Dan Rhodes: How to Become YouTube’s Biggest Magician

0:00Someone offered me like a Netflix show, I probably wouldn't take it. Ultimately, when you have something that does do well, how can you do it again, but just a little different?

0:10Ben Hanlin: Welcome back to What's The Trick? I'm your host, Ben Hanlin. And in this podcast, I sit down with the world's most creative people, try and understand their creative process. And this week's guest is magician Dan Rhodes. Now, I've known Dan for a couple of years, and I really want to get him on the show because he is the world's most followed magician. on YouTube. Across all socials he's got over 37 million followers and he's only in his early 20s. So a bit of backstory about Dan to bring you up to speed. He's from Oldham which if you listen from the UK it's a Oldham is a small town outside of Manchester and during the pandemic he posted more and more and he exploded online which we're going to hear about.

0:52Ben Hanlin: But I wanted to talk to Dan because I wanted to know what the trick was to becoming one of the most followed magicians on YouTube and in this episode he tells us we have a really interesting chat he's very honest and for any of the older listeners and I'd consider myself an older listener that maybe didn't grow up with YouTube even if you think this is maybe not somebody you've heard of or it's not normally your thing this is an episode you want to listen to because it shows you how people today young people are creating things in their bedroom and building a career and this is in this he tells us the blueprint of how he does it so it's kind of interesting anyway to understand what is going on across TikTok social media YouTube and what do we talk about we talk about his attitude and mindset to being a YouTuber the assumptions that most people get wrong when they're trying to make online videos and why he would if he was asked he would turn down a Netflix show so we cover a lot of other things as well we filmed this remotely a few months ago before Christmas so without further Enjoy this episode of What's the Trick with Magician Dan Rose.

2:03Ben Hanlin: Welcome to What's the Trick. And I want to know today, what is the trick to being the most followed, subscribed to magician on YouTube? That's the big question going straight in there. By the way, What's the Trick is a brilliant podcast name. If I was not that far, a podcast name, I probably would have picked something along the similar lines. So now you've stolen the form before I even had it. So I guess that's your job of a magician. What's the trick? It's a big question. So let's go back a bit then. Thanks, Dan. Let's go back to give us very quickly your origin story for people that, you know, I've summed it up.

2:44Ben Hanlin: But actually, it'd be good to hear it from you. In particular, I want to start with the moments you started getting viral because that feels like it was a real gear change for you. So tell us, when was that? And do you remember the first kind of videos where they started to go nuts? Yeah. So kind of long story short, I'm a magician. I did like magic first and foremost. Then I made videos, but it's always kind of been something I did for fun. But I think a lot of people who kind of grew up in my generation did because there was cameras on iPads and editing softwares widely available. Before lockdown, I was wanting to go down the rabbit hole again of, you know, doing live magic as much as I could.

3:26And I had a few residences that I would just like starting out. So that kind of ruined my plans, but in a good way, because then I just went full send with making content. It took about a year. I was on like 100K at the start of lockdown on TikTok. It's still pretty good, but it took about a year and a half to get to a million. and then after a million like the following year it just grew exponentially but I think even if there's anyone watching who wants to grow on social it's always the first number that's kind of the hardest and then it it triples out a little more if you keep consistent with it.

