SPEAKER_04: Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to How I Built This early and ad-free right now.Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.Today's business travelers are finding that fitting in a little leisure time keeps them recharged and excited on work trips. I know this because whenever I travel for work, I always try and meet up with a friend to catch up, have a great dinner, or hit a museum wherever I am.So if you're traveling for work, go with the card that puts the travel in business travel, the Delta SkyMiles Platinum Business American Express card.If you travel, you know.Amica knows that your home, auto, and life insurance are more than just a policy. Thank you for watching. Amica's representatives are there when you need them.And Amica is a mutual, which means they're customer-owned, and they only work in service of you.
Amica asks about your life and your needs so you can build a policy together.As Amica says, empathy is our best policy. We've all been there.Maybe we used one or two misleading words in a shared document, and then the whole team spends a lot of wasted time trying to get on the same page.But we don't need to make those mistakes.Grammarly is a trusted AI writing partner that saves your company from miscommunication and all of the wasted time and money that goes with it. I spend a lot of time writing.I write scripts, emails, speeches, proposals, you name it.And Grammarly helps me find the right tone.It does so much more than correct grammar.
It's almost like a trusted writing partner.And when every word your team writes is clear, concise, and on brand... Everything gets better.Teams that communicate better with Grammarly report 52% less time spent writing sales emails and 66% less time spent editing marketing content.Join 70,000 teams who trust Grammarly to work faster and hit their goals while keeping their data secure. Hey, it's Guy here.And before we start the show, I want to tell you about a super exciting thing.We are launching on How I Built This.So if you own your own business or trying to get one off the ground, we might put you on the show.Yes, on the show.
And when you come on, you won't just be joining me, but you'll be speaking with some of our favorite former guests who also happen to be some of the greatest entrepreneurs on earth. And together, we'll answer your most pressing questions about launching and growing your business.Imagine getting real-time branding advice from Sunbum's Tom Rinks or marketing tips from Vaughn Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey.If you'd like to be considered, send us a one-minute message that tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. And make sure to tell us how to reach you.Each week, we'll pick a few callers to join us on this show.You can send us a voice memo at hibt at id.wondery.com.Or you can call 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there.That's 1-800-433-1298.And that's it.
Hope to hear from you soon.And we are so excited to have you come on the show.And now, on to the show. I think your first just massive, massive video that now has more than 30 million views was eating a Carolina Reaper pepper.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, at the time it was the certified hottest pepper on the planet.Is that like one of the most painful experiences of your life?Yes, I think so.Physically and a little bit emotionally.I don't know why you did this.
SPEAKER_05: I'll tell you why we did it.So we get 30 million views.Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how two boyhood friends turned a talent for making people laugh into one of the most successful YouTube partnerships ever, Rhett and Link. When I got out of college, all I wanted to do was to become a reporter, to travel around the world to dangerous places and exotic locations and tell stories.Now, to be clear, I did do that, though it wasn't nearly as glamorous as I imagined.But for much of my early career, I worked for big media organizations, NPR and then CNN.And for most of recent history, that was the only way to reach big audiences. You had to figure out how to get inside a media company, usually an internship, work really hard to capture the attention of influential editors, and maybe, just maybe, you'd get a shot.In many ways, it seemed nearly impossible for most people. Because now there are people on YouTube, several in fact, with tens and even hundreds of millions of subscribers, a bigger reach than even NPR or CNN or The New York Times.It would have been inconceivable just 10 years ago that a single person could build a media empire through YouTube.
But that is exactly what happened. Ask any American kid under, say, 20 to name an anchor of a nightly news program on TV.I'd be willing to bet fewer than a quarter could name one.But ask them who Mr. Beast is or Mark Rober.And again, I'm willing to bet that the majority would be able to answer that. Because YouTube and also TikTok, of course, are where a growing number of people get their information, for better or for worse.But what's remarkable about all of this is that, well, it's created some really significant businesses. Now, we've done a few content creator stories on this show in the past.Casey Neistat, Dude Perfect, Hank and John Green, among others.But we decided that this month we're going to dig even deeper and take a look at a few really prominent creators to find out more about the mechanics of building a media company on YouTube.
And today, the story of Rhett and Link. It's been estimated that their production company, Mythical Entertainment, brings in tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue.Much of that money comes from advertising and brand endorsements, but also from live shows, merchandise sales, and other projects.And not that long ago, both Rhett and Link were struggling to make a living from their videos. Now, if you're not familiar with them, basically, they're best known for a daily YouTube show called Good Mythical Morning.And on it, they talk about interesting stories in the news or they try weird food or do different stunts.Across their channels, they've amassed over 75 million subscribers.And judging by their financials, they built a pretty impressive business. Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal have known each other since first grade.They are best friends.
They played in a band together in high school.And by then, they had forged their friendship in a literal blood pact.
SPEAKER_02: You know, it was such an important moment.And yeah, it's so surreal.It's very cinematic, right?We were both just on board for, yeah, let's find the sharpest rock and shed some blood and sign a document.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, there actually was no shaking of hands.It was taking the bleeding hands and pressing them on the document.
SPEAKER_02: Right.It seemed more legally binding. Which is why I carried it around in my wallet for a year and a half before I lost the entire wallet.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, it's just, I think, like, there's this implausibility about the story because, I mean, you meet in first grade, you're friends, and you're really close friends, almost like brothers.And to the point where, by the time you're in high school, you're both saying, like, we've got to keep this going.We have something here.There is some charisma, some... dynamic that we both, like you weren't articulating it that way, but intuitively you knew that there was something that two of you together could do more powerfully than you could do on your own.
SPEAKER_05: And I also think that there was a sense that and I don't mean this in a derogatory sense, I mean, we felt different than the people around us, right?We felt like we wanted to have a different kind of life.We wouldn't have necessarily articulated it in that way, but we were like, it feels like the way that we see things and the way that we, the things that we're passionate about, we don't have anyone else that we can point to besides each other that's sort of validating this relationship
SPEAKER_04: tendency right and so you have if i think if we were isolated there would be this sense that like is something wrong with me but when you have this other person that will kind of mirror it for you you're like okay well something's wrong with everybody else were you guys um i mean i know you grew up both of you in it was a small town and probably a lot of most kids went to church on sundays were you guys involved and active in church in the same church as kids
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was a huge part of our lives and our friendship.At church, we went to Buies Creek First Baptist Church.And, you know, there were three times a week that we were there.And the youth group that we were involved in, like that group of friends that we had was pretty tight knit and was a group that went all the way from young grades all the way through high school.
SPEAKER_05: Right.And had like a close, true relationship with God that we really gravitated towards.I mean, I, for one, just sort of really latched onto that.And I was like, this is the most important thing.Like, if this is true, this trumps everything else in our lives.This is the thing that we should be thinking about.This is the thing that we should be living for.All our decisions should be, you know, run through this matrix.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.I know both of you went on to North Carolina State to go to college.And I guess while you were there, you both joined Campus Crusade for Christ.It's a national Christian organization on college campuses all over the country.I don't know if they're as influential today as they were at the time.Maybe they are.But you joined this group.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.We went to that first weekly meeting.And it was like a hundred kids and the meeting starts with a video.And it was the classic video that if you were in college at this time, whether you were a Christian or not, you saw this type of video is when people started getting access to be able to edit their own videos.And it was this classic thing that you would see at the beginning of a conference where the speaker is late and he's got to go through all this stuff to just to make it into the meeting just on time.Right.And you know, there was a mannequin that was a, him jumping off of something and landing awkwardly.Well, it, It was horrible, but it was incredible to us.
