How Cody Ko & Noel Miller Turned a Joke into a Multi-Million Dollar Business

tick tock go [ __ ] yourselves when cody ko and noel miller first called themselves tiny meat gang it was just a joke i don't even think people with it was like this is weird seven years later the name stands for one of the top podcasts in comedy tiny meat gang music with millions of streams i'm pretty sure walkman is almost gold and live shows with sold out crowds we sat down with them to talk about their new podcast network tmg studios and the challenges they faced going from creators to launching a network i think it's the first time we've like really delved into like the business hey we have 10 people on payroll how the [ __ ] do we pay for that we also talk about the youtube landscape as a whole how the [ __ ] are we supposed to compete with that when that's the new bar of success on youtube that's cringe was working for us but i remember telling cody i'm like we can't just be two guys talking at a computer when we were actually in elon musk's house both of us were kind of like is this going to be weird and it was yeah yeah i don't know man i think i was gonna blow it up [Music] before we get into our interview with cody and noel we want to thank the sponsor of this episode jelly smack they work with some of the biggest creators in the world to help them distribute their content across the internet here's how that works they would take a video like this this youtube video right here they'd actually just pull it off of your youtube channel and then cut it and optimize it for different social platforms and then generate revenue from platforms you didn't even know you could monetize on jelly smack has just launched a new division of their company called jellyfi to help creators get capital to hire a team invest in a studio or even fund your future ideas so as creators we have this asset that is our youtube channel and we can use it to get capital today that's based off of the earnings from our back catalog as well as future earnings first you need to pair your youtube channel and jelly smack is going to request read-only access to your channel this means that they can only look at your analytics so they can calculate the value of your videos next you'll have to enter your email so that jelly smack can reach out to you and lastly they're going to give you a few different options for you to review now they do have flexible terms but this is probably the most important step of it all make sure you have a really good plan for how you want to use that capital today to make you money in the future you can click the link in our description and explore the different funding options that jelly smack offers through jellyfi all right now back to our episode with cody and noel what we were talking about this morning we were both talking about like when we first came across you guys for me i vividly remember the mark mcgrath video um it's crazy i think that's one of like the funniest videos on the internet i'm curious just like you know what you guys have built today with tmg studios and all the different things you've tried to get to where you are today like where is this journey if we want to talk about tmg where does this journey start starting with the vlogs we used to vlog at work when we were both engineers and and so i was just like joking about like ob gyn like doing like a sonogram and then like seeing like your kid in the sonogram but he's like holding his dick like it's like a dick pic and just like and then i just said like tiny meat gang and then from there it just snowballed and every time we needed a name it was like okay what should we name ourselves and i was like well just for the time being let's put in tiny meat gang yeah but like we'll come up with something better later it just yeah it was just a placeholder yeah got it so what came after vlogs um if tmg really started in those early videos it's like a joke what was the first thing that you had to put the tmg name on it was music music actually yeah we just wanted to make a parody song and i think i was making fun of everyday bro or whatever yeah i've always wanted to make beats so now this is a really great excuse to like download fl studio and try and do this and we both put down like probably the best verse yeah that we've ever written yeah eat a lot of food keep your dick fat eat a lot of food keep your dick fat yeah after that rick rubin just burned down his whole studio like shangri-la is meaningless [Music] [Laughter] is there like when you guys were first making stuff together was there a thought of like oh this this could be our career uh or was it just kind of like this is cool and fun and it was i don't think we were ever like really thinking long term at least for me no i was it was like i knew i wanted to make a go at this so i really had to make the conscious decision like i'm gonna switch my visa to a visa that would allow me to do creator stuff so my goal in my head was i have to match my salary for my engineering job if i do that then then i can focus on whatever the next goal is but like that was the main thing yeah and so that was always just like the goal and then when we started the podcast it was like hey let's make enough money where we can we can do this full-time we'd have to worry about getting another programming job yeah and uh patreon did that for us like right off the bat this is episode one of the tiny meat game podcast and so i want to give a big shout out to all the people who are listening to this right now because that means you are a supporter on patreon and we appreciate the [ __ ] out of you yes especially me especially noelle because he is um 100 jobless so when you're thinking about matching your salary the first move was setting up a patreon for the podcast no it was before that it was it was trying to do it on adsense but that was right when the ad pocalypse was happening so that wasn't really working out that's why i started doing the individual podcast was because it seemed like longer form at that time was monetizing better and then i was like maybe i could get to a point where i could do like you know host red ads and i know there's a lot of money in that too so it was that was difficult back then because it wasn't just adsense that you could rely on it was like you had to diversify you had to do merch you had to try different things and patreon there was a couple of podcasts on patreon at that time that were doing well so that when we decided to do ours it was like that seemed like kind of a no-brainer it was like we don't really have anything to lose by trying to launch this on patreon first yeah just seeing if people will pay for pay for it yeah and the narrative there was like a narrative with it right that was kind of like we need to make enough money for or if we make x amount of money no yeah that was that was like the initial so i had gotten laid off and then um simultaneously like leading up to those moments we had done a few episodes on his solo podcast and they did really well and so right when i got laid off the those were some of his highest performing episodes so we were like all right it's kind of a no-brainer we should make a podcast um and then so yeah the initial narrative was like uh alina can stop paying for all the rent and then we broke that goal pretty like immediately which was extremely surprising i think that description is still on our patreon yeah oh my goodness yeah which is good for like a brand new person to come across like damn i should help this guy [Laughter] was it a dream for you too were you like i'm down to leave my job to do this or were you a little bit more hesitant no i mean i i've been doing stand-up for a couple years prior um i was like full-on like doomer mindset so i was like i will take anything got it to get away from a desk so at that point i'm like yeah let's go what was your guys first brand deal i guess independently together yeah individually just it's something we ask all our guests mine is ridiculous what is yours so my first brand deal was for the sally bong what it's god i don't even know if i should admit this it's a it's the most bro thing ever it's a woman mannequin body with a beer bong pipe and i wanted to do it as like a meta bit like right making fun of it and they sent me one to make fun of it and then did they pay you to or was that the payment that was a payment i got paid in sally bomb and i did the bit with it and then i after i stopped recording i was like i just has to get out of my [ __ ] apartment actually no payment actually no payment that's hilarious i think my first one was i think it was like a tweet that i did for klondike bars i think or something like that it was like an ice cream bar i think honestly that was like my very first one i was very very like anti brand deals brand deal for a while because i was an engineer that was my thing i was like i don't need to make money through this it's a hobby and it's going to keep being a creative outlet and a hobby for some reason i was like really precious about that i don't know why it was like a you know i don't know it was like a new code type thing i was like i'm not a sellout and then you got the i saw that yeah what was the klondike money at that time i think i got paid like oh man it was like i must have been like five grand geez for a tweet for like one or two tweets i mean it's the it was the easiest money i had ever made and i took it all out in cash and just took a picture with the cash and send it to my friend i i couldn't believe it honestly i was like this is like a significant portion of my engine engineering salary yeah that i just made in like five minutes of work yes i got no money for the salary and was your guys like familiarity with creators because you're working at full screen you're familiar do you guys become like really familiar with how the business worked of creators i think me more than you yeah you because you saw like the numbers yeah that they would pour into marketing yeah yeah actually he he has a really unique insight on this yeah and it actually ties into how we built the network and elaborate on that later but let me just say before you jump into that right before full screen i had a job for a company called victorious yeah we had an app on victoria yes yeah so i was an engineer there oh wow like first of all just for everyone listening that doesn't know what victorious did they they did bespoke apps for influencers but we had a platform where we could just like you know plug in a design it would pump up the same app basically it was one code base and they were paid apps like it was paid memberships right yes the creator was lily singh had one yeah it was like huge creators yeah yeah and so i saw the numbers of those like who was actually pushing download numbers and who was converting into you know paid subscribers and stuff so i definitely saw like how difficult it was yeah i mean this is like a complete sidebar here but like our app was like i think the third most engaged app at victorious and then they just switched the like design of the app for everyone because it was everything that was you know okay i don't know we went from like i think at that time we were like 50 000 daily actives to 3 000 immediately because it was like this new version sucks and then they just hit us up one day and they were like hey we're shutting down the company so your app's gonna kind of go away yeah even for us like they were before their time definitely way before their time but it informed us too like when we saw what was going on there that audiences were willing to have this like custom environment that was for the creator and they were willing to pay for things in that environment true yeah and that was eye opening for us as well yeah that's interesting yeah like yeah i think so working at full screen for me was it was different because i was hired as like uh they titled me as a web developer but i was pretty much a catch-all for anything related to web marketing i even got into like weird territory where i was cutting