YouSaid · the spoken record

Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal

lines on the record: 55
first: 2024-04-08
most recent: 2024-04-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. This episode was researched and produced by Catherine Cypher and edited by Neva Grant with music composed by Rontin Arablui. We had engineering help from Gilly Moon and Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes JC Howard, Casey Herman, Alex Chung, Carrie Thompson, John Isabella, Melia Aguadello, Sam Paulson, Chris Massini, and Carla Estavez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to how I built this.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neil. Otherwise known as Rhett and Link. YouTubers and the founders of Mythical Entertainment. By the way, besides that Carolina Reaper hot pepper, they have tried many, many weird foods over the years and always on camera. They've sampled French onion soup, jelly donuts, a peptobismal pop tart, and something that I can't even imagine. It's so gross a Philly cheesesteak cheesecake”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You guys, when you think about the journey you've been on, right and the decades long journey of really grinding to Just to make a living, and now today, among them easily, the most successful YouTubers on the planet, how much of where you got to do you attribute to the work you put in, and how much do you think has to do with luck and fortune?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You guys are, I've been at this for a long time and have built an incredible business around it. And I wonder if there ever moments where, you know, you kind of want to get off the hamster wheel of content creation because you are still making something every single day. It's a lot, right? And you don't need to do it anymore. I mean, you're obviously supporting a staff and a bunch of people who work for the company. But I wonder when you sort of you look out on the horizon and you look at sort of the long game this in the way you're doing it now.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, now you have a Pretty significant entertainment brand, right? But you are still the center of it. Red and Link are still sort of the brand centers of it. When you think about sort of the longevity of the brand, do you think about ways to pull Rhett and Link out of it so we can live without Rhett and Link, or is that not that important for you, sort of thinking about it in those terms?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And mythical kitchen can really comes out of all the food videos that you guys have done over the years, the trying food, going to the Costco food courts, just different. And they have cookbooks. And by the way, are you guys... Pretty good cooks.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As good mythical mourning became bigger and bigger, how did you think about mythical in general? When did you start to think about, okay, this is a bigger entertainment brand and let's think about how we can build it out because there's podcasts, there's a bunch of different channels. There's books, there's live tours. Now there's merchandise. There's a whole kitchen world which we can talk about. Did it just kind of happen organically or were there moments where the two of you were like, let's architect out what we want this to be?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm wondering, as because it feels like it seems like there was a transition over time. Probably there was a point. Maybe it was 2015, 2016, where you started to come into real money, serious money”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, obviously we could do a whole episode on that journey. And it's a very personal thing There was a and has been an approach that was designed to appeal and to be safe for everybody, right? I mean, there's a lot of stuff and has been a lot of stuff on YouTube that is not safe for everybody. But there's a good also good business reason to make things safe for everybody.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm wondering on that point, you started out as Christian entertainers and you weren't doing explicitly Christian or even inexplicitly Christian themes. But like, did you still think about your videos through a kind of a Christian prism?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Who was watching the video? I mean, as your channel mythical, because now you've got mythical entertainment, right, and mythical becomes the brand. I mean, there's Ret and Link, but RetLink are mythical. Who is watching it? Was it kids?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, and it was a combination of the algorithm changing, but also you kind of understanding through experimentation what people wanted to see, like the first, I think your first just massive, massive video that now has more than 30 million views, was eating, I don't know why you did this. A Carolina Reaper pepper, which is like really dangerous.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you do this show the mythical show, I think 12 episodes. But basically, from what I understand, it didn't matter that you didn't keep doing that because you had the daily show, Good Mythical Morning. But I guess that money gave you the chance to really take risks and experiment with different styles that you would then carry over to good mythical mourning.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they approached you in twenty thirteen, shortly after, not that long after you launched Good Mythical Morning, and they were like, hey, we want to finance something. We want to give you some money.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so you would do this, you'd film this every day, put it out on YouTube, and then spend the rest of the day making or thinking about other videos that you would do or songs or sketches or skits or something like that.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, all right, so IFC does not renew the show, and there you guys are living in Southern California trying to break into Hollywood, right? And presumably wondering about your next move. But I think at that point, you already had another idea in the works, right?