Dude Perfect: Cory Cotton and Tyler Toney

As Texas A&M students in the mid 2000's, Cory Cotton, Tyler Toney and their housemates spent countless hours playing hockey in the living room and attempting trick shots in the backyard. A spontaneous bet over a sandwich led the guys to make a video montage of outrageous basketball shots, which they titled Dude Perfect and posted on a new site called YouTube. After that first video wound up on Good Morning America, the five Dudes challenged themselves to even more outrageous stunts: an impossible shot from the third tier of a stadium, a here-goes-nothing lob from the door of a flying plane. But despite their growing popularity, the group spent five grueling years trying to build ad revenue and brand deals while juggling day jobs and commuting weekly across Texas. In 2014, they finally committed fulltime to building Dude Perfect into a robust entertainment platform, which today includes books, TV, live events, and a YouTube channel that has more subscribers than the NBA, NFL, and NHL combined. Take the listener survey at: http://npr.org/builtsurvey 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?

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• 4:23Guy Raz?

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• 5:07Guy Raz?

  Visit mobili fuels.com for details. Hey, everyone. A quick thing before we start the show. How I Built This is doing its annual survey to better understand our listeners and how you use podcasts. So please, please, please help us out by completing a short anonymous survey at npr.org/builtsurvey. That's all one word, npr.org/builtsurvey. We'd really appreciate your feedback. We really do need it. So again, npr.org/builtsurvey. And thanks.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  We are coming around. I'm like, this is the airplane shot. This is the first one we ever take. And so I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is going to be... Like, I have no control over where this goes. I've never dropped a ball out of a plane. Like, who knows? And it was kind of starting to rain. I remember when I put my hands out the window, I was like, oh, gosh, that kind of hurts, because the rain was spitting behind the propeller. And it just felt like a bunch of needles going into my hands. So I dropped the ball out of the side of the plane. And...

• 6:20Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:31Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how a bunch of college friends turned their backyard basketball rivalry into a viral video, and then a viral entertainment franchise, Dude Perfect, one of the most popular channels ever put on YouTube.

• 6:55Guy Raz?

  You might be surprised to discover that I don't spend much time on YouTube. Okay, of course you knew that. I'm an early, middle-aged dad with a busy life. So the fact that I even know the names Mr. Beast, or PewDiePie, or the Paul Brothers, has everything to do with having two boys who are approaching their teenage years. And among all the clips they'll show me, I've been consistently entertained by a group of five guys who perform outrageous athletic stunts and go by the name Dude Perfect. So when we decided to interview them for this episode of the show, I had to give up my mic for a few minutes to some wild-eyed fans who were hanging around the studio, my children.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  All right, there was a soda can, and the card was on it. Split the soda can in half. How did he do that?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like, he has a couple of different types of cards, and one of the kinds that he has is metal. And so that one, he had to stand.

• 7:53Guy Raz?

  This last voice is Cory Cotton. You'll hear more from him in a moment. What you need to know for now is that these five guys who call themselves Dude Perfect are among the most popular entertainers in America among three to 14-year-old boys and girls, which is why my kids insisted on asking questions of their own.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  When you scored that world record in Oklahoma, when you shot the ball like 220 feet and you made it in the hoop, when you went to sleep at night, what were you feeling?

• 8:24Speaker 01

  What was I feeling after I made the shot?

• 8:27Guy Raz?

  What Dude Perfect produces are stunningly complex tricks. A basketball hurled from an airplane into a hoop far below. A hole-in-one golf shot off a multi-story roof into the hole 1,000 feet away. A bowling ball being hurled from a moving car at dozens of pins for a perfect strike. And none of it is faked. It's all real. It might just take 100 or even 1,000 tries before it works. Sometimes, one shot for a single video can take two weeks. As of this recording, Dude Perfect has nearly 57 million subscribers to its YouTube channel.

• 9:08Guy Raz?

  The guys are among the biggest YouTubers in the world and it's a big business, with tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue, a massive live show that sells out stadiums and arenas, television deals, and even a few food products and partnerships with big brands. But of course, like any great business story, the rise of Dude Perfect as a powerhouse brand was a slow burn. More than a decade in the making. For years, they'd drive halfway across Texas every weekend to shoot videos and then pull all-nighters to edit them. And this was long before YouTube became a way to make decent money.

• 9:50Guy Raz?

  But one of the things that's made Dude Perfect so popular is that they're actually nice guys. They're not mean. They don't get into beefs or boxing matches with other YouTubers. They don't swear. And their videos, despite what I said above, actually look effortless. But as I say, and as you will hear, that effortlessly takes a hell of a lot of effort. Dude Perfect is based in Frisco, Texas, not far from Dallas and just a few hundred miles from where they all met at college. The five dudes are Cody Jones, Garrett Hilbert, two brothers, Cory and Koby Cotton, and Tyler Toney. And there was no way I could speak to all five of them in one sitting,

• 10:33Guy Raz?

  but I did speak to two, Tyler and Cory, whose twin brother Koby is also in Dude Perfect.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Our parents love them to death, but they decided to confuse the whole world. We had solid, real first names. I'm William Cotton and he's John Cotton. And they decided to go with the tricky middle names for what we were actually going to be called. And that's Cory and Kobe. Just one letter apart.

• 10:55Guy Raz?

  What I'm wondering, yeah, I was like, wow, your parents called your brother Kobe and called you Cory? And you're identical twins, but that's actually your middle names?

• 11:03Speaker 03

  Correct. They set us up for a little bit of a confusing life, I think, but it's okay. We like it.

• 11:10Guy Raz?

  And you guys were preacher's kids, right? Like your dad was a pastor kind of in and around the Houston area?

• 11:16Speaker 03

  That's right. So we definitely grew up playing tag in churches and got my finger jammed in a, in a door that Kobe slammed on me as we're playing tag. And we always felt like everyone was looking at us, right? I mean, you're, we're just the pastor's kids. So you're there, everyone knows us. We don't necessarily know them, but you know, you've got all these people 50 years older than you, walking up to you and rubbing your head and oh, man, you're getting so much bigger. And it's all that kind of thing.

• 11:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And did you, was that okay? Were you okay with that?

• 11:44Speaker 03

  Honestly, it was really fun. I know people have different kind of opinions of what it's like to be a pastor's kid. I feel like usually it goes either really well or really poorly, but ours was on the good side for sure.

• 11:54Guy Raz?

  And Tyler, from what I understand, you grew up in Prosper, Texas, or just, just outside. And I, from what I understand, your dad was also involved in the, in the faith community. He was, uh, he was like kind of well known, I guess, because he sang in a, in a Southern gospel music group that, that your grandfather was also involved with. Is that right?

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember vividly going back when I was four, five, six years old. My dad and my uncles and cousin and grandpa, they'd all be at the house, gathered around just the biggest speaker in the house, you know, singing like four inches from each other's ears, trying to nail their parts. And I remember laying in bed at like 10, 11 PM at night and just hearing them blast that music downstairs. And for the older generation and a lot of those Southern Baptist churches, they were, they were celebrities, I guess you could say.

• 12:43Guy Raz?

  And then your dad went and worked for a software company?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. Went to, uh, basically software companies. He was at Netscape when they were kind of the original Internet Explorer browser. And my mom stayed at home with us, with me and my sister, and she was a stay at home mom.

• 13:00Guy Raz?

  As a kid, were you, were you a good athlete from, from an early age?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  I say that I was an above average athlete. My dad always, he was always telling me, you know, teaching me about mental toughness and hustle and how that can overcome a lack of talent in a lot of areas. And so I played everything. I mean, I played a lot of hockey, played football, basketball, baseball, track, golf.

• 13:24Guy Raz?

  And I would venture to guess that if you were to poll people in Texas about their faith, that high school football would rank pretty high up there.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 13:36Guy Raz?

  But it's really important, right? It's a really

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:39Guy Raz?

  big deal in Texas, especially in small towns where they don't have professional teams. And Tyler, you played, like, you weren't just on the high school football team. You were the quarterback, right? That's a, that's a big job.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was all about Friday Night Lights football. I mean, all the shows are, are pretty accurate as far as that goes. Literally, the whole town would come out and watch those football games and stores would close down and things would get moved. Other school activities would get postponed. So it's just a little different feel than it is now with how many people are living in this area.

• 14:10Guy Raz?

  I mean, how do you, I'm just curious, as a, as a 17, 18 year old kid, that's a lot of pressure to be the quarterback. Everyone knows you. They're all coming to the games. How do you deal with that?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  I never really felt pressure being the quarterback. I, I would get nervous before the games, but I mean, as soon as you took that first snap, you forget about all that other stuff. Like, I just, I love competing. I loved taking my guys out against your guys and see who comes out on top. At least for me, I didn't think about the people in the stands or anything like that. I just focused on my guys and having fun. And I mean, those, looking back, those were by far, Friday nights playing football were by far my favorite memories.

• 14:50Guy Raz?

  Wow. Corey, you were also a high school athlete, but I, I've seen you and I've seen you evolve over the years and you are a much slimmer man than Tyler is. So I have to imagine you did not play high school football.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  No, there was no high school football in my career that is accurate. I was a basketball guy. I will say that my brother and I were, I mean, we were like your typical obsessed, short basketball kid. I mean, if you went and looked at my whole childhood, I had, what was the NBA's old slogan? I love this game. My mom painted I love this game in the whole basketball NBA font on our wall. And it's so funny looking back now, especially now that I have young kids, because I genuinely thought that I was going to the NBA. I mean, if you asked me, 4th grade, 7th grade, 11th grade, I probably no joke would have told you at an absolute minimum I was going to play college basketball.

• 15:44Speaker 03

  And I, I mean, I was not getting the type of playing time even in, in early high school that it takes in order to get there. And it's just so funny looking back, but I just loved it so much.

• 15:55Guy Raz?

  Yep. All right. So both of you, you don't, did not grow up knowing each other, but both of you would end up going to Texas A&M in College Station. Corey, what was your kind of thinking? I mean, you were 18 and ready to go to college. Were you thinking, yeah, maybe I'll, I'll do what my dad does and be like a spiritual leader? Or, or did you have other thoughts in your mind?

• 16:16Speaker 03

  That was definitely at least a leading candidate in my mind. So my brother and I went to school together. We pretty much did everything together. I mean, I'm sure that some twins go the opposite direction, but we enjoyed, you know, hanging out together and stuff. So that was never really a question of if we were going to go to the same college or not. So we went together. We both worked at the Apple Store seasonally, off and on in high school and college. And so I'd say our two kind of top career paths for both of us, where we were either going to go into some sort of sports ministry because we both loved basketball so much, or we were going to work, try to corporately at Apple. And that's why we chose to be communication majors, speech comm majors at Texas A&M.