snapchat ads for full screen and then i'd go like program like like build like some landing page for a show so i was like this full service person specifically for the subscriber acquisition team so i saw how they respectfully failed miserably at getting people to sign up for the platform and by the way this is just add some context this is when full screen switched to their s-vod yeah and basically yeah yeah put all their chips in one basket and was like this is the new direction of the company it was like their own little version of subscriptions yes it was like their own little version of netflix or whatever where they were developing premium content in-house yeah so i got to see how many dollars they were pouring into it like getting users what the cost per user was where the content was failing um even seeing i even got insight into the data of the ux and how users interacted with certain layouts and it's now helping inform what we do for our service now wow yeah that's cool yeah i guess like one of the key insights would be like people were people were coming for shane dawson they were and just watching his show yeah and that's it yeah right i think the idea was that oh they'd pay for a monthly membership and then you know that would kind of they would bleed over into the other content and you know enjoy the platform but it wasn't i don't think it was really performing like that the disconnect that i felt they had was they didn't immediately recognize that people were only coming for the person that they liked or were looking to for entertainment and they spent big dollars on content that no one asked for you know they hired the dude who wrote american horror story to do a whole series for them and they spent so much money shooting that out and i think i want to say the total views on that overall might be like sub 5 000. wow yeah it was that's crazy yeah next to no one watching it's a real like people follow people moment yeah you can't take these creators and turn it into like its own disney channel yeah yeah by the way like this is no shade on full screen like i think it was a valiant effort definitely they poured a lot of money into making this happen but it happened with quibby too yeah yeah i think the lesson is that like it doesn't it's not just money you can't just pour money into marketing yeah and make great stuff it's like you also have to kind of nail the specific niche or figure out what's working and then build yeah i also remember going into quibby's office when they were like talking they were talking to us about like their programming and they were like yeah we got a got a series that's directed by spielberg and i was like i'm not positive that the kids who are watching youtube care about that i don't think that means anything no right yeah i think you throw a creator up there and just like talking and that's more interesting yeah and uh yeah i think that was like that the all these are lessons in like the old guard being like i think this is how this is how it should work right they should care that it's scorsese yeah what's crazy is i feel a lot of the old hollywood doesn't realize that nico avocado pulls in more views probably yeah than nolan yeah yeah like if you took all of nolan's films and you stacked them up against nico avocados year-long like i bet you it's more yeah what's weird is trying to like sit and explain what he does to someone yeah you know that's that's how he's performing better yeah that's always i always find that weird for me when like i find myself with my high school friends explaining like first of all being like yeah i got this friend mr beast yeah and he like made everyone put their hand on this lamborghini yeah and you've already lost them at mr b yeah once you've said that they're like yeah and also like the new willy wonka yeah yeah but he gave away what is he doing at that point your friend's like well i'm happy that you like yeah yeah whatever you're doing man that's great for you that's awesome man yeah did you have any discomfort cody or i guess both of you like putting yourselves on the internet in a certain way like almost in like a crass way calling yourselves tiny meat gang was there any of a thought of like well if we have to go back to getting a job it might be harder now well or was that was it really just like well i think we did all that like cake farting stuff on only fans is that like that that's when it was like that now you can't think that that made it bad that yeah we'll be farting on cakes forever yeah i was i was never really that concerned about it because also like i was you know making videos while working at victorious like i was you know we both i guess we're making content yeah on vine like throughout having full-time careers yeah and like those weren't family-friendly finds you know like i was saying a lot of swear words and you know being crass or whatever and i'm victorious like i would go on a one-on-one with my boss like we walked down the third street promenade and people would come up to me and be like oh my god can i get a picture oh interesting and they thought it was awesome they were like oh this is sick that we have an engineer that also makes content yeah and so in my mind i was kind of like oh this is an early sign that this is what the world's becoming the professional world yeah everyone is going to be a creator eventually and they are like it's wild yeah like i don't want to put her on blast but our agent's assistant like her tick tock tick tock came on up on my feed the other day and she makes great tick tocks but it just made me realize everyone does this now like everyone makes videos about their life you can follow it's on the screen right now yeah check it out yeah why the [ __ ] did you know let's say a joel [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] some of the best from the best so when you get when when the patreon thing happens you're you're surprised you're like whoa like that there's actually people who will pay for this yeah uh was it pretty immediate that you were like all right i'm out yeah oh yeah because i was fired at that point okay [Music] yeah yeah yeah you can't fire me i quit actually oh you're already fired so yeah let go so yeah what did it do for you guys though creatively like to see that you had that sort of financing behind it it was cool but it was definitely scary you know because it at least for me personally and i i assume cody as well but i don't think there's anything we ever took for granted so i since that day i've perpetually been of the mindset that tomorrow all our subscribers could go to zero right but that was it was a cool moment that i remember distinctly thinking like it is the first proof that people really like us that's true and what we do yeah like if people are willing to like put their money where their mouth is and actually put up a credit card because in the beginning it wasn't like we were offering anything that crazy we weren't doing bonus content it was a one-week window between when the episode will come out for free yeah yeah so if you liked the podcast you could just wait a week yeah you know so like that wasn't that crazy and people still were like they were just giving us money because they liked us and they wanted to see us do it full time yeah right how did that inform i guess how you guys move forward what's that are like okay this is part of our business patreon we need to keep growing that plus we you know have adsense plus we need to get brand deals like was it all at once or was it more of a focus on like we got this relationship with the audience we're gonna grow whatever i think it was more of that because then we started touring and it was really just a three-year period of us i think just growing closer with the listeners of the podcast and then when the pandemic happened that's actually when we started to kind of shift to think like okay what else can we do i remember we were kind of kicking out ideas and i said oh what if we did like a more expensive tier and then we kind of like piloted show concepts because people were saying oh it'd be cool if you guys like did kind of you know off episodes or like off series about like your interests like you know whatever they are um like people i would talk about mma a lot and people would be like stop talking about it so then the niche group of people that wanted to hear about it was like okay should there just be a separate upload for that um but then at that time cody and i felt that we didn't really have the infrastructure to do a network kind of thing but that it was in our minds definitely i think as early as 2020 and then when we finally did like the big studio change i think that's when we became a lot more serious about okay let's make sure that the content is good so we can you know hire more people and we can kind of expand and i think really in the last year and a half is when we've gotten very dialed in about it being a business but up until then i think we've all it's always just been what would be entertaining what was kind of the what was kind of the inflection point for you guys though once you started the podcast like you mentioned you were on tour i was watching your guys behind the scenes tour videos yeah yeah and there's one episode where like you sell out a couple of venues and you end up having to get a much bigger venue in chicago and like sixteen hundred people are there yeah in one part of it like post malone is like in the green room with you guys and like what contributed to that going from like all right we quit our jobs we set up a podcast on a patreon to having that level of like i don't know it's it's it's weird because you you really don't have that many moments of this like proof that we're talking about that people yeah really like are [ __ ] with what you're doing and i mean that was like a joke that we did on stage too it was like just you know because you see the numbers on that's cringe and love island and stuff like that and all it is isn't a number on a screen but to see the people actually sitting in a theater that like traveled took an uber to you bought a ticket and all that stuff so that was like that first tour was a pretty wild realization that yeah like people you know they really wanted to see us and supported us doing whatever that we wanted to do how do you think the podcast format has impacted that level of fan connection like if if you if you guys had stuck with like maybe vlogs or even like that's cringe and that was the format you went long on and never did a podcast is it the same like is what's the intimacy of the podcast how is that impacted i think hacking rooms yeah i think it's two things i think the way we had done it which i think a lot of people kind of at least comedians will start their podcast this way which is kind of lo-fi in terms of production it's just you know a couple people talking in a room i think that uh i think it creates a certain level of intimacy because i think people are just watching two people go through phases in life and go through experiences so in that way it's to me it kind of borders like a live stream because our podcasts were like never edited and to this day they're not really edited uh unless i get too carried away but uh so i think in that way the podcasting format i think just naturally draws people closer to you because they're seeing you in an extremely unedited uh uh presentation yeah and did you guys kind of have that understanding of maybe podcast is where we're gonna bring people closer to us like have that crew and then maybe that's cringe or love island that's where we find new people for us at least at the beginning it was like what's nice about podcasting is it's like a consistent production schedule yeah you know it's not like with youtube where we had to like wait for inspiration or to find like the perfect video to goof on or whatever which is always like a weird stressful thing it's in the back your mind is like okay what's the next one yeah whereas with a podcast it was like no we go in the same day every week and we