Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart Radio and TDC Media two twelve, thirteen fourteen. YouTube was just an individual in front of a camera editing his or her own videos and creating their own thumbnails. That is not YouTube. You have to love it first of all. If you're just making content to make money, you will fail so quickly. YouTubers don't think about it like that, but they should be, because the goal is to have
active subscribers. When you post a video, all of them click on your video, and that's when I knew, Okay, this is something that's going to be massive. Well, today is a very important day. We have the godfather of basically do you like that? You're already laughing because the interviews is going to go great already. You're basically the godfather of the biggest names in digital right now read Duke Shure And I did not correct your last name. A lot of a lot of people struggle with that
outside in North Dakota. But that was good. But did I say it with a North Dakota Yeah, you said it very very German. Oh I did? You were on point. It's very good. Okay, great, Well, you know what out of ten already. We're really excited to have you here. Obviously, you represent the pitome of what we cover on this show, people of influence, and you are a person of influence because you are behind these people. Like we have an
amazing team. I got into this industry four and a half five years ago by myself out of my bedroom, and to see what Night Media has blossomed into today has been incredible. I think we're just to throw out some numbers. Were over a billion views a month through ten clients or across ten clients, and I believe we're at about that eighty eight million subscriber range, and that's
pretty impressive when you consider it's only ten individuals. Night Media's philosophy just to get into this a little bit, so we usually only work with family friendly creators, so we don't work with a ton of people that actually we don't have any creators that really swear on their channels and something that we're we're not necessarily against, we just don't like to promote it to children. And the second ones, we only work with with creators that want
to be entrepreneurs and business people. And you know, we found ten that you know, want to dig into this industry and want to keep YouTube at its core and want to do so much more, and that's why we stayed small. So you have ten of the most subscribed to followed YouTube personalities in a time where YouTube is it's hard to navigate. Right. People die on YouTube, but I don't mean actually die, but their content dies on YouTube because they're not switching it up enough or whatever.
The reason is. Is it that you've found people who have staying power or is it that you have come up with a strategy for that staying power? Man, I don't know how much I want to stay here, and I think most of it is just lack of understanding of how YouTube actually works. Most of our guys focus on a few things. And yes they switched their content up. Yes they don't do the same video ten times in
a row like some creators make that mistake. But you know, we really understand that a good video starts with a good title and thumbnail, and then once you get people to click on that video, it's all about getting them to stay and watch that video. So it's really just a combination of high click through rate which is CTR, and high a reg uderation. So that's the two things
that we really focus on and as a creator. When those two dip, that's when it's time to either switch it up or say, Okay, my fans aren't clicking on this video. Why are they not clicking on this video? Or why are they not staying and watching this video? For the duration we're going to get into a little bit of your back story before we give away all
the secrets. But there was a time when all of this clicked for you, And there had to have been moments in the journey where you figured out the secret sauce and and to even figure out to work with influencers. Would you remember a time in your career that this all kind of came to fruition for you. There there's a few. I honestly don't even think we're a first space yet, Like we have so much more to accomplish
as a company. And yes, we work with some of the most influential people on the Internet, but there's a lot that we have to accomplish with those individuals, and we really dig into their businesses. But when I was I was an NFL sports agent before I got into this industry and I met Dude perfect. So this was two thousand fifty Dude Perfect was still small, not the Dude Perfect we know today. They're like two million subscribers. And I met them, and at the time, we were
working with large NFL clients. We had Odell Beckham Jr. And Richard Sherman and Marcus Allen and Barry Sanders and so like we were at the top of this NFL chain and it was a lot of fun. But when I met Dude Perfect, advertising agencies and brands were asking me questions that they weren't necessarily interested about Odell and Richard. They were going, tell us more about Dude Perfect, or those trick shot guys are really interesting. Why don't you
come to the office and tell us more? And that was kind of like my first AHA moment was Okay, people are actually looking at this to be a viable marketing you know medium. I left three months later. People still thought I was crazy at that time, like nobody's gonna buy a Dude Perfect video, Like people aren't going to spend money on YouTube. But eventually, after pitching it for six to eight months, people started to spend money.
And that first one was Callaway Golf. Kellowe Golf came in in a very conservative golf industry that's predominantly marketed towards older individuals. Came in and bought a You Perfect video, and this was the first thing I had done with Dude Perfect. And then they came back for a second video, and that's when I knew, Okay, this is something that's going to be massive. And so you leave the sports world behind, yeah, I did. I packed up my car. I worked so hard to get into the sports industry.
To everyone's hard. That's a hard career to kind of break into. It's almost impossible to break into because there's not that many sports agents. It's very difficult. It's easy to get a certificate to be a sports agent. It's very difficult to represent a guy that actually makes an NFL roster. And so I saw the movie Jerry McGuire, just like everyone else did when they were younger, and
I thought it was a sexy industry. I lived in Las Vegas, and I used to travel back and forth in Las Vegas to l A and literally just sit in lobbies like c A and Athletes first, and like all these different lobbies. I was just sitting wait for agents to come out, and then I would hand them my resume and I'd be like, just give me an opportunity, like I promised, like it's going to be worth It
is very every everyone everyone passed. I got some emails back and they're like, you know, thanks for sitting in, but you know, sorry, we just aren't hiring. Or it was like ce A just kicked me out of the lobby and yeah, it's just never happened. And then eventually I met someone in Las Vegas who was running a sports management firm and he offered me an internship and I just took it. Isn't that how all great stories started.
