An Unfiltered Conversation with The Try Guys

25:09Right. Which I think probably plays into like, as something like that happens, it breaks that feeling of like, wait, but you guys informed me coming into myself. What is this? You know? Sure. Yeah. I don't know that we would ever take credit for creating that or just being part of that, but there's a, an undercurrent of, an overcurrent of non-toxic masculinity that was at the core of our content for a long time, which I think is a big reason why the whole thing felt like such a deep betrayal. But I think we had a pretty big confidence in our creative abilities that we knew that the core of creatively what was happening within the group wasn't going to change the output.

25:53The core of how we operated creatively didn't change. Got it. And so we knew that from that perspective, we weren't going to miss a beat. And there was a little bit of reinvigoration. I think that I personally had just felt very stagnant for a year or two and kind of gotten to a point where I was like, maybe I need to move on from this in order to grow. Maybe I've run my course. And I think we all had echoes of that within our minds. And then just that debate of is this where we can do all the things we want to do? And so for better or for worse, this shit happened. It allowed us to kind of reinvigorate our passion for the group.

26:37It made me more excited to think about what it could become. You know, what's interesting, Keith, you said like it was bigger than you imagined or that you thought maybe it would be. And in a way, you're speaking to the reaction from your actual audience. But there was this whole other element. Sure. Like trending on Twitter is one thing. Creators trend on Twitter, it happens. but showing up on SNL in a sketch is somewhat unheard of it's kind of crazy yeah crazy I was like we I just like I just don't think we're important enough to be the opening sketch yeah like they did like you got to that point where my mom has to text me yeah right and say what's but this Try Guys thing yeah because it has like entered her world yes it got into everyone's world it got so viral that you know Seth Rogen's like what's a Try Guy right and people It's getting into other people's spaces that are like, why is my timeline filled up with these people I don't know?

27:29And then other people are like, how do you not know them? I wonder, like with the death of Twitter, if we're going to get to be one of the last true viral events. Maybe. I mean, you're definitely one of the most viral events of the last four years. Yeah, I think we were in a roundup at the end of the year from some people's biggest viral occurrences. Right. It's kind of a careful what you wish for, right? Our whole career was built on trying to go viral. Well, here you go, buddy. How did you guys internalize the take that SNL had? Which was that the video you guys put out that were silly was potentially like too self-serious.

28:04Too extreme of a reaction was sort of their commentary. Right. Right. It was very frustrating when to watch it. Because at first, like when it came on, I was like, wow, what if this is funny? And they have a take that it works for us. Well, you see the first screenshot and it's, that's us. and it's crazy. That's my shirt. That's us. I still have that shirt in my drawer and I don't know what to do with it. They nailed your shirt. They really nailed it. Yours wasn't exact but it was easily all my shirts are exactly the same so they But I felt like you toned down the shirt for that video. Right, yes.

28:38It was just a button down. They were very generous with how much hair they gave me. That was a lot of hair. As someone who struggled with a receding hairline loved that. No, but it was you know, like they've done sketches about YouTube. They did like a Dobrik inspired sketch but they didn't say their names no they didn't yeah people playing them so there was this first moment of like holy shit we grew up watching and i can laugh at first at like i was like the food baby yeah yeah that was funny they're covering our niche references it kept going i was like oh no oh they don't get it oh no this is not the the mainstream dialogue i want most of like older America to watch right before they go to bed about us.

29:21Right. Cause it's like that we're overreacting. They clearly just don't have the actual facts of what it is. And they're just trying to minimize what happened and over oversell our, our reaction to it. It felt a bit like punching down at us as opposed to perhaps punching at someone else. There was one person who wasn't made fun of in that sketch. Yeah. So that felt unfair. Yeah. I understand that. In a way, they're kind of like trivializing the way in which you distributed actually the message. Sure. Like the fact that you put it out on your own YouTube channel, where else would it go? Yeah. But in a way, they're kind of downplaying.

29:58Right. It was as if we like did that interview for CNN. Right. Which is what it is in the sketch. Right. Right. But we didn't. It's on our channel to our audience specifically. Now, obviously, it got way bigger because it was trending. So lots of people saw it, but it wasn't meant to be a, hey, everyone in the world, this is what happened. Yeah, it wasn't a political address, right? We were talking to our audience because when you create content for the internet, you know, look, people show up because they like your art, they like your comedy, but they're buying in for a relationship with you.

30:32It's something that is a power that we have. And it's also something that we struggle with of like, oh, God, are they just here because of this parasocial connection and this sense of insight into our lives and that they know the real us. And we, of course, know that's not true. It's a tricky thing that we've tried to unpack in therapy. I'll never get to the bottom of it. But when this happens, we felt, you know, we have a responsibility to talk to our audience who has dedicated at that point nearly a decade of their lives who felt like they knew us. And now this thing has happened that has shattered their trust.

31:04And it was discovered by the audience too. Like the subreddit is a very engaged. Like I think you were mentioning that you're in like your cultivate era. I consider the Try Guys audience to be like, we always think about width and depth with audiences. And like right now there's ideas that have, I mean, like the sheer amount of people that Mr. Beast reaches is insane. And even every step in between that is insane. but you know having a deep connection with a million plus people is also in arguably more insane right that there are like yeah for sure that that many people will watch your wedding video yeah yeah is wild and care about it in a way and like it'll move them and they might cry like that is yeah that is a whole nother level of connection and um intimacy that i think in other like challenge style videos on YouTube of someone trying something, you know, in that genre, doesn't exist in that genre.

32:02Because like anyone can make an I tried video, which a lot of people are doing, right? Like to see you try and do what I do. You think you can lazy your taint? You think it's easy? But you guys were like, you were so early even to that concept format and has become like an entire industry on YouTube and on the internet. And I agree with Samir that I think like what differentiates you is that you can put up a video about your wedding and it's one of the highest performing. It's an awesome and terrifying responsibility. Totally. I mean, it's given us everything and it also sometimes is forced to be everything.

32:38I don't know. It's a hard thing to wrap your mind around. I've really tried to navigate that responsibly. I kept my relationship secret for two years, not because I wanted to make some big to do about it, but because I knew that there would be a lot of attention put upon my relationship as evidenced by the intense amount of attention put on the other relationship. So I was like, I don't want to turn my relationship into a funnel for likes. I don't want to get into that part of my brain where I go, oh, if I am on vacation, I better take some videos of me and my girlfriend so that we get some likes on Instagram.

33:17I wanted to grow it in my own heart. And then when I realized, okay, Maggie and I are going to be together forever, time to introduce her. Even the wedding stuff, it was this balance of how do I do it in a way that we're just going to take media that we're already taking from this weekend to share something that I think is cool, that I think is fun, that I'm happy to, without violating personal boundaries, without feeling like I'm performing at my own wedding. I've seen other YouTubers who are like straight on like selfie cameraing at their wedding. I'm like, that's fucking better health. Crazy.

33:50If you're not, I mean, power to you. You're not present at your own wedding. If you're performing for someone else. You're doing an ad read in the middle. Right. It's just, you know, it's supposed to be, I mean, weddings are goofy to begin with, right? They're very bizarre ceremonies. I guess they are performative inherently. They are performative. But it is still like, it's something you're, it's really for you and your spouse or about to be spouse. It's really, and then, and your friends, it's a celebration. It's like, hey, we really like all of you and we want you to be here because we really like this other person.

34:18And so are you cool with this? Let's all party together. It's really supposed to be intimate. Even if it's for 400 people, it's intimate to those 400 people. And you did a great job, but I know it was something you stressed over. It's like sharing the right amount where people feel like they are included in watching this wedding, but also everyone who went to the wedding got the actual intimate experience. We were able to be there. Right, right. You were able to be there. I told the videographers, if you need someone to perform, go to Keith. I'm booked. I'm living. Was there any conversation around not putting wedding content on the channel?

34:49Because it is like stylistically, it's drastically different than the majority of the videos. Especially coming off of like what happened last year with like fans getting connected to personal identities. Yeah. You know, I think there's like two to three videos around the wedding. Was there any like programming conversations of like? Well, there was this question of like, should we just not touch relationship stuff? Sure. And I decided, one, I didn't want to let someone else ruin my fun. This was something I was looking forward to for a long time. I was excited to have the opportunity to turn something I loved into art.

35:22But I also knew we had a plan of how to go about it in a way that didn't feel invasive. So one of the videos was about an unfortunate hospital mishap I had. That's an incredible tale. Oh, thanks. Yeah. Well, it's just a wild tale. I spent a month leading up to my wedding in the hospital in and out of it. And that honestly, partially came out of like a sense of guilt where the fact that I was hospitalized for so long meant that like I totally fucked our release schedule and what we could film. And by the third hospitalization, I was like, I got to do something productive with this fucking time.

35:54I'm like just going crazy. So that's where that one came from. I think it was maybe the second or third hospitalization too where we were texting and I was like, so you're like, you're like vlogging. It's crazy. I just know that you like to tell stories and the story is happening. You've got to tell it. That's so good. I think it's so interesting that part of that was guilt. You're going through something. It's guilt. It's boredom. It's just like, you know, we are, at the end of the day, we are storytellers. And so if you have a great story, you have to tell it. But yeah, we don't think you're not contributing.

36:31There's a lot of content that has to be made. There's only a few of us that are regularly in all the content. Obviously, one of our goals is broadening our cast and getting more people and just have more faces and more lifestyles and backgrounds on the channel in general. Because the whole idea is it's people trying something they never tried before. At this point, we've tried a lot. And it's hard for me to have an overwhelming new experience just because I've had so many. You had one this morning. Right. I'm drinking mud. We gave him mud water. I'm drinking dirt. Yeah, that's right. It's wild.