And we were like, this is wonderful.This is so funny.And everybody's laughing and they're starting not in the solemn way.Bow your heads.
SPEAKER_02: He ran off screen and then he runs in the back of the building. And he's got the same clothes on.
SPEAKER_04: And he's got the same clothes on.So you're watching a video of this guy, like, running to get to the meeting, jumping off a building.And then this actual guy in the same clothes runs into the room.And so it makes it seem like you were watching this whole thing in real time.And it was, yeah.
SPEAKER_05: And he was a lot more hilarious than we expected.Yeah, and we had been making some videos, you know, in high school as well.And had a video camera that, you know, my dad originally bought.
SPEAKER_02: Mostly for, like, school projects and stuff. But then we get to college and go to the crew meeting.It's like, oh, we could do that.We could do that in our sleep.
SPEAKER_05: We didn't just think, oh, this is a cool place we want to be.We thought, oh, how do you get to be that guy?
SPEAKER_04: How do you get to make the videos and make people laugh? Yeah.Yeah.Yeah.And I guess you actually pulled it off, right?Because as it turned out, when the emcee of those meetings graduated, you guys, you kind of asked to take over, right?Is that right, Rhett?Yeah.Like, I guess you became the emcee at the meetings and you'd play, like, videos that you guys made.Like, describe what kind of videos.
SPEAKER_02: Well, they would vary.But, like, Rhett would handle his own monologue, basically.Okay. And there wouldn't be a video every single week.But one of them was, you know, at fall break, we went to a retreat center.So we brought the camera and we started shooting all of this footage that we would later edit into one of those Rhett running around in the woods and jumping in the water and having like a fight scene with a moss man who's basically just me covered in algae. And we would score it to Led Zeppelin, and then we would show it at the next weekly meeting.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, all the music that we put under, ACDC, Led Zeppelin, all this really subversive music that the Christian culture at large saw as satanic.We were just like, guys, this is the best music.We're going to put it under these videos.And they just kept letting us get away with it.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.So this was I mean, this was basically like two years of college where you could just experiment in front of an audience that probably just thought it was funny and hilarious.And you could just I mean, you could just try a bunch of things.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.When we think about it like these days, though, it's funny because we definitely spiritualize the entire thing at the time.Right.So there was this.Hey, this is all for Jesus.And like and let me tell you, it was working. I mean, there was about 100 people coming to the meeting 150 max maybe the beginning of sophomore year.And by the time we graduated, there was over 1,000.Wow.
And I'm not saying the meeting went to 1,000 just because of us making the meeting fun.This was happening on a lot of campuses where it was just time and place.Things were kind of exploding.We were kind of right place, right time.But we were creating this thing that was the most fun place to be on a Thursday night on the campus of NC State.Wow.We were doing it so that people would come hear about Jesus, but we were trying really, really hard.Oh, yeah.Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: And I guess what started to happen is that the leadership of Campus Crusade for Christ noticed that you guys were attracting large, huge numbers of people, right?And I guess you guys started to get invited to host other events like this big Christmas conference that they would do in North Carolina every year.Yeah.Yep.And I'm assuming this was like the same type of comedy, like loose sketches and that type of thing?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it was somewhat polarizing because we brought that irreverent, really silly comedy that had nothing at all to do... We didn't make sketches.We didn't do any comedy that was trying to make a point about Jesus.It was all very separated from that.It was like, this is something that if you saw it, you know... completely divorced from the setting, you would just be like, this is clean comedy.Maybe these guys are Christians or Mormon or something because they're not cursing.But you wouldn't be like, they're trying to make some spiritual point with it.
SPEAKER_02: I mean, to be a Christian comedian, like to actually use the term, that's a hard thing to do.Right.If you want to judge it based on its comedy alone, yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Well, in that calculation, which was kind of accidental- is honestly the reason that we're sitting here talking to you today, because it was the fact that we were making comedy that could be divorced from that Christian setting.Right.And just some of those sketches and songs and videos that we made for those conferences are the first videos that ever got uploaded to YouTube.
SPEAKER_04: And meanwhile, a lot of other things are going on in your lives at that point.Like you both graduate and you both get pretty good jobs in engineering.I think, Link, you went to IBM and you went to go work for a company called Black & Veatch.But you were still like on the side doing these events for Campus Crusade for Christ.And I think pretty early on in both of your careers, you both started to think about leaving, right?Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, there was a guy who was on staff with Campus Crusade.Shane was his name.And he sat down with us and was like, I really think there's something here.I think you guys can... Bring this to Campus Crusade full time.Find a way to make this a full time thing where you guys can basically be comedians for Christ.Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: At the time, just to put in context, this is, I think, 2001 or two.And I think both of you were newly married.Both of you got married real, I mean, at a pretty young age, right?Right.Yeah.As soon as we graduated.Both of us.Yeah. They are still your wives.These were your girlfriends at the time.
And presumably, by the way, as an aside, like they had to they were marrying into this friendship, too.I mean, they had to accept that their husbands were going to be spending a lot of time together.So presumably, like the wives had to get along, too.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.And they were actually instrumental in that same time frame of when we were making the decision to do this full time. Our other best friend, Greg, for his wedding, for his rehearsal dinner, we wrote a song about him and about how his wife was about to see him naked for the first time, because that was true, because that's the way we did things, right?You waited until the wedding night for that.
SPEAKER_02: I think the lyric was actually, we've seen Greg naked, soon you will too.Right.Hopefully you enjoy it more than we do.Yeah. And so we sang that song.To all of his family and her family at the rehearsal dinner.How did they respond to that?They loved it.Okay.We like to think that they loved it.
SPEAKER_05: No, they did love it because that's just not me, you know, revisionist history-ing this thing.Because on the way home, Jesse and Christy, Jesse, my wife, Christy, Link's wife, they said... We don't know what it is, but y'all need to do, this doesn't just need to be something that you do occasionally or you just do for a Christmas conference.Like y'all need to do something with this.So it felt like, and again, this is the way that we thought at the time, this was the Lord orchestrating this. through his sovereignty, all these different life events to lead us to the next stage.
SPEAKER_04: So this really prompts you guys to leave your jobs, to go full time for Campus Crusade for Christ.And I think you had to raise money to pay yourselves.Part of your job was to get the money, to raise the money that would pay for your salaries.First of all, I'm assuming your parents were also supportive of, you know, your devotion to your faith.But was any part of them like, you know, guys, really important to support the church and your faith.But like engineering is a really stable job.And I don't know about this.Like did either of your parents kind of express that?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, there was definitely trepidation that rippled its way through my extended family, you know, to leave my engineering job.
SPEAKER_05: Which is a big deal because you're, you know, you were one of the first in your family to go to college.Yeah.And by the way, our goal was $41,500 a year all-in family salary.This is what you get.This is the salary, but you have to go out and raise it.
SPEAKER_04: And did you guys have – one or both of you also had a child at this point, right?Yes.Lily was just born.And Jesse was pregnant with Locke.So you guys, when you decided to do this, to pursue this full time, essentially you were going around basically doing a comedy tour of – you know, of college campuses and, you know, meeting with Campus Crusade for Christ members, basically.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.The thing that we had talked the local leadership into is evangelism training, right?So, you know, the 80s and the 90s were really characterized by a method of Christian evangelism, you know, telling people about Jesus that revolved around big, flashy events that would gather a lot of people into one place, right? a lot of times for another reason, and then share the gospel with them.And, you know, the classic bait and switch.And we were really, really conscious of that.Like we talked about how this bait and switch evangelism seems really insincere.It doesn't seem to really respect people very well.And so why not just... through natural sort of relational connection, let them know about Jesus and what Jesus can do for them.