It's like they said no a thousand times and then finally and then you were representing some known names, which to leave that after all that tenacity and you know, sitting in lobbies and getting kicked out of them for you to then jump ship into this unknown world. Obviously you saw a case study of somebody wanting to buy something, so you knew it was viable and you knew there was something there, but did you know how big this world could be? No idea, no idea. Okay, at the time,
my parents thought it was crazy. So I I packed up my cars like mom, Dad, like I'm driving to Dallas where Dude Perfect is base. I'm leaving for Smartin Management, which was the sports station. Se like, wait, what, I thought, You've worked a year and a half to get this job. You've done it for nine months, and now you're gonna leave. I was like, yeah, I think I can do this, and like, well, you know, we trust you and good luck and you know they supported me, which you know,
it was number one and then number two. It was then figuring out who were the next big channels that are going to pop up on YouTube And luckily then met typical gamer who was live streaming Grand Theft Auto and saw him pulling five thousand viewers to eight thousand viewers to twelve thousand viewers, and you just continue to grow and that's when YouTube gaming became a thing. So then was your full time focus just kind of scouting this this next crop of influencers and mega digital personalities.
And how did that day look for you? Were you just sitting there on YouTube all day? Not really. I was sending a lot of cold emails at that time because I was working pretty closely with Dude Perfect and I was trying to bring in business for them. Wasn't really interested in signing a ton of people. I always understood that talent management wasn't scalable. It wasn't a scalable
business model. For me, it was I just to work with individuals that I enjoyed working with, and then I wanted to become business partners with them and do something much bigger than just create YouTube videos. And for me, that was always, you know, where I wanted to take this. But at the time, there were so many different people popping up on YouTube it was hard to keep up like it is today, It's like there's so many channels with a million subscribers, how do you figure out which
one to work with? So I was just getting to know people, sending a lot of cold emails, talking with advertising agencies, and really just building my rolodex. So at that point, what was the game plan for you? Did you think you're gonna start an agency? Is was night media? Even in the no, it wasn't even really a thing yet. I just was enjoying what I was doing and I was going to eventually figure out how to make it a business. But at the time I wasn't even thinking that.
I was just thinking, Man, I'm not making any money. How do I Convince CALLOWE Golf and BMW to spend money on Dude Perfect so I can actually bring in some income. That's really all I was concerned about at the time, and then it eventually to now what night media has become is pretty crazy. I never imagined. Yeah, so a lot of things happened between that first deal
and today. Um, today, you represent ten huge personalities. We were going over your your top five and that doesn't mean they're your favorite gonna get me in trouble not. I wouldn't say top five because they're all incredible, but you've got Preston Mr b Sunday unspeakable. You can look at it in a few ways, views per month, or subscribers or social reach. I guess we're looking at facts. We're not asking the godfather to pick the favorite child that I love them all today. Yeah, of course you do.
And they're all really talented. So you get this roster? How does how does this happen? So? Okay? So I was working with Due Perfect, then I met typical gamer Twitch and we talked about you had someone on from Twitch Earlier. Twitch was obviously taking off an Amazon had just acquired. It was called Justin TV. YouTube gaming then starts, and I was starting to work with some of those live streamers that were popping up on YouTube that were just live streaming on the platform. And that's really how
it started. And then two thousand seventeen. But February two seventeen, I met an individual named Preston had a Minecraft channel called rest in Plays about three and a half million subscribers. We were in the same city. I was living in Dallas. I had no idea he was in Dallas, and a friend of mine who was also a YouTuber, Nico Vald, introduced us through Twitter d MS. I do most of my business weirdly enough, through Twitter d MS. I've never
recruited anyone, No, they slide into mine. I've never like recruited a person to sign them. It's usually them coming to me and asking questions. Is how it usually starts. Hey, I saw you work with so and so, like, can you tell me a little more? And that's how it works. With Preston, he introduced us. We went out to coffee, sat there for about four hours and just kind of talked about family and faith and business and you know,
just had a good time. And eventually, about thirty days later, him and I started working together and that's when night Media took off. Okay, so would you say he was
the reason night Media came into fruition. I would say he's the reason Night Media started to really scale, like our business offering and what we were offering creators and how we were working with them, because before that, I was working with a few guys who we worked with today and it was just kind of like brand flow, which is great, but Preston really opened my eyes to
this can be so much more. You know, the guy has seven businesses right now because I think twenty seven employees, which is crazy, but a lot and a lot of our clients now as you look at them, they all have twenty plus employees. It's just kind of how we help them build that internal business to support. And then Preston and I just started doing business together and that's when I was like, Okay, I need to hire some
people because this is getting out of control. And then Preston introduced me to Unspeakable Gaming, who lives in Houston, and then we ended up signing Unspeakable and then it just started. The domino started the fall. People who are having two to three million subscribers, that's that's a decent baseline to start with, but then you did something incredible and made them go from three million subscribers to ten
x or you know whatever it is. It's every single person started pretty decently, and I think I would put them in the top of YouTube top creators. What did you do? What was your secret sauce and what was your offering to these people that helped them go from three million to say, twenty million subscribers. Well, it ultimately falls on them to produce good content. The one thing that that we really focus on that we understand is
it's a business. And so most of these YouTube creators that you meet and this was, you know, two thousand, ten, twelve, thirteen fourteen, YouTube was just an individual in front of a camera editing his or her own videos and creating their own thumbnails. That is not YouTube. You have to have a creative director, a post production manager, head editor, like do you need to have specific people on your team to help where you can kind of take a step back as a creator and just focus on, Okay,
what's today's video, Okay, what's tomorrow's video? And that creative director really needs to help you flesh out like Okay, what do my fans want to watch? Right? So what we've really focused on is helping them build teams internally so they can just be talent, and that's what they should be. They shouldn't have to play fifteen different roles. And as we're looking to start other businesses or whether it's a concert whom are product or we're starting a
mobile gaming company, they can't focus on that things. If they're editing their own videos and making their own thumbnails and coming up with all the creative it's just not feasible. And so for us, you know, most of our clients now have taken a step back, hired the specific individuals that they need on the team, and then they also
understand the data behind why YouTube videos perform. Well, what what is the common thread between all of these talent all of this, you know, the digital personalities versus the other ones we're seeing on YouTube. So for us, like we focus on two things. This is what we're talking about a little earlier. The first pillars that they need to be family friendly. We only work with family friendly creators.