talk about you know whatever's going on yeah and then it comes out a couple days later it's it's much like it's easier on the mind as definitely creative like to to count on a production schedule like that yeah it's like for me too with our podcasts like with the audio only versions of it i feel like if i'm just present and i'm in a good mood then it's like that's what determines if it is good yeah like if we both show up ready to be there and excited to be there which is it's easy to do for a podcast whereas with a video we sit down and record it in the back of your mind you're like was this even the right thing to choose yeah yeah is that true have i thought about the title enough like yeah you know there's a lot of pressure on on a youtube upload right now especially i think in this climate and like the podcast audience their expectation is like they're going to hang out with you guys you know and it's like so different from the expectation of someone clicking on a video right now when the video next to it is like i exploded 10 bombs on it you know you're like well yeah yeah i'm gonna head over here and see this is this is way crazier than what yeah you're doing so yeah it's it's it is our next youtube video right right and we can't wait for that one i was actually i was actually talking to two guys i i got the uh big thanks to waleed he connected me with a couple guys that he knows and i finally got the cost on what it would take to blow up a car really yeah that's been his like pipe dream are you looking for a car a car blow up uh do you have a car yeah yes we actually have a car to blow up and we were weirdly having a conversation yeah we had that coming here yesterday should we just give it to someone to blow up let's make it happen are you for real yeah i mean okay no is it costly it's super costly let's get it sponsored uh the car is like the negligible part yeah the car i mean if you want to blow it up yeah it's we have a 1992 mercedes beautiful car it doesn't run yeah but we could get it to where you need it damn i almost i'd rather take the money and refurb it then okay all right yeah it sounds like a sick car it's actually it's a sick car it's also an option we're trying to shake this car right now yeah we bought it on uh doug demaro's cars and bids yeah yeah we do this series where we like review creators like businesses and their merchandise and so we checked out cars and bids we're like let's buy a car we bought a car and it showed up in like an hour and it's a really dope car but and it ran so well when we first got it it was a dream like but when i did i went on my honeymoon and didn't start it and then it's just been dead since and like yeah and like the interiors are falling off she likes to blow it up yes yeah [Laughter] yeah i don't know man i think i was going to [ __ ] blow it specifically like la youtuber because he was like you think like arak would want to blow up literally yeah maybe i was like do you think eric just want this car to blow it up maybe we just give it to him we can take it to the shop that's actually let's blow it up yeah i mean this is it's very la youtube la youtubers and uh the people of the midwest have that in common it's just blowing [ __ ] up yeah yeah yeah all right well if you if you come around to that dude you're actually [Laughter] i was curious about how you guys identify or think of yourselves of like is it podcasters comedians youtubers like where where do any of those terms i really like to use the term influencer yeah me too that's what i call myself yeah that's what i do when i dm like different businesses like i'm an influencer can you send me yeah yes you know exactly that's actually how i pissed myself for a like a 10-minute spot at the comedy store [Laughter] i'm a decorated influencer and i lifted my um all my experience with brands yeah that's right i know comedy doesn't always make money and i just want to show you that i've experienced making money i've worked with nordvpn yeah surf vpn yes i can bring vpn dollars to your house yes if you just give me a chance so yeah yeah it's been working out great correct yeah but do you like do you guys connect with anyone like is there one term that you're like i'm a i'm a youtuber or do you think it's contextual like people look at you and yeah i like when people refer to me as like hot or sexy multi-hyphenate geniuses right yeah um extremely attractive uh very tall no um i don't know depending it really depends like if i'm talking to someone's like mom or like my neighbor they'll say what do you do i'm like i'm a comedian i feel like conceptually it's just the easiest thing to understand yeah and then if it's something a little bit younger um you know i'll say i kind of do a handful of things i'll say oh i got a podcast i do stand up but i always hesitate to just blanket defiant sorry no that was good i like that yes i don't i never know what to say to this day i always hesitate with uh youtuber yeah like i'm even last night someone asked me i said i have a youtube channel yeah which is just something about me it's not like a career and then i have to go into a conversation but for some reason i can't say like youtuber i think because i think youtuber implies like slime videos and you know it's got like uh i think it was that's actually for sure but now i feel like it's it's more of like a real career now like people will understand that that's not just making youtube videos i think it's everyone under 35 that gets that yeah yeah because if you yeah i feel if you tell anyone over that i'm a youtuber they they in their mind it's still makeup tutorials yeah and like vlogging and like what's up guys like they still think it's what's up guys and it kind of is but it's not uh it's less what's up guys though yeah yeah fewer people what's up guys yeah these days yeah definitely fewer or it's followed by something more absurd than it is it's like what's up guys today we're recreating squid games sure yeah yeah yeah yeah today i spent five million dollars creating yes exactly yeah yeah recreating a netflix yeah global phenomena yeah yeah so when did like the the prospect you spoke about it a bit about this concept of testing formats and thinking about it as a network but when did that when you guys actually say hey you know what we got this thing going but let's let's add more to it let's let's not just be podcasters youtubers entertainers comedians let's be like entrepreneurs and media executives yeah so we hired yeah that's the time that's the target yeah executive yeah i can't wait till the customs guy asks me what i do because every time i come to the country they go what do you do i'm a media executive what do you say now i make youtube videos media executive's hard that is yeah that that goes crazy the next next next con next spot i do at a club and they're like oh what credits just say media executive uh coming to stage he's a media executive noel miller and i'll just go up in there in a [ __ ] suit yeah so we're thinking of this show yeah what's up guys i used to work for quibby let me tell you why quivi was actually good and you guys are [ __ ] morons and you lost a good thing that's not comedy yeah you're all [ __ ] [ __ ] that's what i've learned in my years of making billions you're all idiots let me show you we had a show with a woman with a golden hand he threw that away for what tick-tock go [ __ ] yourselves that media executive is dope yeah but it's kind of what you are right you got now like you're not just making decisions about what you're going to make you have to make decisions on what talent to bring on what shows to bring on what shows are going to resonate with the audience there's people paying now for this service that they want you know like content you guys are curating that why why even make that jump from just being creators who already have a ton going on to media executives i think we always try to start with a place that was just like what feels good which is not a super sharp thing to say but um a friend of ours um ben khan who's one of the hosts of the trillionaire mindset him and his buddy emil um in their mindset on spotify and youtube and those guys are hilarious thank you yeah they um so see that's a media executive thing to do to like say thank you when i said those guys yes thank you [Laughter] yeah i literally made them um i taught ben everything he knows after his dad died that's when i stepped in okay i'm not positive if that's true right so it is now he'd been we'd just talk about podcasting in general and he would tell me a lot like man i really want to start one really want to start one i don't know what to do this and that i really want to do something finance oriented and then we were already talking about well what's kind of our first whatever our first step into a network we've been talking about this for like three years yeah and before it just seemed like a kind of like a pipe dream it was like uh i don't this doesn't really seem realistic but remember that in our like we had a meeting with you know our agency like three years ago yeah we did that big round roundtable meeting and that was one of the things we brought up was like we really want to start a network yeah i think it's just you know we're both i think we both are aligned in that we want to build something that's just bigger than ourselves i think also the the fun part about bringing people on just and knowing what we know is ben and emil care way more about sort of like finance and world politics than we do and we think it's just cool that we can create a place where you know people can kind of come to us for just like general humor if people want to drill down into their niches we can bit by bit offer people who actually really care about those things yeah i think that's the most important thing is that when people kind of dial into these shows they're really gaining something from it about something they care about yeah it's also fun building a world and building a little universe you know like it's like the people that we now you know sign and work with are like our friends and they're also people that we're fans of like i've been close friends with brook and connor for a while i know that they're hilarious yeah i've loved their tick tocks for a long time so it was really cool that and ben was one of my favorite tick-tock or favorite vine people of all time it's just cool that we can now you know bring those people in produce stuff for them but then also watch it and you know enjoy it as an audience member and like be on shows with them like eight ball special the show we do with ben that's how i found them yeah was through eight balls yeah that's so much fun to be on yeah because we're like i think ben and emil are some of the funniest people so just cool being on a show with them and chatting with them and i think the audience really resonates with that too like yeah you guys operate as this top of funnel right like you're this the source of for me like as a fan of the show you have so many different outlets where whether it's social or highlights where i can like see things that are happening and on social i saw the moment i was telling you yesterday that where ben talks about those foot pics he sent they asked me if i would be willing to sell photos of my feet please tell me you didn't [ __ ] do this i did it's a hilarious moment and then i was like well what is this and then that's my entrance into this world you guys have created with eight ball special and then i'm like well those guys are funny yeah let me see what they're all about and then it's like this even the other way around like i was a fan of connor early on in the pandemic because his tick tocks were just so good so funny and then it was cool to see him become part of the network and now i have an opportunity to watch and listen to him like long form yeah eclipse it's cool it's cool to see like who you guys identify as people that you want to bring in yeah and there's a stamp right that's like you guys are going to bring in people that if we're fans of you that we we