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we come back in just a moment, how Rettinink make it work? Regardless. Stay with us, I'm Guy Ross, and you're listening to how I built this Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2011, and Rhett and Link have completed the first season of a show for IFC, a show in which they make these very funny commercials for local businesses. For example, they make one for a taxidermist from Ohi, California named Chuck Testa. And it's actually amazingly funny and weird and worth looking up.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you guys move out to LA with your families to make this show with IFC and How did it go? I mean, was it take off? Was it a hit?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, because TV at that point still seemed like that was where the opportunities were. I mean, YouTube was fun, but it was really, we want to get on network TV.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This was IFC. I think, and so this before ask you about that, I mean, By that point, when IFC contacted you because they wanted to make a show around these real commercials of these small businesses, what do you estimate your annual revenue was? Was at that point, I mean, $10,000 a video were you doing one a week? Were you doing two a month? Because you guys have gone from like maybe making $35, $40, $45,000 a year to $100,000, $200,000 a year or more?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, this commercial went so viral, and the tagline was where black and white people go by furniture, basically, something like that. And you had a song.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I should preface this. Your fans know this. This is going to become a very famous. The Red House one. I mean, I remember people.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I think you had cultivated an audience also, maybe there wasn't as much crossover, but from your time as Christian comedians, and that would have been off brand. So, this was the beginning of these kind of commercial opportunities. And I guess one of the ways that you also, or one of the ideas you came up with was to make like spoof commercials, but for businesses.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It seemed like a lot Badly, and you would put the videos on your YouTube page, but it was all, I mean, so interesting that Alkeseltzer of all brands reached out to you because I remember when I was a kid, the commercials were always like two old guys in Delhi eating a big corned beef sandwich, and then he was like, plop, plop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is. Look at it and say, Oh, that's for old people And your audience was not that audience.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take us around the country. Trip across the US that you would make Videos for Alka Seltzer. You are in an RV, you asked for 42,000 dollars for 21 videos.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you were kind of piecing together different opportunities. Like you get a sponsorship, you had this live stream show that was going to bring in 24,000 bucks a year. And I guess at one point, Alka Seltzer reached out to you. They came to you and they were like, hey, we like what you're doing. Can we sponsor videos?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell me a little bit about your lives at this moment in time. I mean, you had this great, you know, Hollywood network contract that kind of fell apart. And now you are both in your early 30s. You've got young families. Were you stressed out about your situation, about money, about health insurance, about any of that?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at that time, I mean, 2007, man. I mean, most mainstream media organizations just thought of YouTube as nothing, as a joke, right? Even to convince small companies that this was a viable place to advertise must have been really hard.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, which I've seen and is like you're wearing mustaches and you're tailgating outside of stadium. Yeah, in the country.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rewrites made the cut. So that airs. And did you feel like maybe this? Was not going to be a long term play. I mean, what was your sense? Did you think that I'm bearing the lead here? The show was canceled after four episodes.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they essentially offered you the job to be the host of the show called Online Nation in 2007. Actually, pretty sort of maybe ahead of its time kind of an idea, because YouTube was still so new. But the idea was you guys are going to host a show that was going to show clips, funny clips from the internet.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, at what point did you leave Campus Crusade for Christ? Did you leave that job? I mean, because I know you are, I mean, you're making videos. I saw a video from this time. It's a hugely popular video you guys did called The Facebook song where you are sort of parroting Facebook. And the two of you in a Facebook Windows, I mean, you're kind of just singing about the weirdness of Facebook at the time.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when we're talking about reach, I have to assume you're talking about hundreds or a few, maybe thousand people who would see these video admin.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's amazing because you were doing this in like 2004, right? And there was no, there was just like a minuscule audience for this. And there was no way to make money off of it. It was just a creative outlet to Give your existing audience or the people that you were going to go perform for and a chance to see you, to see who you were before you got there.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you're going around basically performing, and presumably becoming kind of celebrities on the crew circuit, right? People started to know in that community know about you guys.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you guys, when you decide to do this, to pursue this full time, essentially you were going around basically doing a comedy tour of college campuses and meeting with campus crusade for Christ members, basically.