It's it's a little differently if your audiences in their twenties and thirties and forties, but most of the audience that we have for creators is like six to twelve years old. Some of them sew a little older, like Mr Beast and many Latin Typal gamer. But for the most part, that's where we sit and so family friendlies one and that second one is we only work with creators that want to be more than just YouTubers. They want to have to be business people. They want to
be entrepreneurs. They're really good at using YouTube is that core and then building businesses from that? If that makes sense? So those are like, as I look at all of our clients, are are ten clients. That's two things that they all have in common, is they really want to do more than just be a YouTube creator. How do you guide them? Obviously you said that you play manager agent all these different rules. How do you help customize and guide each person's trajectory or are you I'm assuming
it's different for each person. Yeah, it's really up to them, and they set the cadence of what the next three to five years look like. We just help them get there right most and we have a lot of meetings with people that we don't end up signing because they really have no idea. They're making YouTube videos, they're doing fifty million views a month, and they're like, you know, it's great, and that's fine, it's just not for us, right, we want to build businesses with them. Sign an agent,
persons with Endeavor. He has a publicist and all these other people, and we want to build an infrastructure. So if we want to do an animated series on our own present and Night Media can go do that. Or if we want to do this consumer package good Mr Beast and Night Media can go do that. And so that's why it's just it's so important to us, and some creators just aren't right. They just don't fit in our Night Media's you know, little closet of what we
look for. I was gonna next ask you if if there was exclusivity with these people that you sign, but obviously Preston he was able to sign with an outside agency. Yeah. Yeah, So we don't act as the agent. We just act as the manager or business manager. We sometimes use agents depending on what we want to get done. If Preston, for instance, wanted to do more voiceover and so we signed with Endeavor to help him do a little bit more voice acting. But most all of the exclusivity really
falls on night media. If they want an agent, will go help them interview agents. I think back in the day when we were talking about traditional talent, they said, you know, the important thing about a manager is helping you find a good agent. It's not really the case anymore because it's not a traditional world. Like these people can you know, Preston can do his own animated series and act in it and funding it and do it
all by himself without an agent. We don't need a certified agent Hollywood, but for some circumstances we still do. Let's talk specifically a little bit about Mr Beast because he has done so much in the last year. He's grown and in his numbers are insane basically, and everybody's eyes seem to be on him this year. What what
was the big change in ten for Mr Beat? Yeah, I made an article I think it was a video like mid two thousand eighteen, and I was like, okay, two thousand seventeen, Year of the Pulse two thousand eighteen was Ninja two thousand nineteens like the Year of the Beast, and he might follow it up in twenty is like the Year of the Beast. Again, and I think that's going to happen just based on the projects that we
have going on right now. Right I think I told you before we started the last twelve months, Jimmy's grown sixteen and a half million subscribers. I don't know if which may possibly be the fastest growth were unclear? Yeah, and a personality channel. I'm not talking T series or like businesses or even like justin Bieber, like music channels. We we usually put it in like a style of just personality channels. I would say Ninja is the only other one, and I he had to have grown faster
than Ninja. I'll ask, I'll ask YouTube who grew quicker? You know what, for the sake of the podcast? Guess who grew quicker? Jimmy? Yeah, sorry, Ninja, Sorry Tyler. What is it about Mr Beast? Why? What's what's the so what?