• 16:54Guy Raz?

  How'd you do at school? I mean, were you a good student?

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Honestly, I was a good student. Kobe always squeaked me out slightly. When we graduated college, he squeaked into summa cum laude and I was nothing, right? I was just right below that where they don't say anything. So alphabetically, his name comes right before me. And so, you know, in front of 30,000 people, this is A&M, huge stadium, Kobe walks across and it takes them a long time to kind of say his whole, John Kobe Cotton, summa cum laude. And everyone claps and it's William Cory Cotton. It's just a short, nothing after it. And so it's these little moments that I think about, but we enjoyed competing and honestly, it's been a fun dynamic.

• 17:34Guy Raz?

  So you were a good student. You worked hard. And what about you, Ty? Were you, I know you, when you went on to Texas A&M, you, I didn't even know this was a major. I didn't even know you could major this. I mean, Texas A&M was founded as an agricultural school, but I didn't know you could major in hunting and fishery. That was your focus. Is that what you thought you would do? Something in like, commercial fishing or ranching? Like, what did you think you were gonna do?

• 17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was wildlife and fisheries. Hunting and fishing would have been an even better major, but that one wasn't offered unfortunately. But no, so I started off, I was gonna go be a dentist. My uncle, my dad's oldest brother is a dentist. And I was like, man, that'd be cool. I'll go do that. And started on that path and got to a little class called organic chemistry and decided like, yeah, maybe I should go do something else that, you know, I enjoy a little bit more. And then I figured out, okay, well, there's a duck identification lab that's part of this wildlife and fisheries major. And I was like, man, I'm all in on that. And it was a whole lot less math and English classes

• 18:40Speaker 01

  and a whole lot more wildlife and ecosystems. And I didn't really know what I was gonna go do with that. I kinda thought maybe like game warden or something along those lines or ranch management or something like that. But I just knew that I enjoyed that a lot more than being a dentist.

• 18:57Guy Raz?

  Ty, why don't you rip off some duck names for us?

• 19:00Speaker 01

  You got all kinds of duck names. Gadwall, mallard, pintail, cinnamon teal, blue winged teal, green winged teal, wigeons. The duck lab was a nice, that was one of those where I didn't have to do a lot of studying beforehand.

• 19:11Speaker 03

  Cause you knew it was an easy A.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  I was like, man, this is the easiest class I've ever taken in my life.

• 19:16Guy Raz?

  All right. So fall of 2006, Corey, you and your brother show up at College Station and you, I guess you find a place to live together, right? In like, an off-campus house. And you're just, you know, you're regular students there. And tell me a little bit about how you started to meet, cause this is, you didn't meet Tyler right away. I think first you met two other guys who would eventually become part of Dude Perfect. How did you meet those guys?

• 19:44Speaker 03

  That's right. So we, Tyler is a year younger than the rest of us. So you're correct. We met him the following year, actually through Garrett, which we'll get to. But my brother and I show up on campus and we actually went to I mean, let's call it what it is, right? There's this thing called Fish Camp at A and M. And it's essentially an awesome brainwashing camp to help people that don't know all the traditions about Texas A and M. And then there's kind of a similar one that's a little more Christian oriented called Impact Camp. And we all went to both of them, but at the Christian one, we happened to meet each other. And so my brother and I met Garrett and we also met a guy named Sean and we all kind of hit it off real quick. And so we kind of grouped up very quickly that freshman year.

• 20:24Guy Raz?

  So you meet Garrett and he's just a cool guy that you kind of start hanging out with. You guys have a lot in common.

• 20:31Speaker 03

  I think we just connected on a fun friendship level first, but we all had the same hobbies. His, his main sport for sure was basketball as well. So we pretty quickly formed an intramural team and we hadn't met Cody yet. We ended up meeting him through playing basketball up at the rec center in our illustrious intramural career. And we also had a Bible study that we were all a part of together. So those two things really kind of kept us connected outside of when we were at school.

• 20:56Guy Raz?

  Talk to me a little about that because there's a discipline in going to that every week or more than, more than once a week. Was that connected to just the way you were raised or was it, was it part of a discipline like getting up and exercising every day? I mean, tell me, yeah, tell me about why you, you guys would go to Bible study every week?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  It's a good question. I think a combination of both, right? It was a little bit how we were raised. I think all of us had a really good experience growing up. I say in the church, but really I just mean with our faith. And because of that, we, we met people that felt the same way and there's just a bond there. It doesn't mean that we weren't really good friends with other people that didn't necessarily believe the same things as us. But I think we grew up and experienced what it was like to have really close, strong friendships with guys that could back you up and had your back and things like that. So then when we moved and we were all on our own, that's something we were looking for. We were looking to replicate some of the friendships and kind of brotherhood that we had in high school and, and growing up in, in our own separate lives. And that's how essentially we met these guys, combined that with, with basketball.

• 21:59Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Tyler, you come to Texas A&M the following year, in the fall of 2007. How'd you meet these guys? How did you even come into contact with them? Because Texas A&M is a city, it's massive.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  So Garrett and I went to high school together.

• 22:14Guy Raz?

  Got it, and Garrett was already hanging out with those guys?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he went down to A&M and then when I got down there, he introduced me to the twins and Cody. And the first time I went with Garrett, he was like, hey, let's go to these guys' house. I want you to meet them, they're some cool guys.

• 22:29Guy Raz?

  They're super cool.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, super, super cool guys. I walk into their house and they have the Soulja Boy dance up on their projector and they're like learning the dance moves to Soulja Boy.

• 22:43Guy Raz?

  Crank that Soulja Boy.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were cranking that Soulja Boy as I walked in the door. And I was like, I don't know, I don't know about these guys. Maybe going to do something else tonight, but no, it was, that was my first introduction to them and they got a little bit cooler after that.

• 22:59Guy Raz?

  And, and they were, they were like kind of sports guys, like they were into sports and playing sports. And I think you also joined the Bible study group, right?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, I think anytime that you share, especially a faith, but then also interests with, with other people that are like-minded, that's a very natural progression of friendship and allows for a much deeper friendship and obviously beyond. So I think it's been cool to see that progress over the last, I mean, gosh, like 14 years now? Something like that?

• 23:30Guy Raz?

  You know, in a place like Texas A&M, there's gonna be, and I'm totally projecting, I don't know, I've never been there, but I think, because it's a big school, like any big school, there's gonna be all kinds of different activities and different, different scenes. But presumably a huge fraternity scene, probably a really big party scene. Did you guys avoid that because of your, because of your interest in sports and faith? Like, did you, I don't know, were you guys drinking and doing like, I mean, I'm not, no judgment, I'm just curious, like were you doing beer bond games and stuff like that in college?

• 24:03Speaker 01

  No, I think the answer to the question is not really. When we were in college, kind of one of the things that we wanted to show people is that you didn't necessarily have to go to parties and get wasted and drink a lot of alcohol to have fun and enjoy yourself in college. And personally, I had another outlet, my family ranch that I grew up on, that was only about an hour and a half from College Station. And honestly, I skipped a lot of weekends in College Station to go hang out with my grandma and my grandpa down there at our ranch.

• 24:34Speaker 03

  We didn't really feel like we were missing out, right? I mean, I think, yes, it was the five of us, but we also had a lot of other friends that would come and our house was a huge hangout. And, you know, it probably looked like we were having just a massive party sometimes because, you know, the police would come every once in a while because we had a lot of cars in front of our street, but people would just come and hang out. And we just had, you know, fun, sports, you know, goofy games going on at our house. And there were just a lot of people that were hanging around.

• 25:01Guy Raz?

  So from what I understand, Tyler, your sophomore year, you move in with those guys. And Cody was also living with you or not, not at that point?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I believe so. My sophomore year, their junior year.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's right.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Cody, Kobe, Cory and me all lived in a house together.

• 25:19Guy Raz?

  And Garrett, who would become also part, he did not live with you. He lived like down the street.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he couldn't live with us. He was too clean. Our dishwasher and sink was too messy for him.

• 25:29Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so this is your kind of group house. You all were students, so you had to study. And, but you also, take me inside that house. Were you playing video games all the time? What were you doing in there?

• 25:40Speaker 01

  There was a few video games. There was a lot of made up games.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  Hustle ball.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we, we had like these really ugly doors. This house was, I don't even know when it was built. It was probably built in the seventies. It had like these very like Star Trek shaped doors that were just like very rounded. And one of them was kind of across from the kitchen opening and we just ended up turning them into like hockey goals. And so we would just stuff pillows in, you know, pants and shirts for the goalies and play hockey in the living room. We had a mini hoop in the living room that we played basketball, made up a bunch of games outside. I mean, we, we were just always competing. We were always creating ways to. Have fun and we were never short on ideas, I guess, for things to do.

• 26:24Guy Raz?

  So you guys were like, big boys, basically.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  Still are.

• 26:28Guy Raz?

  And this is not, again, this is not a judgment. This is like, because I think about my boys, from a very early age, they would like take socks and roll them up and play hockey in our living room, or baseball. Like, they would just throw a stuffed sock at the other one with a plastic bat and just... And my wife would be like, "What are you guys doing?" And eventually, we just, we all understood, that's just what they were doing. But you guys were like, 19, 20 years old and you were doing this at your college group house.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Now 31, and still doing it.

• 26:59Guy Raz?

  I mean, you would do things like, you'd have two of you just sitting on a sofa, and one person would throw a football in between and like, whoever caught it would like try to wrestle it away from the other person. I mean, right, like, you were like, doing that kind of stuff.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yep, that was hustleball, great game. I think that one may have cost us a TV at one point, and I think a hole in the drywall.

• 27:21Guy Raz?

  So you guys were not hanging out in the quad, like, reading philosophy?

• 27:24Speaker 01

  No, I had to ask my sister where the library was my senior year, when she was a freshman, unfortunately, when I was forced to study for a class that I really needed to pass to graduate. So that was a, that was a humbling moment, too.

• 27:37Guy Raz?