37:02my tongue feels weird but like but you know I was about to go do an off-Broadway show and I was going to be gone for six weeks you were about to do the wedding we already knew he was going to be gone during that time for his honeymoon so content still had to come out on the channel I was and like we were going to have something that Zach was going to host and then he got injured so I was hosting it which was fine but it also just like wasn't what the channel was supposed to have on it because we like to have a decent spread of who's appearing on it so it doesn't look like only one person is there it sucks right now if you go back it's like keith face keith face just try saying that 10 times fast and then my face forever which no one wants yeah me least of all and it's like this is just we're trying our best guys like we we uh we're going getting through a slog one thing i wanted to say that i think you guys nailed was the tripod podcast episode after the event i've actually listened to that three times.

37:58First time, cause I was very curious. Sure. The second time, cause I was like, how did you leave me feeling so good? You know, after that conversation and then third time to really study tonally, how did you do that? Like, and that's, that's for me being like an observer of our space of like, I don't think there's been a better piece of content made after like a, you know, public controversy than that hour and a half or two hour long conversation where you guys address it, you do it in a lighthearted manner. It opens with you talking to the producer, Miles, about his titling conventions of a lot of the episodes being like controversial.

38:40And I think one of the opening things you say is like - You've used up all your controversial titles basically. You say like - On things that weren't that controversial. You're like, hello to like our regular viewers and no one else, which is like so funny. But like totally, I just, it's something that I think I really aspire to as we continue to come into our own as creators of like - As we approach controversy. Yeah. Right, yeah. Which is inevitable for everybody. Which is inevitable for everybody. But that to me was like - Colin's dogfighting, breaking up fails. Yeah, as that comes to life, we want to be able to handle it.

39:14That was just such a impressive display of like your guys authentic personalities coming forward. You know, in contrast to, I think how, like the big couch video that everyone was like talking about and tonally how people, and like when I saw that, I was like, oh my God, that is, that to me, like pulled me more into the world of the Try Guys. And I feel like I'd have to assume that there has been a rise, correct me if I'm wrong, but like maybe a rise in viewership or fandom or connection. connection. Have you felt that tangibly or not? Not really. I mean, maybe there was, I think there were certainly a lot of people interested in the channel in the months following it.

39:57I think after the buzz of it all went away, a lot of those other people went away too. I think we've had the opposite to be honest, because we got an influx of people like what's going on. There must be drama here. I love drama. So they subscribe and then they realize there's, we're not dramatic people. So, and then they unsubscribed. subscribed. So we saw a huge drop in subscribers for the first time ever. Um, and I think that that, you know, along with other things, you know, we, we got into a time when it was harder to create content. So the confluence of those events, uh, led to some of our, our worst performing months ever, um, to start this year.

40:32And it's something that we're, we're recovering from. But you took mushrooms on the channel, which was exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's, that's again, our cultivate phase. That was cultivating. Yeah. We're just trying to do funny, goofy stuff. I love that. Again, I think like you're, I think it's pretty natural for creators to age up with their audiences. And like aging up doesn't mean more mature content. It just means like exploring. And like you said, you know, like doing a format for a very long time is incredibly challenging. Not only for you guys, but it's also like the audiences, the whole environment is changing.

41:09Sure. Um, and I think about like, you know, you guys, your guys origins are at Buzzfeed. The amount that Buzzfeed has changed. I went to their YouTube channel to look and just be like, Hmm, Whoa, you know, and vice is, is going bankrupt right now. Like the wild time. It's a wild time coming out, but we're, we're recording this in the midst of all the digital media media company. Yeah. The 20 times are over. Yeah. How do you guys think about, you know, your own media company and how to keep things fresh? Cause we look at these, you know, this history of media companies of the early stage when we were all coming up as internet creators.

41:48I mean, Buzzfeed was the pinnacle of. Yeah. I mean, the whole idea was it was an engine that created viral content. It was a viral lab. So, and it was very cool to work there. We were working with amazingly creative people and they all came from different schools of both filmmaking or entertaining and it just and everything happens so fast and you get to you know we were there we were working with Quinta Brunson and we were just working with just people who shouldn't have been together it was incredible creativity at that time it was an incubator and you got to learn from everybody and teach everybody and take people's success and everyone wanted everyone to succeed it was really infectious and it felt like a grad school that paid us didn't pay us great but it paid us we actually went to school there for a week so we got accepted into this buzzfeed program were we there i think you guys were around it was very like hollywood lot like all i remember is steven lim came in like a black car and the door opened and i was like this is this is modern hollywood you know like you were you there uh that must have been like 2016 yeah we made a video about But we spent a week there and it was, it was Instagram and Buzzfeed started like a school.

43:00I must've been mentally checked out. I don't know anything about it. I was there. You might've come and spoken to us. I don't remember, but I honestly think in those seven days, I had a pretty long conversation. They wouldn't have trusted me. In those seven days, I think we learned more about like how the internet works and how video interacts with the internet. Then I've learned. And how to brainstorm. Yeah. Like how to come up with an idea was like the premise of that. Really good for that. I mean, it taught us a lot about, I mean how the internet works and how video on the internet works, especially at that time, how video on the internet worked.

43:40They not only understood it, but I feel like defined how it worked. Totally. And which is really about like a video gets to someone else, becomes viral because someone has to share it to someone. And so why would you share it? And breaking down the different reasons someone might share something. It's not, we always used to think, oh, because it's funny. Like early viral videos were funny and that's why they shared. But then you think like, wait, why did that Dove commercial get so viral? It's like, oh, because it touched people in a different way. And then you're like, okay, well, there's actually a lot of reasons people might share a video.

44:13Maybe it's because it's a identity related to them. Maybe it's because it's just simply unbelievable. because unbelievable things like trick shots, they're unbelievable. Yeah. And yet they happen. That's why those become viral because I can't believe that ping pong ball went 365 feet into a shot glass. It's unbelievable. Does it elicit an emotion? Does it give you a piece of information? Does it touch a relationship you have with people? It was a time where we were able to think of digital media, whether it's videos or photos or memes, as not just entertainment, not just content, but units of conversation.

44:48And I don't know if that's as true anymore. I still think it is to an extent like TikToks, you know, you see a TikTok, you share it with your wife or each other or your best friend. And that is a way that you're reaching out through the cold expanse of the digital void to say, hey, love you. Thinking of you. I thought you'd like this. So that was a lot of what we were doing back then is thinking about how do we create pieces of media that people can use to either communicate to the world something about themselves or to connect with someone else to say, I see you. That's really the atoms from which everything we do has sprouted.

45:28Let's talk about trying on women's underwear. What do you think that, was that like, how do you, I guess, talk about like the equation of virality? Which was, yeah, to be clear, like video number one. That's video number one. First Try Guys video. That came out specifically out of a brainstorm where we left that brainstorm being like, this is too easy of an idea. It was so obviously a slam dunk that none of us wanted to do it. And we let it like linger for two months until finally it took multiple producers coming together being like, all right, let's do it for fun. And it super crushed. But the idea of that.

46:03Wait, why would you not want to do it? Because it was going to perform well. It was too fucking easy. Because it was just too on the nose. It was too on the nose. You wouldn't have been proud necessarily. it's just it was just so like well yeah anyone can make that kind of vibe you know but it was like we also there was a little bit of a struggle to find guys in the office who wanted to do it no one would we didn't cast actors because you have to make typically a video was like you have a brainstorm on Monday great book some time to shoot it on Tuesday morning you should get a rough cut out by the end of Wednesday and by the end of Wednesday you should have been in a brainstorm to start the next video.

46:41Yeah, at that time, we were responsible for six videos a month. And that is like me owning the whole stack. So ideation, shooting, producing. Six videos a month? Yeah, one and a half videos a week. Yeah. Holy smokes. So that's why like you really like, as soon as you come out of a brainstorm, you need to be going straight to the production team to be like, I need to see what cameras and rooms are available tomorrow morning, I guess. And then you have that done. You don't have time to cast. So you just walk over to Zach and be like, Zach, are you doing anything this morning? It's like, well, I have a brainstorm at 930.

47:10It's like, are you doing anything right now? Can I buy you for like 10 minutes to go eat some Indonesian snacks? Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Of course, why not? We also cast each other because we knew how to perform for the edits. Wait, but we can get real inside baseball with you guys because this channel is all about it. So the reason that we made that first video was because of Facebook. Facebook had just launched their nascent video platform. And so we had a specific brainstorm. How do we, what does Facebook video want to be? This was like week one of Facebook. And there was one video that had performed well, made by another producer, that was around guys trying on, I want to say, Spanx.

47:48So we're like, cool, guys trying lady things. We do taste tests, which is people trying different cultures. Maybe there's something to this gender swap of it all. The irony is if we had just waited and been like, oh, no, Facebook just wants fast hands and stretchy cheese. That's the secret to Facebook. And this was also because Facebook at the time was promising these unbelievable numbers, which we would later find out were inflated. They were using just people scrolling by to juice their numbers. And they were also for years promising this incredible stream of revenue that was going to change the industry, which also turned out to not be true.

48:21And as a result, we saw huge companies. College Humors talked about how they shifted their entire strategy to be about native Facebook video. Ended up tanking the company. they're doing quite well now with Dropout. But I digress. So we had this brainstorm. We came up with this idea. We came together. We were the only ones willing to be in the video. It was a huge success. And this video was a hit on YouTube and Facebook and maybe Twitter as well, where it got a million views on both YouTube and Facebook, which was unheard of for us. usually things would, you know, you tried to make things curated to each platform.

49:00What performs on Instagram is different than what we'll perform on TikTok is different than what we'll perform on YouTube. Um, but we found this rare crossover hit. And so from that we said, okay, we should do this again. We thought that maybe there were three ideas there. That was sexy. It was sort of like, what is underwear? Underwear, ladies underwear is inherently just so different from men's underwear. In some ways it's more constrictive. In some ways it's clearly meant to be provocative. So there's a lot in there that guys haven't experienced in their clothes. So we can comment on that. Women can watch it and be like, yes, finally someone understands me.

49:33I can send it to my friend to commiserate or I can send it to my boyfriend to prove a point. And then we're like, okay, what else is kind of like that? It's like, oh, well, Halloween costumes are hyper-sexualized for women and not at all. We didn't have that one yet. What was the second one? It was pregnancy. Oh, yeah, pregnancy. And then there was like maybe, God, there was one other that I forget. And then a month later, we're like, Halloween costumes, same thing. Because we started in September. So right after like, okay, Halloween's coming up. Oh, yeah. It's like men's Halloween costumes are never sexy.

