Mythical: Rhett and Link

Best friends Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal started out as “comedians for Christ,” and grew their partnership into one of the most successful YouTube platforms in existence. During college they created silly videos and songs for Christian events, and later built a following on YouTube before most people knew what it was. After struggling to find stardom in Hollywood, they continued to build a presence on YouTube: sampling punishingly hot peppers, writing ear-wormy songs about random things, showing off glasses that turned the world upside down. Nowadays, their entertainment company, Mythical, reports over 75 million subscribers and 25 billion lifetime views. This episode was produced and researched by Katherine Sypher with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  Our presenting sponsor today is Anthropic, the team behind Claude. Every founder on this show started with a hard question. Not the marketing plan, the 2 a.m. kind. Is this idea any good? Am I the one to build it? Should I quit my job? Anthropic got built the same way. A public benefit corporation founded on one hard question. How do we make sure AI goes well for people? So they asked over 100,000 people their hopes and their fears and are publishing what they find, even the uncomfortable parts. Me? I've got my own hard question about AI. Here it is. If everyone has access to something that can help them write the business plan,

• 0:46Guy Raz?

  build the prototype, analyze the market, maybe even come up with the idea, what separates the people who actually build something from everyone else? I don't have a clean answer yet, so I've been sitting with it with Claude. There's hope in hard questions. Ask yours at claude.ai/hibt. We get support from U.S. Bank. A question I love asking founders. What's the one decision you almost didn't make? The one that changed everything? Because it's never the obvious stuff. It's never, I decided to start a company. It's the small, boring, Tuesday afternoon decision you barely remember making until you realize it's the reason everything after it either worked or didn't.

• 1:32Guy Raz?

  Say you're 18 months in. Business is growing. You've got expenses coming from six directions. Gas for the van, office supplies, your phone bill, team lunches that are actually client meetings, and you're putting it all on whatever card you grabbed in year one. You're not thinking about it. Why would you? You've got bigger problems. But here's the thing. Path A, you keep going like that. End of the year, you're sorting through statements, trying to figure out what went where. You've left hundreds, maybe thousands, on the table in rewards you never earned, money that could have gone back into the business. Path B, you pause and get the US Bank Triple Cash Rewards Visa Business Card. Now, you're earning 3% cash back

• 2:16Guy Raz?

  on gas and EV charging, office supply stores, cellphone service, and restaurants. You pick up an extra $750 cash back as a bonus. And you've got a low APR on purchases and balance transfers for 12 months while you're scaling. Same business, same expenses, two completely different outcomes based on one small decision. Visit usbank.com/business to learn more. The creditor and issuer of this card is US Bank National Association, pursuant to a license from Visa USA, Inc. Some restrictions apply. If you travel often, you'll want to hear about this unprecedented offer. For the first time ever,

• 3:00Guy Raz?

  new Delta SkyMiles Reserve American Express Card members can earn two Delta Comfort Round Trip flights for travel within the 48 contiguous US states, Puerto Rico, or the US Virgin Islands. Plus, you can earn 50,000 bonus miles towards your next getaway. And who doesn't appreciate an elevated airport experience? Delta SkyMiles Reserve Card members get access to the Delta Sky Club, your pre-flight oasis to recharge, with 15 visits and four one-time guest passes each medallion year when flying Delta together. That's up to $950 in annual value. Value estimate based on $50 per visit rate to purchase additional visits

• 3:45Guy Raz?

  or bring a guest to the Delta Sky Club. Make every trip feel more rewarding with the car that upgrades your travel. Apply today at delta.com/cardsocial. Offer ends November 4, 2026. Minimum spending requirements and terms apply. Flights are fulfilled as flight certificates valid for Delta Comfort or Delta Maine to select domestic destinations. Book 21-plus days in advance. Up to $80 per person and taxes and fees apply. Other restrictions apply. When I pull up to a gas pump to fill my car, I'm not thinking about chemistry or engineering. I'm thinking about getting in, filling up, and getting on with my day. And it reminds me a little bit of the founders I talk to on this show, because the best

• 4:27Guy Raz?

  ones obsess over things their customers will never see. Tiny details, invisible improvements, relentless iteration. And not because anyone's watching, but because it makes the product better. That's what the mobile brand does. It engineers fuel the same way great founders engineer their products. Mobile Supreme Plus Premium Gas helps keep engines three times cleaner, which can mean better performance and improved gas mileage. It's for people who care about what's under the hood, even if they never see it. Three times cleaner compared to mobile regular gas in port fuel-injected engines. Actual results may vary. Visit mobilefuels.com for details.

• 5:12Guy Raz?

  Hey, it's Guy here. And before we start the show, I want to tell you about a super exciting thing we are launching on How I Built This. So if you own your own business or trying to get one off the ground, we might put you on the show. Yes, on the show! And when you come on, you won't just be joining me, but you'll be speaking with some of our favorite former guests, who also happen to be some of the greatest entrepreneurs on Earth. And together, we'll answer your most pressing questions about launching and growing your business. Imagine getting real-time branding advice from Sun Bum's Tom Rinks, or marketing tips from Von Weaver of Uncle Nearest Whiskey. If you'd like to be considered, send us a one-minute message that

• 5:57Guy Raz?

  Tells us about your business and the issues or questions that you'd like help with. And make sure to tell us how to reach you. Each week, we'll pick a few callers to join us on this show. You can send us a voice memo at [email protected], or you can call 1-800-433-1298 and leave a message there. That's 1-800-433-1298. And that's it. Hope to hear from you soon. And we are so excited to have you come on the show. And now, on to the show.

• 6:42Guy Raz?

  I think your first just massive, massive video that now has more than 30 million views was eating a Carolina Reaper pepper.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, at the time, it was the certified hottest pepper on the planet.

• 6:55Guy Raz?

  Is that like, one of the most painful experiences of your life?

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Yes, I think so, physically, and a little bit emotionally.

• 7:04Guy Raz?

  I don't know why you did this.

• 7:06Speaker 01

  I'll tell you why we did it, so we get 30 million views.

• 7:16Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 7:27Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how two boyhood friends turned a talent for making people laugh into one of the most successful YouTube partnerships ever, Rhett and Link.

• 7:46Guy Raz?

  When I got out of college, all I wanted to do was to become a reporter, to travel around the world to dangerous places and exotic locations and tell stories.

• 7:58Guy Raz?

  Now, to be clear, I did do that, though it wasn't nearly as glamorous as I imagined. But for much of my early career, I worked for big media organizations, NPR and then CNN. And for most of recent history, that was the only way to reach big audiences. You had to figure out how to get inside a media company, usually an internship, work really hard to capture the attention of influential editors, and maybe, just maybe, you'd get a shot. In many ways, it seemed nearly impossible for most people. Because now, there are people on YouTube, several in fact, with tens and even hundreds

• 8:41Guy Raz?

  of millions of subscribers, a bigger reach than even NPR, or CNN, or the New York Times. It would have been inconceivable just 10 years ago that a single person could build a media empire through YouTube. But that is exactly what happened. Ask any American kid under, say, 20 to name an anchor of a nightly news program on TV, I'd be willing to bet fewer than a quarter could name one. But ask them who Mr. Beast is, or Mark Rober, and again, I'm willing to bet that the majority would be able to answer that. Because YouTube, and also TikTok, of course, are where a growing number of people get their information, for better or for worse.

• 9:26Guy Raz?

  But what's remarkable about all of this is that, well, it's created some really significant businesses. Now, we've done a few content creator stories on this show in the past, Casey Neistat, Dude Perfect, Hank and John Green, among others. But we decided that this month, we're going to dig even deeper and take a look at a few really prominent creators to find out more about the mechanics of building a media company on YouTube. And today, the story of Rhett and Link. It's been estimated that their production company, Mythical Entertainment, brings in tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue. Much of that money comes from advertising and brand endorsements,

• 10:09Guy Raz?

  but also from live shows, merchandise sales, and other projects. And not that long ago, both Rhett and Link were struggling to make a living from their videos. Now, if you're not familiar with them, basically, they're best known for a daily YouTube show called Good Mythical Morning. And on it, they talk about interesting stories in the news, or they try weird food, or do different stunts. Across their channels, they've amassed over 75 million subscribers. And judging by their financials, they built a pretty impressive business. Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neale have known each other since first grade. They are best friends. They played in a band together in high school.

• 10:53Guy Raz?

  And by then, they had forged their friendship in a literal blood pact.