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this really prompts you guys to leave your jobs to go full time for Campus Crusade for Christ. And I think you had to raise money to pay yourselves. You had to, part of your job was to get the money to raise the money that would pay for your salaries. First of all, I'm assuming your parents were also supportive of your devotion to your faith, but was any part of them, guys, really important to support the church and your faith, but like engineering is a really stable job. And I don't know about this. Did either of your parents kind of express that”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And they are still your wives. These were your girlfriends at the time And presumably, by the way, as an aside, they had to, they were marrying into this friendship too. I mean, they had to accept that their husbands were going to be spending a lot of time together. So presumably the wives had to get along too.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the time, just to put in context, this is, I think, 2001 or 2, and I think both of you were newly married. Both of you got married at a pretty young age, right?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And meanwhile, a lot of other things are going on in your lives at that point. You both graduate and you both get pretty good jobs in engineering. I think Link, you went to IBM and RET, you went to go work for a company called Black&V, but you were still on the side doing these events for campus crusade for Christ. Pretty early on in both of your careers, you both start to think about leaving, right?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I guess what started to happen is that the leadership of campus crusade for Christ noticed that you guys were attracting huge numbers of people. And I guess you guys started to get invited to host other events, like this big Christmas conference that they would do in North Carolina every year. I'm assuming this was like the same type of comedy, like really loose sketches and that type of thing”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this was, I mean, this was basically like two years of college where you could just experiment in front of an audience that probably just thought it was funny and hilarious. And you could just, I mean, you could just try a bunch of things.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do you get to make the videos and make people laugh? Yeah, and I guess you actually pulled it off, right? Because as it turned out, when the MC of those meetings graduated, you guys, you kind of asked to take over, right? Is that right, Rhett? Like, I guess you became the MC at the meetings and you'd play videos that you guys made. Describe what kind of videos.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You got the same clothes on? He's got the same clothes on. So you're watching a video of this guy running to get to the meeting, jumping off a building, and then this actual guy in the same clothes runs into the room. And so it makes it seem like you were watching. This whole thing in real time, and it was”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. I know both of you went on to North Carolina State to go to college. And I guess while you were there, you both joined Campus Crusade for Christ as a national Christian organization on college campuses all over the country. I don't know if they're as influential today as they were at the time. Maybe they are. But you joined this group.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Were you guys, I mean, I know you grew up both of you as a small town and probably a lot of most kids went to church on Sundays. Were you guys involved and active in church in the same church as kids?”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, it's just, I think there's this implausibility about the story because, I mean, you meet in first grade, you're friends, and you're really close friends, almost like brothers. And to the point where by the time you're in high school, you're both saying, like, we've got to keep this going. We have something here. There is some charisma, some dynamic that we both, like you weren't articulating it that way, but intuitively, you knew that there was something the two of you together could do more powerfully than you could do on your own.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Try weird food or do different stunts. Across their channels, they've amassed over 75 million subscribers. And judging by their financials, they built a pretty impressive business. Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neil have known each other since first grade. They are best friends. They played in a band together in high school, and by then they had forged their friendship in a literal blood pact.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On this show in the past, Casey Neistad, Dude Perfect, Hank and John Green, among others. But we decided that this month we're going to dig even deeper and take a look at a few really prominent creators to find out more about the mechanics of building a media company on YouTube. And today the story of Rhett and Link. It's been estimated that their production company, Mythical Entertainment, brings in tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue. Much of that money comes from advertising and brand endorsements, but also from live shows, merchandise sales, and other projects. And not that long ago, both Ret and Link were struggling to make a living from their videos. Now, if you're not familiar with them, basically they're best known for a daily YouTube show called Good Mythical Morning. And on it, they talk about interesting stories in the news.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Millions of subscribers, a bigger reach than even NPR or CNN or the New York Times. It would have been inconceivable just ten years ago that a single person could build a media empire through YouTube. But that is exactly what happened. Ask any American kid under, say, twenty to name an anchor of a nightly news program on TV? I'd be willing to bet fewer than a quarter could name one. But ask them who Mr. Beast is or Mark Rober, and again, I'm willing to bet that the majority would be able to answer that, because YouTube and also TikTok, of course, are where a growing number of people get their information, for better or for worse. But what's remarkable about all of this is that, well, it's created some really significant businesses. Now, we've done a few content creator stories.”
2024-04-08 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Mythical: Rhett and Link · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT