Martin and he had the vanquish and so if he wasn't driving $200,000 cars, right? More handmade, aren't they? The MSRP of that car, I think it was like 350 or 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 his car and I noticed a huge difference when I pull up in that car versus the Prius. Yeah, man. Could be the same client, but when you show up to a really expensive house, all of a sudden people took me a lot more seriously. That's real. When I was buying houses, when I when I was looking for the house that I bought, like not buying multiple houses, like when I was shopping for houses, I I noticed that, you know, well, I mean, I hadn't had the alternate 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. Cuz I'm a I'm a goofy guy who looks like I'm 20some. Well, I am 20ome, but looks like I'm 29. Looks like I'm 21. Like, you know, I look I look like a scrawny kid, you know, who's just geeking around. And uh 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 um I will tell you how many offers we got on this thing. I will tell you, you know, it's [snorts] a weird game. Like, it's weird. Um, 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 [laughter] and uh I bought his house. That was really cool. Did you Did you know it was his house going into it? Yeah. Did that make you want to buy it? Yeah. [laughter] Actually, actually. Well, because what's interesting is like advertiser money bought that house for him and advertiser money [laughter] bought that house for me. And what's really funny about it is like after I 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 uh somebody left behind two Old Spice body washes underneath the sink. And so I have them on display in that bathroom now. But his 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. Um, 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, you go through a final walkthrough and the seller'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 I would not want to sell anything to a geeky YouTuber. Like, no [laughter] way. Like, you know, he sees your offers. thought 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 no on a horse on a horse now we I remember that is something I do remember I'm on a horse yeah your tickets are now diamonds yeah [laughter] that's so cool man cuz that's a funny ad and like and like that was inspiration for me to start making my sketches my sketches after the sketch 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, uh, 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 we would make like goofy jokes about Coca-Cola and try to figure out like how 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 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. Um, but I have employees, so you can't rob me. Haha. But like I I I would keep it and maybe rent it out as an Airbnb or or do um long long-term rental cuz I want to hold on to it. I really love where it is and uh 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 in mid roll midroll ads? Because all of your videos are very, very short. Comedy is all about trimming the fat. If you add too much fat, like SNL 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 3 minutes for me is pushing it. You know, it's hard to keep somebody's attention, especially with TikTok now. Yeah, they get [clears throat] the funniest thing in less than 60 seconds. That's why I on the videos where I do go past 8 minutes, I do get double ad rev, but but a lion 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, [laughter] I mean on YouTube because I don't do merch. Yeah, I'm I'm going to Yeah, but that's where Mythical comes in. They're 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. Incredible. Just in one week. You know why? Because your videos are so short and they apply to anybody. Uh, 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, add 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 it's only US-based uh, English speaking and a very narrow focus on Facebook where Facebook content tends to be global. Yeah. So, your content is per way better than mine is for Facebook. I'm excit I'm really excited about it and I and I um hope to continue growing on Facebook. I've heard from several creators saying that Facebook ad revenue is higher than 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 you know if I do a book or whatever tour again then all of that sort of will pay for like cooler projects. I [clears throat] 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 I may or may not be involved in that. Um uh but there's a lot of things on my plate right now to where I don't know if I am even able to. Um but I thought about it and I do did do boxing uh lessons for a bit. Um, but uh 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 anyway. That's convenient, which is so I know. I know. But [laughter] but I we talked about it when you came over to my house. We talked about this. I told you to do it, but you had to be dedicated to it. Yeah. And like we'll see. I don't know if I 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 Young Ling 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. Wow. Okay. But that was so cool. Like that was cool. I got to introduce Amy Polar. Like that's sick. That's cool. [snorts] Cool [laughter] story, bro. I can't wait for the next Creator Clash, though. That'll be cool. I'll be there. Like, [laughter] I would I would I'd watch it at least. Um, depending on where I am in the world. I bet he'll be able to uh 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 like he's got to hit that second one. I I'm sure he will. 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. He 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 to get better in each each one a million%. you know, and and uh and it's a it was already a proven concept. This whole idea of like celebrity deathmatch, right? Like it's it's already been proven. So, he's just took it. He's like, "This is an idea. Let me use this for good." And then Yeah. But the crazy thing is that um you know, the Logan Paul one, the Jake Paul had been successful, but then afterwards that what was it? The Ace uh the Ace Family one just seemed to bomb. It was so bad. And but there's the Austin McBroom. Oh, is he an Ace Family? That's the family guy. I forget what it was where he fought Bryce Hall and I think just nobody nobody watched it. Nobody got paid. It was such a disaster. 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 is like, "Oh yeah, Bryce Hall, Austin McBroom, nobody watched. Everyone just watched." There's a difference between like YouTubers and Tik Tockers though. I think like Bryce Hall is mainly a Tik Tocker, right? Yes. Pretty big. Yeah. But I feel like YouTubers have like a stronger connection with their audience. I don't know. Or there's something about it. And also like Bryce Hall like probably appeals to a lot of like children, right? [laughter] Like like I don't know. Oh, he's going to call you out, man. Whatever. Fight. He's going to box you. Call me out, dog. Whatever. Like anyway, I don't [laughter] know who his audience is. Children. I don't know. It's like kids, right? I know. Yeah. 