50:04They're only funny. They're like equal parts funny or scary. There's half of them are just jokes. Like you dress up as a big old boner. Or the other half is you dress as a guy with a knife covered in blood. There's something in the middle there, which is just like you dress as Batman, which is confusing. Right. Because what's that? You dress as childhood heroes. Yeah. What is that? But normally you'd make it funny. It'd be like Batman who's drunk. Yeah. Right? Like Batman holding a beer. Right. Your point is like, I'm going to be Batman at this party, but I'm going to get hammered on me. What a stressful holiday.

50:32I had a phase where I went through very simple like children's costumes. Like, what are you? I'm a pumpkin. Oh, big fan. Which is fun. Big fan. But ultimately, it's funny. It's sort of anti-comedy funny. We'll go back to the story. And we just realized, yeah, that in the same way, we're going to be able to have guys see how it's hypersexualized. we get to make a lot of double entendre silly puns and jokes, which are funny. But ultimately at the end, it's like, wow, this is crazy that the only offering for ladies is hypersexualized. Like even if you wanted to dress as a ladybug, it's a hot ladybug.

51:02A sexy ladybug. A sexy ladybug. So that did the same thing. In fact, it did it even more so because it was around Halloween. So people were sharing it and then some people were sharing it and be like, well, actually, I love dressing as a sexy whatever. And some people were like, thank you. I would love to just dress as a normal spooky nurse rather than a sexy nurse. So it got lots of conversations going. And for the first time, we were like, let's use the same cast because BuzzFeed is all about iteration. Pick something from it and replicate it. And what they never did was put the exact same people in a video.

51:38And that was sort of because... Pretty fucking obvious. BuzzFeed didn't want the people to become famous. And that's why they really leaned into Tasty because you didn't know who made it. Yeah, and that's part of the reason that it is struggling and has struggled. Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that as an element, they were very resistant to let people become personalities within the company because in a business strategic way, they didn't want people to have leverage. Of course. And ask for more money because this brand relies on this person. But we were just, it was really like, we have to make these videos so fast.

52:12I need people who know how to perform what I want out of this video quickly. because I have to put it together really fast. And so if I can just go to the same guys that I know can deliver this, I will make the video faster. It will be better. And also it might have some sort of carryover from the last video's audience to see these same guys doing this again. And it creates a better relationship. And now we're not only getting people to watch because it's a viral concept and it has a good message, but they like Zach's joke from the first one and they want to see Zach's jokes in this one. Yeah.

52:43That's so interesting. That's like, it's going on multiple levels. I love just like, I can't stop thinking about the units of conversation. I think like we, we talk about that a lot now and how the mediums have changed. Like back then a share on a long form YouTube video or Facebook was probably the easiest place to share something, right? YouTube's still kind of hard to share. You press the share button, then you copy the link. And then where do you put that? Into text? Is it in an email? Is it in a WhatsApp? I'm not going to share it straight to Twitter where it burns in some, check out this video.

53:11Stop it. It's crazy. Don't speak for me. So it's actually harder. And that's why Instagram and TikToker, they have the DM, right? Which is like much easier to share a unit of conversation. But yeah, like the conceptually, like why is someone going to share that? And then you go deeper and like, I'm enjoying these character dynamics. I'm enjoying the people. Did BuzzFeed, were they like when you guys were starting to catch, did someone come to you and were like, great work, congratulations? Sure. We all got pins and buttons when we made good videos. and that was sort of a weird cultish currency.

53:45Yes, you got a pin. Like there was a pin that had some guy's face on it for a YouTube hit. There was a different kind of pin. Based on benchmarks. Yeah, for a Facebook hit. And then eventually they established this weird, very, it was very culty. It's like a hoodie you could get if you got. One day they go, look at this beautiful hoodie. And everyone goes, oh. And they say, we've gotten one for all of you. If you'd like to win it, you must get a video that gets to 1 million in one week. It was three million. Three million? Three million in a week. Yeah, okay. So like some guy comes in wearing that hoodie and everyone's like, dang, he got three million in a week.

54:22When you got your hoodie though, it was like your SNL jacket. It was like, welcome to the club, buddy. That's crazy. And we all drank the fucking Kool-Aid. I now can look back and be like, wow. But back then it was like, I need that fucking hoodie. Of course. That is strange and culty, but it's not too dissimilar to what's happening actually with Instagram and Facebook. Like we heard someone from Instagram speak and they weren't talking about like monetization that comes from video. They were literally talking about like the stickers or like the little emojis that will get sent to you. Have you noticed that?

54:50Upon accomplishing certain viewership metrics. We just had. And delivering them as if it's like something I can use in my real life that I can exchange for like food. We made an Instagram reel that went uncomfortably viral. And at every milestone, it was like a sticker that just came out of the screen and was like. made a reel that viral yeah now i really want it it kept saying new achievement unlocked five million views yeah and you were like so what do i do with that and that was it it was just the it was like the one out of ten on youtube when the confetti comes out of the screen and it's just like a dopamine hit where you're like i did it yeah i didn't realize i was going i didn't realize there was a thing to do but i did it but i did it yeah i mean it is amazing that so many of like the current internet rock stars are from that era of BuzzFeed.

55:40Yeah, like Michelle. Yeah. Michelle is, I mean, I think she's probably the best try guy there is. Yeah. Michelle Correa is who you're talking about. She tries things to such a degree that we could never. She's amazing. She transforms her whole self every time she does a challenge accepted video in a way that no one else could. She's one of a kind. She's brilliant and she's very sweet. as well but she's she commits herself way harder than i mean she just boxed she just boxed but and she you know even when she does like she ran that crazy marathon ultra that was crazy that's sort of ridiculous yeah that was like ridiculous michelle michelle that's a lot it's a lot she does it at a production value too that was not at buzzfeed which i think is really interesting yeah she takes it to this other degree that maybe you wouldn't expect would work on youtube because it's like too polished yeah it's nice to see i mean she's always loved and aspired to something more cinematic.

56:36And I don't know, it's something that we like to see too. Things that are more polished are fun. I don't think that that's the direction that YouTube is ultimately going. But in our wildest dreams, we would hope to be kind of this somewhere in between digital and traditional where we can use our audiences to unlock higher tiers of storytelling. I know that's something that she shares. What are you watching on YouTube right now? So I love, I'm a sucker for a good video essay. I really love Ryan Trahan's videos and I might be the only person on the planet who I didn't like his Penny series and it just didn't grab me but what I love I mean I loved them I was so I think the model of it was so incredible but what I love about his videos is the crafting instruction and the way that he is able to make his audience care about something that the algorithm does not care about so he did a fossil video he built a tiny ecosystem oh the ecosystem was so good You look at the titles and thumbnails and they are super interesting.

57:36They're super compelling. He went to Shrek Fest. I think that the way that he builds his videos is so wonderfully compelling. And I actually, I broke down for our team the first like minute and a half of his Shrek video and the way that he laid out each chapter of the video, but also continuously raised the stakes. And you know what? Within the first 30 seconds, you know he's going to the Shrek Fest, which is a crazy thing I've never heard of. Also, he's dressed as Lord Farquaad in the middle of an airport. Also, he has to break into Shrek Fest. And now while I'm watching him walk through an airport in a Lord Farquaad costume, he's now going to tell me the chapters of everything he needs to conquer, which is eating an onion and screaming and whatever.

58:21So it's just like... really expertly filling me with expectations and raising the stakes, getting me excited. I think that his craft is next level. Yeah, he's really good. He's an excellent storyteller. And he brings in a level of comedy that's so subtle, but so good. Really funny. It's very dry. It's so funny. His music in the first minute, how he does it and when he drops it out. And even the lo-fi nature of everything, a lot of it being filmed on an iPhone. But there's so many setups. Yeah, there are. He moves that camera. It's like Casey Neistat style where it's shot. from many different ways.

58:59I don't know, but my expectation is that he approaches video. I like it because it's like me. Oh, yeah. I think that I would guess that he does what I used to do a lot, which is building the edit before you shoot. For sure. And writing it out, not in a document, but in a timeline and laying down the music tracks, knowing the rhythm changes that you need. And you put in, you slot in some footage, you create that, and then you go, okay, well, where are the gaps? I like that. So you're literally building it in like a premiere timeline. Yeah. Oh, cool. Rhythm is a huge, huge way that we approach our stories.

59:36It's, you know, if you watch our videos, you've noticed that the songs change a million times. I don't like a song to go more than 45 seconds, preferably no more than 15 seconds. And that's all about building variable rhythms within our content. There's a reason that we never sit in an interview. Well, in our videos. In our videos. In our videos. We would never do this. We would never do something like that. What you guys are doing here? No rhythm.

1:00:04There's a reason we don't go all of our expectations, the entire interview for 10 minutes, and then our entire try, we weave it back and forth. Because one, we're trying to create comedy through contrast, but we're also trying to create variable rhythm. I am so sorry for disparaging everything you do. No, no. This is divulged into us just from complimenting each other to kind of jabbing a little bit of a couple more minutes. And this might, yeah. And also like for us, a big thing is like things don't have to happen in the order that they happen. They have to happen in order of when you need the information.

1:00:40Yes. And also in the same way is like a cold open will often like have a joke from later in the video. I don't need to see the joke again later. The cold open happens and it doesn't have to come back up. It doesn't have to come back. You've already seen it. You already know that. Why would I show you the same joke again? you've already seen the joke unless it's a really good joke unless it's amazing now if it is if you see it again it's because we don't have any more jokes around it you know I've had an editor be like well if you remove this later does it make sense that it's at the top I'm like don't worry about that just worry about that it was funny was it funny in its context yes and then if you forget about it did it hook them to get to the next point that's all that matters is that it's it fulfilled its need by appearing once doesn't need to come back well let me ask just because we're here what is the recipe to a like successful Try Guys video?