  All right, so, as the story goes, that I've read, at a certain point in this house, you decide, "Let's buy a basketball hoop." Like, one of those hoops that, the standalone basketball hoop, right, that you like put sand or water in the bottom to weigh it down.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Yep, it was a plastic backboard basketball goal from Academy. Like, Garrett and I went and bought, and we didn't really have a great driveway or any concrete to play basketball on, so we just stuck it in the backyard, and we would make up shooting games, or just have free throw competitions, and... We were getting ready to go to lunch one day and I went to the corner of the yard and I was like, "Okay, if I make this, you're buying my lunch." And he's like, "Okay, whatever."

• 28:16Speaker 03

  That's right. Ty is pretty known, at least back in the day, for creating what we all call "one-sided bets." So for example, I walk into the backyard one day, college house, and Ty has a knife in his pocket, right? I grew up on a ranch, always has a knife with him. And he said, "Hey, I bet I can throw this knife and stick it in that tree all the way across the backyard, you know, 30 yards. And if I do, you owe me 10 bucks." Well, there's no "if I don't, I owe you 10 bucks." It's just one-sided. And so, you know, classic, me, I'm like, "Sure, whatever." And he does it, sticks in the tree. So it was that situation, just basketball version, that kind of started everything. Ty's in the backyard and he looks at Garrett and he says, "Hey, if I make this shot, you owe me a Jimmy John's sandwich." And he's kind of standing in the corner and tosses up

• 28:58Speaker 03

  a hook shot, swish-o-dre now. So they go to lunch and they get back and a camera gets involved and we start filming everything.

• 29:06Guy Raz?

  But how does it... So I understand you got the hoop, right? But what, first of all, what kind of cam... Like, was it an iPhone camera? Was it like a video camera? And who decided to start filming those shots that day?

• 29:20Speaker 03

  It was a picture camera on video mode, and I cannot say that more clearly. We are talking...

• 29:25Guy Raz?

  It was just a... It was like a little compact digital camera.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  Yep. One of the ones where you turn it on and the middle lens goes zh, zh, and kind of pokes out towards the front. I mean, very small. And to be honest, we've never really been able to remember who exactly busted out the camera. I think, my gut, is that Ty made that first shot and Garrett, you know, had to buy him lunch and we wanted to show the other guys when they got back. And it was kind of a, you know, keep everyone honest, make sure they pay their bets, and also show the guys because it was a funny story.

• 29:56Guy Raz?

  And you just held the camera and would like, start filming Tyler or each other, or what?

• 30:03Speaker 03

  It started with recreating that shot with Tyler and Garrett. So Tyler goes in the corner, does his hook shot, and I think the dynamic shifted when we saw it on camera. I know that's silly to say, but when we were looking through, you know, playing it back on the camera, it just has a different vibe, right? And especially when you've never done this kind of thing before, it just looks fun to try and do again. And so it started with that shot for Ty, but then someone else said, "Hey, I want a shot." And someone goes, you know, across the fence and throws it, or one of the guys climbed on the roof, you know, or someone does a bounce shot off the chimney. And we were just having fun in our backyard.

• 30:36Guy Raz?

  I guess eventually, like, what, you had a friend of yours, Sean, actually like do a proper film of, like, really actually try to make cool films of this?

• 30:48Speaker 01

  No, so Sean was, so originally DP had six members, so Sean was one of the other guys that lived with us at the house. And me and him were in the backyard originally when we decided like, hey, we need like a beginning to this video of these trick shots. And so we had two chairs set up, like lawn chairs, in the backyard that were sitting in the middle of the yard. He put the camera on the railing because obviously we didn't have a cameraman or anything like that. And when he set it up, he went around and looked, you know, on the backside of the camera on the little, through the little viewfinder, and he said, "Oh, dude, perfect. It's already in frame. Like, everything's good to go. Like, it's centered up. Nice." And so we went around, and it was already recording at that point, so he came around

• 31:31Speaker 01

  and sat down next to me, and we recorded a terrible intro where we named it like Backyard Stuntman. And when we went back and listened to the original audio, we just thought it was funny the way that he said "dude, perfect." And so we ended up, like, I guess, kind of adopting that as the title of the video.

• 31:47Guy Raz?

  It says "dude, perfect."

• 31:48Speaker 01

  Yep. And that original "dude, perfect" audio is still in all the videos.

• 31:53Guy Raz?

  All right. So, April 8th, 2009, you guys recorded a video which you decide to upload to YouTube. And this is still like pretty early YouTube days, like two and a half, three years into YouTube.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, very early.

• 32:10Guy Raz?

  First of all, what was the, what did the video show? Describe the video.

• 32:13Speaker 03

  So, we basically put together a video of us doing the shots in the backyard, right? Picture, you know, music and us doing different shots with, you know, the occasional celebration in between. And that's really all it was.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Except, don't picture the Space Jam music as the soundtrack, because that was the original one, and we had our first lesson in music copyright issues.

• 32:33Guy Raz?

  You use the Space Jam music because you're like, yeah, of course. But you obviously were college students and bozos, so you didn't know that you can't do that.

• 32:40Speaker 03

  Exactly. So I was the only one with a YouTube channel at the time. I was also the only one that knew anything about video editing. I had taken one class in high school. And so I bust open iMovie on my Apple laptop.

• 32:50Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  And put the footage in, throw, obviously, one of my favorite songs at the time, Space Jam, and put that behind it. And very quickly after we load the video, like Tyler said, you know, this video has been banned worldwide, was the error message we got back. And we learned that you can't just use someone else's music.

• 33:07Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  And so then we actually called one of Cody's buddies who lived down the street. And he had happened to just be there, actually, the week before, handing out his demo CD for their group's, you know, recent kind of launch of their music career. And one of the songs on it was awesome.

• 33:23Guy Raz?

  And it was, what kind of, what kind of music was it, like rock, hip hop?

• 33:27Speaker 03

  Like, so everyone should go look it up. Shout out Manic Bloom, and the song that we used was "Running From the Scene."

• 33:37Guy Raz?

  And just to be clear, because you can see this video, obviously, still available. And it's like, there's a shot of like, one of you guys, like, throwing a ball off the chimney and then it going into the basket and, you know, throwing the ball from a distance. And the idea was, let's just put this up on YouTube and see what happens?

• 33:55Speaker 03

  We wanted to share it with family and friends was really the main reason. I had kind of had in the back of my mind, a kind of bucket list idea of, at some point in my life, I would love to put up a video on this new thing called YouTube that got a million views. That sounded fun to me. That wasn't the goal when we started filming. But I think after I had finished editing it, we all shared it on our Facebook status with something along the lines of, hey, guys, my buddies and I just made a fun basketball video. We're trying to see if it can get a million views. Thanks for watching.

• 34:29Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Corey, Tyler, and the rest of the dudes began to grow an audience by giving themselves harder and harder trick shots to perform. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 34:53Guy Raz?

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• 35:35Guy Raz?

  The agents bring speed and scale, 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.

• 36:20Guy Raz?

  NetSuite Next surfaces insights 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 "A Linings 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.

• 37:05Guy 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, Stripe is built

• 37:50Guy Raz?

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• 38:27Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's April 2009, and the guys from Dude Perfect have just released a video montage of a bunch of trick shots in their backyard. They've sent it out to everyone they know, hoping to eventually get 1 million views.

• 38:46Speaker 03

  The video definitely did not get a million views. It got probably maybe 100,000, probably closer to 50,000 views.

• 38:53Guy Raz?

  Wait, that's unbelievable. How did that happen?

• 38:57Speaker 03

  I guess we had friends that had other friends and people just shared it and it bounced around. The numbers were not, you know, when you think of a viral video, it wasn't that, but it did get passed around enough for someone to notice it. And the absolutely wild thing is that somehow, the very next day, I'm laying in bed, you know, probably sleeping, you know, late, like you would imagine in college, and I wake up to my phone buzzing, and I pick it up groggily, and it's some lady who said, "Hey, I'm a producer at Good Morning America, and we wanted to play you guys' video today. Is that okay?" So of course, I'm like, "Wait, what is happening? How do they have my phone number?" Still don't know how they got my number to this day, but of course, I, you know, said, "Let me pray about it, yes," and run around the house screaming and telling the guys, you know, "Hey, we're about to be on Good Morning America."

• 39:42Guy Raz?

  Did they want to interview you too, or just play your video?

• 39:45Speaker 03

  They did. Sore subject. They said, "Hey, we would love for Diane Sawyer to ask you guys some live questions while the footage runs." And so we all huddled together in the living room, and they've got us, you know, on the cellphone, and we're about to record and kind of do a, you know, kind of live hit.

• 40:01Guy Raz?

  It was an audio interview, not a video interview?

• 40:03Speaker 03

  Correct. There was audio. There was no way for us to, you know, shoot a video feed in there at that point. But we're there, and we are ready. And we are ready for our phone to ring, and, you know, we'd given them our number, and they said, "Hey, we're about to call you guys. You'll see it on TV, but, you know, all you have to do is answer our questions." So we are sitting there, you know, salivating, ready to do this interview, and for whatever reason, they never called us. But on camera, you can see Diane Sawyer saying, what was her phrase? "We're trying to phone you guys." "We're trying to phone you guys." And so we're like, "Oh, you're not."

• 40:31Guy Raz?

  No, you're not. You liar. Making us look bad.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  But they showed the footage, and obviously, for, you know, five college guys, it was it was kind of a fun 15 minutes of the spotlight.

• 40:42Guy Raz?

  So they showed some of the video. You did not ever get a chance at that point to talk to Diane Sawyer, or maybe you have at this point?

• 40:49Speaker 03

  I haven't.

• 40:50Guy Raz?

  Diane, they're waiting for your call. But it's on Good Morning America. After that first video, and got attention, was there like a strategic, like, conversation? Like, "Hey, let's do more of these," or was it just like, "That was fun. Maybe we'll make another one?"

• 41:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, very much just like, oh, that was cool. Like, I mean, that was the extent of our thoughts. Like, oh, no way, that was awesome.

• 41:10Speaker 03

  It was, that was cool. Let's do it somewhere else is probably what we really thought, right? That was fun. Now let's take it out of our backyard. We'll drag that basketball goal somewhere else and do it again.

• 41:19Guy Raz?

  And how long did it take you to make a second video?

• 41:21Speaker 03

  Uh, a month, maybe? Where did we go for our second one, Ty? Was that the ranch?

• 41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, the ranch that I was talking about that I would go to. That was my, uh, my grandpa's place.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  So we did our second video at the ranch and, you know, for us, back at the time, it was where can we do a basketball shot? That was all we were thinking about.