find funny too yeah yeah like like the way they present things and present the world yeah it's like a certain point of view yeah i think we want to keep it like that too you know like we're at a point now where we can probably scale pretty quickly like our production pipeline is super well oiled and that's like you know big thanks to ryan for that but um so we're at a point now where we can like produce a ton of shows i threw a shaka on the camera that was great that was great don't do that anymore yeah you're fine you're fired again think media executive ryan yeah yeah but i think it's like you know it's an interesting challenge for us to keep it feeling bespoke and yeah like we're we're putting a lot of thought into what we produce and who we sign because we do want it to feel like that we want it to feel like like a family but like you know you can watch one show and immediately know that you know this it's if it's vetted by us that it's yeah entertaining did you look at any group for inspiration though because i feel like creator network is not that common like rhett and link do it like babish starting to do it but like three years ago when you're starting to talk about this what what was the inspiration that you could do something like this yeah i think we're both you know more entrepreneurial than we'd like to give ourselves credit for at least then we used to give ourselves credit for yeah but this has always been something that i think we wanted to do in the back of our mind it's like let's take what we've learned yeah about doing this ourselves and you know try to see if we can build something bigger yeah i think that's what's interesting is that this this whole career is like still being defined but the people who have been in it for you know you guys been doing this for seven years you've had experiences that now when conor and brooke you know are in your network you can kind of like mentor them in a in a way right i'm like hey this is these are some of the mistakes we made this is some of the adversity we faced but we can we can carry you through that i think for us like we've been on youtube in different forms for 10 years and i can't believe how slow some of the lessons are that we've had to learn right yeah you look back and you're like oh man like i wish i just knew that and the people who are starting today they're getting advice from people and they're jumping yeah ten years ahead is that like a big part of it like if you join the network getting to interface i think we could probably we could probably do a better job at like mentoring but okay no but i think there is like we we definitely do apply our learnings to the network the network and the shows that we produce absolutely yeah um and you know where they start off when we start producing their shows is you know already light years ahead of where we started when we started like it took us two years to get our first ad read right you know um whereas like their their shows are monetizing right out the gate yeah um and they're you know they get traction right out of the gate for two guys with like a loose idea what do you do next like what was your path to saying like let's go from a loose idea to actually making tmg studios so i think we it started with building out um a production team that could kind of well oil or create a machine for our specific show so our show was kind of if you know we always relate things to code if you look at that as like the code base and then how can we replicate this over many shows so we first built up a team that was more or less working for what we were doing um and then we actually we actually brought in ryan and ryan can oversee the repetition of the system that we've created for our show yeah to be done multiple times over um so it it all kind of tied like it went kind of hand in hand at first but in terms of concrete steps it started with what do we need for our show to free up our mental resources to build the the rest of the infrastructure to um do this many times over so what are some of the new challenges with tmg studios versus just t when is tmg like what's how does your day-to-day impacted or even your mental space impacted from like a okay now we have a whole set of new you know we have to figure out really clever ways to ignore ryan that's the first hat so now you got a guy who's like an elephant in the room yeah meetings on our calendar and then us canceling them right sure enough yeah yeah yeah rsvp no yeah yeah but it is different you have like someone here who's trying to build this business and no it is it definitely is definitely like you know the mindset now is not all right it's this is two guys making a show how can we get this up every week and whatever it's like okay we have 10 people on payroll how do we make sure that the business is generating revenue and that we can scale it year year over year yeah so that there's proof that this thing is growing and you know moving in the direction that we want it to move so it definitely is you know much more of a business now than it used to be or it used to just be about our show it's still i mean it still is about you know we're not ignoring our show or our production or anything but you know a lot of the the work outside of the production of tmg is figuring out how to make the network successful can you tell us about like the roles that tmg studio has like you know ryan obviously is here like what does ryan do and what what exactly does ryan what's this why is ryan that's a great question [Music] he's a media executive the reason i asked those because i feel like we see all these creators launch so many different things yeah and it's easy to be like wow they're just they can do everything yeah i think well this kind of ties into samir's question about um like day-to-day um and like day-to-day headspace so i think uh so as far as the team uh ryan's our executive producer um and then he oversees just a handful of different producers at uh different levels um now we're at the point where actually we have like production interns it's pretty cool because just last week we shot something for uh upcoming like moment house show and uh it was really cool to bring someone in um who doesn't really have a ton of production experience and if this was a way we could like mentor someone where we can actually give them a unique production experience and because we're not like some union show um we can light them on fire no uh they can have a very direct like hands-on experience where we can say like you know go dump the memory from that uh you know dump the car from that camera and also can you move this prop over here and can you slate this and um they get to interact with a lot of small things but so i think we so that ryan's our executive producer um how many producers we have now we have three core producers yeah three corporations that report into him we have our studio manager who is in charge of all the gear and that's getting crazy because now we've got like another b studio that we're setting up with different sets and so our studio manager is pretty tied down with that then our production interns kind of just float between things then we have our editing team and they do most of our editing some of it we outsource and i think that's the other part that kind of gets overlooked too like when creators start things is we have our core team but then we do have a ton of like extensions of small agencies that we use or you know just random freelancers that we pull into projects that um so the web gets very expansive very quickly also one thing i want to make a note of doing is like whenever i'm listening to somebody's story and you know and how they built their business or whatever i always appreciate like the honesty in terms of how they didn't know what they were doing yeah and what to hire for and everything and they kind of figured it out as they went i think that's you know something that we've experienced as well is in the beginning like when we first hired kyle that was our very first employee and that was literally just like okay can you handle the editing and whatever it's like too much for us to do now yeah and then luke was next and it was like it's because we needed more you know production help good nate as well and nate sorry and nate to edit and um you know if you just take little steps in solving what problems are directly in front of you but then just keep that yeah you know you know like that zoomed out vision of where you want to get to i think that's the most important thing and that's what we do we never really it wasn't a master plan where we at the very beginning of this sat down we're like okay we want this crazy one-day production pipeline where we use the same servers that netflix has in their offices and we're dumping footage on there and then all of our editors are editing from home right remote wired into their computers in the studio which is what it is now you know ryan thanks to ryan this is something that we you know developed because we eventually were able to hire the right people because we just kept making little you know steps towards that main goal of building a network and having this well-oiled machine i also think if you're building something and you're bringing people on i think it's good to caveat to those people hey i'm bringing you on to do this but that definitely can change and i think that's something that people overlook is when you're i think building a business you you have specific needs in the moment but i think you have to be open to the fact that um you may not know what you need actually which is a weird meta thing i think also as creators we live in a world of like experimentation yeah right yeah it's like try this it works for some time totally now there's something different yeah actually this works better take some part of this and do it over there i mean you guys personal channels are like that right now if you look at the last two to three videos of each of you guys and there's like new formats that we haven't seen before and you've been doing it for a while yeah i mean that's we've been kind of doing that like throughout throughout our whole career it's like that's how we first started doing you know that's cringe and love island stuff is that that just was started with a text i was like hey we should try this this this this would be cool like he found a video of a [ __ ] robot yeah i remember the very first thing we reacted to and it was literally just like hey man we should sit down and i was like yeah both of us were kind of like is this gonna be weird yeah and it was yeah yeah yeah yeah it's super weird yeah but then you know things got weirder so yeah exactly was that like uh yeah was that surprising when that series that's cringe just kind of like it's so crazy because we didn't i don't even think we ever viewed it as like a series yeah it's only retrospective yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's funny to see like sean evans say like the hit series that's cringe you know you're like oh yeah it's cool though that people are starting to group things like that yeah yeah it helps that you stopped though because once you stop then people can really package it yeah you know if it's still ongoing it just feels like it's just videos yeah yeah that's a good point that's a good point i do i am yeah i am proud kind of proud of the fact that we like stop doing it yes yeah yeah cause it is this nice little package it's a set of like 12 videos i don't even know how many episodes we did no it's a lot man it's like 17 or like okay yeah but still like in aggregate those probably also have over 150 million views together way more way more than yeah yeah that's crazy yeah that's crazy the official number i think like a couple of them have over 100 mil at this point no i think the biggest one is 30. 