Ian Hecox - On Founding Smosh, Staying Power on Youtube, and Advice for Creators

you don't know who Ian is? What do you know? I know that was aggressive, but if you don't know that name, we got to reevaluate life. I mean, the internet is a big place. I never assume anybody you're pretty a video of mine, but I assume so. And the reason you're here is because of that. You were one of the pioneers in the YouTube space. And not only did you pioneer in a world that a lot of people didn't understand back in two thousand five, by

the way, when people weren't really doing the YouTube thing. Yeah, I mean, YouTube wasn't really a thing. It wasn't a thing. It just recently, I think in the last decade has become a thing in two thousand five. Starts with a little a silly video, just you and your friend And did you ever know that it would turn into this empire that has employed so many people and made so many people so much money. And yeah, we had no no idea whatsoever. It was just us, you know, messing

around with the webcam. We started with lip syncs. We did the Power Rangers theme song. That was our first slip sync, and then we did a Mortal Kombat and then Pokemon and then the Pokemon theme song music video was the video that like really really blew up and for I think a year and a half it was the most viewed video on YouTube. And back in the day,

there was no discovery ability on YouTube. So the only way that you could find quote unquote quality content, which that video looking back, is not the only way you can find quality content is if you went to the most viewed page like most people of all time. Okay, so all those videos that had the most views must be the best videos on YouTube. That would be the theory. But you know, our videos up at the top, and it was like, think, why do you think about so

many views? Because nothing else like that was on YouTube, and you guys were just kind of creating your own lane, and people were curious because that's what I would think. Yeah, I mean, I think music is universal. I mean, that's why all the top view videos are are music videos. So I think that's one thing Pokemon is, you know, the sort of global unifier who doesn't like Pokemon. At that time, a lot of people were doing lip syncs, but a lot of people were just kind of standing

there and just lip sinking. But we were also throwing in jokes into it, so like kind of like criticizing the Pokemon while we were singing the song. Just the fact that the like Pokemon in a strange way is like animal abuse. So we had some like jokes. I never thought of it. I don't need to left, but I never thought about it. Yeah, I mean, you're you're forcing it's it's it's no different than a than a dog fight, and we don't allow that. So we, uh, we kind of made some some jokes in the video.

I think that's what kind of made it stand out from the other sort of lip syncs is we actually had a take on it. I'm not saying like it's supreme art, but Also, back in the days of YouTube, you're not really competing with that much quality content. Anything that's like sort of above like the worst quality ever would automatically rise above everything else. So it had a little bit of thought behind it, some creativity and use music. What compelled you guys? First of all, for people who

don't know, who did you do the video with? Yeah, so I did the video with my childhood friend Anthony. We met in like the sixth grade, and we did a share boredom. We just graduated high school. I was seventeen. He might have been seventeen as well. Yeah at the time, he's also seventeen. You guys go to the same high school. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, so we went to the same elementary school, middle school, high school, best friends, and we're both bored. All of

our friends were going off to real colleges. We were staying in Sacramento and we're going to go to a community college. So we were pretty bored. Over the summer. We had actually started making videos and posting them on my Space before we even knew what YouTube was. The only reason we found out about YouTube so early was because somebody had stolen our video and uploaded on YouTube. Yeah. So that's how we actually found out about YouTube was

because somebody had ripped our content. So we started upload kind of a compliment. Yeah right, yeah, so we started uploading on there, it started getting the views, and to us, over a hundred views was insane. And at that time, you could just refresh YouTube and see the counter go up, so like we would just like refresh and see like, oh my god, there's five more views. Oh my god, there's ten more views. So that was that was a weird experience for us. What was monetization like back then?

Did you guys even think that this was something you could make money from that early on? There's no way of monization. I mean, like I guess we we had sort of like the first Patreon in a sense where we just not like solicited our viewers for donations, but we said, like, hey, we want to film with more than just a webcam that's tied to the computer. We

we would like a handicap. So people actually donated money to us to buy a handicam so that we can actually go beyond Anthony's bedroom, and then we put their names and their like donation, I think we can put their donation amounts like on the screen of our videos. So at the end of the video, it's like, thanks to this person for donating thirty So ahead of the times, because I feel like that was a very early iteration

of what actually ends up happening if you fast forward. Yeah, and the same time with the same thing with merch, So we wanted to keep doing it. And then once the Pokemon theme song music video was removed for copyright infringement, we were like, hey, you know, we should probably start making more original content that's not using other people's stuff. And so from that point on, pretty much we were we were wholly original content, not using copyrighted music or

you know, images or whatever. So we then sort of transitioned to sketch comedy, and that's kind of the road we went down. So sketch comedy for the first few years of YouTube was kind of like the king of YouTube, Like everybody wanted to do sketch comedy, and you know, there's channels like balloon Shop that really pays me off. Why would you knock the drink out of his hand? What would you do that? Why would you do that?