And so that's what our ministry was.It wasn't creating big flashy events for non-Christians.It was creating weirdly specific comedic seminars for Christians.
SPEAKER_02: But we also cared about entertaining.And can we construct a job where we can have our cake and eat it too?
SPEAKER_04: All right, so you're going around basically performing and presumably becoming kind of, you know, sort of celebrities on the crew circuit, right?Like people started to know in that community, know about you guys.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it was starting.And it's funny, even today— occasionally, if we meet somebody who's a fan, they'll be like, I was at the 2002 Greensboro Christmas Conference.
SPEAKER_02: Dude, don't talk to anybody about it. If you have footage, destroy it.But, yeah, in order to promote our appearance and to kind of build into like, okay, you'll want to show up for our training, we made a website.Rhettandlink.com.Rhettandlink.com.Well, we had all of these videos that we had made at Christmas conferences and now for this seminar.Yeah. And this is, of course, pre-YouTube or right at the time of YouTube being invented.
SPEAKER_05: And people were asking us at the time.In 2005, early 2006, people would say, why don't you guys have a YouTube?And we'd be like, because we have a website.Yeah.You know, YouTube is for people who can't make their own server.
SPEAKER_02: And... We saw that Apple launched not only a thing called podcast, but video podcast at the exact same time.Yeah.So for us, we were like, okay, we can make a video every week to put on not only our website now, but we can put it on Apple.com. video podcast.Hopefully we can get noticed there.We can grow our audience on our website by having a weekly show. Welcome to the Rhett and Link cast.This podcast is about... And you would sit behind a desk, a table in the office of the Campus Crusade, right?It was the Campus Crusade conference room.
And we went in there and we set up a microphone on the table and we sat shoulder to shoulder.And we talked very quietly because people were working in the office.And talk about what?What did you talk about?Velcro.Yeah.Just dumb stuff.Yeah. The Swiss guy, George, he called it Velcro because of the French words velour and crochet.So we, like, formatted the show, and then at a certain point, we introduced a song that we had written about Velcro.
SPEAKER_01: One side is fuzzy.One side is prickly.Separately useless, but together so sticky.Zippers and...
SPEAKER_02: And it featured a music video.And all of this was in like a 12 minute to 15 minute video we called a podcast.
SPEAKER_04: It's amazing because you were doing this in like 2004, right?And there was just like a minuscule audience for this.And there was no way to make money off of it.It was like a creative outlet to give your existing audience or the people that you were going to go perform for a chance to see you, to see who you were before you got there.
SPEAKER_05: And that's the only reason that we did that format.We weren't trying to make money with the creative outlet. experimentation, it was more about what are the ways that you could reach an audience?And so that freedom of not having to worry about the money led us to be like, there's no money in podcasting, but this is a great way for us to stay in touch with the audience that we're building.
SPEAKER_04: And when we're talking about reach, I have to assume you're talking about hundreds or a few, maybe thousand people who would see these videos.
SPEAKER_02: At most, yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Hundreds or thousands of people at most. I think 2006 is when you launched a YouTube channel.And this is early YouTube.YouTube is like for weirdos.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.It's basically just a server.It's another server for us that we don't have to pay for.Yeah.It's how we saw it.We only did it because people started taking our videos from our website and uploading them to YouTube and they were getting thousands of views versus hundreds of views.And we were like, oh, we should do this on purpose.
SPEAKER_04: So at what point did you leave Campus Crusade for Christ?Did you leave that job?I mean, because I know you were, I mean, you're still, you're making videos.I saw a video from this time.It's a hugely popular video you guys did called the Facebook song where you are sort of parroting Facebook.And it's the two of you in a Facebook windows.I mean, you're kind of just singing about the weirdness of Facebook at the time.
SPEAKER_01: I'm hooked on Facebook. I used to meet girls hanging out at the mall, but now I just wait for them to write on my wall.
SPEAKER_05: We were having the success of individual videos like the Facebook song. to the point where we got noticed by some producers who were putting together a show for the CW called Online Nation, which was going to be a internet clip show.And so they reached out and said, we want to feature some of your videos on the show.And by the way, we would love some of the hosts to be internet personalities. Well, we got the offer to be two of the four hosts.And at that point, it was like, hold on, the CW?That's a real TV network.An actual network is asking us to be hosts of a show?It's going to be like on TV that you can get with an antenna?Right.
At that point, we said, okay, we forget this because there's a lot of things that have happened over the past 20 years, but that moment felt... I remember waking up one morning and thinking, I'm going to host a network television show.This doesn't feel real.That was the first moment there was something that just didn't feel real.At that point, it was like, you can't say yes to this without officially saying you're not going to be on staff with Campus Crusade.Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: But we kind of felt like it was God, right?Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_05: We certainly had to have felt that.Well, that's a wonderful way that that worldview worked for us was that Oh, this opportunity is obviously from God.So it was easy to say yes to it.
SPEAKER_04: So they essentially offered you the job to be the host of the show called Online Nation in 2007.Actually pretty sort of maybe ahead of its time kind of an idea because YouTube was still so new.But the idea was you guys were going to host a show that was going to show clips, like funny clips from the internet.We recorded eight episodes.
SPEAKER_02: They showed four of them before they decided.
SPEAKER_04: We were going to do it forever.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: This was going to be our lifestyle.And probably big money.I mean, comparatively big money to what you were making, more than $41,000 a year.
SPEAKER_05: I actually think that, if I recall correctly, we each got paid $8,000 per episode.So by doing eight episodes, we each increased our annual salary by 50% from what we were getting.So this felt like earth shattering money. levels of money.Now, we were so excited about this, right?And so we were like, we're gonna make a big event of this premiere.We had not seen the show. They didn't let us preview the show, give any notes.That was not our role.And we gather... Everybody that we know.
Every family and friend.In Harnett County and the surrounding counties.I mean, we had a few hundred people.It was like a wedding.We were in the paper.I'd only been in the paper once when I called a 55-pound Amberjack when I was in middle school.So this was a big freaking deal.And we invite everybody over to watch a 22-minute show.Yeah.And then...
The show starts.It was a big buildup.We sit there, and I begin to realize that there's a lot of courtesy laughing happening.And then the other thing that was dawning on us at the time is that they did not use anything that we wrote.And the reason that we wrote our own stuff is because we thought that everything that we were saying that they had written was just the cheesiest possible thing.
SPEAKER_02: I remember the point where we were filming and they were like, now we're just going to get some wild lines as if you are reacting to videos we've not yet, you know, found or cleared.And then the teleprompter would just scroll and it would be like, that was unbelievable.Zoinks, you know.How do you come up with this stuff?None of our rewrites made the cut.
SPEAKER_04: So that airs. And did you feel like maybe this was not going to be a long-term play?I mean, what was your sense?Did you think that—I mean, I guess I'm bearing the lead here.The show was canceled after four episodes.It was canceled after four episodes.