4:03Ben Hanlin: So do you remember the first video or type of video that went viral? Yeah I think the first that ever hit a million views was um on tiktok which was like a vanishing bottle so maybe for someone who hasn't seen one of those videos for a while or can't quite remember how would you describe that style of video do you have a name for it yeah um that was like a behind the scenes video but the way i'll describe it and this is for like anyone making content or whatever uh it's a good idea to find um what you'd call as a bucket so essentially what a bucket would be would be a concept that you've seen that's worked so how many times can you recycle this bucket so I posted like a plethora of different videos like all the time some that didn't work I'd try like can I do a magic trick in this many seconds or they start and bearing in mind they were all just videos in my room because obviously we couldn't perform in in the real world so it had to be like an adaptive style but something that were going viral on TikTok was this behind the scenes concept where everyone knows the sound of this timer the 10 second timer it's like bleep bleep bleep then the video starts so I was seeing people doing behind the scenes of with like dances and stuff like that I got right we're all getting set up bleep bleep but I was like oh that's cool how could I do that as a magic trick so I just tried it because I was trying loads of stuff and the first one I did went pretty viral so I just did it again and then again and again and then that's when another concept that were going viral was someone would take a ping pong ball and say a statement like I'm stupid but then the ping pong ball goes in or I'm a good looking it doesn't go in and then blahdy blahdy blah so I started doing that with cards in a glass so I'd like say something the card would fly and that worked so I did a multitude of them but point being is that I tried many different things but in the end my the majority of my TikToks and YouTube shorts were kind of predicated on like these six buckets of content which was like behind the scenes this rate the magic trick magic battle and two or three other things so that's a good doctrine to follow that when you start you're going to throw loads of stuff that doesn't work and then ultimately when you have something that does do well how can you do it again but just a little different and i'm pretty confident saying you are the number one most followed youtube magician in the world yeah so that was so bananas talk me through that then how you started doing that on youtube and how quickly that just exploded for you uh yeah so uh obviously tiktok was like this massive um kind of anomaly um where i think the other platforms almost panicked and thinking during the lockdown period everyone was just on tiktok so instagram uh released instagram reels to compete with TikTok YouTube released uh shorts and Snapchat made Spotlight etc but um the lucky thing is that but when YouTube shorts came out I already had a library of short form stuff that worked on TikTok so I posted like 10 uh shorts when I heard about this thing none of them really did well so I just kind of left it yeah I just woke up one day and and I was on like 22k subs I was like that's a bit of a leap and then I went on the shorts and one of them was on like 300k and the other ones were like 40k 30k whatever so I was like wow this must be working so posted a few more shorts and then it just went bang one of them just went insane and then just never stopped really so I'd be I'd be still making like two to three like new vids every day but I'd be posting at least five because I'd post three new vids and I'd just post two of like the catalogue I already had um so I think that you're posting five YouTube shorts a day at one yeah and I think that was for the first like eight months um because I've got over like a thousand vids on there let's talk about YouTube for a second uh obviously you said you've grown up with YouTube and being a YouTuber and that thing of everyone always thinks of long form content so that kind of Mr B style or longer or whatever you want to do with it, but you then have become famous for your shorts.

8:17Ben Hanlin: I'm going to ask a question here, and feel free, I don't need to know details, right? Yeah. But if you'd have said back in the day, somebody's got 26 million followers on YouTube, they would have been a gazillionaire because of the old, you know, the long form. When this happened, has that completely changed your life from that point of view, having that many subscribers on YouTube? It's pretty life-changing? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I think the TikTok was still like life changing to some degree, but I think the YouTube like blow up was the thing that like really took it to like another level, really.

8:52So, yeah, I'd say like that's kind of my bread and butter. What helped me like kind of get to the next step, if that makes sense.

9:02Ben Hanlin: Yeah. So one thing we haven't spoken about is before your videos were going viral, did you have a job? Rob, I know you were young when you were doing this. Yeah. But at what point did it tick over and you were like, no, I'm making a good living now being a content creator? During the start of lockdown, I had a savings account with 10 grand in it. So obviously lockdown happened and I just had nothing to do. So every month I was like, I spent money on buying new tricks and I didn't earn any money from TikTok for the first year. And I was just so confident in the fact that if I grow a following then the money will come from that I don't need to make a an instant ROI I think that's where maybe even a lot of um people who want to do YouTube or even sometimes magicians go wrong is that they want to get the instant kind of return like obviously if you do a gig you guarantee money whereas YouTube or content's a bit more of a more longer game and I was almost on a million followers and I hadn't even done a brand deal yet or anything him and um my mum was like she was like wow you got a million followers well done but I think you have to get like a normal job soon like this isn't really whatever and then I got my first like gig for because someone saw me on TikTok for like a couple k so I was like okay it's working now and then a few months after that the YouTube thing happened and it all kind of just came from that but I think it's interesting it's a a good analogy that if you kind of just focus on the mission And then like the money comes like subsidiary to the, to the content or whatever else.

10:40But yeah, there were definitely a point where it was like, it almost like tipped under, you know?

10:46Ben Hanlin: Yeah. And it's that thing is now, I suppose from your point of view, it's you're just getting up every single day for, for a year or year and a half, whatever it is and going, no, there's something at the end of this. And I think you're right. A lot of that, so much of that is patience. So most people will start a channel at some point, even they might even start a podcast, do whatever. And they get to a few weeks or months in and go, ah, do you know what? Forget it. It's just not what it's just having that patience to stick with it. Yeah, exactly. And also like it's the things you learn from from doing it, because being able to do something daily in and of itself is with so many distract.

11:23Like I'm very lucky in the sense that I managed to do it quite young when I was still living at home and whatnot, because obviously, you know, if you've got a job, kids, whatever, it's a bit harder to just wake up and do that. But I think that's also a consequence of lockdown, the fact that literally nothing else to do. So, you know, because a lot of magicians, I think, during lockdown, they were all doing, like, Zoom shows and stuff, like a lot of them do, and then other things like that. I was thinking about doing a few things like that, but I was just like, just the one thing I was obsessed with was just, like, the videos.

11:57So I just hammered that really. But I think, yeah, I think it's just, it's definitely a generational thing for sure, YouTube, because I think as well, people from an older generation, it's just, they don't really, they didn't, or at the time, didn't really see the value in content and because it's so new. But also I think it also comes to the fact that I could take a risk because of how old I was at the time.

12:23Ben Hanlin: yeah no and like you say you just got up every day but so let's let's get into the process then how does an idea start and if you want to be specific you can talk about a specific video or whatever how it starts and then what you do next then how you film it because that volume is ridiculous the amount of content you're making right yeah uh i think first and foremost it's i think as you know you it's kind of a good thing to know that you don't always have to necessarily reinvent the wheel but you have to kind of add your own spin to certain things like idea wise like i said with the behind the scenes thing it wasn't my idea to do a behind i'm gonna take this off spit hot uh but uh yeah it wasn't like um my idea to do a behind the scenes video but it was uh my idea to do it as like a magic trick so yeah i think that if that makes sense so but if we take so let's say you're filming three videos a day so every 10 days you've filmed 30 video you're filming you're filming 90 videos a month which is insane right so do you have a system do you go do you like sit down and write loads of magic tricks you like or do you just watch a load of videos and go oh there's something in that and make a list do you film in batch do you do it one every day a little bit every day yeah so what i'd do is i'd uh i'd wake up i'd do the i'd either i think when i started i was doing my because i didn't um i didn't uh get all the buckets straight away so um And it was like, and also there was also other magicians that we was all kind of doing similar videos at the time.

13:56So we were like sharing ideas and having a few calls and whatnot. But I think also like my channel blowing up was also a consequence of every other magician kind of putting in ideas on the kind of social front. Because we all developed a new style indoors kind of concepts that we all kind of took buckets from each other. so it's not all just like me just coming up with all these genius ideas I wish I could take all the credit but no it's just it's more of I would do like two videos that I kind of knew would work and then one a bit more experimental but when I really established a bookist I just did them but yeah to answer your question because going on a bit of a tangent I'd wake up do three vids, edit them that night and then upload them that day and then just recycle it the next day.

