Episode 175 - Dude Perfect: The World's Most Trusted Source Of Entertainment with Coby Cotton
How homemade trick shot videos filmed in the backyard of a college house turned into a multimillion dollar business for five best friends. Join us as we ask Dude Perfect just how they turned a college hobby into a full time job. With over 56 million YouTube subscribers, Dude Perfect has grown from a college hobby into a household name. Today, we’re going to talk about the early days when they were just making videos for fun, the day they all quit their day jobs and went all in, and what the day-to-day looks like now.
Episode Transcript
*Some listeners have found it helpful to have a transcription of the podcast. Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it. The FDE movement is a volunteer-led movement, and if you’d like to contribute by editing future transcripts, please email us.
Coby Cotton: We had fun making the first video, but to your point, certainly did not think anything real material was going to come of it. We were just having a good time. The response was really strong and so in typical college fashion, we wanted to continue trying what we had just seen a little bit of success with. We went out to Tyler's family's ranch, filmed it. The response was even better, and it continued along that path, and a few videos in company started emailing us saying that they wanted to be featured in the videos. And so for us, that was the light bulb moment of whoa, I didn't even know that was a thing. And it took us a while before we did that first one.
Henry Kaestner: Welcome back to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, I'm here with William William, how are you?
William Norvell: Good to be here. I'm doing great today, actually, and even better wants to bring Kobe on.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah. So with you, so this is a big, big, big deal for me. And I'll explain it here in a second. So before we go too much further into it, Kobe con welcome to the program.
Coby Cotton: Thank you, guys. Thank you. It's good to be here. I appreciate you having me.
Henry Kaestner: So this is a big deal for me personally. I am the father of three teenage boys. William is the father of a three year old boy, and he is about to get ready into all sorts of different things, like adventures in Odyssey podcasts and all the things that come from focusing on a family that have been such a big part of my parenting journey over the course of the last 19 years. But I can think of few things that have been more formative in my boy's lives, especially my youngest son's life. Then dude, perfect. You got five guys who love Jesus who love having a great time. They're athletes like my boys are. And for them to see great relevant cultural role models is a blessing to me. As a father, you want that they talk about the fact that you can be the greatest father of all time, and it's incredibly important. But it's also the four or five other cultural influences and other men that might speak into their lives. So the influence of a role model that does things at such scale that dude perfect does it. Kobe, how many subscribers do you have?
Coby Cotton: I think it's around 56 million right now.
Henry Kaestner: That's a big
William Norvell: number. That's gosh, you know, we just have 54 million, so that's good. I feel bad because we're. We thought we were on top, Henry.
Henry Kaestner: Yeah, that's amazing. That's incredible scale. And so there's so much in that, right? There's so much in that. And there's so many different things I want to talk about in the program in terms of the team dynamic and your faith for being in the same direction, how you keep things going over and over. But we're grateful for you being here. One of the things that we want to, though, start off with every podcast is to understand a little bit about the autobiographical sketch of each person we're talking to. So we're going to talk about the team here in a second. So many of the questions that I have have to do with how you can create in a team for so long, keep it fresh and keep the friendships real. What does that look like? Because I think that's really relevant for the entrepreneurs that listen to this, that do so in a team. But let's start off with Koby kind. I know that you are at least I think I do through all the things you've put on the web. And yet I'm sure there's lots of things that you haven't released. Where did you grow up? Who are you? Is faith a part of your life? If so, when did it become so who's Kobe can?
Coby Cotton: Absolutely. Well, first, before I dove into history, I want you guys to know Henry, multiple people had passed information along to me and I'd stumbled on in a couple of different times. But a few months back, when we were first setting up this interview, I dove so deep into an article that you had written about. I think it was 15 or 20 best practices that you had learned with bandwidth, and it was just really impactful on me. And that was the main reason why I wanted to make sure to do this podcast because I just really resonated with a lot of what you shared. We've been making a lot of changes this year. It did perfect in just trying to build a really strong company with a lot of the principles and values that you had outlined. So, so just wanted you to know that at the outset. Wow, that's an awesome encouragement.
Henry Kaestner: Thank you for that. Thank you for that. And Lord, forgive me if I brag about that tonight at dinner with my three boys that Kobe Bryant said that we were any bit of an encouragement to how God was using him in the marketplace. So thank you.
