They Built A $2M Business To Fund Their Dreams

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They Built A $2M Business To Fund Their Dreams

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Oct 18, 2023

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In this video, I'm in Chicago to meet Dylan and Henry - two college roommates who built a $2M/Year business to fund their creative dreams. They share their strategies for landing BIG clients (Ali Abdaal, Will Smith, Naval...), AND the secret that has gotten them over 1 billion views on YouTube. But the best part about their business - they optimize for fun first... THEN for money.

0:00 - Intro
1:04 - Meet The Boys
1:26 - Business Breakdown
2:04 - Content Strategy
2:28 - 1 Billion Views
2:43 - Background
3:43 - Finding The Idea (Blitz Strategy)
4:56 - How They Self-Funded The Business
5:38 - Landing Big Clients (Squatter Marketing)
7:08 - How To Create Viral Content
8:09 - How To Hire
8:45 - Where To Find Talented Editors
9:22 - Costs of The Team
9:56 - Starting A Business With A Friend
10:58 - Content OVER Money
11:30 - Day in the life
12:05 - Future Vision & Strategy
12:59 - How To Find Profitable Ideas
13:30 - Advice

Follow The Boys
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/DylanJardon
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/HenryBelcaster
🎥 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@dylanjardon
🎥 YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@HenryBelcaster

Our Links
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📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/starter_story/
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/thepatwalls

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These two roommates built a 1 8 million a year business in two years

They've worked with some of the biggest names on the internet and have done over

1 billion views on YouTube with a simple formula for going viral

But they have a confession their business is not profitable

We had like 40 000 of this debt for like months and months and months

They choose not to be profitable for a reason

reason because their goal is to build a business that optimizes for having fun rather than profits

And like Mr Beast invest every dollar back into creating their own content

and chasing their dreams

Make as much cash here and then dump that all into building the next Disney

They invited me into their wacky studio in Chicago

broke down all the ways they make money

and showed me just how fun it is to build a business with your best friend

They also broke down their dead simple formula on how they can guarantee millions of views

Just humans are wired

In this video Henry and Dylan put on a masterclass on how to chase your dreams

while having a shit ton of fun along the way

I'm Pat Walls and this is Starter Story

Welcome Thanks for having

Tell me about who you guys are and what you built

I'm Henry this is my best bud Dylan

And we built Clip co which is an animation studio that does 2 million a year in top line

And then we take basically all the profits from that

and we make these crazy animated shorts of our own

that tell really complicated ideas in a simple funny way

Can you guys explain to me how your business works

and what your goal is by creating this business to fund your creative pursuits

So basically we've got a pool of the best animators in the world

best animators and video editors

And then we work with a lot of companies that have a lot of media that they want to make

but they don't have anyone to execute on it

So we just match up Awesome Animator with a company that doesn't have any editors

and we basically let them work together

So that business Clip co is this cash flowing machine that allows us to hire

you know we have like 10 of our own animators that just work on our content and pay us

So it cash flows into the content that we want to make

And how much content are you guys making

Our goal with content is like can we just get out one short per day

Now I say that but they're like one of the most highly animated 60 second shorts in the world

We say it's like South Park for nerds

So we want to explain something in 60 seconds that's maybe really complex

but tell it in a funny and simple way

And we're also taking those shorts and turning them into an illustrated email

So basically we double the content

And what kind of numbers is this content doing

In the last year of putting out daily shorts we've done a billion views combined

And then we just launched this Smart Nonsense newsletter

which did like 10 000 subs in the first month

And now we're three weeks later and we're at like 20 000 subs

Take me through the timeline of when you guys first met and everything you've built since

I met Henry at this Accepted Students Day in college in 2015

We're basically good friends through all of college

The only like entrepreneurial friends

We kept talking and by 2020 we're like

hey let's take these conversations and turn them into a podcast

And hopefully the whole world will listen

He's like dude like I think if we start a podcast and it'll be about this

we'll call it Smart Nonsense

And dude based on my numbers in six months

we could have a million people listening to this thing

And I'm like sign me up

Three months later we're running out of like unemployment money from the government

And the podcast has 14 views

And so that's when we were like okay we need to figure out how to make money

Service business was the best way to do that

We didn't really have anything

It was just us

We had some ideas

We turned that into an agency which prints a lot of money

And then we have all these animators and all this money

And we're like 2022 is the year of making content

So for the last year we've been making YouTube shorts

And that's what's taken us from zero to a million subs on YouTube and a billion views