I think there's a lot of things. One is he's more focused on the algorithm more than any person I've ever met, Like he really pays attention to the data and why videos perform and why videos don't perform, and so a lot of his day, I mean, he'll think three four hours just on a thumbnail, like what is this thumbnail? How do I get this from a ten to click through rate? So that's most of his days
is just creative. But all his videos are different. Like he and we really invented the trends in eighteen last to leave massive trend on YouTube still today, twenty four hour videos massive trend on YouTube that Jimmy really started in twenty s I'm not going to say I watched the whole thing. Didn't he say hundred thousand times? That was I think sixteen or seventeen, okay, but that was insane. Yeah, he's done a few of those. He did the miss
put Pie one saying put pie thousand times. I think he watched It's every Day Bro for twenty four straight hours? And how is his mental state after that? He's fine? Is he? Okay? I don't think he'll ever do anything like that again. The twenty four hour videos, and they are a percent legit. It's not like they go spend six hours in a rainforce like the new video that came up there in the rainforest for twenty four hours or there, you know there. I shouldn't even say they're
filming another twenty four hour video next week. That's insane, but they'll spend twenty four hours there. They're not making this up, so would you it's okay to say this is the main motivation behind Mr Beast's videos, What is going to get the most views? I think it's some of it in what we really understood. And this really started with the twitch donation videos, which was another trend. He started Twitch donation videos when we did the forty
dollars to Ninja and we gave it. It was a charity stream for St. Jude, So it's basically a donation to to St. Jude's. I think it just sparked something within him is like, wait, I have an opportunity to do a lot of social good with my platform, and so yes, we pull out of views, but we also we do a lot with charitable organizations. We're starting our own five oh one C three that's going to tackle homelessness in America. You know, we just announced yesterday that
we're gonna plant twenty million trees by Earth Day. So his platform has really become something so much bigger than just pulling views. And I think that's why I like, not only was the Year of the Beast, like I guarantee, like the end of that year, he's gonna be sitting around that fifty million subscriber range. That's insane. That's absolutely do thirty by the end of the year. I'll say it's end of September, where almost twenty five December will
probably a two to three million month. Do we know who has the most? I'm sure. I wonder how many of those are active. I have no idea. I'm just speculating. I don't think it's really so, it's it's now Beauty Pie, Mr Dude Perfect. I think we passed Mark Applier and Jack Septicai and Annas. I think it's just those three Mr be stood Perfect, Beauty Pie. That's awesome. So you're working in this space where you you know, they're not just working on YouTube, they also are building businesses that
you've referenced many times. What are some of the businesses that you've found to be most lucrative and in line with what these creators are setting out to do. I think merchandise is the first one that always stands out, and people do like their own merch and now we're seeing creators actually create clothing companies like Teddy Fresh in H three H dre that are doing you know very
well or loose change and face banks. We're going to see more of that, and obviously all our clients sell merchandise. I think we'll get a little bit more into specific clothing brands and apparel. The next one for us is going to be consumer package good, So we're gonna get into products, whether that's candy or other edible, you know, food, something along those lines. Will launch in the next like thirty to sixty days. I won't say what it's called.
Presson and I launched a animated production company about sixty days ago, and so we're going to start creating our own intellectual property, our own animated series. Will probably do a few with Nickelodeon. I think we're at the finish line with a few of those right now. So sky's the limit. I think the hard part is staying narrow and actually executing on a certain thing, on certain things, because our guys and they now think like this, like I can accomplish anything with my platform. What do I
want to build? So we we try and keep them pretty narrow with like, okay, let's pick two to three things this year and execute on those instead of fifteen
and not getting anything done. In twelve months. And so for Preston, it was, you know, we want to do a certain consumer package ago that will launch and then really meat Ball, which is our kids production house, and so those are the two things that we wanted to execute on in ten as well as his elm He's he's with Elmer's Hot Pockets, Hot Wheels, Sonic and Disney right now, or his his corporate partners. How is your head staying? We just left Orlando. Actually we filmed a
Star Wars commercial. I got roped into it somehow. So it was Preston, his wife bree our friend Keith, and myself. We're in the Star Wars commercial for Galaxy's Edge. So we just launched that on Saturday. I'm back here again on the first. We have a Hot Wheels thing going on, and then Breeze also filming a thing for another brand on the opposite side of town. There's a lot going on. There's so much going on, and how do you even
keep your head straight? Because you have these ten It's not like, you know, most agencies have their one star. It feels like all ten of your clients are stars. Yeah, they keep me busy. I have a great team. I travel a lot because I like to be with them when they travel or they're doing certain appearances. But I also have a really supportive team that also helps, and
you know, fills in the gaps. How do you manage time and properly allocate enough time to each of these people because obviously, you know, with a music label, they might put all their eggs into Taylor Swift, but then there's the person that's really talented, but they're not going to put as much marketing money or whatever. How do you equally distribute your time to make sure that all of your clients feel like they're getting the attention the
time that they need. It's so difficult. I've runned that prominent. It's the reason why we are not going to ever scale the talent management business because I only have so much time. Nick on my team, who represents and manages some of our clients, now, only has so much time. You know, we're hiring another talent manager who's probably going to sign one, maybe two individuals, will never get over fifteen to eighteen. It's just not our business. And so the way that I manage my time is just not
signing everyone. If I wanted to, Night Media could probably have fifteen more clients hitting that like hundred million of mark But you know, we have ten whales right now and we're so focused on those ten that for us to just start signing people is just not our business. I like that. I feel like that's why everyone's doing so well. They get that specific attention and it's catered
to them versus you just kind of dumping content out there. Yeah, and there's some management companies that represent thousands of people. I mean, at that point, you even know everyone's name, do you know who their parents are? Like you, I'm so close to the ten individuals that we work with. I was in Preston's wedding. I'll probably in you know, typicals wedding if him and Samara end up getting married in the next year. So it's like they're now like
our best friends. And I think that's the one thing that sounds out about night Media, as we treat him like family, and it's hard to have family when there's a thousand individuals in your company or a thousand creators like you just there's no time for that. So you're pretty hands on when it comes to whether it's a brand deal or it's somebody wanting to brainstorm with you, Preston coming to you a year ago or whatever and saying, I want to do animation. How does a conversation like
that happen? Is it? This is a passion of Preston's and he comes to you and he's like, how do we execute? And then you figure it out. It was actually something I pitched him on. So Preston, if you look at his channel, his Minecraft channel now it's it used to be Preston Plays. It's just changed the Preston now. So we just crossed ten million subscribers two months ago and he switched Minecraft onto a different channel now called Preston Place. He has two series that really stood out
to me that were episodical. One was based on hide and Seek within Minecraft and he also tried it in Roadblocks and in Fortnite, and the other ones about finding secret items artifacts places, and they're the two most popular series on his channel really on YouTube to be quite honest, like they average four to eight million views of video. And so when we looked at it, people are coming to us and saying, hey, we want to do an
animated series, will you act in it? And we just figured why do we need, these people will do it ourselves. We have the distribution on his channel, we can do the toys, we can do all this stuff ourselves, and we can market it. So we kind of looked as like, do we need Disney, do we need Nickelodeon, do we need Cartoon Network? Or can we execute this by ourselves?
