Speaker 1: Break was breaking down all the biggest NBA storylines. Your
Speaker 1: child So the heat Check, the Heat Check?
Speaker 2: What's trist a Cracker?
Speaker 1: The best podcast covering all the drama around the association?
Speaker 2: Drank Michael Smith aka Rhino, one of the biggest fucking
Speaker 2: names in the basketball content space. One point seven milli
Speaker 2: followers on TikTok, one point three milli followers on YouTube,
Speaker 2: gets more views than first take on YouTube, gets more
Speaker 2: views than your favorite fucking morning show. Why because he
Speaker 2: is a straight beast. Similarly massive followings on other social
Speaker 2: media platforms as well. He has been grinding making straight
Speaker 2: to camera video since twenty ten. That is a long
Speaker 2: fucking time. This man's been in the internet game since
Speaker 2: longer than I think I even knew the Internet social
Speaker 2: media exists. He is basically my role model when it
Speaker 2: comes to content. Doesn't know this. I'm about to drop
Speaker 2: some info on him. One of the very first videos
Speaker 2: that I saw on TikTok that was highly successful in
Speaker 2: the sports space that I sent to my producer and said,
Speaker 2: this man is crushing, we need to diagnose what he does.
Speaker 2: Was this man, Frank Michael Smith. I have been following
Speaker 2: you since the real reason Russell Westbrook playd so hard
Speaker 2: in the spring of twenty twenty. Frank Michael Smith.
Speaker 1: Wow, that you just set the record for the intro.
Speaker 1: Let's go. I'm fired up right now. Sometimes you need
Speaker 1: to hear it, Trista.
Speaker 2: I know, like you can do the intro later, but like,
Speaker 2: who knows what the intro is really going to be? Right, Like,
Speaker 2: who knows?
Speaker 1: You know? That was beautiful. Thank you. I'm ready to
Speaker 1: dive into it. Yeah, you put the twenty ten number
Speaker 1: out there. That makes me feel old at this point.
Speaker 1: But I was grind. I was one of the first
Speaker 1: people on YouTube. I was in two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: in middle school making highlight videos and like people didn't
Speaker 1: know YouTube yet.
Speaker 2: That's what's so crazy is the space at that point
Speaker 2: was not as saturated as it is now. And what's
Speaker 2: fascinating to me about your journey is that a lot
Speaker 2: of YouTubers that are huge they got huge because of
Speaker 2: when they started, but it was but you didn't, Like
Speaker 2: you got huge through persistence. So what do you think
Speaker 2: was the difference between what you did then and what
Speaker 2: you did now? And like how different do you think
Speaker 2: YouTube is now from when you started?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's so much different. So back then,
Speaker 1: I remember I used to do these highlight videos, so
Speaker 1: it would be like Lebron James Ultimate Highlight Mix, and
Speaker 1: if you dig hard enough, you still might find one.
Speaker 1: They're not under my name, but you might find one.
Speaker 1: I was rarely ever in the actual videos. They were
Speaker 1: just like you know, highlight compilations, and they I had
Speaker 1: a cool soundtrack on there, which, by the way, is
Speaker 1: like the easiest way to start hating a song is
Speaker 1: to put it in your video. You have to listen
Speaker 1: to it like seventy five times. So I just crushed
Speaker 1: my favorite songs. But anyway, it was all about search.
Speaker 1: I knew people were gonna search Lebron James, so I
Speaker 1: would make his highlight mix and it would get views.
Speaker 1: And you know, as a thirteen year old kid, getting
Speaker 1: like one hundred thousand views was amazing. It was like
Speaker 1: almost felt impossible, but it was happening. And now it's
Speaker 1: you know, it's so much more sophisticated. It's not really
Speaker 1: about search anymore. It's so much more it's it's probably
Speaker 1: a better system. Now it's about watch time, loyalty, all
Speaker 1: these other things. But I mean, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, it's still about like, hey, do people watch
Speaker 1: and like your videos? It's not that complicated.
Speaker 2: Well in discovery too. I think the thing that's always
Speaker 2: been interesting to me as someone who came like you
Speaker 2: from you know, anonymity, right, Like wasn't I wasn't a
Speaker 2: college athlete. I didn't get plopped into the system where
Speaker 2: you get pushed. So discovery has always been something fascinating
Speaker 2: to me. How do you think if you were to
Speaker 2: start a YouTube pay today, you could take it to
Speaker 2: zero to viral differently than what you do now, Like
Speaker 2: if you were to do it in a different way, I'm.