Where did the idea for Click the agency come from

It was basically like we made a podcast and hired editors abroad in the Philippines

to help us produce it

We like did this whole system

So I'm like let's try this little podcast system with our favorite podcast

which the first one was my first million

They're looking to crack into video

Sam Parr and Sean Puri have no idea how to do a video podcast

So they're hitting up Twitter like yo who's going to help us with video

Should we do video vote in this poll or whatever

And we're like dude we'll do it for free

And we're there tomorrow

Yeah

And basically like forged plane tickets

We're like dude we're literally there tomorrow

I hope you're at your house

And then Sam and Sean are like are you serious

Like what the fuck

What is this

So we had this strategy

Like we're crazy

We're going to show you exactly what we're going to do for you

And then just beat you over the head with it until you pay us money

We tried this with the All In podcast

We want to work with them

So like let's make one video for them

That'll like wake them up

Second video is like oh this is really interesting

Like what's Henry doing

What's Dylan doing

And the third video they're like how do we work with you

And it was cool

Like in All In's case I remember the first Blitz video went out

And Jason Calacanis was like I don't know what you want but like you're hired

So that it woke them up pissed them off a bit

So you guys were basically just doing free work

How did you guys fund this

The first agency we worked with basically gave us a little bit of buffer

We have maybe a month of free work we can do

but they better pay us like the day that month ends

Unfortunately they didn't pay us the day it ended

So Henry's credit card basically came into our lives

And we had like 40 000 of this debt for like months and months and months

And we were always of the mindset

We were like OK if we can't pay this credit card what's the worst

It's a 20 premium

We got to like we just have to make 20 more money

That was kind of our mindset

We just have to sell one more client

We can do that

Luckily we tend to grow the business to like pay it off

But it is this risky like scary in the moment

But shit we do have a lot of debt

Like a lot's riding on this

You guys have worked with some huge names

Will Smith Ali Abdaal Naval

How did you land huge clients like that

We called it squatter marketing

We're just going to pretend like they hired us

and be the crazy person that like makes videos for them for a year straight

just not getting paid

But because they share all our stuff everyone thinks we work with them

They're like oh if Alwyn wants to work with them

why wouldn't we

Because that's the pinnacle

So now we get all the clients from their network

Quick break

This is me five years ago desperate to start my own business

but plagued with shiny object syndrome

I tried building SaaS tools freelancing affiliate marketing

but none of these business ideas ever panned out to anything

But everything changed one day when I looked inside and wondered

what if instead I built a business around what I'm good at

and what I'm passionate about

Well that decision led me to building a business

that now makes over a million dollars a year

And that's what Starter Story is all about

It's a community of thousands of founders

founders who changed their life by building an online business

around their skills and their passions

Our 4 000 plus case studies and business idea breakdowns

will show you how regular people just like you

found the right idea and turned it into millions

For example Luke joined Starter Story

and dove into our case study about a newsletter business

that makes over 25 million a year

Just one month later he launched his own newsletter business

that did 5 800 in revenue in 30 days

So if you're serious about finding that right idea

click the first link in the description

We're running a special for the YouTube family

the video

I'll see you around

Peace

You guys have done over a billion views on YouTube

You've created viral content to a science

So what's the secret of creating viral content

How do you do it

When we were trying to engineer viral content

Dylan comes to me and he's like

what have people been watching forever

for the last tens of thousands of years

years And what will they keep watching

And we came to the conclusion it was like story

People were telling stories in cave paintings

So they will be around another 50 000 years right

We were doing all this content before that was like abstract

abstract And I was talking about book quotes and like who knows what

And Dylan was like Henry just tell a really good story

Humans are wired to listen to stories

So if your story is good on a 60 second clip

you can get people to watch for 55 seconds

The human brain literally can't not finish watching a story

Like we want to close those loops

So that was the big breakthrough with story

And then our advantage was we had this team of amazing animators

So we can now animate these stories and bring them to life

with basically our version of South Park

So now you're hooked on the story itself

And then you're just following the journey on screen

You guys have a team of 50 animators and editors

Tell me about how to hire great people and keep them on

Our principle has always been hire better

So our current team we're not going to accept them unless they wow you

Meaning like wow this person is better than me

I would learn from them

And then you look back and you have 50 people

who are all just learning from each other

And it's so talent dense

When we're looking at people's portfolios we should just trust our gut

If they're really good our gut is always like whoa

like did our jaw hit the floor

Were we like wow

If we see someone work and our guts like on the fence never going to work out

And where do you find this kind of talent

We started hiring when we were getting money from the government to survive

And we're like okay Henry will sleep on the floor

So he doesn't need as much money

And I just wear the same T shirts every day

So we'll take the extra money and hire editors

But we couldn't afford like a 5 000 6 000 editor in the U S

But we knew we also couldn't afford to be editing content daily

If we wanted to make content daily we need to outsource the editing immediately

Otherwise we'll burn out

We can't edit and make all the content

If we want to focus on the content we need an editor immediately

So we hired in the Philippines

The Philippines is the best place in the world for creative talent

What is the cost of something like that look like

A lot

The cost is a lot

Our personal team is like maybe 25 000 or 30 000 a month

which is funny because that's a lot of money to be paying for shorts that make 5 000 a month