• 41:36Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 41:36Speaker 03

  So Tyler had a good water tower, for example.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  It wasn't a water tower. It was a feed tower, but to a city boy from Houston, it looks like a water tower.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  Got it, yes. I am a city boy. So, you know, he goes up and, you know, sits on top of this thing and does a hook shot down into the goal. And we just wanted to change environments and mix it up.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  First try, by the way. That one was a FT.

• 41:55Guy Raz?

  Wow. So you're still making some videos, but this is just a kind of a fun thing you're doing as college students. But in the fall of 2009, I guess you have your second really big kind of moment, which was you decide to try and make the world's longest basketball shot. And Tyler, you were, you were gonna be the one to do this. What, tell me what the idea of this was.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  So I think at this point, it was like, okay, well, how are we going to outdo people's expectations now? Because now we'd done the backyard video. Now we'd done the ranch addition, so they'd already seen basketball trick shots taken out of, you know, a traditional environment. And so we were, I think, I was in the car with Kobe and we were driving to campus and we drove by Kyle Field, Texas A&M's football stadium. And I was like, we need to get in the stadium. We need to do the world's longest basketball shot. I was like, that would be something that people would watch. And the twins were communication majors, so I told Kobe, I was like, hey, if you get us in that stadium, I will throw a ball from the third deck and I will make the shot.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  So he sent some emails around and I have no idea why, but somebody felt good about unlocking Kyle Field for us and giving us free reign of the stadium.

• 43:13Guy Raz?

  And you, by the way, and you brought your basketball hoop there?

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, we brought our portable basketball.

• 43:19Guy Raz?

  This is the $80 basketball hoop that you bought?

• 43:21Speaker 01

  It was 70. Yeah, I think it was 70.

• 43:23Guy Raz?

  So you would just like load it into a truck and drive it there?

• 43:27Speaker 01

  That was pretty typical for us to load it up in the back of one of our trucks in College Station and go drive it around.

• 43:32Guy Raz?

  So somebody gave you permission to go onto the field at Texas A&M? And where did you place the basketball hoop?

• 43:39Speaker 01

  Uh, the basketball goal was on the, right on the other side of the track in between the track and the football field.

• 43:45Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  And we only had four basketballs at the time. We had recruited a few buddies to go up there and help us rebound because we obviously knew it would take more than one shot to get.

• 43:56Guy Raz?

  And this is a huge stadium, right? This like could seat what, 60, 70,000 people?

• 44:01Speaker 01

  Uh, more than that, I think at the time. I think it's closer to 85,000 probably.

• 44:06Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  And so first I went up to the second deck because I honestly, I didn't know how far I'd be able to throw it off the top. I didn't know how far the ball would go. And so I went to the second deck and threw a ball off as hard as I could and it sailed over the goal onto the football field.

• 44:20Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  And at that point I was like, we can do this. Like we can go to the top of the stadium and I am, I am physically capable of throwing it far enough to make the shot. And that was all we needed to know because we would have stayed there as long as it took to get the shot.

• 44:34Guy Raz?

  And you brought one camera with you or did you bring more than one? Because you needed to film you and the basket and the, right, the shot.

• 44:43Speaker 01

  We had upgraded to two cameras at this point and I think we had made the massive improvement of going from not just one picture camera to video mode to a second actual camcorder, the type that looks like kind of a cylinder that you put your hand through the little strap.

• 44:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 44:58Speaker 01

  And your index finger on the top.

• 44:59Guy Raz?

  Oh, yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 01

  You can zoom. I think we borrowed that from a buddy. So we were feeling extremely fancy.

• 45:03Guy Raz?

  And was either camera static or were they going to track the shot?

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Both handheld. We could not afford to have a camera on a tripod that got hit by a basketball goal. It would have buried the whole company.

• 45:13Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay. How far were you from the basketball hoop?

• 45:17Speaker 01

  If I had to guess, I'd say it was like 60 yards. So, you know, 180 feet, something like that.

• 45:21Guy Raz?

  Wow. And that's a basketball. It's not a football. Different aerodynamics.

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:25Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot harder to throw.

• 45:26Guy Raz?

  Um, all right. So you get up to the third deck. Oh, the rest of the dudes? At this point, with six people, the rest of you guys are on the field or in different parts of the stadium?

• 45:36Speaker 01

  Kobe was up top with me filming.

• 45:37Guy Raz?

  Okay. And Corey, you were on the field?

• 45:40Speaker 03

  I was on the field. I don't think I was holding a camera at that point. I was standing right by the goal.

• 45:45Guy Raz?

  Right. But you were gonna be the video editor, so I'm assuming you were the director?

• 45:48Speaker 03

  I don't think we would've thought about it that way.

• 45:51Speaker 01

  You're thinking way too, way too far ahead of where we were at.

• 45:53Guy Raz?

  I'm over-intellectualizing this. I got you.

• 45:55Speaker 03

  You know what? You know what? I like it, Guy. Yes, I was the director.

• 45:57Guy Raz?

  Okay. All right. So, so you go up there, Tyler. And tell me what you do.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  So, we start throwing basketballs. We had a few members of the Texas A&M basketball team that had kinda, they were kinda funneling out of practice to come watch, and we had kind of a little gallery going. Ended up popping one of our basketballs. I think it hit like a bench or something down below on the field. So, we were down to three basketballs now at this point. And it's a little bit of a slow process, obviously, in getting three basketballs all the way back up to the top of a stadium. But we'd have somebody on the first deck that the guys on the field would throw to. The guy on the first deck would throw it to the guy on the second deck. The guy on the second deck would throw it up to the third deck.

• 46:38Speaker 03

  The problem was if somebody in the relay chain threw the ball up but didn't throw it up quite high enough, it would bounce all the way back down. So, it was a tricky, tricky situation. Elevators became our best friends as we moved forward with this company.

• 46:52Guy Raz?

  And we know what happens in the end. We know you made the shot, but before you get there, how many, I mean, I can't imagine how many shots you had to shoot before that you got one that went in.

• 47:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. I would say it's probably not as many shots as you would think, especially with only three basketballs, because, you know, after you shoot three basketballs, it probably takes a good five minutes to get everything back up top and reset. So, it was only an hour and a half, two hours of shooting. And so, it didn't take too long to make the shot.

• 47:24Guy Raz?

  Even an hour and a half? I mean, that sounds like it's amazing that you made it in an hour and a half, but that's still a long time. You know, it's a lot of like, okay, this didn't work, let's get the balls back up. Oh, nope, didn't work, let's get the balls back up. To him, like, you must have been convinced that you would eventually make it.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, we, like I said, when I threw the ball off the second deck and I knew that we were capable of doing it, we would've been there a week if we had to.

• 47:50Guy Raz?

  And you gotta remember, every once in a while, the ball would would come really close, right? It would hit the back iron, you know, hit the rim. And at that point, you're like, oh, I'm staying until as long as it takes. Like, I'm not giving up on this.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  We always liken it to playing Battleship. Like, if you just keep guessing and keep throwing enough, then it's gonna go in at some point. Like, it has to. Like, the ball can only go so many places. And so, as long as you're willing to put in the reps, any trick shot theoretically is possible.

• 48:15Guy Raz?

  But sometimes, like, there may be 2 million places where a ball could land. And you can't throw it 2 million times because you just, the time would run out. But, I mean, I guess you're kind of calibrating your throw, and you're, there's muscle memory, and you're feeling it, and you're trying to make tiny adjustments. But we're humans, we're not robots, right? We, we can't be as perfect as a robot. But you're kind of feeling that and just making tiny adjustments, hoping that everything kind of goes your way at some point.

• 48:45Speaker 03

  I think this is where Ty, being a quarterback, really came into play, right? Because you just said it, and what you just said is, is the answer, right? It's making adjustments.

• 48:53Guy Raz?

  So it goes in, and how'd you react?

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yes! What? Oh, my god!

• 49:01Speaker 03

  We lost our minds. I mean, I think that's what a lot of people gravitate towards, too, is, especially at the beginning, was seeing the celebrations and the excitement and the joy, and just that, like, pure elation of, not only is it over, but you accomplished what you set out to do.

• 49:17Guy Raz?

  So, you put this out on the YouTube channel, on Corey's YouTube channel, and I'm assuming you wrote, hey, watch us do the world's longest basketball shot. And did it just go crazy overnight?

• 49:30Speaker 03

  This was a simpler video, in a sense, right? So, everything we'd done up until this, probably three or four videos, had been, you know, what someone would probably call a montage, almost felt like a music video. Multiple shots, music behind it, all spliced together. This one, we wanted to try something different, and obviously, we didn't film multiple shots in the stadium, we just did this one. And so, in our heads, we were like, man, we got this. This is gonna be one, super shareable clip. It's gonna be awesome. And it's funny, we put it up, and we were expecting this, like, instant reaction, people were gonna go crazy over it. And we put it up, and, and for a while, it just kind of went flat.

• 50:04Guy Raz?

  That's amazing, because this was, I mean, anyone can watch it, it's totally nuts. And-

• 50:09Speaker 03

  For whatever reason, yep, people didn't, didn't pick it up at first.

• 50:12Guy Raz?

  So, what happened? How did it get attention?

• 50:16Speaker 03

  So it was probably three days later and you know, we were all split up. I think maybe we had done the shot right before some sort of vacation. Maybe there was a break in our schedule. And so I remember my brother and I hopped on a plane to North Carolina with our family. My grandparents lived in North Carolina. And so we hop on the plane and I mean, I was like literally thinking about how sad I was about the fact that that cool video we had shot recently didn't do well. And you know, whatever, let's just go on vacation and not worry about it. And my brother and I hop on this plane and we're flying and it's about a two hour flight. And so as we land, we flip our, you know, my phone back off airplane mode. And all of a sudden, my phone just starts vibrating like I'd never seen mine or anyone else's do before. And I mean, I thought it was broken. And

• 51:01Speaker 03

  so, you know, finally, the screen kind of slows down enough for me to read a text message or two. And what people had said was something to the effect of, hey, guys, your most recent video has 2 million views and it was shared on Yahoo's homepage. And so that turned out to be what had happened. Yahoo's homepage, which I don't know if you remember, but that was like the spot. It was a thing.

• 51:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah, people, that was people's homepage.