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 the projector and it's very like, you know, it's written like a play and it's an hour 15 and there's aotted time for me to improvise with the audience and 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. Um it was insane. What are the economics behind it? Isn't that a really high overhead? It's difficult. It is. Yeah, it's really high. And I and I went into it thinking I was going to lose money. Yeah. I went into it being told that I would be in the red. Um, but I came out I doubled every uh expectation they had. Um, which is great cuz I would rather not be in the red. But it was uh it was very um I did not do tour for the money. I did it because I wanted to meet people and I wanted to like practice like being funny in front of an audience um to like sharpen the sword, you know, cuz 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 uh it just made me a better comedian, I guess. Um, 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. And, uh, how many people were showing up? There's about 300 at a venue, something like that. Wow. um uh is three two 300 but it everything was like 80 85 90% sold out which is good because there was cancellations cuz I had co 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 cuz like it's hard I hate promoting you have to you know you have to for live stuff and like next go around I would rather like really focus on targeted Facebook ads for people who are likely to know who I am cuz 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 and then they're going to miss it and it's in their hometown, you know? Like, so that's the big challenge that I have with with touring is like Danny Duncan seems to put it at the very end of his videos as like a 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 That's I kind of had something similarish, but I think I need to I I'll get better about that, too. Especially for Tik Tok and and uh Instagram reels, maybe. Yeah. Are you pretty strict on 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 3 seconds or less. Mhm. Um, I am strict on it. Um, but yeah, it would be really quick. Or you could make it a pausible 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. Um, that's probably what I would end up doing next time. 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 like 0.25 speed. It's on there for like an eighth of a second and they have to find it. That's brilliant. I might do that. [laughter] Shout out to Grant for the I would try to see what happens. One free ticket per video. That's so cool. Yeah. And you could always pin a pin a comment at the very top and just reiterate, hey, it's a ticket in here. Got to screenshot it. Type in a code and it'll be pinning comments are so good for call to action for like follow me on Instagram, follow me on D. I love pinned comments, man. The best. Now, why put so much emphasis on like TV or Netflix versus just doing what you're doing on YouTube? Cuz 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, you know, give rights away. On all platforms, I'm doing at least 30 million views a month. Mhm. Um uh so and that's better than a lot of shows, you know. Um so honestly, just to meet the right people to enable me to tell better stories later cuz 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, Tik Tok. I would like to make a movie um myself. So, I guess like me starring in a show or a movie would be me entering on the ground floor, which is so backwards. Um, 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 um aka Childish 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. Um he was above Smosh, you know, for a while and and uh then he was able to leverage that and get a writing job um you know on um 30 Rock and then he like became a star on Community and now he created his own show on FX Atlanta. that is a smash hit, but his trajectory was, you know, he he shook the right hands and he knew the right people to where he was able to make something substantial and and respected and critically acclaimed. And so like it's not and and me wanting to do that is not a matter of me just wanting to make something critically acclaimed. Honestly, I want to just hire more artists. Like I want to hire more actors and more people, more more uh 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. Um, [clears throat] that's kind of why I want to I want to scale up versus like, you know, doing it all myself. I could technically edit 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 he probably felt like he was doing a service to the world, and I'm sure he was, but but like, you know, now he gets to write jokes. And I had one of those census people come up to the house so many times. It was probably him. Yeah, it was probably Scott. [laughter] Forget about it. Just not be interested. But then they would just come back over and over and over and over again. You just sign the 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 I which is so ironic because I just talked about outsourcing everything, but but I think like there's one thing I could do better. Well, definitely like now that I'm improving my gear, I think I think I need to start really looking into like a lot of my team I sort of trained up from the 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 like a like a director of photography, like a good DP, like who knows how to light a scene, you know? um 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. Um uh at at things, so they pull you up rather than So they pull me up rather than me training people up, if that makes sense. And merch. I'm figuring out merch. Uh that's something I haven't really accessed yet, but I'm working on it. Um, but in terms of content, yeah, I don't know, man. Probably title thumbnail game probably because like [clears throat] on Tik Tok thumbnails are a bit blurry, I've noticed. Do you think? Yeah. Blurry. Interesting. Um, Lynn Manuel a little niche I feel. Well, maybe not. Maybe maybe he's extremely famous. The thing is that video on Tik Tok, 2 million views. That video on YouTube, 500,000. So, definitely what's limiting me on YouTube right now is my is my title thumbnail. You need to know who Lin Manuel is to make it funny or no? You tell me. [laughter] I think I don't know. I'll watch it. I think you need to watch it. It's so stupid and ridiculous. Got it. Um that I'm really curious actually. Okay, I'll let you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's very silly, but but I'm excited to keep like, you know, 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, every anyone who's ever played an instrument would watch that video. Interesting. I always try to think the at least for my titles, every word you put in distills the audience just like a little bit. So the the more I could convey with fewer words, the better. Fascinating. Yeah. Like let's just say like investing for beginners. Now everyone who's not a beginner is not going to watch the video. Investing for beginners. how to start a Roth IRA. 