• 10:59Speaker 01

  You know, it was such an important moment. And yeah, it's so surreal. It's very cinematic, right? And we were both just on board for, yeah, let's find the sharpest rock and shed some blood and sign a document.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, there actually was no shaking of hands. It was taking the bleeding hands and pressing them on the document.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Right. It seemed more legally binding, which is why I carried it around in my wallet for a year and a half before I lost the entire wallet.

• 11:28Guy Raz?

  I mean, it's just, I think, like, there's this implausibility about this story because, I mean, you meet in first grade, you're friends, and you're really close friends, almost like brothers. And to the point where, by the time you're in high school, you're both saying, like, we've got to keep this going. We have something here. There is some charisma, some dynamic that we both... Like, you aren't articulating it that way, but intuitively, you knew that there was something the two of you together could do more powerfully than you could do on your own.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  And I also think that there was a sense that... And I don't mean this in a derogatory sense. I mean, we felt different than the people around us. Right? We felt like we wanted to have a different kind of life. We wouldn't have necessarily articulated it in that way. But we were like, it feels like the way that we see things and the way that we, the things that we're passionate about. We don't have anyone else that we can point to besides each other. That's sort of validating the, this tendency, right? And so you have, if, I think if we were isolated, there would be this sense that like, there's something wrong with me. But when you have this other person that will kind of mirror it for you, you're like, okay, well, something's wrong with everybody else.

• 12:46Guy Raz?

  Were you guys, I mean, I know you grew up, both of you in, it was a small town and probably a lot of, most kids went to church on Sundays. Were you guys involved and active in church, in the same church as kids?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was a huge part of our lives and our friendship at church. We went to Bowie's Creek First Baptist Church. And, you know, we, there were three times a week that we were there. And the youth group that we were involved in, like that group of friends that we had was pretty tight knit. And was, was a group that went all the way from young grades all the way through high school.

• 13:29Speaker 02

  Right. And had like a close, true relationship with God that we really gravitated towards. I mean, I for one, just sort of really latched on to that. And I was like, this is the most important thing. Like if this is true, this trumps everything else in our lives. This is the thing that we should be thinking about. This is the thing that we should be living for. All our decisions should be, you know, run through this matrix.

• 13:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I know that both of you went on to, to North Carolina State to go to college. And I guess while you were there, you both joined Campus Crusade for Christ. It's a national Christian organization on college campuses all over the country. I don't know if they're as influential today as they were at the time. Maybe they are, but you, you joined this group.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, we went to that first weekly meeting. And it was like 100 kids and the meeting starts with a video. And it was the classic video that if you were in college at this time, whether you were a Christian or not, you saw this type of videos when people started getting access to be able to edit their own videos. And it was this classic thing that you would see at the beginning of a conference where the speaker is late and he's got to go through all this stuff to just to make it into the meeting just on time, right? And, you know, there was a mannequin that was him jumping off of something and landing awkwardly. It was horrible, but it was incredible to us. And we were like, this is, this is wonderful. This is so funny.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  And everybody's laughing and they're starting not in the solemn way.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  He ran, he ran off screen and then he runs in the back of the building.

• 15:06Speaker 03

  And he's got the same clothes on.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And he's got the same clothes on.

• 15:09Guy Raz?

  You're watching a video of this guy like running to get to the meeting, jumping off a building. And, and then this actual guy in the same clothes runs into the room. And so it makes it seem like you were watching this whole thing in real time. And it was, yeah.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  And he was a lot more hilarious than we expected.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we, and we had been making some videos, you know, in high school as well and had a video camera that, you know, my dad originally bought.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Mostly for like school projects and stuff. But then in, you know, we get to college and go to the crew meeting. It's like, oh, we could do that.

• 15:41Speaker 02

  And we didn't just think, we didn't just think, oh, this is a cool place we want to be. We thought, oh, how do you get to be that guy?

• 15:49Guy Raz?

  How do you get to make the videos and make people laugh?

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Yeah. And, and I guess you actually pulled it off, right? Because as it turned out, when the emcee of, of those meetings graduated, you guys, you kind of asked to take over, right? Is that right, Red?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:06Guy Raz?

  Like, I guess you, you became the emcee at the meetings and you'd play like videos that you guys made. Like, describe what kind of videos?

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Well, they would vary, but like Rhett would handle his own monologue, basically. And there wouldn't be a video every single week, but one of them was, you know, at fall break, we went to a retreat center. So we brought the camera and we started shooting all of this footage that we would later edit into one of those Rhett running around in the woods and jumping in the water and having like a fight scene with a moss man who's basically just me covered in algae.

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  And we would score it to Led Zeppelin.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  And then we would show it at the next weekly meeting.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, all the music, like all the music that we, that we put under all these, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, all this really subversive music that the culture, Christian culture at large saw as satanic, we were just like, guys, this is the best music. We're going to put it under these videos. And they just kept letting us get away with it.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this was, I mean, this was basically like two years of college where you could just experiment in front of an audience that probably just thought it was funny and hilarious. And you could just, I mean, you could just try a bunch of things.

• 17:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. When we think about it, like these days, though, it's funny because we definitely spiritualized the entire thing at the time, right? So there was this, hey, this is all for Jesus. And like, and let me tell you, it was working. I mean, there was about 100 people coming to the meeting, 150 max, maybe the beginning of sophomore year. And by the time we graduated, there was over 1,000.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 17:49Speaker 02

  And I'm not saying the meeting went to 1,000 just because of us making the meeting fun. This was happening on a lot of campuses where it was just, it was just time and place. Things were kind of exploding. We were kind of right place, right time. But we were creating this thing that was the most fun place to be on a Thursday night on the campus of NC State.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  We were doing it so that people would come here about Jesus, but we were trying really, really hard.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:11Guy Raz?

  And I guess what started to happen is that, is that the leadership of Campus Crusade for Christ. Notice that you guys were attracting large, huge numbers of people, right? And, and I guess you guys started to get invited to host other events like this, this like big Christmas conference that they would do in North Carolina every year.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 18:32Guy Raz?

  And I'm assuming this was like the same type of comedy, like, like really loose sketches and that type of thing?

• 18:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was somewhat polarizing because we brought that irreverent, really silly comedy that had nothing at all to do, like, we didn't make sketches, we didn't do any comedy that was trying to make a point about Jesus. It was all very separated from that. It was like, this is something that if you saw it, you know, completely divorced from the setting, you would just be like, this is clean comedy. Maybe these guys are Christians or Mormon or something because they're not cursing. But you wouldn't be like, they're trying to make some spiritual point with it.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  I mean, to be a Christian comedian, like, to actually use the term, that's a hard thing to do.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  If you want to judge it based on its comedy alone.

• 19:21Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Well, and that calculation, which was kind of accidental, is honestly the reason that we're sitting here talking to you today. Because it was the fact that we were making comedy that could be divorced from that Christian setting.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 19:35Speaker 02

  And just some of those sketches and songs and videos that we made for those conferences are the first videos that ever got uploaded to YouTube.

• 19:44Guy Raz?

  And meanwhile, a lot of other things are going on in your lives at that point. Like, you both graduate and you both get pretty good jobs in engineering. I think, Link, you went to IBM and Rhett, you went to go work for a company called Black and Beach and, but you were still like on the side doing these events for Campus Crusade for Christ.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:05Guy Raz?

  And I think pretty early on in both of your careers, you both started to think about, about leaving, right?

• 20:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was a guy who was on staff with Campus Crusade, Shane was his name. And he sat down with us and was like, I really think there's something here. I think you guys can bring this to Campus Crusade full time. Find a way to make this a full time thing where you guys can basically be comedians for Christ.

• 20:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah. At the time, just to put it in context, this is, I think, 2001 or 2002. And I think both of you were newly married. Both of you got married real, I mean, at a pretty young age, right?

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Right, you know, as soon as we graduated, both of us.

• 20:44Guy Raz?

  And they are still your wives? These were your girlfriends at the time? And presumably, by the way, as an aside, like, they had to, they were marrying into this friendship, too. I mean, they had to accept that their husbands were going to be spending a lot of time together. So presumably, like, the wives had to get along, too.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they were actually instrumental in that same timeframe of when we were making the decision to do this full time. Our other best friend, Greg, for his wedding, we, for his rehearsal dinner, we wrote a song about him. And about how his wife was about to see him naked for the first time, because that was true. Because that's the way we did things, right? You waited until the wedding night for that.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  I think the lyric was actually, "We've seen Greg naked, soon you will too."

• 21:33Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  "Hopefully you enjoy it more than we do."