Coby Cotton: That was awesome. Absolutely, absolutely. So a little backstory from us. So dude, perfect is five guys. We actually started the six at Texas A&M. We had a six member. As everything got going, he ended up doing med school, so he's still a close friend of ours. So if you really, really know the history, there were six of us. So for the last 12 years, though, there have been five guys. We started in our backyard in College Station, Texas as classic Texas A&M Aggies. It was our junior year. We had an all grass backyard and so naturally we were very competitive guys. So a couple of guys went out, bought a basketball goal, couldn't dribble it around because of the grass, and they just started shooting these crazy shots in the backyard. Tyler Garrett, a Jimmy John's sandwich that he can make a hook shot from behind the tree. Nailed it! Classic. So then, of course, they had to get the camera out to show us when we got back home. By the time we got there, everybody was trying to one up each other and we were videoing it. Corey had iMovie on a Mac and a YouTube account at YouTube.com slash Corey content, so he naturally put it together and threw it up. And it was, in our opinion, pretty terrible. VIDEO But for some reason, God had other plans, and it kind of took off. So that very first video I think we called Backyard Stunt Man until we renamed it Dude Perfect. But that was the very beginning of the FDE there in the backyard of College Station
Henry Kaestner: at Super Cool. So you grew up, you're a twin, by the way, I should mention, and I hope that will bring. We have listeners in one hundred and forty five hundred and fifty countries now, and I hope that everybody will make a commitment to looking at the video subscribing. We don't have a very deep subscriber base, so we're not going to make a big dent in the fifty million. But because this podcast is going to have a lot of people joining Team Kobe because I know Tyler has been in, he's been out, but I think that every FDE listener is going to be a solid member of Team Kobe when this is done. Talk about growing up as a twin and talking about, you know, did you grow up in a Christian house? Was faith a part of your life? Is it a part of your life now as you all get together and you serve out in the marketplace? What's that look like for you?
Coby Cotton: Yeah, I did. Actually, all five of us very fortunate and blessed to have grown up with very strong believing families who we just were introduced to Christ at a young age. Just so grateful for that. My parents are both amazing. They both worked in ministry growing up. And so, yeah, that was something that was a part of my life from really early age when we met at school. The five of us we met through a Bible study there and through playing basketball and ended up as roommates. So that was definitely and continues to be at the core of the relationship between the five of us as well.
Henry Kaestner: Okay. Very cool. Okay. I want to get into the question and I've been thinking about as as looking forward to our interview today, which is you guys have been doing this, as you said, for 12 years and you've been prolific. You've come up with hundreds of videos. Every one of them is very, very good. The production values outstanding, everyone's creative. But you got five guys around and each of you, you know, Tyler might go ahead and he might maybe take more of a role. And some, you know, the game show on overtime and things like that, but all five of you play a really, really important role. Talk to us about that team dynamic because there's a chemistry that you guys have that is amazing and I think part of your appeal. And yet that's got to be hard to do and just tell us about how that works. Presumably, there's a lot of stuff also that goes on behind the scenes. So walk us through the team dynamic.
Coby Cotton: That's a great question, Henry. I think, like you said, I think it's part of the appeal and it's always part of the challenge as well, right? I think there's benefits and cons to having five guys in kind of an entertainment company like we do, right? We were just out filming with the guy who was an individual and we were talking about how challenging it would be if everything rode on just you, right? So we have this ability to share kind of the spotlight and the creative challenges of coming up with things with the other four guys. But at the same time, you know, it's not an individually led typical CEO running a company type standpoint, right, where there's all these shared opinions and sometimes it can be difficult to come to a consensus. So there's definitely pros and cons. I think what we've been so grateful for is that each of the five of us do have natural gifts and skill sets. And so honestly, from the very beginning, the way we broke up kind of the business roles and responsibilities is where we are today, 12 years later. I've kind of run a lot of the business side. My brother has spearheaded the production, which meant at first he was the one doing all the editing and now he's managing that team. Tyler runs and leads all the creative. He's the he says he thinks of cool ideas. That's just something that happens to him. Garrett has run our merchandise and our financial stuff, and Cody has run our social media for all these years. And so kind of all the natural bent and abilities between the five of us has really been so helpful and just shouldering that load from the beginning
Henry Kaestner: or so, coming back to the beginning here, saying, So you've got this great epic viral video backyard stuntman, you realize you got something because so many people are down into it. When did it start? When did you kind of look at each other and say, you know, maybe this is actually something we can do? I'm going to presume that before you filmed that video, you had not thought you'd be making trick shot for your career. But what point in time did you look at each other and say, I actually think we got something here, and maybe we'll at least push off some of those other things we'd planned as we set up this business?
