The Full Story of Jesser (18 Million Subscribers)

how did I get to this point it's crazy your profit margin is just like insane to get to 10 million to 100 million is that revenue or subscribers Revenue that's crazy the NBA and the NFL they need younger fans 18 million people saying yes I'm interested in this we just got health insurance 401K I don't know what that is but I have it it's gone from like the jesser YouTube channel to jesser Industry I was just stacking the money what happens next like what happens to the way we watch sports oh wow that's a good question today on the Colin smear show we're joined by Jesse ryell AKA jesser to put it simply young people are not sitting down to watch a full basketball game but they are watching Jess's videos he's collaborating with professional athletes he has a partnership with the NBA and he's building out what he wants to be aund million Sports Media company and we caught up with him at a critical point in this journey he's about to put out his first Nationwide product in Walmart and he just hired a former Spotify exec to be the president of his company Squad now whether you're into sports or not I think we can all learn something from someone who's been able to build over 18 million subscribers on YouTube it's a really fun conversation for us to have I think you guys will all really enjoy this this episode is sponsored by spotter spotter provides Capital Community and now a suite of AI software personalized for creators and they do all of this to help accelerate Creator careers spotter has paid out over $900 million through catalog licensing deals to creators like Mr Beast Kiger Dion Dude Perfect destroying and gesser to help scale their Productions and teams and if you've been watching our Channel then you know that spotter's been working with top creators and AI experts to develop a suite of AI software that helps creators like us brainstorm better videos one of the tools that we use the most is called title Exploder and it solves one of the hardest things about growing a YouTube channel which is packaging so here's how title exploiter works you can start with a title or an idea and then from there you can rephrase it shorten it Reverb or explode that idea to give you a ton of different variations you can edit the titles that the software gives you and then keep iterating until you find a title that you like one of the best parts is that spotter software is directly connected to your YouTube channel so the ideas are based on your top performing videos as well as the best videos on YouTube if you're a Creator and you want to see if you're eligible to get access to title Exploder then you can scan this QR code right here you also click the link in our description or you can go to join. spotter. La signing up there will also ensure that you're the first to know when spotter's AI software gets rolled out to all creators all right now for our conversation with [Music] jesser all right jesser welcome to the show thanks for having me bro it is an honor you guys are goats of what you do have so many amazing guests so happy to be here um it's Jesse R right my actual name well my my last name does start with an R right yeah and that's why jesser yeah originally my name on YouTube was Jester the laser so I had that for like a couple years and then I I dropped the laser yeah surprised you didn't drop the Jessie and just go with the Las Las honestly that could have been a move yeah um so last night you crossed 18 million subscribers let go congrats man thank you so much how does that feel it's honestly like surreal especially like thinking about way back when I wanted to do YouTube and it was like every the top guys all over like a million and the fact that people have like 18 18 million subscribers just an unfathomable number like especially I was like how did I get to this point it's crazy it doesn't feel real so it's just it's like a surreal number at this point like everything now is like the cherry on top any like Milestone yeah I mean that's what we're going to dig into is how did you get to this point um I'm curious like 18 million people saying like yes I'm interested in this clearly that's so many people but I would imagine there are moments when people come up to you they meet you they don't know who you are and they're like what do you do yeah like tell me about what you do how do you answer that question um I just say I'm a YouTuber okay like I I it's usually parents who ask that because they be like I love when parents will like see their kid come up to me they be like I don't know who the [ __ ] you are but like my son loves you I'm like okay why you have to say it like that but I just say like I'm a basketball YouTuber and I do like challenges trick shots yeah I pretty much that's my answer I feel like right now you are like by far arguably the most popular YouTuber amongst like young kids would you say that is that how you describe your audience or do you feel like your audiences I would say maybe that would be more accurate if it was like uh like basketball focused kids just kids General I don't think is much for me I think there's a lot of creators are bigger and have more an audience like that but I think like my audience like they really are like they play sports they're basketball type of kids so I would say in that if you say it like that it would be accurate got it would you say that the the videos you make are videos you would have wanted to watch when you were a little kid I think so like you're in the audience essentially M yeah I think I definitely think so when uh when you talk about like explaining to parents you know you're I don't know how many people know this but your dad is like a a legend in in Hollywood your dad yeah he's goated dad your dad is goated in Hollywood like he he produced Wedding Crashers that's like one of the greatest movies of all time yeah I feel like No One Ever Knows about that cuz I my dad never wanted to be like on camera or anything so I never just talked about him but yeah he's a executive movie producer he's done a bunch of crazy movies like he did one of the Rocky movies he did like Wedding Crashers so it definitely like growing up I had it was like I got to go to set I think the coolest thing ever is he was doing this movie for Christmases I love that movie that movie is actually so good it's amazing so they filmed that in Bora Bora which is like where everyone goes for their honeymoon everything and I was in kindergarten and I got to stay with him for a whole month yeah like on the set and like all a sudden like Vince Von's there and he's talking to me and I'm like oh my God that's amazing wow I mean that movie is so funny by the way just in case people haven't seen that like I I would die on a hill saying that's like one of the best Christmas movies for the record for the record yeah just so everyone knows so did that impact you at all like did that lead you to wanting to be where you are today seeing your dad make movies and produce entertainment I think definitely it had to have an impact but it's weird cuz I was never like a huge movie fan but I was obsessed with YouTube and like movies and YouTube are so different but I think just it's media so it's I think it's definitely like part of it is there for sure does he understand what you do and did he when you started was he like oh I get it you're you're filming yourself like you're producing entertainment like did he understand it I think he understood it the beginning especially cuz like the First videos I would do were like just home skits like just skits with my brother um which is like I guess short films in a way but they're really horrible but yeah so I think he he I don't think he really understood it when it was like gaming when I was doing like Minecraft and 2K and I don't know if he even really watched them until like it started getting more popular but I think he he gets it more than like the average parent would get it right right what was it that started to get popular like when you first took to YouTube so it first started to get popular popular for me was like I had uploaded for years like Minecraft and skits they never got any views until I did this skit and this skit was called NBA 2K in real life and it was pretty much if you played NBA 2K it's the basketball video game for like NBA he so unrealistic so many of the things that would happen so we kind of like showed what it would look like doing those unrealistic things in real life just bit by bit by bit and I posted that and then like Bleacher Report posted it like all these Sports websites posted it and the video got like 300,000 views and I gained like 1,000 subscribers in like 2 days so that was kind of like what started it all that's like a light moment and you're in high school I was either a freshman in high I think I was a freshman in high school yeah so you started YouTube when you were 14 is that right no I started probably like 10 years old maybe years old wow well I was making videos but I don't even think we were uploading them to YouTube cuz my older brother my brother years older me he does YouTube too but like he had the original capture card and things but we would make like sketches and he would just put me in them so I was like in those videos and then yeah was probably like we I don't know if we uploaded all of them like I deleted the Channels cuz like kids at school were fine to them we were embarrassed so we deleted a lot of old stuff but like 1011 I was uploading YouTube videos and like learning how to edit and everything I think about the concept of kids at my school seeing like my home movies I made with my brother like I wouldn't I would be super embarrassed you know like I I think that that's like such an interesting part of growing up with YouTube is that you were sharing a lot of your like early creative Endeavors and then people could find them and like as you're going through puberty and like adolescence you're like wait don't watch that yeah no it was horrible cuz I was like the most shy kid ever like I would I wouldn't say anything to a female I would turn like red so it was like my outlet at home to make these videos and then like once that video got popular like so many kids at school heard about it cuz like oh this kid had a viral and then like they were like oh teacher you should play it and the teacher playing one of my gaming videos and they were so weird in front of the whole class I literally wanted to crawl up in the ball and just like die I it was the worst and like the older kids on the cuz I was on basketball like the varsity team would like we'd always be with them um they would like watch the video like make jokes and [ __ ] I'd be like I ate it here I Hae it so much you know that is weirdly common that like a shy kid in school makes it on YouTube I feel like it is and I wonder what that like is it just like the sense of control or like freedom of expression when it's you know yourself because I've also noticed while we've been sitting here you're pretty comfortable staring down the camera lens and talking to the camera lens and that's like a whole different relationship right it's like when you're alone in a room looking at a lens like why is that more comfortable than when you're at school yeah it's definitely