14:49I don't even know how I came up with some of the ideas. I got like, well, a great example and this is how I actually do now, I just thought about it. For example, I did a behind the scenes where I put a strawberry in the back of an egg, like a hollow egg and then I made it disappear and then I crunched it open and the strawberry appears inside the egg. That was literally, I was waking up thinking, what am I going to film today? I was scrolling and a TikTok video came up of a prank where someone like made an egg hollow so they tap the top bottom blow it out and then they hit someone on the head with like a shallow egg there's no egg in it like it's a prank yeah I thought there's surely a magic trick there and I was like oh yeah so I did that open the back of the egg put the strawberry and did it as a behind the scene so an idea can be as simple as that i think it was more just the the execution of just trying some and being fine with it not working just next next next um because there were loads of stuff that just didn't really work or they were just wasn't really good ideas in hindsight but you've just got to do as many as you can i don't know if you've ever uh heard of like it was a recent thing i saw but like the clay pot analogy go on so basically they assigned like a group of people a task in two rooms and they give them like an hour they said in room one i want you to all make a perfect clay pot and in room two in the same amount of time so an hour each um they had to make seven seven pots each in this other room so what ended up happening was when it was all done the the people that was given the task of making a perfect pot the pots were nowhere near as good as some of the individual pots that the other group made seven of so it's kind of the analogy or concepts that just doing things as much as possible and just getting

16:45Ben Hanlin: stuff out you're made better stuff yeah and there's a i haven't heard that i've heard something similar called the photography experiment very similar but that idea and you're right of so it It seems like your process was don't overanalyze it. Don't don't look for perfection, because so many people, especially with content, spend hours and hours going, oh, that's not right. I'll work on it tomorrow. I'll work on it tomorrow. But by the time they've done that, you've posted six videos in the time that they've spent two days posting one. And it's given you six bits of data. Question. So you don't have to answer.

17:21Ben Hanlin: We can move on. um so in some of your videos you kind of reveal how certain tricks are done right did you ever get any negativity in comments in general because because some some videos like this people can just be nasty and and a lot of negativity and let's talk about magicians and the magic circle now the magic circle hey they get a bit shirty when people start revealing magic did you ever have any beef with them dad not not like yeah not direct i love we're going here because i actually want to voice my opinion about this um because first and foremost i don't uh necessarily consider myself a member of the magic community even though i'm a magician uh i'm not like really i think they like to act like it's a brotherhood but personally from a lot of what i've seen i think magicians are probably almost to like some of the most competitive people but obviously a negative way like i feel like it's not really that they want to always share most times it's more they want to critique and kind of you know uh i think that's more of maybe an ego thing because magic is the job of you being the product so i think it's more of a consequence of that versus anything else but yeah there was a lot of magicians that um got annoyed that like i taught the secrets to a few tricks but my kind of argument to that is you know first and foremost i think a lot of magicians don't want a trick to be revealed because they think it kind of makes the art of magic look bad or it kind of you know um takes it a step back but what i found is sometimes when they actually see there's a secret behind it they respect it a lot more because they know that it's not like just a packet that's been bought or they know it's not a camera trick for example or they know it's not when they know there is actually methods behind the tricks then you know they like it more also i think to a fault magicians get so caught up on the actual secret in and of itself that they forget all like the packaging around it which is so much more important than the actual trick itself so so in your comments there must be sometimes again when you're as big as you are and you're doing lots of social videos you must get lots of comments there must be inevitably negative comments and a lot of people might wonder how do you deal with that as a person getting people because everybody can say whatever they want about anything these days yeah um so do you look in the comments do you go through it or do you are you quite thick-skinned with that stuff what's quite of funny is um when i actually first like blew up on youtube i was just so happy that it worked and obviously there were like thousands of comments like the same negative thing i just could not care less and i know i always say to people like i don't understand how these like love islanders or tv stars get so upset about the negative comments however i've changed my view on it because i think the difference is or the bit of a distinction is if you go on a tv show or if you you go on tv you might be you've never done tv or anything like before and you're going in with that mindset of going getting the followers gonna gain you might have not necessarily thought about all the other things that come with it whereas because i was like dead set on making this work for like two years with zero like success i kind of i was like i'll take it by any means like even if the first bit that goes viral is like some someone clowning on me and it's all negative i don't care i just wanted the the kind of maybe that's a good thing a bad thing or whatever but i just kind of wanted that um so yeah honestly like no comments of or dms or ever bothered me because you can't i feel like you can't say there's there's pros and cons to everything like if you earn loads of money and you've got loads of freedom all of a sudden then the counter to that is that you could feel more lonely or then if uh there's so many like it's so multifaceted But I think ultimately for me, it's like I can't say, oh, I want to gain loads of followers and blah, blah, blah, blah.