Speaker 1: Not sure I would do it in a different way.
Speaker 1: I could go from zero again. But it's it all
Speaker 1: comes down to value at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: And you'll hear people talk about this and it's like
Speaker 1: a pretty broad stroke to paint here, But the end
Speaker 1: of the day, like are you giving someone something interesting?
Speaker 1: Like that's what you do on this podcast. People like
Speaker 1: your podcast because you deliver value, Like you're funny, you're informational,
Speaker 1: you're relatable. Those are all valuable things. So you know,
Speaker 1: everyone has their own different way of getting there, but
Speaker 1: you know, I know how to do that. Now so
Speaker 1: I could go from zero.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's crazy. It's like almost become the thing that
Speaker 2: I read. I read an article of you being interviewed,
Speaker 2: and the thing that I thought was like so fascinating
Speaker 2: and something that I struggle with a lot is like
Speaker 2: having a formula. And that sounds like for a creator,
Speaker 2: there's nothing scarier than the word formula, right, Like you
Speaker 2: feel your trap now into a box. But for what
Speaker 2: has worked for you? Have you have stuck to this recipe?
Speaker 2: Recipe is probably the better way of putting it, because
Speaker 2: that sounds I think better and more like open and
Speaker 2: then like this is working, I'm sticking to this. Like
Speaker 2: how did you find out what that formula was?
Speaker 1: You know? I didn't put that much thought into it.
Speaker 1: Like I've tried so many different things and most of
Speaker 1: them failed. So it wasn't like I was like, hey,
Speaker 1: like first try here, got it. But finally when I
Speaker 1: found something that did work, I knew right away. So
Speaker 1: I met my first video on TikTok. We'll get to
Speaker 1: the TikTok portion of my career. It was twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I had worked in sports media for a couple of
Speaker 1: years out in LA started making videos on my own
Speaker 1: and I did. I did an origin story about Yiannis.
Speaker 1: I know, it's an interesting story, a little kid growing
Speaker 1: up on the streets to Athens, trying to sell knockoff
Speaker 1: DVDs to people to make a dollar. It's amazing, really
Speaker 1: is a great story. I would see these on YouTube
Speaker 1: and they were like eight and a half minutes long.
Speaker 1: Eight it's an important number there because once you go
Speaker 1: over that, you can throw an ad in the middle.
Speaker 1: So people would stretch them out on purpose and the
Speaker 1: story would lose value because you know, it just didn't
Speaker 1: need to take that long. I saw these and I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I'll do that in one minute. I'll
Speaker 1: try that on TikTok. You know they limit you to
Speaker 1: one minute. It's the whole game. And it worked immediately.
Speaker 1: People really appreciated how I didn't waste their time. I
Speaker 1: told the story with forward motion. It was fast paced,
Speaker 1: and that's the whole thing about TikTok because it's a
Speaker 1: fast paced environment. So it just fit. It just fit
Speaker 1: all of TikTok's values. People appreciated it, and I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: now this gout to do one of these every single day,
Speaker 1: and that's the repeatability that you talked about was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's one thing to go viral, to have a hit,
Speaker 1: Now can you do that every day of your life?
Speaker 1: And that's what I did, Like the next two years.
Speaker 1: I don't think I missed a day.
Speaker 2: Did you see that article that just came out about
Speaker 2: Sham's I was going to ask I read the whole Yeah,
Speaker 2: I thought that was so just for people who haven't
Speaker 2: read it. It chronicles Schams's career. He ends up getting
Speaker 2: mentored by Woes Wojenhammer now in this like Cold War
Speaker 2: as newsbreakers. But the thing that I thought was fascinating
Speaker 2: to me is that like Shams has absolutely zero work
Speaker 2: life balance. He probably will never date in any meaningful way.
Speaker 2: He's on his phone like eighteen hours a day. Like,
Speaker 2: what was the most interesting part, because you talk about consistency,
Speaker 2: and that was the first thing I thought about when
Speaker 2: you said two years without missing a video, Like, what
Speaker 2: was the thing that you felt was compelling in that
Speaker 2: article as it relates to you in your career.
Speaker 1: Well, Shams is born that way that stuck out. And
Speaker 1: by the way, one of my friends I went to
Speaker 1: college with him, he went to New Trier. He graduated
Speaker 1: with Shams. I saw him this week and at a
Speaker 1: wedding and he was like, you see the article on
Speaker 1: my boy Shams. And I was like, oh yeah you guys,
Speaker 1: Like were you the same year? He was like yeah,
Speaker 1: I had classes with them. I was like, was he
Speaker 1: the same way in high school? He's like the exact
Speaker 1: same way. Just loved basketball, obsessed with basketball. You know.
Speaker 1: They mentioned this in the article like it didn't really
Speaker 1: make the teams, but was just dialed in. And they
Speaker 1: go in the article and talk about how he's you know, hey,
Speaker 1: I can't do this interview. I got class. Oh skip college. No,
Speaker 1: I'm in high school. So that's just the way he is.
Speaker 1: Like you, you can't really give advice if your sham's
Speaker 1: like you kind of have it or you don't. Not
Speaker 1: everyone's cut out for that. In my career is certainly
Speaker 1: not as demanding. But I'm entrepreneurial by heart. Like I
Speaker 1: was the kid in high school selling snapback hats out
Speaker 1: of my locker and printing T shirts in the school
Speaker 1: art room and selling those and it was just fun
Speaker 1: for me. That's what I like to do. So when
Speaker 1: I had the chance, when I saw this video go off,
Speaker 1: I knew I had a chance here. It was fun
Speaker 1: to take that chance and be like, let's do this
Speaker 1: every day, Let's keep this rolling. It was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I was having a good time.
Speaker 2: How long did it take for you to realize that
Speaker 2: you could monetize this?
Speaker 1: See, I had a bit of an advantage. I worked
Speaker 1: in sports for a couple of years with clutch points
Speaker 1: right exactly. So I'll tell you a funny story. I
Speaker 1: wasn't making very much money, and so I went to
Speaker 1: my boss and I was like, hey, can I start
Speaker 1: doing some sales on the side. I got to sign
Speaker 1: some of these deals so I can get a commission check.
Speaker 1: Like LA's expensive, Trista, it's I So I was like,
Speaker 1: I got to make some extra money, like I'm stressing,
Speaker 1: Like I didn't even have a car and I live
Speaker 1: in LA. So I was like, let me sign some
Speaker 1: of these deals.
Speaker 2: And I got I stop you right there really fast?
Speaker 2: Did you uber everywhere? Or what did you do?
Speaker 1: Oh? Uberpool? That was my thing? All right, Peter Uberpool,
Speaker 1: we need it back.
Speaker 2: So you say, okay, I want to do sales.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I find this deal and it's with the
Speaker 1: company sports betting Dime and it was a nice deal.
Speaker 1: It was like a twenty five thousand dollars a month
Speaker 1: deal and I was scheduled to make like a couple
Speaker 1: thousand on it every month, which was like, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: this is like massive life changing money for me. And
Speaker 1: the day we signed it, we had all the ink
Speaker 1: on the paper. The pandemic hits March badness gets shut down,
Speaker 1: the deal gets voided, and I'm out, and I was like,
Speaker 1: this is the worst thing that's ever happened to me.
Speaker 1: This can't be happening right now. And fast forward a
Speaker 1: couple months later, I'm making my own videos. I part
Speaker 1: ways with Clutch Points. I reached back out to the
Speaker 1: same company, sportspending time, and I was like, Hey, give
Speaker 1: me a fraction of what you were about to give
Speaker 1: Clutch Points and I'll deliver. I'm getting tons of views
Speaker 1: right now. I'll drive people where you want to drive them.
Speaker 1: And I crushed it for them. So I monetized pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: But I had some relationships in the bag.
Speaker 2: So what do you think is the most important part
Speaker 2: of a creator going from engaging content views to Ashley
Speaker 2: delivering value.
Speaker 1: For a brand. I mean, people have to care about you,
Speaker 1: They have to care about you, and that's like, that's
Speaker 1: one of the problems Clutch Points had was like no
Speaker 1: one really cares about the brand that much. They delivered
Speaker 1: a lot of news like hey, so and so sprains
Speaker 1: his ankle and here's the article about it, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna link you back to the website. They they couldn't
Speaker 1: have like an in person activation. They couldn't be like, hey, everybody,
Speaker 1: meet up. We're having a three v three tournament at
Speaker 1: the park. Like people wouldn't show up. They didn't really
Speaker 1: identify with the brand. They were just in it for
Speaker 1: these little news morsels, and a lot of it was
Speaker 1: just aggregated too, like they're really shams probably like you know,
Speaker 1: there there's taking what he does. And they do have
Speaker 1: a couple guys like beat writers for the Clippers and such,
Speaker 1: but you know, that was really the business. They weren't
Speaker 1: building a relationship with their audience. They weren't fostering anything.