Coby Cotton: So we had fun making the first video, but to your point, certainly did not think anything real material was going to come of it. We were just having a good time. The response was really strong and so in typical college fashion, we wanted to continue trying what we had just seen a little bit of success with. We went out to Tyler's family's ranch, filmed it. The response was even better, and it continued along that path, and a few videos in company started emailing us saying that they wanted to be featured in the videos. And so for us, that was the light bulb moment of whoa, I didn't even know that was a thing. And it took us a while before we did that first one. But at some point GMC early on reached out and they wanted to do an NBA Finals commercial, which is just a crazy way to jump start the commercial piece of the business for us. And that was the one where Tyler dropped the basketball out of an airplane, and they played that during NBA Finals, so it was a really cool first kind of foray into the business world for us.
Henry Kaestner: OK. So before I hand this over to William, my co-host here, I do have some other questions that we have thought about with some input from some of our younger listeners at FDE to include my son. What's the longest you've ever spent on a single trick shot? Because we know there's an integrity there. This is not, you know, you actually are making this and you're just not showing every take. So what's the longest? It's taken to make one
Coby Cotton: to come to mind, the longest that I can remember. We same ranch that I talked about before we cut down a tree, used a tractor, put it in the ground, call it the world's largest slingshot, and it took all of the first day and half of data to make it. I mean, it was it was brutal surgical tubing, big old duct tape pouch basketball. I think it's probably 100 yards that it would launch. It was insane. And just to get it all right, it took a really long time. That was tough. The second one that I think of locally here in Frisco, Texas, north of Dallas, where we live and have our business. We rented out this basketball arena for this foam airplane shots that we do. And I mean, we had a whole day of stuff planned, and it turned out that the very first shot we tried to do is this triple flipper from the upper deck and get it to pop this balloon at the very bottom. And that literally ended up being the only shot we did the entire day. And I mean, whatever that was a 12 hour day that we were there, we made it in the last few minutes and everybody was stuff. It was a tough look to get one shot out of, however much we paid to rent the arena, but we were glad we at least made that one by the end.
Henry Kaestner: On the other side, was there one where you kind of steel yourselves like, gosh, wouldn't it be great if we had this shot? But it's probably going to take four or five hours to do? And so you just kind of do it and then like one of you like makes it on the first time you're like, Oh, my goodness.
Coby Cotton: The the one that I mentioned for GMC, where Tyler shot it out of the airplane, he went up the first try came running some of those crop dusters. I mean, it's still an airplane. Don't get me wrong, it's just a little bit lower than your 747. And so he's he's coming by and he drops it. And I mean, he missed it by three football fields and almost hit a cow out of this pasture far away. And we're like, What have we signed up for there? Probably 40 camera people there. This big production company for the TV commercial, he circles back around the second time and we're all yelling, Drop it, drop it into drops and he drains it on the second try. So I think for us, that was the one that we were like, Guys, we're on to something. I think the crew must have thought we have got the right guys. These guys are automatic. What else can we do? And Ty says he'll never do it again because he loves having a 50 percent percentage on the air.
William Norvell: Oh, that's amazing. And volume here. I'm a huge fan, too. You know, we we oscillate between Henry and I about how big a fans we are with with certain guests, but I can't quite approach the fandom. But gosh, I love what you guys do. Gosh, it's so much fun. I love watching, y'all. I love a couple of years ago when you won your first battle.
Coby Cotton: That's right. Thank you. Thank you.
William Norvell: That's a big deal. We're on the team here, so I've got one of the to coach, but Henry just made me think of something. Have you ever quit on a trick shot? Have you ever started something and just days and days and said, Gosh, you know what? It just was a bad idea. It's just not going to work.