So operating at a total loss

But for us it's like that never felt like much money because

it was just cash flowing from the agency

We never saw it

It was never in our pockets

Might as well be I don't know lit on fire

Maybe this is the benefit of doing the Mr B strategy of

just throwing profits back into everything

So it doesn't feel like we're spending anything

For anyone watching this video

I want to know what it's like to start a business with your best friend

I don't know how you could start a business without your best friend at this point

The highs are so incredibly high and the lows are so grim

I guess one thing we do is just like use humor to get out of it

Every time it's like Lucky we're going to make 50 000 by tomorrow

How do we do that

And he's like dude I don't know but we do it every time

For any solo founder kudos to you but we could never do it

This is like the best thing in the world

I'll also add like so Dylan's a perfectionist through and through

Sweats the details every single one of them

And my skill set is very much like let me just ship things that are 80 good enough

So me without a Dylan over time just like start sprinting in the wrong direction

Dylan without me doesn't get enough stuff shipped out the door to have iterations

So I think that kind of co founder of maybe the executor and maybe the perfectionist or

visionary or the builder and the seller I do think like that's probably maybe the

best archetype but maybe it's all I know

So you guys have this business that makes 2 million

but your whole focus is on creating content

Why content over money

Well we saw the pinnacles of success

Luckily like doing all this blitzing we got into the room

into literal parties with some of the richest most powerful people

And the funny thing was a lot of them were jealous of us and what we could do

They would ask us about like hey how do you build a personal brand

How do you grow

And we're just like let's just make enough money

We don't need a billion dollars like they do and just funnel all our money into content

and just kind of like shortcut what they did

Walk me through a day in the life for you guys

You got two really sides of the business that you're working on

What does a typical day look like for you with these businesses

At this point because we've outsourced the entire running of the agency

it's just like explore ask the question why find that thread go down the rabbit hole

And then our job is just like tell it in a 60 second book report which is super fun

So we just get to learn and be curious

And then I spend maybe an hour a day just like floating around the agency

making sure there's no major fires

And then we usually talk in the afternoon and he's got some crazy ideas

something he's been thinking about that we explore

What is the long term vision

What does the future look like for what you guys are doing

We're definitely lifestyle first

So we're just like always optimizing for fun

What's the path of least resistance

How can we have the fewest headaches

How can we just be happiest in the short run

So it was always like how can we put the right people in place

to make sure we're working on the content on the stuff

One thing we like is this idea of being above the clouds

It came from Colin and Samir

But it's like you need to stay above the clouds

have everyone doing whatever they need to be doing below the clouds

But the second you the leaders or the explorers the visionaries

the second you come below the clouds and you're doing day to day stuff

and answering this and doing that fire you're in a lot of trouble

Beyond that we don't plan too far out

I have this tendency of planning and planning and planning

and getting the logo design and doing the artwork

and like not actually doing anything

So Dylan having us just like default to action

Our plan is in the short run optimize for happiness

happiness And then like as a byproduct just teach as many people as possible

It seems to be working

Where can people watching this YouTube video get ideas on how to make money now

We started with our own itch

We needed a podcast to get edited

So we hired editors

And then oh turns out other people have podcasts that they need edited

So they just used our editors

Turns out they could pay us for that

So we have always just subscribed to do what you want create the product you want

And there are probably other people like you

So sell them that product

Yeah if we create something we truly need right now

there's probably 10 other people that need it

And we can charge them a couple thousand bucks

That's enough money to live

So scratching your own itch

Last question we asked the founders

if you could go on your guys shoulders and give each other advice

what would you do differently

Or what advice would you have for founders

founders The tendency because it was my tendency

is to just overcomplicate almost everything in business

I'm like thinking about oh what's our subscription price

And it turns too high

And like we need account managers and we need project managers

and we need quality assurance

And Dylan's like no if we can match an animator with a client for two years

everything else goes to zero

Nothing else matters

I think a big misconception is how you approach business

Business shouldn't be this

You make money 10 years in the future

which is kind of where Henry was going originally

Versus I'm like how do I make money 10 hours in the future

How do I do something now

Make money today

I think people just get scared about business and end up not doing anything

when you could just go and pitch your idea and try and make 10 bucks off it

That's the advice I would give to anyone thinking about becoming an entrepreneur

Thanks for having me guys

Thanks for coming through

Follow this advice and you'll get 1 billion views in one year

Nice

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