interesting especially over time I've lost the shyness just being so many situations but I think it is easier to talk into aens even though there's like oh you could be talking to millions of people but it's like you're really not like you're just you're really just talking to this like a camera so it's like I don't know it's just it's it is a lot easier for some Reon especially as a shy person like I know there's a lot of people who aren't shy at all but then when you film them they get really shy so I was like the opposite so like when a camera's on I think just over doing it for so many years that like it like gives me energy or it like makes me ready to go in a weird way I don't know what it is but it's like a switch yeah so when you make NBA 2K in real life and it gets 300,000 views it's shared all over you're like a freshman in high school is that a moment where you're proud or in that moment too are you kind of like oh no oh no I was so hype was so hype and other people thought it was cool yeah it was cuz like I've been uploading like I had hundreds of Minecraft videos before that video came up and it was like the one basketball video I did did well but it's like I was always trying to get to have subscribers like I wanted to be a YouTuber and I knew that before I even posted that video like I knew I wanted to be a YouTuber fulltime and the reason for that I was my favorite YouTuber was Pro Syndicate he was doing like a live stream and someone asked him like well what do you do for a job and he was like oh I'm just a YouTuber like I vividly remember watching that and being like Oh my God you can do this as a job like as a 10-year-old and then ever since that day I was just going hard on YouTube to do it as a job but then yeah so it's doing it for like those hundreds of videos and never getting any views like 10 30 views a video and then having a video get hundreds of thousands it was like oh my goodness this is this is what I've been chasing for for so long was amazing what' you do next so then after that I switched to doing 2K content and I started this was 2K14 so I started consistently posting that I posted like part the followup just making that video again and then that one did even better than the first one oh interesting and then from that moment I had like 3,000 subscribers and then I kept uploading to UK every single day and I was getting a thousand views of video now from that just getting that little audience and I was just doing that every day and that's kind of where I went from there so did you know what it meant to do YouTube as a job at that obviously you're super young I just knew that that's all he did like that's what he did with his life he just made videos so at at that age being a kid who's like into basketball too like I remember when I was a kid here I grew up in La this is this is a shirt I bought at the Great Western Forum watching the Lakers play and I was like I want to play basketball when I grow up now when you're a young kid like 9 10 years old that's like a in your mind you're like that's a total reality I want to be an NBA until you you know at least me like a like a 5 foot six Indian kid start to grow up and you're like well and you've seen me play basketball I see you've been hooping bro you some game winners last time we play you hit me that was a I've watched that highlight 100 [Music] times no no no no for the record I didn't even make that team right Colin didn't get picked I didn't get picked so that's where that's where I'm at our team was absolutely stacked yes sir like uh this was at spotter Summit in Montana uh but you me Ryan Tran Mr Beast and Matteo that was like uh we went on a nine game we were nine and0 and we had some comp bro Dude Perfect the twins are going against us it wasn't just you know people who didn't know how to hoop but there was some but Jimmy stacked the team okay so basically just call it like it is yeah yeah Jimmy St I tried to join the team he was like not I actually was shocked when he picked me but I was like okay sure yeah play but where I was going with this was uh like there was a time in life where being an NBA player was like when you grow up you're like that's what I want to be I I want to play basketball was that a thought or was like you YouTuber was just so much more appealing cuz you're like 10 years old you're into basketball like that's like so for me I think cuz when I started playing basketball I'd already had this goal of wanting to be a YouTuber cuz I played soccer before but I never was thought to be like a pro soccer player like I never was on like Club teams or anything so I like going into basketball like it was my hobby the sports but I didn't have the NBA dreams because I still was like I just want to be a YouTuber that's what I was focused on and when did the when did the videos start making money like were you 14 when all of a sudden you get like an AdSense check or did you not have monetization on or like when did you realize like oh actually this could be a job I well I think it was so the year as I was 2K14 like a th views vide so you're really not making like anything but I think the that next year my videos went from like a th to like 100,000 pretty fast all of a sudden still 2K or were you doing yeah so like when 2K14 when the new one 2K15 came out my views just they just did way better all of a sudden I went from like a th000 to 100,000 videoos so that it was in 2015 so I guess it was a sophomore I started making like money off ad AdSense M interesting and so like when you're playing games uh on YouTube like there's no content ID rights from the game like the game's not claiming your content you can just monetize playing games why do you think you had that jump from a th000 to 100,000 is it just because there was a new game and not that many people were making videos about it I think the reason my channel got popular is cuz if you think about the NBA 2K Community back in like 2014 it's very like you know Chris Smooth it's just like not really any editing just cut CS like post commentary not even showing FaceCam but at the time like my favorite YouTubers too was like KSI roaa the FIFA community and if you watch the FIFA Community back in 2014 their videos were crazy edits like crazy Pace like these giant Wagers like such epic videos and then I was because I watched those videos I didn't watch 2K YouTubers I took like so much inspiration from them and then I brought it to 2K with my videos in 2015 I kind of like took their style emulated it into 2K and no one else had done that style and then that kind of became the style over time interesting because it was just the FIFA Community is always head of the 2K community on YouTube so it's like I was part of that catching up phase I guess or like helping bring that to that but I think that was the difference and like I was doing videos people hadn't done in the 2K community so I think that's what made the jump from like going up to like 100k video so was there a moment in high school where you're starting to get 100,000 views a video and you're sort of starting to care less about high school oh yeah yeah like yeah like soft once the video started doing like well and I was like oh my God like I I knew like once they getting 100K views a video like I could do this full time like that's enough to go full-time so yeah I mean I meaning from a revenue perspective enough to go fulltime well I mean I didn't I didn't know the numbers but I was like I didn't spend anything because I didn't know how to spend money like when you first start making money I've never spent money like that so I was just stacking the money um but yeah and then sophomore year junior year I was like I was definitely no like After High School I'm done I'm going to go do YouTube but then junior year I was like it's my I was looking at all the ways of not how to not go to school senior year so I found you could do a test and if you take the test it's all like the California high school exit exit exam you don't have to go senior year it's like a mini GED or something like that I don't know the specifics but I took that test so I didn't have to go senior year so I could just do YouTube full time and were your parents supportive of of that that yeah they're actually super supportive because my dad was supportive cuz he like saw I was making the money and then my mom wanted to move out of California at the time and so if I graduated year a year earlier she could move out a year earlier so she was like we need to do this yeah let's do this what what were the like AdSense check sizes at that time or do you remember the first one that came in where you were like oh wow that's that's like real money I genuinely don't remember the numbers I just remember when I moved out of that senior year like moved I moved into like a YouTube house or whatever I had like two or 300K in the bank from Wow from do two or $300,000 yeah just I never spent any of it besides packs on 2K I would spend a lot of money on that's crazy for a 16-year-old that's completely insane I was like 17 like after that summer of junior year I think I had that much money just sitting there oh so you were you were confident like you were like oh I can actually move out and pay rent and like do this yeah wow that's I mean that's really did you feel like oh yeah this is what I wanted to happen like this is what I expected to happen or did it feel like oh my gosh this is this super rare thing how did this happen to me I definitely always feel like that like the fact that I'm able to do this because this what I dreamed about doing so always feel like extremely blessed but yeah I would say I just always felt like I can't believe this happen I'm moving into a house like this is the dream be a YouTuber live with other YouTubers like I find for me it's a mix of the two of like I feel like we've had the confidence that like we would do something you know like we would make something happen we'll work hard over a number of years but even still to this day I'll like yesterday I'm just thinking to myself like I can't believe this like this is real this worked yeah this job is the biggest blessing like I still cannot believe it and I think the the other commonality amongst people who are successful on YouTube are people who have had years where they uploaded that no one watched MH because that means you're building a habit and you actually are into it like you're not there for the reward of people watching but like I remember when 300 people watched one of our videos and I was like laying in bed with my heart pounding being like 300 people and watched our video that is crazy gas go 301 when he used to go 301 plus remember that in the beginning and you'd be like 301 plus how many people could maybe there's thousands of people you got the 301 bro you were you were on top especially back then yeah totally wow that's that's amazing I think that's like one of the questions you know like a classic question about the internet now is that like not understanding why people watch other people play games you know that's like a classic kind of misunderstood part of the internet but it is pretty amazing the economy that was created by the allowance of play video games online right like NBA 2K just being like yeah that's good promotion for