Coby Cotton: There was one where we were standing on the back of Tyler's truck. He's here. We've we've grown. We've grown in the things that we've decided to do over the years. This is way back college days again as a slingshot to think the more of the story here is no need to try to slingshot. If you mess around at home, it's just a bad idea. But we're in the back of the truck bed. Basketball pulls slingshot back. Tried it for at least an hour. And then at some point basketball gets launched and we just hear this explosion and we were really confused. And when we realized what had happened, we had clipped the back of his truck where that where the brake light is up top on the back of the truck. And I mean, it just exploded that whole back section of his truck. So we just decided, you know what? We're going to tap out this video is going be fine without the shot. Sorry about your truck, Ty and we we charged the head with a new one, so we gave out and gave up on that one.
William Norvell: That's good because, you know, I'm sure you know this, but you know you've spawned an entire generation of people going into this. And you know, if you get on Tik Tok at any one time, there's 50 different people doing trick shots. And you know, some of these things last days and days and days, people trying to do these things, I just think it's fascinating.
Coby Cotton: I would say emotionally, it's very hard to quit because if you're two, three hours deep, I mean, that's just that's just a complete loss if you don't get it at that point. So I get it. I understand why somebody would give multiple days to it because it's tough stuff to just throw that in the trash.
William Norvell: It's amazing. I mean, you guys have built a business, too. As you mentioned earlier, all five of you all do different parts of the business. I want to switch to that for a minute. Can you walk us through kind of a two part question one? Just kind of what does the business look like for our listeners and then to, you know, gosh, you watch your videos and you just think you guys just have fun all frickin day? And maybe that's true. Maybe that's true. But I got to ask it, what does it look like day to day? What does it look like running, dude? Perfect. Do you really just walk in and start throwing balls into hoops every morning? Because that's pretty awesome. May get a whole new people applying for jobs to
Coby Cotton: the the perception that you just described that it's all fun and games is our hardest challenge with our individual lives. They, of course, you know, have that same expectation of what we do at work all day. So it's hard to go home when they've had a long day with the kids and explain to them. But it was tough today. Like today, it was hard. You know, I spent three hours trying to flip a water bottle onto this record player and she's like, Awesome honey, you know, I'm glad you're here. Thank you. This is the kiddo. But the truth is, there is a lot of kind of business pieces to it, right? Especially as the business has matured these last 12 years. There's a ton of red tape that goes into the planning side. Really, you asked initially kind of the core of the business, I would say probably two or three main pieces of the business today. For anybody who is or isn't familiar, the way YouTube works in general is you get a certain number of views and there's ads run across the videos. So when somebody watches our video and your family is watching and you guys sit through that ad, dude perfect gets paid for that impression, right? And so that's one piece. The second piece is a lot of times we'll work with a sponsor on a video. As I mentioned, GMC, right? If GMC sponsors a YouTube video and we give some type of messaging about GMC or showcase their products, they're going to pay you perfect for that. Just like they went on TV commercial. That's a piece of the revenue for us. Then we have our merchandise side T-shirts, basketballs, mini hoops, all that kind of stuff. And we most recently have a touring side of the business where we are one summer and now had to take a break during all the COVID stuff. We're about to go back out here in the fall. So that's just a live show that we do in basketball arenas across the country. We started with twenty two shows a couple of years ago when we did that and we're about to do. This fall, so that's going to be kind of crazy, but we're excited.
William Norvell: Well, that's a lot of pressure going live as that field is this rehearsed tricks?
Coby Cotton: Well, the weird part is if you're a musician, it's very normal that you're in front of people and you see the reactions all the time because touring is what you do as you're coming up for us. It's the opposite. You start in front of a camera and you never see people's reactions, even if millions of people are watching because they're just watching on their phone or their computer or their TV. So for us, it was we're 12 at this point, probably 10 years in and you're standing out in an arena and we're seeing the reactions of the people who've been watching all these years. And it was honestly just a super cool feeling. And it was a good reminder that they're not just numbers to us that we see tick up on their YouTube counter, but they really are individual families and people that are affected by it.
William Norvell: Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. I think that's so good for a lot of people to do marketing or videos. I mean, whoever may be listening, I mean, I would imagine it's so hard to get that sense of who the people are. You're actually serving. And obviously, customer experience and knowing your customers is one of the things we talk about a lot here,
Coby Cotton: and I love that.