The Lonely Island Lonely Island, obviously, Anie Sandberg, Kiva and Jorma, who then went on to SNL and then bigger and bigger things. Hello, welcome to the party. Hi, I've never met you before. You know, just two guys and we're having a good time. Derek Comedy where Donald Glover Childish Gambino came from that sad one to YouTube. Sir sat Opposite Day, Sir James Goody Endings? Or can I not ask you something about Opposite Day? No? But sketch comedy

is really hard to continue and it's expensive. It's more expensive than just doing a vlog, Like you need to like hire people, and you know, writing sketches and shooting it and editing. It takes a little bit longer than normal kinds of things. So a lot of people burnt out on making sketches. You're right out of high school. What makes you think I'm qualified to be doing sketch Because, like you said, it's not just about hiring people. Like you could have the money. I know people who have

all the money in the world. But if you're not a good writer, if you don't have good ideas, it's not gonna fly. So how did you guys get to the place where you were qualified enough to do successful sketch comedy. I don't think we're qualified at all. Well something made you think you were. I mean, it's really we just kind of paid attention to the feedback on YouTube, and I know that's not always the best idea to read the comments, but some people have some pretty constructive

criticism that are acting sucked and our ideas sucked. So we continue to go to community college, but only in classes that applied to whatever we were doing. So we took some acting classes, we took some writing classes, we took some improv classes, took some film classes, and then once we burned out on those. Once we did all those classes, we just left. But with with sketch comedy,

you know, it takes a lot of time. We were out of high school, so we're living in our parents house and you know, start to have bills, so you have to find some way to create an income. And so the choice was either well, you try to find a job and then find some time to make sketches, or you can commit fully to creating sketches and try to build a business doing that. So that then turned our focus. What did family think about That family was

totally known. They were down there anything better, well, because I think now it would be a lot easier for you know, a fifteen year old or sixth year old to convince their parents, like, look, Jake Paul is making twenty two million dollars year, so can I two thousand five, two thousand six. Whenever you were doing it, that was not the case. So you didn't have a case study to point to and say, these people are making a living doing this, I'm gonna build an umpire. You had

literally nothing but your own drive and an idea. Yeah, and we had viewers. You had viewers. I think my dad's an accountant, so he kind of understands business, and I think we had viewers. So that had to event something. It's like, oh, well, if we're getting similar views to like a local TV show or something like, that's gotta that's gotta mean something like, there's gotta be a way to to monetize that. There was no way at that time in regards to add revenue. I remember our first

brand deal we did for five dollars. That was a big deal to us. But we we found other ways of monetizing. We uh started selling merch and I think we were some of the first people on the platform to do that. We knew this like guy that worked out of a warehouse down the street that was a screen printer. Pretty sure he had one leg, but he never showed us. Um, but we need I need to

find out. So we So then we started like marketing our merch and like these little sort of like funny commercials at the ends of our videos, Oh my god, yes, what what look at my shirts? Oh my god, stoppers shirt. We would have this guy screenpin all the shirts. Then Anthony had a program that would take all the orders in with like their names and their addresses, and then

we would package all the shirts ourselves. That we would then load all the shirts into his car and then we would drive to USPS and get very ugly looks from the workers there because we'd be mailing out maybe hundreds of shirts at a time. But that was the way that we first sort of supplemented the income for the business. That was that was so entrepreneurial. I knew I was going to suck that up. Yeah, every time I tried to say that one. But you know what

I mean, guys, entrepreneurial of you? Yeah, I mean we didn't have any I mean We didn't have any choice. It was like that was our only option. It was trying to sell merch to create an income, to stay out of a job or work a job and not be able to create content. So and you're so young to figure that out. Yeah, well, I think I think I probably had some advice from my dad to we didn't really have any other choice. It's just like that was the only way to do it at the time.

And you're still going to school at this point, and what were you majoring in? Was it anything to do with this world? That was just general ed. We didn't really know what we wanted to do. I think Anthony thought he would get a business degree, but I think he didn't really know quite what that meant. He's just like, I don't know, business sounds nice. And he was already he was running the website on his own, so he kind of already had like a knack for entrepreneurial kind

of like, look at you. He just said it the first time, Did I do it? Like? It was like, Butter, I'm really jealous, you'll get it, you know. We we didn't have any sort of set plan, and our parents didn't have any expectation for us to become lawyers or doc there. So there was nobody pushing us in a specific direction. So that kind of allowed us to kind of just see that this is a big opportunity that it was our only chance to possibly take, so we

just kind of went full into it. But just like they weren't pushing an agenda, it doesn't really sound like you necessarily had an agenda either. It wasn't like some people start a YouTube channel because the ultimate goal is to be an actress, a series regular, or they want to break into music. It just seemed like you guys were throwing things to the ceiling and seeing what's stuck that you enjoyed doing. But it didn't seem like you had a well we're doing this because we want to be,

you know, movie stars in five years. Yeah. I'm a very much go with the flow kind of guy. So for me, I didn't have aspirations. I guess I wouldn't say like, well, they'll look at you. It just fell into a lot of success. I don't know, but I

think you worked very hard for that. I didn't have I didn't have any I didn't feel like I deserved anything, you know, I think a lot of people actors, you know, they put a lot of time into this dream of becoming an actor, and then when they get sort of a taste of success, then they feel like I deserve this, Like anything anything that comes my way, I don't feel like I deserved it. I mean, I worked towards it and it happened, and then I just try to, you know,

not take anything for granted. And that's just kind of been the way that I've always kind of looked at our career. It's like just kind of go with the flow, go with like wherever this crazy thing is taking us. Would you say that that has a lot to do with the fifteen plus years of success this brand that wasn't a brand at the time has seen because of your mentality and because of your attitude towards everything you

were doing every day. Yeah, I think so. And I wasn't looking to use Smash as a platform to become a television actor or you know, a director or anything like. To me, all those things are awesome and I love doing that, um and I'll take those opportunities if they come. But Smash has always made the most sense to me as like that's my sort of base, That's what I understand, and it's what I think that we're good at and everything else is is nice, But there's probably other people

they're better at it than me. So you're creating content, you're making you're getting little brand deals here and there, you're selling merch just to keep things afloat. When did it become something that you felt like wasn't a hustle struggle. It was more of like, Okay, we have a system going and this is this is a real business. Was there like a video that went viral? Was there a

moment a validation? Can you remember a time when it felt real, because I'm sure it took a while to feel like a real quote unquote real Job's say, in like two thousand seven, we were contacted by um, this guy, Barry Bloomberg. He was Disney television executive that had left Disney and he was kind of looking for the next thing to focus on and he sort of saw, you know,

online media as being this sort of next thing. So he started working with us and was like, if you guys want to do this for a long time, you need to start thinking of Smash as like a comedy brand. So it was now small at this point, you had evolved into Smash. Yeah, I mean Smash was a name that we had actually had since sophomore year of high school. Okay, so that was not like evolved into the name Smash.

You guys always kind of called it Smash. Yeah. That really worked out because, like at the time of like the beginning of YouTube, everybody was like their channels were just like their names. If we didn't have Smash, we might have called our channel like Ian and Anthony Productions,

which doesn't exactly lend itself to longevity. But luckily we had this great name because it was a it was an inside joke that our friends that came up with, and then Anthony created a website for it, and then when the YouTube video started picking up, we're like, well, let's just continue to have it tied to this Smash name.

At that time, it was just Anthony and myself as the faces of Smash, and it was Barry that you know, sort of said, if you guys wanted to be doing this ten years, twenty years, whatever years down the road, it needs to be more than just you two. It needs to be a brand. And that's something that we weren't thinking of the time. I don't think that was something anybody's thinking about at the time. Nowadays, every Instagram model is like, this is my brand. Everything is happiness

and beauty and positivity. Everybody's thinking like what their brand is now. But back then it's like, no, our channel is like we're just like two guys. But it made a lot of sense to say that we always just kind of like went by the flow that I guess that's not completely true. Like we we did have this

vision of what smash could become. I mean just from the beginning, you screenprinting your own merch you may have been go with the flow and attitude of like where this goes, but you were very much proactive in everything that you guys did, like the to the Patreon, your own version of Patriot. Yeah, that ended once we started like actually getting money from merch. Were like, okay, we can't just ask for money from We can't just be like can I have five dollars? We can give you

a shout out at the end. Yeah, we stopped. We stopped doing that. We're like, okay, that's just kind of wrong. And I'm not I'm not talking Patreon. I think Patreon is great, but you were not pay I mean you were just saying five dollars please. Yeah. Yeah, We're like, hey, we'll show you on the video if you give us. But yeah, that that changed once. That probably paid for that. I mean people do. But if we were look back and be like Tatiana Bruckly, Um, so Barry comes along

two thousand seven. This was I believe around the time when YouTube started their partner program two thousand right, yeah, I think, yeah, so that is when the partnership program. I'm sure you were one of the very first. Yeah, we were one of the first ten channels actually. For the partnership program. YouTube was like, hey, we'll pay you this base amount of money and we're gonna put ads

on your videos. And that was something we were nervous about at first because there had never been an add on YouTube, like maybe on like a banner on the front page, but to have an ad play before the video or just at that time, it wasn't even pre role pre roles weren't even a thing. It was just a pop up they put in our videos. Our fans

freaked out, They're like, what is this garbage? Oh you guys sold out, like, well, we need to do this if we're going to continue to create videos, and and at that time, like the audiences didn't really have an understanding of, oh, if they want to keep creating content, they actually need to make money doing this. Now everyone understands, and now like audiences are excited when they see YouTubers or instagrammers or even tiktoker's get brand deals. They're like,

they're like, yeah, get that money, get that money. But for probably the first six years or maybe even beyond that, whenever we did a brand deal, we just got shipped on all the time. Was it the nature of the brand or was it any time you did a brand Because I could see if a brand was like completely unaligned, people being like, why are you doing a Tampax? Not that did that, I mean, but if they came and they you know, had some good you know, we we

we toss some good creative back at them. Tampax hit us up. And I feel like, if there's somebody that could pull it off, I would be you guys. I think it's you know, also, some some people were very young and don't understand that. You know, when you leave your parents house, you need to make money. And I think you know to to a degree, like a lot of the things we're doing are brand integrations, which at that time nobody had really done on YouTube. Obviously, like

television does it. You know, American Idol has a Coca Cola cup next to them, But also a lot of those companies didn't trust online brands to get their message

across well. So a lot of the messaging that we had to put into videos was insane, like you have to say this slogan and you have to do this, and you have to do that, and it's like at that time, a lot of brands didn't understand like no, like allow this person to work your and into the creative rather than forcing them to create what's essentially a commercial. I cannot relate more. I'm not going to name the company.

I was working for a company that they did a deal with Turbo Tax, which I'm on a red carpet for the Grammys, and they're like, work in Turbo Tax. I'm like, what do you fucking mean? They so then I was like, so have you done your taxes? Miley cyrus like it was just and the way that they want, you know, And then they didn't. They weren't thinking ahead.

And I think it's really great that they do trust content creators, but trust content creators to come up with a creative way to do it because but I also think in everyone's defense, it was such a new concept, and I just remember being so uncomfortable being like a little way and have you done your taxes? I mean, I'm not saying you didn't, but have you? It was just awkward, and I just remember being in these awful situations with these brands. Turbo tax scarred me a little. Yeah,

shout out, I don't blame you. Yeah, we had some pretty bad ones. And it was also just like they were very controlling about the creative and they'll be like silly violent things that would happen in our videos, and they'd be like, oh, I'm sorry, could the lawn flamingo not hit her in the head. You're like, no, it has to hit her on that. Yeah, that's just too violent. That's too violent. I'm sorry, Like, we don't want to promote violence. So it's just we we had to deal

with a lot of that garbage. And I feel like brands are a little bit better now and they trust the creators a little bit more, and now they just if they want to market their product to young people. They have to work with us because they're not watching television. We are the only option for these companies. And someone would much rather watch you throw a flamingo at someone's head to sell a product than like some I'm being like, you should get this product. It just it doesn't work

if they're smart. But I mean not every not everybody's there yet. I think brands are definitely coming around. I'm seeing brands really trust content creators, especially on Instagram, these like short little videos and people are able to make up their own sketches to promote whatever. I'm seeing that a lot, and it's very refreshing. But you're right, there's a lot of brands it's still probably don't fully get

it yet. A lot of the bigger brands are still very concerned about this idea of Middle America where they think that everybody in quote unquote Middle America is this sort of like very delicate, you know, very religious, like if they say anything about violence or sex, like they're gonna leave this brand forever. And it's like, no, they're just people, but they're very concerned about offending. If anything, I think people are so unaffected now and people want

fun and a little bit more just lighthearted stuff. I think, and especially I think the people that you're targeting the millennials. I love that term, but you know, you influence the millennial, the people that spend the most money. Those people they want to see you doing it, so you start getting brand deals, money is coming in, you're dealing with content. This was still just you and Anthony at this point, right,

we're still the faces we started on. One of the other things that that Barry was kind of pushing for is early YouTube, you're doing everything yourself. There's nobody that was really building a business off of YouTube. There's no sort of guidelines on what's a healthy way to work on online. Every YouTuber is working seven days a week, fourteen hours a day. And Barry was one of those people that's like, you need to treat this like a job, and in in that way, you're taking the weekends off,

you're hiring people to help you. The moment we did that, we found a remarkable increase in in our sanity, and I think that's something that like I have always tried to preach to other YouTubers. I'm like, the moment you make any sort of extra income, like put the workload onto somebody else that can help you create content, whether it's editing, or whether it's an assistant or whether it's a producer, like anybody that can take that workload off

off what you're doing. Artists are very controlling about the thing they're putting out, so they have this mindset that like, oh, but nobody can do it like me, And that's just not the truth for a lot of YouTube content, a lot of people like I just can't find an editor that understands what I'm doing, Like, I just I just can't do that. It's like, there's a lot of very talented people out there, and like, as long as you just stay with them and teach them the sort of

way that you create content, they can get there. Was it hard for you, guys? Obviously you're starting to hire people. You edited your own stuff from the beginning of time.

Now other people are editing your content. Was that like a hard thing because it is hard to let go, like you said, if you're creative, Was it hard for you and were there any challenges with becoming bigger because in a sense now you have very involved it's not just you and Anthony sitting at a table collaborating saying we want to do this, there's people invested in involved that have an effect on your content. Was that hard for you as far as the creative and writing process goes,

we were. We were writing everything for the first maybe five for six years, so creatively we were still we still had control. As it went on and as the channel expanded, we couldn't do everything, so we hired an editor, and then later on when we started doing another channel, we hired a writer who's actually still with us, so he's been with us for about nine years. I really believe in collaboration. I don't think I have the best ideas.

I think I have ideas, but I'm perfectly okay with with passing them by somebody and say, hey, is this a good idea or is this a shit idea? And if they're like shit idea and they can explain why, then I'm okay with that. And for me, I think that collaborating with people is only going to create a

better product unless you're a genius than unless you're Kanye West. Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, no comment, but I think, you know, I think in most cases, collaboration never hurts, or at least never hurts to run it by a second opinion, I couldn't agree with you more so. I read an article actually that said that on multiple occasions, I think it was like three or four different time periods between like two thousand and eight and two thousand and fifteen, Smash was the

number one most subscribe to channel on YouTube. Do you pinch yourself when you think about that, because it's massive, especially as we get later in time like two, when there are so many content creators and so many YouTube channels. What do you think attributed to this consistency and success? Yeah, I think the thing is we were always doing the content that we wanted to do at the time. We

were never chasing trends. Like the reason why we hit the most subscribed four times was because a certain trend would hit or YouTube would shift an algorithm. Then a creator would get this crazy bump, crazy bumping views, crazy bumping subs. Then they would rise above everyone else, and then the algorithm would shift or trend would shift, and then their content would no longer be favored, so then

they would maybe sort of drop out of favor. But we were always just constant, which is remarkable because it's not just like, oh, you guys took over two thousand eight. It was like to be able to consistently be at the top, you've got to be evolving NonStop and knowing what your viewers want because your viewers are also growing, and so there's this like balance of like what do we want to do as creators because you're evolving, and

then what do our fans want? It has to be such a hard thing to balance and figure out, like what the secret sauces in a sense, But you guys figured it out. I mean, I mean, there's the algorithm is always shifting, so it's it's never it's never like, oh we figured it out, We're good forever exactly. It's like, you know, every once in a while, we'll have something that will that will hit and will be like, oh, okay, that works, so then let's kind of keep going down

that route. But there's obviously people right now that are killing the game, killing it way more than us, Like we just look like little teeny tiny tadpoles compared to them because they've figured it out. But do you think it's a temporary figured it out? Like I think I think as long as as long as they're savvy, then then they could probably stay up there forever as long

as the YouTube keeps favoring that content. But you know, YouTube gets something like three hours of video every second or something like that, So what you see on YouTube is just this teeny tiny little tip of the iceberg above like all the other stuff on YouTube. So I've always kind of, you know, had this this mentality that it could be over the next day. That's why we had always put focus on our website because we're like, okay, we can at least control whatever happens on the website.

We own that we own, you know, anything that happens there. Nowadays, you know, the sort of landscape online is completely shifted. Like you don't go to websites anymore. How many websites do you go to that aren't Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, And you're not even you're going to the app on your phone. You're not even like actually going to website. Right, Yeah,

websites are irrelevant now. It's it's become completely whittled down to a few social media sites, in my opinion, So our strategy of build the website that that became less and less relevant as it went on, So like, okay, we just need to focus on social media. Then unfortunately you don't. We don't own that. So it's just kind of like our strategy has always been, like, don't discount the other social media, like don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't mean yeah, don't be just a YouTuber,

like also be on Facebook. Like we get a ton of yous on Facebook. We're also on Twitter and Instagram, not quite on Snapchat, you guys dabble and twitch at all. Well, the thing with twitches that Twitch is in a weird kind of place and that if you want to be a prolific person on Twitch, you have to be able to stream something like five hours a day. I mean you have to consistently be on Twitch to even for

anyone to even notice you. We've had good meetings with the people at Twitch, and I think it's an awesome platform and I love for us to be on it, Like I'd love to find a way for us to be on it, But if it's gonna take me being on Twitch for five hours a day, three times a week, I just physically can't do that with all the other stuff we do. So I totally believe in Twitch and

I think it's a great platform. I'm interested to see what happened with the sort of public opinion on the creators on there, because I think I think a lot of the creators on there being worked to the bone. I mean just in the news this week with streamers and people who are in competitive gaming, like all the news that came out with bass Plan and it's a

whole world for sure. The thing I love about Twitch, and I'm sure this is one of the reasons you love it, is the real time interaction with your fans that like, you can't beat that. But I know that you guys do interact and you have engagement on YouTube, and I'm sure you do Facebook lives and things like that, but allow you to connect. But you would think, because you guys do fall into the gaming category that it

would be a natural but not. It's it's a little it's different for us because we've never been about competitive gaming exactly. So like a lot of times brands will come to us and they'll be like, so smash e Sports and we're like, no, like have you seen my content? Like so we have Smash Games, which is another channel that we have and that's our that's our gaming stuff. But none of us are good gamers were our sort

of outlook on gaming. For for Smashes, it's it's a group of friends having fun and that's that's how it's always been. And none of us are particularly good at it. That's one side of twitches, like people that competitively play, people that are good. You have the Ninjas and the te Fews of the world. That's definitely not us, and

I think there's there's obviously room for both. You were talking about how you in your head always said this could end any day, and there have been some close calls in the career who got a touch on it, but you're still going strong. You specifically are still you know, carrying out the Smash legacy. Anthony is no longer um a part of the brand, but still very close friend

of yours. Can you just for people who may not be aware of there were things in the last I would say like five years that affected the brand and how you kind of ruled with those times. So yeah, I say five years is probably a good a good

distance to go back. So you know, one of our big direction we want to go Smash was grows Smash beyond Anthony and myself sort of the idea that I had always had is you know, you look at Smash like a Saturday Night Live that has a cast of talent, we would be the sort of Lauren Michaels of the Saturday Night Live. And that's the direction that I've always wanted to go. I don't think I need to be the star of the channel forever, and I still want

to be heavily involved. But I think, you know, if if you look at our content now, we have people like Shane Top, Courtney Miller, Olivia Sway Like, it's just incredibly talented people and they bring something to the table that I can't bring. You built that table, you better not forget it. But like I'm I'm also just like a white guy from suburban Surprise, I'm just a white dude from suburban northern California. Like I, I have a

certain life experience that I can draw from. But the beauty of comedy is that it comes from life experience. So I can only tell one side of comedy. So if I can bring in people from all walks of life to tell their sort of side, than that's representing more of the country or the world. All these people started joining on, you guys get acquired a couple of times, right, I mean, not specifically Smash, but through changing hands a

few times. Can you talk us through the different companies that you kind of had to associate with along the way and then severed ties with Yeah. So I think the very very first thing was we we needed to grow beyond what we were capable of becoming on our own. So in two thousand leven I think, we sold Smash to a company called Alloy Digital, and they were a company that they were starting to acquire other digital entertainment properties, one of which you know very well, Clever, which was

an entertainment news company. So for us, it was it was a chance to be part of something bigger than ourselves. And it was obviously a risk, but every choice in business is a risk, and at the beginning it seemed like a really good idea. Obviously, they helped us grow to a point that we couldn't have gotten to ourselves. So I'm not saying it was all a bad thing. I think that they helped us greatly, and I mean we're we're paid just fine doing it, so it's like

it wasn't a totally bad bet. So eventually Alloy then merged with Break Media, famous for the break website, which was at the time just uh. It was a lot of like, oh, here's a girl in a bikini. That was kind of their business model. I think I'm not the biggest fan of that content. But so anyway, they merged and became Defy Media. Then they would acquire more brands, and I was like, okay, that's fine. They they gave us so much creative freedom to do what we wanted

to do. They didn't meddle in that side of our business, so in that respect they were great. Apparently they made some bad business, bad business decisions, and the company effectively collapsed, which left Smash in a weird place because I didn't known it anymore, but it was no longer in their possession. There was a moment in time late last year that I didn't know if Smash was going to continue. Somebody very wonderful at Defy gave me access to the logins

to the YouTube channels during the downtime. Legally was they don't know. I think I think for I think it was wise for all parties to allow us to create content and keep the channel alive. Because the bank that was selling the properties obviously they don't want a depreciating assets, so for us to continue to create content and keep the brand alive, that's just you were. You were creating content, not getting paid, just just hoping to keep this thing

alive what you did. So, I think that's really interesting. I didn't know that people were getting paid and people actually put in a lot of work. Are our longtime director Ryan Todd, who has been with us for ten years, he's living up in Acrimento. He was flying down to help us shoot these videos with no pay on his own dime. And our cast also not getting paid. They were coming like we had some crew people, like longtime crew people showing up to help us shoot. They're all

doing it for no pay. It was just like it was a really cool thing to to sort of see like this is something that we all put work into and to see people you know, have a commitment to it at that level is really really awesome. Well, it goes to show that people really believed in the in the brand and the product, right, I mean, you've been in this for so long. They're basically saying we we believe in your baby, and we don't want it to

go away. Yeah. Yeah, And I think yeah, everyone believed in it, and they and they believed in what it could still do in the future. So well it worked out. Yeah, it worked out. I mean I I set out to try to pull together investment to pull it out myself. The timeline was too crazy for that. And then last minute, Retton Link stepped up. Retten Link, who are also long time YouTubers. They run a show called Good Mythical Morning.

They are also childhood friends like Anthony and myself, and they stepped up and they acquired Smash and it's been really, really awesome. And now we can announce that Rhett in Link have bought Smash and made us a part of Mythical Entertainment, which we are so excited about because they are creators helping creators. It really is an awesome thing. We get to do whatever we want and we're super

super excited. That's so great. I mean, this is you don't hear stories like the story of Smash, which is why I really wanted you to come in, because you guys defied every odd You stayed true to who you were. You didn't kind of as we touched on, you didn't roll with the trend. You kind of just stayed consistent, and because of that consistency, you gained new fans. But then I'm assuming a lot of your Day one fans

are still with you. There. There has to be, because our demographics or I mean it's it's eighteen to twenty four is the largest demo, but then the second largest demo according to YouTube, And obviously I'm sure there's kids are using their parents accounts, but our second largest demo is thirty five, So those are like the Day one I think, so. Yeah, So there's definitely there's definitely a group of legacy viewers people have been watching since the

beginning or relatively since the beginning. And then there's the people that are that are just now finding Smash. That's incredible. And so Anthony is no longer with Smash. You guys are still good friends, I assume, Yeah, we stay in touch. Was it hard for you to make the decision to stay or was that just not even an option not

to when your other half essentially leaves. Yeah, we definitely talked about it because he he told me like, hey, you know, thinking about leaving, and and he asked me to keep it a secret for a little bit, what for a little while, So he could sort of get prepared. And obviously I honored that Anthony is leaving Smash. This is not click bait, this is not a sketch. I just need to do it's best for me, and that right now for me is to focus on creating stuff

as an independent creator on my own channel. And that's something that I fully support and I cannot wait to see what Anthony goes out there and create some I'm excited for him. Thank you. I like, I'm talking about you, like literally, I'm excited for you. Did you feel pressured to jump ship with him just because you had started it together? Or were you just he he asked me if if I wanted to leave, and and he's like, you're thinking about leaving? I was like, I just doesn't

feel right. It's just not doesn't feel like the right time. I think that a lot of those kinds of decisions you just have to trust your gut. You might not be able to put it into words. Why, But like, I feel like there's so much more we could do with Smash, And I think it's such a cool Brandon for me. The ability to employ, you know, thirty people is is a source of pride for me for myself, and I think what he did like he needed to do, and I don't think what he did was selfish in