1:01:30If you look at it and you're like, I know right now what's going to work or what performs, what is that kind of equation? We don't make as many classic Try videos. We, you know, food has been our best successor, but there's a through line in all of them, which is we are going to do something that is related to a commonly held passion or identity. So whether that's ballet, oh, I grew up doing ballet or my little sister did, or I've always wondered what that's like, or making a pie, right? That's something that people know about. Lots of people do, but a lot of people just buy frozen pies. They don't know how to make a pie.

1:02:05So something that is like intimately known. And then we have an expert who is going to be the source of education, authority. And now we get to be the crash test dummies and the idiots. And then there's a lot with how we craft that as well, which is contrast editing. So expert says, now no matter what, don't do this. Cut to Keith doing this, right? And we're not forcing that, but we find those moments in the edit. And also we like to have an arc. Most of our best videos will follow a three-act structure. We have a first act break. At the second act break, we do have the Dark Knight of the Soul where the character is at their lowest so that we can then see them triumphantly rise and use something they learned earlier and succeed.

1:02:54Um, you know, it's, we, uh, we try and follow the tenants of traditional storytelling. Um, and I think a lot of our best videos also have to have some stakes, whether that's a performance or God feeding what we've done to an expert. And that's also a sense of reveal. Um, we learned really early on that audiences love a reveal. And once the reveal, I mean, this is okay. So we talked about data. We still use data. while we try to not let data inform but not dictate our art. So YouTube has tons of incredible data and that has informed how to make our content the best it can be. You also sometimes take that data and willfully ignore it to then make things you want to make.

1:03:41But we've learned a ton on how to structure our videos based on audience retention. And that's learning that once they see the big reveal at the end, the video is over. So now if you have any reflection where we've gone through this incredibly transformative emotional experience, you need to start hearing the reflection underneath and during the final performance, the final reveal, whatever. Because once we're done revealing, you got 30 seconds, video's over. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. That reveal too is an honest moment for whoever's in the video, one of you two, to actually experience something for the first time, right?

1:04:20And actually capture a moment that was real and honest. Absolutely. And you want to have like character growth, right? So at the beginning of a video, not everybody is going to want to do it. Some people might want to do it. And maybe some person's like could start with the I've done this before, so I'm going to crush this. They end up doing like bad. And then someone is like, I don't want to do this. I think I'll be bad at it. they actually throughout the video really like it and they do the best. So you have some sort of, there's multiple story arcs happening. And then in the format of a Try Guys video, there's often like little formats that happen.

1:04:51So maybe there's a little reaction minute that's a reaction format that's buried in there. And then there's like another, there's a fax format and like a brief history of type format. Try on, taste test. So it's actually lots of little formats. And that's why you need lots and lots of music because you're really changing the pace and the mood of the video into little tiny chapters amongst the bigger three-act structure that's happening. Yeah, we kind of go back to the first two-minute videos we made when we started at BuzzFeed, and we just kind of piece those together into a bigger piece of media.

1:05:23And with what you said about arcs, I mean, that's just good storytelling. That's going to be true on YouTube. It's going to be true anywhere. If Keith is going to win this episode of Without a Recipe, I want to see him struggle. It is very boring if he succeeds the whole time. and I also want to see him struggle in the right order. Sometimes we'll rearrange footage. Again, I don't care what actually happened. I want to tell a good story. So there are edits that I've made where I've taken the last thing that happened which was this huge temper tantrum when we were babysitting toddlers and I moved it to the front because I wanted the character to grow.

1:06:01It's not like if the character just ends with, okay, temper tantrum, video's over. It's like, oh shit, you failed. it was good for you the whole video and now and you know this one character it was very very boring successful successful sexful temper tantrum video over i rearranged the entire guts of that video to make it look like they struggled they struggled and finally found a moment of yeah serenity doesn't it feel so good to find one of those puzzle pieces and move it around and just go oh better than anything that's exactly where it's supposed to be yeah it is there's this weird thing where when you're making when you're like in the flow you feel like whatever you're making is telling you what it wants to be which is such a hippy dippy shit thing to say you've taken enough mushrooms yeah all of us have taken enough mushrooms for that statement yeah yeah uh it's time for my next uh no but it is it it feels like you know there's a block of marble and inside is a statue and i just have to find it you know we we will shoot our our video and that is the raw putty and it knows what it wants to be and we just have to listen to it.

1:07:05Colin sometimes describes it as like Queen's Gambit. Did you watch that show? Where the pieces are like moving while you're laying in bed. Also fueled by drugs in that show. Those were pharmaceuticals. More dangerous. I'm just talking about general sleepiness and dreaming. Same. There was something when we were at BuzzFeed for that week that I just remembered that we think about all the time now, which they had us write down identities and emotions. Yeah. And be like, who, you know, are you trying to reach? And what emotion are you trying to make them feel? And like draw lines and be like, your content is a bridge for these people to transform into feeling this emotion, which was very profound and has really impacted us quite a bit.

1:07:49Absolutely. And that's like true to the individual acts of a story. You know, it's true to the story in itself. It's true to the channel and the brand of what you are trying to become, right? Of like you're transforming people through your storytelling. so that's something that I really took away from that week at BuzzFeed that I really enjoyed oh yeah when you guys made the decision to step out of BuzzFeed how did you retain the name the Try Guys? long negotiations was it? that felt like when I saw that happen I was like there's no possible way that you guys own 100 % of that BuzzFeed has to be involved because it was incubated within the confines of BuzzFeed Which is generally the terms of how it works.

1:08:32If you work in another company, if you come up with an idea at that company, they own it, even if it feels like your idea. No, they owned it entirely. And so it was this long negotiation to figure out, hey, you guys aren't going to do anything with this. We're leaving. We'd really love to not call ourselves the do boys. Was that an option? We had bullshit names and they all sucked. Coming off of one of their many rounds of creative layoffs, and they don't want more bad PR either. right like if they want if we left and couldn't retain it because you guys were very popular at this point like you had a serious audience i would say we were uh more popular than we are now like we were just like it was that was at the big the the pinnacle of what we were doing we were doing really really amazing stuff our stuff looked awesome it felt unique at buzzfeed it was the first show cast show at buzzfeed now there's since then there's uh you know been the guys who are now and Watcher doing Unsolved and Steven Lim doing Worth It and Ladylike all these other shows came about after the Try Guys because they never thought that they could do shows that were cast dependent because they didn't think they wanted that then they saw our success and they're like okay there's something now I will say the whole time we were doing it they were constantly like four of you working on one video doesn't make any sense we don't want you to keep doing this and we were kind of like but it does four times as well as any of our individual videos so like why wouldn't we be doing this so there was always like a fight back and forth but then once they started selling branded integrations into ours and making a fuck ton of money they suddenly were like oh okay no this is fine you don't get a cut of branded integrations into that from back then a very minuscule which is part of why we love it yeah we get a really bad cut of it did it feel kind of funny to be like that popular and be an employee at a company or like what does that feel like um no it it felt frustrating and i don't know that it's purely the i think they weren't built at that point for what we were doing and and the reason to leave is because i felt like we were in a box and the box was too small for what we were doing i i we had desires to uh explore this this property in a million different directions we weren't doing merchandise.

1:10:48We weren't doing a podcast. We weren't making different types of content. We weren't going on tour, writing a book. There were, there were, we saw that there was so much potential within this thing. And then I would have meetings where I was like arguing for next to$300 to shoot a video. And I'm like, guys, I can't fucking do this anymore. Like you just let me, come on. I, you are not paying me that you're paying me. I don't want to make it too much about money. But it's all about money. But at that point, there's an element of we are growing exponentially and not earning. We could be growing exponentially and we're not even able to.

1:11:22It wasn't even about money we were being paid. It was about money at our disposal to make better content. It was the budget wasn't going up. And it was like, well, how are we supposed to elevate our content if we're being given the money to make a sit at a table taste test when we're trying to make a go out and drive cars around a closed course? But the business concept of digital content, especially at that time, was like, it should cost as little as possible, right? So that the margin is just ludicrous, right? At some point. So that like your audience grows and the revenue grows. And that still is the benefit of digital content.

1:11:59But I think that was the, I mean, BuzzFeed got a$50 million investment, right? From Andreessen Horwitz. Sounds about right. I think it was more than that. Maybe more than that, but just like what the venture, like the, to, to turn creativity into a business is a very delicate thing to do. And I don't know if, I don't know who has done it right. You know, when you zoom out at that scale, at that scale, it's very complicated to do. And I think even at the scales that we're doing it at, it's super complicated to turn just like loose, fun, creativity into a P &L that works is super challenging. It is.

1:12:35You guys made that decision, though, to jump and go independent. Yeah, I mean, it began, it began, it was a creative endeavor. It was, hey, there's a lot that we can do, and it seems like there's some money here to allow us to do it. Now, our financial success in the first few years outpaced our expectations and then allowed us to grow faster and allowed us to do more. but our philosophy was always okay if we're going to get x in for a branded video let's deliver something to the brand and then use some of that money to make some cool shit that we actually care about got it i think it used to be though that we would like use the brand of money for the video that the brand was on and now it's a little bit more like the the brand of money still goes to something but doesn't always necessarily go to the video that is sponsored you know but like we just really want when we have money to make stuff that looks bigger and feels bigger and like has more artistic stuff, we get to do that.

1:13:32And it's awesome to do that. But back when we were at Buzzfeed, we really specifically at Buzzfeed were like, well, anytime this we're getting money to make this video, this video needs to be the most amazing thing we've ever made because we didn't want people to see a brand go on something and then it not be better. Like if we, if we are selling something to people, that's not just us, it needs to be an unbelievable video itself. And that's also because we weren't, you know, it's like, look, I'm sponsoring the movie The Shallows starring Blake Lively. I'm not seeing that money, so let's do something really cool artistically because that's the way that I'm going to get paid.