Henry Kaestner: So Justin's gave me for donuts because I keep on going off script, but usually I do so much of a better job in talking to somebody that I've not as involved in as I have been with you. And so I'm able to kind of, you know, put things together sequentially and and build off what I had said before. But I'm going to go back into putting together your trick shots. And you talked about Tyler's truck getting hurt and you just went ahead and pulled the plug on a truck. One of your most recent videos has you and a demolition derby. Have you guys ever been hurt doing this stuff and that was in front of a live audience?
Coby Cotton: Yeah, let me think the demo derby great when you are on top of it, because I was as fresh as a fresh video, good job winning that one. Yeah, somehow everybody's fine. That was really fun. Yeah, that was our first live battle in front of an audience. We were up in Bristol, Tennessee, and out of that super cool speedway that they have there and a bunch of people came in. It was a blast. If you guys want to look that one up, it's demolition derby on YouTube.
Henry Kaestner: But and Cody, at times we looked scared.
Coby Cotton: Oh, I was pretty, it's pretty iffy. You know, it's pretty redneck thing to do. So it was, but it was a ton of fun injuries. I think the worst one we have today, which we laugh at Corey, but I mean, it's kind of a bummer. He broke a finger and now it's crooked. So we were in world record football addition to we filmed at TCU's Football Stadium here in Texas. Super fun VIDEO We got to break all these world records, their duty record. Some of them are kind of impressive. Most of them are just silly and goofy records. And one of them, Corey, was blindfolded and it was the world's longest blindfolded football catch. And as you can imagine, you know, some I don't know. I don't remember 40 50 yards away just chucking a football up at you and then telling you to stick your arms out and try to catch it. Most of the time, it just hits him in the football helmet or right in the chest or whatever. But unfortunately, he caught it just a mega jammed finger that didn't he? All right. And it's just super crooked now, so that's a bummer. But every handshake he's reminded of that video.
William Norvell: Let me jump in. I want to ask you because you know, the creator economy is taking off, right? I mean, I mean, you guys were part of the very, very beginning, but you see so much of this now. I mean, I know Tony Robbins even recently launched a whole software platform to help creators sort of get their content out there. When you think about that, when you think about the economy moving forward there, I mean, what? What does that look and feel like every day knowing that sort of you are the brand right? And then how do you think through that from a faith lens potentially of, you know, gosh, do I do I do I ask myself, Do I not? I mean, my audience knows me as X can I? Can I do this? This is my message. Can I change my message? And how you look for I just know it's a rambling question isn't how you process through being the face of the brand and all of those things and making these videos?
Coby Cotton: Yeah, great question, William. I think where my mind first goes on, it is I'm grateful. I think it's cool that you don't have to rely anymore on like to be on a TV network, right? Like, you don't have to go through a lot of the normal things that you would have had to do 10, 20 years ago to have an audience, to then sell a product or company or whatever that you know your actual product is. It's cool to be able to be authentic. I mean, that's what we always tell kids who ask us now like, Hey, what do I need to do to make it big on YouTube, right? It's hey, look, we had no intention of making it big on YouTube, right? We were just being very authentic. Obviously, from our standpoint, we feel like God's hand was on it, but we were just being us and doing something we genuinely enjoyed. And we feel like if you try to go, you know, manufacture excitement around something, you're going to have a very hard time sticking with it long enough to build that traction. And so I think it's just really cool that whatever you're passionate about, you can build a following around without having to kind of follow a lot of the old standards that people had to and kind of go through those gatekeepers. I think from a you mentioned just like your personal brand. Same thing. I think I've bumped into entertainers or people, and they're not the same off camera we are. I feel like and I've had people tell us they feel like we're the same, maybe not quite as high pumped up on the energy levels that we are on our videos. Hard to maintain that all the time, but for the most part, I feel like we're authentic on camera because if we spend as much time as we do in front of the camera, it's pretty exhausting to try to fake that. So that's the direction you've chosen to go.
Henry Kaestner: That's amazing and comes to mind as I've just meander all over. Think you're the business person in the group or a business? Everybody's in the business, but you're a business person. Does your insurance liability coverage cover the damage done by the rage monster? While you're blowing your fireworks, you're blowing things. He's going crazy. Some of the things. And I also wonder is, is there ever a time when the rage monster goes nuts? You're like, Dude, I actually didn't want you to to do that. That's actually going to really cost us.