• 21:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so we sang that song.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  To all of his family and her family at the rehearsal dinner.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  How did they respond to that? They loved it. Okay.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  We'd like to think that they loved it.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  They did love it, because, that's just not me, you know, revisionist historying this thing. Because on the way home, Jesse and Christie, Jesse, my wife, Christie, Link's wife, they said, "We don't know what it is, but y'all need to do, this doesn't just need to be something that you do occasionally, or you just do for a Christmas conference. Like, y'all need to do something with this." So it felt like, and again, this is the way that we thought at the time, this was the Lord orchestrating. Through his sovereignty, all these different life events to lead us to the next stage.

• 22:21Guy Raz?

  So this really prompts you guys to leave your jobs, to go full time for Campus Crusade for Christ. And I think you had to raise money to pay yourselves. You had to raise, part of your job was to get the money, to raise the money that would pay for your salaries. First of all, I'm assuming your parents were also supportive of, you know, your devotion to your faith, but was any part of them like, you know, guys, really important to support the church and your faith, but like, engineering is a really stable job. And I don't know about this. Like, did either of your parents kind of express that?

• 23:03Speaker 01

  I mean, there was definitely trepidation that rippled its way through my extended family, you know, to leave my engineering job.

• 23:12Speaker 02

  Which was a big deal because you were one of the first in your family to go to college.

• 23:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  And by the way, our goal was $41,500 a year, all in, family salary. This is what you get. This is the salary, but you have to go out and raise it.

• 23:31Guy Raz?

  And did you guys have, one or both of you also had a child at this point, right?

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Yes, Lily was just born.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  And Jesse was pregnant with Locke.

• 23:42Guy Raz?

  So you guys, when you decided to do this, to pursue this full time, essentially, you were going around, basically doing a comedy tour of, you know, of college campuses and, you know, meeting with Campus Crusade for Christ members, basically?

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  The thing that we had talked the local leadership into is evangelism training, right? So, you know, the 80s and the 90s were really characterized by a method of Christian evangelism, you know, telling people about Jesus that revolved around big, flashy events that would gather a lot of people into one's place, a lot of times for another reason, and then share the gospel with them. And, you know, the classic bait and switch. And we were really, really conscious of that. Like, we talked about how this bait and switch evangelism seems really insincere. It doesn't seem to really respect people very well. And so why not just...

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Through natural sort of relational connection, let them know about Jesus and what Jesus can do for them. And so that's what our ministry was. It wasn't creating big flashy events for non-Christians. It was creating weirdly specific comedic seminars for Christians.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  But we also cared about entertaining. And can we construct a job where we can have our cake and eat it too?

• 25:11Guy Raz?

  All right, so you're going around basically performing and presumably becoming kind of, you know, sort of celebrities on the cruise circuit, right? Like, people started to know in that community, know about you guys.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was starting. And it's funny, even today, occasionally, if we meet somebody who's a fan, they'll be like, "I was at the 2002 Greensboro Christmas Conference."

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Dude, don't talk to anybody about it. If you have footage, destroy it. But yeah, in order to promote our appearance and to kind of build into like, okay, you'll want to show up for our training, we made a website.

• 25:59Guy Raz?

  Redlink.com.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Red and link.com. Well, we had all of these videos that we had made at Christmas conferences. And now for this seminar. And this was, of course, pre-Youtube or right at the time of YouTube being invented.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  And people were asking us at the time, in 2005, early 2006, people would say, "Why don't you guys have a YouTube?" And we'd be like, "Because we have a website."

• 26:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  You know, YouTube is for people who can't make their own server.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  And we saw that Apple launched not only a thing called podcasts, but video podcasts at the exact same time.

• 26:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  So for us...

• 26:41Speaker 01

  We were like, okay, we can make a video every week to put on not only our website now, but we can put it on Apple Video Podcast. Hopefully, we can get noticed there. We can grow our audience on our website by having a weekly show.

• 26:58Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  Welcome to the Rent and Link Cast. This podcast is about-

• 27:03Guy Raz?

  And you would sit behind a desk-

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:05Guy Raz?

  -a table in your, in the office of the Campus Crusade, right?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  It was the Campus Crusade conference room. And we went in there and we set up a microphone on the table and we sat shoulder to shoulder.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  And we talked very quietly because people were working in the office.

• 27:19Guy Raz?

  And talk about what? What would you talk about?

• 27:21Speaker 01

  Velcro.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Just dumb stuff.

• 27:24Speaker 04

  The Swiss guy, George, he called it Velcro because of the French words velour and crochet.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  So we formatted the show and then at a certain point, we introduced a song that we had written about Velcro.

• 27:38Speaker 03

  One side is fuzzy, one side is prickly, separately useless, but together so sticky. Zippers and-

• 27:49Speaker 01

  And it featured a music video. And all of this was in like a 12-minute to 15-minute video. We called it a podcast.

• 27:58Guy Raz?

  It's amazing because you were doing this in like 2004, right? And there was no, there was just like a miniscule audience for this. And there was no way to make money off of it. It was just, it was like a creative outlet to give your existing audience or the people that you were going to go perform for a chance to see you, to see who you were before you got there.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  And that's the only reason that we did that format. We weren't trying to make money with the creative experimentation. It was more about what are the ways that you could reach an audience? And so that freedom of not having to worry about-

• 28:35Speaker 02

  The money led us to be like, there's no money in podcasting, but this is a great way for us to stay in touch with the audience that we're building.

• 28:43Guy Raz?

  And when we're talking about reach, I have to assume you're talking about hundreds or a few, maybe thousand people who would see these videos.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  At most, yeah. Hundreds or thousands of people at most.

• 28:54Guy Raz?

  I think 2006 is when you launched a YouTube channel. And this is early YouTube. YouTube is like for weirdos.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's basically just a server. It's another server for us that we don't have to pay for.

• 29:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  It's how we saw it. We only did it because people started taking our videos from our website and uploading them to YouTube and they were getting thousands of views versus hundreds of views. And we were like, oh, we should do this on purpose.

• 29:17Guy Raz?

  So at what point did you leave Campus Crusade for Christ? Did you leave that job? I mean, because I know you were, I mean, you're still, you're making videos. I saw a video from this time. It's a hugely popular video you guys did called The Facebook Song, where you are sort of parroting Facebook and it's the two of you in a Facebook Windows. I mean, you're kind of just singing about the weirdness of Facebook at the time.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  I'm hooked on Facebook. I used to meet girls hanging out at the mall, but now I just wait for them to write on my wall. Take a look.

• 29:52Speaker 02

  We were having the success of individual videos like The Facebook Song, to the point where we got noticed by some producers who were putting together a show for the CW called Online Nation, which was going to be an internet clip show.

• 30:08Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  And so they reached out and said, we want to feature some of your videos on the show. And by the way, we would love some of the hosts to be internet personalities. Well, we got the offer to be two of the four hosts. And at that point, it was like, hold on, the CW?

• 30:25Guy Raz?

  That's a real TV network.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  An actual network is asking to us to be hosts of a show? It's going to be like on TV that you can get with an antenna? Right. At that point, we said, okay, like, we forget this because there's a lot of things that have happened over the past 20 years, but that moment felt...

• 30:48Speaker 02

  I remember waking up one morning and thinking, I'm gonna host a network television show.

• 30:53Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  This doesn't, this doesn't feel real. That was the first moment there was something that just didn't feel real. At that point, it was like, you can't say yes to this without officially saying, you're not going to be on staff with Campus Crusade.

• 31:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  But we kind of felt like it was God, right? Oh, yeah. We certainly had to have felt that. Well, that's a, that's a wonderful way that that worldview worked for us, was that, oh, this opportunity is obviously from God.

• 31:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  So it was easy to say yes to it.

• 31:21Guy Raz?

  So they essentially offered you the job to be the host of the show called Online Nation. So in 2007, actually, pretty, sort of, maybe ahead of its time, kind of an idea, because YouTube was still so new. But the idea was you guys were gonna host a show that was gonna show clips, like funny clips from the internet.

• 31:41Speaker 02

  Yep. We recorded eight episodes. They showed four of them before they decided. We were gonna do it forever. This was gonna be our lifestyle.

• 31:49Guy Raz?

  And probably, probably big money, I mean comparatively big money to what you were making, more than $41,000 a year.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  I actually think that, if I recall correctly, we each got paid $8,000 per episode. So by doing eight episodes, we each increased our annual salary by 50% from what we were getting. So this felt like earth-shattering levels of money. Now, we were so excited about this, right? And so we were like, we're gonna make a big event of this premiere. We had not seen the show. We had not, they didn't let us preview the show, give any notes. That was not our role. And we gather. Everybody that we know. Every family and friend. In Harnett County and the surrounding counties. I mean, we had a few hundred people. It was like a wedding. We were in the paper. I'd only been in the paper once when I called a 55-pound amberjack when I was in middle school. So this was a big frickin' deal.