1:14:07As an artist, I want to get paid by being able to make something that I wouldn't be able to make otherwise. Point to something like, look at that. That's cool. I made that. And this was us growing and growing into ourselves as young creators. Was there anything that you missed after making the jump about BuzzFeed? Just the people. we loved yeah i mean it was as we said this incredible incubator but we were able to replicate some of the things that we loved about it we brought i mean the first thing we did when we started a company was bring in collaborators we love collaboration um uh we we took uh our first editor devlin who we were like you are incredible we are nothing without you come with us we brought on a producer we brought on uh two pas one of them miles became our shooter and then he now runs our podcast department.

1:14:55YB is one of our editors. She worked with us at Buzzfeed in about what, six months, a year in, at whatever point our non-tampering clause, uh, she was like, Hey, I'd love to work for you guys. And we're like, get on over here. And you had the capital to do that at that time? We fit. Yeah. We figured it out. That's amazing. Cause that's not an easy, like four people plus employees plus a place to work. Right. I mean, luckily it was like, it was stair-stepped, right? So we, we obviously invested our own money to start to hire the two people, the two or three people we had. And then what was actually really hard is that you don't get your first paycheck from YouTube until after you've been on there for a month and a half.

1:15:32Well, you have to get on there to become where you can get money. And then you have to wait to get that money. So our first paycheck actually was Patreon. Patreon was hugely important to us, especially at our start, because we simply would have actually run out of money if not for the first Patreon check that came through. And then the YouTube check came through and then other things started coming through. And then, and also we were able to make merch that, and it was the first time we had merch that we felt good about going out. So when we did get revenue streams, a lot of them opened up at the same time, which was great.

1:16:07But for those first three months, it was like, okay. It was tight. I mean, I was literally on some of our shoots, I made chili and that was the crew lunch. It was good chili. I can make chili. That sounds exciting. But it was literally like, we simply do not have money. And our first video was like, even the Keith Eats Everything at Taco Bell was one of the first videos we shot. And we had only ever done one other eat the menu before. And it was a tri-vlog thing where I ate everything at McDonald's. But like, that was something we could afford to make. And it was like, well, maybe this will do just as well.

1:16:37It has a huge brand in it. So if it does really well, it probably gets good monetization. And it did. And that's like, we still make those today because they are very much in that digital way. Like they have very low cost. And they - High yield. Unreasonably high yield. My memory of the first year is obviously compressed. But in the beginning, we were cobbling together equipment that we had owned from back in the day. And it's cool. I have this camera. I have this busted light. I have a tripod. I have a C-stand. And then we were editing ourselves. And so it was just a gradual process of building the team up.

1:17:09And we were shooting. Yep. Yeah. I was like, I would be in front. I was like, okay, Zach, now you sit down. And I'll run the cameras. And I'll be running the sound. And frankly, like, you know, look, it's, unsustainable, but obviously I miss that energy. I think there's a infectious quality to that content because it was so handmade, um, that is hard to replicate, but it's, we could not sustain that forever because we, we burnt to a crisp. And at that time, everyone's focused on that one video for that period of time. I put my entire life force into every single release. We were there, I mean, from 8 a.m.

1:17:46until 1 in the morning, like every day for the first several months. That's a beautiful... And I would be sitting next to Zach and be like, and we really were stressing to make sure that, especially our first videos as a company have to be incredible. It'd be better. So we're gonna sit next to each other, and we're gonna watch this cut over and over and over. I'm like, oh, this joke would be funnier if it was a half a second. Yeah, Keith and I love doing the split headphones where... Start and stop. The group edit. The group edit. We love a group edit. Frustrating, but fun. And always pays off, honestly.

1:18:14It does pay off. It's so grueling and terrible to go through and edit with someone else, but it works. We are now responsible business owners. And so it's like, you can't make every piece of content as good as it could possibly be because the amount of physical and emotional labor that goes into that is just unsustainable. And that's something that I've really struggled with because it doesn't feel good to put things out that you know in your heart are not as good as you could possibly do. It feels even worse when you're like, that's a 6 out of 10, and then YouTube validates it and ranks it for you, and it's like, that was actually a 5, guys.

1:18:53And you're like, oh. Okay. What's that say about the other video? Yeah, yeah. I find sometimes that it's not even about being good, it's just less me. Sure. The further removed sometimes that Samira and I are from an edit, I don't know necessarily if it's better or worse, but it's my idea of what's more me at the end when the, when, you know, at the time all of you are sitting in that edit or you've got headphones on and you're watching every second. I think that's a very apt and correct observation. Um, and, and the thing that I think I psychologically struggle with the most and I go back and forth is what is the try guys?

1:19:28Is it my artistic expression? Because for many years, for the good part of the last decade, everything I did creatively and I don't just mean me, It was everything Keith did creatively, everything Eugene did creatively. It was all of us was funneled into this thing. And any idea I had, any expression I had about the world was funneled through those projects. Now, the company is growing. There are a lot of people that touch it, a lot of people who put themselves into it. But as a result, none of us put all of ourselves into it. And so do I hold on tight and say this thing needs to be a reflection of the type of content I want to see in the world?

1:20:06or do I allow myself to step back? And the Try Guys now becomes an entity unto itself and it is no longer me. And if I want to make my deep, passionate art, that exists somewhere else. Or maybe it exists as a subset within the Try Guys, but the Try Guys is no longer mine. And that I don't know what to do about. That's a really scary thing. I think about that with our channel being named Colin and Samir. Sometimes I wish our name was something other than our actual names. Because yeah, I feel like it is my identity. And even as us, you see, we're in an office now. We have employees. We are, at times, removed more than we were five years ago from what we're making.

1:20:42And I do have that sense of, is what we're putting out under my name, half of my name, less of my true identity at times than maybe it was three, four years ago when we had less and had to be with headphones in between each other making every little decision? And is that the inevitability of like media companies where like when Jonah Peretti was maybe more involved in the virality or the content creation process of BuzzFeed that it was innovative. And as that becomes more and more of a commercial engine, when you commercialize creativity, it turns into a commodity of sorts that it has to be. It's productized.

1:21:22Every company grows, the quality has to get thinner, like fast food. sure every fast food chain started as a restaurant yeah and it was a popular restaurant that got a second restaurant in the same town and then it got a third restaurant the county over and then somebody with money came in and said I think this restaurant can be everywhere but we're gonna have to make some changes and then they do and it gets really really big but like Heath's brain funnels things yeah I'm a very fast food person and I always I always as silly as it is I started the menu talking about the first one. Yeah. And then, and now it has 2 ,000 locations.

1:22:00Like it's different. You know, the way Taco Bell started is very goofy, but it ultimately was, they wanted to make a restaurant that competed with McDonald's and they're already, it was too hard to compete with burgers with burgers. So he made tacos. It's interesting because it does have like, as fast food restaurants have more locations, they actually have more mass appeal. Right. Right. But the quality actually has gone down, but something about it, and it's often the efficiency of getting the food, right? Ultimately, it's the speed of which food is made is why we like it. It's fast. And the predictability.

1:22:36And it's exactly the same. I think that is the thing from a consumer level in media, like predictability actually matters, right? As you settle into a format, like I think about Rhett and Link and how they've been able to do Good Mythical Morning for as long as they've been able to do it. There's a lot of predictability in that. You go to that channel and it's Good Mythical Morning. We have done like a guest hosting once. It's a machine. Oh yeah. Totally. Yeah. Being there. You are literally a cog even as the host. Like when we sat down and we're like, oh, it's, it is, it's, you know, it's a live to tape thing.

1:23:07It was so fast. But that engine is very crucial to a growth of a media company because then they also, you know, can dig a medium sized hole on their Rhett and Link channel. And that's just kind of like, that has no predict. I have no idea what's going to come out next on the Rhett and Link channel. Right. And that's exciting. Um, but as a consumer, I know that Monday through Thursday I can show up and this thing's going to be there. And I think they've done an intelligent job of automating the things that they, they know need to be reliable, which then clears out their space to write a book and write an album and dig a hole.

1:23:41Yeah. But that's a hard thing for like an artistic and a creative person to do. It's just hard because you need a lot of people around you because I don't think creative people are consistent people. Right. And some of the best art has an end date. Yeah. Right? Like truly some of the best stuff that comes out, whether it's movies or like Bo Burnham's Inside. We love the limited series. They're great. A limited series is great. Nine years because he knew. He was like, it just shouldn't go on anymore. Every artist I respect knew when to get out. And I don't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like having a big team.

1:24:14It's fear. It's a little bit fear. Yeah, absolutely. It's a question of like, will I ever be able to make something else like this? but it's also what we have allows us to do so many incredible things. So we get to make without a recipe. And for my money, I think it is as good as any reality cooking show on TV. I think it's better than shows that have been made. Maybe including ones. Yeah, let's call them out. Maybe hypothetically there was a cooking show that involved people on YouTube and they were on a TV show and I'm not going to call out that. Is this our next YouTube boxing match? Whatever.

1:24:51I will never die I don't even know where you're going with it it was us we made a TV we made a food hour show we covered it in our newsletter it didn't get picked up so they agreed they didn't make it anymore but we're we have a team we have a team in the ability to make a show that is professional is polished is looks great is edited great you know but to have that team in order to to be able to move the mountains that it takes to make a show of that caliber, you need to have a company. And in order to have that company, you need to have a certain output. So, you know, look, we know that we would be more successful if we shut up and play the hits.

1:25:34We have some shows that are more reliable and we've tried to do a good job of finding the ones that we enjoy. You know, Keith only does eat the menu because it crushes and he loves doing it. It's fun. And he's figured out a way to make it into something that he loves by having guests and telling jokes, right? But we also still make really stupid, random fucking videos that our audience is like, what is this? And that is us being bad business owners. Sure. But that's the only way we're going to get through this. Yeah. We're trying to incorporate that right now. I mean, we've started having like meetings every Thursday morning to come up with concepts that truly don't make that much sense for the engine that we've built.