us that you're playing and you get paid to do it that's pretty significant like what an economy that was developed out of out of yeah out of thin air you know crazy I can't stop thinking too about the moment probably where you told your friends on the basketball team you weren't coming back oh I remember the end of junior year I didn't say anything to you Irish exited from high school my good friends I I told that I wasn't coming back but I didn't tell anybody else that's so funny wow like that's so interesting to me that you can like you stop playing the sport at the school but then you make videos about the sport yeah yeah yeah like junior year I didn't play on the basketball team cuz it just took up so much time I just wanted to make videos and then it would be like oh you have to go back to school for two hours for practice and be like bro like when you play on the team sometimes there's no time for anything but homework and sports so it's like I just couldn't play again yeah that's amazing so when you move into this house you're in like YouTube house with like other 16 17 year olds like no uh or was there like an adult no so I red did with Christopher London who we like he was also doing 2K videos at the time she might have been like 22 23 I don't know and then Zach who the traveling gamer who's bit my boy too but I remember I didn't even know Zach when he moved it Chris was just like oh my boy's going to move in I was like hell yeah like I seen one of his streams and then yeah so it was like the three of us all move moved in together and Zach it was so interesting he was an electrical engineer so he would just be gone for like 2 months and then he'd come back oh he had like a real job yeah so he still a real job at the time but he was also a streamer that was fun and is that when you transition from making gaming videos to more like IRL content like you're you're actually you know in the in the videos so that's I started experimenting with those but my a majority of my content was still like gaming 2K videos but I would do a lot of like sketches in the videos different things where I'd leave the room or like go film like a bit like oh me training doing push-ups at the park to get ready for this wager and just so I take the camera out a lot and then we started like experimenting doing like like we had a Mini Hoop in our house so we do like Dunk Contest like got it so many videos on the mini hoop in the house got it so did you grow exponentially once you were in a house and you're only focused on YouTube yes I moved in at like 600,000 subscribers when I moved in and then I think that first year maybe gain like another no my growth was never like too crazy um so I think that first house we kept moving houses but I hit a million subscribers like at the end of our lease in that house it maybe took like a year to gain like 400,000 maybe I think we're there for one year so yeah like a year to gain like 400,000 subscribers and is that house is that where your crew developed that like the two hype crew it was like the start of the start of it yeah yeah and that was obviously I would imagine as like a young person like it's very appealing to be like a crew oh yeah it's always better like I always push my homies to do YouTube and like and a lot of them do it full-time like my best friend growing up is a YouTuber we still make videos like every day together and then my brother does YouTube so I was like it's so much better be able to do stuff with your homies and like grow together than by yourself so I've always love like the doing stuff with others or having like connections with other creators it's been always an an important thing like creating a crew did that create any complications though as well of like we're now doing this as a business together not really cuz like the only reason we made the crew name is cuz like we we like we didn't start with a group Channel or anything thing we just were like okay we all make videos together we need a name cuz like everyone like because people would call us the 2K house that was like our first name and then we were like okay we don't want to be the 2K house like let's come up with our own name instead of being like 2K cuz that's like the the game of the games name so that was really the reason of like doing the group name and just so we had that and then it wasn't until like 2 years after we made a group Channel got it and what did you learn from I guess that experience of starting a group Channel and like what's that like I think the group it was definitely like just so much fun having the group but it was definitely like looking back we would film all of us it was like six to eight of us at the time we would all film in the same day just one video after another wow and I was like the first person to have a cameraman so he just film for everyone but those it was just so much fun cuz like the videos were like okay we're all going to sit on the couch play a game for 30 minutes we bang out like four couch videos now we're going to go to our backyard and we have the basketball and do four basketball videos and then we definitely we had that schedule going but like looking back it's like damn we were filming just all day for like eight channels what were you learning about fun what were you learning about YouTube at this time in terms of like what types of ideas could work or what the relationship was with the audience like were these foundational years of learning how to make a YouTube video guess yeah I think the so around like 2017 I would say this is time was like I never looked at the analytics at all like I never looked at a retention graph or anything like that and then how you were talking about basketball earlier Mato yeah so Mato like cold emailed me like yo I do analytics like we should work together during that time yeah wow wait so that was in like 2017 yeah for you guys who don't know Mato uh is what Mr Beast Chief strategy officer now something like that yeah yeah he must have been super young at the time too he was in college okay um but yeah he messaged me he was like do you want to do like analytics reports and then he did one for me and he was like your real life basketball videos get three times the views of your other videos and I was like oh [ __ ] let me just do real life basketball videos this month and I only did real life basketball videos that month and it was like my record views for the month and I was like oh I should probably look at analytics like that's crazy an interesting thing that like a stranger will reach out in this industry just because there are people who are passionate about it who will like just go out of their way to like help you no strings attached sort of at that time yeah and then I just started working with him like just paying him to do analytics really I didn't know that yeah wow go back interesting we go way back I thought we were all just teammates in Montana know you guys had history we've been plotting that game for a long time uh that's really cool um so with with that change uh what changed with like either the business or the impact that you were seeing in front of your eyes like were people starting to recognize you like crazy like what what happened there now you're on camera yeah now you're on camera people like really recognize your face and you're growing a lot I think once we did like the group videos and it was like cuz it's not only like my videos I'm in I'm also in like eight other people's videos like we definitely get it recognized a lot especially if we go anywhere Bast related like cuz we would go to like at the time we lived next to Chino Hills and lamelo ball was like going crazy so we would go to his games and do like Vlogs just that was the video just go watch the game Vlog the video's done like it was so easy back then oh I miss those days but yeah we get recognized a lot at anything basketball related but if I went and did something non- basketball related I mean probably not get recognized yeah was there a moment like when a NBA player reached out for the first time where you were like oh my gosh this person's watching forget the year but ballis life this basketball company was having a they have their like balls life All-American Game with all the top high school kids and we went to the practice and dear and fox was there and me and Chris were like oh my God dear and fox is here like this is so cool and like we were like we have to say something to him so we like got our cameras and we went up to him and he's like oh what up jesser and Chris we were like what and he knew like all the different 2K YouTubers and he was just the nicest dude ever and it was just like the most surreal moment like oh my God de I think I titled my video like de Fox watches my videos question Mar Mark like from the Vlog I mean that's a crazy sense of validation and I always think about with YouTube creators like there's these almost like checkpoints that keep you going they almost give you like a power boost when these moments of validation happen it could be when you cross a million subscribers it could be um when you find out that someone watches your videos it could be like when you make a certain amount of money like what were those big moments of validation for you or like boosts for you was it finding out that certain people watched the channel number one was definitely a million subscribers yeah cuz that just took so long like seven years of uploading videos or something like that so that was always the big one and then I think 10 million was like the next one in terms of like the validation type of things so I would say the subscriber metric was definitely it interesting and as you start working with Mato are you starting to get more into the analytics or are you just listening to his ideas like is it just like his stuff was very analytical like all these spreadsheets numbers and he would just break it down in a call so that like I learned from him like oh we should look at this look at all these different things so what were those things like it was definitely like the I think the the study that I was saying earlier is he like put all the different types of videos I do and then the average views each one of those videos gets and then he showed that to me and I was like oh wow like why am I not doing more real life basketball like you should and I only did it for a month and it just went crazy so I think that is super helpful and that's the one I still to this day is like okay let me just organize which of these get the most views like organized by format yeah exactly yeah that feels like it's very right now like you're if you're watching a bunch of creators you start to recognize like once a format hits right whether it's $1 versus you know hundred million from Jimmy right like the $1 versus was a format that worked really well uh for him or Ryan tryan's like one star reviews and once you see one hit you see them that do like a ton of iterations of that and start to build upon that format feel like that's like the YouTube philosophy is like okay I don't know what your magic number is but it's like I'm going to do if I'm uploading seven videos five of them I know I've already done tested they do well two of them are experiments if the experiment does good do it one more time