SPEAKER_05: Hey, that's a full month, guy.And what we saw, to use the Christian metaphor, you know, God had closed one door and opened up another.That door felt like it was now closing very quickly.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: But we thought, listen— One of the producers of the show, Paul Cockrell, agreed to be our manager.And so the idea was, hey, regardless of where this Online Nation thing is going, maybe we can use this to secure another opportunity.
SPEAKER_02: We had been painted this vivid picture of what our future in Hollywood was going to be like by the other producer of Online Nation.Remember what David said?I remember him saying, before you know it,
SPEAKER_05: your wife's going to be pushing that stroller down the streets of Malibu.And I was like, yeah, that's right.I had no idea that no one actually lives in Malibu, unless you're like somebody, a household name.
SPEAKER_02: There's not many places to actually push a stroller in Malibu.There aren't really.
SPEAKER_04: You've got to drive to the shopping center and get your car.Yeah, you wouldn't really push the stroller in Malibu.But yes, I can understand what he's trying to get at there.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so he did sell this idea.And I think we've always had this inflated sense of confidence.And even when we see something failing, we're like, well, the reason that's failing is because we didn't get to do what we wanted to do.We didn't get to say the things that we wanted to say.So if we can just find somebody that we can talk into letting us do what we want to do.So at that point... We went around having what we were told were general meetings with production companies, producers.And we didn't really understand what that meant.It meant just get to know you.But what we saw that was, it's like, this is a meeting that's currently about nothing.
So we need to make it about something.So we would do things like sit in the lobby of a production company, look at the posters representing the properties that they had made. and then come up with a pitch based on how these different properties meet.Like, this is the stuff that they're into.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, they have like an alien movie, and they did like a music documentary, and then they call us back.Red Link, so-and-so executive will see you.And we go in there, and we just start pitching the idea that we've just hatched as if it's the reason we're there.We got this idea for this movie where... It's a good idea.I still want to make this movie, by the way.This washed-up... country music group, like back in their heyday, they sent their music to space, you know, like when they did that with the Voyager spacecraft.
SPEAKER_05: And then aliens intercepted the music, and an alien civilization has fallen in love with this particular band, and now they're invading Earth, and they want to get the band back together.And that band basically has to get back together to save Earth's population. That's great.
SPEAKER_02: And so we're just, we're like, this is how it's done, right?We have plenty of ideas.And he was like, well, I just want to hear the ones you're most excited about.Yeah.And we're like, oh, you mean the one we just came up with in the lobby?Because we just thought this is the game and this is how it works.And so we did a lot of those actually.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.I mean, the show is canceled.You're hoping maybe there might be a lifeline, but nothing.Right.
SPEAKER_05: But the thing that was working was we were continuing to make YouTube videos that were getting more and more views.And we were trying to invent a business model.And what we ended up doing was we would construct a sketch or a song. And then we would reach out to somebody to sponsor it because this is before the partner program.You didn't make any money just by getting views on YouTube.Putting videos on YouTube, that was it.There was no business model in 2007.So right around that same time, like 2007, like in that era where we're trying to make something happen in Hollywood.So we wrote a song about cornhole.
SPEAKER_04: Yes, which I've seen and is – It's like you're wearing mustaches and you're tailgating outside of the stadium.Yeah, it's kind of like a country song about... Yeah, and you're playing cornhole.
SPEAKER_02: An Olympic sport by 2024, by the way.Exactly.That's what we claim in the song.It reminded me a little bit of like the Flight of the Conchords kind of approach.
SPEAKER_05: They were definitely... Influences.Big influences.
SPEAKER_02: I'm sure, yeah.Yeah.We were like the down-home North Carolina boy version of Flight of the Conchords.The sort of the PG version.Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: So you make this cornhole video.So we would literally write the song, and then we would cold call companies that sold cornhole equipment. With the help of my dad, I put together a little contract where it was, hey, you give us $2,000 up front to make this music video, and then we have a $20 CPM.We had just sort of started hearing about what that was.
SPEAKER_04: So you'd say for every 1,000 views, we get $20, right?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and we end up calling some guys from a company in Ohio, AJJ Cornhole, and they're like, this is exactly the kind of thing that we want to do.We love the idea of getting the word out.We see what you guys have done.And so we put their cornhole equipment in the song, and then at the end of the video, you see there's a little ad that pops up and says, hey, get your cornhole equipment at AJJCornhole.com.Yeah. We probably ended up making like 25 grand off that video.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, that video has like 1.8 million views as of today.Yeah, so they stopped paying us at some point.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, we put a cap on it.But at that point, we were like, okay, this is how we control our destiny.
SPEAKER_04: But at that time, I mean, 2007, man.I mean, most mainstream media organizations just thought of YouTube as like nothing, as a joke, right?And so... I mean, even to convince small companies that this was a viable place to advertise must have been really hard.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was a lonely landscape.We had to make it financially viable.But, you know, the interesting thing is... Our whole, we were so much older than everybody else, so we had to do the responsible thing and figure out a business plan.We weren't really connecting with other YouTubers because they were substantially younger than we were and they were just expressing themselves and they didn't have kids.They didn't have failed careers in television hosting.They didn't need the money.They were still in their bedrooms. But it was all those years between graduating from college and this point in the story, it bought us the time we needed to create enough content to then have a brand on YouTube once YouTube became a thing.Yeah.
That now it was like, there started to be some money coming in if we could just tap into it.
SPEAKER_04: Tell me a little bit about your lives at this moment in time.I mean, you had this great, you know, Hollywood, you know, network contract that kind of fell apart.And now you are both in your early 30s.You've got young families.Were you stressed out about your situation, about money, about health insurance, about any of that?
SPEAKER_02: It was definitely very stressful for me, you know, having this month to month experience.Every dotted line that was signed at the bottom of a contract that we kind of invented ourselves reset a ticking clock in my brain.Oh, well, you know, you're still running out of money.You're still running out of money.
SPEAKER_04: When we come back in just a moment, how Rhett and Link get a gig with Alka-Seltzer and why Rhett puts on a lobster costume to make the worst commercial ever.Stay with us.I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This. Successful companies don't happen overnight.It takes an awful lot of grit, determination and teamwork.Our sponsor Atlassian knows this better than anyone.Their team has spent over 20 years creating software that powers collaboration for teams around the world. By creating software like Jira and Confluence to improve companies' workflow, Atlassian is on a mission to make impossibility a reality.And now, they're ushering in the next era of teamwork with Atlassian Intelligence.When you think of AI, pizza may not be the first thing that comes to mind.
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Hey, welcome back to How I Built This.I'm Guy Raz.So it's around 2007, and after trying to make a go of it in Hollywood, Rhett and Link are back to working for themselves, marketing funny songs and videos, and soon hosting another talk show.
SPEAKER_02: There was a website called Ustream TV.We started doing some broadcast on there, and then the founder reached out to us, and we inked a deal to do a weekly show broadcast live.For $500 a show.$500 a show, and we said we'll do it.We committed to doing it for a year.And what was the show called? It was called the Rhett and Link Cast Live because it was exactly that Apple podcast format that we'd been doing.We set up our same green card table with the hole cut in the middle for the microphone.And we sat behind that and we figured out how to broadcast live for an hour every Thursday night.
SPEAKER_04: What would you do?
SPEAKER_02: talk about for an hour live?We would introduce pre-produced videos we had made.If we had a music video that week, we would premiere it on the show and then break it out as its own video on YouTube.And we also ended up setting up a second camera so we could camera switch and show my nana and papa sitting on a couch as our only audience members.And I would only cut to him on that camera once... My papa had fallen asleep, which would happen every time.He couldn't see that well anyway, so you couldn't really tell if he was sleeping or not, but I always said he was asleep.