1:26:13And we're trying to figure out like how and when to make these videos that we just have to make. How do you make time for that? Yeah, we need to make time for it because it's like essential to who we are and how we came into this career in the first place. What's weird is when you know what's going to work, but you don't want to make it. And I guess that's similar to when you talked about the first, and you're like, I know that's the right idea, but I don't really want to make that one. You know, and I know this one's not going to perform, but I want to make it. Right, like we knew Try Guys put on big robot skeletons is not going to be the thing that our majority female audience who grew up watching us because we helped other guys understand that they have a lot of harder stuff than us.

1:26:57But we really wanted to drive a big old robot exoskeleton. Who doesn't want to get in a gigantic mech and crush stuff? Of course. Hilarious. This video isn't going to be a slam dunk on the channel, but what an experience for us this gets to be. I made an entire scripted true crime mockumentary about the time someone leaked a photo of my, a video of my dick on the internet. Yeah, sure. Not optimized to perform well, but God damn do I. It's likely it won't perform well and it can't make money. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Even like Shakespeare live. Yeah. Probably not in the like projected, expected roadmap.

1:27:36Right. That specifically, you know, the company was like, hey, this live stream was a great success. You should do another cooking video. And we're like, well, we don't really want to just run that into the ground. If we do that all the time, The audience is going to get sick of it. We're going to get sick of it. So this is, we hope it's going to crush and do well, but it's also, we need to keep it fresh for ourselves. I think that at the end of the day, I mean, if we can broaden this back to business advice, right? That's kind of what this is all about. Like there is a core of our audience who I think is stimulated by that.

1:28:07They want to see us do the weird. And those are the ones that I'm doing it for. Even if it doesn't go as wide and as broad as possible, I'm doing it for the real ones who want to see us put on Elizabethan costumes and perform Shakespeare while holding kittens and there's a lot of theater kids or people who have done theater I mean when I did my off-Broadway show people flew from all over the country and some people flew from the UK to see it and they said that I was living out a dream they had for them so like the Shakespeare thing can be like that as well sure because everybody who's ever been in any middle school high school college production has had that one thought go through their mind and be like, what if this was my job?

1:28:47What if I was an actor? Like so few people get to be actors. I mean, LA, we have the most of them, but even here, there's some people who move here and then move back. It's hard because you have to be really used to people telling you no and having a lot of time where you're not working and then you're, it's just hard. It's hard economically, but doing a theatrical thing and being on a stage under lights, there's something very special about that. And, you know, if we, hopefully us doing this, we'll have that same sort of like, wow, I always wanted to do Shakespeare in front of people. Or I've always been scared to do theater in front of people.

1:29:21And also it is live. It's not going to be live to tape. It's going to be live, live. So we have to learn lines and maybe we'll forget them. I will definitely forget them. But that's the stuff that builds like that deep connection. Yeah. You know, and I think that is so unique on the internet. In your guys' documentary, behind The Try, which is a fantastic movie about kind of the rise of The Try Guys and chronicles your tour, which goes really into depth of these dynamics. And it reads a lot like a boy band, right? When you're watching it. Yeah, for sure. It definitely reads as similar to watching something about One Direction or like another, like a band that is reaching this level of fame and fanfare and navigating the dynamics, the interpersonal dynamics of that.

1:30:05I'm curious how those dynamics changed when you became co-owners of a business. Like the entrepreneurial stress of owning a business is very different from the stress of being on a production. Like the implications change. When you're on set and you're like, is this going well? Changes when you are a business owner with employees, you know, compared to when you are trying to make a video that's gonna work. Especially the tone and the style of your videos is comedy and light. Just like, what was that going from like collaborators to co-owners and then like, you know, managers within a company? I mean, the first thing that we did was hire bosses so we didn't have to be the boss.

1:30:48And that was a damn good decision. Yeah, that's a good idea. I, to this day, have no interest in ever being a manager. I want other people to allow us to do what we do best, which is creativity. So we had other people take on those. We replaced ourselves. But yeah, there is still a huge amount of responsibility that we have. And I think it's just an increased sense of responsibility within the work, which kind of goes back to what is the Try Guys? Is it mine? No, it isn't anymore. It's this, you know, 20 plus people. This is their livelihood. So it's just a fundamentally different thing. How did you find those bosses?

1:31:26One of them, Rachel, was our first producer. She was just someone we'd worked with, incredibly talented. when she went on maternity leave. She was going to be gone for six months. So we brought on Nick Rufka, who is now our COO. He was someone who was out in the world producing but was looking for a more stable job. I think what we've done time and time again is find really talented people and try and figure out where they want to be and where we think their skill sets match up. Got it. It's a lesson that I'm learning again and again is that, and with Nick and Rachel, they both hit it out of the park immediately.

1:32:02But we've had some employees where it's like, you are very talented. You're in the wrong role. Okay, I can get frustrated with you. I could fire you. Or I can look at our operations and say, how do we take what you do and make it work for us? And you will find that if people are happy and stimulated by what they do, they will do better work. They will bring more themselves. They will create more value for your company. I mean, everyone at a job, if there's one part of the job that you think sucks, you don't do it well anyway. Any job you'd have is like, oh, this part of my job sucks. I'm just really not going to do it very well.

1:32:40But if you can remove the parts of that person's job that suck and only give them stuff that is gratifying and good, they're going to do even better at all of those things. But it's easy, I think, as a boss or being in charge to be like, oh, man, I want them to just get better at this thing that sucks. I know it sucks. That's why I don't do it. that's why I hired someone to do it but you've got to find someone who doesn't think that sucks yeah and we've seen from BuzzFeed and other times and I think we've probably seen it too that sometimes creative people because they have seniority at a company someone decides they should be a manager of other creative people but they have nothing in them that wants to manage or is good at managing so they become a bad manager and then the people under them really resent them and then they resent the people under them because they're resented and that it creates It's a relationship that's not helpful to anyone.

1:33:31And so it's like, just because someone's been there longer, sometimes you're like, well, I'll just put them in a new position. But that isn't the right answer because people who are really, really, really good at making videos aren't necessarily good at telling other people how to make videos. You got to find someone who is not interested in being creative, but has empathy for the creative process and creative people. Yeah. Or like has been creative, but really wants to be more about the structure of things now. Like I've just changed. I really found that I like this stuff more than I thought I did.

1:34:04And I want to do this. Then you get someone who is still learning, but they're excited to learn. So they're going to be getting better and they're more invested in doing it. The thing I always wondered with the COO role, which I think is becoming COO and president and CEO is becoming more of a prevalent role in the creator space right now. And I think that's like, you know, we're probably now entering a point where we could use a operations person here. That person, though, like Nick still works for you guys. So if Nick wants a raise, he still comes to you. Right. or if you need to let go of Nick, that's on you guys.

1:34:42Correct. If, yes, ultimately. We still got to be the bosses. You still have to be the bosses of that. And we've had to do a lot of grownup work that sucks. Totally, yeah. We've had to rise to challenges that sucks. As we started, we used to be four people. Now we're three. There are a lot of responsibilities. We divvy things up amongst ourselves that Keith and I now do that we never did. And so we had to rise to that challenge, find that we were actually, we had a talent and aptitude for things where we didn't think we would excel. And so part of that is confidence, but also part of that is empowering your employees to make good decisions.

1:35:23And so I think one of the things that we're really good at is being empathetic, admitting what we don't know, and empowering people around us to make decisions. with the idea of, I mean, you asked many questions at once, right? But having a COO allows us to not worry about the operations. We have payroll and healthcare and people, this is now their career. We have people who just celebrated five-year anniversaries at the company. Holy smokes, that's crazy. Yeah, it's nuts. So we're like, okay, they need some benchmarks. They need to know that this is a job that they can see themselves in for years.

1:36:02ever, right? Or at least for the next five, 10 years. So what are those benchmarks? What are the salary raises? What is their career longevity? Because we have incredibly talented people and I know that not everyone's going to stay with us forever. There are some people who their growth is going to necessitate just as we left BuzzFeed, they're going to have to leave us. But for people that want to stay, I want them to know that there is a road for them and what that road is, I want to be very clear with them. That ain't work I want to do. I want to take rooms and go to Mario World. For work. For work.

1:36:39For all of you. To make new content that pushes the limits. Honestly sounds like a good time. Potentially overwhelming. Right. I'd recommend it. But also fun. You can only do too many psychedelics in public though when you're a public figure because people want to talk to you and then you're going to get way in your head about it. It was a small dose. Yeah. Micro dose. Good, good. Yeah. That was working. Right. You were on the job. If I hadn't brought employees, I probably would have been a lot stupider. But it turns out 360 GoPros can make you look pretty convincingly high without you having enough.

1:37:13Yeah. That was a funny, that was a good choice of camera for that video. It was really the technology helped us decide the format. Yeah. That, I guess what I'm curious about now is like how you have navigated the group dynamic of like what you do pour into Try Guys and then your individual projects. Because I can also imagine that that might be challenging at times to be like, hmm, that's a really creative thing you're doing with Lou Berger. Maybe that would have worked over here. And like, wouldn't that have been a good thing for you to do in the context of Try Guys? And Lou Berger is your, how do you describe it?

1:37:51It's my comedy band. Yeah. It's a, you know, and we put up the musical, right? And yes, there's a world where I could have probably written a musical with Zach and Eugene, and we could have done the same thing. But it's like, I don't know if that's their goal as much as it is mine. But it also fulfills my live performance need. I started out as a live performer. I have a theater degree. I did improv. I toured with an improv group for four years out of Chicago. I only learned video editing because I was trying to make sketches, and I didn't have anyone to edit for me. and then obviously I learned a lot more about video production, stumbled into BuzzFeed, which we started out very low there, but we moved up pretty quickly.

1:38:35But yeah, I mean, there's stuff we want to do creatively and also there's stuff that you have to do creatively on your own. Like Eugene has to do some of these things creatively on his own because he's a gay Asian creator and we are some straight white boys and we are not the best people to create what he needs to create artistically to fill the niches he wants to fill and uplift the voices he wants to uplift. We just don't necessarily fit into that as well. And I don't want to force myself into that because that's something he, and also some of these things are things he thought of 12 years ago before he knew me.

1:39:14From its inception, the Try Guys has always been our way to unlock creative passions that we have. And we said in the beginning that we wanted to use the Try Guys to make things together. We also wanted to use it as a platform to make things apart. That was from its inception when we went off to do our company. That was the goal. And it's this idea of we have this incredible audience. We have this intimate connection with them. Will they support us in our personal endeavors? We don't want to just do one thing forever. We want to do a lot of things. And the audience has been incredibly gracious in allowing us to do those things.

1:39:51And it goes back to that central question of what is the Try Guys? Because we started it to be this jumping pad for us to do, launch pad's the word, not jumping pad. Jumping pad. Jumping pad. Our boing-boing to do all of the things that we dreamed of doing. But as we've gone on, it's morphed now into something unto itself. And so there's going to, I think, always be that push and pull of being like, okay, is it meant for me to do my fantastical dreams or should it be an entity unto itself? For me also, I go and do live performances and women or girls or people bring their friends or boyfriends and they don't know who I am.

1:40:33Which is fantastic. Which is great. I love performing for people and being able to see someone go from, I'm not interested in watching this show to enjoying the show. That is what gives me way more validation. And to not have any light on your identity. Yeah, not have any color of like, that's the guy who tried on ladies' underwear. That's the guy who, you know, did that. I'm just some guy. And like, am I funny to you doing this thing? Because that's what I think I am able to do. But maybe, I mean, I'm going to shows where the audience is over. They already like me. I can do anything on that stage for the most part.

1:41:01When we went on Five Guys tour, it was like just, they were eaten out of our hands. And it was the most fun we've ever had. But you guys went hard. I just want to know. We did go hard. Because that's what it is. mattered to us. And there's this double-edged, I don't mean to, I want to hear all your compliments. They mean a lot. We love them. You know what? Because you cut me off, I'm not going to give any of them. I'm not going to give any of them. But it's like, I, I, look, I love when people love me. It feels really good. But, not to take ourselves too seriously here, we aspire not to be content creators, we aspire to be artists.

1:41:36Yeah. And to have someone only like what you do because they like you, or an idea of you, Now that doesn't feel so good. I want you to love the art I make. I want people who don't know me to see this thing and go, holy shit. Now I probably should go and look at the Try Guys as a whole and say, I have made this entity that deeply impacts people, that's helped them interpret their place in the world. And I do feel that sense of pride. It's helped people get through things. It's helped people understand who they are. It's helped people embrace parts of their identity. but over time now that morphs into people just they want to support you and they love it because they love you i want to now create art that is that is great not because you like me but because the thing that my brain made is yeah it connects me fucking awesome it's essentially maybe what you felt at the very beginning of the truck guys this came out of our collective brains and right Yeah, when we, I think, you know.

1:42:35It's a good problem to have. Our first mega hit was the pregnancy series, the labor pain simulator, the pregnancy bellies. And to us, that was way more gratifying than the other stuff because now we had interviews of people sharing their actual experiences. So it wasn't just us like learning things on camera, but rather people who had learned things sharing their perspective. And then you get to see us goofily like roll around in pregnancy bellies. But you're hearing from real parents. It felt more artfully creative. It felt like art. and it was like kind of a, that's when it really became more of a show and less of videos.

1:43:08Yeah. And we have both now. We have videos that are part of the show and videos that are videos and series that are different and then we have competition cooking shows. So we have a whole, we have a much wider spread of content now. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I think a lot about the difference between content and art. Yeah. And again, I don't mean to sound too pretentious, but I want to make art And I think content is meant to flow through you. You scroll through TikTok, that's content. You read some tweets, that's content. It's meant to satiate you. It's meant to help you through life because life fucking sucks, work sucks.

1:43:46I need to shut off my brain and watch some content. I'm going to fold laundry and watch The Bachelor. That shit is content. We make content. We make content a lot. That's a necessity of our job. But I don't necessarily feel good making content. And so that's the struggle that I feel when I lay down at night. How much do you connect with the craft of being a YouTube creator? Like how in the weeds are you on YouTube? Because I do think that what I've noticed is - I think I'm a self-loathing YouTuber. Yeah. The craft of making a good YouTube video has so many other elements than the craft of making a good video or a good art, right?

1:44:27Like sometimes I'll look at some of our work and I'll be like, that was a good video, but the thumbnail was excellent. So it dominated. And that was an excellent video, but we really couldn't encapsulate it well. And it just tanked. But like the AVD is really high. Like people really liked it who watched it, but we couldn't get enough people in the door. Like it's tough because we, well, we talk as much about like, I want to make art. I don't like making content. at the same time, you have to sometimes be like, if we can't think of the title and thumbnail for this video, we shouldn't make it. There's no one's going to watch it.

1:45:00If you can't sell the video before someone's watched it, it's kind of a waste of your time to make it to begin with. If your intention is a business. If your intention is for people to watch the video, if you can't make a poster and a title for it that works, you're going to be disappointed. Because people won't watch it. There's a lot of YouTubers now who grew up watching YouTube, consuming YouTube, and wanting to make YouTube. And they are students of YouTube. That is not us. Keith comes from a live performance improv background. Eugene and I went to film school. We wanted to only make movies.

1:45:37When I'm thinking about how we shape our videos, I'm not thinking about retention time. I'm thinking about Joseph Campbell. That's how I'm approaching the craft of our videos. and so from the beginning we felt that we were somewhat accidental YouTubers we fell into this because Keith needed we all needed a job right? Mainly because Keith I'm trying to think how you got there I need a job I literally I only had taught myself how to light things how to shoot things how to edit things I had no formal training so I went to BuzzFeed as an intern thinking I will go here for three months they will tell me what I'm doing wrong I will learn how to do something better and I will leave and continue making weird content that's mostly bizarre sketches on the internet, but I'll be better at it.

1:46:24Right. Similar. I was like just totally fucking depressed and was like, I was like, hey, I need a job where I'm actually making something. And when I got there, I found it intoxicating. I think that's what I mean when I say like, I woke up from this fever dream. It was like, this was never the plan. We didn't want to do YouTube. And along the way, we have found that we are very good at it, very good at parts of it. We've become experts at part of it, but there's still that, you know, that drumbeat in the back of our head saying, Hey, this wasn't the goal. Uh, the goal was not to become YouTubers.

1:46:55It was not to create a YouTube company. Um, so yeah, I, I don't know. I don't consider myself the best YouTuber. I don't think I ever will be. Um, and it's probably because I don't want it as badly as a lot of these people. I think what's interesting though is like, you can't share that role of the, the YouTuber in the group equally. Like the, you know what I mean? Like if everyone enjoys the personal projects now, and it was part of the reason for doing this, but now you have an engine, how do you handle who is like try guy number one? You know what I mean? To make sure things come out as creative projects are happening, do you switch?

1:47:34We haven't brought up Eugene much throughout this conversation, but clearly that was something that Eugene, his role was something he talked about in the documentary years ago of how much does he want to be involved. Yep, for sure. And that's because like, YouTube, good YouTube content is limiting in some ways, right? Like you can't, not everything works on YouTube, especially if they keep changing literally what can work well on YouTube. Like it's a changing platform. I'd say Zach of us is the best at, as the content is coming out, making sure it is good enough. Like he's got an incredible brain of like knowing where are going to be the times where people are going to check out of a video and giving the appropriate notes to that video to get it better.

1:48:19I am the best at like being in a lot of videos. Truly. He's our pure performer. You complimented me, so I got you. He's our pure performer and he's also an idea machine and just has a really good savvy for knowing what is going to connect with people on a base level. And I think, you know, look, I love complaining. That's what I'm doing. And I'm telling you all the things that we do bad and why we suck at this. But it is, we've found the parts of the job that we love. And so for Eugene, I think in the behind the scenes, there was less that he loved. And so he was like, okay, how do, we've all just found the parts of the business that we enjoy doing.

1:49:04He really loves branding and thinking about our outward strategy. And he really loves like sinking his teeth into our bigger projects and he loves performing. Beyond that, the projects that he wants to work on are right now outside of us. And we are, from our inception, creating space for that to happen. I love working with edits. That is where I have fun. And so that's what I do. I work with our editors. I give notes. I think about pre-production with our producer. I think about how to structure the storytelling and new ways to structure our storytelling. I think about how we're shooting things keith loves performing and so that is what you're going to see him doing a lot spending a lot of his time doing he loves coming up with new ideas um but you know like you were talking about like what is the try guys like what are we like how i think that it's always been the secret to why the try guys is so good is that the that we were all different yeah that our backgrounds are different our wants were different our things that we thought would do better were different our interests are different and it did create a way for us to both divide and conquer and unify and conquer over things and like we just know what our strengths are and we also disagree and then we have to work through something that uh appeals to both people uh like you know we just all come at it at such a different way and from a different background so the content has multiple perspectives even the whole idea of like what what difference it's like try guys from like jackasses that we don't always want to do what we're doing.

1:50:42Not all of us, at least. And we're a jackass. They're all like, all right, we're all going to go in there and chop our dicks off. And they're all like, we're going to do it. But like, even yesterday, they seemed gung ho as hell. You made that comparison earlier. I'm like, no, those guys are fucking crazy. But they're also, the group looks different now. Yeah, sure. Like it's heavily led by Thomas. Yeah. And the content looks different. It's a lot more travel centric. It's a lot more exploratory. Like that has also changed. And I think when Colin was saying that, I was thinking about Thomas. Thomas is very much like Mr.

1:51:13Yes Theory YouTube. He understands YouTube really well. He'll make 11 different thumbnails, right? And he'll like look at them and study them and he'll show them to us. And he'll be like, which one stuck out to you? Like he is all about, you know, how to make this dream show he's always wanted. How does that intersect with YouTube? He is very good at that. And I guess the answer is it's us. It's all of us. Yeah, none of us is Mr. YouTube, but we all have some of the building blocks of Mr. YouTube at our company. We wouldn't still be doing this if we didn't love it. If we didn't find parts of this job that we just fucking love.

1:51:52And it's the experiences that we get to have. It's the ability to tell these great stories and the actual nitty gritty of the work. I mean, when we were filming our Food Network show, I was like, God, this takes so fucking long. And I was like, you know what would be cool is if we could do something like, couldn't we do without a recipe but flip the script on the experts? Like I want to see a really incredible chef have to present something that sucks. And I rode from one location to another with our producer, Rachel, and I was just like pitching this really fuzzy idea. And I got out of the car and I said, guys, I got a new show.

1:52:31And we spit it back and forth. We came up with some gamification ideas to it. And soon enough, we had Phoning It In, which is now our second or third biggest show. And it's that speed, that ability to just have an idea and have the team around you to nurture that idea and then to execute it at a really high level. That is something that is so uniquely awesome to YouTube. We get to – we don't have a gatekeeper. where we get to green light our own ideas. And so that is a huge blessing and something that I wouldn't trade for anything. Yeah, that is the best part of YouTube and of internet creation is that basically you decide what you put out there.

1:53:14If we tried to make that show in a traditional way, we would have pitched it to all the fucking networks. It would have been a four month process of pitching. Maybe one of them says yes. Then we get into business affairs. It takes six months and then they go, the writer's strike's happening. We're not actually green lighting anything. then maybe it takes like a year you get the contract down and you go okay they're only green lighting a pilot and actually you guys are only getting paid$500 a day like it just it would have taken years of our fucking life it would have gotten watered down by that time the idea is not good anymore the idea is not good anymore there would have been 8 ,000 hands touching it and they would have changed it instead had an idea we tested it we said this is cool we shot it it was the brain trust of me Keith our producer Rachel and our editor Devlin we figured it out together and it's fucking awesome.

1:54:01That's it. Like momentum is, uh, so incredibly important to creativity. Like the distance between, uh, an idea and creation has gone like this, right? It's like way shorter of a gap between idea and creation. And that, you know, allows for that momentum to just like continue and go like, there's nothing that kills a creative project like that, right? Like it's all of a sudden being like, okay, let's think about this. And then it's like three months later and you're like, it's not there anymore. I also like the longer we have relationships with different members of our team, the more I understand why like directors famously have editors they work with.

1:54:40Yeah. That they only work with them. They just like, cause they get it. Yeah. There's a nonverbal language. Because having worked with editors that didn't normally make our shows, we have to go over there and sit with them and explain to them and help them get it. and they never really get it. Especially comedy. They may not have the vocabulary. Comedy is really hard. Especially how our comedy works too. Like we have a, there's an expectation of our characters, but also even how we deliver jokes and what the pace of our content is. Every time we get a new shooter, someone behind camera, it's like, they don't know how to do the little bumping on the joke.

1:55:13It's just, there's a lot of these intangibles into the creation that makes it something we like versus something we don't like. When you look out, do you think there's another traditional media project that the Try Guys do? Like to a big degree, obviously the Food Network show. Like you still have aspirations. Oh, to do something. Like when you look at the next five years, I'm sure individually you have aspirations to do things that intersect with traditional media. But as a group, do you feel like, oh, like our biggest project has not been done yet outside of like releasing it on our own? I think like us coming together as a group is going to be more seasonal, right?

1:55:51We're going to be doing these big live stream events. We're going to be doing our tentpole seasons, like without a recipe. Years ago, we did this series called The Dirty Tour, where we raced things that shouldn't be raced, like swamp boats, etc. We've talked about doing another season of that. I think, though, that the majority of our content, we're having fun broadening it, bringing in new people who can try experiences and have fresh takes on them. I mean, it's necessity. It's also artistically interesting to broaden the Try Guys and then let, when the three of us come together, feel like that event.

1:56:27Big deal, yeah. And I do think a lot of the big projects that we want to do for the next couple years at least are going to be things where, by necessity, we spearhead them solo, but find ways to bring it back to the company. I would love to make a movie. I don't think that movie is going to star me, Keith, and Eugene. Right. I just don't think that that is the kind of role that Keith and Eugene want. I think that what I want to make isn't going to align with what they want to do. But I think that there's a huge opportunity to still have it feel part of the narrative of what the Try Guys are creating.

1:57:04And it's either directly having the production company do it because our production capabilities, the team that we work with is just out of this fucking world, or it's because I'm bringing people along on the journey. we root for each other in our individual pursuits because it still makes the brand look great if Eugene can sell an amazing show that's awesome that's great that's really good if Zach can make a film and it doesn't involve us at all and it's a success that's even better part of the model for the short film is like cool can we show this higher tier production capability who knows what type of work that may lead to in the future.

1:57:48Can we take on, can we do something like what Portal A does and produce probably not YouTube Rewind, but high tier commercials for other brands that live on YouTube. Is that something that happens right now? Like does the production company produce kind of just like branded content, ads? Not currently. Not currently. Just for our channel. It's just internal. But is this structure like production company and then other company that holds the IP of Try Guys? Or is that all one company? Right now, it's all one thing. It's all one thing. Yeah, right now it's all one thing. Got it. And when you look at like, you're saying like the Try Guys YouTube channel is the primary source of revenue.

1:58:26But you've expanded into other content as well, like podcast network. Doing our live streams. Live streams. Obviously, we have merch. It's not a huge portion of it. Sure. We've talked about doing another YouTube channel. It's just kind of a bandwidth thing. and how much do you have to put so much into its launch. Oh my God, yeah. And it's like, it's a risk. Is it, and it's always like, is it a bad idea? As the years go on, I feel like that creeps in more and more where the risk management becomes such a big part of a creative company. Right. Where you're like, if that was, you know, year one, you might be like, yeah, of course, let's start a new YouTube channel.

1:59:04And then as the years go on, you're like, okay, That level of risk might not be the thing we want to endure right now. Right. When I said it at the beginning, and I mean it, you're seeing us at a nexus point. We're in between. Believe it or not, we're still recovering and getting our footing from what happened. Our content, the reverberations of the change and the way that we were thrown off course are still felt in our content. And we're now getting our footing back and kind of getting back to what we want to do. Yeah. So I'm excited to see what happens. Thank you guys for coming out here. I know in LA, this is like a, you know.

1:59:41That was a big fucking ask. Yeah, it's a big ask. It was a little bit of a track, but honestly, it's exciting to be on the show. You guys do a great job of furthering how people can understand what it is that we do. I told you guys the first time I met you that I watch you all the time, and weirdly, for whatever reason, I watch you while working out. So I'm the only person in the world that I'm doing push-ups and binging comments. You're not the only person. We get that feedback a lot, and I think it's so interesting to do this show and think about people lifting weights. Shout out to everyone who just finished on the treadmill.

2:00:13You did it. You did it. Watch out for those picture frames behind you. Yeah. Please be aware of your space. One random Try Guys my family fact is that in some... We've reached that point. We've reached that point. We're at the end of the pod so I figured I could just... Can't wait. I just figured I could... It's a random family fact. Yeah. Well, I've worn your brother's shirts. Yes. And Eugene also wore my family's clothing line in one of your guys' PR shoots, and it was like a big deal in our family. Big deal. I think that photo is printed out in my dad's office. Yeah. You guys are all in red, and Eugene is wearing like this red Hawaiian kind of printed shirt.

2:00:51Okay. Yeah. So I'll deepen the family lore. Okay, let's do it. Is that actually caused a fight as well. That shirt? Really? Yeah. Because. Okay. Okay, so we were on the shoot, and it was a YouTube shoot. They gave us the clothes and I was like, oh, these are dope. And we were like, first of all, Keith just left, assuming that he could keep it. Yeah, I left. He wasn't wearing it. But I was wearing like Ted Baker. And well, hold on. I drove all the way to Marina Del Rey to do this photo shoot for free for them to show to brands, for them to make money and hopefully make me some money as well, but mainly for them to make money.

2:01:30And then I was like, okay well I'm wearing it so I'm gonna leave and I was like I wasn't supposed to take that sweater I was like they can afford it you guys drove cross down to come here we'll be stealing stuff you have every right to take whatever you want I'm taking more of the mud please so Eugene and I made the mistake or rather I we stayed behind and we're like oh can we keep this and they're like let me go as they do this whole thing and they say you both can keep it and I'm like wow And Eugene's like, you seem like you really want the shirt. And I'm like, because I was complimenting him all day.

2:02:06We were both wearing ragamon. And I was like, I mean, yes, it's an amazing shirt. You should, what? And he's like, no, you seem like you really want it. You take it. I'm like, okay. So I kept the shirt. And that shirt that he wore, I started wearing, it's a fucking great shirt. I wore it for years. Years later, he called me out on it. And he was like, you stole that shirt from me. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. You said that you didn't want it. And therefore I could take it. He's like, no, you were making it really clear that you wanted the shirt. I'm like, no, I was complimenting you because you didn't like that you were in shorts and you were unsure of your look and you look great.

2:02:39So it was this, he was like holding it for years and finally it came out. But I will say that this shirt is the gift that keeps on giving. I was at a Florida Keys wedding and I was like, well, we got to wear our dope flowy shirts. So I gave that shirt to one of my best friends in the world, my friend Eric. I let him wear it and he loved it so much that I was like, you know what? Wow. You go for it. Look at that. This traveling shirt. So I gave him a picture because I've worn the fuck out of that shirt and also I don't wear it around Eugene because I know how he feels. What an unbelievable narrative that this shirt has created.

2:03:16And he wears it all the time now. So he loves that shirt. So we're moving this shirt story cold open or right after. No, this shirt story is the cold open of this ball. It needs to be early on. Right, right. You always got to push the brand. The last thing I wanted to leave.

2:03:35We should give you guys some space in the description. We'll put the hot sauce. That's what eat the menus for. Yeah, that's why you're here is to promote the sauce. I actually forgot to bring you guys sauce. I'll have to mail you some. That'd be great. Yeah. All right, guys. Well, thanks. Thank you. Thanks. Later. See ya. Bye. Quick end. So we keep retention. Yep. That's how you do it. Yeah, it's over. Yeah, you wouldn't even want to include this even if it was funny. Right. like if you say something really good right now we won't include it yeah I can use it

2:04:06Thank you.