if it bangs twice it gets to that it adds to the bucket of these do good I'm G keep doing these it's just I feel like if you do that and you're constantly adding the experiments in there it's just the cyc that's that's the thing is The Balancing Act of I know this works and this is a brand new experiment cuz as you start to grow those experiments start to take on a new level of risk like was there ever a period for you as you're growing where you were like afraid to experiment or like felt like the stakes were really high like if you uploaded one bad video definitely I think for me that was getting out of gaming like out of 2K was really scary um especially more once I got into the analytics part of it because before like I thought about any analytics I wouldn't care I would just be like okay I'm going to do a vlog today or I'm going to try to bake a cake without instructors so whatever sounds R like I would just sit down in the morning be like what am I doing today but then when you see the analytic side of it it's like okay should know there's a real freedom to the life before you get there's such a creative freedom to that life I know once you get into it man you're just like but it works that's the thing I know but that's when you change from being like creative and free to being strategic and obviously this is a business and we're entrepreneurs so we're going to be strategic and a lot of us are also into like games and YouTube is this game where if you like tweak this thing then these this goes up and you're like oh that's fun I like it when the numbers go up and we trust those numbers at least a little bit more so than like it's hard to know how to read a certain amount of comments or see people tweet about your video and know you know in what that means stacked up to the next video or the video before that like the metrics are just all we sort of have right it seems like up to now like everything's pretty linear and growing up and to the right for you from zero to a million and and and a bit beyond M from 1 million to now to 18 million like what were the big were there big challenges yeah I would say there was definitely a moment where it was everything kind of changed cuz for let's say let's say like starting in 2014 on the main Channel like uploading a lot I think it's I was seven years in I was at like 3 million subscribers so it's a very like slow steady growth Community um but pretty much what happened is like I was like I want to grow like I see all these people growing I'm like I feel like I gained like 10,000 20,000 subscribers a month pretty consistently like every month for the last couple years and I was like I I H like am I not working hard enough what am I not doing so I was like I'm going to daily Vlog right I was like that's how you you can't work harder than the daily Vlog like that's that is a classic YouTube thought so I start doing the daily Vlog and instantly my view start dropping but I'm like whatever [ __ ] it next day you're not even worried about it cuz you're worried about the next day yeah and I'm like 25 days in and I get mono bro and I'm just out like I can't Vlog I'm in bed horrible sickness and in that did you do a mono Vlog I did bro I'm literally like at the doctor's office crying cuz I was like I can't do the Vlog anymore like I was like I was months of like I'm going to commit to this that's the universe though just telling you like hey pump the brakes yeah I'm lit crying on camera about being sick and not being able to continue just stop please stop the moment it was like the world was come down on me but it was a blessing in disguise cuz then when I was sick I was like you know what the the daily Vlogs really weren't working My Views are all down like and then that's when I started working with patty patty Galloway yeah the goat and then he was looking at my Vlogs and he basically like what stuck with me and I think that made the shift for my channel and everything he was like okay all your Vlogs are very catered towards your audience like daily Vlog is really like building it's just like you don't grow but you just you give your community it's like all inside jokes so I'm starting off the videos with inside jokes like and I'm watching these I'm like yeah if this is a new viewer like they not know what's going on or like they're going to leave and he was like okay you have to make videos that your current audience will like and new viewers will like and I never thought about that at all it's like 2019 or 20 maybe and then I basically after that I tried doing videos that I was like had really broad General appeal that new viewers would like and then the videos went from these daily Vlogs so we're doing like two 300K a video then to like very fast a million views a video what's an example of uh one of those titles that would be like more broad so I think the one that like Set It Off was like going to three NBA games in 24 hours it was like that was the first one that that just banged off the gate and that's the first jesser video I've watched which was I think it was more than that though it was more than three well yeah so three was part one then that bang let me do this again and again is that a concept that you came up with with Patty like in one of your sessions together or how' that come about I don't know where I thought of it I don't think it was in one of those sessions but I probably was like you should do this I could imagined but yeah that that's kind of what started it off was that video in particular yeah I I ended up watching that's my first video of yours I watched uh I don't remember which one it was but you go to a ton of games I don't know I go to so many go to so many this video and I was like this is an interesting con looking at the title and thumbnail it's it's interesting the title's interesting and it seems impossible so you and I think that's what makes a really good title thumbnail is it's like that seems impossible I think of it as like a um almost like a good packaging is like the magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat M where it's like okay I know that didn't just happen exactly like that but I enjoyed the illusion of it and a good title thumbnail is like an illusion where it's like I went to x amount of NBA games in in 50 hours and you're wearing like three you know jerseys and I'm like I I can't imagine that's exactly what happened but now I'm curious you know now I'm curious enough to click um so that's the one that got me that's the first one sense the one video I like let me make this for do viewers and it worked what were those sessions with Pat like like I I hear a lot about working with Patty Galloway and I I I'm intrigued by the fact that you grew up as as an athlete and into sports and you clearly have had different like coaches or like do do you think about it like that that like you're more receptive to working with someone like Patty because of your relationship to having coaching uh I never thought about it like that but I guess yeah I feel like sports is very like you have your coach you listen to them and I guess it's very similar like I've always tried to get like mentors and coaches so I feel like he was that for me yeah but I guess a session working with him is like he'll Break Down the video we posted so like just break it all down like what went wrong what was good about it so that was like a majority of the call and then you know presenting to him like what do you think of these new ideas and getting his thoughts there I mean that was the big one is just like breaking down the videos and like okay every video would be like what do we do how do we make this better next time because I remember and then he did it he showed it I was so hyped in his uh vids vid Summit oh yeah he did like a presentation thing and it was like they're going to three NBA games it's like the next one was going to five NBA games and it was like a 17-minute video and we fixed everything from the first one that he was like you could have done this better you could have done this better and then the retention was like 70% like a 17-minute video and it what were some of those fixes oh God what were they it's been so long um I think like I know one is like once I get to the final game just end the video cuz like you completed the challenge so it's like if you notice on all my videos once I get to the final Arena I'll literally end the video in the first quarter I be like I made it to the arena I'm out cuz people stopped I we noticed people stopped watching Once I completed the challenge basically if there's nothing else to wait for yeah unless you introduce something brand new you're like now that I'm at this Stadium or Arena I need to do X but if you don't do that then it's done yeah I think that was that was one that I remember that stuck out as like a learning okay let's try to do this next time right and then I think the other thing though like once it all clicked is like at the time that was right when I got my office space like a warehouse and that's also at the time where I started building out a team cuz I realized all the other YouTubers had a team like I remember I went to Preston's warehouse and this dud had like 20 people running around I was like real operation like what is going on what do these people do I'm like you're with like four people like then I was like okay I need to I need to make a team like I need to learn so I started like talking to other YouTubers who had teams and just like asking everyone like how do they do it what do they do what are all these people for so then I started like reinvesting everything into the team at the same time so then I had a bunch of great people around me like Patty and then a bunch of other people on my team who are amazing and then it became way more of like a group effort making these videos than just me and like were you doing all the editing or was you had a filmer editor before uh I was I wasn't editing at this point I stopped editing when I was around like 2 million subscribers I stopped editing got it mhm how how did you know like how to hire these people and what to pay them cuz like have a company yeah you're pretty young at this time I mean it's definitely just asking like what other people are paying and then I mean it was like a Trav I was like okay we got to get another PA he like oh my boy would be down so then we hired his boy and then like the other person was a childhood friend so it was just like people I knew I was like you want to come work for me and then over time you learned like to it's really just talking to people like friends of friends or like do you know anyone who would want to do this I think that's how he got like pretty much everyone in the early days was just friends of friends was there a moment where you know okay you've brought on a team and now you're thinking Beyond videos like you're thinking merch you're thinking events you're you're really trying to expand what the universe is yeah so I always had merch um since like 2016 and then it wasn't like I was doing it with another company called Ballers life and they were great um but it was like I didn't own the merch company it was kind of just like working for them my merch was on their merch site so then yeah building the team I was like okay I want to