• 51:25Speaker 03

  That was a life changer for people. Yep. And so it turned out honestly to be the same thing for us. It had been shared as the main kind of, you know, clickable thing on Yahoo's homepage. And about two hours, it had gotten about 2 million views. And because this one was so shareable, it just instantly went bananas. And not only did it get a lot of views, but it got picked up by SportsCenter and every sports talk show you can imagine and every morning show and night show. And like we landed in North Carolina and went to, you know, somewhere to eat. And, you know, obviously, we're texting each other and laughing about how crazy this is. But we walk in to eat somewhere and I look up on the TV and there we are. And that was, that was the first time that something like that had ever happened.

• 52:07Guy Raz?

  You're looking at the TVs, like they're probably playing SportsCenter and you're on it.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  Yep. We're just sitting there at a burger place and look up at the screen and, you know, they're playing it over and over and, and people in the restaurant are pointing at it. And it was just one of those like, whoa moments. It was pretty cool.

• 52:22Guy Raz?

  Were they saying on SportsCenter, oh, this is total, totally fake?

• 52:24Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Yep, that's what everybody was saying, I think.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think Carmelo Anthony was the one who was on the top 10 desk at the time when the Kyle Field shot was blowing up and he was the one, they asked him, they're like, Carmelo, is this real? And he was like, no way, not a chance.

• 52:42Guy Raz?

  Wow. Were you initially kind of sad about that? Like, oh my God, it's not fake? Did you feel bad when people were saying that?

• 52:51Speaker 03

  There was a little bit of pride of like, hey, come on, people, like, we're capable about this, you know, Ty's, Ty's an athlete, he can do this, this is, this is real.

• 52:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:58Speaker 03

  But, but there was also a piece where we were like, hey, if that's what it takes for people to talk about it, you know, at this magnitude, you know, go for it.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  I'm, yeah, I mean, there's, like Corey said, there's definitely a part of you that's like, like, why would you not believe us? But then it was also just a testament to, like, look what we pulled off. Like, there's professional athletes that are out there saying this can't be done, and we just did it.

• 53:20Guy Raz?

  I love that. I mean, it's so, it's, it makes total sense, because if you did fake it, and people said it was fake, then you might have felt bad, because you're like, oh, they found us out.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, even going back to the first video, that was a decision that we actually had to make very early on, because we had a shot in the original backyard video, the first one we ever uploaded. It hit just in front of the rim, but, you know, hit the net, looked like a swish. And we were like, we could totally put this in the video, and literally no one would question it. And this conversation came up, and we just said, like, look, if we, if we are truly gonna say that everything we do is real, then we can't have one fake shot, or we lose all credibility. Within, it's like, okay, well, if you faked that one, then what else did you fake? And so we decided from that point on, anything that we do is gonna be 100% real, 100% authentic, and this is gonna be what Dude Perfect represents going forward.

• 54:13Guy Raz?

  All right, you guys get all this attention for this video, and clearly...

• 54:20Guy Raz?

  The gears in your head start to turn, thinking, maybe there's something bigger here. Because that year, you actually set up an LLC. You filed the paperwork to set up Dude Perfect LLC. Who came up with, who went to the team, to the other five guys and said, let's just like, register a business here?

• 54:35Speaker 03

  I think it was right after that shot had happened and that video had done pretty well. My brother and I were back home with our family and it was right around the Masters. I mean, I remember and Kobe and I were kind of sitting on the couch watching the golf tournament. And Kobe looked at me and he said, you know, we should probably see if DudePerfect.com is available. Like, if we're gonna go for this thing, we should maybe make it official. And so he logged on to whatever domain company and for $9.99, we snagged DudePerfect.com.

• 55:02Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 55:02Speaker 03

  And so I think that was, it kind of solidified it in our minds as like, okay, this is a thing.

• 55:07Guy Raz?

  All right. You're still in college, you're still college students. And I guess you get contacted by YouTube, right? At this point, this is 2009, they're like, hey, do you guys want to be a YouTube partner? Like, is that what they asked?

• 55:21Speaker 03

  I think so. It's changed over time, kind of how that partnership program works. Now it's a little more automated. If you, there's some very low threshold. If you are able to achieve X amount of views, then you can start to advertise against your stuff and make AdSense. So Google owns YouTube, right? So it's Google AdSense is kind of the piece that people make money on. And so I think back then, it was you had to have X amount of followers or X amount of views. But then YouTube itself would kind of contact you and say, do you want to opt in to be able to advertise? So we did.

• 55:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  But of course, I mean, we are talking almost no money whatsoever. I think it was probably four or five videos in, Ty comes running into the, to the living room at some point, this is when we're still at college. And he said, guys, we've officially made it. I think we just made collectively enough money to buy a sandwich.

• 56:08Speaker 01

  Technically, we had each made one cent. But I had the incredible foresight to say, one day, we will each be able to take this money that we made from people watching our videos and we will be able to go buy a sandwich with it.

• 56:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's what it was.

• 56:21Guy Raz?

  Because people don't realize that even if you get a million views on YouTube, it's not that, you don't get paid that much money.

• 56:28Speaker 03

  Well, especially back then. It was just so early. There weren't the type of, you know, demand that there is today from the advertiser's side.

• 56:35Guy Raz?

  Yep. All right, so you've got this LLC, but this was like still, you know, early days, right? And so, and you guys were in college, but presumably you kept making videos. What was the cadence at that point? After that, you know, that shot that you make in the stadium, there's a demand. So did you guys say, you know, we gotta do this every week, or we gotta do this every month? Or what did you, what did you think?

• 56:59Speaker 01

  I don't think there was a cadence even at that point. I think it was still so early on, even at that point, we still had no intention of like, oh, man, if we play our cards right, you know, this could be huge. I mean, we were, I guess, a little bit small-minded and didn't see like the big picture until a lot later down the road.

• 57:18Guy Raz?

  This is still just super fun, but you guys were getting attention, like the, you know, media outlets were interested in you. I mean, you were a bunch of college kids making these cool, fun videos. So presumably you were sort of seen as a novelty act or just like, right? Something like that at the time?

• 57:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's very much like the trick shot guys. I mean, that's what people labeled us as, is, oh, those are the basketball trick shot guys that are doing this.

• 57:41Speaker 03

  And then we said, oh, we're gonna shake that up. And then we started throwing footballs.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  Really diversified.

• 57:47Guy Raz?

  I read that in like 2010, you got a corporate sponsor, GMC, that came aboard, which sounds, that may sound to a lot of people like, oh, my gosh, you got a corporate sponsor. But oftentimes, it's like, hey, we'll give you $10,000 to make a video and we want to put our logo on it, right? I mean, that's, that's what that probably, something like that, meant at the time.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you're not far off. So GMC calls and they wanted us to do, first of all, just the fact that somebody wanted to pay us to make a video, like, that was mind blowing to us. We were like, we are scamming these people. This is incredible. And so we show up, I think it was down around Austin.

• 58:27Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 58:27Speaker 03

  And they had like a couple of, I guess there was like a few different videos that we were gonna try and do, that we were gonna post on our YouTube channel. And then they were gonna use as NBA Finals commercial. And then they were gonna use another one during the World Cup as a commercial. And so we show up to this place in Austin that we were doing the airplane shot.

• 58:46Guy Raz?

  You were going to be in a single-engine airplane flying over a basketball hoop?

• 58:51Speaker 03

  That's right. They basically asked us, "Hey, guys, if y'all could attempt any type of shot, what would it be?" And just off the cuff, we throw out, "Oh, I mean, we'd love to make a shot out of an airplane." And so like Ty said, then, you know, the I's got dotted and the T's got crossed. And all of a sudden, we roll up in a van to Austin, and there's this huge tent with at least 50 to 100 cars. And we kind of pull up and it's foggy in the morning. And, you know, we're all looking around.

• 59:18Speaker 01

  They must be having a wedding or something out here.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  God, this is a crazy event. Like, man, it's early for all these people to be out here. That's weird. And we walk in, and as soon as we walk inside the flap of the tent, people start looking at us and clapping. And we're like, "Oh, my gosh, they're here for us."

• 59:32Guy Raz?

  That was the production crew?

• 59:34Speaker 03

  That was more than a flip camera on video mode.

• 59:38Guy Raz?

  Oh, my God. And there was a real airplane?

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Sitting out in the field just waiting for us.

• 59:44Guy Raz?

  Like a crop duster? Like a low-flying airplane?

• 59:47Speaker 01

  It wasn't a crop duster. It was just a-

• 59:48Speaker 03

  Piper Cub. Yellow.

• 59:50Guy Raz?

  And so the idea was you would have a basketball hoop in the middle of the field, and you would fly low over it. And Tyler, you were the one who was gonna take the shot.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  Yep, that was the concept.

• 1:00:00Guy Raz?

  How'd you do that? What'd you do?

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  So I get up in this plane, and I'm talking to the GMC guys. And they're like, "Hey, you know, just keep in mind, like, we don't want to hit the truck." Because the serial number on this truck was like 0000004. And it's like, you know, we've only got one of these in the US. The other two are off somewhere else, and the other one's like getting finalized or whatever. So they're like, "Hey, don't, you know, whatever you do, don't hit the windshield or the hood and put like a massive dent in this truck that we only have one of." So the truck was sitting probably, I don't know, 30 feet in front of the basketball goal, where it could be seen in the camera.

• 1:00:35Guy Raz?

  Got it. Okay.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  And so I'm like, "That's fine. That's like, it's way far away from the goal. I'm not gonna hit the truck or whatever." But thanks for like the vote of confidence to put that in my mind right before I go up in the plane. And so we get up in this plane and they load probably, there wasn't a lot of room. They could only put like one bag of basketballs in the back of this plane, which is like eight.

• 1:00:55Guy Raz?

  Cause you're just gonna keep going flying around and flying around until you make it.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  Yep. And I just remember like, once we got up in the air and we kind of go for this first like pass, not getting ready to take the shot yet, but I looked down and I'm like, oh my gosh, they moved the truck right underneath the goal. I'm like, what are they doing? And they hadn't moved the truck at all. It just looked a lot closer to the goal from up in the air than it was. And so I'm like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be like, I have no control over where this goes. I've never dropped a ball out of a plane. Like who knows where this thing is going. And so we come around for the first pass and it was kind of starting to rain. I remember when I put my hands out the window, I was like, oh gosh, that kind of hurts because the rain was like spitting behind the propeller and it just felt like a bunch of needles going into my hands when I stuck my hands out the window to drop the

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  ball. So I, we are coming around. I'm like, this is the airplane shot. This is the first one we ever take. I dropped the ball out of the plane, out of the side of the plane and we're moving so fast that I can't really tell where the ball goes after I drop it. And the guys come on the radio, on the walkie talkie, and I could just tell like everyone went from this like super excited, like this is gonna be incredible. I can't believe we're gonna do a shot out of an airplane to this is most likely never gonna happen. Cause it was about like 150 feet past the goal. Like the worst miss probably in the history of Dude Perfect to that point, furthest from the goal, like not even close. And so you could just tell the energy was just like way down at that point. Yeah.