And that's really why meat Ball started. It's so interesting that once these personalities have the platform, they can literally do whatever they want, right, they have the power to. But at some point do you step in and say don't do that one passion project because there's you'll see YouTubers who have a lot of eyeballs and they're like, Oh, I'm gonna go do this one thing that might not be the best move for them strategically for their career. Yeah. I shove a lot of stuff down, more for specific
people on our roster than others. But yeah, I have to step in sometimes and I just don't think it's a good idea. And that's also why they have us there. Right, if we just said yes everything they wanted to do, then then why why are we so trusted? Right? So the other thing that all of our clients trust me with is like if Reed thinks it's a good idea. Let's do it right. So most of them come to
us and say, what do you think? And is the ultimate goal to transition into a more mainstream world or is it more of a business empire they're trying to build or is it different for each person? It's different. I don't think we need to transition to mainstream. I
think we're all the guys are already so popular. I think the mainstream now needs us more than we need them, especially like I told you some of these shows that all of our guys turned down, Like we don't necessarily need to go on we think something it'll do more bad for us than good. You know, Ninjas went on Jimmy Fallon six times. So there's like a love hate for Ninja right now. It's like fifty fifty. When I meet kids, I'm like, do you like Ninja? Like Nope,
hate Ninja. Why do you think that? I just think he went into mainstream way too quickly, and the community felt like he got popular and then he left them behind. And so we're really cognizant of that too. Is like where are fans at? Like, let's always make sure we're catering to our fans first, and if we're going to go do something in mainstream media, great, but let's always come back to our fans because they're the ones that put us in this position. I love that. I love
that so much. Another layer to that question is what if YouTube just kind of becomes irrelevant? Yeah, it definitely could. Most of our clients have other businesses where it wouldn't matter. I think most of them could stop recording YouTube videos tomorrow and they would have, you know, income for the rest of their lives through other businesses that they had started are currently starting. Well, they'll they'll always be a platform to create content on right, whether it's YouTube or
Twitch or the next iteration of those two things. The people that you represent, they want to create content and that's what they'll do. Is that what you're well, yes, they love creating content, but a lot of them have other goals. Not necessarily I want to be YouTube for for the rest of my life, something more, Yeah, exactly. They use it as a catalyst for it was the start of something so much bigger as as I look at.
And it's obviously different for each individual person. But like one of our one of our clients wants to run the next Mattel Like. He's like, I have all these kids that follow me. I want to run the next biggest toy company in the world, because you know, these toy companies are struggling to get kids to buy their stuff. But I'm over here just selling direct to consumer, and I'm probably doing just as good as all of them. They all each of their own goals and we just
help them get there. That's awesome. So Jake Paul was on here. I was I mentioned too earlier, and he actually said he doesn't want to be referred to as a YouTuber anymore. He's like, I'm an entertainer. I don't like being labeled a YouTuber, and consider me a boxer right now because because right now he's training, and he's very seriously training to box, and I, you know, a part of you wants to be like, what are you doing?
But then hearing him talk about training three times a day and changing his entire you know what, he eats, his health regimen and and he's dabbling into all these things. But I think he understands that he has a platform and so people are going to watch whatever he does. Right So in his head, he's thinking I'm just gonna be the best boxer. Someone is seriously trained for this. Do you find that your clients also have these like dream passion things that they would because this was a
passion of Jake's. It wasn't like a random I want to box, He's always liked boxing. Is there anything you can tell us about a passion that we may not know about one of your clients like Mr Beast or Sunday or Unspeakable. Yeah, they do nothing that stands out like I want to be a boxer or I want to be a musician. None of them want to be musicians. So there won't be an everyday bro coming out from probably not um not to say he won't do something down the road, whether we do a distract or something.
Please do a distract would be so funny if we did. I obviously the fans want us to do it. Nothing really stands out. Most of our clients just want to do good. They want to use their platform to do good. And that's another thing that stands out about all of our clients is like they know that little kids look
up to them and they have this massive platform. And so that's another reason why we don't sign people that's where, right, because you know, you're this little six, eight ten year old kids really looking up to this person every single day he's posting a video um and so they really like being in that position of like being a role model.
