Speaker 1: Break with breaking down all the biggest NBA storylines. You
Speaker 1: tuned in to the Heat Check. The Heat Check was
Speaker 1: just a crazy, the best podcast covering all the drama
Speaker 1: around the association.
Speaker 2: I read that it takes you eight hours somewhere between
Speaker 2: eight and twelve hours to go from ideation to publish
Speaker 2: for one video.
Speaker 3: Is that true?
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, depending on the size of the video. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I write pretty fast. Now, I've done over a thousand
Speaker 1: of these. So actually getting the idea, I have like
Speaker 1: a solid filter for what's a good idea and what's not.
Speaker 1: It's probably the most important thing to have. Then, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm writing the script or a guy on my team
Speaker 1: writes the first edition of the script, I'm make an edit,
Speaker 1: I film it that The filming process is actually really quick.
Speaker 1: I'll hammer out a video in like four minutes, but
Speaker 1: I sent it off to my editing team, who are beasts.
Speaker 1: These guys are the best and they'll spend full shift
Speaker 1: on it. So they'll spend eight hours editing this, you know,
Speaker 1: one minute video.
Speaker 2: Wow, So okay, So you guys all get together for
Speaker 2: the ideation first or just just like walk me through
Speaker 2: the granular steps of how that happens.
Speaker 1: From all over the place. Like I saw, for example, today,
Speaker 1: I saw a post from ESPN NFL. It was a
Speaker 1: quote from DeMarcus Ware and it was talking about Micah Parsons.
Speaker 1: He has all the tools to be Lawrence Taylor. I
Speaker 1: was just having a conversation with my dad last night
Speaker 1: about how the NFL is hell bent on making Micah
Speaker 1: Parsons and the Lawrence Taylor. They are going so far
Speaker 1: with this thing. So when I see that post today
Speaker 1: on my Instagram feed, I'm like, Okay, that's just ammo.
Speaker 1: Now I have like a visual aid to put into
Speaker 1: this script. It's going to look even better now. I'm
Speaker 1: reinvigorated to write this thing. I got some of my
Speaker 1: thoughts out with my dad last night. Let's write this.
Speaker 1: I write it, I film it, I get to the team.
Speaker 3: How long did it take to write the script?
Speaker 1: Thirty minutes, not roughly when you edit.
Speaker 3: The script or someone writes the first edition.
Speaker 2: And I know this is like very granular, but I
Speaker 2: think it's super important for people who want to be creators.
Speaker 3: What are you looking for to be in the script?
Speaker 2: Because I read in this interview, but I also just
Speaker 2: based on what I know you've got some of the
Speaker 2: best hooks, meaning the thing that gets viewers listening and
Speaker 2: interested and not to swipe left or rights or out
Speaker 2: of there. Like, So what's the most important thing for
Speaker 2: you when you're building that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a fine line you got to walk. You
Speaker 1: can't be so sensational and be like this is the greatest,
Speaker 1: you know, all this stuff, because then you're gonna lose
Speaker 1: people's trust. It's probably not the greatest, the most crazy
Speaker 1: thing ever you heard. And I see people who do that,
Speaker 1: and you know, I don't think it's sustainable. So you
Speaker 1: got to give people something without giving them the whole thing.
Speaker 1: You have to make it exciting without making it sensational.
Speaker 1: It's a balancing act. You have to weigh these things
Speaker 1: and be like, Okay, how can I not give up
Speaker 1: enough information here but still gain their interest and still
Speaker 1: make them need to watch the whole video, which I don't.
Speaker 1: Some people have a problem. They call that clickbaiting and stuff.
Speaker 1: I really don't think it is. Like I think of
Speaker 1: my story structure in a lot of the same ways
Speaker 1: that like movies are written. There's context, there's characters, there's setting,
Speaker 1: there's tension. A movie wouldn't be fun if they just
Speaker 1: gave you the ending right away. You know, you got
Speaker 1: to you gott add some build up here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you have to say, hey, like check this little
Speaker 3: that trailer.
Speaker 2: The trailers wouldn't exist if we didn't have to draw
Speaker 2: people in.