21:29But I also don't want people to comment negativity or have a bad opinion because that's just part of parcel with it.

21:36Ben Hanlin: What are your like go if somebody says I want to be good on TikTok, I make videos, they're not popping off. What is your quick go to without even looking at their content? Do you tell them to do? I think one of the biggest ones to remember is no one like cares about you. So if any part of your video couldn't be understood, if somebody doesn't have like a preconceived notion or understanding of you, then it's probably not going to do well. So I think you've got to think of it like genuinely really go, would I watch this video if it wasn't me? If I didn't know this person. Yeah, like how is it interesting?

22:14How have they learned? What I used to do is I just find a video that went viral and look at mine and go, is it as good or is it... If someone was to watch these, would they say this one is objectively miles better or would they say it's a bit better but this one's okay? Just that sort of thing.

22:34Ben Hanlin: Hello, it's me and this is a short commercial break and if you're a regular listener, you know when I say commercial break, I'm not really saying anything because I haven't got any sponsors but I thought it'd be nice just to stop for a couple of minutes and have a little chat. So this is Dan Rhodes. If you're liking Dan and you want to see some of his content, You can go find him on all socials, Dan Rhodes, which is Rhodes, R-H-O-D-E-S. So give him a follow. And the word I'm getting so far in this episode is consistency. He gets up every day and he just does it, which I think is pretty interesting.

23:05Ben Hanlin: And also it's very similar to what Callie Hart said, an author a few weeks back about becoming a great author. She said you just have to do the work and great authors have to make lots of books to become great. And also getting up every day. She talked about if you write a page a day as an author, by the end of the year, you've got a whole book. So if you want to listen to that episode, you can go back and check it out. But I just thought it was quite interesting that a social media content creator and an author have very similar mindsets there. Also, a massive thank you to you lovely people that watched last week's episode, Tom Basden, and shared it.

23:42Ben Hanlin: We did our first ever 100 ,000 views on Instagram for a video, which is really lovely because this is still new as a podcast. And the fact that you guys are engaging with it and sharing it is fantastic. Thank you. And thanks for the DMs as well. People, I say this every episode, if you're listening, drop me a DM just to say that you're out there and listening. I'm a very sad person. It really does pick me up. And I will also respond to you. We can have a little chat on Instagram DMs as well. um my goal it's the new year my goal for 2026 is to film 50 of these i'm really committed to this podcast and i really want to grow it and i want you to help being part of this community uh where we're going to bring lots of other people who are interested in creativity inspiration all together so that's my goal for this year is to really keep going with this podcast so i need your help a little bit with that if i can so you hear this all the time but please do hit that subscribe button and follow wherever you are listening on your podcasts.