• 32:40Speaker 02

  And we invite everybody over to watch, you know, it's a 22-minute show.

• 32:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  And then the show starts. It was a big buildup. We sit there and I begin to realize that there's a lot of courtesy laughing happening. And then the other thing that we were, that was dawning on us at the time is that they did not use anything that we wrote.

• 33:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 02

  And we thought, and the reason that we wrote our own stuff is because we thought that... Everything that we were saying that they had written was just the cheesiest possible.

• 33:10Speaker 01

  I remember the point where we were filming and they were like, now we're just gonna get some wild lines as if you are reacting to videos we've not yet, you know, found or cleared. And then the teleprompter would just scroll and it would be like, that was unbelievable. Zoinks, you know?

• 33:30Speaker 02

  How do you come up with this stuff?

• 33:33Speaker 01

  None of our rewrites made the cut. So, that airs. And did you feel like maybe this was not gonna be a long-term play? I mean, what was your sense? Did you think that, I mean, I guess I'm bearing the lead here. The show was canceled after four episodes, but what were you?

• 33:56Speaker 02

  It was canceled after four episodes. Hey, that's a full month, guy. And what we saw, to use the Christian metaphor, you know, we had got to close one door and open up another. That door felt like it was now closing very quickly.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  But we thought, listen, one of the producers of the show, Paul Cockrell, agreed to be our manager. And so the idea was, hey, regardless of where this Online Nation thing is going, maybe we can use this to secure another opportunity.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  We had been painted this vivid picture of what our future in Hollywood was gonna be like by the other producer of Online Nation. Remember what David said?

• 34:35Speaker 02

  I remember him saying, before you know it, your wife's gonna be pushing that stroller down the streets of Malibu.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  And I was like, yeah, that's right. I had no idea that no one actually lives in Malibu. Unless you're like, somebody, a household name.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  There's not many places to actually push a stroller in Malibu.

• 34:59Guy Raz?

  There aren't really, yeah. You gotta drive to the shopping center and get in your car. And, yeah, you wouldn't really push the stroller in Malibu. But yes, I can understand what he's trying to get at there.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so he did sell this idea and I think we've always had this inflated sense of confidence. And even when we see something failing, we're like, well, the reason that's failing is because we didn't get to do what we wanted to do. We didn't get to say the things that we wanted to say. So if we can just find somebody that we can talk, talk into letting us do what we want to do. So at that point, we went around having what we were told were general meetings with production companies, producers. And we didn't really understand what that meant. It meant just get to know you. But what we saw that was is like, this is a meeting that's currently about nothing, so we need to make it about something.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  So we would do things like sit in the lobby of a production company, look at the posters representing the properties that they had made, and then come up with a pitch based on how these different properties meet. Like, this is the stuff that they're into.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  Oh, they have like an alien movie and they did like a music documentary and then they call us back, Red Link, so and so executive will see you. And we go in there and we just start pitching the idea that we've just hatched as if it's the reason we're there. We got this idea for this movie where-

• 36:29Speaker 02

  It's a good idea. I still want to make this movie, by the way.

• 36:31Speaker 01

  This washed up country music group, like back in their heyday, they took, they sent their music to space, you know? Like when they did that with the Voyager spacecraft.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  And then aliens intercepted the music and an alien civilization has fallen in love with this particular band. And now they're invading Earth-

• 36:52Speaker 01

  And amazing.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  And they want to get the band back together. And that band basically has to get back together to save Earth's population.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  It's great. And so we're just, we're like, this is how it's done, right? We have plenty of ideas. And he was like, well, I just want to hear the ones you're most excited about.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  We're like, oh, you mean the one we just came up with in the lobby? Because we just thought this is the game and this is how it works and so-

• 37:16Speaker 02

  We did a lot of those, actually.

• 37:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, the show was canceled. You're hoping maybe there might be a lifeline, but nothing.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Right. But the thing that was working was we were continuing to make YouTube videos.

• 37:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  That were getting more and more views. And we were trying to invent a business model. And what we ended up doing was we would construct a sketch or a song. And then we would reach out to somebody to sponsor it, because this is before the Partner Program. You didn't make any money just by getting views on YouTube.

• 37:48Guy Raz?

  Putting videos on YouTube, that was it. There was no, there was no business model in 2007.

• 37:54Speaker 02

  So right around that same time, like 2007, like in that era where we're trying to make something happen in Hollywood. So we wrote a song about cornhole.

• 38:02Guy Raz?

  Yes, which I've seen and is, it's like you're wearing mustaches and you're tailgating outside of a stadium.

• 38:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's kind of like a country song about.

• 38:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah, and you're playing cornhole. And it actually.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  An Olympic sport by 2024, by the way.

• 38:17Guy Raz?

  Exactly.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  What we claim in the song.

• 38:19Guy Raz?

  It reminded me a little bit of like the Flight of the Conchords kind of approach.

• 38:24Speaker 02

  They were definitely. Influences. Big influences.

• 38:28Guy Raz?

  I'm sure, yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. We were like the down home North Carolina boy version of Flight of the Conchords.

• 38:33Guy Raz?

  The sort of the PG version.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:36Guy Raz?

  So you make this cornhole video.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  So we would literally write the song and then we would cold call companies that sold cornhole equipment. With the help of my dad, I like put together a little contract where it was, hey, you give us $2,000 upfront to make this music video. And then we have a $20 CPM, you know, we had just sort of started hearing about what that was.

• 39:01Guy Raz?

  So you'd say for every thousand views, we get 20 bucks.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:05Guy Raz?

  From you. Okay.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  And we end up calling some guys from a company in Ohio, AJJ Cornhole. And they're like, this is exactly the kind of thing that we want to do. We, you know, we love the idea of getting the word out. We see what you guys have done. And so we put their cornhole equipment in the song. And then at the end of the video, you see there's a little ad that pops up and says, hey, get your cornhole equipment at ajjcornhole.com.

• 39:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  We probably ended up making like 25 grand off that video.

• 39:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, that video has like 1.8 million views as of.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, so they stopped paying us at some point.

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we put a, we put a cap on it.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  But at that point, we were like, okay, this is how we control our destiny.

• 39:48Guy Raz?

  But at that time, I mean, 2007, man. I mean, most mainstream media organizations just thought of YouTube as like, nothing, as a joke, right? And, and so how, I mean, even to convince small companies that this was a viable place to advertise must have been really hard.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a lonely landscape.

• 40:12Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  We had to make it financially viable. And it, but you know, the interesting thing is our whole, we were so much older than everybody else. So we had, we had to do the responsible thing and figure out a business plan.

• 40:26Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  You know, we weren't really connecting with other YouTubers because they were substantially younger than we were and they were just expressing themselves and not, they didn't have kids. You know, they didn't have failed careers in television hosting. They were, they didn't need the money. They were still in their bedrooms. But it, it was all those years between graduating from college and this point in the story. It bought us the time we needed to create enough content to then have a, a brand on YouTube, once YouTube became a thing.

• 41:07Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  That now it was like, there started to be some money coming in if we could just tap into it.

• 41:13Guy Raz?

  Tell me a little bit about your lives at this moment in time. I mean, you had this great, you know, Hollywood, you know, network contract that, that kind of fell apart.

• 41:27Guy Raz?

  And now you are both in your early 30s. You've got young families. Were you stressed out about your situation, about money, about health insurance, about any of that?

• 41:41Speaker 01

  It was definitely very stressful for me, you know, having this month to month experience. Every dotted line that was signed at the bottom of a contract that we kind of invented ourselves. Reset a ticking clock in my brain.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  Oh, well, you know, you're still running out of money. You're still running out of money.

• 42:07Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Rhett and Link get a gig with Alka Seltzer, and why Rhett puts on a lobster costume to make the worst commercial ever. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 42:29Guy Raz?

  Does your team want a website that looks and feels handcrafted, but is still fast to ship? Well, Framer is built exactly for that. With Framer, you design on a visual canvas with responsive layouts, hosting, and a CMS built in, so the work is production-ready from day one. And you can get it done with help from Framer's AI agents. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. Prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. AI agents and humans work together. The agents bring speed and scale,

• 43:14Guy Raz?

  and people bring taste, judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities. It's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on. NetSuite Next surfaces insights

• 43:58Guy Raz?

  exactly when you need them, puts agents to work on routine tasks and problems, and lets you ask complex questions in plain language, like talking to a knowledgeable colleague. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together. And that shift is already underway. That's why NetSuite wants to put a new expert-created business guide in your hands today. It's called Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. And right now, it's yours, absolutely free. Inside, you'll discover how AI could reshape work across your entire organization, and how to position your business to prosper from it.