Speaker 3: So how many people do you have working with you
Speaker 3: on your staff right now? And how did it?
Speaker 2: How did it go from you by yourself in La
Speaker 2: to now you having a little squad.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll start in La. I tell people this all
Speaker 1: the time, like, you don't I got the nice mic
Speaker 1: right here, so do you? You know you don't need
Speaker 1: this stuff. But the biggest mistake some of these newer
Speaker 1: creators make is they want to buy everything right away.
Speaker 1: I had an iPhone seven. I used like a suction
Speaker 1: cup and put it on the wall and use the
Speaker 1: front camera. It was nice and sunny in La, so
Speaker 1: I was near a window, didn't need any lighting. But
Speaker 1: I couldn't film it was dark. You know, I had
Speaker 1: to get I had a little window here, but you
Speaker 1: know I had a fifty dollars mic from Target. I
Speaker 1: did have a MacBook Pro, but that's it. Like, you know,
Speaker 1: I just cleaned up the room that I was living
Speaker 1: in so it didn't look messy for people, and made
Speaker 1: the videos. You know, it's a low barrier entry nowadays.
Speaker 1: You don't need to have all this fancy stuff. You
Speaker 1: gotta slowly, slowly level up.
Speaker 2: You use like whatever final cut or you edited in
Speaker 2: post correct. You wouldn't just do straight to camera post
Speaker 2: on TikTok. You would do straight to camera, upload the
Speaker 2: MacBook Pro and then put what we call b roll in,
Speaker 2: which is the video footage that you have overlaying your audio.
Speaker 1: Right. Yeah, So I had all these skills. Like I
Speaker 1: said at the top, I've been making these videos since
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. I used to use Windows movie Maker.
Speaker 1: You know, that was the worst thing ever iMovie some
Speaker 1: of these programs. Then I went to final cut. Now
Speaker 1: I'm at Adobe Premiere, so I know how to use
Speaker 1: all this stuff. I had those skills. The skill I
Speaker 1: really didn't have at the beginning was being on camera talking.
Speaker 1: I never did any of that. I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I got zero followers, Like, no one's going to see this,
Speaker 1: you know, like who cares. It's like my friends don't
Speaker 1: even have TikTok yet. It's pretty early. So I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know like, even if if I'm terrible here, no
Speaker 1: one's going to see it. Sure enough, my first video
Speaker 1: gets one hundred thousand, and I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, at least I got the stats to back
Speaker 1: it up. Now if I'm terrible.
Speaker 2: Interactive media major in College of Miami of Ohio. I
Speaker 2: think the thing that's interesting to me is that it
Speaker 2: feels like, just from moment one, you kind of just
Speaker 2: knew that this was your game plan.
Speaker 3: Like what is that program? What did you learn? How
Speaker 3: much of that do you use every day?
Speaker 1: Now I'm one of the few people who really uses
Speaker 1: their major, at least like from my friends in college.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it did feel right. I didn't know Miami
Speaker 1: had this major when I went there. I was undecided
Speaker 1: and I was going to try and get in the
Speaker 1: business school. You got like a Dean calc. That wasn't happening.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be an entrepreneurship major. It wouldn't let
Speaker 1: me be an entrepreneurship major. Like makes no sense to
Speaker 1: me at all, but you know, it's all for the best.
Speaker 1: I find interactive media. I finish out that major, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't really any job for me. Like I came
Speaker 1: out of college and I was jobless for six months.
Speaker 1: It sucked, like I felt pretty bad about myself. To
Speaker 1: be honest, all my friends were like working making money.
Speaker 1: I was like, damn. I went for an interview as
Speaker 1: like a loan support analyst. That was painful. I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I cannot. I hope they don't offer me this job.
Speaker 1: I do not even want to have to say no
Speaker 1: to them. So, you know, shout out to all the
Speaker 1: loan support analysts out there, no disrespect. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: for me. Finally found the thing at Clutch Points and
Speaker 1: you know that wasn't for me either, But you know
Speaker 1: I learned a lot of valuable things there and part
Speaker 1: of ways and do my own thing in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: So for.
Speaker 2: Those who don't know, my man Frank Smith was running
Speaker 2: the socials for Clutch Points and killing it there.
Speaker 3: And what I thought was interesting was the interview that
Speaker 3: I that.
Speaker 2: I read was that they were totally fine with you
Speaker 2: doing your own thing while you were working there until
Speaker 2: you surpassed them. What was that like conversation like and
Speaker 2: what did that sort of teach you?
Speaker 1: That was wild? That made no sense to me at all,
Speaker 1: Like I wanted to win so bad. I'm a competitive person.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to win. When I was there, I
Speaker 1: was like, we got to do new stuff, We got
Speaker 1: to be more creative, we got to like, we got
Speaker 1: to evolve as a brand here. We need to do
Speaker 1: original content. Like I said, a lot of it's aggregated,
Speaker 1: and that they made a business model off of that.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying this anything like wrong with it, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to level up and I saw this original
Speaker 1: content as a way to do that. And I would
Speaker 1: tell them every Monday we had this meeting about TikTok.
Speaker 1: I was like, look, this stuff's working for me. We
Speaker 1: should lead into this, we should be posting this, we
Speaker 1: should be you know, devoting resources to this. And they
Speaker 1: kind of just blew me off week after week until
Speaker 1: I passed them and then their whole attitude flipped and
Speaker 1: they said they owned my page. It was crazy. It
Speaker 1: was like they were trying to basically say that, like
Speaker 1: everything I created in my own time on my own
Speaker 1: phone was theirs. And at that point, like the relationship
Speaker 1: had totally soured and there was no way that I
Speaker 1: was going to continue working there. I was already working remote,
Speaker 1: which was weird anyway, and I was like, now I'm
Speaker 1: just going to better myself and do my own thing.
Speaker 1: So they fired me.
Speaker 2: They're loss, you're done with clutch points, but you're still
Speaker 2: in LA. You go off, you do it all by yourself.
Speaker 2: Now walk me through how you get from that to
Speaker 2: living in Pittsburgh with the team media mogul them.
Speaker 1: All Right, So, first of all, I love Pittsburgh. You're
Speaker 1: not going to hear a lot of like creators in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 1: Although like my guy Colin is here, it's not exactly
Speaker 1: a creator hotbed. It's the oppice move you'd make if
Speaker 1: you're starting a media company a production company. You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: let me move from LA to Pittsburgh. At like the
Speaker 1: peak of this business, you know, I was doing like
Speaker 1: eighty million views a month. Things are going well. So
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, let me move to Pittsburgh. And
Speaker 1: a lot of people's minds they were probably like, that's
Speaker 1: the opposite way, that's your work. But for me, it
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know what the point of living
Speaker 1: in LA is anymore. People don't want to meet with
Speaker 1: you in person. COVID got so weird there that you know,
Speaker 1: what's the whole point of being there? If you can't
Speaker 1: build relationships. Everyone wanted to take a meeting online. I
Speaker 1: was like, why am I paying all this rent? And
Speaker 1: I just love Pittsburgh. This is my hometown. I love
Speaker 1: the city. People here have like a real community connection
Speaker 1: with the other, with each other. There's not transplants. You know,
Speaker 1: it was weird living in LA Like I'm I would
Speaker 1: walk down the street and people like wouldn't wave at you,
Speaker 1: like the simplest things, like no one was friendly ever.
Speaker 1: And that's something that Pittsburgh really does a good job of,
Speaker 1: like we all have this like you know, well most
Speaker 1: of us were born here, so you know, it just works.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I had the opportunity to buy my childhood
Speaker 1: home where I am right now. So I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: that's perfect. I can set my studio up in the basement.
Speaker 1: I know, I have plenty of room. I love this house.
Speaker 1: And I made it. I made it happen in October
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: At what point did you say, Okay, I've got the
Speaker 2: resources where I want to either have people come on
Speaker 2: to my team or you obviously started a production company
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 1: So that happened actually while I was still in La
Speaker 1: I got my first video editor. He is a beast.
Speaker 1: I've worked with him for like six or seven years actually,
Speaker 1: so he was at clutch points and he was like
Speaker 1: I taught him how to do most of his edits
Speaker 1: in the beginning, and this guy, like he's such a grinder.
Speaker 1: He is so much better than me in every possible way. Now,
Speaker 1: Like he has really taken that minor lesson I gave
Speaker 1: him at the beginning, like six or seven years go
Speaker 1: and become so talented, Like he's so committed to his craft.
Speaker 1: He helped me build the rest of our video editing team.
Speaker 1: We have like ten guys. Now, wow, so we don't
Speaker 1: just edit for me. We have a whole portfolio of
Speaker 1: snap shows we do. We take brands on as clients.
Speaker 1: We've really taken this team and built it out in
Speaker 1: a couple different ways here. So yeah, credit to him,
Speaker 1: credit to our relationship, and I mean it just helps
Speaker 1: to have someone who's actually committed to their craft. Like
Speaker 1: there's two different kinds of people you hire. I've definitely
Speaker 1: realized this. There's the one person that's just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm here to like do my thing, and the other
Speaker 1: person's like, I want to get better it's like that.
Speaker 1: You see it happen in sports too, like you draft
Speaker 1: a rookie who never gets any better. They're probably not
Speaker 1: working hard enough this guy's job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's interesting too because you as somebody who's
Speaker 2: like that, who's almost maniacal about every day I gets,
Speaker 2: as you can tell if I'm me and my friend
Speaker 2: who's worked on the podcast with me since the beginning,
Speaker 2: are like passing back and forth, like what do you
Speaker 2: think makes this video really good?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: Why did this video go viral?
Speaker 2: There's a there's an element of like always wanting to improve,
Speaker 2: and when people don't have that, it's just a very jarring,
Speaker 2: jarring feeling.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine living that way. I think about this
Speaker 1: a lot, actually, and I've come to terms with it. It
Speaker 1: used to frustrate me a lot, but I've come to
Speaker 1: terms with like, some people just they're not interested in
Speaker 1: that and that's not going to change for them, and
Speaker 1: it's something you have to accept.
Speaker 2: Do you think that there are stories that are good
Speaker 2: that you make that don't go viral? Like is there
Speaker 2: a story that you remember making that you were like, Yeah,
Speaker 2: this thing's gonna crush and the algorithm for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: just did not respond.
Speaker 3: And if so, what was it? Oh, did not respond,
Speaker 3: just did not respond.
Speaker 1: You know what, I'll have to look through. Can I
Speaker 1: give you the opposite?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 1: Okay. So I did a story on Barry Bremen and
Speaker 1: he for anyone who hasn't seen the video, there's actually
Speaker 1: an E sixty on him that's really good too. He
Speaker 1: was a professional fraud. He would go to games and
Speaker 1: get on the court by like dressing like the players,
Speaker 1: and he was famous for this, Like everyone kind of
Speaker 1: loved him if you did it. Nowadays, today's equivalent is
Speaker 1: like the guy he used to be Klay Thompson, remember him, Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: So no one likes that guy, Like he's banned, he
Speaker 1: can't go to games anymore. Barry Breman was such a
Speaker 1: likable guy and such a pioneer in this stuff that
Speaker 1: everyone kind of like loved when he did it, and
Speaker 1: it was a thing like, oh Barry Breman, like the
Speaker 1: impostors here. And when I got that story, I was like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make a you know, a TikTok or a
Speaker 1: short out of this. I was like, this is definitely
Speaker 1: going to blow up, Like this story is so good.
Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of people know it, which
Speaker 1: is a big part. And any story that has like
Speaker 1: an element of fraud or crime or foul play or
Speaker 1: something like that, there's like a hint of that to
Speaker 1: it always going to be better. And then what happened, Oh,
Speaker 1: blew up immediately everywhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what about a video you thought would not do
Speaker 2: well and then it just exploded?
Speaker 1: All right, I'll give this one as an example. So
Speaker 1: I hadn't tried this format yet. I did a video
Speaker 1: about the fifty forty ninety Club, and I was like, Man,
Speaker 1: Tony Snell's like in the fifty forty ninety Club. I
Speaker 1: found this information and I was like, he hasn't missed
Speaker 1: a freak throw in like two years, you know. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't one of those players. It's like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: like he plays four minutes a game, Like he's not qualifying.
Speaker 1: Like Tony Snell was starting a lot of these games. Now,
Speaker 1: he wasn't shooting a lot, but he was playing a
Speaker 1: lot of minutes. And he was like he did have
Speaker 1: the stats. I don't think he ended up qualifying at
Speaker 1: the end of the season, but I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, what if I made this video and I
Speaker 1: didn't reveal his name until the very end. I hadn't
Speaker 1: tried this format yet, so I was like, this could
Speaker 1: be really bad or it could be amazing because people
Speaker 1: will have to watch the end to see ended up
Speaker 1: being great. But I can't imagine like making a video
Speaker 1: about Tony Snell and it doing well, Like there's not
Speaker 1: that much interesting stuff about Tony Snell.
Speaker 3: Except for Kasia in the Club Trillion too, or like
Speaker 3: he was in oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the The Zero Game.
Speaker 3: Yet the Zero Game stories.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that you at one point didn't want to
Speaker 2: do stories about yourself or you didn't want to make
Speaker 2: yourself like a focal point of the video, but those
Speaker 2: are crushing those, like you said, create value for an audience.
Speaker 2: At what point in the process for you, did you
Speaker 2: realize that you were just as important as whatever it
Speaker 2: is that you were talking about.
Speaker 1: Well, I definitely realized that when everyone copied my style,
Speaker 1: when everyone started making videos that were identical to mine,
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, now my face is actually like
Speaker 1: integral here, because it's the differentiator between people trying to
Speaker 1: do my style and me doing my stifle. They don't
Speaker 1: have me, so definitely at that point and you'll see
Speaker 1: it so often with the thumbnails. The thumbnails is crazy.
Speaker 1: The fact that I started making these colorful thumbnails with
Speaker 1: the cutout above the text, and then everyone tried to
Speaker 1: do that. There's so much.
Speaker 3: It's pretty sick. It is pretty sick. Let's be honest.
Speaker 1: It's nice. I love it, but like, my god, there's
Speaker 1: so many other ways to be creative here. I'm surprised that,
Speaker 1: like there's people doing it now that don't even know
Speaker 1: they're doing mine. They're doing someone else that did mine,
Speaker 1: And you know, that was definitely a turning point. But
Speaker 1: I will make videos about myself to answer your question.
Speaker 1: It's just got to be interesting enough. Like people have
Speaker 1: to realize, like I don't live some like crazy lifestyle,
Speaker 1: like a lot of creators don't. Anyone who read the
Speaker 1: Shams article knows he doesn't. It's on his phone twenty
Speaker 1: hours a day. You know, I'm not doing those numbers.
Speaker 1: But you know, a lot of my days spent hanging
Speaker 1: out in my studio, like editing videos and writing scripts
Speaker 1: with my cat down here. You know, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not exactly story worthy content.
Speaker 3: So what's next? What do you want to?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: What's the big dream? For you.
Speaker 1: A couple things on the radar right now. The Hunt,
Speaker 1: which I talked about earlier, which is a great way
Speaker 1: to put myself into the content. I love actually meeting
Speaker 1: the people who watch my videos and it's always an
Speaker 1: amazing interaction, and to add some level of creativity there
Speaker 1: is even better. So I'm really excited to work on that.
Speaker 1: We have built fantasy games before. Five Card Draw is
Speaker 1: a big one. I've done it for years, really popular.
Speaker 1: We have some big plans with that. I'm involved in
Speaker 1: an agency, a creative agency called Supersonic. We brought on
Speaker 1: a couple brand clients there and we share my video
Speaker 1: editing team. So you know, that's kind of the whole
Speaker 1: thing right now. With creators, right it's like you can
Speaker 1: only go so far with the actual content unless you're
Speaker 1: Alex Cooper or Joe Rogan or you know, mister Beast.
Speaker 1: But he's even a good example of someone that built
Speaker 1: a business on the side in addition to his billions
Speaker 1: of views. You have to take what you're building and
Speaker 1: build businesses off of it. So that's definitely the next
Speaker 1: step for me.
Speaker 3: Fascinating