SPEAKER_04: And by the way, how many people would watch it, the Ustream show?Hundreds.Yeah, a few hundred.Okay.And it was a cable access show, basically.Exactly.It was like Wayne's World.Very much so.
SPEAKER_05: Okay.So we're developing this skill.We have this equipment. Our office was the basement of my father-in-law's.He had basically been using it as a storage center for his business.I just was like, hey, you're just storing stuff down here.Can we set up shop in here?You know, we got some good breaks, like not paying any rent for our space, even though the nature of the space wasn't necessarily worth paying rent for.It was better than the alternative.
SPEAKER_02: What kind of mold were we breathing in?I do not know, but... Every time that someone above us flushed the toilet, we had to stop and take another take because it was right above our camera.
SPEAKER_04: So you were kind of piecing together different opportunities.Like you'd get a sponsorship.You had this live stream show that was going to bring in $24,000 a year.And I guess at one point Alka-Seltzer reached out to you.They came to you and they were like, hey, we like what we're doing.Can we sponsor videos?That was a big moment.
SPEAKER_05: So the ad agency for Alka-Seltzer reached out. and said we're going to do a Alka-Seltzer-themed road trip series highlighting all these places to eat and food-related things across the country.
SPEAKER_04: And by the way, how many YouTube subscribers would you say you had at this time, 2008?
SPEAKER_05: This is a total guess, but it was less than 50,000.Because I remember looking at some of the top guys with 60,000, 70,000 and thinking, how in the world did they get that kind of traction?So probably 10 to 20.
SPEAKER_04: Right.So some creative, forward-thinking ad person who was working for Alex Setzer was like, why don't we try YouTube?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.Yeah. And they're like, they say, we're going to make 21 videos is what this series will be all across the summer.And what do you guys, what do you charge for 21 videos?And when we came back with $42,000 because it was $2,000 per video.Because we were like, we don't want to tell them too much.They're asking... for 21 videos, but like, we gotta keep this affordable and like, that'll set us up.Like that'll be a big chunk.We were always just thinking about like, what do we need to kind of get through the year?
What do we know they'll say yes to?They paid more for the RV that they rented to take us around the country.
SPEAKER_04: This was a trip across the US that you would make 21 videos for Alka-Seltzer.You were in an RV.You asked for $42,000 for 21 videos. Yeah, and it seemed like a lot of money.It was like, this is... We needed it so badly.And you would put the videos on your YouTube page, but it was all... I mean, it's so interesting that Alka-Seltzer, of all brands, reached out to you.Because I remember when I was a kid, the commercials were always like, two old guys in a deli eating a big corned beef sandwich.And then it was like, plop, plop, fizz, fizz.Oh, what a relief it is.And you would look at it and say, oh, that's for old people.
Alka-Seltzer.And your audience was not that audience.Right.
SPEAKER_02: They had a new product that was a hangover cure.You know, you got to get these little kids with a hangover cure.But we were not comfortable promoting the product.And that was the one thing we put up a fight over was we don't want to do anything hangover related.And so we actually got in a retrofit their project to just be about pop, pop, fizz, fizz.Oh, what a relief it is.And it was like this retro... kind of approach to their brand to reach a younger audience.I don't know.We were just cagey about the hangover thing.
SPEAKER_04: Well, yeah, because I think you had cultivated an audience also.Maybe there wasn't as much crossover, but from your time as Christian comedians and that would have been off brand.Yeah.So this was the beginning of, you know, these kind of commercial opportunities.Yeah. And I guess one of the ways that you also, or one of the ideas you came up with was to make like spoof commercials, but for like businesses.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, we pull up, again, we're on this Alcazosa road trip.The RV stops, we wake up, they open the door.They're like, you're in Boston and we're going to take you to this famous fish market.Make a video, come up with something.
SPEAKER_06: I smell something fishy.
SPEAKER_02: I said, well, can you get us a lobster mascot costume?And we'll just make fun of those like late night local commercials where it's usually gonna be the owner of the restaurant that's in the suit.
SPEAKER_06: Did somebody say clam bake?Clam bake.Did somebody say lobster?Lobster.Did somebody say crab legs?Crabs.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so I was the lobster.You were the lobster.And we called it, when we posted it to YouTube, we called it the worst commercial ever, you know.And it got a lot of traction.Fast forward a little bit into 2008. because this is how another very strange sponsor works its way into our content.We're writing a song on a live stream late at night.It was during the 2008 financial crisis and we were writing a song about the financial crisis.
SPEAKER_04: In real time.In real time.
SPEAKER_05: Okay, yep.And so we're writing this song and then we get like a private message from a guy and he says, I want to sponsor this song that you're making right now. I'm like, what the hell?You mean you want to sponsor this song?And this guy was the CEO of a company called MicroBuilt, which essentially was a company that provided administrative services for small businesses at scale, like across the country.And he was just like, at the end of this song, can you just put our logo and our website at the end?You don't have to mention us or anything.It's just like a song about the financial crisis and then our website.Wow. We were like, yeah, $5,000.
Because at that point, we were like, two's not enough.Yeah.Okay.
SPEAKER_02: And the video of the song would go on your website, and he'd have that.It would go on our YouTube channel, yeah.So we say yes, and we do that.And he was ecstatic.So he's like, I want to sponsor more videos.Right.And, you know, we're like, explain again what you do. You manage credit being extended to customers of businesses that need to extend credit, like a furniture store.Right.And we were like, we had this brainstorm later and we were like, hold on, his customers are like small businesses, furniture stores.
They make some of the most famous local commercials in history are like furniture stores.We made a fake one for a real business before.Why don't we make real commercials for real businesses that tap into that local commercial aesthetic.And so we went to a furniture store called Red House Furniture.
SPEAKER_04: And I should preface this.Your fans know this.This is going to become a very famous commercial, the Red House one.I mean, I remember people... saying this and I was like, what are you talking about?YouTube, I was like, who, what, what's YouTube?This, you go to the Red House, okay, so keep telling the story.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so we meet them and we're like, tell us about yourself and your business and at some point, they just, one of them says, we're kind of like the Rainbow Coalition around here, you know, we got a lot of white people and black people that work here and we got a lot of white people and black people that shop here and we were like, okay, how about that's the angle of the commercial?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. A customer would come in and then we would introduce ourselves and ask, would they be willing to be in the commercial?And then we would just write down something for them to say on a cue card.And I remember writing it down and I held it up to the guy and I, Rhett's recording, I'm holding up.And then he said, I'm black and I love the Red House.And then everyone who came in would just say what they were.If they were white, they would say, I'm white and I love the Red House.And we didn't know exactly where the line was.
SPEAKER_05: We were like, I don't, it's like, this is kind of their idea, the way that we went about this, like, how is this going to be taken?Like, I think that some people are going to think that they should be offended by this.And some people are gonna be like, well, when I really think about it, I don't think I am offended by it.Let's just put it on the internet and find out.And what that led to, CNN called and wanted to do an interview about this commercial.And so that was like the first time we'd ever talked to any national news outlet about anything that we had done.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, I mean, this commercial went so viral.And the tagline was, where black and white people go to buy furniture, basically.Something like that.And you had a song.Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: At the Red House, where black people and white people buy furniture.
SPEAKER_03: Such a weird, just such a weird.It's so weird.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And it was a positive message of racial reconciliation to sell furniture because furniture is for everybody.