any way. Also, being being a solo creator isn't attractive to me. Like I said, I like collaboration, and you guys were the dynamic duo. It was just it was Ian and Anthony. So that had to be a transition for you as well. Well. At that point there was already the the other cast, so that that was something

that was started maybe about four years ago. And the company that was, you know, Defy, they were very insistent on like forcing them into the content, like, Okay, they're just gonna be in the videos now are we talking about like the so Hankies and the Jovins of the world, and that was Smash Games. But yes, but they were also doing crossover into some of your content, right, yeah, but that made a little bit more sense because we were starting a whole new channel. It's like they're gamers

and we're gamers. That in a less sense, but it was the people like Courtney Miller, Shane top Le, No Grossman, olivious way. So you didn't feel completely on your own in the sea of what do I do? You had you had a great team at the at the point that Anthony left. Our channel was more than just E

and Anthony by by the time he left. But there was obviously some really painful transition periods when we started introducing the cast four years ago, because the company insisted on just throwing the people in there, like, that's not how YouTube works. This isn't the Disney Channel. You can't just hire a bunch of young people and throw them

on and expect people to be okay with that. Were you in a position that you could voice that no, no, I mean I voiced it, but you weren't in a position where it had weight Because now this the company, huge company is just too bad. We're paying them, so you need to use them, I mean for us and myself. You know, I'll go with the flow. So it's like, okay if you say so, And we tried to do it and as natural of a way as possible. But with YouTube you can't lie. You can't, well you can,

but eventually catches up to you. But you can't like bullshit your way through your content. So you know your fans would call you out in two seconds. Yeah, exactly. So a lot of people were like, who are these new people, Why are they doing this? And it was very clear it had to happen. I think it could have been a little bit softer of a of a transition,

but it happened. Some people got mad, but then people then realize like, oh, they're literally just helping the content be better, because you can't just continue to do the same thing for fourteen years, like you have to evolve and it can't just be Ian and Anthony sitting in a living room on a couch for every single sketch, and that's what it was for for what felt like

too long. So in hindsight, fifteen fourteen years later, you can whisper into young Ian's ear and tell him one piece of advice that might make things transition smoother business deals better. Would there be something that you would, in hindsight tell younger I I don't think so. I mean, I think obviously there was. There was things that didn't

work out, but that's still worked out in a sense. Yeah, I mean, whether it was like a bad brand deal and we got backlash or you know, some sort of bad business deal, or like oh we hired this person and they weren't great, Like that's all part of learning. So whatever bad things happened, they happened, and we became better because of it. Absolutely, it actually shaped your journey and probably taught you, you know, how to get over

the hurdle. And you guys are thriving. Now. How many I think I've saw twenty four million subscribers across it might I might even be think we're twenty five something. We were we were stuck. We were stuck at twenty two million for like I think, like a year because just our content was not was not in the right place. And then once once we got things correct and we started doing the things that we felt like we needed to do, you it immediately changed. Can you wrap your

head around it's a big number. Twenty five million people wait for your content. That's a lot that's subs and that's also people that subscribe maybe eight years ago that are that moved on, So it's not necessarily million people that are watching. Okay, fine, but still I mean, starting from a couch doing lip singing videos, fast forward fourteen years, you've built an empire that huge beheamoths of companies have

wanted to buy. It started on a couch you and your best friend that's got to be a pinch me. It's weird. It's pretty weird. I mean, you're so in it, it's your life, so you probably don't see it that way. But from the outside it's an insane story. I I agree, it's insane, and thank you for sharing you with us today. I'm really excited to see where Smash goes in the next couple of years. Do you have any do you

have a vision for what you think? Let's not even do a big one, but like, where do you see that? Where do you see Smash in the next year? Let's go super small? Yeah. Well, we we got back on our feet in February with Mythical and if these past four months are indicative of where we're going that I feel very very positive about our future. That's awesome. It's been nothing but good ship. The ship is going to get better and better, like the biggest, best ship you've

ever seen. Yeah, and you know what we're ending on that. Thank you so much for stopping by. I'm really excited for everything that you have going on, big big things, big big ships. Yeah. Well, thank you for having me on here to talk about my ships. Now all day, you can always come and talk about your pooh. All right, I just said pooh, and we're definitely just going to cut right now. Hi guys, thanks for listening. Behind the Influence is a production of I Heart Radio and t DC Media