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 limiting your audience possible. Yeah, it's interesting. I find that when you go really specific, like I like I did a video called when you make a trionee in medieval times. Well, when you hit a tri-onee in medieval times, that's a very specific joke. Yes. But it's but but everyone knows the medieval times. Yeah. Yeah, I still did like but like not everybody knows what a tronee is. So like that video did like 7 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. So that could long tail though. That's probably going to do really well over a year or two. That's probably right. That's probably right. So So that's you know I don't know. It's weird game. YouTube's algorithm. I don't know if it's an algorith algorithm thing or, you know, I'm sure it's my bad and how I'm packaging it, but I think um Tik Tok does such a better job at just like shotguning content to everybody. And if it's good, it gets rewarded on Tik Tok 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 Tik Tok. That's when I'm like, okay, that's where it lives, you know? Yeah, but if a video did 15 million on Tik Tok, then I'm like, it's a packaging problem. Yeah, I know. Sometimes I've had videos do well on one but not the other. Like, some do really well on YouTube, bomb on Tik Tok, 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 to be on Facebook and Tik Tok and Instagram and Snapchat and, you know, YouTube because too many platforms. I think eventually it's going to all condense down to one. But the fact Yeah. Disney [laughter] Disney Plus Plus. Yeah. But if you But if you do like a uh Disney Squared Disney Squared, [laughter] that's really funny. Someone will do that. They'll steal it. 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 [snorts] stuff. This should be a platform that aggregates all the social medias together in one. So you type in like you type in Daniel Thrasher and it shows like your Instagram post, Snapchat, just like so it just shotguns it to all these different platforms. No, just so you're talking about on the receiving end. Yeah. So I'd be able to search as a user, one person, but get all of their content in one page. Wow. So many different platforms. It would be cool to just drag a video and title it and descript description and it just puts it on every single platform. That would be sick. They have that already for the podcast. So, we use Ankor, the streaming service, and it already puts it on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast. It does everything, and I upload it to one thing, but it'd be cool with like actual video content. Wow. I hope I'm not Yeah, we just uh came up with something. That's a great idea. I hope I'm not being boring, by the way. I feel I feel 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. This [laughter] is great. I love it. Tell us a Tell us a joke. Be funny. Make us laugh. Okay, you ready for this one? It's a knock-knock joke. You start. Ready? Knockk knockock. I'm not going to answer the door. You going to get the Who's there? Who's there? What? Knock knock. Who's there? This joke is It's just for the audience. It's [laughter] not It's not a good one. Do I Do I Am I not getting a joke? It's not a good one. Yeah, this joke. Yeah, let's move [laughter] on. Is the joke over? The joke's over. That was a joke. I start weeping and like, [laughter] "All right, that was our podcast, everybody." I'm just like, "I'm a 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. Um, that's a great question. I've never been asked that question before outside of romantic partners. [laughter] Um, I feel so secure right now because I have because I have a team. I guess 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 weasling my way in, you know, and so my biggest desire, like my hope is to be respected by 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, you know, like looking at like butts and stuff like that's so, [laughter] you know, I really hope people don't think that cuz 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, [laughter] 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 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 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 um because I'm so incredibly careful about who I surround myself with. um having friends like you uh people who are level-headed like I know a lot of people in the comedy world in the music world turn to substances and and you know vices and stuff like that and I'm very much not that type of person. So I really am like am 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 have worked in hospitals their whole lives. My sister's a nurse, my other sister works in a hospital, you know, like everybody in my family's in medicine. And um they were very good about raising me well. Uh and and not being silly. Um you know, so like when I moved to LA, like there was very little concern of me like doing getting caught up, stupid LA stuff. Clubbing. Yeah. And I 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 they could be like, "Hey, it's 9:00 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 Kindle like like leave me alone, you know? Like [laughter] I like that. Yeah. [gasps] 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, don't say that. 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. [laughter] One thing. Is that a diss at Nickelback, dude? [laughter] Listen. You listen to me. My 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's really good." But that's what's different. That's a byproduct of me being from Florida. Okay. Um, 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 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 uh The War of Art by Steven Presfield, and that will highlight more of what I'm talking about. So, I think everybody should read The War of Art by Steven Presfield. Cool. Great answer. Thanks so much for coming on, man. Nice meeting you. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. Nice meeting you. 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, [laughter] set. We're going to turn out the cameras. Thank you guys so much. But first, we'll get a free stock down below in the description when you sign up for public.com down below. Delicious. Daniel, check his stuff out down below. Thank you so much for watching and until next time. See you. Thanks, folks. That was awesome. Thanks so much for doing this. That was fun.