make the the basketball clothes bucket Squad um my own thing so that was like we stopped working with them and then made our own company for that so it's definitely thinking of like okay this is becoming a business and trying to learn like cuz I used to not think anything business like all my thought was like what video I'm making today but now definitely like as you get a team and you're managing all these employees and it gets bigger it's like okay it has to be a business now this is a business to yeah that's a funny moment because there is there is a time where you're just like making videos you're receiving I mean I assume primarily AdSense Revenue early on or did you have brand deals I had brand deals as well but ad revenue is always like 80% who was who was brokering the brand deals at the time were you signed yeah I was signed I was with long haul manag I know that is I don't know they do a lot of the basketball creators okay got they're like a sport mainly Sports I think they also do matat oh like matat and then basketball creators and butter yeah um I was with them for a while yeah it's interesting because like all of that happens with basically no overhead right like you're it's just you and your friend who's filming so like your profit margin is just like insane at that ER 95% Prof exactly it's completely insane so you don't really have to think and then as you get into hiring people all of a sudden your overhead is heavy it's like wait hold on I'm paying like five people every month so now this is a business and you also have editors which means um I don't know if you felt this but you're like now I have to make videos so they have something to do yeah shift yeah which is a funny shift yeah it's like now I'm like responsible for all these people's like livelihood if I stopped uploading or just went away so it definitely adds a layer of pressure it's definitely funny cuz it's like I feel like it's such a shocking moment for me was like learning oh like most big companies they have like 10% margins if that a lot of them are losing money and then I'm like oh my God like I've had this like 95% profit margin for all these years and now it's nowhere near that now I'm like more like a real company's Prof margin yeah it's weird because it's like there's there's such a beauty to that Simplicity and then there's this desire for growth like where do you think your desire for expansion and growth came because you there's a world where you could just kind of continue with a pretty small team you know and just make videos I think I really really wanted to hit 10 million subscribers like so bad so then I was like everyone all these people have 10 million they all have teams so like I got to level up adapt get a team so it was really like wanting to hit that Milestone was like the reason what would you say now is one of the uh biggest struggles you have in terms of like where you're at as a Creator is it you know having a big team is it getting access to uh the right people the right NBA players to be in your videos like what what is it now that you feel like man if I could just unlock that I feel like the thing that's been the biggest struggle for me for the last year and a half is like like having the right focus in terms of like I feel like I have so many different things going on that I'm not focusing enough and I even had a thought earlier this year like oh should I start another company or like a subscription service but I and then I came to the conclusion like no I can't spread out my focus anymore like it's already too thin so I think just feeling like I have enough time uh for each of the different things I'm working on has been like the biggest struggle like figuring out the balance between all those things a bit of it is like opportunity overload actually like there's a lot of opportunity [Music] a month a month okay try to do two shorts a week maybe more if I can and then 10 videos a month on the React channel 10 videos a month on react and that was a step we were originally to do 20 a month 20 a month but we decided to scale back after the spot Su CU everyone was like longer videos and our videos are like 8 to 10 minutes yeah that I I mean I think that is the current you know era of uh YouTube is longer form content which is interesting um like I I think we talked about it spot or Summit it was like 20 to 40 minutes it's like the sweet spot right exactly um but I imagine your reacts channel is probably the profit leader of your company in terms of AD Revenue yeah but it doesn't get anywhere near the sponsor deals of the main Channel but it does it makes more on added Revenue because they just upload more got it and so today with 18 million Subs like what does the company look like because you also recently hired a president I did which is a lot my boy Zach yeah Zach he's awesome um but that's like that's like a I don't know how else to say this but that's like a real adult employee you he's the oldest employe yeah but Zach's like a he's like a president who comes from I think he was at Spotify beforehand right like that's like a real yeah it's definely I don't know how else to put that but like that's like a grownup hire you hired a president of your company what does that even it's gone from like the jesser YouTube channel to jesser Industries yeah yeah what does that even mean and why did you get to a point where you're like you know what we need a president yeah so I felt like like we got to like zero to 10 million as a company but to get to 10 million to 100 million I was like I need someone who's very experienced in the business world and that revenue or subscribers I would just say like company or yeah Revenue company value got it like Z to 10 million you felt like you could do that yourself but 10 million to 100 million it's like I need we need yeah exactly so it's just like business opportunity like outside of them and then maximizing it is kind of like his goal and then also he's helping a lot with the content so it's like now we're like trying to pitch different show ideas with like a lot of NBA players have production companies so like okay how do I pitch them an idea so we're doing he's helping with stuff like that and then just different bigger projects but I really wanted to have someone who just was like at that level like who has been in the game and like just knows big companies or whatever and just like I want to like I want to grow the company as much as possible so does that take some weight off of you to hire a president like or were there responsibilities that you had that now you get to share with him or that he did yeah I think it definitely takes a weight off I mean what he's capable of doing I'm not capable of doing like he's like great at networking and just knows like business sense or like how we should structure our orc chart like I don't know I never went to business school I'm just guessing with everything yeah also like you got your friends coming to you if maybe they want to raise or they want to change in their their comp or like they're like hey jesser do we have health insurance it's like there's there's all these things that happen when you become a real company yeah we just got health insurance exactly see you got a grown up insurance we got benefits so if you want to work in bucket Squad we have benefits it's rare in the Creator space it is rare it's rare because like all of us just fell into this and we're like I don't know we don't know what we doingit 401K I don't know what that is but I have it yeah yeah I I think though like you know it's funny because you have that conversation of like okay yeah zero to 10 million and then 10 million to 100 million but I actually think in your situation there's this really interesting reality that in in our world like the product that you have is access to whatever your audience is and based on what that audience is or who that audience is is the potential value that your company can get to right and because your audience is Young sports fans I think the potential value is is so high because solving a problem for an industry that has a ton of money and needs to solve that problem right like the NBA and the NFL they need younger fans yeah their problem is definitely because genz is smaller generation than the generation before and they watch less of sports and it's like that's my audience he like those kids so so not only do you have a captive Sports audience a sports audience also is willing to spend money right like when when you grow up playing sports your parents will buy you equipment or like if you play basketball you buy shoes you buy Jersey you'll buy so like you have a um a crop of people where the financial decision maker um is is the kid but the financier is the parents which is a great scenario um and then you also have this captive audience that these people who have billions of dollars meaning the NBA and the NFL they're trying to access your audience so you are in this sweet spot where I I believe like your opportunity is immense right now yeah there's a lot of opportunity in the Sports World I think it's it's a bit of accessing your audience but also your knowledge and understanding of how you even acquire that audience right right because there's obviously something that they're not doing that you are doing what do you think it is about what you do uh that does actually attract that young sports fan that maybe the NBA hasn't done to date I think my content for those kids is just so much more like relatable and like kids don't really watch like full games anymore they like highlight so they like the fast-paced stuff and when like the YouTube content just faster paced and then like it's like for example I get like I'm just naturally hyped to see like these players like LeBron or I'm like oh my God that's LeBron but then if you watch any video it's like just an interview with LeBron just asking him questions but then it's like I'm it's just so much more relatable and it's like I've been blessed enough a lot of the videos are like what kids would dream to do like go to 3 NBA games that's like a dream like I've had parents come up to me and be like Oh my son B watch your videos and like we went to three NBA games like 30 hours we flying every and like oh the NBA should make like a they really want to do it they do they're just like the video they want to do what you've done I was going to say the if the NBA did like um partnered with an airline and it's like we'll get you to three games 250 people in a commercial airplane could pay some you know high price to go to three I bet you there'd be a ton of parents oh my God yeah and the NBA's I mean n has been great too like they work with me so much they've been such a blessing like so much of the content I'm able to do is because of them and like the relationship so I think they definitely like see it more than like a lot of the other sports leagues like trying to like have creators do things and work with creators like as much as possible every big event they're always bringing out creators so they're they definitely really are getting it yeah I think the NBA uh was quicker to understand social than than anyone else but I do want to just go back to something you said that I think is really important is that you bring the um childlike