• 44:41Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next, because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally. From payments and billing to fraud protection and cross-border payouts,

• 45:26Guy Raz?

  Stripe is built to support the new pace of commerce. They're trusted by the companies building at the frontier, from 86% of the Forbes AI 50 to global leaders like Salesforce and OpenAI. In fact, more than 1.6% of global GDP flows through Stripe, with Stripe's users processing a combined $1.9 trillion last year. So if you're already thinking about what's next for your business, see what's possible at stripe.com.

• 46:04Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2007, and after trying to make a go of it in Hollywood, Rhett and Link are back to working for themselves, marketing funny songs and videos, and soon hosting another talk show.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  There was a website called Ustream TV. We started doing some broadcast on there, and then the founder reached out to us, and we inked a deal to do a weekly show, broadcast live.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  For $500 a show?

• 46:37Speaker 01

  $500 a show, and we said, we'll do it. We committed to doing it for a year.

• 46:42Guy Raz?

  And what was the show called?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  It was called the Rhett and Link Cast Live, because it was exactly that Apple Podcast format that we'd been doing. We set up our same green card table with the hole cut in the middle for the microphone, and we sat behind that, and we figured out how to broadcast live for an hour every Thursday night.

• 47:04Guy Raz?

  What would you talk about for an hour live?

• 47:07Speaker 01

  We would introduce pre-produced videos we had made. If we had a music video that week, we would premiere it on the show and then break it out as its own video on YouTube. And we also ended up setting up a second camera so we could camera switch and show my nana and papa sitting on a couch as our only audience members. And I would only cut to him on that camera once my papa had fallen asleep, which would happen every time. He couldn't see that well, anyway, so you couldn't really tell if he was sleeping or not, but I always said he was asleep.

• 47:45Guy Raz?

  And by the way, how many people would watch it, the Ustream show?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Hundreds.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, a few hundreds.

• 47:50Guy Raz?

  Okay. And it was a cable access show, basically?

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 47:53Guy Raz?

  It's like Wayne's World.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  Very much so. So we're developing this skill. We have this equipment. Our office was the basement of my father-in-law's. He'd basically been using it as a storage center for his, for his business. And I just was like, hey, you're just storing stuff down here. Can we just, can we set up shop in here? You know, we got some good breaks, like not paying any rent for our, for our space, even though the nature of the space wasn't necessarily worth paying rent for. It was better than the alternative.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  What kind of mold were we breathing in? I do not know, but every time that someone above us flushed the toilet, we had to stop and take another take because it was right above our camera.

• 48:38Guy Raz?

  So, so you were kind of piecing together different opportunities. Like you'd get a sponsorship. You had this live stream show that was going to bring in 24,000 bucks a year. And I guess at one point Alka-Seltzer like reached out to you and they came to you and they were like, hey, we like what we're doing. Can we sponsor videos?

• 48:57Speaker 02

  That was a big moment. So the ad agency for Alka-Seltzer reached out and said, we're going to do a Alka-Seltzer themed, you know, road trip series highlighting all these places to eat and food-related things across the country.

• 49:12Guy Raz?

  And by the way, how many YouTube subscribers would you say you had at this time, 2008?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  I'm going to, this is a total guess, but it was less than 50,000 because I remember looking at some of the top guys with 60, 70,000 and thinking, how in the world did they get that kind of traction? So probably 10 to 20.

• 49:30Guy Raz?

  Right. So some creative, forward-thinking ad person who was working for Alka-Seltzer was like, why don't we try YouTube?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they're like, they say, we're going to make 21 videos is what this series will be all across, you know, the summer. And, you know, what, what do you guys, what do you charge for 21 videos? And when we came back with $42,000, because it was 2,000 per video. Because we were like, we don't want to tell them too much. Like, they're asking for 21 videos, but like, we gotta keep this affordable. And like, that'll set us up, like, that'll be a big chunk. We were always just thinking about like, what do we need to kind of get through the year? What do we know they'll say yes to?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  They paid more for the RV that they rented to take us around the country.

• 50:16Guy Raz?

  This was a trip across the US. You would make 21 videos for Alka-Seltzer. You were in an RV. You asked for $42,000 for 21 videos.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it seemed like a lot of money. It was like, this is-

• 50:30Speaker 01

  We needed it so badly.

• 50:32Guy Raz?

  And you would put the videos on your YouTube page, but it was all, I mean, it's so interesting that Alka-Seltzer, of all brands, reached out to you. Because I remember when I was a kid, the commercials were always like, two old guys in the deli eating a big corned beef sandwich. And then it was like, plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is. And you would look at it and say, oh, that's for old people. Alka-Seltzer, and your audience was not that audience.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  They had a new product-

• 50:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  -that was a hangover cure. You know, you gotta get, you gotta get these little kids with a hangover cure.

• 51:01Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  But we were not comfortable promoting the product. And that was the one, that was the one thing we put up a fight over, was we don't want to do anything hangover-related. And so, we actually got in a retrofit their project to just be about plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is. And it was like, this retro kind of approach to their brand to reach a younger audience. I don't know, we were just cagey about the hangover thing.

• 51:30Guy Raz?

  Well, yeah, because I think you had cultivated an audience also, maybe there wasn't as much crossover, but from your time as, as Christian comedians, and that would have been off-brand.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:41Guy Raz?

  So, this was the beginning of, you know, these kind of commercial opportunities. And I guess one of the ways that you also, or one of the ideas you came up with was to make spoof commercials, but for businesses.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we pull up. Again, we're on this Alcatraz road trip. The RV stops, we wake up, they open the door. They're like, you're in Boston, and we're going to take you to this famous fish market. Make a video, come up with something. I smell something fishy. We said, well, can you get us a lobster mascot costume? And we'll just make fun of those late night, local commercials where it's usually going to be the owner of the restaurant that's in the suit. Did somebody say crab legs?

• 52:34Speaker 04

  Crab legs.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Did somebody say lobster?

• 52:36Speaker 04

  Lobster.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Did somebody say crab legs?

• 52:40Speaker 04

  Crabs.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was the lobster.

• 52:42Guy Raz?

  You were the lobster.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  And we called it, when we posted it to YouTube, we called it the worst commercial ever. And it got a lot of traction. Fast forward a little bit into 2008. Because this is how another very strange sponsor works its way into our content. We're writing a song on a livestream late at night. It was during the 2008 financial crisis, and we were writing a song about the financial crisis.

• 53:07Guy Raz?

  In real time.

• 53:08Speaker 02

  In real time.

• 53:09Guy Raz?

  Okay, yep.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  And so, we're writing this song, and then we get like a private message from a guy, and he says, "I want to sponsor this song that you're making right now." I'm like, what the hell? You mean you want to sponsor this song? And this guy was the CEO of a company called Microbuilt, which essentially was a company that provided administrative services for small businesses at scale, like across the country. And he was just like, at the end of this song, can you just put our logo and our website at the end? You don't have to mention us or anything. It's just like a song about the financial crisis, and then our website.

• 53:48Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  We were like, yeah, $5,000. Because at that point, we were like, two's not enough.

• 53:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And the, okay, and the, and the video of the song would go on your website and he'd have that.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:01Speaker 01

  It would go on our YouTube channel, yeah.

• 54:03Speaker 02

  So we say yes, and we do that.

• 54:04Speaker 01

  And he was, he was ecstatic. So he's like, I want to sponsor more videos.

• 54:09Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:09Speaker 01

  And, you know, he, we were like, explain again what you do. You manage credit being extended to customers of businesses that need to extend credit, like a furniture store.

• 54:22Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  And we were like, we had this brainstorm later and we were like, hold on, his customers are like small businesses, furniture stores. They make, some of the most famous local commercials in history are like furniture stores. We made a fake one for a real business before. Why don't we make real commercials for real businesses that tap into that local commercial aesthetic?

• 54:48Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  And so we went to a furniture store called Red House Furniture.

• 54:52Guy Raz?

  And I should preface this, for your fans know this, this is gonna become a very famous commercial, the Red House one. I mean, I remember people saying this, and I was like, what are you talking about? YouTube, Red, I was like, who, what, what's YouTube? This, you go to the Red House, okay, so keep telling the story.