• 1:02:28Guy Raz?

  And so, so you, Ty, you're up in the plane and you're trying to make this shot from, from like 100 plus feet up and, and Corey presumably you're here on the ground. What was going on there?

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  So I'm down at the bottom at this point and the crew, like Ty said, is, is just deflated. I mean, this is gonna be a big time TV commercial. They're all dialed in, ready to go. And that first shot missed by, you know, like Tyler said, a couple hundred feet, if not, you know, 80 yards. I mean, it was like insane. There were some cows way far away and the ball almost hit a cow. And I'm like, oh gosh, this is about to be the most embarrassing day of our lives.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  So at this point, I'm like, OK, well, that's fine. It was, you know, I'm just going to drop the ball earlier. It was like the only thought I had at this, but it was the only thing I thought I could do. Like, no control over this. I just got to drop it earlier. And I'm like, OK, here we go. You know, round two. But I'm like, golly, this is taking forever because to reset the shot, the pilot had to take like a pretty huge loop to get back around. And so I'm just picturing how long like the Kyle Field shot took to get rebounds. Well, this was like, I mean, after we shot the ball, it was another like three minutes just to get back around to a point where we were even able to attempt another shot. So now I'm starting to do the math in my head like, how many, what am I going to get? Like, you know, 30 shots at this before it's sunset?

• 1:03:46Guy Raz?

  You're probably stressed out, by the way, because it's like a professional crew of people and these are like hardened, experienced production people. I'm sure you must have felt like, oh, God, I don't think they realize how long it's going to take.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  For sure. And we'd never had people waiting on us either to like film us. Like, it was always just us and I didn't care if the other guys had to, you know, sit down at the ground at Kyle Field and throw up, you know, a couple more rounds of rebounds. And so we come around for the second pass finally after what felt like forever. And I'm like, OK, well, I'm just going to drop it earlier and see what happens. It's probably going straight through the windshield of the new GMC Denali pickup truck. And I dropped the ball and it looked like it was like pretty good timing, but you know, the plane keeps going, so I can't really see. And all of a sudden, like the radio, all I hear is just.

• 1:04:42Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:04:43Speaker 01

  Well, I was, I told the pilot, I was like, I think I just made it.

• 1:04:50Guy Raz?

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

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• 1:06:53Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2010 and Tyler is up in an airplane for Dude Perfect's first sponsored video. And he can't quite tell from up in the air, but it looks like his second attempt has actually gone in.

• 1:07:11Speaker 01

  It took us like five minutes to actually confirm, okay, we did make it because nobody could even talk at that point.

• 1:07:17Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  And it was, I mean, that had to be like one of the most surreal moments in DP history as far as like just not expecting a shot to happen and then second try out of an airplane, swished it.

• 1:07:31Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  And it was just like a complete opposite emotion from after that first shot.

• 1:07:36Guy Raz?

  I mean, you guys were still in college, some of you graduated because I think Tyler, you would have another year of college, right?

• 1:07:43Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 1:07:44Guy Raz?

  And so this is May of 2010. You were in commercials for the World Cup, for the NBA Finals. At that point, I have to assume that people, at least on campus, knew you guys, knew who you were.

• 1:07:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that my senior year was a little bit different in the fact that people started to recognize us around campus and, you know, when the guys would come back in town to film something and we'd have a basketball goal in the back of the truck, like everybody knew what we were going to do. They're like, oh, nice dude, perfect, is going to film something. And, you know, people in our classes and stuff would know and they had seen the videos. And so there was a little bit of a small, I guess, celebrity status to it, but even then it still wasn't like a major thing at that point.

• 1:08:25Guy Raz?

  Corey, you and Cody and Garrett, you guys graduated, right? And Kobe too. And you went off to get a job, like a real job, right?

• 1:08:35Speaker 03

  Well, so again, five of us and three of the guys, not Kobe and I, were either getting married or had already gotten married by the end of school. And so we basically had to, you know, kind of make a decision on how we were going to handle the continuing Dude Perfect stuff. And so my brother and I decided to move back to Austin, which is where our parents were living at the time. And so we lived at their house with them and took the free option so that we could work on Dude Perfect during the week.

• 1:09:00Guy Raz?

  Because this was not sustainable. You were not making, you could not make a living off of this.

• 1:09:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, not even remotely. So we had gotten paid by GMC and that was essentially it. We'd made some ad money, but, you know, it's probably sandwich money at that point. And, you know, that was cool. And that definitely was like, opened our minds to the fact that this could be a real job. And so I think that gave us enough motivation to try and keep it going after school, but we didn't know how it was going to work. And so my brother and I kind of took the mantle of the weekly stuff. Kobe did a lot of the business calls and then I did a lot of the editing or all of the editing at that point.

• 1:09:33Guy Raz?

  Working with them on trying to get sponsors?

• 1:09:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, especially once that GMC thing happened. I think GMC or the production company probably is who really won the award for that. And it turned out to be that we didn't scam them, but in some sense, right, they got a great deal from us because it just got a ton of publicity. It was a great, great video.

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  Over a billion impressions on that campaign, I remember they said.

• 1:09:58Speaker 03

  That's exactly right.

• 1:09:59Guy Raz?

  And so that production company probably got a ton of business.

• 1:10:02Speaker 03

  I think they probably did. And so we started getting calls from different groups and agencies and production companies and brands. And so we just realized that this is a whole thing. Like this is a world that is available to us. And so Cory fielded a lot of that stuff. And then I was editing everything. And so we lived at our house while the other guys and their wives at this point had real jobs.

• 1:10:22Guy Raz?

  And you would just gather every week from different, like, because you're in Austin, Tyler, you were in College Station. Where were the other guys?

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

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

• 1:10:58Guy Raz?

  Right? Like Garrett was working in an architecture firm and you guys were working for your dad's church, Corey, right? You and your brother. And I guess, Tyler, when you graduated the next year, like you went and worked for a landscaping company.

• 1:11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I had done an internship at a landscaping company in Prosper, and I went back to work there. I was laying sod at the beginning on a maintenance crew and then eventually kind of oversaw like our residential department and a little bit of our commercial maintenance stuff.

• 1:11:25Guy Raz?

  So let me understand this. Texas is a very big state. You guys would drive once a week somewhere to a central location and film something to put out?

• 1:11:35Speaker 03

  Well, I wish it was a central location. The reality was, these guys were grounded here in kind of the Dallas area, right? And they're married and their families are here. So Cory and I were in Austin. It is about a four hour drive.

• 1:11:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:47Speaker 03

  So it's kind of past that easy drive status to where it's like, oh, this drive is pretty rough. But we probably drove it at least once, if not twice a week for four years. This was what kind of looking back, we, we think of as absolute, you know, the grind years, no question.

• 1:12:02Guy Raz?

  So you would leave super early in the morning on a Saturday or what do you leave on a Friday night?

• 1:12:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, probably Saturday morning.

• 1:12:07Guy Raz?

  And then you would film all weekend and then drive back on Sunday night?

• 1:12:12Speaker 03

  Exactly. Drive back and then I would edit it.

• 1:12:13Guy Raz?

  And so you had to have a successful shot in that two day period?

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  Definitely. No question.

• 1:12:22Speaker 01

  Certainly felt like it.

• 1:12:23Guy Raz?

  And meantime, you were thinking of new, new kind of tricks and stunts to do, right? Cause they had to be better than the previous one. How do you beat an airplane shot, like especially without a budget?

• 1:12:34Speaker 03

  It was tough to continue to try and outdo yourselves, right? I mean, this is back when all we did were trick shots. And so the bar is, is simple. It's make it better than the previous video. And what that usually means to people is farther or higher or something that just feels like a totally different concept.

• 1:12:49Guy Raz?

  I mean, you guys were like, you know, you got on Jimmy Kimmel, you were, um, you know, you were getting attention. Meantime, Ty, you're like, like laying sod Monday to Friday.

• 1:13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Weed eating, laying sod, selling plants, all the above.

• 1:13:05Guy Raz?

  Because you couldn't, even though you were getting sponsors and attention, it's, see, this is amazing to me. It was not, it wasn't actually that much money to, to make a sustainable business?

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:16Guy Raz?

  What explains that? I mean, I'm trying with all of the views you were getting and was it just like you guys weren't asking for, for enough? You were just kind of, or was it, you just, I don't know, just the, the industry wasn't quite mature yet? What, what, what explains that?

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  I think it's closer to what you said. The industry just wasn't quite there. I mean, I think even at the time, Dude Perfect has always been kind of a premier brand. We were charging even back then, what we felt like was top dollar for a YouTube group to be charging a brand to do a video.

• 1:13:45Guy Raz?

  Like what would you charge a brand back in 2011 to do a video for them?

• 1:13:49Speaker 01

  Gosh.

• 1:13:50Speaker 03

  I know GMC, the very first original thing, and this is for a TV commercial, so this felt way bigger than a YouTube video, but this was kind of the first thing we ever heard. I think they paid us 50 grand. And I mean, that was, it honestly was life-changing because it made us feel like this was-

• 1:14:05Guy Raz?

  10,000 bucks a person.

• 1:14:07Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And then we kind of learned about taxes and we were like, oh, that's funny.

• 1:14:10Guy Raz?

  That's $4,000 a person.

• 1:14:11Speaker 03

  But that was the first number we'd really ever heard. And so I think we, I think honestly, the biggest thing was we had to split it with five guys. And that just, that really carves into it pretty quickly.

• 1:14:22Guy Raz?

  Yeah. It's like, this was your side hustle because you had the full-time job, but clearly you had the vision of making this your main hustle, not your side hustle. But you guys were driving four hours back and forth from Dallas, I think basically until 2014. And from what I understand, it got to the point where some of you were like, I don't think I can keep doing this. This is not working.

• 1:14:48Speaker 03

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

• 1:15:30Speaker 03

  And so I went and, you know, tapped Kobe and woke him up. And he drives me, you know, in the middle of nowhere, Texas, wherever we were at this ranch. And he drives me basically 100 miles an hour towards the nearest hospital or emergency room that's probably 30, 45 minutes away. And so I get there and they tell me, you know, after doing some tests on me that I had what's called Bell's palsy. And it's basically kind of a paralysis of the face that they still don't know exactly what causes it, but what they usually see is stress and lack of sleep. And so they call it- It took six full months for me to get a single twitch in my face back.