24:40Ben Hanlin: And also reviewing it really helps for all the podcast algorithms. If you can drop a review right now, that'd be amazing. But my biggest request, if you just do one thing for me, it'd be amazing, is just think about anyone you know that might love this podcast. They might be into this type of conversations. All I want you to do is WhatsApp them and just send them a link and say, give this a listen, I think you'll like it. And if every one person shares it to one person, eventually this whole thing will grow and it will be lovely so that's enough from me this week thanks again and obviously we come with our episodes are released every friday so there'll be a new one next week we're gonna jump back in here to dan we talk about now how he's recently focused more away from the short form videos and long form youtube videos which if anybody is interested long form youtube videos is always the holy grail that's what you want to achieve as a content creator because you get people watching your stuff for a lot longer you make more ad revenue it becomes it goes up a whole nother gear so um what we where we jump back in is he we're talking about how a lot of his audience aren't used to him doing that kind of content and how he feels like he's starting from scratch again by doing long form youtube enjoy i'm in a lucky position now where i've got a decent amount saved and whatnot where i could just kind of artistically make the videos i want because when I was younger my biggest goal was to like I always thought like do a dynamo style tv show or do you know whatever but I feel like the next way of doing that is from YouTube because that's the the style that will work so let's go into that a little bit so you've got like you said in a good not in a weird way but you've got a little bit of money that you can take punts spend longer probably a bit more production per video yeah so have you got a goal at the moment of like the kind of stuff you're thinking about of what could be future episodes or yeah yeah I constantly I'm writing down ideas but um by the time I finish one um sometimes the ideas change pretty drastically so I haven't got kind of a set the bait um um list it's more of this year I've just been when my YouTube shorts were blowing up and I were doing gigs and brand deals and loads of stuff I didn't really have time to do much focused stuff so now luckily now I'm not as busy obviously I'm still doing a few gigs here and there but I'm just being more like subjective to what I pick so I can just like focus and I think as long as I can have the time to just do it consistently and whatever it should all work Are you going to do that on your own?

27:18Ben Hanlin: Have you got a team of people? I've got an editor so I've got an editor that I work with he just comes to my house every day and we work on them together every day yeah yeah so what you've gone out and filmed a load of stuff already and now you're editing every day yeah well um so we just we work on one then on to the next one so like I posted like a live story vid uh recently but that video is like uh probably like a hundred hours in like a one vid it was pretty uh it was pretty like crazy um but yeah but i'm just like really enjoying it because i genuinely just love videos from uh and it's just so good that i can do that intrinsically and have the full creative control yeah so so again you'd have to but is this person essentially a full-time video editor that you wow that takes a bit of that takes a bit of balls doesn't it to go right i'm gonna hire this person yeah and see what happens at the end of the year you know but again it's just it seems like you're kind of replicating your that pattern again which was like right i've made a decision i'm going all in five days a week and you just you're doing it again now aren't you that's yeah so can you tell us a title that he's working on at the moment what's the title um the next video is um what uh recreating movie magic so um i've already filmed like three but like doing tricks from movies and then um and then that's the next one but after that I'm not sure it'll just depend when it's done um but sometimes we're filming kind of two at once if we have to like film something because we've booked in the date of something and whatnot so yeah but the way it works we just kind of sit together and I kind of come up with the story and like the way it's going to go and the feel and everything and then jake learns like um after effects uh and then the story as well but like the tedious kind of software-y like stuff that's quite difficult to do so it's a it's a perfect combination because we always say like if if i was trying to do the after effects and the and the story and everything i wouldn't be able to do it well and if he was trying to just come up with the story it wouldn't work as well either so I think um it's a like a perfect in the middle then so yeah now it's just kind of a full steam ahead and just not getting distracted by you know side things like honestly now if someone offered me I'm not even kidding if