Have you been in a position where you've noticed because sometimes you know that overnight fame can be a little overwhelming and you don't have to call anybody out, But where it kind of changed the content creator? Or is it different with this crop? With our clients, know, we keep them pretty grounded. I've definitely seen people where it goes to their head or you know, they start making a lot of money and they no longer talk to
their old friends, and it definitely happens. Most of our guys are pretty grounded and humble when it comes to that, and that's just you know, us getting to know them before we sign them. You know, usually our relationships with clients starts like thirty two ninety days of just like let's get to know each other. I don't want to talk business, I don't want to talk brand deals. I just want to talk like about you, your family, your aspirations. You know where you came from. And that's just why
we know our guys so well. Not to make a blanket statement about Hollywood, but it's it's very rare to hear that. You know, a lot of these managers and people behind the scenes are really just chasing the dollar and they don't really care. From what I've seen personally about the core values are not cussing or whatever. It is. Well, Luckily to we we operate outside of this city. I'm here a lot, but we're in Dallas, Texas. That's where we're headquartered. Not to say we won't open a satellite
office here. And we also don't have a single creator that lives in l A. It's not by design either, I've just for whatever reason, don't have any clients that live here. So what does that look like for you? Just on a plane a lots. I'm on a plane a lot. Yeah, October, I don't know she's this summer. I was probably in Dallas fifteen to twenty days in June, July, August. There's just a lot of travel. I enjoy it, though.
Jimmy's in North Carolina, Sunday's in South Carolina, Typicals in Vancouver, we gotta in Houston, and we have people all over the place. I'm in Portland a lot with many lad Just how do you manage your time? Forget managing making sure that all of these people get the love and the attention that they needed. How are you doing that self love? I don't know. I meditate every morning, so I started meditating in early two thousand eighteen. Is just
you get a lot of mind fatigue. I also get decision fatigue because I'm getting asked by so many different people every day, like what do I do here? What do I do here? What's this this decision? So decision fatigue is definitely a thing. I don't have a ton of time left in my day, but I love what I do, so it's like I don't really see this as work. Like I get to like to do podcasts, I get to travel around, I get to do fun stuff. We get to animated series. I get to be in
a Star Wars commercial. I broke againness world record with Cam Newton in July, so I now I'm the world record holder for the longest catch of an American football behind the back, just like I've two nineteen has been insane? What yeah? So it was on Cam Newton's channel, so he released it. We'll release our version probably in December on Mr. Beast channel. But we flew out to Carolina and filmed video with Cam Newton and we broke five year old records that day with Cam, and I broke
the behind the back catch one. We also broke like longest between the legs catch, most catches in one minute, most one hand catches in a minute. Who was doing all the catching? You? Cam actually caught the ball, Okay, but you caught one. I caught the one behind the back. The fun fact everyone he did play football in college, so which helped a little bit. It was it was fifty seven yards, so the ball was humming when it was coming in. Yeah, but I did catch your behind
the back. So I mean you're kind of in the content to I've probably been in fifty videos on Presence Channel. Where's your channel? Probably won't ever happen. Yeah, you just want to be a good start. If I ever have a channel, it'll be not a talk show or a podcast, It'll be something business related. I really like what Tim
Ferris does. This is why I do this show. I'm obsessed with Tim Farriss, and I love those takeaways that you walk away listening to that podcast and You're like, what can I learn from this, which is a perfect segue for my next question, which was which is going to be if you were to give advice. So there's somebody who wants to be the next Mr. Beasts, the next Preston. There are a lot of those kids out there. They see the Jake Paul's, Logan Paul's, they see these
like glamorous lifestyles. They want to be content creators. What is a piece of advice you have to give to them? One I made a video on this. You have to love it. First of all. If you're just making content to make money, you will fail so quickly. I think the hard part now as we see these Forbes articles how much does Jake Paul make? How much does Logan
Paul make? And these kids are seeing these YouTube creators making so much money, and so they think it's like this industry that they want to make videos and make all this money, and it's just not realistic. So I think kids stepping into this world right now, they're all gonna really struggle to make it because they just don't love it. Most of the guys that we work with they got into this industry because they love making videos.
