Dude Perfect: Cory Cotton and Tyler Toney (2021)

24:42So that was a humbling moment too. All right. So as the story goes that I've read, at a certain point in this house, you decide, let's buy a basketball hoop. Like one of those hoops that is a standalone basketball hoop, right? That you like put sand or water in the bottom to weigh it down. Yep. It was a plastic backboard basketball goal from Academy that Garrett and I went and bought. and we didn't really have a great driveway or any concrete to play basketball on. So we just stuck it in the backyard and we would make up shooting games or just have free throw competitions. And we were getting ready to go to lunch one day and I went to the corner of the yard and I was like, hey, if I make this, you're buying my lunch.

25:22And he's like, okay, whatever. That's right. Ty is pretty known, at least back in the day, for creating what we all call one-sided bets. So for example, I walk into the backyard one day, college house, and Ty has a knife in his pocket, right? Grew up on a ranch, always has a knife with him. and he said, hey, I bet I can throw this knife and stick it in that tree all the way across the backyard, you know, 30 yards, and if I do, you owe me 10 bucks. Well, there's no, if I don't, I owe you 10 bucks. It's just one-sided, and so, you know, classic. Me, I'm like, sure, whatever, and he does it, sticks in the tree.

25:54So it was that situation, just basketball version, that kind of started everything, ties in the backyard, and he looks at Garrett, and he says, hey, if I make the shot, you owe me a Jimmy John sandwich, and he's kind of standing in the corner and tosses up a hook shot swish o 'dre now so they go to lunch and they get back and uh a camera gets involved and we start filming everything but how does it so so i understand you got the hoop right but what first of all what kind of cat like was it an iphone camera was it like a video camera and who decided to to start filming those shots that day it was a picture camera on video mode and i cannot say that more clearly we are talking it It was like a little compact digital camera.

26:36One of the ones where you turn it on and the middle lens goes and kind of pokes out towards the front. I mean, very small. And to be honest, we've never really been able to remember who exactly busted out the camera. I think my gut is that Ty made that first shot and Garrett had to buy him lunch. And we wanted to show the other guys when they got back. And it was kind of a keep everyone honest, make sure they pay their bets, and also show the guys because it was a funny story. and you just held the camera and would like start filming Tyler or each other or what? It started with recreating that shot with Tyler and Garrett.

27:14So Tyler goes in the corner, does his hook shot. And I think the dynamic shifted when we saw it on camera. I know that's silly to say, but when we were looking through, you know, playing it back on the camera, it just has a different vibe, right? And especially when you've never done this kind of thing before, it just looks fun to try and do again. And so it started with that shot for tie but then someone else said hey I want a shot and someone goes you know across the fence and throws it or one of the guys climbed on the roof you know or someone does a bounce shot off the chimney and we were just having fun in our backyard I guess eventually like what you you had a friend of yours Sean actually like do a proper film of like like really actually try to make cool films of this no so Sean was so originally DP had six members so Sean was one of the other guys that lived with us at the house.

28:04And me and him were in the backyard originally when we decided like, hey, we need like a beginning to this video of these trick shots. And so we had two chairs set up like lawn chairs in the backyard that were sitting in the middle of the yard. He put the camera on the railing because obviously we didn't have a cameraman or anything like that. And when he set it up, he went around and looked, you know, on the backside of the camera on the little, through the little viewfinder and he said oh dude perfect it's already in frame like everything's good to go like it's centered up nice and so we went around and it was already recording at that point so he came around and sat down next to me and we recorded a terrible intro where we named it like backyard stuntman and when we went back and listened to the original audio we just thought it was funny the way that he said dude perfect and so we ended up like I guess kind of adopting that as the title of the video.

28:54It says Dude Perfect. Yeah. And that original Dude Perfect audio is still in all the videos. All right. So April 8th, 2009, you guys recorded a video which you decide to upload to YouTube. And this is still like pretty early YouTube days. It's like two and a half, three years into YouTube. Yeah, very early. First of all, what was the, what did the video show? Describe the video. So we basically put together a video of us doing the shots in the backyard, right? Picture, you know, music and us doing different shots with, you know, the occasional celebration in between. And that's really all it was.

29:33Don't picture the Space Jam music as the soundtrack because that was the original one. And we had our first lesson in music copyright issues. You use the Space Jam music because you're like, yeah, of course. But you obviously were college students and bozos. So you didn't know that you can't do that. Exactly. So I was the only one with a YouTube channel at the time. I was also the only one that knew anything about video editing. I had taken one class in high school. And so I bust open iMovie on my Apple laptop and put the footage in, throw, obviously, one of my favorite songs at the time, Space Jam, and put that behind it.

30:06And very quickly after we load the video, like Tyler said, you know, this video has been banned worldwide was the error message we got back and we learned that you can't just use someone else's music. Right. And so then we actually called one of Cody's buddies who lived down the street and he had happened to just be there actually the week before handing out his demo CD for their group's recent kind of launch of their music career. And one of the songs on it was awesome. And it was, what kind of music was it? Like rock, hip hop? So everyone should go look it up. Shout out Manic Bloom. And the song that we used was Running From The Scene.

30:45And just to be clear, because you can see this video, obviously, still available. And it's like there's a shot of like one of you guys like throwing a ball off the chimney and then it going into the basket and, you know, throwing the ball from a distance. And the idea was, let's put this up on YouTube and see what happens. We wanted to share it with family and friends was really the main reason. I had kind of had in the back of my mind a kind of bucket list idea of at some point in my life, I would love to put up a video on this new thing called YouTube that got a million views. That sounded fun to me.

31:17That wasn't the goal when we started filming. But I think after I had finished editing it, we all shared it on our Facebook status with something along the lines of, hey, guys, my buddies and I just made a fun basketball video. We're trying to see if we can get a million views. Thanks for watching.

31:37When we come back in just a moment How Corey, Tyler, and the rest of the dudes Began to grow an audience By giving themselves harder and harder trick shots to perform Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz And you're listening to How I Built This

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35:19Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So, it's April 2009, and the guys from Dude Perfect have just released a video montage of a bunch of trick shots in their backyard. They've sent it out to everyone they know, hoping to eventually get one million views. The video definitely did not get a million views. It got probably maybe 100 ,000, probably closer to 50 ,000 views. Wait, that's unbelievable. How did that happen? I guess we had friends that had other friends and people just shared it and it bounced around. The numbers were not, you know, when you think of a viral video, it wasn't that.

36:00But it did get passed around enough for someone to notice it. And the absolutely wild thing is that somehow the very next day I'm laying in bed, you know, probably sleeping, you know, late, like you would imagine in college. And I wake up to my phone buzzing and I pick it up groggily. And it's some lady who said, hey, I'm a producer at Good Morning America. And we wanted to play you guys's video today. Is that OK? So, of course, I'm like, wait, what is happening? How do they have my phone number? Still don't know how they got my number to this day. But of course, I, you know, said, let me pray about it.