Coby Cotton: So the rage monster for those who are unfamiliar, we have a series called Stereotypes, where we started out back pick up basketball stereotypes, people, you would see golf stereotypes. You know, the guy that grabs a golf ball from the woods and acts like it was in the fairway and throws it back out? We kind of paint a picture of all the goofy things within these different worlds, and rage monsters is something that ended up a piece of it. And now it's people's favorite thing that Dude Perfect has ever done. And it's Tyler in these little skits, basically just absolutely losing it and breaking all kinds of things. We have to this point. Taking a sword through an above ground swimming pool, we've knocked over a tree with a tractor. We demolished a basketball court, blown up a house, we destroyed a jet ski. I mean, it's all you can think of. It's everybody's favorite and mom's least favorite. We get emails all the time from moms who say it's a terrible example, and that's the one email that we just we just say, you know, we appreciate your insight, but this is just it's we're going to let you parent your kids and help them understand that this is a joke, but that this is it's just a production and we're just having fun
William Norvell: compared to the rest of the video content in the world I got. I can't feel like that's their toughest challenge.
Coby Cotton: It feels like a little soft to me, so I think we're going to be OK.
William Norvell: One of the things I'd love to judge Kobe, I mean, you know, so 12 years, 12 years running a business, you know, I think we could get sucked in to stories and fun and all those things. You guys have been running a business. You've been running an entity. It sounds like you're probably all close with your wives, too. You went to college together. I mean, that's a long time to manage through friendship, manage through business. I'd love if you wouldn't mind share maybe a couple of the difficulties of going through that over the years that you can think back on and maybe how you guys figured out a way to manage through that, together with multiple intertwined friendships, multiple intertwined families. I just think that's so fascinating to dove into.
Coby Cotton: Yeah, I think I mean, it is a long time, right? Twelve years is crazy that we've been doing it for that long and anybody's done anything for 12 years knows that there's ups and downs, right? And so we actually made it was, I think it was two years ago. Now we came out with a documentary on YouTube, which is a ton of fun, and it tells our whole story. So for anybody who's interested in seeing all of this in video format, you just type in the perfect documentary on YouTube. It's I mean, it's a 90 minute movie, basically. So it's not a quick five minute watch, but if you have the time, I think you really enjoy it. Really proud of it. But it shows kind of some of those ups and downs as well. And I just think probably the biggest one is just friendship over time. I think for us, the bedrock of the business really is five friends. And so we have learned over time with good counselors and friends around us that, hey, like, you all have to protect that friendship and you have to work through conflict together. Because if you don't, you know, the whole business could crater based on just the five of you guys and the closeness there. And so for us, obviously, our faith is at the bedrock of that. We each have to have a strong abiding relationship with Christ. And then, you know, it's important to all of us that we are each involved in a community where we have people around us who don't care that we're not perfect and don't care that we have all the subscribers that we have and can speak into our lives. And then we do. Like I said, we've gotten better. I can't say it's been perfect, but we've gotten better at resolving conflict between the five of us. The phrase we use as guys to make it easier is we sort ourselves so somebody needs to own something. They say, Hey, like, I'm a sword myself on that and that was on me. I'm taking that one and owning that. And so I think that has been significant for us over time.
Henry Kaestner: Koby, how long can you guys do this if Tom Brady retires at forty five or forty six? How long? How long can the dude perfect shell go fascinated by that? And just because it any point in time, I think, well, you know, at this point for me came probably about six years ago. Like, there's nothing else to be done there, no more trick shots to be done. They've done it and then everyone progressively gets better. But how long does it go on?