Wonder back to sports where it's like LeBron James is a superhero so like when you see him it's exciting right I think I think I understand what you're saying that it becomes very normalized when you're watching a game no one's excited to see LeBron they're just like yeah LeBron's there and he does something amazing and yeah the commentators especially people yeah who work for the network they're like this is part of my job I see LeBron every day let's ask him a question okay cool but you are that professional fan yeah we we get to live through you in that experience and be like oh my gosh yeah it is crazy to see LeBron like so I want to bring up you talked about form that work you know and like repeating those formats and then experimenting a format that really uh like captured my attention on your channel uh was this like secret NBA player meaning like guess guess the secret NBA player um where essentially there's there's a group of people they're all wearing masks one of them is an NBA player and then um the judges which is you your buddies and eventually Giannis and like NBA crazy um are guessing which one the NBA player is that is a fantastic format yeah shout out to Jubilee bro that's Jubilee Jubilee inspired inspired yeah I was just with Jason the CEO of Jubilee yesterday yeah they're awesome they're awesome so that was inspired by Jubilee oh yeah gu that's smart so how did that episode with Giannis specifically come together so that like getting Giannis in the video was definitely years in the making cuz like I I did a video with him at VidCon once like way back in the day where he like he came to vid he was Nike had a booth a basketball court and he like taught me out a Euro Step so I met him there and then I played in the celebrity game and then um him thanes Alex they were all the coaches for the celebrity game and then Alex was getting more into YouTube um his younger brother and we had collabed and then I was always like oh we got to get Yannis in a video and then just pitched him an idea and then Alex was just like yo Alex and yanis like yo we could do it on this date and at first I want to do like a real life basketball video but they were he couldn't do real life basketball at the time so I was like I had like a week to prepare guest the secret NBA player and I didn't know who was going to be the secret NBA player and I so you had Yannis booked I had Giannis booked but no one El no NBA player okay got it so then I was just struggling I messaged like hundreds of players on Instagram like just calling people's agents and stuff like please and it was so hard to find someone but finally I got an NBA player wow yeah so you didn't like hit up the NBA to be like hey because I guess if it's an official like n collab it' be more complex yeah a lot more complex got it but it was crazy like he literally came all the way down to my warehouse which is not close to La it was it was super coolow he was super nice he's I love him he's goated do you see that format is that like a big format for you this year or when do you abandon a format when do you when are you like we've done that enough I guess I'm G to stop banging the video St doing well like I want to do more of those it's just really hard to coordinate those um so like I just locked in a judge for one so I'm like okay now I need to find a secret NBA player like I want to do guess the secret NFL player oh that's um maybe just like guess the secret pro athlete or and then have it could be any sport but yeah I definitely want to do more of that format it's just there's a lot of formats on my channel that do super super well but require like I guess like celebrity guest talent and then those videos it's like I want to do more of them but it's I'm trying to be better at networking and figure it out but it is hard especially like it's during the NBA season sure okay so like everyone's kind of like booked off m is there any structure around how you come up with ideas you know you say that's Jubilee inspired but is there like a Monday meeting where you're pitching ideas and people bring that to the table or is that just something in your head oh that'd be cool uh yeah so the team we have we have just like a ideas meeting and then everyone will just come with like two ideas flushed out and a ton of great ideas have come from my team that I never came up with we don't do that every week but we try to do that more often now and then the great ideas will come from that and then I'll always just be thinking of ideas all the time and then it's just a mix of the two for ideas when when Zach came in and you have a president now did he look at your like operation and like a week in the Life at bucket Squad and did he make changes of like now we're GNA operate like this no not not really he he was like okay coming into this business like the content side of it is doing extremely well like I'm going to try not to touch that at all he's not involved in besides coll getting colls so he kind of just like whatever working working I don't need to touch this was like his you guys are making like 20 what like 25 28 videos a month with you include shorts with shorts and re yeah so it's kind of just like you guys you guys do that like you you have enough to focus on yeah I mean that's enough to focus on for for a team and how big is the content team so on the main channel it's probably let me think like seven people in person and then like four editors four or five editors wow so maybe like 12 just for the main Channel wow yeah it's a lot of a lot of people yeah and are you managing those people or do you have producers that manage oh no we have other people that manage got it yeah wow that's crazy I'm curious you said you make two shorts a week what's the case for shorts I feel like we're sort of fighting to convince ourselves uh to prioritize shorts a little bit here what do they do for you how do they fit in well for me shorts are just like I would have never been a 10 million subscribers 18 million subscribers without shorts like shorts carried my channel past 10 million subscribers so like for me that's why I wanted to do it because I was like okay I want to get to the 10 million Mark like a lot of subscribers and it's funny cuz like I feel like I've heard on y'all's podcast is a lot of creators feel like the subscriber number is a vanity metric or whatever but it's like brands feel that way yeah that's so that's why I feel like it's still valuable but I mean it's really just like do you want to get more subscribers and you should do shorts and now it's interesting like seeing everyone go into dubbing is like the next phase and it's like if I could dub my shorts then people will will have people see shorts way more than videos like they get so much more views so it's like if I could do shorts in other languages now then people will see me in that language then see the long form so I guess if you're dubbing that could be a case of like going hard on shorts so you could like once you do go into the other language there's a way for people to find you easier is is a way to look at it but I mean I struggle with it too because I I was playing like five shorts a week last year in Q4 so but now I'm going down to two yeah what makes a a viral short you or like for you specifically do you have like because I watched the one where you um we were talking about it this morning where you throw the football over the house that's funny yeah I think definitely one thing that makes him go viral is if you don't have any speaking in it and it's like physical comedy cuz then all the languages it cuz those videos like my shorts that have the most views those over the house football throws have so many views from India really maybe that's why I like it it's just something in my DNA that makes me like that short they're they're language agnostic they don't even need dubing I mean that's why cobby lame is like so popular I mean blowing up the basketball is another great one great short it's just like oh yeah you could turn the sound off and I'm just G to watch until you blow this basketball up I feel like most of my viral like shorts it starts with like a question and then the video just answering that question and people just want to know the answer it's like it going be the dumbest stuff too it could be like how many layers of tape does it take to stop a human and is just one layer two layers five layers it always ends with someone just getting hurt yeah it is it is relatively simple I think that the interesting thing is probably you know when I think about I'm curious your perspective on the future of of sports entertainment like where does it go um and is it actually is is it actually presently a problem you know that that young kids aren't watching full games if so what what happens next like what happens to the way we watch sports is it is it going to be like five different streams where I can hear you and your buddies doing the commentary for a game is it actually everyone's G to watch it in shorter bits because it feels like again like the NBA the NFL a lot of people are trying to solve this problem of like how do we get people to watch these games like are full games still going to be highly coveted or I think the full games will always be there but to your point how it's like oh you could watch the game while I'm doing it or how Dude Perfect does theirs and like if you haven't seen that dude perfect for those watching will you can watch the NFL game while they're doing challenges on Amazon I think it is football yeah and then they have like the Nickelodeon version for the kids and I think they're just going to keep doing alternate methods of watching the game like even now Kevin Hart's doing one for NBA oh really mhm where he has separate stream uhuh but it's on TV it's like a whole channel it's just an all stream of him interesting so that will definitely continue to be a thing I think people will just the younger generation will consume on social apps more than TV so that's where like TV's just struggling but they're still consuming it but just not in those long sessions more like like NBA cutdowns those get a million views a day like all the time every day of just the highlights of games yeah I'm sure the challenge though for the NBA there is that that's not as monetizable mhm right cuz the live game is where Big Ticket advertising gets sold because it's it's Aven tized it's like everyone's eyeballs are on this live game it's uh you need more Super Bowls right like highlights of the Super Bowl are not as monetizable as the Super Bowl and NBA is trying like you see the inseason tournament that used to be not a thing that's like a big thing to sell advertising to and like people want to see who's going to win that Championship do the games need to be shorter no I don't think so I don't think you can mess with the Integrity of the sport with it is that don't find that NBA games specifically are that long games when you go they're over before you know it's more games are long do you think those need to be shorter or like because I'm also a purist like I when I watch sports like I grew up on on watching sports like I want to keep them as is but I also look at like this next Generation that's would prefer to watch jesser than a full NBA game how does the