• 55:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, we meet them and we're like, tell us about yourself and your business. And at some point, they just, one of them says, we're kinda like the Rainbow Coalition around here. You know, we got a lot of white people and black people that work here, and we got a lot of white people and black people that shop here. And we were like, okay, how about that's the angle of the commercial?

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. A customer would come in, and then we would introduce ourselves and ask whether they'd be willing to be in the commercial. And then we would just write down something for them to say on a cue card. And I remember writing it down, and I held it up to the guy. And Rhett's recording, I'm holding up, and, and then he said, I'm black and I love the Red House. And then everyone who came in would just say what they were. If they were white, they would say, I'm white and I love the Red House. And we didn't know exactly where the line was.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  We were like, I don't, it's like, this is kinda their idea, the way that we went about this, like, how is this, how is this going to be taken? Like, I think- I think that some people are going to think that they should be offended by this. And some people are gonna be like, well, when I really think about it, I don't think I am offended by it. Let's just put it on the internet and find out. And what that led to, CNN called and wanted to do an interview about this commercial. And so that was like the first time we'd ever talked to any national news outlet about anything that we had done.

• 56:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I mean, this commercial went so viral and the tagline was where black and white people go to buy furniture, basically, something like that. And you had a song.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. At the Red House, where black people and white people buy furniture.

• 56:53Guy Raz?

  Such a weird, just such a weird, it's so weird.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, it was a positive message of racial reconciliation to sell furniture because furniture is for everybody.

• 57:08Guy Raz?

  How did, did it, did it affect business at the Red House?

• 57:11Speaker 02

  Great question. So what ended up happening is a lot of these places ended up becoming just places people would go because of the, the commercial.

• 57:21Guy Raz?

  To get a selfie.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  They would wanna just get a selfie with the person, so they just started selling a lot of Red House t-shirts. We actually designed a t-shirt for them and sent it to them for them to sell.

• 57:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  But they were very, very happy, you know, and Phil from MicroBilt wanted more. So we ended up creating this entire campaign called I Love Local Commercials, which was a website where people could go and submit their favorite local business to get a free commercial from Red and Lincoln, MicroBilt.

• 57:52Guy Raz?

  I mean, and, and were you still charging 5,000 bucks to do that?

• 57:57Speaker 02

  At that point, we, I don't know what that price tag was to do more, but Phil was just really happy with how things are going.

• 58:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  And so I think at some point around that time, I remember we had a conversation with a fellow YouTuber who was, his, his tag was Mr. Safety at the time. Corey is, is his name. And I remember him telling us. Never accept less than $10,000 for a sponsored video. And we were like, wow, man, I think people might say no. But we started saying that and started getting yeses. So thanks to Corey for encouraging that. But we would always find a way to work the weirdest sponsors into our videos and still make this engaging piece of content. And it was growing and growing and growing. And then we got contacted by some producers from Hollywood who wanted to take what we were doing with these local commercials and turn it into a TV show.

• 58:48Guy Raz?

  This was IFC.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:50Guy Raz?

  I think, and so this, before I ask you about that, I mean, by that point, when IFC contacted you, because they want to make a show around these real commercials of these small businesses. What do you estimate your annual revenue was? Was it, was at that point, I mean, 10,000 bucks a video? Were you doing one a week? Were you doing two a month? I mean, because you guys had gone from like, maybe making 35, 40, 45,000 a year to what? 100, 200,000 bucks a year or more?

• 59:21Speaker 02

  These are wild guesses, just based on some of those numbers. But I think that we had a little bit more than doubled, probably individually of what we were making. So we're probably working at around like 200,000 revenue coming in.

• 59:34Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay. So IFC contacts you. So now you're back in the Hollywood network TV world, right?

• 59:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  It was exciting because we were being pursued to make a television show. That was something we had already made. We had already established the template. That's when we said, we're going to move to LA to make this show and supervise it as executive producers as well.

• 1:00:02Guy Raz?

  Because TV at that point, still seemed like that was where the opportunities were. I mean, YouTube was fun, but it was really, we want to get on network TV.

• 1:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think it was simply, we always had aspirations to make things that seemed like the kind of thing that you would require someone else's money to make, right?

• 1:00:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  Versus the kind of DIY stuff that we had been making all along.

• 1:00:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  And I also think that, for me, one of the sort of subconscious delineations has always been, traditional media.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Someone who has power, some gatekeeper has let you in, has said that we bless you and we're going to give you the thumbs up.

• 1:00:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Whereas the internet was always the Wild West and it was like, I'm kind of on the same playing field with a kid in their bedroom with a camera that might just make something that go viral. And so the price of entry just feels very, very low. And so I just think that there's something subconsciously, you feel like you haven't done anything if someone hasn't recognized you officially and said, yes, you are good enough. And that wasn't something we were ever able to really come to grips with.

• 1:01:16Guy Raz?

  All right, so you guys move out to LA with your families to make this show with IFC. And how did it go? I mean, was it, did it, did it take off? Was it a hit?

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  We told our family and friends back home that it was temporary. We didn't load up the U-Haul with our furniture. But I think Rhett, you were, you were 100% convinced we weren't coming back. I was probably, I was 75% we weren't coming back.

• 1:01:47Speaker 02

  But it wasn't because I thought that the show would necessarily work. It was, I was like, okay, this is it, man. We've got to go out there to make this. We shouldn't, we shouldn't come back. Like, we should make it work out there regardless.

• 1:02:01Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment. How Rhett and Link make it work regardless. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 1:02:23Speaker 05

  Football is back and PrizePix is bringing out their best offer yet. New users who sign up will get $150 in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. That's right. If you win your first $5 lineup, you'll get $150 in lineups. On PrizePix, you simply pick two to six players, pick more or less on their stat projections and Submit your lineup, then sweat it out as you watch your picks play out live. It's the best way to get more locked in on game day. Make all the picks you want this football season, all in the same app. And now, PrizePix is available nationwide. So what are you waiting for? Lock in for kickoff because everyone and everything is on PrizePix. What you on?

• 1:03:08Speaker 06

  Download the PrizePix app today and use code WONDERY. That's code WONDERY to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix, run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit PrizePix.com for restrictions and details.

• 1:03:23Speaker 07

  They're running a cover two defense. But you're running to get game day deals on Uber Eats. Keep everyone at tonight's watch party fed with deals from your go to restaurants. Or stock up with deals on your favorite snacks and groceries. Whatever the occasion, get game day deals on Uber Eats all season long. It's not football without food. Uber Eats, order now. Terms apply. Product availability varies by region. See app for details.

• 1:04:01Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2011 and Rhett and Link have completed the first season of a show for IFC, a show in which they make these very funny commercials for local businesses. For example, they make one for a taxidermist from Ojai, California named Chuck Testa. And it's actually amazingly funny and weird and worth looking up.

• 1:04:26Speaker 02

  Chuck had taken that commercial and posted it on his YouTube channel, where it was going crazy viral, getting more views than anything we had ever made. Time Magazine was naming it in the top 10 memes of the year. But that was when IFC was making the decision about whether or not they were going to renew. They were like, well, actually, we're going in a different direction. We're going with scripted series now is where we're going. And again, it was this, this thing that was just adding to this bucket of disillusionment of. They have some prerogative. They have some decision that they want to make that we're just subject to, regardless of the fact that this commercial is just blowing up like crazy and we could do this again and again and again.

• 1:05:08Guy Raz?

  Hmm. So, all right. So IFC does not renew the show. And there you guys are, living in Southern California, trying to break into Hollywood, right? And presumably wondering about your next move. But I think at that point, you already had another idea in the works, right?

• 1:05:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Right before we had moved to LA, we did a little daily show called Good Morning Chia Lincoln.

• 1:05:33Guy Raz?

  It was a Chia Pet Lincoln, Abe Lincoln.

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Abraham Lincoln, yeah.

• 1:05:36Guy Raz?

  With a microphone behind Abe Lincoln.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:38Guy Raz?

  And it was the two of you there. And it was a daily show, right?

• 1:05:41Speaker 02

  Yep. We said, is there something we can do this really low lift, high connection as an experiment? And we'll say there's a shelf life on the show because when the Chia Lincoln dies, the show dies.

• 1:05:53Speaker 01

  Well, and that's when we knew that we were going to be moving to LA. So it was, we needed something to do in the meantime.

• 1:06:01Guy Raz?

  And that was the daily, and that was basically to make this daily show limited, because I think you would end up making like 40 of them.

• 1:06:08Speaker 02

  Yep. That's about how long a Chia, Chia Pet.