• 1:16:05Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 1:16:05Speaker 03

  And it's just a practical example of how hard we really were going. And we would just do whatever it took to get that next video out. And to the point where we just broke. And so that's, that's kind of me at this point emotionally. Four years in is like, you know, I'm looking at the guys when, you know, when we're meeting up one day. And I was like, guys, I, I don't know if I can keep doing this.

• 1:16:25Guy Raz?

  Corey, were you, were you ever even slightly resentful of the other guys? Cause you were also going home and editing this stuff. And that's a lot of work. Were you ever like, God, those, you know, I gotta do all this work?

• 1:16:39Speaker 03

  Honestly, I don't know that I would have described it as resentful. I mean, sure, did thoughts cross my mind of, hey, these guys are not having to do Dude Perfect as much as I am? Sure. But the reality was they were working crazy hours with their other jobs. So we were both doing the same amount of, of work hours wise, because they had full time jobs during the week. And we all had DP during the weekend. So, you know, logically I couldn't really go there. But I think we were all so excited about what could be with Dude Perfect that we just powered through. But it, it hit a breaking point. And for me, it was the, the kind of physical piece.

• 1:17:11Guy Raz?

  And I guess around like, like 2013 or 2014, maybe somewhere around there, there was kind of a turning point where you guys were like some event for, for March Madness. And, and Tyler, I guess you suddenly realized you had to make a decision. Like you have this, this landscaping gig and you had to choose one job or the other.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Yep. I don't remember if it was the Houston Final Four or the Atlanta Final Four. But they, they had flown out ahead of time because they needed to be there Friday. I was having to work. I flew out Friday night down there. And Saturday, when we're all down there doing our event, I got an email from my boss at the time. And it said basically like, hey, you can't miss any more Saturdays. Like if, you know, if you're going to work here, I need you to be here Saturdays. So I remember I showed Garrett first. I think we were sitting on the plane headed back home. And I was like, man, I don't like, I don't know what we're gonna do.

• 1:18:08Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I mean, of course, now, looking back on it, knowing what we know, I would have thought you might have been thinking, yeah, I got that email and I thought, you can take this email and shove it up your, but that's not what you were thinking.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  Well, and we weren't in a place, not only would I, I hope that wouldn't be my thought, but we were also just not in a place that could warrant a reaction like that. I think when we really looked at it, we were like, okay, what if, cause Garrett had wanted to make a change at his architecture firm, I think anyways. And Cody was looking at making a move. And so I knew I had to find something else if we were going to continue to do perfect. And so I was like, what if, this was in April, this was during the final four, I was like, let's look and see what would happen. If for the rest of the year, for the next, you know, eight months, we just try dude perfect. And we had it figured out after doing all this research that we could each take home about $8,000 the rest of the year.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  And for some reason that, we felt good about that. For some reason that was like, okay, well, okay, we can totally do this till December and see what happens. And so.

• 1:19:13Guy Raz?

  You just do it on Saturdays. So you, you knew that you, you could make $8,000 each during the year.

• 1:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was still, it wasn't supplementing the income that we were making at our other jobs at that point. And so it was definitely.

• 1:19:24Guy Raz?

  It was ramen money.

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was definitely ramen money. So, you know, we had to have that conversation with not only our wives, but our in-laws. And, you know, for me and Garrett and Cody, we all had somebody else to take care of at that point. It wasn't just us. So.

• 1:19:38Guy Raz?

  You had kids.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think, I didn't have kids yet. I think Garrett may have just had his first kid.

• 1:19:45Speaker 03

  Which that's unfathomable to me now to think back, to have a child and to think, I'm going to quit my architecture career. Cause he had his masters and a pretty solid job and go into YouTube videos. Cause this is, this is cat videos still, you know?

• 1:19:57Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:19:58Speaker 03

  For the stage of YouTube, this is if you tell someone you're a YouTuber, it's you work in your basement. So for Kobe and I, we, you know, it was easy. We were still living with our family. Any money was enough for us. And, you know, anything for us was gravy. And obviously at some point. We wanted to make a little bit of money, but we were okay. And these guys were having to look at their, you know, father in laws in the eye and explain how they're going to take care of their girl. And it was funny because for Kobe and I, we're like, great, thank goodness. We can all, you know, kind, try and do this together. For those guys, someone had to pull the parachute first. And so I remember listening to the guys, you know, after deciding this was going to happen and they kind of looked at each other and it's like, okay, cool. Like, I get that we're all going to quit, but who's going to quit first? Right? Because, you know, once you, once you say that, you're burning that bridge realistically at that company.

• 1:20:43Speaker 03

  So it was kind of a funny conversation.

• 1:20:46Guy Raz?

  All right. So it's mid 2014. You guys all decide to go in, all in on this thing. And you've got to professionalize, right? I mean, I'm assuming you've got to like create some kind of infrastructure, at least have some kind of, some system to bring in incoming inquiries. And so I guess at this point, what, Tyler, your dad kind of helps out, decides, you guys decide he's going to help you guys out?

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. When we first did the GMC, when they sent that proposal, like as one of the first brands to ever work with us and we got a contract, we were like, what in the world? Like, this is like 50 pages. Like, who's going to read this?

• 1:21:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  And my dad being in sales and, you know, being a good negotiator and stuff, we were just like, well, let's just send it over to him and see what he says about it. And so that was kind of how that relationship started.

• 1:21:35Guy Raz?

  And what about camera work? Did you, did you hire a professional camera team or did you already have a team at that point?

• 1:21:42Speaker 03

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

• 1:22:24Guy Raz?

  And when you decided to go all in. How did you do, because you've got to do business development, you've got to get sponsors in, you've got to get revenue in. So how did that happen? How did you, how did you start to bring more of those people in?

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  I don't know, maybe a month after going full-time, we got an email from Nerf, who has been one of our, our longest partner that we've had, they have been since then. And so we had signed our first big Nerf deal to come out with Dude Perfect Nerf products and do videos for them. And that was like our first big partnership. And that for us just kind of confirmed like, okay, like this is what we're supposed to be doing. Like this is a great first step in the right direction, going full-time. We still didn't think that we needed an office. So for the first year, we pretty much just met at like Panera or Corner Bakery or whatever coffee shop we could sit in and not order anything

• 1:23:18Speaker 01

  until they kicked us out. And we got away with that for a while, but after some time, obviously had to start like making more real business decisions, I guess, and financial expenses. Like, okay, we do need an office if we're going to hire somebody to edit our videos so they can have a place to sit there and work. And it was kind of a slow transition, rolling into all that stuff and just kind of a learn-along-the-way process of what that looks like.

• 1:23:44Guy Raz?

  So, once you guys made that decision, you gave yourself like six to eight months, right? To see if it would work. Was this, I mean, you got the Nerf deal, so that was great. That was going to be sustainable. But then was it just like things started to just come in? As you put more videos out, you got more attention, more stuff came in. It just became like a natural kind of organic growth like that? Or did you have to go out and hustle and get the work to you?

• 1:24:08Speaker 01

  It was still a hustle, but I think we also moved into our first office. And office is overstating it. I mean, it was a pretty fun space.

• 1:24:15Guy Raz?

  It was like a strip mall, right? It was like a 2,000 or 3,000 square foot or something like that?

• 1:24:20Speaker 01

  Correct. It was a public-facing building, but it was a cool space, right? And so we knew we physically needed somewhere to office out of, but we didn't want it to be your typical, you know, cube farm. And so we made it as cool as we could and we built it out in a cool way. And it was, it was very, you know, sporty on the inside and activity-based and a basketball goal.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  Hanging on the wall and shuffleboard and ping pong tables and pool tables and a space that was very, you know, natural to film in. And so I think when people saw that, I think it was like, oh, these guys are serious. Like, this is the first time we've ever seen anyone online basically create a space.

• 1:24:54Guy Raz?

  This is before there were hype houses and all these places in LA now.

• 1:24:58Speaker 03

  Definitely.

• 1:24:59Guy Raz?

  And did you, you were financing these videos essentially through your sponsorship, right? Because the videos, even if they were getting a lot of views, that was not your revenue model at the time.

• 1:25:09Speaker 03

  It was a consistent revenue model, right? I think that's the cool thing about the ad side is you can start to predict and get a little bit of a predictable cash flow there. So it helped. I would say we probably thought about it more so as our YouTube money, meaning the ads, we can pay for our bills, right? And then the sponsorship stuff, that's what can hopefully help us, you know, support our families.

• 1:25:31Guy Raz?

  Did you guys, you know, you got to, now it's a business and this isn't going to be your livelihood and you got to really, your quality, the pressure on you is to make high quality videos because you've already been making high quality videos. So there's an expectation. You watch them, they look seamless, simple, because it's so hard to make them. I know that, looking at it. But that does create creative tension in any environment, even in our environment, you know? I know you're all friends and stuff, but in any kind of business arrangement, there's always going to be tension. Have you had big, big arguments between the five of you at certain points?

• 1:26:06Speaker 03

  I mean, we're brothers, right? Like, we have known each other for 14, 16 years at this point. So anything that you can imagine with family, you know, with five brothers, that's what's happened. So we've certainly, you know, been upset at each other many times. And that's a lot of people. That's a lot of cooks in the kitchen to try to agree and try to vote. And so as you can imagine, it gets messy. But I think we've all just, we've aligned on the things that really matter, right? We've majored on the majors and minored on the minors. And so our, you know, tent pole things, right? Quality and that people can trust everything we put out, like those things continue to kind of guide what we do. And so I think as a group, you know, we didn't have to convince each other about those things over and over again.

• 1:26:49Speaker 01

  I think, you know, for us, there's obviously been moments throughout the 12 years that have been extremely difficult and, you know, very confrontational and Difficult moments, and I think the only reason that Dude Perfect is still a thing today is truly because of our faith. And I think, you know, as five Christian guys, Jesus was all about loving people and forgiving people and serving people. And you get a lot of opportunities to do that when you have disagreements with your friends that you work with. And so we've definitely had our opportunities to do that. And I think truly that is the only reason that Dude Perfect is still a thing 12 years later.

• 1:27:24Guy Raz?