NBA yeah I feel like you can never like adjust with the that type of things like the nature of the sport like it has to be what it is also for like record everything and I don't think they would ever touch that but I think it is a real challenge like it is for these the big giant sports leagues they're really trying to figure it out but I mean they do a great job of posting content on social they all are like like the NFL and Taylor slip they're like attacking that like they're doing a great job dude what a moment for the NFL like they couldn't that's like they brought up Taylor Swift so much if we find out in like three years that that was actually a brand deal oh my God like the NFL pitched and they were like listen Taylor you're going to date one of the Stars that's going to make it into the super Super Bowl like that's like the storyline is unbelievable but like the NFL can't Bank on this storyline yeah year after year unless they start you know crafting these crafting these I think the leagues are doing the best they can like they're like NFL's got or I don't even know that's the NFL or Amazon I guess it would be Amazon more than the NFL like doing the Dude Perfect stream or like I think they they are trying their best to figure it out but it is it is hard to like get people to watch full games I I think what I like about NFL cuz I just got into NFL this year it's like I like that all the games are on Sunday so I got Red Zone and it's like constantly the best moment of each game like I love watching NFL Red Zone but the full games unless it's like my team I'm not as or it's like playoffs I'll watch all the full games but but you know I just watched the um like the Pro Bowl weekend the skills competition for the NFL and it's like it's interesting but some of it is just continuously too complex like what you just said about CHS being like it's a really simple question and when you look like destroying with one-on ones that's like he boiled something down to a really simple form this guy is going to guard this guy one of them is g to win yeah and then it repeats over and over right so there's like it's basically he's introducing a question two guys line up who's G to win you gotta watch right and so I think that uh the NBA the NFL as they look at like ancillary content shoulder programming how to get new viewers like everything you've said in this conversation is something that programming people or um people at those leagues should be thinking about okay we have to feed our core fans right and we have to attract new viewers yeah the same thing exact same thing right like it's it's we're all in the same business uh we're all in the business of capturing audience um and I feel like they they have a lot to learn from people like yourself and and D um I think the biggest competitive Advantage for creators is that we can change the format it's like you can't change the length of an NBA game or an NFL game you can't change the rules but D has no problem getting people together and doing a one-on-one competition to win money right like we have the option to make all of these mini games that can be experiments that that will reach those new audiences yeah yeah yeah right yeah it's definitely interesting I'm curious when you think about like from from 10 million to 100 million what does it take to get there for your company is it you know building out products is it building Brands like what what comes alongside the media I feel like it will never be off ad new getting to that point so it has to be those different things so it's like for me hopefully it's like trying to get bucket Squad apparel as integrated into the basketball Community it's just like yo that's a dope basketball brand not that's jesser merch or anything so like trying to build that up is like the main thing is like building as a legit brand like our products are amazing just doing that and then yeah other products like we're doing a hoop I was telling you about we're doing a Mini Hoop in Walmart and that one's like jesser branded that's going into Walmart in Walmart oh wow let's go cool that's awesome I mean that's crazy when is that happening uh mid April we're have that yeah so that would be like Jer branded oh yeah you guys have you got to put it up there branded Mini Hoop that's cool in in all Walmarts uh it's I think like half cuz a lot of the Walmarts like grocery stores okay yeah but so I have to do well with that product I'm like I have to sell this out cuz if I can sell it out I can get multiple products you have to send us one oh 100% that's cool can you talk about uh the shoes or no oh bug SWAT shoes uh yeah I could talk about them because that like I saw those and I was like oh those are cool and that's hard like basketball Sho so they were not they were not basketball shoes I will say that they were trainers okay and then for that a company approached me soul Savvy and was like hey would you want to do your own shoe and I was like of course I want to do my own want to do their own shoe and then um they made a shoe for another Creator before that too um but yeah and then did the shoe got to like pick out all the materials all the little details to make it special to me and then that was just super cool cuz like all my Idols have shoes yeah of course that I look up to so I was like I got my own shoe do you see that as becoming like a a big part of what bucket wild does shoes I feel like in the next like year year or two probably not cuz it's like a one time we just wanted to do it um but I would love to offer basketball shoes one day and my dream would be like like oh I'm bucket Squad sponsor some NBA players and they're wearing the bucket Squad shoes in games but I feel like that's definitely like years down the line cuz it's it's like starting a new basketball shoe brand it's okay it's like my competitors Nike but you look at right now like again we're talking about how Sports entertainment reaches a younger audience Mr Beast is sponsor of the Charlotte Hornets right with feasts uh but it's the Beast logo on their Jersey right yeah which is wild and then uh Prime is now the official drink of the Lakers right and so and I think there's like there's definitely a lot of incentive for the league and the teams to partner with creators because it comes with added marketing um so you never know that's the dream that would definitely be the dream again you're in a really good spot for that to happen so um yeah it's interesting that apparel is is a big piece of that uh I I forgot to ask this uh to you but I was curious if you remember your first brand deal and like what that experience was like I do what was your first brand deal so I forget the name of an app but it was a basketball app right and they promised me a collab with Andrew Wiggins for it and then like they they were like it was the day to shoot and they were coming to my house for and they were like oh actually Andrew Wiggins couldn't show up I still had to do this ad and the whole video was like a skit ad for the company oh the entire video and I like didn't get I got paid like absolutely nothing I was like oh my God I get to make a video with an NBA player like this is going to be the best thing ever and then yeah they scammed me pretty much cuz Andrew wi was never there it's a bad Bas it was a bad first experience on brand deals oh interesting and now are do you have like are you building your own internal sales team or do you work you still work with external representation yeah external representation I feel like that's that's another level I don't I don't know if I'm there yet yeah I mean it's it's it's interesting I've been thinking about it quite a bit as like you know traditional representation is Talent representation or even like I'm sure your dad had representation as a right where it's here a single that we represent to do a CFT but what's interesting is actually building companies so now we have representation that represents our whole company kind of right Well's interesting CU like like I work with night right and then they all the brand deals anything YouTube related that's all them but then like I'm like apparel is like my thing for sure so like you have too much overhead yeah to to deal with like you you can't really pay a a high percentage to a representation when like you get a brand deal let's say you get a 100K brand deal right you have you you named 15 people who work on your main channel so you got to pay their salaries too yeah so like you're also paying the representation a commission uh but they're taking commission off the top so now you have you know 85 to spend on everything and you have so much you start to get so much expense that that's where I get curious if if creators are starting to think about that now I would say like I think no matter what what you're paying a high fee for someone to help you do sales uh but I've just been fascinated by that thought of like how Partnerships come together in the future of this because we're not we're not just Talent getting placed into a movie or getting placed into a thing we're like yeah it's a whole company it's a whole company it's not like yeah it's it's it's interesting it is very interesting yeah do you have a dream collaboration in mind that you know if you were able to get that collaboration with a certain format a certain concept it would be your most watched video yes LeBron James LeBron like if I got a LeBron collab like no one has ever done a LeBron James collab YouTube video that would be the most legendary thing I ever do I think there is a photo of you like playing a carnival game with him but you're like down on the edge you seen that yeah that the story behind that for Space Jam they like rented out the entire park was it Universal yeah Universal and then that was a crazy night cuz just so many celebrities were there it was it was ridiculous but LeBron I saw him walking over to the games and I like rushed to that corner seat cuz I was like bro if I if I win I'm making a video like I beat LeBron James won in this game or something but then I neither of us won what do you think you would make if LeBron's like hey man I got an afternoon I'll come over if I could just do like a shooting challenge with him or it doesn't even have to be crazy it could literally just be like a shooting competition feel like oneon-one one one one would be super fun one-on one would be the best video ever yeah and some level of like high stakes one-on-one would be interesting you know like yeah yeah you you played in this Creator Cup right which is the NBA is it is it an NBA like sponsored thing or is it yeah so for the NBA's inseason tournament that they just did this year they wanted to test like a Creator match so they we it was on the NBA's court they put it together and we all had like NBA jerseys on it was just straight creators and we just they had like a celebrity game typ where there's like challenges in the game and different fun things like that but got to play in that that was really cool do you think the NBA continue doing stuff like that like is that yeah I think they definitely should and I think they could just make it a way bigger event because like the Celebrity Game always is great yeah and like at in season tournament like why not add on a Creator version of that and get like the biggest creators in the world and sell it out the siden football charity match is something to look at right would you ever play in that by the way oh bro I I want to play it excit let me know I'm ready cuz you're you're a soccer guy you I love soccer like you could ball in that oh yeah that's my goal I was literally planning like once they get closer to the announce I'm going to I've been practicing my juggling so I'm going to do a video anyone from the Sidman is watching yes I'm going to do a video where I'm just juggling like the ball the whole time and I'm like I've been playing soccer my whole life you guys keep lose or the YouTube Allstar team is always trash many people actually play soccer or I'll call call it football so they don't get offended football but that's crazy like they're packing out stadiums like I feel like there's a basketball version of that in the family did it at St Center they sold the whole thing out back in the day but true like I would love to do that and that's something I've always wanted to do is host my own Creator match and make it a really big thing and it's just it's just a lot to put on but it's on the bucket list for sure there's one business that I like if I can pitch you a business and I'm curious if you've thought about this um like basketball camp have you thought about that I have thought about that and and what are the like what's stopping you from doing it or or is it something that you want to do I'm I'm going to do a little like a clinic later in this year with the Knicks so we're going to test that out see how that does but it's just like figuring out like the logistics of that like probably have to partner with someone who does camps but it's definitely been on like the company ideas list has been like basketball camps for sure you're definitely like the internet's camp counselor I feel like when it comes to basketball yeah and if there's like uh you know content side of that I think like the thing that's interesting about someone like you is that the kids would come to basketball camp obviously to play basketball but if there's an element of it too where they come home with like a a cool video or learn more about how to make their own basketball videos if you add like a Content element to that now you're speaking to like kids into basketball and every kid who's into YouTube and social media like that's if they get to play some of the games that you play and like take part in those it's more about fun than it is necessarily about like being the best basketball player mhm one idea I always wanted to do was like Top Golf like a basketball version of Top Golf I thought that would be so fun where it's like you got the bar food and then it's like the hoop but it's like a bowling alley so all the balls come back to you and you could do like three point all different challenges we do in the videos like Moneyball and all that and like hoops at varying distances yeah like maybe the hoop backs up and like the ri can change sizes and it's just absolutely crazy I feel like that's a video you should make that would be sick too start with a video like I like make the Prototype do a video and then but then it's like oh my God now I have to figure out restaurant games business like that would I don't know where to start these things sound amazing I'm like okay how would I actually is that a business I really want to be in I have no idea what's the pie chart of the business right now is it still primarily advertising and brand deals or is merchandise and like bucket Squad starting to become a bigger portion of it yeah that's definitely becoming a bigger portion I would say like I mean I could be totally wrong but maybe like ad revenues like 50% then brand deals is like 30% and then the apparel is like 20% maybe something like that okay yeah I would say how would it looks did that equal 100 I wasn't I hope so yeah it did it did 503 yes yes yep we'll cut that part out yeah what advice do you have for someone who's just starting out on YouTube right now I would say my number one advice if you're just starting out is literally just have like fun with it do make videos with your homies because it's more fun to make videos with your friends and then do it for that reason and then event like you got to fall in love with it cuz I see so many people start and they're starting off with these videos that are like very Trends they're just like trying Trends they're just doing it really bad and it's like some of these can't even be fun to fill yeah so I would say just like literally just have fun with it is the number one thing and don't make anything you're not having fun with because that it's just you're going to quit so I think that's the most important thing that's good advice if you could pitch the NBA or NFL like a YouTube series that they should be doing oh that they should be yeah what do you think it would be like if the leagues are watching like how should they change up their YouTube strategy oh on YouTube yeah or maybe it's on TV like what should they be doing differently from a media and content perspective oh wow that's a good question um I feel like if you think back to covid right the bubble yeah all the players started vlogging on their own like Javale McGee was doing a vlog matis thy and like the content coming out of the bubble was so amazing it's just hard because it's like the NBA can they tell players to do that it's kind of like the players have to want to do it but as the generations get younger and younger I think more and more players you'll see are like live streaming on Twitch or making YouTube videos like that so it's finding out just any ways they can to empower the players to make the content because at the end of the day people watch like for the players it's like especially NBA player driven like an athlete Agency for YouTube channels where like athletes can come to you to like learn how to do YouTube no I probably would never do that got it does anything like that exist or there's agencies out there that manage uh social media for strictly like athletes I know there's a lot of those that they help out with that that I've seen and I yeah over the years but I mean if someone asked me I might help them but I feel like that would be that's just like another that was the focus the focus I'm like pitching you all these things but this is like yeah I think the natural state of a Creator is like you're a Creator you want to cre and then once find it's overwheling to like I need to feed this thing so my mind goes I like if I were the NBA or the NFL I would look you guys have ideas I'm I would look at what's happened with new heights with Jason and Travis Kelce and and look at a player podcast and think okay how can we help players make that possible help put them on the right path you know I mean I think right now the NFL and the NBA YouTube channels are just they're flooded with highlights and content and they maybe they have to be but I definitely think they can start helping to uh get athletes started up with new channels that maybe they're partnered into um yeah like right it doesn't have to be the the let's say the NBA we're talking about it doesn't have to be their socialist it can be their player socialist is all it all goes to the NBA at the end of the daying them you think about what we did at at spotter Summit like if the NBA hosted a summit where they brought like a bunch of content creators and a bunch of athletes who are interested together to like brainstorm for a weekend or something and just like we present some stuff to them around like how do you how do you do this and what are you are you interested in podcasting are you interested in like making short form are you interested in like long form because it's it's probably overwhelming for an athlete to be like all right I got I got a buddy who films maybe he could film me I don't know you know it's like is that how it works I I think it's tough too it's like a lot of them like some of the top players don't even have Instagrams and stuff it's what the heck like they just don't care at all and then it's like they also they a lot of players have grown to hate the media too sure so that's also a tough thing so it definitely would have to be the players that want to do it the younger players at least so it's so it's like a hard it's a hard question they may not even have the opportunity to your point though to learn what they would like right like there's no space or time in their schedule I'm sure to like meet with people like you and be like what formats are out there right what could be sustainable for me that I would like to do whether I'm playing in the NBA or after I'm done MH I'm pitching it right now to the NBA give us a call NBA times Creator Summit I saw that the NFL right that did they did the quarterbacks one where they followed the quarterbacks and now they're doing that for NBA oh they are I'm pretty sure oh cool I love dos like that those are my favorite like the Jordan do like sports media doesn't get better than like top players yeah but the the amazing thing is just back to your point of like question answer like sports just starts with a question like a game just starts with a question who's going to win exactly and then you build Stakes on top of that well if they win then this happens if they win then this happens and like and then this player you know has this narrative and this player has this so it's like the best packaging for St course is always a story every game is a story I love it I love it so much um well cool man where where do you think you're going to be at the end of this year subscriber wise if you're still you're still like kind of pushing on that I well I'm slowing down on shorts uploads so hey if we hit 25 million that would I'd be over the moon that would be insane I mean that's that would be the goal crazy and what's the reacts Channel at right now I think we're at like 2. 4 million do you see yourself going hard at reacts the whole year or do you are you I'm just trying to consistently do 10 just every month yeah just that for the whole year there so many yeah I mean cool man that's awesome yeah hey y'all are the best dude thank you so much for the time I'm excited to see what's next I I really am very intrigued by the business you're building and like the opportunity in sports so I want to come check out your space yeah I'd love to come check out yeah you have a warehouse that's like what is it 10,000 sare feet 10,000 sare ft that's crazy SI and you film out of there yeah we're there like 5 days a week there all day yeah 100% what it's like an hour and a half maybe from La do you rent it or did you buy that where I rent it you rent it okay that' be sick one day hopefully come I gotta get better at basketball because if we get called up to like a crater cup I just I got to get better I just got to get on the court man I got to make I just got to make a squad you know I'm just trying to bench War I didn't even break a sweat you know I'm trying to get on the court yeah um cool man well thanks thanks dude all righty see you [Music]

Channel: Colin and Samir

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Id: 9mO1yp3JFo0

Length: 83min 34sec (5014 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 01 2024