someone offered me like a Netflix show I probably wouldn't take it wow because because you just think you want to build your channel and own your channel yeah and i just think that uh it has like more longevity in the end if i just can do it the right way well and that and like you said that is the way a different generation thinks i'm i'm a bit i mean i'm a lot older than you i'm almost 40 and our generation definitely thinks like get on the telly get on netflix yeah and you're like no the future is owning your own yeah i think like i wouldn't mind doing that and also i'd still there's still things I'd love to do like you know everyone goes is your big goal to do is showing Vegas or this that and the other and it definitely would be would be cool but I think what I'm doing now is I'm not making videos to be able to do this big other thing I'm kind of uh doing the videos is what's keeping me on the straight and narrow path in a sense and I think yeah everything I'm happy for that I've kind of achieved in my life has been a product of making videos so I'm almost like why when I'm not do that uh still sweet all right I think we have covered a lot of ground uh one question I haven't asked actually and we're not going to end on a negative at all but because of your volume and the amount you've done did you ever feel burnout at all especially with the short form like every day I've got to do another three I mean that is hard yeah I think so like I think I one of the biggest burnouts before it kind of blew up and then I think when it did that kind of gave me a massive momentum push to just wake up and like right it's working now but it's definitely it's hard them times where it's not working as much but that is really the time you've just got to push through and be like it's better than the alternative of just giving up and you know I even know some really talented creators who they were even better than me but they just give up at the time where it could lead to something big so I think the biggest thing is just there's a few magicians I spoke to as well during lockdown they'd ask me for content advice, I'd give it to them and then they'd be like I just haven't got time to make the vids and then they'd be like on a live stream playing a game or something so it's like you do have the time if you, because I know you you've done you've done tv and then because what i respect as well is i think and i'd be interested to see how your thoughts about this but i think a lot of magicians who have gone tv who did a lot on tv like yourself or maybe like um some other bigger magicians that going from like having a camera crew of loads of people and having that big budget to filming on a phone or going out on the street is kind of uh it might have been a bit of an ego hit for them so they didn't want to do it whereas i noticed you jumped on the opportunity and like so even though you have had that as well what was your thought process with that because i think yeah for me it's always been like i've even done magic on a few tv shows where i've gone from big camera crew to then the next day i'm going up to people going i'm filming a vid can you be in it they're like no and you just gotta deal with with that yeah i think i think you're spot on i mean there is definitely like for years and years the the ego the pinnacle was to have your own tv show so it was it was a status thing yeah but me i mean i can't sweat other people for me the thing i always have a thought about is what do like got to put the audience first so the audience massively has moved like they say that tv is now second screen so if i ignore that and pretend that tv is still the number one i'm i am kidding myself and i'm leaving myself in the past yeah so for me it's very much always trying to be where your audience are so at the moment it's short form or it's tiktok but and also long form but it's gonna that's gonna move again soon soon there's gonna be another platform or another change exactly so it's just constantly like what you're doing you know understanding what you're about and not being wedded to the platform so if tv dies i'm somewhere else if tiktok dies we're somewhere else we've got we're onto our home stretch in the chat perfect i think we should wrap things up with my fast five are you ready for ben's fast five yes sir born right born ready right so um i'm gonna start with my highlander question given your age dad i don't want to patronize have you ever seen the film highlander remind me what it's about i may have done it's about immortals going around chopping each other's heads off but there's a new film coming out with hamry cavill anyway the question is in that film whenever they kill another person they actually get all that person's knowledge and skills so if you could you don't have to kill them they can still stay alive but if you can steal anyone on the planet's knowledge or skills who would it be uh mr beast like i'd take all this youtube knowledge and that'd be and this is a big out to be really quick i know it's a fire round but this is a No, that's right.

34:59Conversation I have with a lot of people, they really don't understand that YouTube, TikTok, all these, it really is knowledge-based. It's luck to have that first few vids, but I've seen it firsthand where I've given someone a tip for a TikTok or this, that, and the video has just blown up. So it really does prove that Mr. Beast could give me one tip tomorrow. If Mr. Beast tomorrow told me, if I said I need to film a video in a day, long form, if he told me exactly what to do and i followed it to a t it would bang because he's got the knowledge so like knowledge really is everything when it comes but yeah mr beast question number

35:38Ben Hanlin: two time capsule if you could only put one of your videos in a time capsule to be kept forever and the rest incinerated what video would it be um probably this one i recently posted um it's uh it's like a live story video um it's um what's the title of it uh what have i called it now yeah yeah whatever the name of it is um it's just like it kind of explains my short story and all things like that so yeah great that one good and that's on that's on your youtube yeah yeah right go and give that a watch right culture vulture what is a book tv show film you've seen recently that you've loved i literally just started watching one about this there's like serial killer that inspired the movie Psycho on Netflix.

36:26It's called Monster, the Ed something story. I'm not sure the name.

36:30Ben Hanlin: Ed Gein? Guy Gein? Yeah, something like that. Yeah, it's pretty good. It's the same directors that did a few other of them, like Jeremy Dart. Was it Dharma? Was it Dharma? Yeah, things like that. Yeah, yeah. Right. Okay, that one. Magic Wand. Now, you probably have your own magic wand, but if I was to hypothetically hand you a magic wand and you can make something vanish from the world of social media or magic it's up to you forever yeah what would you vanish oh um the the like drama and commentary channels that all the all the channels like all the contents based on is just other people in a negative light so like the ones who are like just in this person's had beef with this person that it works as a format but I think if your entire channel and brand is based on like small trivial uh things yeah gossip it's just like the lowest form of anything yeah is that people talking about other celebrities or breakups yeah yeah like you know like their entire channels like a and it's more the ones that actually doing it instead of like a big media organization I get that's the weather like sat in the room and they've actually built a channel and career off um just talking about other uh i'll only name names but there's a few of them where every single vid is just uh even like oh ksi's new thing failed why mr beast's allegations are i'm just like that's just so depressing like no matter how much money you make how your entire brand is just the negative or even and then most the time it's not grounded in anything real it's just like an opinion or just a pathetic little thing so yeah that's why i get right well then you've vanished it there we go it's done and the final question the final question is and you can repeat something you've already said in this conversation but if somebody was to come up to you and say dan what is the trick to having a career as a social media content creator what would you say just um first of all if you don't really like it then there's really no point because like you're competing against people who enjoy it but if you have a intrinsic enjoyment for like making content i feel like um there's intrinsic and extrinsic values obviously and most people a lot of people's job they don't particularly enjoy it they do it because their uh extrinsic value is the money you know but i think i read something recently or saw something recently read no one reads books anymore sorry it just sounds better when you say you read it versus i saw like an instagram whatever or a podcast insert but it said the way you know i think it might have been jimmy car or something like that he said the way you know you've got a successful life or career is if the thing you're doing you do regardless on how the money would change it's like if you'd still do it if you made millions or if you'd still do it if you made and luckily i found what i liked young which was magic and content creation and no matter how the pendulum shifts i'm still gonna be doing it so if you think that with content that you'd because i meet a lot of people are like i want to do youtube so i can earn loads of money and make cover and i'm like it's just it sounds so cliche and annoying to hear but if you don't love it so yeah just if you love it and you see the longevity in it then that's all you need but just know it's gonna take a while find the content find the type of videos that you would do even if you'd won the lottery and you don't need the money yeah exactly that's the exact right cheers that may have been a great great chat it's been obviously been amazing to see your work over the last five years and the growth and all that but just to hear it like laid out and i think the thing i'm taking from this is just how focused you are on one simple thing and just how disciplined you are getting up every day and cracking on so no thank you for sharing all that mate it's been a honor to chat with you and i think you're an incredible magician i've got so much respect for you mate ah thank you cheers so there you go that was what's the trick with dan rhodes really interesting guy there i've as i was listening to that back again i wrote a few notes to myself so the things i'm taking away from that conversation i'm going to zip through i've got four things here it's consistency for him you know consistency beats being brilliant just turn up every day and do it and um second thing don't overthink the output he's not in his own head overthinking is it good isn't it good he's just putting it out there and i think that's resonates a lot but resonates with me is that you overthink just put it out there also i thought was really interesting is he said about this long-term strategy he wasn't trying to do this overnight even when he had a million followers and he said that too many people quit too early and i've been thinking about that a lot even with this podcast not many people get past 10 episodes 20 episodes that and they quit too early so i can kind of that's inspired me to think yeah come on let's not quit too early i like that and the fourth thing um he thinks of his content in buckets he had his six buckets but if you could if you're struggling to make content especially for social mead or anything what are the buckets and then just repeat them each time oh my dog is barking you might be able to hear this there's someone at the door this is live this is how we're rolling i'm gonna wrap this up there dm me on instagram if you like this episode and i'll see you next week so what's the trick with ben hamlin