Coby Cotton: It's a great question, we ask ourselves that weekly. I think the truth and or at least what we have felt is we feel like the world is always going to be in need of trusted entertainment and maybe it's going to morph over time. One thing that we have really been intentional to do is to mix up the type of content we've made over these last 12 years. We started with all the trick shots. That's, I'm sure what we will always be known for, no matter what we do. But we've tried to pivot multiple times and introduce different stuff. We have the stereotypes we have, the battles. I mentioned the bucket list, but we're going to be coming out with a clip show here soon. You know, kind of America's funniest home videos style, right? Like over time, as a popular series of ours, which is more of a variety show, more like a Jimmy Fallon type show. And so as we've introduced those different types of content, we have felt kind of the life span of dude perfect increase. We feel like if it was just trick shots, to your point, we would have already been out of ideas, right? There's no possible way you could do 12 years worth of only trick shots. And so I think that's helped. The other thing for us is it goes back to what I said at first this year, we have spent a lot of time on the business itself and not just the videos. We took some time for an offside, really for the first time, these 12 years kind of took a dove into our mission statement and kind of trying to craft what we wanted to be and where we landed as we're striving to be the world's most trusted entertainment. And we feel like that has become kind of our calling card and our niche in the entertainment world. And we just know from having kids ourselves and from what families have told us specifically even on our tours. And it's what you said at the top entry. There's just such a lack of that today, and that is just at the core of what we're trying to accomplish is make world class entertainment that families can trust. And so I think, you know, whether it's us doing that or somebody else, and then there's always going to be a need and a desire for that. And so we want to just continue to make the best that we can and hopefully people will stick with us.
Henry Kaestner: So as I told you before, as a father, I'm grateful for your ability to do that and for the fact you've delivered on that, that's exactly what you are for our family. I think about the impression that you make on so many families around the world. And of course, with 56 million subscribers, you have, I'm sure quite a few of them are international. Have you thought of leaning into that more and taking the show on the road? And actually, you will never remember this. But right after the backyard stuntman, I reached out to you guys, I sent email and said, You know, you've got so many views. What would it look like to do one of these trick shot videos in Africa and call attention to a different ministry? And you've probably had thousands of people come inbounds on all sorts of different ideas to promote all sorts of different causes and missions that they care about. But could you free form just a little bit about what it looks like to not only create a channel with trusted entertainment, but also a global brand? The impact, because what ends up happening is with your international subscribers is they now have a different perspective of number one, what American culture is like and is they spend any meaningful time as subscribers come to understand there's something special about you and that points with gentleness respect to your faith. What does it look like to build out that international brand in that region?
Coby Cotton: I think kind of like we mentioned, not seeing the faces, it was hard at first for us to realize that this was beyond the US, right? Eventually, we started diving more into the analytics and actually looking at who we were reaching, but for a long time were just making videos you don't even realize and then you go on a family trip somewhere. And especially as it's the brand has grown over these years, it is truly remarkable the reach of just YouTube in general. I mean, we are in just Third World, very underdeveloped countries and kids still come up to us the same way they do in the US. I mean, you would think they don't have phones, but that's almost all that they have and they come up to us just as much because that's what they're watching and whether they're in the US, you know, in a family that's well-off and now they just don't watch as much TV, they just watch more YouTube or, like I mentioned in another country, in a difficult environment. It truly is crazy. And so we are we're much more aware of that now, and we're hopeful to take the tour international in the next couple of years. We just think that would be a ton of fun and something that people have asked for it, and we have enjoyed traveling specifically in the bucket list series. It's opened our eyes even more to the people who are watching around the world, which is genuinely nuts. It's crazy. It's such a weird, such a weird deal.
William Norvell: And as you didn't take the time to apologize to Henry for not going back to his email. But you know, we get no need to do that. We could do that or another shout out.
Henry Kaestner: We did that part. No, but I saw it. You saw it in the South Africa bucket list. I mean, these kids clearly knew who you guys were, and that's from all sorts of different backgrounds. And that's got to be maybe a little scary. I mean, it just the burden almost of that of, oh my goodness, the things that we come up with. They're going to impact kids lives all over the country about how they think in their talk, talking the language they use and maybe even what maybe you get at this or does it must impact a little bit about how you think about your corporate partners, right? You know, if I endorse this because you undoubtedly have had some people have come in and say, Well, gosh, is this really reflective of it or not?