Speaker 1: So when I went out of my own, I knew
Speaker 1: I can't have that. I have to show my face
Speaker 1: in these videos. I have to I have to be relatable.
Speaker 1: I have to show you know there's there's a human
Speaker 1: behind these videos. I'm not like you know some sports
Speaker 1: story machine. I have a life, so you know, people
Speaker 1: people actually appreciate that. I just started a broadcast channel
Speaker 1: on you on Instagram the other day. Thousand people joined
Speaker 1: it immediately. They care about me. So that's the answer
Speaker 1: your question. That's how you have to transition. And like
Speaker 1: people are only gonna convert to brands or sponsor deals
Speaker 1: they care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's hard to get brands to want to
Speaker 2: jump on even if your views are big, right, Like,
Speaker 2: because how are you.
Speaker 1: Going to do that?
Speaker 2: Are you going to put a water mark in? Because
Speaker 2: that's not gonna get any real organic value to a brand,
Speaker 2: is it? Is it something that's like you know this
Speaker 2: Canada drive that I'm just having, Like what are like,
Speaker 2: how how do you find the Because I saw that
Speaker 2: there was a big stock X partnership that you just
Speaker 2: did where you did a scavenger hunt inside of an arena.
Speaker 1: So that actually not stock I wanted to be stock X.
Speaker 1: Oh so what was it was?
Speaker 2: Just you bought the Travis Scott.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, let me explain this. This is this is
Speaker 1: really cool. So it's totally sponsored right now stock X.
Speaker 1: If anyone's listening, pay those attention to the segment My
Speaker 1: suggestion is always to be creative with the brand deals.
Speaker 1: The brand's paying you money, you know, I think you
Speaker 1: owe it to them to at least think outside the
Speaker 1: box a little bit. It shouldn't be as simple as like,
Speaker 1: here's a candidate dry, you know, use your brain a
Speaker 1: little bit. So this isn't sponsored yet. In the future,
Speaker 1: I hope the brands will see the creativity. But me
Speaker 1: and a fellow Pittsburgh creator. His name's Cohen Hanahan. He
Speaker 1: goes by all Hail b Ball. You might have seen
Speaker 1: his stuff before. I know you're on Basketball TikTok, so
Speaker 1: you've probably seen him. Anyway, we linked up and we
Speaker 1: were like, hey, how cool would it be if we
Speaker 1: did a scavenger hunt at the Steelers game? And we
Speaker 1: loved it, so we went in during the pit game,
Speaker 1: which they play at Heinsfield Acrosher Stadium now and they
Speaker 1: played a week before, hit it during the pick game,
Speaker 1: took a video of us hiding it but didn't give
Speaker 1: away too much, and then promoted that we're doing this,
Speaker 1: and then it was on and we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: find the golden letter, you win the Travis Scotts and
Speaker 1: we ended up having to move the letter a little bit.
Speaker 1: We had some logistical issues, but I stood in the
Speaker 1: corner Trista and tied my hoodie up and watched hundreds
Speaker 1: of kids dig around the concourse. It was amazing, Like
Speaker 1: to see these people in real life. It's so game changing,
Speaker 1: Like we sit behind these screens and see the views
Speaker 1: go up. Seeing it in person is like next level.
Speaker 1: I love it. So now we're doing it every week.
Speaker 2: That's six. You came out your pocket for the Travis
Speaker 2: Scotts Bobbie the secondary market to do the activation for
Speaker 2: a potential deal that hasn't even happened yet.
Speaker 1: Well yes, but we also get like we're building something
Speaker 1: like we also do giveaway attached to it. So if
Speaker 1: you were to like I can't make it to Pittsburgh,
Speaker 1: you go to my bill, you enter your email in
Speaker 1: and you have a chance to win another pair. So
Speaker 1: now we get everyone's email, we can create like a
Speaker 1: Koolus letter. So we're building assets attached to this. It's
Speaker 1: called the hunt. You can't talk and you can talk
Speaker 1: to