SPEAKER_05: Did it affect business at the Red House?Great question.So what ended up happening is a lot of these places ended up becoming... just places people would go because of the commercial.
SPEAKER_04: To get a selfie.
SPEAKER_05: They would want to just get a selfie with the person.So they just started selling a lot of Red House t-shirts.We actually designed a t-shirt for them and sent it to them for them to sell.Yeah.But they were very, very happy. And Phil from MicroBuilt wanted more.So we ended up creating this entire campaign called I Love Local Commercials, which was a website where people could go and submit their favorite local business to get a free commercial from Rhett and Link and MicroBuilt. I mean, and were you still charging $5,000 to do that?At that point, I don't know what that price tag was to do more, but Phil was just really happy with how things were going.Yeah.
And so I think at some point around that time, I remember we had a conversation with a fellow YouTuber whose tag was Mr. Safety at the time.Corey is his name.And I remember him telling us, never accept less than $10,000 for a sponsored video.And we were like, oh man, I think people might say no.But we started saying that and started getting yeses.So thanks to Corey for encouraging that.But we would always find a way to work the weirdest sponsors into our videos and still make this engaging piece of content.And it was growing and growing and growing.And then we got contacted by some producers from Hollywood who wanted to take what we were doing with these local commercials and turn it into a TV show.
SPEAKER_04: This was IFC, I think.And so this – before I ask you about that, I mean by that point when IFC contacted you because they wanted to make a show around these real commercials of these small businesses, what do you estimate your annual revenue was?Was it – was at that point, I mean $10,000 a video.Were you doing one a week?Were you doing two a month?I mean – Because you guys have gone from like maybe making $35,000, $40,000, $45,000 a year to what?$100,000, $200,000 a year or more?
SPEAKER_05: These are wild guesses just based on some of those numbers.But I think that we had a little bit more than doubled probably individually of what we were making.So we're probably working at around like $200,000 revenue coming in.Got it.Okay.So IFC contacts you.
SPEAKER_04: So now you're back in the Hollywood network TV industry.
SPEAKER_02: World, right?Yeah.It was exciting because we were being pursued to make a television show that was something we had already made.We had already established the template.That's when we said, we're going to move to LA to make this show and supervise it as executive producers as well.
SPEAKER_04: Because TV at that point still seemed like that was where the opportunities were.I mean, YouTube was fun, but it was really, we want to get on network TV.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah, and I think it was simply we always had aspirations to make things that seemed like the kind of thing that you would require someone else's money to make, right?Yeah.Versus the kind of DIY stuff that we had been making all along.Yeah.And I also think that, for me, one of the sort of subconscious delineations has always been traditional media – Someone who has power, some gatekeeper has let you in, has said that we bless you and we're going to give you the thumbs up.Whereas the internet was always the Wild West and it was like, I'm kind of on the same playing field with a kid in their bedroom with a camera that might just make something that go viral. And so the price of entry just feels very, very low.And so I just think there's something subconsciously.You feel like you haven't done anything if someone hasn't recognized you officially and said, yes, you are good enough.
And that wasn't something we were ever able to really come to grips with.All right.
SPEAKER_04: So you guys move out to L.A.with your families to make this show with IFC and. How did it go?
SPEAKER_02: I mean, did it take off?Was it a hit?We told our family and friends back home that it was temporary.We didn't load up the U-Haul with our furniture.But I think, Rhett, you were 100% convinced we weren't coming back. I was probably, I was 75% we weren't coming back.
SPEAKER_05: But it wasn't because I thought that the show would necessarily work.It was, I was like, okay, this is it, man.We've got to go out there to make this.We shouldn't come back.Like, we should make it work out there regardless.
SPEAKER_04: When we come back in just a moment, how Rhett and Link make it work regardless.Stay with us.I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This. You probably know Squarespace as a tool to build custom websites for your business, but it's way more than that.Squarespace is the all-in-one platform for building your brand, engaging your customers, and growing your business online.If you're running a business like the founders on this show, then you'll love some of Squarespace's features. Squarespace has appointment scheduling where clients can easily see your availability, taking the hassle out of coordinating calendars.Squarespace also makes email campaigns super easy with customizable email templates for converting subscribers into loyal customers.And Squarespace has tons of analytics so you know where all your site visits and sales are coming from. So check out squarespace.com slash built for a free trial.
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That's mintmobile.com slash built.Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com slash built.Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply.See Mint Mobile for details. Thank you. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This.I'm Guy Raz.So it's 2011 and Rhett and Link have completed the first season of a show for IFC, a show in which they make these very funny commercials for local businesses.For example, they make one for a taxidermist from Ojai, California named Chuck Testa.And it's actually amazingly funny and weird and worth looking up.
SPEAKER_05: Chuck had taken that commercial and posted it on his YouTube channel where it was going crazy viral, getting more views than anything we had ever made.Time Magazine was naming it in the top 10 memes of the year.But that was when IFC was making the decision about whether or not they were going to renew.They were like, well, actually, we're going in a different direction.We're going with scripted series now is where we're going.And again, it was this thing that was just adding to this bucket of disillusionment of... They have some prerogative.They have some decision that they want to make that we're just subject to, regardless of the fact that this commercial is just blowing up like crazy and we could do this again and again and again.
SPEAKER_04: So, all right, so IFC does not renew the show.And there you guys are living in Southern California trying to break into Hollywood, right?And presumably wondering about your next move.But I think at that point you already had another idea in the works, right?
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.Right before we had moved to L.A., we did a little daily show called Good Morning Chia Lincoln.
SPEAKER_04: It was a Chia Pet Lincoln, Abe Lincoln.Abraham Lincoln, yeah.With a microphone behind Abe Lincoln.
SPEAKER_05: And it was a two of you there and it was a daily show, right?Yep.We said, is there something we can do this really low lift, high connection as an experiment? And we'll say there's a shelf life on the show because when the Chia Lincoln dies, the show dies.
SPEAKER_02: Well, and that's when we knew that we were going to be moving to L.A.So it was we needed something to do in the meantime.
SPEAKER_04: And that was the daily and that was basically to make this daily show limited because I think you would end up making like 40 of them.Yep.
SPEAKER_02: That's about how long a Chia Pet can live.40 days. Yeah, so I would drive to Rhett's house.He'd get in the car with me.I'd say, you got anything?He'd say, yeah.Or he'd say no.And I'd say, well, I got something.And then we wouldn't talk until we got to the studio.We'd drive, you know, it was a five minute drive.
And then we would set up that same card table with the hole in it, with the microphone coming out. And we would sit down behind it and we would start the camera and we would have the conversation that we would have had on the car ride in.We had it with an audience watching.
SPEAKER_05: And it didn't like go crazy.Like it wasn't like, but people loved it.
SPEAKER_04: They really liked it.So you had done this.It was fun.Yeah. It was in the back of your mind.But meantime, you go to L.A.
SPEAKER_02: to do this IFC show.Yeah, we devote months to making the show.And then when it comes out, we're promoting it and, you know, waiting for them to reorder it.And they don't.And then they don't.They don't.And that's when we made the decision.
SPEAKER_05: Well, what if we brought back that Chia Lincoln show?We called it something else.And we do it right from the beginning with the intention that, A, This is going to be around for a long time.If you go back and watch the first episode of Good Mythical Morning, you'll see that we say things like, we want this to be a part of your daily routine.This is the beginning of something special.Also, it starts with a sponsor or a brush, the little tongue brush.They pay $300 to be the sponsor of that first episode. Right.