  Well, on that point, right, and I, that makes a lot of sense. You can always circle back to this thing you share, which is, in your case, is your faith. And you can kind of lean on that to resolve things. And I know we're talking about this more than normal because you guys don't really talk a lot about this on the videos, which I think is actually great. I mean, in a sense that you've got all kinds of kids and people watching and some people just, they respect faith, but they don't want, really not interested, don't want to hear about it.

• 1:27:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, I don't think it's something that we purposefully try to hide. Our main purpose for making the videos and any type of entertainment we do is to bring people together, right? I mean, I think at the end of the day, you know, we've actually been talking about it recently. Our mission statement is to be the world's most trusted world-class entertainment. So I think for us, I don't think that we feel like it's necessary, you know, nor is it necessarily very entertaining to sit around and talk about our faith on videos, but it is the most important thing to us. So I think we put, you know, entertainment as the key piece of our videos. And if anyone digs, you know, at all, they can kind of see, you know, what we're really all about. And we're happy to tell anyone that asks.

• 1:28:29Guy Raz?

  You know, we heard my, my boys earlier in the conversation, 12 and 10 years old. And that's how I learned about you through my boys. Cause I, I'm not a YouTube watcher and, you know, I'm in my mid 40s. It's just not my thing, right? And it's really cool how they connect with what you do. And as I've gone down the rabbit hole of Dude Perfect, it's clear that you have a massive audience. Probably your primary audience is like boys, right? Like probably between five and 15. Is that fair? That that's your biggest core audience?

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  I think it's definitely our biggest. I think we've been surprised over the years as we've started to transition out of just being the basketball trick shot guys, you know, now we've got. The Trick Shot videos are probably our least popular series we have now, which is awesome. I mean, we love that. That's cool to see, you know, us try new things and they work, I guess. So they're well received by the audience. So now we've got stereotypes and the battles and...

• 1:29:22Guy Raz?

  And these are shows, I should mention, these are like sketch shows, like stereotypes. You like have one where you all go to the beach and there's like stereotype of the person always gets sunburned. And like the muscle guy and like, that's what it is.

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  Yep. We've just tried all these different series and it's cool to see our audience grow with us. And especially like, I mean, you talk about some of these athletes and celebrities that we've been fortunate enough to meet. And, you know, on tour, we were shocked to see how many females were there. I mean, it was a good like, I would say 70, 30, 60, 40 split between girls and boys that were coming to the tour in 2019.

• 1:29:54Guy Raz?

  All right. Here's the other thing that's happened to you guys. You've become really famous. I mean, I, you know, there are going to be some people who listen to this who haven't heard of you. And but, but just so they know, you have like a bigger YouTube channel than the NBA, than the NFL, than Ariana Grande. I mean, you've, you've had 10 billion views of your videos. Like you guys are really famous. Like you get recognized wherever you go. How's that must change your life, right? You must get, you probably can't walk through an airport terminal without getting stopped.

• 1:30:28Speaker 03

  It's, I mean, there's no question it's drastically changed our personal lives. And again, something we didn't think about, right? I mean, when it started happening a lot, which I'd say is probably, I don't know, five or six years ago now is when we were like, oh, snap. Like people are recognizing us everywhere we go and not just as a group, but individually. It's tricky. I would say the large majority of the time, it's a really positive experience. But at the same time, you know, we're regular people too. And so we'll be out at dinner and we're with our family and our kids. And we'll be, you know, tucked in the back of a booth at a Mexican restaurant. And then you'll have a family stand up and the dad will say something like, hey, take a picture with our kids. You know, and he's not really asking. He's kind of saying, hey, do it.

• 1:31:09Speaker 03

  And you're stuck in the back of the booth. And if you take one picture, then everyone in the restaurant is going to notice. And, you know, before you know it, you'll have a line. And it's not that we don't appreciate everyone in the restaurant that their kids know us or their parents know us and that they want to take a picture. But obviously it just changes the whole dynamic.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think it just goes back to our faith, is why we handle situations like we do. I mean, if it was purely from a selfish perspective, I think there would definitely be times when you... Walk out of the office and you're like, man, the last thing I want to do is go take more pictures. I'm trying to get home and see my own family. But at the end of the day, like, if you think about it, like, you know, I may have 20 or 30 of those interactions in a day. I'm not going to be able to remember the kids or families' names that I meet or anything like that. But that kid is probably going to remember that experience for the rest of his life. But it's definitely a conscious decision that you have to make, that yes, it may be inconvenient, it may be frustrating, you may have just come off of having an absolutely horrible day personally. But there you walk outside and there's a

• 1:32:06Speaker 01

  group of 20 people waiting to take a picture with you. You've got to decide in that moment, you know, how am I going to handle this? Like, they have no idea what's going on in your personal life. I mean, they, and they should, they, there's no way they could.

• 1:32:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You guys expanded to a live show. You've got multi-channel shows on YouTube. Clearly, you've got a vision to make this bigger. And by the way, how many people work for Dude Perfect today?

• 1:32:32Speaker 03

  We're probably up to, between 15 to 20, you know, depending on what time people are listening to this. Yeah, full time.

• 1:32:39Guy Raz?

  And I think it's estimated you're like a $30 million business, annual business. Is that fair to say?

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I think we choose not to discuss finances on a detailed level. But yeah, there's plenty of articles and reports out there and they're not too far off on the estimates.

• 1:32:56Guy Raz?

  All right. So you are a, you're a media company now. What's the ambition? I mean, what do you guys want this to be? Because it's, you know, some people might say, oh, those are the trick shot guys. Some people might say, oh, those are the YouTube guys. Some people might say, oh, that's those guys that do that live show. Tell me, tell me the vision.

• 1:33:14Speaker 03

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

• 1:33:58Guy Raz?

  How crazy would you have thought if, when you were in college, one of you guys was like, "We're gonna make a really, really significant business that's gonna generate a lot of money out of these stupid, like, things we're doing in our group house."

• 1:34:15Speaker 01

  I think if you had have said that two years ago, we would have thought it was crazy. I don't think you had to go back 12 years to when we were back in college.

• 1:34:23Speaker 03

  But yeah, it was unfathomable. I mean, honestly, we could not have even wrapped our minds around it, partly because that world didn't really exist, right? I think kids now, your kids probably even grow up and one of their, you know, top things, "Hey, what do you want to be when you grow up?" "Well, I want to be a YouTuber."

• 1:34:36Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 1:34:36Speaker 03

  Because that's a thing.

• 1:34:37Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 1:34:37Speaker 03

  And it was not a thing when we were growing up, and it was barely a thing at all when we were, you know, in the beginning stages of Dude Perfect.

• 1:34:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah, by the way, thanks for that. Now, and every time I ask my kids, "What do you want to be?", they're all like, "I want to be the president. Like, I want to be a YouTuber." So appreciate it.

• 1:34:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, we have to apologize for that, and we didn't start water bottle flipping, but we definitely helped make it a kind of a thing, so we apologize to teachers for that all the time. I'm sure that's, you know, endlessly frustrating to them.

• 1:35:02Guy Raz?

  Yep. How much, for both of you, Tyler and Corey, how much of your success do you attribute to how hard you worked and just the grind, and how much do you think it has to do with luck?

• 1:35:14Speaker 03

  We are perfectionists, right? We all are, and we are all willing to put in that extra effort and whatever piece of the process you can imagine. I mean, just the other day, as an example, we launched a new book recently, and so we did kind of a contest giveaway, and we did this big film project in order to make it happen, and we put a lot of time and effort into it, and we edited it, and we looked at it, and we said, "I don't like the way it looks." Like, it's okay, no one would really bat an eye at it, but that's not the vision that we had. And we went, and we redid the whole thing, right? So that's just so classic Dude Perfect. We have this bar that I think is a lot higher than what most people imagine it would be, at least online. So on the hard work side, I mean, I'm not gonna lie, like, we, you know, we try hard, we take it seriously.

• 1:35:56Speaker 03

  It's the most fun thing ever, so we don't take it too seriously, but we take the opportunity that we have with it seriously. And, you know, if we can spread a little bit of hope and joy in that sense, that's a huge win.

• 1:36:08Guy Raz?

  How about you Tyler?

• 1:36:09Speaker 01

  I mean, there's no question that we've all put in a lot of work, but I think we would still be putting in that work. I mean, I was putting in that work when I was doing landscaping. Our personalities have always been like, the way we were raised is, you know, you've got to work for something. It's not just going to be handed to you. And so I think we tend to look at it, maybe not so much of luck, but more so that God has kind of blessed us with this platform for a reason. And even if it's just as simple as providing content for families to sit down and watch together. I think we, we hope at minimum, like that's what we can provide for people. And I don't tend to look at it as luck, but I think it's been a huge blessing to be able to have a platform like that.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  I mean, it would be a waste if at the end of this, it was like, oh, okay. Well, we made some funny videos on this website called YouTube that may or may not be around in 50 years. And I think we all hope that there's a little bit more meaning and a little bit more purpose behind Dude Perfect than that. When this is all said and done.

• 1:37:13Guy Raz?

  That's Tyler Toney and Cory Cotton, two of the five co-founders of Dude Perfect. Oh, and by the way, I think we may have forgotten to ask just one more critical question. Uh, Bram, you wanna, you wanna take this one?

• 1:37:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. Have you ever scored an incredible trick shot, but it turns out you weren't recording?

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  We have. So I was like, hey, well, let me go to the front yard and see if I can make this shot over the house into the backyard. And I was like, I'm just going to go practice it and throw a few. And I ended up making it and we were not filming. And so we decided, rule number one of trick shots, you're either filming or you're not filming.

• 1:37:51Speaker 02

  And I have a last question. Was that trick shot?

• 1:37:54Guy Raz?

  Daddy, daddy has to do his job. Daddy has to do his job.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Dad's going to be out of a job soon, sounds like.

• 1:38:00Guy Raz?

  Do you want to say bye?

• 1:38:01Speaker 02

  Bye. Bye.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  All right. See you, boys. Thanks for the question. Y'all have a good day.

• 1:38:05Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you're not yet a subscriber, please do subscribe to the podcast wherever you get your podcasts. If you want to write to us, our email address is [email protected]. If you want to follow us on Twitter, we're at How I Built This, or mine is at Guy Raz. On Instagram, we're at How I Built This NPR, or mine is at Guy.Raz. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neve Grant, with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff includes Casey Herman, Rachel Faulkner, James Delahoussaye, Julia Carney, Elaine Coats, Farah Safari, Liz Metzger, Annalise Ober, and Harrison V.J. Choi.

• 1:38:49Guy Raz?

  Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This. This is NPR.