• 1:06:12Guy Raz?

  Forty days.

• 1:06:13Speaker 02

  Can live.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I would drive to Rhett's house. He'd get in the car with me. I'd say, you got anything? He'd say, yeah. Or he'd say, no. And I'd say, well, I got something. And then we wouldn't talk until we got to the studio. We'd drive, you know, it was a five, it was a five minute drive.

• 1:06:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  And then we would set up that same card table with the hole in it, with the microphone coming out. And we would sit down behind it and we would start the camera and we would have the conversation that we would have had on the car ride in. We had it with an audience watching.

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  And it didn't like go crazy. Like, it wasn't like, but people loved it. They really liked it.

• 1:06:53Guy Raz?

  So you had done this. It was fun. It was in the back of your mind. But you meantime, you go to LA to do this, this IFC show.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, we devote months to making the show. And then when it comes out, we're promoting it and, you know, waiting for them to reorder it.

• 1:07:10Guy Raz?

  And they don't.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  And then they don't.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  They don't. And that's when we made the decision. Well, what if we brought back that Chia Lincoln show? We called it something else and we do it right from the beginning with the intention that A, this is gonna be, this is gonna be around for a long time. If you go back and watch the first episode of Good Mythical Morning, you'll see that we say things like, "We want this to be a part of your daily routine."

• 1:07:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:35Speaker 02

  This is the beginning of something special. Also, it starts with a sponsor, or a brush.

• 1:07:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:41Speaker 02

  The little tongue brush. They paid $300 to be the sponsor of that first episode.

• 1:07:47Guy Raz?

  Right. And so, you would do this, you'd film this every day, put it out on YouTube, and then spend the rest of the day making or thinking about other, like, videos that you would do? Or songs, or sketches, or skits, or something like that?

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Still doing those bigger tent pole videos that had sponsors attached to them that were bringing in substantially more money than what was happening on Good Mythical Morning.

• 1:08:11Guy Raz?

  And still, YouTube was not paying you for the videos. It was all, you would find sponsors to get, to finance it.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  By this point, there was AdSense. AdSense for us was kinda like, it was a bonus income, but it really wasn't driving our business. We had to, we had to get these bigger deals to create custom content for brands. Until Good Mythical Morning started to gain attention, first from YouTube itself.

• 1:08:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah. They approached you in 2013, shortly after, not that long after you launched Good Mythical Morning, and they were like, "Hey, we wanna finance something. We wanna, you know, give you some money."

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we have money in a bucket that's earmarked for experimentation, and one, and there's different buckets of experimentation, one of which was making long-form videos. Like, can we extend the watch time, is what they were thinking at the time, by extending the runtime of, of successful programming. And so, we pitched a, a variety show that we called The Mythical Show, and it would be a half hour, once a week.

• 1:09:21Speaker 02

  Twelve episodes.

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  Twelve episodes.

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  We did the same thing we've always done, which is under, under price. And I don't, and by this point, we should've known, but- We were like, 30 minutes of content times 12. We have to hire a team to help us do this. And we like worked the numbers and it came to like $92,000. And then we just like, well, I guess we should just round up to $100,000. We just didn't have, we did things so, so cheaply.

• 1:09:49Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  And then what would happen is once we got into the project, we would get a lot more ambitious and realize, oh, we should have asked for more. But they just gave us $100,000.

• 1:09:58Guy Raz?

  And you do this show, right? The mythical show, I think 12 episodes.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:10:04Guy Raz?

  But, but basically, from what I, I understand, like, it didn't matter that you didn't keep doing that. Cause you would, you, you had the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. But I guess that money gave you the chance to really take risks and experiment with different

• 1:10:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:10:18Guy Raz?

  styles that you would then carry over to Good Mythical Morning.

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. So then the show had a whole new look. And we had a team that we were now devoting some of their time to helping make Good Mythical Morning work without it just being all on our shoulders anymore.

• 1:10:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  But there was a change that happened at around 2014. Again, one of those, just being lucky, being in the right place at the right time. YouTube makes a change to the algorithm where they really start emphasizing watch time. And they want that watch time per user to, to go up. And the way that they do that is if somebody kind of gets into a cycle where they watch one video and then there's a suggested video that comes up related to it. And we had a couple of years of daily, long form Good Mythical Morning videos. So somebody could sit and watch three episodes of Good Mythical Morning and they've been sitting there for 45 minutes.

• 1:11:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  And all of a sudden.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  YouTube would reward our channel for keeping people on their platform.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  And that 2014, 2015, 2016, that three-year period saw Good Mythical Morning eclipse everything that we had ever created.

• 1:11:36Guy Raz?

  Wow. And it was a combination of the algorithm changing, but also you kind of understanding through experimentation what people wanted to see, like the first, I think your first just massive, massive video. And now has more than 30 million views was eating, I don't know why you did this. A Carolina Reaper pepper. And which is like really dangerous.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  I'll tell you why we did it. So we get 30 million views.

• 1:12:09Speaker 04

  It started.

• 1:12:12Speaker 04

  The hiccups have started.

• 1:12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, at the time, it was the certified hottest pepper on the planet. They're busy breeding hotter ones now, apparently, but we've backed out of that business.

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we don't do that.

• 1:12:25Speaker 04

  Every breath out is like time travel into a stupid, stupid place.

• 1:12:32Guy Raz?

  Is that like one of the most painful experiences of your life?

• 1:12:37Speaker 01

  Uh, yes, I think so, physically.

• 1:12:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  I mean, and a little bit emotionally.

• 1:12:42Speaker 04

  I feel like my right nipple is gonna spout fire.

• 1:12:46Speaker 02

  Listen, you know what? We proved our manhood.

• 1:12:49Speaker 04

  Yeah. We are men! We're men!

• 1:12:51Speaker 01

  It wasn't cut down to flatter us anyway, right? So I think that, yes, that was a spectacle, but the undercurrent was this sincerity. Like, our viewers knew they were getting the real thing.

• 1:13:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  And I think that we started to realize that what kept people coming back was that we were letting them in on our friendship.

• 1:13:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  You know, so it was this catch 22. Yeah, you gotta eat the hottest pepper in the world, but at least you get to do it with your best friend, and maybe people will stick around when the next day is just a fun conversation.

• 1:13:35Guy Raz?

  Who was watching the video? I mean, as your channel, Mythical, because now you've got Mythical Entertainment, right? And Mythical becomes the brand. I mean, there's Rhett and Link, but Rhett and Link are mythical. Who was watching it? Was it kids?

• 1:13:50Speaker 02

  We could tell that our audience was very broad, right? So, yes, there were a lot of kids watching. Parents felt comfortable letting their kids watch the show, but they were also watching it. And we were just also noticing anecdotally when we would meet people. Out in the wild, it was always like you couldn't tell who was a bigger fan. Is it the mom, the dad, or the daughter or the son?

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:13Speaker 02

  And it seems like they're all watching this together, or at least watching it separately and then talking about it. So, right from the beginning-

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Which we prefer for the view count.

• 1:14:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 1:14:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I'm wondering, like, on that point, right? You started out as Christian entertainers, and you're not, you weren't doing explicitly Christian, or even inexplicably Christian themes, but like, did you still think about your videos through a kind of a Christian prism?

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  So, even from those early days, even back in 2007, 2008, for me, kind of initially, there was a crisis of faith that was growing and building. And around 2012, 2013 is where I just privately, behind the scenes, stopped calling myself a Christian. I was like, for a whole lot of reasons, I don't, I don't believe this anymore. And so, I think what was, what was happening was, it was like, well, there's this sense that people kind of, yes, we made this, this content originally sort of clean because it was consistent with the way that we talked at our houses in front of our children.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  But hey, now my kids are 10, now my kids are 12, now my kids are 13.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:15:28Speaker 02

  And so that was changing the way that we were making our content. And it wasn't calculated, but I think it kind of, over time, was getting into a place where it's like, okay, this is still mostly family-friendly, but there's gonna be some innuendo. And so the parents are gonna get it, it's gonna go over the kids' heads. I think that was how, sort of, the Christian factor was influencing things over time.

• 1:15:50Guy Raz?

  Link, were you also having a bit of a crisis of faith?

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's totally Rhett's fault. I would like to go on record. You know, you know, it's-

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  As with most everything, we walked through life together and our friendship was close that like if either one of us were having any sort of crisis, well, the other guy would be involved.

• 1:16:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:16Speaker 01

  And so it was nice to be a sounding board for him when he's like, this is what, I'm reading this book about evolution and I'm trying to figure out how it fits in with my previous worldview. Like, I was all ears there, first as a sounding board, but then, yeah, I started to question things too.