30 mil yeah no what's the biggest one i think it's the morning routine one oh yeah it's over yeah i still again like the mark mcgrath one for me is probably attributed to a hundred thousand of those yeah morning routine is 31 million it's good you won as 23. oh so maybe it's not jake paul 25 yeah so it's probably like 150 million in total i mean that's that's really crazy yeah in that experimentation like you guys mentioned like like stopping that's cringe like how do you how did you was that conscious of like we're gonna try this and we're gonna stop this by like stopping that specifically such a successful series like today you would think that if someone was making youtube videos it'd be like find the thing that works and any media executive would work yeah yeah keep doing that that's true yeah we as media executives that's actually the tng stands for the media executives i think we no i i at least me i'm you can tell by my youtube channel i [ __ ] i'm so guilty of self-sabotage you know i find something that works and then i immediately [ __ ] myself over and yeah do something that no one wants to see so um i personally get bored of things very quickly and so that's cringe was working for us but i remember telling cody i'm like we can't just be two guys talking at a computer we have to move on from this and cody was like yeah no i i i can i can i can talk at a computer no but i just told him no but i just meant like as the two of us i felt like that's cringe did so well that staying too long in it would have just i don't know i thought that would have started to work against us at some point yeah it was also kind of natural it was like we were really focused on other things i think we both like trying new things and pushing ourselves and learning especially so like at that point the last ones came out like when we were on tour yeah so we were really focused on the live show and yeah you know going show by show tweaking it depending on what the audience laughed at and what it didn't you know that was taking up a lot of our mental real estate so was music starting to play a bigger role yeah during that time it was yeah yeah um and so we yeah we music continued to kind of um be a factor and then the pandemic hit and then i think that's when when the pandemic hit out naturally everyone like re you know they kind of thought about things more and like what does the future look like and i think that was an easy moment for us to be like well probably not going to be like rapping about dicks for very long so like maybe we should you know try some other things that present more of a challenge and something we can like really care about really sink our teeth into yeah with your music like i was talking to cody about this um like some of the streams on spotify of your guys music yeah are crazy yeah i think i'm pretty sure walkman is almost gold yeah it's like 86 or 90 million yeah streams and like broke [ __ ] uh it's like 45 47 million and i also put on that song yeah when i was doing some research for this podcast right i've heard that song yeah but i put it on and i was like how how serious were you when you were making this song where you kind of like didn't because that's like a like the emphasis on like the comedy being the main character started to maybe like not that it went down but like the quality of the music started it was almost like you guys were flexing in this way of like no we could like if we were yeah if you actually wanted to do this you could just do this that's what we were going for yeah awkward song yeah i really wanted an awesome awkwardly good song next to all the other music that comedians or just even youtubers put on youtube it's just it's not the same yeah it's josh richards though yeah yeah yeah that's true i think it's funny because when some people break down the music it's really interesting to see what their interpretations of it are like even hearing what you guys have to say is really interesting because i guess the general theme here is that the things that we made we never had these really deep thoughts about it it's funny when i go on the road and um even to this day you know i've had people ask like what what like what was your process like making music and i'm like it's very complicated um someone makes a beat and then me and cody look at each other and say do you want to go first [Laughter] and then one of us records and then the other one goes yeah that that works and then the other one records and then we're like yeah sick you know a lot of it is supported by the producers that we know um just between like spock and diamond pistols they're they're they're always the ones to really make the music like do something um so yeah i i do feel it got to a point where i was getting just like a little too far away from comedy and i'm like maybe it's a little too horny now too i think i think for me like broke [ __ ] was the moment where i was like this is a little too good like this song i'm i can casually listen to like i like this song yeah and that's when it was like i felt like there was an inflection point of life yeah are these guys just gonna become like a music he's gonna make good music no because there's uh the music industry is the worst industry to be let's dig into that so yeah yeah like i wanna i wanna hear about it because this is also actually interesting because you're bringing up joji right yeah yeah there are road maps where it's like okay someone can be like a comedian have funny videos on youtube and then go into music oh yeah yeah yeah like tim heideker does music now a lot of people do it for sure but i think what's interesting is the business side and the money side of music a lot of people hear that you know labels working with labels isn't like the best experience or whatever but when we were independent like you know and then it wasn't even a conscious decision it was just like we're putting out music let's just do it on our own because we have a marketing platform built in we can just make a video on youtube and like we're making a lot of money yeah like from streams yeah we're making a good chunk like it like you know i'm i don't even i won't put a number on it but like it was it was good like for an independent you know an artist project yeah like it generated a significant amount of income and then we signed with a label and we made zero money but i mean like that's you know that's no shade to the label or anything like i think it's just how this is how it works that's how it works yeah why did you go from making sense for people that don't have that platform that we had worked so long to build already we did it as kind of like a legitimacy thing it was like we signed with a label and you know then we're on the same label that was um mike posner yeah exactly yeah you know goes way back yeah they're like you know famous name so it was legitimacy but also you get in advance but no could you explain like why does the money go down so significantly yeah um it's theft no [Laughter] the contract that they make you sign has a lot of built-in things that you discover along the way got it um mostly it's it's recommend that yeah yeah yeah that's what really [ __ ] you is that um you know they give you this advance and it's money which they want they also take a long time to give you that as well yeah interesting i don't want to talk too much [ __ ] yeah yeah noel does though [Music] yeah no like everyone that works at the label like they were all really great and had the best intentions like and and like i said it works for other people right but i think for us like we're we've always been so independent we've always done everything by ourselves yeah that that relationship just didn't really work as well for us and it's also like the industry was changing so much like i don't know if the record label would think like the way you guys did that seat geek integration in one of your music videos yeah that was crazy but we did that because otherwise that money would have came out of our our recruitment so like but they pay you a certain amount of money and then to like fund your album or whatever but then you only receive royalty money after you've paid that back and then all the marketing fees on top of that right so they a lot a certain amount of money towards music videos or whatever but the rest you have to pay that back so you end up paying for everything yeah yeah the label basically takes takes no risk which is how it's traditionally been yeah fun fact about brokebitch um so it was a crazy like sequence of events because basically we needed to finance it so um i pitched like okay what if we do this ad at the end and we can kind of tie it into a story like oh great simultaneously don't i i think i can say this um i pitched a uh key from kean peel directly to be like in the music video like i had a phone call with him um and he was down but then because we did had the ad in it it created like red tape because he was committed to other things which yeah so it was like a very surreal thing to be talking to kay and just hearing his voice you know okay yeah i like this and i'm like oh this is [ __ ] up yeah and then you know unfortunately it didn't pan out but you know was that a good video but yeah that whole and then we almost had we almost had courtney cox in the video for daddy really yes we've almost had a lot of great cameras never quite pulled through yeah for the music videos at least i mean we had some we've had some pretty great guests yeah i pitched john cena for daddy um didn't hear back from his age but yeah yeah yeah i was curious about that like experimentation um and when it comes to i guess early days making a decision to try something and stop it and how maybe the have those stakes increase now that you have dmg studios or just like the the stuff you guys have built like you experimentation gets harder when you have overhead right yeah payroll and people or like a mortgage and you're like yeah well i could experiment or i could just do the thing that works i think we tend to do it on our individual channels yeah um we are working on some stuff though like and we but yeah but i i guess like it's a two-part answer so we are working on stuff between us but because now we have to factor in the network and how that plays out like it's a much harder thing to pull the trigger on yeah we definitely have to have deeper conversations about okay how does this impact the money we also don't want to do anything that impacts our ability to support the other shows that we have we want to make sure they're taken care of so there's that aspect of it and then so i think it's easier sometimes when we individually are like i wonder if this will work and we can try like some version of it and then we can almost like proof of concept some idea and then we can bring that to the network as well so i think we have two avenues for that still got it i was just gonna say i think we're also pretty good at like taking calculated risks yes yeah you know i think that's like just you know starting on patreon is a good example um like that allowed us to you know fund the podcast in the beginning and then get a studio and and make those you know take risks with our content and stuff like that and try different things because we knew we had a little bit of a safety net in terms of um and we're good at doing that now it's like we're never going to stop you know the the main money maker is the podcast but as long as that's going then we can mess around with coding into all dues and try moment house shows and like really try to develop new formats yeah do you guys talk about or do you have to talk about like how you're gonna experiment personally are you always aware of that just in case you're like you know what actually that would have that would be good if we do it on tmg um yeah not not really because i feel i don't feel anything is really sacred anymore unless you you know start some [Music] extremely unique series to yourself but i think if you're just throwing out general premises i think it doesn't matter because um i did like this entire game show that no one gave a [ __ ] about and it's fine because we just repurposed a lot i thought that was funny oh thanks dude yeah yeah appreciate it i remember that was great it was like well produced thank you yeah yeah but uh from in doing that it was dope because i learned so much and then i was able to just say oh we could repurpose this aspect for like a coding oil do or oh let's let's do this concept and i know it'll work because i we worked on these things peripherally and we can adapt it into that so when it comes to like the stuff we do together it's always going to be unique because it's just us too yeah you know even if cody does some video concept by himself if he does it with me it's automatically different so yeah i don't think that anything is like super off limits or it's it's never a situation of like ah you [ __ ] it if yeah if we just did it together instead of by yourself you know it would have worked better it doesn't matter was there ever a point working together where you guys felt like your identity was so wrapped up in the two of you working together it's too late for that like did you make cause like i feel like for us it's that way 100 our brand is not it's it's our names yeah you know we definitely we definitely i think we're at that point to a certain extent where certain people only know the stuff that we do together and you know forever we'll get comments on our individual channels there's like where's the other guy yeah yeah the other guys like compare us and all that [ __ ] but like we're also like pretty careful in maintaining our own individual stuff yeah it's like a sanity thing it's like yeah we're both creatives so like if we don't have a a you know a medium outside of tmg to experiment and work on our own stuff yeah i think we'd both go insane yeah yeah because i think you it that's a weird thing when that people don't i think really see is that when you do a lot of work with a like a creative partner like every aspect of the business if it's doing well starts to squeeze you two together into everything like you know then before you know it like every brand wants you to only work together and everyone's only pitching you to work together and you go insane because you you have to have your own sense of self like that is super crucial i mean that's just like a basic thing in life you know you you need time to yourself and i think the same holds true for your work so yeah yeah i think i think it comes across with you guys too which i i really respect and think um like noelle you're a short film no thanks man you know like flipping that on on youtube and you're just like whoa this is a total this is just a creative expression you say you you openly like sabotage yourself yeah youtube in a in a potentially youtube algorithmic sense yeah but from an artistic perspective it's really enjoyable to watch your channel and see a new format that's comedic and then a music i think video is interesting whether the platform rewards it or not yeah it doesn't it does it doesn't yeah i could confirm that too yeah but we like weird but we terrified of experimentation yeah i would say like we we are it's like a scary thing to experiment because especially when you build a business around something that it's like working yeah uh and i was curious cody you talked about that a bit around well mainly around like some of the challenges of creating youtube videos and maybe feeling uninspired or not as inspired to me yeah i don't want to put words in your mouth here but yeah you were like responding or one of your streams are you saying my videos no yeah i know it's definitely something that i've been feeling lately i think like we both go through those definitely zones where it's just like this whole world is up and down and up and down you know and there's some moments where it's just like [ __ ] i just everything i do feels dry it feels like it doesn't have a soul or a purpose and i think i i'm a big fan of like momentum and when it feels like something's working that really excites me like like that i like it but also other people like it and you know for a while i just like wasn't finding that and that's those moments where you have to sit back and just reevaluate and be like well it's just because i'm doing the i'm doing the same thing and expecting different results right it's like but that's also what youtube like you're expecting a different emotional result but like from but as an audience member it's like i i can only watch someone do one thing for so long and that's like four years you know that's that's the period where it's like okay if this guy doesn't grow or evolve to the next thing or find something else like i'm gonna fizzle out as an audience member yeah which you see happen all the time and i think that's one of the reasons why we've been able to like you know survive this long in this industry is because we keep trying new things and we keep evolving and learning and trying to better ourselves as you know creators how much of what's happening on youtube at large affects the decisions you guys make like in your personal content on tmg we were talking yesterday again about it it's hard when you look at youtube and someone who's brand new will upload a video that's like i traveled to every country in the world and that's their first video yeah we talk about it a lot because like we're you know we're having these conversations like i said uh amongst ourselves about you know new formats for tmg and experimentation and then we're but we're like what the [ __ ] do we do because all of a sudden this i see this video from this kid and it's like i went to every gordon ramsay restaurant in the world this is like his fourth youtube video ever spent 50 grand on it and then he edits he edits it down to like four minutes yeah yeah how the [ __ ] are we supposed to compete with that when that's the new bar of success on youtube oh yeah let's blow up our car man you know yeah [ __ ] everything yeah no i think um well code and i've talked about this before in our podcast but uh the way i kind of boiled it down which i think is really funny is everyone is speed running their youtube career so yeah they're doing these really intense concepts right away yeah yeah and you can only visit so many restaurants all over the world so many times right in foreign that's fine but i do think there is something to be said about how the algorithm is motivating absurdity you know now before it used to be like look at this goofy uh movie that i saw now it's like i watched every movie from this director you know now you know and the thumbnail is like someone's eyes yeah yeah yeah metal and i don't think it's necessarily sort of interrupt but i don't think it's necessarily the algorithm's fault is that no it's just because people there's so much [ __ ] that that's what people have seen everything oh wow this is something new yeah yeah yeah people have seen everything so that's where yeah i think i think it comes down to doing crazy [ __ ] like that's really all that's left like some of the ideas i've come up with for us the two of them are like oh how the [ __ ] do we pay for that i'm like if we find a way yeah yeah because it yeah it's really funny i'm just i just have to say guys i said blow up a car i didn't even say it cody said it twice now right and the the way they smiled i'm just saying yeah yeah yeah i'm just saying and again like this is serendipitous that we have a car for you yeah yeah yeah it really is yeah i think we manifested this i think i think this is leading up to this moment i think the biggest key to our career is actually this book called the secret i don't know if you've heard of it we just manifested being a media executive right right that's all we did um but you know what one genre that feels like it's still kind of holding strong or like a lot of it has been um like it's not as crazy is the commentary genre or like the reaction right guys like drew goodin or jarvis johnson like yeah there's something especially with drew it's like for me i find it so enjoyable to just sit and listen to his like kind of intellectual analysis of something even his videos have gotten a little bit crazier like when he's buying every ad on instagram that's a that's a very simple idea yeah compared to sitting at a computer and reacting to something yeah weight it's like you can tell how much effort he put into that and money too like he's behind these things you know what for the ninja turtles yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no yeah i would say they're they also are getting kind of pushed into absurdity unintentionally i just think everything on youtube is going that direction so i think it's going to be very interesting to see where things go even with even with tech talk i think it's funny that there's this youth that's speed running all of the um especially yeah all the styles of content yeah you know that that to me is the same as like when neo laid back and like they like plugged in the chip in his head and they're like and he goes now i know kung fu yeah that's what these kids are doing they're laying down at night like watching tech talk and then just rolling their eyes in their head they're getting like decades of sketch comedy injected in their brain over 12 months yeah and then plus like vlogging plus everything yeah so much about like entrepreneurialism about going to college like how do you even go to college when you've like you feel like you've lived at all like you've seen everything yeah it's like it's dmt that's all that's left seriously i don't know i think it's a it's a weird future that we're about to live in i think even even your guys videos are like obviously they've progressed significantly from you guys sitting and watching stuff like the edits are complex the concepts are complexity like the out-of-touch concept really funny you're next for that by the way that was that was a really funny concept oh that was great yeah i like that one that's a really good because we get to play along too yeah right like i got to play along with you that was really fun oh thanks your edits are incredibly complex like the way you're did you watch the ukulele video that i did yeah okay so that was like my first like adventure into this world of like okay i'm gonna try an idea that's bigger than just me sitting at a desk like i gotta like set a goal and try something but i don't want to spend twenty thousand dollars on it um so yeah we're definitely no dude spending 20k for a hundred a hundred thousand views yeah yeah feels awesome you should do it sometime it's really fulfilling it's really rewarding and rewarding yeah and then to have someone comment oh well look this guy [ __ ] complaining how hard is it this guy acts like it costs so much [Laughter] exactly i love that continue continue sorry the best is also in youtube like doubles down on it they give you a 10 out of 10 and then there's like a line of copy that's like your viewers have no interest yeah regular viewers yeah yeah thanks greg yeah have you considered being more interesting yeah or maybe quit yeah i don't think youtube's for you actually yeah it's like five times like three ten out of tens i should have like a resume builder that pops up so yeah we dug up your old linkedin profile and we scouted some careers i might do a video where you look for new jobs yeah do you think that um like back to tmg studios like podcasting is a format for you guys investing in like not not suggesting building like um uh a network of youtube creators but building a network of of podcasts and and yeah podcasters has has that held a little is that held a little bit more sacred than like the pace at which things are moving on youtube and in social versus like joe rogan's been podcasting for how many years like is that is it a more stable creative environment that audiences are like yeah this is a podcast yeah i think yeah i think this is something that again like we weren't super intentional about in the beginning it was like a podcast is working for us it's really lucrative so it would make sense for the for the first thing that the people do that we sign is to do a podcast because we know the world so well yeah we already have these relationships where we can monetize it so this makes sense right but now we're in this interesting place where it's like you know we're really good at making video podcasts yeah it is it is somewhere where it feels like youtube is moving more in that direction like you just see these for sure hour long live streams from people where it's just a full-on show it seems like more and more of those are coming out and people enjoy watching those longer form video just unscripted but now we're an interesting place where like if that's the first move that we make and they're building an audience on their own then they can start to do kind of whatever like more short form youtube videos um you know sketches if they want and we'll produce them yeah so i think that's kind of an interesting future that we're sort of looking towards is is yeah we're signing podcasters but we're really signing creatives who really believe in and then just giving them a platform to do whatever they want yeah outside of a podcast you know are you guys are you guys open to talking about like the terms of a deal when you bring a new creator in i always think it's interesting when like creators build a network because they have the perspective of what it would be like if they went in themselves how are these things that are important it's tough to go into like a super niche detail the thing is we actually kind of extrapolate parts of that to other people because we want to maintain the creative relationship with the people there so we some of those conversations we do leave between like their people and our people kind of thing i think the only thing we try to do is um we we do have aspects of the contracts that are the agreements that we help build and we're really keen on just making people happy um yeah we we because we've been on the other end where people offer us that perspective some piece of [ __ ] deal and we're like it's like [ __ ] you man like you don't even respect like what like me as a person building up what i've built and then bringing it to you you know i'm not bringing it to you for you to just [ __ ] cannibalize it and like ruin me so yeah that's kind of been our motivation with like trying to you know build sets and create like a visual aspect that feels very you know like oh when you come here to do your show we like we care and there's going to be energy put into that i think that's like the most important part of this next chapter of networks and and media companies is that you guys have spent years and are continuing to spend years making the stuff like yeah it's highly unlikely that some of these the exact media executives at quibby made short form content no so that like even like executives at youtube that don't make youtube videos yeah right so a lot of people who like when they were making decisions on youtube originals like yeah they're just kind of they didn't know what works on youtube because they never felt what it's like to very true film themselves and put it out like they don't know that experience and so i think that the empathy from a creative yeah like for me if we're going to sign with with anyone like i want it like when we got to sit down with rhett and link you hear from them and you're like oh you know what this is like yeah true yeah you know way more what this is like than we know you know you you've done this and i think that's a lot of the value when you look at young creators looking at tmg yeah it's like yeah they know they know what i feel like they know what it's like to press upload or to you know yeah there's that something and like we also are really really keen on because you know it's not to shade anybody but we see other podcast networks and their whole racket which is get as many people in here and pump them all through the same studio and let's see what sticks and i just think that's such a diss to the people who have built up what they've built and you're just forcing them to you know oh yeah create this thing that you love um in this extremely sanitized uh vanilla space that you can't affect your own no this is great no this is like there's not enough on the walls no no i mean it more like just sticking craters like onto like a table or like two chairs or the television but yeah just throw your logo up there it's fine right yeah yeah you know i think we like it's an assembly line it's like all right next one is everybody's a racket so i think no i mean i'm a very i'm a very i tend to be very jaded about things so when you zoom out like you mentioned that you know some of your day-to-day and the problems you're facing you're trying to solve the problem in front of you but trying to have that that zoomed out vision on where you're headed where what is that like what is the zoomed out vision on where tmg studios is headed um i think i think we i think ultimately it's tough to say because we're still experimenting but i think the the ideal goal is that we have a roster of people that um are just providing like really good entertainment and the the money that people are paying they feel it's the exchange is is worth i think and we want to enable them to to like yeah you know reach their full potential yeah and and do more like we can bring people on as podcasters but if out of that they say hey you know is it possible to get some funding for this type of content or you know we want to try these different avenues we want to be in a position where we can green light stuff like that and just build like a nice ecosystem of just you know just creative people i think that's but that's even like one to two years you know i think we're on our way to doing that hopefully i think five to ten years is like it would be really cool for us to be running you know a bigger scale media company where we're you know buying the rights to movies and making making those yeah yeah you know it's not just podcasts i think podcasts are a really great starting point and i think we're going to take that really seriously yeah for as long as we can but i would love to scale outside of that niche and you know yeah it would be cool to run like a full-scale media company does that align with you guys creatively too like as tmg yes things like that yeah yeah like obviously there's been music there's stuff right now yeah oh cool yeah that's in that same vein so okay that's really cool yeah because i was curious about like okay you bring on another show like you guys are working really well as like you've you've built this model where you have a patreon but you guys actually like custom built this site and i when it launched to be honest i was like taken aback by it well it's like well shut up fourth wall yeah yeah yeah these guys are going for us but yeah yeah i mean they're they're amazing like yeah uh when they reached out you know immediately the relationship right off the bat was just like i don't know they were like just so generous yeah like they're like hey we you know and again it was like it was like a creator first sort of mindset where he was like i've i know you know what you're looking for and we will build this site for you um you know all you need to do is try to convert some people and we were like absolutely yeah we'll do that because it makes sense like it would just align with our vision like we wanted to end up in a place where we had multiple shows on one platform yeah we could have done that on patreon but you know it wouldn't have been branded yeah yeah i think that's the main thing part of it let's down in the weeds and create features that tmg studios dot tv listeners really want and also the best part about your new site is that you don't know fourth wall was involved like that to me as a fan of you guys i'm like oh i feel like i'm in my own space with you guys and to be fair they they pretty much are because fourth wall is just kind of supplying like a code base but like at the end of the day we we have so much control over like hey can we add this feature and hey can we enable this for people when they comment and it's a very you know it's a great relationship because we get to give them good ideas they get to give us good ideas so in that way uh i'm sure what we're developing for us isn't one-to-one with other people and so it it does end up feeling like this very personalized experience which is really dope that's cool yeah is the uh that was tmg studios.tv what was that was that tick tock yeah that was joelle park okay is the uh is the immediate like next step for tmg more shows or is it like more creative with the current cast of of characters in the current world yeah porn yeah that's the next day yeah should we stop there it's a it's it's a mixture i do you know not not because i sleep next to her but i do have to quickly shout out my fiance alina she's she's helped us at many stages like kind of um you know directly kind of through me or like in meetings with us she'll kind of throw ideas out she's been really helpful in the way of like um you know sometimes i'll i'll sit there and i'll [ __ ] me and cody like need like a new type of concept she has like a lot of production experience like she used to produce for apple and so she's been really helpful in the way of like oh if you guys want to try this i will produce it for you um and so that has been greatly helpful in figuring out okay what things do we do next like the thing we shot last week i'm really stoked on that dude can we talk about that yeah let's just talk about it we're gonna yeah it's gonna be so like we're gonna do a moment house show and we essentially she helped like produce uh a [ __ ] mashup of like survivor the challenge and um what else would it be it'd be like a little bit of uh it's it's mostly those two i love the challenges yeah yeah yeah she produced an original show basically is like a mix of these things yeah because with like contestants kind of because what it started with is uh cody and i were like we we want to chew on something different but we don't we want to do it our way and you know so i was talking with her and she was like well you know people like it when you guys interact like but they like it when you compete clearly because of all the coding well do stuff we do and then she was like uh what if you did like a weird like challenge mashup because we watched a lot of the challenge as well i'm like oh [ __ ] i know me and cody will love that [ __ ] just cause we're naturally a little bit competitive you know we're a little bit yeah we try to be athletic and then uh i mean this guy 12 years experience [Music] there's an olympian right here dude but an olympic hopeful yeah yeah olympic hopefully yeah yeah yeah hopefully the olympics will realize what they [ __ ] missed out on exactly but yeah so we shot that out last week and it was i mean that's some of the most fun we've had shooting in a minute and it fully opened up this world where we were kind of like dude we could go 2v2 against other people um we could make this a total shootout where it's me cody and then four other people competing all against each other i mean there's so many ways you could slice it and we did it all in our own studio and go ahead i was gonna say that's what's great about these moments of like kind of dry like what's next what's next is that it leads to these moments where it's like oh [ __ ] it's like the ideas are you know running through your head and it's like we could we should do five of these just us but then we should also have other youtubers in on this and this could become this whole other thing it's like yeah yeah you know that's i love moments like that where you know you're in a ebb and then all of a sudden you reach this flow state yeah so i think that's like in terms of next steps i think that's really what dictates our next steps is we kind of draw on the resources around us we like we kind of start with our gut and we say um this is getting stale or we need to you know hey we kind of need to refresh this idea that we've done in the past like cody noel do is we love but we're like maybe people want to see another version of us [ __ ] around that's that's kind of where it all stems from that's cringes us [ __ ] around coding oil dudes is completely us like you know we're being told how to work out and we're not listening or pretending to break our [ __ ] ankles whatever and then this now can be us like [ __ ] with each other but it's still entertaining um eventually host your own version of love island yeah yeah oh yeah don't give a start [Laughter] no no no they just don't we've we had a bit back in the day we wanted to call it the influencer peninsula and yeah stick a bunch of them on but whatever but i think that's how we kind of you know that is how we dictate next steps because now that we have this great new concept that we can work on and build on now we can say okay let's we can build this into this show and then it does well there okay maybe let's extrapolate it or expand it and make it larger now we do it with you know other uh youtubers or whoever try to maybe draw some celebrity talent into it and make it bigger than us um i think it i think a general theme is that everything we work on now is i think we see a little bit more into the future so unlike with that's cringe we're kind of like oh let's just make a video yeah i think now we do think more in the in the realm of like okay if we do this is it repeatable and how expansive can we make it sounds like you're thinking like uh a media exactly yeah i feel like this podcast was just like you guys are going through a self-discovery of recognizing you are now media executive kind of yeah i'm definitely i'm definitely like reluctant to admit it sometimes yeah you know i think it's funny elena will have to tell me she's like you and cody are like doing a lot and i'm like it's whatever yeah yeah we're just it's fine yeah we just want to make great stuff you know yeah yeah and we want to put people on like it feels good that like you know ben and emil and connor brooke have this amazing platform now not that they didn't before you know obviously tick tocks awesome but like you know they were able to give them this new format and yeah platform and you know let their minds run wild with whatever they want to do you know and we have some talent coming up that we're signing right now that we're really really thrilled that they get those opportunities as well so building people up is is is a really dope feeling yeah and working with them yeah like it's great that you know we sign someone and then all of a sudden we're shooting a video for a moment house show or for team g studios and we're like we get to film a sketch for them like the cult sketch that we did for tv studios that was great yeah that was that was like a moment where i felt like i felt the universe yeah right oh this is talent as a part of tmg and now every time we come up with an idea where we're like this game show thing for example obviously or anything else like a sketch or whatever like for the moment house show we had you know we were like well we need someone to come in and pretend they just got their arm eaten by a tiger and that person was ben yeah cause like anything that we do now we're like oh let's we have this great rock talent let's plug them in and then it becomes something great i feel like especially for people from tiktok that's a huge service yeah because it's extremely difficult to go from tick-tock to having anything long-form yeah where and that's where you can sustain a business yeah that was very true i wanna just shout out to you know we talked uh i think this is the first time we we've like really delved into like the business yeah so i just would be remiss if we didn't shout out to everyone that works for yeah also like was odd our representation yeah you know everyone we have incredible teams and support systems around us our fiances definitely so uh yeah definitely wouldn't be where we are without them and if you want to work for tmg studios you can email john's team g studios dot tv okay that'll be on jobs at teamg studios.tv and if you have a podcast idea that you won't produce podcasts at tmgstudios.tv well on that note like if people are there's going to be people who are watching this who want to pitch you guys a podcast what makes a good podcast pitch for you guys um and does it have to be comedy like what's the thing no no i think we we're open to anything could be like a um like a multi-cultural duo who talks about like entrepreneurship and yeah yeah yeah definitely yeah yeah yeah yeah we excel we excel in one white guy and and one ethnically vague combo we excel in that good combo though yeah it presents a lot of opportunities yes it does yeah you open up both sides yeah there's there's the comfort of calling and the yeah exotics and you're deemed safe next to collins i've literally said that to him before yeah like it's good that pair man because i'm yeah yeah that's it's harder all right so if you're in an ethnically biracial creative relationship yes yeah but are there any other outsiders i want to do a true crime show yeah but like some funny angle on it it doesn't necessarily have to be comedy but make it unique because there's so many true crime shows right now yeah but um i yeah i really want to do that that feels like just like a a winning formula how does like podcasting revenue break down like you know between i guess membership adsense brand deals are brands of deals still part of that like a significant part of that world like how do you guys look at that yeah i mean with the ad reads that we do it's it's all i would say obviously our our subscribers um those are the people that we really put at the front in terms of priorities because they're the ones listening every week they're you know paying every month we want to make them happy so what website uh tmgstudios.tv oh okay got it yeah you got it yeah yeah and uh which you know you and you can learn more by just going to right about the service that we offer and then uh you actually don't you know we'll do ad reads but those aren't you don't hear those on tmgstudios.tv so yeah you know that's just completely yeah so the episodes are ad free on tmgstudios.tv yes they are there's actually yeah there's bonus content on tv yeah yeah yeah just surrounded by media executives yeah sorry yeah corporate america over here yeah but uh yes then you know there's brand deals and then adsense we don't prioritize that or like we don't uh concern ourselves with it too much um it is it is important but um podcasts podcast wise we don't make that much adsense but when we do a coding oil do we make decent adsense money yeah not enough like they they cost it costs like a decent amount to produce those so usually with adsense we'll break even or make a little bit of money on adsense if we do a code into all do nowadays before we use to make a ton of money but like they get less views now so we kind of break even and then if we do a brand deal that's when we like in that video that's where we actually profit yeah got it yeah it's interesting do either you guys like live in your youtube studios or do you guys not really care about those like just check your analytics all the time pretty often and check it often uh i just try to remain sane yeah so i i had to delete it off my phone yeah yeah yeah i was like i don't i don't need to know yeah i just upload and i just either ask alina or my production assistant elena manages like a lot of my youtube stuff so i'm like is it good she's like yes and i just no more no more it's just us now but yeah were there any like oh [ __ ] moments collectively with you guys whether it was a deal for a certain amount of money or like a milestone in your career like a cultural moment whether it was like on hot ones or something like that any moment where you two like reflect back and it was just at the time like a holy [ __ ] type of thing i think the biggest little [ __ ] moments still was being in elon musk's party house yeah that was like yeah actually it was yeah or or when we like went and went to europe with post malone and yeah recorded a podcast episode with him and went to like five of his shows and then like that was a pretty wild like few weeks but yeah when we were actually in elon musk's house yeah and there was a moment like after we left where we were both like sitting on the curb like children like waiting for an uber at 4 am outside of elon musk's house and we were just like what the [ __ ] just happened how did you get invited to elon musk's house one of post malone's uh high school friends introduced him to that's cringe and then he just followed us on twitter he just dm he just damned us and then uh i was like i appreciate the follow man he just sent me his number and he was like let's hang out oh okay so he put us in a thread he was flying back from tour he touches down in la we go meet him at a bar we're hanging out and then he goes y'all wanna go to elons and we laugh for like he goes yeah let's go and we're like okay he's like i'm texting him right now we're like he turns his phone to us sure yeah sure enough it's like elon musk and we're like what oh this is for real you actually want to go to music yeah let's go right now yeah and yeah we pulled up to his house and him and grimes were standing on the driveway just like with lanterns yeah that kind of checks yeah it checks out yeah it checks out yes super strange vibe yeah it proceeded to be a very very weird night i peed in one of the bathrooms and i took a picture of me in the mirror like i'm pissing in elon's bathroom he hung out for a minute and then it got to a point where we were like it's time to go yeah yeah everyone's like where are you or like we're at evil it's hard to explain yeah and then yeah at 4am we're waiting for an uber just laughing like what the [ __ ] yeah that's a wild moment weird really i think you talked about cody also like jack harlow at one point turning to you and being like like being a fan of the content is that is that like more did you talk about that yeah i mean we had uh texted because i've been a fan of his music for a long time yeah um and so we somehow we like started i don't even know how we like met or started talking initially but i think i don't even know how but we used to text and send dms back and forth and stuff like that and then um i did this like tick tock like making fun of one of the lines in his new song and that's what it was like yeah yeah i saw him at coachella and he was like oh man i saw that tick tock and i was like [ __ ] yeah is that cultural impact that like crazy that these like i don't know like i think that's more i think that's just a testament to the power of tick tock more than it is yeah our impact you know i think it's just like if you make a tick tock about something chances are or somebody chances are they're gonna [ __ ] see everything because that's got it everyone sees it you know yeah i mean um it was it was cool when we went to louisville uh jack put us in touch with like some of his childhood friends yeah yeah we're friends with his like immediate group of people we haven't talked to him in a while yeah that's the coachella thing but ace two for one what's up uh if you happen to see this um yeah no they uh they we hung out with them and and uh but yeah jack's been nice to us he didn't follow either of us after you clowned him so okay good that's good i think he actually thought it was funny because he was like i thought that was funny and i was like thanks yeah he walked off with nine bodyguards yeah all right that's great guys yeah thanks appreciation [Laughter] [Music] you

Channel: Colin and Samir

Views: 1,380,252

Keywords: colin and samir, colin samir, Colin and Samir Videos, colin and samir show, Amazon FBA, Robinhood Stocks, Making money online, how much money on youtube, cody ko, noel miller, tiny meat gang, tmg, that's cringe, tmg podcast, tmg studios, education, business, podcast, interview, youtubers, trillionaire mindset, brooke and connor podcast, cody, codyko, THE. BUTTON., 6secondauditions, I ran an ULTRA marathon, Bridalplasty - what the hell was this show?

Id: yNLqaQ6slkw

Length: 97min 54sec (5874 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2022