Preston has been making videos for about nine years, and for the first four and a half to five years he didn't make it dime. It's just like I love playing video games, I love live streaming, I love making content. Will eventually happened, which changed because there are people who are still making content ten thirteen years later and they're not getting that that boom. Right. Yeah, it was Minecraft for him. He found he was playing he had a
tvn R frags, which is his old channel. He was playing Call of dutycs GO and then Minecraft came out and he started Preston Place and that's really that inflection point that he hit. The same with Mr Beast and he has seven years of content on his channel and what was the turning point for him? There was a few videos. One he gave pizzas. I think he gave a hundred pizzas away um to homeless people. I believe
that was the video. And then he did a Twitch donation video and I think that's really when people started to pay attention. Okay, who is Mr Beast? What is he doing? But every creator that you see who's massive has that like inflection point of like when did it start? Jake and Logan were on Vine, so they had a built an audience already, so when they transistened to YouTube,
it was a little bit easier. But for most of our clients, they were just making YouTube videos since fourteen fifteen years old and then and then all of a sudden they blow up and you see it's crazy and blocks and subscribers. Yeah. So my biggest warrior is kids getting into this to make money, and it's it's so much of a grind that if you don't love it,
you're going to fail. And I think another misconception also with creating content on YouTube is there are other streams of income for these content creators, so it's they're not just making money on YouTube videos. There's merch. We actually had the founder of fan Joy on and we were talking about love Chris, So we were talking about a lot of these people are making more money selling merch
than they are making videos. And I think these kids see these videos and they realize that they think they're going to make millions of dollars just uploading a vlog every day. Yeah. I don't even know if David Dobrick makes money off his channel. He has four minute videos which you can only run a pre roll on so maybe any swears, so maybe he has a fifty cent CPM. To be quite honest, he probably makes nothing off his channel, but he has a very popular podcast. He has a
very popular merchandise company. His tour was a massive success. He's now doing pop up shops, which I'm sure Chris talked about. It's like he's just figured out different ways to monetize his brand, and the big creators are doing that. They understand that YouTube's algorithms going to change one day and they're gonna stop making money or we're gonna have another apocalypse and ads will not run on those certain
creators channels. We just saw this with kids channels. YouTube basically killed ads on young kids channels, unboxing channels, nursery rhyme channels, and said they're not going to monetize them anymore. It's like that came out of nowhere. So some of these channels that were pulling five hundred million views a month, like Coco Melon, are no longer going to make any money from ad sense, so they need to figure out
different ways to make money. And then, speaking of ads, do you do you guys kind of have a rule of thumb with ads on your videos or what you like to do for the viewers? Yeah, well where where do we place them? Yeah? Yeah, We've figured out after a lot of testing that the best way to do it is always a pre role and then an add every two minutes and two minutes and thirty seconds, and then we usually put an end roll. What are your thoughts on a lot of viewers get upset with creators
for placing ads. What do you have to say to Well, I mean Mr Beast gives away most of the money he makes on ad sense anyway, So if he didn't place mid rolls, then we wouldn't be able to give a hundred thousand dollars away to homeless people or give a hundred and twenty five dollars to homeless shelter for Christmas every year. So it's just like most of the money is going back into the content. I love that. I love that. Okay, So you have such an eye
for talent. Is there anybody on YouTube right now that you're kind of that you're not that is not signed to Night Media? Someone on YouTube you've got your eye on. You think that they have something going. I know you have. They're honestly, isn't like I'm trying to think I don't watch a ton of content outside of our clients, because you don't even have time to think about signing anyone else. Yeah, it's I'm pretty focused on our ten individuals. Are there
some creators doing some awesome stuff? Yes, there is even people that we don't represent, Like I think David's content is amazing, it's very authentic. Why do you think people watch David dobreg He's funny. His supporting cast is also awesome. Like, they're just fun individuals and they're at that age where they're like eighteen to two years old, right in that college age. They have a large fan They have a large fan base of probably sixteen to twenty four, maybe younger.
I don't know. It's just something about his four minute videos too. They're just easy to consume. So there's all these like there's a Cloud gang, there's Team ten, there's you know, David's career already forgot what they call Oh yeah, the vlog How could I forget the vlog spot? How come you guys don't have a gang name? We don't need to have a gang name. I don't know, like we're successful without it. I actually Preston. So Preston used to have the pack. It was Vick Star Lachlin music No, No,
Vick Star Laughlin Beijian Canadian and Rob and Preston. They were called the pack. That was a Minecraft blew up. Do they collab? We don't really do collabs. Night media clients clab internally with each other, but we don't do a lot of outside collabs. There's a few reasons for that. One is we don't want people subscribe to our channels
that aren't going to click on videos and sub boxes. So, for instance, if Jimmy would go do a video James Charles and two d fifty thousand James Charles fans would subdim Mr Beast, then that video hits sub boxes and those two people don't click on it. That hurts our ctr So that's why we don't. That's why we don't
do collabs outside of our genre. Right, So Preston will do collabs with our kids creators because he knows that, oh those fans will click on my videos, but we don't do like David Dobre for instance, like I don't know if I lover to do a collab with David because we don't know if here his fans would click on our videos. YouTubers don't think about it like that, but they should be because the goal is to have a dent active subscribers. When you post a video, all
of them click on your video. Hence you have a high CTR. When you just inflate your subscriber numbers by doing collabs, you're actually hurting your channel. If I ever start a YouTube channel, all I am forcing you to represent you. You know all these What you just said makes total sense, but the initial knee jerk reaction when a huge YouTuber asks you to collaborate is yes, I'm going to get a bunch of new subscribers. But those
subscribers don't care. They want to see eyeshadow palettes if they're on James Charles channel and they're not going to watch, and it makes you look back. It's it's why all our fans of hit like hockey Stick growth because like we understand the algorithm more than anyone probably and we really focus on it. For instance, like we have a female creator and she came to me and she's like, I want to do a collab with this person, this person, and this person and they were so far outside of
like her normal content. I was like, here's what you need to understand. Yes, you'll probably gain another two million subscribers off these three claps, and those two million people will not click on your videos and your channel will then start to die. Do you think YouTube viewers are
that specific with the content they're they're consuming. Yeah? I think they sub to channels that they want to watch, and sometimes they sub to channels as their creators telling them to subdue another channel, and then they'll never click on that video ever again, or that creator ever again. You don't think it's possibly an opportunity for discovery potentially. I just think you can do more harm than good.