SPEAKER_04: And so you would do this, you'd film this every day, put it on YouTube, and then spend the rest of the day making or thinking about other videos that you would do or songs or sketches or skits or something like that.
SPEAKER_05: Yeah.Still doing those bigger tentpole videos that had sponsors attached to them that were bringing in substantially more money than what was happening on Good Mythical Morning.
SPEAKER_04: And still, YouTube was not paying you for the videos.It was all you would find sponsors to get to finance it.
SPEAKER_02: By this point, there was AdSense.AdSense for us was kind of like a it was a bonus income, but it really wasn't driving our business.We had to we had to get these bigger deals to create custom content for brands until Good Mythical Morning started to gain attention first from YouTube itself.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.They approached you in 2013, shortly after, not that long after you launched Good Mythical Morning, and they were like, hey, we want to finance something.We want to give you some money.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we have money in a bucket that's earmarked for experimentation, and there's different buckets of experimentation, one of which was making long-form videos.Like, can we extend the watch time... is what they were thinking at the time by extending the runtime of successful programming.And so we pitched a variety show that we called The Mythical Show, and it would be a half hour once a week.
SPEAKER_05: 12 episodes.12 episodes.We did the same thing we've always done, which is under price.And by this point, we should have known.Yeah. We were like, 30 minutes of content times 12.We have to hire a team to help us do this.And we like worked the numbers and it came to like $92,000.And then we just like, well, I guess we should just round up to $100,000.We just didn't have... We did things so, so cheaply.
Yeah.And then what would happen is once we got into the project, we would get a lot more ambitious and realize, oh, we should have asked for more.But they just gave us $100,000.And...
SPEAKER_04: You do this show, right, the mythical show, I think 12 episodes.Yep.But basically, from what I understand, like it didn't matter that you didn't keep doing that because you had the daily show, Good Mythical Morning.But I guess that money gave you the chance to really take risks and experiment with different styles that you would then carry over to Good Mythical Morning.Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.So then the show had a whole new look and we had a team that we were now devoting some of their time to helping make Good Mythical Morning work without it just being all on our shoulders anymore.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: But there was a change that happened around 2014.Again, one of those just being lucky, being in the right place at the right time. YouTube makes a change to the algorithm where they really start emphasizing watch time and they want that watch time per user to go up.And the way that they do that is if somebody kind of gets into a cycle where they watch one video and then there's a suggested video that comes up related to it.And we had a couple of years of daily long form Good Mythical Morning videos.So somebody could sit and watch three episodes of Good Mythical Morning and they've been sitting there for 45 minutes.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_05: And all of a sudden... YouTube would reward our channel for keeping people on their platform.In that 2014, 2015, 2016, that three-year period... saw Good Mythical Morning eclipse everything that we had ever created.
SPEAKER_04: Wow.And it was a combination of the algorithm changing, but also you kind of understanding through experimentation what people wanted to see.Like the first, I think your first just massive, massive video, and now has more than 30 million views, was eating, I don't know why you did this, a Carolina Reaper pepper, which is really dangerous.
SPEAKER_05: I'll tell you why we did it, so we get 30 million views.
SPEAKER_06: It started.The hiccups have started.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, at the time, it was the certified hottest pepper on the planet.They're busy breeding hotter ones now, apparently, but we've backed out of that business.We don't do that anymore.
SPEAKER_06: Every breath out is like...
SPEAKER_04: time travel into a stupid, stupid place.
SPEAKER_02: Is that, like, one of the most painful experiences of your life?Uh, yes.I think so.Physically.Yeah.I mean, and a little bit emotionally.I feel like my right nipple's gonna fire.
SPEAKER_05: Listen, you know what?We proved our manhood.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.We are men!We're men!It wasn't cut down to flatter us in any way, right?So, I think that... Yes, that was a spectacle.But the undercurrent was this sincerity.Like our viewers knew they were getting the real thing.And I think that we started to realize that what kept people coming back was that we were letting them in on our friendship.Yeah.
You know, so it was this catch-22.Yeah, you got to... Eat the hottest pepper in the world, but at least you get to do it with your best friend, and maybe people will stick around when the next day is just a fun conversation.
SPEAKER_04: Who was watching the video?I mean, as your channel, Mythical, because now you've got Mythical Entertainment, right?And Mythical becomes the brand.I mean, there's Rhett and Link, but Rhett and Link are Mythical.Who was watching it?Was it kids?
SPEAKER_05: We could tell that our audience was very broad. Right, so yes, there were a lot of kids watching.Parents felt comfortable letting their kids watch the show, but they were also watching it.And we were just also noticing anecdotally when we would meet people out in the wild, it was always like you couldn't tell who was a bigger fan.Is it the mom, the dad, or the daughter, or the son?And it seems like they're all watching this together, or at least watching it separately and then talking about it.So right from the beginning- Which we prefer for the view count.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right. Yeah, I'm wondering, like, on that point, right, you started out as Christian entertainers, and you weren't doing explicitly Christian or even inexplicably Christian themes.But, like, did you still think about your videos through a kind of a Christian prism?
SPEAKER_05: So even from those early days, even back in 2007, 2008, for me, kind of initially, there was a crisis of faith that was growing and building. And around 2012, 2013 is where I just privately behind the scenes stopped calling myself a Christian.I was like, for a whole lot of reasons, I don't believe this anymore.And so I think what was... What was happening was it was like, well, there's this sense that people kind of, yes, we made this content originally sort of clean because it was consistent with the way that we talked at our houses in front of our children.But hey, now my kids are 10.Now my kids are 12.Now my kids are 13.Right.And so that was changing the way that we were making our content.
And it wasn't calculated, right? But I think it kind of over time was getting into a place where it's like, okay, this is still mostly family friendly, but there's going to be some innuendo.And so the parents are going to get it.It's going to go over the kids' heads.I think that was how sort of the Christian factor was influencing things over time.
SPEAKER_04: Link, were you also having a bit of a crisis of faith?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and it's totally Rhett's fault.I would like to go on record.You know, it's... As with most everything, we walked through life together and our friendship was close that like if either one of us were having any sort of crisis, well, the other guy would be involved.Yeah.And so it was nice to be a sounding board for him when he's like, this is what I'm reading this book about evolution.Yeah. And I'm trying to figure out how it fits in with my previous worldview.Like, I was all ears there.First as a soundy board, but then, yeah, I started to question things too.
So, I mean, do you still consider yourselves to be Christians?
SPEAKER_04: No.No.No.No.
SPEAKER_05: 2020 was the first year where we kind of told our, is our coming out stories like, hey, we're not Christians anymore.
SPEAKER_02: And there were many years.There was a time when we had gotten to that point privately, but it was not something that we discussed or alluded to publicly.
SPEAKER_04: I mean obviously it's a – we could do a whole episode on that journey.It's a very personal thing.But there was a – and has been an approach that was designed to appeal and to be safe for everybody, right?I mean there's a lot of stuff and has been a lot of stuff on YouTube that is not safe. safe for everybody.But there's also a good business reason to make things safe for everybody.
SPEAKER_02: We totally benefited from that, forgive the term, synergy, right?And it goes beyond just the brand friendliness.
SPEAKER_05: The nature of the content.I would say that there's a whole world of having come from that worldview, the way that we were able to just develop the confidence in performance and comedy in front of people that you just, we didn't do the traditional thing of like going to a comedy club.It was like, we had this safety net when you do things in that Christian comedy and Christian conferences.They may not love you, but you know, they're going to forgive you.And the standards are so much lower.You don't have to be as good.So I think that we were able to perform in a place where it's like, well, these guys are real funny.So yeah, we'll see us next to the Flight of the Conchords and you probably won't think that. But if you just see us in that context, you'll be like, I think these guys are going places.
Because as you heard today, like so many of the critical points in our story revolve around our involvement in Christian things and what we were thinking.Everyone would just think we went from being engineers to being entertainers because that sounded easy to understand.We're like, no, it's a convoluted path.
SPEAKER_04: And we're grateful for it.I'm wondering as because it feels like it seems like there was a it was a transition over time.Right.Like probably there was a point maybe it was 2015, 2016, where you started to come into real money, serious money.
SPEAKER_05: Looking back, it still feels relatively incremental, but ramping, certainly ramping up significantly at that time. But I think that the, and this remains our philosophy today, right? With every dollar that comes in, the first question is how do we turn that around and invest it back into the people, the team, and the ideas that we and our team want to create?Yeah.And so, you know, I actually, I don't know exactly what the graph is in terms of how the team grew, but it certainly feels like it grew from that five to around a hundred or so.
SPEAKER_02: Pretty geometrically.Yeah.And how much of a team can we build out that removes us from extraneous parts of that production and process?So we can just do what we do best, which is just put our friendship on display on camera.
SPEAKER_04: As Good Mythical Morning, you know, became bigger and bigger, how did you think about mythical in general?When did you start to think about, OK, this is a bigger entertainment brand and let's think about how we can build it out?Because there's podcasts, there's other there's a bunch of different channels. There's books.There's live tours.Now there's merchandise.There's a whole kitchen world, which we can talk about.Did it just kind of happen organically or were there moments where the two of you were like, let's architect out what we want this to be?
SPEAKER_02: We hired a business person first. named Brian, to join our C-suite.And that was a big turning point.When did that happen?Do you remember?2016.Okay.
SPEAKER_05: Even to this day, I'd say over the past, you know, now eight years since he's joined us, most everything is driven by what is the next thing that we want to create?And what makes the most sense?Where are we seeing traction from? Mythical Kitchen is the perfect example of how the brand has grown beyond the two of us, and it was very organic.
SPEAKER_04: And Mythical Kitchen really comes out of all the food videos that you guys have done over the years, trying food, going to the Costco food courts, just different – Right, and there are cookbooks.And by the way, are you guys pretty good cooks?I'm pretty good.Link can speak for himself.
SPEAKER_05: I'm a great consumer of cooked foods.Yeah.But what we were finding is that the food content was really the thing that was really catching.It's like, we've been on a few of the shows personally, but this... is really driven by the spirit of Good Mythical Morning and Mythical at Large, but it's its own natural outgrowth of the brand.
SPEAKER_04: I mean, now you have a pretty significant entertainment brand, right?But you are still the center of it.Rhett and Link are still sort of the brand centers of it.And When you think about the sort of the longevity of the brand, do you think about ways to pull Rhett and Link out of it so we can live without Rhett and Link?Or is that not that important for you?Sort of thinking about it in those terms.
SPEAKER_05: I think we still feel very energized as creators.So we have a lot of things that we want to create.You know, we have a success in Mythical Kitchen.We want to try it again.It's all about being very purposeful because it's not just growth for the sake of growth.There is a component of as the community grows, the revenue grows.But we think about it first and foremost as... This community, which we get to meet, you know, we interact with, we interact with them in all kinds of ways.Obviously, there's the instant feedback of comments, but then there's the interactions that we have on the Mythical Society where we do AMAs or we do live streams.And then we meet them if we go out on tour and we do meet and greets and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_04: You guys are – have been at this for a long time and have built an incredible business around it.And I wonder if there are ever moments where, you know, if you kind of want to get off the hamster wheel of content creation because you are still making something every single day.Yeah. It's a lot.Right.And you don't need to do it anymore.I mean, you don't you know, you're obviously supporting a staff and a bunch of people who work for the company.But I wonder what you when you sort of you look out on the horizon and you look at sort of the long, long game.How long do you guys see yourselves doing this in the way you're doing it now?
SPEAKER_02: I think we see the long game being all the way.You know, we have always worked hard to remove things from our plate and our task list that other people can do better and that can free us up to devote only the right things to the right project.And so I think, you know, after... a decade of doing the show after thousands, literally thousands of episodes, we are having the most fun that we've had on Good Mythical Morning because behind the scenes, we've done a lot of work to entrust other people to do what they can do.We have things that we're passionately want to create. And the heart and soul of everything we do, it all comes back to our friendship.And we put a lot of work into loving each other as brothers.But, you know, if we can keep that vibrant, then everything else will follow.That is the long play for us, to remain friends.
SPEAKER_04: Do you guys, when you think about the journey you've been on, right, and the decades-long journey of really grinding to... just to make a living.And now today, you know, among the easily the most successful YouTubers on the planet.How much of where you got to do you attribute to the work you put in and how much do you think has to do with luck and fortune?
SPEAKER_02: Or God.Or God.We talked a lot about God.We can't leave God out at this point, can we, Rhett?
SPEAKER_05: No, that's a deep question for another time. You know, I think that the analogy that I would use is that, you know, you've got this sort of self-motivated, self-propelled car, like one of those little toys that you wind up by sort of putting on the ground and pulling back, right?And so it has this, we have this motivation to constantly move.But once you let go of that car, That car is not really driving itself very well, right?That toy runs into obstacles and it responds to its environment, but it keeps going under its own power.I think that that's kind of how we operate.We're so driven to continue to create and to continue to innovate and find ways to connect with people.We said in the first book we ever wrote, the book of mythicality, our philosophy has always been pick a direction and go. Make the best decision that you can, but just know that all you're really doing is setting yourself up for another decision to be made in the future.
And the outcome isn't going to be what you envisioned.
SPEAKER_02: I just feel fortunate that I didn't have to do it alone.
SPEAKER_06: But I think I could have.
SPEAKER_02: No, just kidding.I don't think I could have.
SPEAKER_04: That's Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, otherwise known as Rhett and Link, YouTubers and the founders of Mythical Entertainment. By the way, besides that Carolina Reaper hot pepper, they have tried many, many weird foods over the years and always on camera.They've sampled French onion soup, jelly donuts, a Pepto-Bismol Pop-Tart, and something that I can't even imagine, it's so gross, a Philly cheesesteak cheesecake. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week.Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show.And as always, it's free.This episode was researched and produced by Catherine Seifer and edited by Neva Grant with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. We had engineering help from Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez.Our production staff also includes J.C.Howard, Casey Herman, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, Malia Agudelo, Sam Paulson, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez.
I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. If you like how I built this, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com survey.
SPEAKER_00: Are you looking to add a new podcast to your ever-growing podcast schedule?If the answer to that question is yes, or even if it's maybe, or really anything other than a hard no, let me suggest my podcast, Life is Short with Justin Long.In every episode, we peek inside the heads of actors, musicians, authors, and thinkers to find out what makes them tick and how they find meaning in life.I'm also very curious about some of the heavier, more existential stuff, like what emoji they use most often and... what their favorite form of a potato is, you know, the important stuff.So join us because, you know, life is short.If you'd like Life is Short and Life is Shorter, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