• 1:16:37Guy Raz?

  So, I mean, do you still consider yourselves to be Christians?

• 1:16:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:16:43Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:16:44Guy Raz?

  No.

• 1:16:45Speaker 02

  2020 was the first year where we kind of told our, is our coming out stories, like, hey, we're not Christians anymore and...

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  And there were many years, there was a time when we had gotten to that point privately, but it was not something that we discussed or alluded to publicly.

• 1:17:02Guy Raz?

  I mean, obviously, it's a, it's a, we could do a whole episode on that journey.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:08Guy Raz?

  And it's a very personal thing, but there was a and has been, an approach that was designed to appeal and to be safe for everybody, right? I mean, there's a lot of stuff and has been a lot of stuff on YouTube that is not safe for everybody, but there's a good, also a good business reason to make things safe for everybody.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  We totally benefited from, from that, forgive the term synergy, right?

• 1:17:34Speaker 02

  And it goes beyond just...

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  You got the brand friendliness.

• 1:17:37Speaker 02

  The nature of the content. I would say that there's a whole world of having come from that worldview, the way that we were able to just develop confidence in performance and comedy in front of people, that you just, we didn't do the traditional thing of like going to a comedy club. It was like we had this safety net when you do things in that Christian comedy and Christian conferences.

• 1:17:58Speaker 01

  They may not love you, but you know they're gonna forgive you.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  And the standards are so much lower, you don't have to be as good. So I think that we were able to perform in a place where it's like, well, these guys are real funny. So yeah, well, see us next to the Flight of the Conchords and you probably won't think that, but if you just see us in that context, you'll be like, I think these guys are going places. Cause as you heard today, like so many of the critical points in our story revolve around our involvement in Christian things and what we were thinking. Everyone would just think we went from being engineers to being entertainers, cause that sounded... Easy to understand. We're like, no, it's a convoluted path.

• 1:18:35Speaker 01

  And we're grateful for it.

• 1:18:36Guy Raz?

  I'm wondering as, because it feels like, it seems like there was a, it was a transition over time, right? Like, probably there was a point, maybe it was 2015, 2016, where you started to come into real money, serious money.

• 1:18:53Speaker 02

  Looking back, it still feels relatively incremental, but ramping, certainly ramping up significantly at that time. But I think that the, and this remains our philosophy today, right? Like, we, with every dollar that comes in, the first question is, how do we turn that around and invest it back into the people, the team, and the ideas that we and our team want to create?

• 1:19:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  And so, you know, I actually, I don't know exactly what the graph is in terms of how the team grew, but it certainly feels like it grew from that five to around 100 or so, pretty geometrically.

• 1:19:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  And how much of a team can we build out that removes us from extraneous parts of that production and process? So we can just do what we do best, which is just put our friendship on display on camera.

• 1:19:51Guy Raz?

  As Good Mythical Morning, you know, became bigger and bigger, how did you think about mythical in general? When did you start to think about, okay, this is a bigger entertainment brand, and let's think about how we can build it out? Because there's podcasts, there's other, there's a bunch of different channels. There's books, there's live tours. Now, there's merchandise. There's a whole kitchen world, which we could talk about. Did it just kind of happen organically? Or were there moments where the two of you were like, let's architect out what we want this to be?

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  We hired a business person named Brian to join our C-suite. And that was a big turning point.

• 1:20:38Guy Raz?

  When did that happen? Do you remember?

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  2016.

• 1:20:41Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 1:20:41Speaker 02

  Even to this day, I'd say over the past, you know, now eight years since he's joined us.

• 1:20:48Speaker 02

  Most everything is driven by what is the next thing that we want to create? And what makes the most sense? Where are we seeing traction? Mythical Kitchen is the perfect example of how the brand has grown beyond the two of us, and it was very organic.

• 1:21:05Guy Raz?

  And Mythical Kitchen, Mythical Kitchen really comes out of all the food videos that you guys have done over the years, trying food, going to the Costco food courts, just different, right? And it's, they're cookbooks. And by the way, are you guys pretty good cooks?

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  I'm pretty good. Link can speak for himself.

• 1:21:24Guy Raz?

  I'm a great consumer of cooked foods. Yeah.

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  But what we were finding is that the food content was really the thing that was really catching. It's like, in that brand, we've been on a few of the shows personally, but this is really driven by the spirit of Good Mythical Morning and Mythical at Large, but it's its own natural outgrowth of the brand.

• 1:21:50Guy Raz?

  I mean, now you have a pretty significant entertainment brand, right? But you are still the center of it. Rhett and Link are still sort of the brand centers of it. And when you think about the longevity of the brand, do you think about ways to pull Rhett and Link out of it so it can live without Rhett and Link? Or is that not that important for you, sort of thinking about it in those terms?

• 1:22:25Speaker 02

  I think we still feel very energized as creators. So we have a lot of things that we want to create. You know, we have a success in Mythical Kitchen. We want to try it again. It's all about being very purposeful because it's not just growth for the sake of growth. There is a component of as the community grows, the revenue grows. But we think about it first and foremost as...

• 1:22:52Speaker 02

  This community, which we get to meet, you know, we interact with, we interact with them in all kinds of ways. Obviously, there's the instant feedback of comments, but then there's the interactions that we have on The Mythical Society where we do AMAs or we do live streams. And then we meet them if we go out on tour and we do meet and greets and that kind of thing.

• 1:23:09Guy Raz?

  You guys are, have been at this for a long time and have built an incredible business around it. And I wonder if there are ever moments where, you know, if you kind of want to get off the hamster wheel of create, you know, content creation because you are still making something every single day. It's a lot, right? And you don't need to do it anymore. I mean, you don't, you know, you're obviously supporting a staff and a bunch of people who work for the company. But I wonder what you, when you sort of you look out on the horizon and you look at sort of the long, long game, how long do you guys

• 1:23:51Guy Raz?

  see yourselves doing this in the way you're doing it now?

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  I think we see the long game being all the way, you know? We have always worked hard to remove things from our plate and our task list that other people can do better and that can free us up to devote only the right things to the right project. And so I think, you know, after a decade of doing the show, after thousands, literally thousands of episodes, we are having the most fun that we've had on Good Mythical Morning because behind the scenes, we've done a lot of work to entrust other people to do what they can do. We have things that we passionately want to create. And the heart and soul of

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  everything we do, it all comes back to our friendship. And we, we put a lot of work into loving each other as brothers. But, you know, if we can keep, if we can keep that vibrant, then everything else will follow. That is the long play for us, to remain friends.

• 1:25:02Guy Raz?

  Do you guys, when you think about the journey you've been on, right, and the decades-long journey of really grinding to...

• 1:25:11Guy Raz?

  Just to make a living. And now today, you know, among the easily the most successful YouTubers on the planet, how much of where you got to do you attribute to the work you put in? And how much do you think has to do with luck and fortune?

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  Or God.

• 1:25:31Guy Raz?

  Or God.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  We talked a lot about God. We can't leave God out at this point, can we, Rhett?

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  No, that's a deep question for another time. You know, I think that the analogy that I would use is that, you know, you've got this sort of self motivated, self propelled car, like one of those little toys that you you wind up by sort of putting on the ground and pulling back. Right? And so it has this, we have this motivation to constantly move. But once you let go of that car, that car is not really driving itself very well. Right? That toy runs into obstacles and it responds to its environment, but it keeps going under its own power. I think that that's kind of how we operate.

• 1:26:22Speaker 02

  We're so driven to continue to create and to continue to innovate and find ways to connect with people. We said in the first book we ever wrote, The Book of Mythicality, our philosophy has always been pick a direction and go. Make the best decision that you can. But just know that all you're really doing is setting yourself up for another decision to be made in the future. And the outcome isn't going to be what you envisioned.

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  I just feel fortunate that I didn't have to do it alone. But I think I could have. No, just kidding. I don't think I could have.

• 1:26:56Guy Raz?

  That's Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neale, otherwise known as Rhett and Link, YouTubers and the founders of mythical entertainment. By the way, besides that Carolina Reaper hot pepper, they have tried many, many weird foods over the years. And always on camera, they've sampled French onion soup, jelly doughnuts, a Pepto Bismol Pop-Tart, and something that I can't even imagine. It's so gross, a Philly cheesesteak cheesecake.

• 1:27:28Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was researched and produced by Catherine Seifer and edited by Neva Grant, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. We had engineering help from Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Casey Herman, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, Malia Agudelo, Sam Paulson, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.