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did i just blow your mind
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here's the part of the video where i
tell you how long it's been that i've
wanted to tell you this secret
and there's a very good chance that this
has an impact especially early on
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that's
look he it goes to darkness
[Applause]
[Music]
what was the first place you remember
creating stuff online and what did you
make
i had a blog called the dirty dirty
and it was because i lived in atlanta
and it was the dirty south and um
my dad found it and thought
it was about porn and that was not good
because it wasn't it was just stories
and then my boss found it and then i
stopped writing it but it was so much
fun i just wanted to create this like
media empire online so that was like my
first thing is that i really wanted to
create some kind of like news magazine
thing online which i ended up kind of
doing with the cooper review but
um yeah i mean blogging was the first
thing that i really did
how about you casey what were you up to
um
well i i the first way i ever shared my
videos
was by exporting from my dv camera here
to vhs tapes and then getting in my car
and driving to people's houses and
handing them the vhs tape like that was
going viral in 1998. how old are you
[Laughter]
and then like when i first started to
share online there was still not a place
where you could put video like youtube
was 2006 and i started making videos in
like
2 000
right
yeah did you
know that or am i repeating because you
showed us your first camera and it said
2 000 oh that's right circa 2000 you got
a better memory than i do nice sarah
cooper nice
did i just blow your mind just through
basic memory skills
um
but when i would put videos online then
in the pre youtube days there's nowhere
to put them i'd either pay for splash
pages that i would like
own
that would just host a single quicktime
video or i would use like apple's back
end to
do the same thing but it was really an
ad hoc way
of of sharing videos on the internet but
yeah that was that was the environment
where you know like i i tried to figure
out how to share my content um in the
absence of any formal access to what was
like the regular
traditional universe of media clearly
creators are finally being valued in a
space that traditionally likes to play
it safe so
when did you kind of notice paychecks
coming in and people taking interest and
you know managers and things like this
sort of popping up because clearly
there's been this shift like when was
that for you
well it happened twice for me i you know
with 10 tricks to appear smart meetings
that was a blog post that went viral
that eventually made me
decide to leave google and
start my blog and
start writing and
write a book
and then at the beginning of this year i
was writing another book and just doing
stand-up comedy
and then i went viral again this year
which led to
more
success than i could have ever imagined
um
it just was like leaps and bounds before
more than what i had before and i think
a lot of that was just
i wasn't just going viral with that one
thing i also had these books that i'd
written i'd also been doing it for a
long time
but when you have like millions of
people like liking your stuff and
sharing your stuff that's when you're
like oh
i could make money with this because i
have i've been able to with my own mind
create something that millions of people
like and so that is really what
hollywood listens to i mean and that's
true with the books too like they
they're interested in the idea but
they're much more interested in your
platform so if you have a platform of
people that like your stuff they they
that's pretty much a done deal for them
so i feel like proving yourself online
has worked for me really well in terms
of like building that audience and then
showing
uh the industry that i have an audience
of people that want to hear from me um
and so it's really been like this year
i've been like oh i could actually
have a real career in comedy
that's so awesome
casey how about you when was like the
first moment you're like oh i'm making
money
well you know when i
i we sold our hbo show for like a lot of
money that's the first time i ever got
really paid
um you know that that was a huge
benchmark in my career but i don't
consider that like the moment when i
really feel figured out how to
capitalize off of my
work that felt much more like maybe
winning the lottery or like really
striking gold
um
but after that was when i would direct
tv commercials and it felt like a very
honest living like i
i bid on them i'd pitch them i'd write
treatments and every once in a while i'd
get a commercial maybe once or twice a
quarter and you show up and you get your
day rate which is a great paycheck and
then i would take all that money and i'd
spend that money making little youtube
videos for fun like my most one of the
videos that has
of my videos that's had like the best
reach of the biggest audience like the
best response i've ever had was a video
called make it count
and it was a video i actually made for
nike and when people like how did you
get to work for nike the truth is about
six months before i made that video i
made like this bike video for an event
nike was doing in the west village um it
was a one night only event they're like
we want to show some video do you have
anything you can
show and i was like no but i'll make you
something they're like okay we don't
have any budget i was like it's fine
but i made like this video we played it
at this event a hundred people saw it
and then that the next day that was up
on my website and on my youtube channel
and it was like this is a video i was
hired by nike to make nike hired me
and it was like my nike work
right and it was it was a stretch but it
wasn't a lie
but nike saw that and they're like look
we really appreciate that you made that
for us we want to do something a little
bit more ambitious with you are you
interested in doing this project and
then that project was um i mean to this
day i still get work based on that video
that i made for nike you know eight
years ago
so i i think that like
if you can give somebody who's thinking
about giving you money thinking about
supporting you thinking about green
lighting your show thinking about hiring
you to be a brand ambassador the the
better your ability to demonstrate that
you're going to be able to realize what
you're making the more confidence you're
going to give that entity and the more
likely you are of getting the gig
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you