I think if it's in your if you make automotive content and you're collabing with other automotive channels, perfect, But if you're an automotive channel and you're going to kids creators and doing collapse with just anyone, if you're just setting yourself up for failure. M hm. So many truth bombs are just being dropped at my heart. What happens when Mr Beast comes to a year from now and wants to completely change his brand the type of content
he's putting out there, what do you do that? And you have all these subscribers that are used to a certain type of content. But Mr Beast woke up and he has a different vision. Yeah. Well, he's way smarter than I am when it comes to like understanding his audience. So I would support it because if he's saying he's going to do this, then I would trust him. When I met him and he had one point seven million subscribers, he told me he'd have ten million by the end
of the year. And this was in February March maybe. I was like, Okay, let's see it. I was like, there's no way you have one point seven you're gonna gets to ten million by December. There's no And he proved me wrong. So we ended the year thirteen point five million or something like that. So if he comes to me and says I'm switching up my content, I'll be like, all right, let's do it. I love that. And then advice for somebody who is in your shoes now,
not a creator, but somebody who wants to represent creators. Yeah, just to add value that when I first started in this industry, I didn't even take a commission. It's like I will literally work for free, I will do a good job, I will deliver and then we'll talk about it. So it's like you need to provide value before you can just go to someone, throw a contract in front of them and say, hey, let me take X percentage of your revenue. So it just doesn't work like that.
And there's a lot more competition in the space, and there used to be when I got started. When I got started, there was probably two or three people that were trying to manage digital influencers. There's especially in this town. So I think if you're a young kid, find someone that you get along with, that you think you can work with for the next decade and provide value. Don't try and sign thirty seven people right out of the door because it's you're not gonna last. You seem too
good to be true. How about that you have all these knowledge nuggets, plus you have this incredible roster of talent. I'm really excited to see what they all have going on. I know you couldn't tell us much. Is there anything you can tell us? Just give us one little, you know kind of thing. You know, Well, we talked about the tree video, so we're going to see a lot of YouTubers be a part of this Mr Beast Tree Challenge, so it's a dollar to planet tree. So he did
get other YouTubers involved. We're gonna have a ton and it's not within the your community, your well all the night media clients will probably get involved. Others. I won't say anyone's name yet. We'll wait for those announcements, but some people that have been on this podcast are probably
going to be involved. So yeah, and like I said, the goal is to plant twenty million trees by Earth, so we'll start out so Mr Beast will start out with probably a million trees and then we'll go get nineteen more million planet and yeah, it'll be that's it. That's crazy or five one C three is coming up, so it's we'll tackle homelessness in America. So that's another thing Mr Beast has been working on. Whether the video goes up in late two thousand, nineteen or twenty, I
think we're still trying to figure out. He just he has a lot of projects coming up and including coming on our show. Sorry, sorry, Jimmy, you might have to come on the show. Don't apologize. Tell him you're welcome. He doesn't necessarily love doing interviews, but we'll see what we can do. Do you see how fun I am? Its light fresh, This is great bubble. What else can I say here? We have a great view of I think we're in Burbank. We are in Burbank or the
Heart Studios. Yeah, we'd love to have all of your people on. Yeah, we have to get a few more on. Yeah, they're also awesome. I'm excited to have I think we're gonna have precedent on sometimes in October, and I'm super excited, especially if you haven't had a kids creator on yet. I'm really interested to talk to him because he has such unique content out there and it's doing really well.
Everybody's doing really listen. Seven eight channels, eight channels. Pulling quick question about that, What is the benefit to having more than one channel? I've always wondered this. Why are people opening more than one channel? Why wouldn't you just want all the views? Yeah, that we go down a rabbit hole here too. So it goes back to the point of our people clicking on videos and subboxes. Let's
just take video games for example. You start a channel on Minecraft and then all of a sudden, Fortnite comes out, so you have pivot to Fortnite, and then oh, Fortnite dies, let's pivot to another game. And channels that have done that in the past have usually struggled to pull consistent
views over the course of three to four years. And so what we looked at in Preston's case was, why don't we have a main channel that does real life because real life content is doing incredibly well right now on YouTube, and if we want to do Fortnite, we'll put it on a separate channel. If you want to make Minecraft, we'll put it on a separate channel. If you want to, you know, film a different video game that comes out in the next six months, let's put
it on a different channel. And it's turned out really well. So he's kind of separated his audiences again because we want kids to click on it when it's in sub boxes, not have a bunch of Minecraft Fortnite rollblocks and Call of Duty videos on the same channel when most of his audience is only interested in Minecraft. So there was definitely a strategy there. Oh yeah, yeah. I was always like,
what are they doing? Why? I was pitching present on changing his main channel from Minecraft to real life content a year ago and he finally pulled the trigger and it's worked out really well. Awesome. I feel like we've learned so much today. Thanks so much for stopping. And I know you have a probably a flight to catch. No, I'm here for another day, so I'm taking meetings the rest of the day and tomorrow, and then I fly home and I'll be back then six days. Hopefully you
get a nap in between, hopefully, hopefully. Behind the Influences a production of I Heart Radio and TDC Media