Coby Cotton: Right, right? Yeah, that's a great question. That was actually one of the earliest decisions we had to make. We had an alcohol company, approached us early on again were college guys. So why would they not reach out to us? And we, I mean, it was adult money at the time, especially to college kids. And that was a hard decision for us. But I know that we were unified quickly on, Hey, this is just not the direction we're going to take this. And initially it started because of our faith. We just said, Look, we're just gonna take our stance on this. We know this is reaching kids, which is not something we're going to do. And then, you know, over the years, we've seen that that has become a strong business move as well because the brands are looking for partners that are safe for them to advertise against him and that they can trust just as much as families want to trust what they're watching. So it's worked out from a business perspective. But you're right, even to this day, there are brands that are pro-choice and we, you know, even though they're offering good money, we choose to turn those down because they could jeopardize the trust that we're working so hard to build.
William Norvell: OK, so this is an off the wall question, which I'm kind of known for. So bear with me. This may not work at all, but I'm very curious, is there a brand? Is there someone? Is there something you've always wanted to work with or someone to work with that you haven't been able to? One, I want to hear about it, and two, I want to see if our listeners can make it happen.
Coby Cotton: Oh man, that's good. Cody, the tall guy really wants to do something with Cristiano Ronaldo. That's that's his top athlete to work with. We've had some good conversations with Steph Curry in the past, but we've never been able to pull off a video, so we're still hopeful that Steph wants to do it. So hopefully that'll happen. Recently, the guys, somebody wants to go to space. Tyler has said that if his wife lets him, he'll get on a rocket and he'll go to space. My wife has already told me no. So I already got the downvote on that, but that would be on our list. So if anybody has any connections there. All right.
William Norvell: We got the. Christiane, over daughter Steph Curry in space. Just a quick recap, yeah,
Henry Kaestner: come on, guys, come on, FDE audience come through, come through for Kobe, you are members of Team Kobe. This is how to bless them. If I think of another brand of a bunch of guys getting together and do any creative things in a slightly different genre, it's the music group. OK, go. And they did a video where they're all weightless. I don't know if you ever saw it, but it was good, and it'd be interesting to find out how they did that. And because I guess you have to go to space, I think, to go weightless. But maybe there's something there, I don't know.
William Norvell: Now you can end up weightless without being in space. They got simulators we can make. I got a feeling you probably done that now. Alabama's not known for much, but we've got a space station there and you can go weightless.
Coby Cotton: OK, now what? What did you just say at the beginning that hearing that my mind went to OK, go there. Stuff's unbelievable. It's crazy what all they've done. I can't remember if they did the zero gravity flight or how they pulled that off, but
Henry Kaestner: it was a really cool one. It was. It was awesome. That may be something we include, maybe something we don't. But then another creative group of folks that do some new things. William, take his way, please.
William Norvell: I'm one of the last things we love to just leave as an encouragement for our guest is fun to watch. It's fun to hear the stories. You know, you get to hear so many. We don't get to hear all of them from our listeners, too, but every now and then we hear this amazing story of how God was just working through this exact moment for the people that are listening to our podcast. So we love to ask where in God's word is it coming alive to do you? Sometimes that could be something that this morning, you know, that came to you. It could be something even meditating on for a while. It could be something you've been meditating on your whole life. But just love to see how God's word continues to live and breathe and transcend our guest and our listeners.
Coby Cotton: Yeah, such a good question. Appreciate you guys asking two things that come to mind. The community group I'm in right now, a couple of the guys we've been studying James and it's just been a reminder to me talks about, you know, you show me your faith some other way and I'll show it to you by my works, right? And I've always had a hard time kind of meshing those two, and I just think it's it's powerful to think about our actions or what demonstrate, you know, what's in our heart, right? And truly like if God is doing something in me that's going to come out of my actions. And so that's really been something I've been focusing on in James. And then the other thing that comes to mind for me when I was single, I was just telling a friend this the other day in Psalms, the verse give me an undivided heart that I may hear your name. And for me personally, I felt like when I was dialed in on that verse and trusting God to give me an undivided heart towards him, that was when I was most impactful, and I was I was just I felt like I was taking my eyes off of me and putting them on the people around me and some students that I was working with and different things. And to me, that has just been a verse that's always been impactful for me, and I think I've got around my house. So those are the two that come to mind.
Henry Kaestner: Those are great, and that's been a blessing to me, too. So thank you for answering that way. And dear Lord, I ask and write and pray that you would give all of our audience an undivided heart toward you so that you may be able to know them each personally. And we pray for this, and we pray for the continued ministry and staff and team of dude perfect. Give them your favor and blessing and protection in Jesus name. Amen.