36:30Yes. and run around the house screaming and telling the guys, hey, we're about to be on Good Morning America. Did they want to interview you too or just play your video? They did. Sore subject. They said, hey, we would love for Diane Sawyer to ask you guys some live questions while the footage runs. And so we all huddled together in the living room and they've got us on the cell phone and we're about to record and kind of do a live hit. Oh, it was an audio interview, not a video interview. Correct. It was audio. There was no way for us to shoot a video feed in there at that point. But we're there, and we are ready.

37:03And we are ready for our phone to ring. And we'd given them our number, and they said, we're about to call you guys. You'll see it on TV, but all you have to do is answer our questions. So we are sitting there salivating, ready to do this interview. And for whatever reason, they never called us. But on camera, you can see Diane Sawyer saying, what was her phrase, Ty? We're trying to phone you guys. We're trying to phone you guys. And so we're like, well, you're not. No, you're not. We're sitting here. You liar. here making us look bad uh but they showed the footage and obviously for you know five college guys it was it was kind of a fun 15 minutes of the spotlight so they showed some of the video you did not ever get a chance at that point to talk to diane sawyer or maybe you have at this point i haven't not yet diane you're waiting for your call but it's on good morning america after that first video and got attention was there like a strategic like conversation like hey let's do more of these or was it just like that was fun maybe we'll make another one yeah very much just like oh that was cool like yeah i mean that was the extent of our thoughts like oh no way that was awesome it was that was cool let's do it somewhere else is probably what we really thought right that was fun now let's take it out of our backyard we'll drag that basketball goal somewhere else and do it again and how long did it take you to make a second video uh a month maybe where did we go for our second one ty was that the ranch yeah the ranch that i was talking about that i That was my grandpa's place.

38:22So we did our second video at the ranch. And for us back at the time, it was where can we do a basketball shot? That was all we were thinking about. So Tyler had a good water tower, for example. It wasn't a water tower. It was a feed tower. But to a city boy from Houston, it looks like a water tower. Yeah, I am a city boy. So he goes up and sits on top of this thing and does a hook shot down into the goal. And we just wanted to change environments and mix it up. First try, by the way. That one was a FT. Wow. Wow. So you're still making some videos, but this is just a kind of a fun thing you're doing as college students.

38:54But in the fall of 2009, I guess you have your second really big kind of moment, which was you decide to try and make the world's longest basketball shot. And Tyler, you were you were going to be the one to do this. What tell me what the idea of this was? so I think at this point it was like okay well how are we going to outdo people's expectations now because now we've done the backyard video now we've done the ranch edition so they'd already seen basketball trick shots taken out of you know a traditional environment and so we were I think I was in the car with Kobe and we were driving to campus and we drove by Kyle Field Texas A &M's football stadium.

39:39And I was like, we need to get in the stadium. We need to do the world's longest basketball shot. I was like, that would be something that people would watch. And the twins were communication majors. So I told Kobe, I was like, Hey, if you get us in that stadium, I will throw a ball from the third deck and I will make the shot. So he sent some emails around and I have no idea why, but somebody felt good about unlocking Kyle Field for us and giving us free reign of the stadium. And you, by the way, and you brought your basketball hoop there? Oh yeah, yeah. We brought our portable basketball goal.

40:12This is the$80 basketball hoop that you bought? It was$70. Okay. Yeah, I think it was$70. So you would just like load it into a truck and drive it there? Yep. That was pretty typical for us to load it up in the back of one of our trucks in College Station and go drive it around. So somebody gave you permission to go onto the field at Texas A &M. And where did you place the basketball hoop? The basketball goal was on the, right on the other side of the track in between the track and the football field. Okay. And we only had four basketballs at the time. We had recruited a few buddies to go up there and help us rebound because we obviously knew it would take more than one shot to get.

40:49And this is a huge stadium, right? This is like, you could see what, 60, 70 ,000 people? More than that, I think at the time, I think it's closer to 85 ,000 probably. Wow. And so first I went up to the second deck because I honestly, I didn't know how far I'd be able to throw it off the top. I didn't know how far the ball would go. And so I went to the second deck and threw a ball off as hard as I could. And it sailed over the goal onto the football field. And at that point, I was like, we can do this. Like we can go to the top of the stadium. And I am physically capable of throwing it far enough to make the shot.

41:23And that was all we needed to know. Because we would have stayed there as long as it took to get the shot. And you brought one camera with you or did you bring more than one? because you needed to film you and the basket and the right to the shot. We had upgraded to two cameras at this point, and I think we had made the massive improvement of going from not just one picture camera to video mode to a second actual camcorder, the type that looks like kind of a cylinder that you put your hand through the little strap and your index finger on the top. You can zoom. I think we borrowed that from a buddy, so we were feeling extremely fancy.

41:56And was either camera static or were they going to track the shot? Both handheld. We could not afford to have a camera on a tripod that got hit by a basketball goal. It would have buried the whole company. Got it. Okay. How far were you from the basketball hoop? If I had to guess, I'd say it was like 60 yards. So, you know, 180 feet, something like that. And that's a basketball. It's not a football. Different aerodynamics. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. A lot harder to throw. All right. So you get up to the third deck. Oh, the rest of the dudes at this point was six people. The rest of you guys are on the field or in different parts of the stadium.

42:29Kobe was up top with me filming. Okay. And Corey, you were on the field? I was on the field. I don't think I was holding a camera at that point. I was standing right by the goal. But you were going to be the video editor, so I'm assuming you were the director. I don't think we would have thought about it that way. Way too far ahead of where we were at. I'm over-intellectualizing this. I got you. You know what? I like it, guy. Yes, I was the director. Okay. All right. So you go up there, Tyler, and tell me what you do. So we start throwing basketballs. We had a few members of the Texas A &M basketball team that had kind of, they were kind of funneling out of practice to come watch.

43:04And we had kind of a little gallery going, ended up popping one of our basketballs. I think it hit like a bench or something down below on the field. So we were down to three basketballs now at this point. And it's a little bit of a slow process, obviously, in getting three basketballs all the way back up to the top of a stadium. but we'd have somebody on the first deck that the guys on the field would throw to the guy on the first deck would throw it to the guy on the second deck the guy on the second deck would throw it up to the third deck the problem was if somebody in the relay chain threw the ball up but didn't throw it up quite high enough it would bounce all the way back down so it was a tricky tree situation elevators became our best friends as we moved forward with this company and um we know what happens in the end we know you made the shot but before you get there how many i mean i can't imagine how many shots you had to shoot before that you got one that went in.

43:57Yeah, I would say it's probably not as many shots as you would think, especially with only three basketballs, because, you know, after you shoot three basketballs, it probably takes a good five minutes to get everything back up top and reset. So it was only an hour and a half, two hours of shooting. And so it didn't take too long to make the shot. Even an hour and a half. I mean, that sounds like it's amazing that you made it in an hour and a half, but that's still a long time. You know, it's a lot of like, okay, this didn't work. Let's get the balls back up. Oh, nope. Didn't work. Let's get the balls back up to him.

44:29Like you must have been convinced that you would eventually make it. Yeah. I mean, we, like I said, when I threw the ball off the second deck and I knew that we were capable of doing it, we would have been there a week if we had to. And you got to remember every once in a while, the ball would, would come really close, right? it would hit the back iron you know hit the rim and at that point you're like oh i'm staying until as long as it takes like i'm not giving up on this we always liken it to a plain battleship like if you just keep guessing and keep throwing enough then it's going to go in at some point like it has to like the ball can only go so many places and so as long as you're willing to put in the reps any trick shot theoretically is possible but sometimes like there may be two million places where a ball could land.

45:13And you can't throw it two million times because the time would run out. But I mean, I guess you're kind of calibrating your throw and there's muscle memory and you're feeling it and you're trying to make tiny adjustments. But we're humans, we're not robots, right? We can't be as perfect as a robot, but you're kind of feeling that and just making tiny adjustments, hoping that everything kind of goes your way at some point. I think this is where Ty being a quarterback really came into play, right? Because you just said it. And what you just said is the answer, right? It's making adjustments. So it goes in.

45:47And how'd you react? Yes! What? Oh, my God! We lost our minds. I mean, I think that's what a lot of people gravitate towards, too, is especially at the beginning was seeing the celebrations and the excitement and the joy and just that, like, pure elation of not only is it over, but you accomplished what you set out to do. so you put this out on the youtube channel on cory's youtube channel and i'm assuming you wrote hey watch us do the world's longest basketball shot and did it just go crazy overnight this was a simpler video in a sense right so everything we'd done up until this probably three or four videos had been you know what someone would probably call a montage almost felt like a music video multiple shots music behind it all spliced together this one we wanted to try something different and obviously we didn't film multiple shots in the stadium we just did this one and so in our heads we were like man we got this this is going to be one super shareable clip it's going to be awesome and it's funny we put it up and we were expecting this like instant reaction people were going to go crazy over it and we put it up and and for a while it just kind of went flat that's amazing because this was an insane i mean anyone can watch it it's totally nuts and for whatever reason yep people didn't didn't pick it up at first so what happened how did it get attention so it was probably three days later and you know we were all split up i think maybe we had done the shot right before some sort of vacation maybe there was a break in our schedule and so i remember my brother and i hopped on a plane to north carolina with our family my grandparents lived in north carolina and so we hop on the plane and i mean i was like literally really thinking about how sad I was about the fact that that cool video we had shot recently didn't do well and you know, whatever, let's just go on vacation and not worry about it.

47:36And my brother and I hop on this plane and we're flying and it's about a two hour flight. And so as we land, we flip our, you know, my phone back off airplane mode. And all of a sudden my phone just starts vibrating like I'd never seen mine or anyone else's do before. And I mean, I thought it was broken. And so, you know, finally the screen kind of slows down enough for me to read a text message or two. And what people had said was something to the effect of, Hey guys, your most recent video has 2 million views and it was shared on Yahoo's homepage. And so that turned out to be what had happened.

48:11Yahoo's homepage, which I don't know if you remember, but that was like the spot. It was a thing. Yeah. That was people's homepage. That was a life changer for people. Yep. And so it turned out honestly to be the same thing for us. It had been shared as the main kind of, you know, clickable thing on Yahoo's homepage and about two hours, it had gotten about 2 million views. And because this one was so shareable, it just instantly went bananas. And not only did it get a lot of views, but it got picked up by SportsCenter and every sports talk show you can imagine and every morning show and night show.

48:44And like we landed in North Carolina and went to, you know somewhere to eat and you know obviously we're texting each other and laughing about how crazy this is but we walk in to eat somewhere and I look up on the tv and there we are wow and that was that was the first time that something like that had ever happened you're looking at the tvs like they're probably playing sports center and you're on it yep we're just sitting there at a at a burger place and look up at the screen and you know they're playing it over and over and and people in the restaurant are pointing at it and it was just one of those like whoa moments.

49:14It was pretty cool. Were they saying on SportsCenter, oh, this is totally fake? 100%. Yep. That's what everybody was saying. I think. Yeah. I think Carmelo Anthony was the one who was on the top 10 desk at the time when the Kyle Field shot was blowing up. And he was the one they asked him. They're like, Carmelo, is this real? And he was like, no way. Not a chance. Wow. Were you initially kind of sad about that? Like, oh my God, it's not fake. Did you feel bad when people are saying that? There was a little bit of pride of like, hey, come on, people, like we're capable about this. You know, Ty's an athlete, he can do this, this is real.

49:51But there was also a piece where we were like, hey, if that's what it takes for people to talk about it, you know, at this magnitude, you know, go for it. Yeah, I mean, there's, like Corey said, there's definitely a part of you that's like, like, why would you not believe us? But then it was also just a testament to, like, look what we pulled off. Like there's professional athletes that are out there saying this can't be done. And we just did it. I love that. I mean, it's so, it makes total sense. Because if you did fake it and people said it was fake, then you might've felt bad because you're like, oh, they found us out.

50:21Yeah. Well, even going back to the first video, that was a decision that we actually had to make very early on because we had a shot in the original backyard video, the first one we ever uploaded. It hit just in front of the rim, but, you know, hit the net, looked like a swish. And we were like, we could totally put this in the video. and literally no one would question it. And this conversation came up and we just said like, look, if we are truly gonna say that everything we do is real, then we can't have one fake shot or we lose all credibility. It's like, okay, well, if you faked that one, then what else did you fake?

50:56And so we decided from that point on, anything that we do is gonna be 100 % real, 100 % authentic. And this is gonna be what Dude Perfect represents going forward. All right. You guys get all this attention for this video and clearly the gears in your head start to turn thinking maybe there's something bigger here because that year you actually set up an LLC. You filed the paperwork to set up Dude Perfect LLC. Who came up with it? Who went to the team to the other five guys and said, let's just like register a business here? I think it was right after that shot had happened and that video had done pretty well.

51:33My brother and I were back home with our family and it was right around the Masters. I mean, I remember and Kobe and I were kind of sitting on the couch watching the golf tournament and Kobe looked at me and he said, you know, we should probably see if dudeperfect.com is available. Like if we're going to go for this thing, we should maybe make it official. And so he logged on to whatever domain company and for$9.99, we snagged dudeperfect.com. And so I think that was, it kind of solidified it in our minds is like, okay, this is a thing. All right. You're still in college. You're still college students.

52:04And I guess you get contacted by YouTube, right? At this point, this is 2009. They're like, hey, do you guys want to be a YouTube partner? Like, is that what they asked? I think so. It's changed over time kind of how that partnership program works. Now it's a little more automated. If you, there's some very low threshold, if you are able to achieve X amount of views, then you can start to advertise against your stuff and make AdSense. So Google owns YouTube, right? So it's Google AdSense is kind of the piece that people make money on. And so I think back then it was, you had to have X amount of followers or X amount of views, but then YouTube itself would kind of contact you and say, do you want to opt in to be able to advertise?

52:44So we did. But of course, I mean, we are talking almost no money whatsoever. I think it was probably four or five videos in, Ty comes running into the living room at some point. This is when we're still at college. And he said, guys, we've officially made it. I think we just made collectively enough money to buy a sandwich. Technically we had each made one cent, but I had the incredible foresight to say one day we will each be able to take this money that we made from people watching our videos and we will be able to go buy a sandwich with it. Yeah, that's what it was. Because people don't realize that even if you get a million views on YouTube, You don't get paid that much money.

53:21Well, especially back then. It was just so early. There weren't the type of demand that there is today from the advertiser side. Yeah. All right. So you've got this LLC. But this was like still early days, right? And you guys were in college. But presumably you kept making videos. What was the cadence at that point? After that shot that you make in the stadium, there's a demand. So did you guys say, you know, we got to do this every week or we got to do this every month or what did you think? I don't think there was a cadence even at that point. I think it was still so early on. Even at that point, we still had no intention of like, oh, man, if we play our cards right, you know, this could be huge.

54:03I mean, we were, I guess, a little bit small minded and didn't see like the big picture until a lot later down the road. This is still just super fun. But you guys were getting attention like the media outlets were interested in you. I mean, you were a bunch of college kids making these cool, fun videos. So presumably you were sort of seen as a novelty act or just like, right? Something like that at the time. Yeah, I mean, it's very much like the trick shot guys. I mean, that's what people labeled us as is, oh, those are the basketball trick shot guys that are doing this. And then we said, oh, we're going to shake that up.

54:36And then we started throwing footballs. Really diversified. I read that in like 2010, you got a corporate sponsor, GMC, that came aboard, which sounds, that may sound to a lot of people like, oh my gosh, you got a corporate sponsor. But oftentimes it's like, hey, we'll give you$10 ,000 to make a video and we want to put our logo on it, right? I mean, that's what that probably, something like that meant at the time. Yeah. I mean, you're not far off. So GMC calls and they wanted us to do, first of all, just the fact that somebody wanted to pay us to make a video, like that was mind blowing to us.

55:12We were like, we are scamming these people. This is incredible. And so we show up, I think it was down around Austin. Yep. And they had like a couple of, I guess there was like a few different videos that we were going to try and do that we're going to post on our YouTube channel. and then they were going to use as NBA finals commercial. And then they were going to use another one during the World Cup as a commercial. And so we show up to this place in Austin that we were doing the airplane shot. You were going to be in a single engine airplane flying over a basketball hoop. That's right. They basically asked us, hey, guys, if y 'all could attempt any type of shot, what would it be?

55:49And just off the cuff, we throw out, oh, I mean, we'd love to make a shot out of an airplane. and so like Ty said then you know the I's got dotted and the T's got crossed and all of a sudden we roll up in a van to Austin and there's this huge tent with at least 50 to 100 cars and we kind of pull up and it's foggy in the morning and you know we're all looking around. I must be having a wedding or something out here. God this is a crazy event like man it's early for all these people to be out here that's weird and we walk in and as soon as we walk inside the flap of the tent people start looking at us and clapping and we're like oh my gosh they're here for us that was the production crew that was more than than a flip camera on video mode oh my god and there was a real airplane oh yeah sitting out in the field just waiting for us like a crop duster like a low flying airplane i wasn't a crop duster it was just piper cub yellow okay and so the idea was you would have a basketball hoop in a middle of the field and you would fly low over it and tyler you were the one who was going to take the shot.

56:52Yep. That was the concept. How'd you do that? What'd you do? So I get up in this plane and I'm talking to the GMC guys and they're like, Hey, you know, just keep in mind, like we don't want to hit the truck because the serial number on this truck was like zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, four. And it was like, you know, we've only got one of these in the U S the other two are off somewhere else. And the other one's like getting finalized or whatever. So they're like, Hey, don't, you know, whatever you do, don't hit the windshield or the hood and put like a massive dent in this truck that we only have one of.

57:22So the truck was sitting probably, I don't know, 30 feet in front of the basketball goal where it could be seen in the camera. And so I'm like, that's fine. That's like, it's way far away from the goal. I'm not going to hit the truck or whatever, but thanks for like the vote of confidence to put that in my mind right before I go up in the plane. And so we get up in this plane and they load probably, there wasn't a lot of room. They could only put like one bag of basketballs in the back of this plane, which is like eight. Because you're just going to keep going flying around and flying around until you make it.

57:51And I just remember like once we got up in the air and we kind of go for this first like pass, not getting ready to take the shot yet, but I looked down and I'm like, oh my gosh, they moved the truck right underneath the goal. I'm like, what are they doing? And they hadn't moved the truck at all. It just looked a lot closer to the goal from up in the air than it was. And so I'm like, oh my gosh, this is going to be like I have no control over where this goes. I've never dropped a ball out of a plane. Like who knows where this thing is going. And so we come around for the first pass and it was kind of starting to rain.

58:24I remember when I put my hands out the window, I was like, oh gosh, that kind of hurts because the rain was like spitting behind the propeller. And it just felt like a bunch of needles going into my hands when I stuck my hands out the window to drop the ball. So I, we are coming around. I'm like, this is the airplane shot. This is the first one we ever take. I dropped the ball out of the plane, out of the side of the plane. And we're moving so fast that I can't really tell where the ball goes after I drop it. And the guys come on the radio on the walkie talkie. And I could just tell like everyone went from this like super excited, like this is going to be incredible.

58:59I can't believe we're going to do a shot out of an airplane too. This is most likely never going to happen because it was about like 150 feet past the goal. Like the worst miss probably in the history of Dude Perfect to that point. Furthest from the goal, like not even close. Oh my God. And so you could just tell the energy was just like way down at that point. Ooh. Yeah. And so Ty, you're up in the plane and you're trying to make this shot from like a hundred plus feet up. And Corey, presumably you're here on the ground. What was going on there? So I'm down at the bottom at this point and the crew, like Ty said, is just deflated.

59:38I mean, this is going to be a big time TV commercial. they're all dialed in ready to go and that first shot missed by you know like tyler said a couple hundred feet if not you know 80 yards i mean it was like insane there were some cows way far away and the ball almost hit a cow and i'm like oh gosh this is about to be the most embarrassing day of our lives so at this point i'm like okay well that's fine it was you know i'm just gonna drop the ball earlier was like the only thought i had at this but it's the only thing i thought i could do like no control over this i just got to drop it earlier and i'm like okay here we go you know round two, but I'm like, golly, this is taking forever because to reset the shot, the pilot had to take like a pretty huge loop to get back around.

1:00:18And so I'm just picturing how long like the Kyle field shot took to get rebounds. Well, this was like, I mean, after we shot the ball, it was another like three minutes just to get back around to a point where we were even able to attempt another shot. So now I'm starting to do the math in my head. Like how many, what am I going to get like you know 30 shots at this before it's sunset you're probably stressed out by the way because it's like a professional crew of people and these are like hardened experienced production people i'm sure you must have felt like oh god i don't think they realize how how long it's gonna take for sure and we'd never had people waiting on us either to like film us like it was always just us i didn't care if the other guys had to you know sit down on the at the ground to Kyle Field and throw up a couple more rounds of rebounds.

1:01:06And so we come around for the second pass, finally, after what felt like forever, and I'm like, okay, well, I'm just going to drop it earlier and see what happens. It's probably going straight through the windshield of the new GMC Denali pickup truck. And I dropped the ball, and it looked like it was pretty good timing, but the plane keeps going, so I can't really see. And all of a sudden, like the radio, all I hear is just...

1:01:35Wow. I told the pilot, I was like, I think I just made it.

1:01:43When we come back in just a moment, how Tyler, Corey, and the rest of the team keep Dude Perfect going while keeping their day jobs. A decision that, at first, nearly runs them into the ground. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

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1:04:37Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2010, and Tyler is up in an airplane for Dude Perfect's first sponsored video. And he can't quite tell from up in the air, but it looks like his second attempt has actually gone in. It took us like five minutes to actually confirm, okay, we did make it because nobody could even talk at that point. Wow. And it was, I mean, that had to be like one of the most like surreal moments in DP history as far as like just not expecting a shot to happen. And then second try out of an airplane, swished it. Wow. It was just like a complete opposite emotion from after that first shot.

1:05:20I mean, you guys were still in college. Some of you graduated because I think, Tyler, you would have another year of college, right? Yep. And so this is May of 2010. you were in commercials for the world cup for the nba finals at that point i have to assume that people at least at on campus knew knew you guys knew who you were yeah i think that my senior year was a little bit different in the fact that people started to recognize us around campus and you know when the guys would come back in town to film something and we'd have a basketball goal in the back of the truck like everybody knew what we were going to do they're like oh nice dude perfect is going to film something.

1:05:56And, you know, people in our classes and stuff would know, and they had seen the videos. And so there was a little bit of a small, I guess, celebrity status to it. But even then, it still wasn't like a major thing at that point. Corey, you and Cody and Garrett, you guys graduate, right? And Kobe too. And you went off to get a job, like a real job, right? Well, so again, five of us and three of the guys, not Kobe and I were either getting married or had already gotten married by the end of school. And so we basically had to, you know, kind of make a decision on how we were going to handle the continuing Dude Perfect stuff.

1:06:33And so my brother and I decided to move back to Austin, which is where our parents were living at the time. And so we lived at their house with them and took the free option so that we could work on Dude Perfect during the week. Because this was not sustainable. You were not making, you cannot make a living off of this. Yeah, not even remotely. So we had gotten paid by GMC. And that was essentially it. We'd made some ad money, but you know, it's probably sandwich money at that point. And you know, that was cool. And that definitely was like, opened our minds to the fact that this could be a real job.

1:07:03And so I think that gave us enough motivation to try and keep it going after school, but we didn't know how it was going to work. And so my brother and I kind of took the mantle of the weekly stuff, Kobe did a lot of the business calls. And then I did a lot of the editing or all of the editing at that point. Working with them on, on, on trying to get sponsors. Yeah. We, you know, especially once that, that GMC thing happened, I think GMC or the production company probably is who really won the award for that. And it turned out to be that we didn't scam them, but in, in some sense, right. You know, they got a great deal from us because it just got a ton of publicity.

1:07:38It was a great, great video. Over a billion impressions on that campaign. I remember. Wow. That's exactly right. And so that production company probably got a ton of business. I think they probably did. And so we started getting calls from different groups and agencies and production companies and brands. And so we just realized that this is a whole thing. Like, this is a world that is available to us. And so Kobe fielded a lot of that stuff. And then I was editing everything. And so we lived at our house while the other guys and their wives at this point, you know, had real jobs. And you would just gather every week from different, like, because you're Austin.

1:08:11Tyler, you were in College Station. Where were the other guys? They were up in Dallas. So, I mean, at this point, not like we had a lot of brand deals or opportunities anyways, but when we did, we would just tell companies that we were so busy with speaking engagements and things like that during the week that if they wanted to do a Branded Dude Perfect video, it would have to be on a Saturday. And the brands are like, what? There's no way you're that busy during the week. We're like, yeah, yeah, it's going to have to be Saturday. When And in reality, I was still in school and the other guys were working other jobs.

1:08:43Garrett was working in an architecture firm and you guys were working for your dad's church, Corey, right? You and your brother. And I guess, Tyler, when you graduated the next year, you went and worked for a landscaping company. Yeah. So I had done an internship at a landscaping company in Prosper and I went back to work there. I was laying sod at the beginning on a maintenance crew and then eventually kind of oversaw our residential department and a little bit of our commercial maintenance stuff. So let me understand this. Texas is a very big state. You guys would drive once a week somewhere to a central location and film something to put out?

1:09:19Well, I wish it was a central location. The reality was these guys were grounded here in kind of the Dallas area, right? They're married and their families are here. So Kobe and I were in Austin and it is about a four hour drive. So it's kind of past that easy drive status to where it's like, uh, this drive is pretty rough, but we probably drove it at least once, if not twice a week for four years. This was what kind of looking back, we, we think of as absolute, you know, the grind years, no question. So you would leave super early in the morning on a Saturday or a Friday night? Yeah, probably Saturday morning.

1:09:52And then you would film all weekend and then drive back on Sunday night? Exactly. Drive back and then I would edit it. And so you had to have a successful shot in that two day period. Definitely. No question. Certainly felt like it. And meantime, you were thinking of new kind of tricks and stunts to do, right? Because they had to be better than the previous one. How do you beat an airplane shot? Like, especially without a budget. It was tough to continue to try and outdo yourselves, right? I mean, this is back when all we did were trick shots. And so the bar is simple. It's make it better than the previous video.

1:10:27and what that usually means to people is farther or higher or something that just feels like a totally different concept. I mean, you guys were like, you know, you got on Jimmy Kimmel. You were, you know, you were getting attention. Meantime, Ty, you're like laying sod Monday to Friday. Yeah. Weed eating, laying sod, selling plants, all the above. Because you couldn't, even though you were getting sponsors and attention, see, this is amazing to me. it was not it wasn't actually that much money to to make a sustainable business that's right yeah what explains that i mean i'm trying with all of the views you were getting and was it just like you guys weren't asking for for enough you were just kind of or was it you just i don't know just the the industry wasn't quite mature yet what what what explains that i think it's closer to what you said the industry just wasn't quite there i mean i think even at the time dude perfect has always been kind of a premier brand we were charging even back then what we felt like was top dollar for a youtube group to be charging a brand to do a video like what would you charge a brand back in 2011 to do a video for them gosh i know gmc the very first original thing and this is for a tv commercial so this felt way bigger than a youtube video but this was kind of the first thing we ever heard i think they paid us 50 grand and i mean that was it honestly was life-changing because it made us feel like this was 10 ,000 bucks a person.

1:11:51Absolutely. And then we kind of learned about taxes and we're like, Oh, that's$4 ,000 a person. But that was the first number we'd really ever heard. And so I think we, I think honestly, the biggest thing was we had to split it with five guys and I just, that really carves into it pretty quickly. Yeah. It's like, this was your side hustle. Cause you had the full-time job, but clearly you had the vision of making this your main hustle, not your side hustle. But you guys were driving four hours back and forth from Dallas, I think basically until 2014. And from what I understand, it got to the point where some of you were like, I don't think I keep doing this.

1:12:30This is not working. That's right. So we, Kobe and I were the ones driving four hours back and forth each time and we were working on it during the week. And so there came a point where we drove, you know, a handful of times in a row and we were working on a video all through the night, two nights in a row. And, you know, I wasn't used to doing that even coming out of college. And so for whatever reason, my body just broke. And so we were at one of Ty's buddy's ranches and I woke up in the morning after finally having, you know, gotten to sleep at, you know, whatever, 72 hours or something. And so I wake up and I go to brush my teeth in the morning and the water is just running down the right side of my face.

1:13:07and I turn the light on and look in the mirror and I thought I'd had a stroke because the right side of my face was not functioning. And so I went and tapped Kobe and woke him up and he drives me in the middle of nowhere, Texas, wherever we were at this ranch and he drives me basically 100 miles an hour towards the nearest hospital or emergency room that's probably 30, 45 minutes away. And so I get there and they tell me after doing some tests on me that I had what's called Bell's palsy. And it's basically kind of a paralysis of the face that they still don't know exactly what causes it, but what they usually see is stress and lack of sleep.

1:13:43And so they call it temporary. It took six full months for me to get a single twitch in my face back. And it's just a practical example of how hard we really were going. And we would just do whatever it took to get that next video out to the point where we just broke. And so that's kind of me at this point emotionally. Four years in, it's like I'm looking at the guys when we're meeting up one day, and I was like, guys, I don't know if I can keep doing this. Corey, were you ever even slightly resentful of the other guys? Because you were also going home and editing this stuff. And that's a lot of work.

1:14:20Were you ever like, God, I got to do all this work? Honestly, I don't know that I would have described it as resentful. I mean, sure, did thoughts cross my mind of, hey, these guys are not having to do perfect as much as I am? Sure. But the reality was they were working crazy hours with their other jobs. So we were both doing the same amount of work hours wise because they had full time jobs during the week and we all had DP during the weekend. So, you know, logically, I couldn't really go there. But I think we were all so excited about what could be with Dude Perfect that we just powered through.

1:14:51But it hit a breaking point. And for me, it was the kind of physical piece. And I guess around like 2013 or 2014, maybe somewhere around there, there was kind of a turning point where you guys were like some event for March Madness. And Tyler, I guess you suddenly realized you had to make a decision. Like you had this landscaping gig and you had to choose one job or the other. Yep. I don't remember if it was the Houston Final Four or the Atlanta Final Four. but they they had flown out ahead of time because they needed to be there friday i was having to work i flew out friday night down there and saturday when we're all down there doing our event i got an email from my boss at the time and it said basically like hey you can't miss any more saturdays like if you know if you're gonna work here i need you to be here saturdays so i remember i showed garrett first i think we were sitting on the plane headed back home and i was like man i I don't know what we're going to do.

1:15:52Yeah. I mean, of course, now looking back on it, knowing what we know, I would have thought you might have been thinking, yeah, I got that email and I thought, you can take this email and shove it up your, but that's not what you were thinking. Well, and we weren't in a place, not only would I, I hope that wouldn't be my thought, but we were also just not in a place that could warrant a reaction like that. I think when we really looked at it, we were like, okay, what if, because Garrett had wanted to make a change at his architecture firm, I think anyways. And Cody was looking at making a move.

1:16:25And so I knew I had to find something else if we were going to continue Dude Perfect. And so I was like, what if this was in April, this was during the final four. I was like, let's look and see what would happen if for the rest of the year, for the next eight months, we just try Dude Perfect. And we had it figured up after doing all this research that we could each take home about$8 ,000 the rest of the year. And for some reason that we felt good about that. For some reason that was like, okay, well, okay, we can totally do this till December and see what happens. And so - You just do it on Saturdays.

1:16:58So you knew that you could make$8 ,000 each during the year. Yeah. It was still, it wasn't supplementing the income that we were making at our other jobs at that point. And so it was definitely - It was ramen money. Yeah. Yeah. It was definitely ramen money. So, you know, we had to have that conversation with not only our wives, but our in-laws. And for me and Garrett and Cody, we all had somebody else to take care of at that point. It wasn't just us. You had kids. Yeah. I think I didn't have kids yet. I think Garrett may have just had his first kid. Wow. Which that's unfathomable to me now to think back, to have a child and to think, I'm going to quit my architecture career because he had his master's and a pretty solid job and going to YouTube videos.

1:17:39Because this is cat videos still, you know, for the stage of YouTube, this is if you tell someone you're a YouTuber, it's you work in your basement. So for Kobe and I, we, you know, it was easy. We're still living with our family. Any money was enough for us. And, you know, anything for us was gravy. And obviously, at some point, we wanted to make a little bit of money, but we were okay. And these guys were having to look at their, you know, father in laws in the eye and explain how they're going to take care of their girl. And it was funny, because for Kobe and I, we're like, great, thank goodness, We can all, you know, kind of try and do this together for those guys.

1:18:12Someone had to pull a parachute first. And so I remember listening to the guys, you know, after deciding this was going to happen and they kind of looked at each other and was like, okay, cool. Like I get that we're all going to quit, but who's going to quit first, right? Because, you know, once you, once you say that you're burning that bridge realistically at that company. So it was kind of a funny conversation. All right. So it's mid 2014. You guys all decide to go in, all in on this thing. And you've got to professionalize, right? I mean, I'm assuming you've got to like create some kind of infrastructure, at least have some kind of – some system to bring in incoming inquiries.

1:18:49And so I guess at this point, what, Tyler, your dad kind of helps out, decides he's going to help you guys out? Yeah, when we first did the GMC, when they sent that proposal, like it was one of the first brands to ever work with us and we got a contract. We were like, what in the world? Like this is like 50 pages. Like who's going to read this? Yeah. And my dad being in sales and, you know, being a good negotiator and stuff, we were just like, let's just send it over to him and see what he says about it. And so that was kind of how that relationship started. And what about camera work? Did you did you hire a professional camera team or did you already have a team at that point?

1:19:26No, we sure did. And I think we were probably still at the about the same cameras as we started with. To be totally honest, we may have upgraded one step, whatever step that was at the time. my big stipulation when we moved from Austin to Dallas was that I really needed some help on the editing side so I told the guys hey I will you know uproot my life and leave all my friends and family and stuff over here if you guys are cool with us taking a total leap of faith and not only all going full-time but being willing to throw enough salary at somebody to where we can hire an editor to help me so it was it was tricky because we didn't even know if we had enough money to make this whole thing make sense for us to begin with but then we had to hire somebody you know, on top of that.

1:20:05So it was tough, but it was definitely the right call. No question. And when you decided to go all in, how did you do, because you got to do business development, you got to get sponsors in, you got to get revenue in. So how did that happen? How did you, how did you start to bring more of those people in? I don't know, maybe a month after going full time, we got an email from Nerf, um, who has been one of our, our longest partner that we've had. they have been since then and so we had signed our first big nerf deal to come out with dude perfect nerf products and do videos for them and that was like our first big partnership and that for us just kind of confirmed like okay like this is what we're supposed to be doing like this is a great first step in the right direction going full time we still didn't think that we needed an office so for the first year we pretty much just met at like panera or corner bakery or whatever coffee shop, we could sit in and not order anything until they kicked us out.

1:21:04And we got away with that for a while. But after some time, obviously had to start like making more real business decisions, I guess, and financial expenses. Like, okay, we do need an office if we're going to hire somebody to edit our videos so they can have a place to sit there and work. And it was kind of a slow transition rolling into all that stuff and just kind of a learn along the way process of what that looks like. So once you guys made that decision, you gave yourself like six to eight months, right? To see if it would work. Was this, I mean, you got the nerf deal. So that was great. That was going to be sustainable.

1:21:38But then was it just like things started to just come in as you put more videos out, you got more attention, more stuff came in. It just became like a natural kind of organic growth like that. Or did you have to go out and hustle and get the work to you? It was still a hustle, but I think we also moved into our first office and offices overstating it. I mean, it was a pretty fun space. It was like a strip mall, right? It was like a 2 ,000 or 3 ,000 square foot or something like that. Correct. It was a public facing building, but it was a cool space, right? And so we knew we physically needed somewhere to office out of, but we didn't want it to be your typical, you know, cube farm.

1:22:13And so we made it as cool as we could and we built it out in a cool way. and it was very, you know, sporty on the inside and activity-based and a basketball goal hanging on the wall and shuffleboard and ping-pong tables and pool tables and a space that was very, you know, natural to film in. And so I think when people saw that, I think it was like, oh, these guys are serious. Like, this is the first time we've ever seen anyone online basically create a space, you know, that was serious. This is before there were hype houses and all these places in L.A. now. Yeah, definitely. influencers. And did you, you were financing these videos essentially through your sponsorship, right?

1:22:49Because the videos, even if they were getting a lot of views, that was not your revenue model at the time. It was a consistent revenue model, right? I think that's the cool thing about the ad side is you can start to predict and get a little bit of a, you know, predictable cash flow there. So it helped. I would say we probably thought about it more so as our YouTube money, meaning the ads, we can pay for our bills, right? And then the sponsorship stuff, that's what can hopefully help us, you know, support our families. Did you guys, you know, you got to now it's a business and this is going to be your livelihood and you got to really your quality, the pressure on you is to make high quality videos because you've already been making high quality videos.

1:23:28So there's an expectation. You watch them, they look seamless, simple, because it's so hard to make them. I know that looking at it, but that does create creative tension in any environment, even in our environment. I know you're all friends and stuff, but in any kind of business arrangement, there's always going to be tension. Have you had big arguments between the five of you at certain points? I mean, we're brothers, right? We have known each other for 14, 16 years at this point. So anything that you can imagine with family, with five brothers, that's what's happened. So we've certainly been upset at each other many times.

1:24:05And that's a lot of people. That's a lot of cooks in the kitchen to try to agree and try to vote. And so as you can imagine, it gets messy. But I think we've all just, we've aligned on the things that really matter, right? We've majored on the majors and minored on the minors. And so our, you know, tentpole things, right, quality and that people can trust everything we put out, like those things continue to kind of guide what we do. And so I think as a group, you know, we didn't have to convince each other about those things over and over again. I think, you know, for us, there's obviously been moments throughout the 12 years that have been extremely difficult and, you know, very confrontational and difficult moments.

1:24:43And I think the only reason that Dude Perfect is still a thing today is truly because of our faith. And I think, you know, as five Christian guys, Jesus was all about loving people and forgiving people and serving people. And you get a lot of opportunities to do that when you have disagreements with your friends that you work with. And so we've definitely had our opportunities to do that. And I think truly that is the only reason that Dude Perfect is still a thing 12 years later. Well, on that point, right, and that makes a lot of sense. You can always circle back to this thing you share, which is in your case, it's your faith.

1:25:15And you can kind of lean on that to resolve things. And I know we're talking about this more than normal because you guys don't really talk a lot about this on the videos, which I think is actually great. I mean, in a sense that you've got all kinds of kids and people watching and some people just they respect faith, but they don't want really not interested to want to hear about it. Yeah, I don't think it's something that we purposefully try to hide. Our main purpose for making the videos and any type of entertainment we do is to bring people together. Right. I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, we've actually been talking about it recently.

1:25:47Our mission statement is to be the world's most trusted world class entertainment. So I think for us, I don't think that we feel like it's necessary, you know, nor is it necessarily very entertaining to sit around and talk about our faith on videos. But it is the most important thing to us. So I think we put, you know, entertainment as the key piece of our videos. And if anyone digs, you know, at all, they can kind of see, you know, what we're really all about. And we're happy to tell anyone that asks. You know, we heard my boys earlier in the conversation. and that's how I learned about you through my boys because I'm not a YouTube watcher and it's really cool how they connect with what you do and as I've gone down the rabbit hole of Dude Perfect, it's clear that you have a massive audience.

1:26:31Probably your primary audience is like boys, right? Like probably between five and 15. Is that fair? That's your biggest core audience? I think it's definitely our biggest. I think we've been surprised over the years as we've started to transition out of just being the basketball trickshot guys. You know, now we've got the trickshot videos are probably our least popular series we have now, which is awesome. I mean, we love that. That's cool to see, you know, us try new things and they work, I guess. So they're well-received by the audience. So now we've got stereotypes and the battles. And these are shows, I should mention, these are like sketch shows, like stereotypes.

1:27:03You like have one where you all go to the beach and there's like stereotype of the person who always gets sunburned and like the muscle guy. And like, that's what it is. Yep. We've just tried all these different series And it's cool to see our audience grow with us. And especially like, I mean, you talk about some of these athletes and celebrities that we've been fortunate enough to meet. And, you know, on tour, we were, we were shocked to see how many females were there. I mean, it was a good, like, I would say 70, 30, 60, 40 split between girls and boys that were coming to the, to the tour in 2019.

1:27:32All right. Here's the other thing that's happened to you guys. You've become really famous. I mean, I, you know, there are going to be some people who listen to this who haven't heard of you. And but but just so they know, you have like a bigger YouTube channel than the NBA, than the NFL, than Ariana Grande. I mean, you've like you guys are really famous. Like you get recognized wherever you go. How is that must change your life? Right. You must get you probably can't walk through an airport terminal without getting stopped. It's I mean, there's no question it's drastically changed our personal lives.

1:28:06And again, something we didn't think about. Right. I mean, when it started happening a lot, like people are recognizing us everywhere we go and not just as a group, but individually, it's tricky. I would say the large majority of the time, it's a really positive experience. But at the same time, you know, we're regular people, too. And so we'll be out at dinner and we're with our family and our kids and we'll be, you know, tucked in the back of a booth at a Mexican restaurant. And then you'll have a family stand up and the dad will say something like, hey, take a picture with our kids. you know, and he's not really asking.

1:28:38He's kind of saying, Hey, do it. And you're stuck in the back of the booth. And if you take one picture, then everyone in the restaurant is going to notice. And, you know, before you know, you'll have a line. And it's not that we don't appreciate everyone in the restaurant that their kids know us or that their parents know us and that they want to take a picture, but obviously it just changes the whole dynamic. Yeah. I think it just goes back to our faith is why we handle situations like we do. I mean, if it was purely from a selfish perspective, I think there would definitely be times when you walk out of the office and And you're like, man, the last thing I want to do is go take more pictures.

1:29:07I'm trying to get home and see my own family. But at the end of the day, like, if you think about it, like, you know, I may have 20 or 30 of those interactions in a day. I'm not going to be able to remember the kids or family's names that I meet or anything like that. But that kid is probably going to remember that experience for the rest of his life. But it's definitely a conscious decision that you have to make that, yes, it may be inconvenient. It may be frustrating. You may have just come off of having an absolutely horrible day personally, but there you walk outside and there's a group of 20 people waiting to take a picture with you.

1:29:40You've got to decide in that moment, you know, how am I going to handle this? Like they have no idea what's going on in your personal life. I mean, and there's no way they could. Yeah. You guys expanded to a live show. You've got multi-channel shows on YouTube. You're a media company now. What's the ambition? I mean, what do you guys want this to be? Because it's, you know, some people might say, oh, those are the trick shot guys. Some people might say, oh, those are the YouTube guys. Some people might say, oh, that's those guys that do that live show. Tell me the vision. I mean, the truth is I think we like all the things you just said, right?

1:30:16I think we want to be relevant on all the platforms, right? Anything that's popular, we want to have a presence there and just continue to kind of shine our light in those different areas. And so we're trying to do a bunch of different things. we've got a movie that we're you know just starting to work on and so we're kind of trying to tackle it all and it's it's it kind of goes back to us being competitive guys right there's a piece of a piece of it that's the business side and we think that part is fun and you know just like any entrepreneur we like growing the business and then there's also a piece of us that you know no matter what we do we're still competitive guys and we like to try and you know tackle some different areas and if that means that you know we want to make a movie then hey let's try it That's a completely new experience.

1:30:55And, you know, we want to see it happen. How crazy would you have thought if when you were in college, one of you guys was like, we're going to make a really, really significant business that's going to generate a lot of money out of that of these stupid, like things we're doing in our group house. I think if you had said that two years ago, we would have thought it was crazy. I don't think you had to go back 12 years to when we were back in college. But yeah, it was unfathomable. I mean, honestly, we could not have even wrapped our minds around it, partly because that world didn't really exist.

1:31:28Right. I think kids now, your kids probably even grow up in one of their, you know, top things. Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up? Well, I want to be a YouTuber because that's a thing. And it was not a thing when we were growing up. And it was barely a thing at all when we were, you know, in the beginning stages of Dude Perfect. Yeah. By the way, thanks for that. Now, and every time I ask my kids what you want to be, they're not like, I want to be the president. Like, I want to be a YouTuber. So appreciate it. We have to apologize for that. And we didn't start water bottle flipping, but we definitely helped make it kind of a thing.

1:31:56So we apologize to teachers for that all the time. I'm sure that's, you know, endlessly frustrating to them. Yeah. How much for both of you, Tyler and Corey, how much of your success do you attribute to how hard you worked and just the grind? And how much do you think it has to do with luck? We are perfectionists, right? We all are. and we are all willing to put in that extra effort in whatever piece of the process you can imagine. I mean, just the other day, as an example, we launched a new book recently and so we did kind of a contest giveaway and we did this big film project in order to make it happen and we put a lot of time and effort into it and we edited it and we looked at it and we said, I don't like the way it looks.

1:32:35Like, it's okay, no one would really bat an eye at it, but that's not the vision that we had and we went and we redid the whole thing, right? So that's just so classic Dude Perfect. we have this bar that I think is a lot higher than what most people imagine it would be at least online so on the hard work side I mean I'm not gonna lie like we you know we try hard we take it seriously it's the most fun thing ever so we don't take it too seriously but we take the opportunity that we have with it seriously and you know if we can spread a little bit of hope and joy in that sense that's a huge win how about you tell her I mean there's no question that we've all put in a lot of work, but I think we would still be putting in that work.

1:33:15I mean, I was putting in that work when I was doing landscaping. Our personalities have always been like the way we were raised is, you know, you've got to work for something. It's not just going to be handed to you. And so I think we tend to look at it, maybe not so much of luck, but more so that God has kind of blessed us with this platform for a reason. And even if it's just as simple as providing content for families to sit down and watch together. I think we hope at minimum that's what we can provide for people. And I don't tend to look at it as luck, but I think it's been a huge blessing to be able to have a platform like that.

1:33:53I mean, it would be a waste if at the end of this, it was like, oh, okay, well, we made some funny videos on this website called YouTube that may or may not be around in 50 years. And I think we all hope that there's a little bit more meaning and a little bit more purpose behind Dude Perfect than that when this is all said and done. That's Tyler Toney and Corey Cotton, two of the five co-founders of Dude Perfect. Oh, and by the way, I think we may have forgotten to ask just one more critical question. Bram, you want to take this one? Yeah. Have you ever scored an incredible trick shot, but it turns out you weren't recording?

1:34:33We have. So I was like, hey, let me go to the front yard and see if I can make this shot over the house into the backyard. And I was like, I'm just going to go practice it and throw a few. And I ended up making it and we were not filming. And so we decided rule number one of trick shots, you're either filming or you're not filming. And I have a last question. Was that trick shot? Daddy has to do his job. Daddy has to do his job. Dad's going to be out of a job soon. Sounds like. Do you want to say bye? Bye. Bye. All right. See you, boys. Thanks for the question. Have a good day. By the way, since we first ran this episode, they've announced plans to build new headquarters in Frisco, Texas, including a theme park.

1:35:12They were also featured in an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary called Dude Perfect, a very long shot, which is really awesome. I just saw it. And last year, they broke the world record for the highest basketball shot again, this time with an 856-foot shot off of the Strat Tower in Las Vegas. 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 if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter at GuyRoz.com. This episode was produced by J.C.

1:35:54Howard with music composed by Ramteen Ereblewe. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Chris Messini, Sam Paulson, Devin Schwartz, Catherine Seifer, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, and Elaine Coates. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

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