Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I'm Rhett.
And I'm Link.
This week at the Round
Table of dim lighting.
We're picking up where
we left off last week,
and illuminating the dark years.
The lost years.
They're not dark.
The lost years,
Yeah.
Rhett and Link
So this is part two of
us filling in big gap
in our lives that we have
never really talked about
and that is really,
the breadth of our college experience.
And then especially,
which is what we're
gonna get into this week.
What happened after we graduated,
and how did we go from
graduating working as engineers
and then eventually becoming YouTubers,
and it's not the path
that you would expect,
or you have heard in
interviews or articles
that you have read about us.
If you haven't listened
to last week's podcast,
then you definitely need to do that,
before listening to this one.
Yeah come on listen.
Do not listen to this one
without going back to part one,
but I will just quickly sort
of just up to where we're at.
And can I say before you--
Yeah.
That to reiterate that the
plan is there's so many...
This is so logistical in
terms of connecting the dots
of our careers professionally
but there's an entire personal
and spiritual aspect to the story,
that we're saving that side of the coin
for each of us for the next two episodes,
we're each gonna take,
we'll both be there.
But we'll each take an
episode to share our own
stories of our spiritual journeys,
which go through the times
that we're talking about here,
as well as bringing us up to--
Present day.
Where we are now.
Yeah.
So that will be the next two episodes,
hashtag Ear Biscuits with any thoughts,
comments, questions
you have about anything
we're talking about today.
We're accumulating those
so that when we're through
those next two episodes, then we can
be a part of that
conversation at that point.
Yeah.
So to recap what we covered last week,
we talked about the fact that,
when we started our careers,
we grew up as evangelical Christians.
And that is not how we would
describe ourselves now.
And like Link said "Will
talk about that whole process
"and why we would not
call ourselves that now
"in subsequent individual podcasts."
But because it plays such a
integral role in who we were,
and then every decision
that we made professionally,
as you're about to hear,
we wanted to kind of fill in the gaps.
Last week we got from high
school through college,
talked about our very,
very heavy involvement
in Campus Crusade for Christ.
And how that was really
the first opportunity
we ever had to be comedians.
That was when we started
being Rhett and Link on stage
in front of a group of people.
Yeah, the weekly meeting at NC State
and then every Christmas
at the Christmas Conference
slash Winter Conference
where multiple states
would come together, Crew students,
and you and both of us
will start emceeing that.
So, when we graduated,
it was a point of decision because,
our lives for the past
four plus years had been,
so much of our life
experience had been wrapped up
in our involvement in
Campus Crusade for Christ
that not only was it
daunting to just graduate
and move into the real world, so to speak,
but also to there was an implied
that we were leaving behind
such a big part of our
experience, specifically
being involved in Campus Crusade
and being involved, visibly so much.
And our passion is being so engaged there,
to now it's okay, I've
been working at IBM for,
in a co op... on and off.
So while you were in school,
you're like taking semesters and working.
But I got a job with IBM,
you got a job as a civil engineer--
Well, backup just a second because,
while I was in college, in fact,
I remember going into my senior year,
our involvement in Campus Crusade,
and then specifically, I took
two summer project trips,
I took one to New York City in 98
and then I took one to Slovakia in 99.
And again, the way I've always described
what I did in Slovakia,
because it's not untrue
is teaching English.
But the reality was, it was English camps,
teaching English with the
intention of teaching people
about Christianity.
That's kinda how these organizations work.
It's like,
you kind of go into a situation
under a certain pretense,
but ultimately what you're
after is communicating
the gospel.
Conversion.
And converting people to Christianity.
And that doesn't mean that the experiences
were not incredibly fruitful,
at least for me, personally,
and enriching and getting
to travel and experience,
people in other places that
were different than me.
Same for me going to Santa Cruz
amusement park ride operator.
Right?
And so we told stories from
those periods of times,
but we never really
explained why we were there.
That was while we were there.
But that experience, especially
my experience in Slovakia,
in getting to know
people who had basically
given their lives vocationally,
like professionally, to
Crew to work full-time,
and seeing that these
people are just like, man,
they're happy to wake up in the morning.
They're engaged very closely
with what they're doing.
They're continuing from our vantage point,
the experience that we were having
and so aligned with in
college it professionally.
Well, and I think the thing
that ends up happening
this isn't just true of people
who get involved in
religious organizations
but again, you're so passionate
and usually kind of find your cause
and the thing that you're
into and your early 20s.
And then what you begin to see
is you begin to look around
at the adults in your life
and you're like, what
is wrong with you guys?
You're all dead.
I remember going back to my local church,
having been involved in Campus Crusade
and gone to these weekly meetings
and gone to these conferences
where we were worshiping
and we were, singing these the songs
and I was being filled with
the Spirit overwhelmed,
emotional experiences,
and then you go back to your church
and you're like, God, what
is this matter to you guys?
And you become sort of a disillusioned?
You think that you got it figured out
and you think that the
adults have just lost it?
But when you find these people
who have decided to go on staff,
they seem passionately
engaged with exactly the stuff
that you're currently
passionate engaged with.
So at that point, I made the decision.
This is what I want to do.
I wanna go on staff.
I want to be full time
staff at Campus Crusade.
I went home.
Oh, you made the decision?
Yeah, I went home,
Okay.
So, you may not remember this,
but I went home after that trip.
And I told my parents, I was like,
I don't wanna get an engineering degree.
I wanna get a communications degree.
I'd like to take these last
two to three semesters.
Okay, I remember that.
And transfer into communications,
because this is what I'm good at.
I'm a good speaker.
I wanna learn more about that.
And also, I just kind of wanna
get more involved in ministry.
I'll have more time if
I'm in communications
than engineering 'cause it's
let's be honest, way easier.
And then my dad actually said
he was like, "You know what?"
Because my brother had
already gone on staff.
My brother Cole was on staff
at Campus Crusade at the time,
Right.
already.
I think he started at UNC.
I think that's where he was at the time.
And so it was already in the family.
Again, we talked about Cole a lot like
he will listen to our very first hip hop
because of Cole and a lot
of other things 'cause he's,
He blazed the trail.
typical older brother
We were comfortable following.
But if he had never gotten
involved Campus Crusade,
we also would not be here, I believe,
it's with a domino effect.
We have been in InterVarsity.
Him hit right, you were sweet one
they're some we just
suddenly skipped over,
shout out to InterVarsity.
We were flirting with y'all.
We were in an inter varsity Bible study
as well as a crusade Bible study,
I remember two Bible studies.
We need a pace I said.
You can't give us enough
Bible studies y'all.
So we ended up...
I ended up thinking I
was gonna go on staff
'cause Cole was already on staff.
And but my dad was like,
I think it will be great
if you go on staff, but,
you got one more year
of engineering school.
Yeah.
To just have an engineering degree.
And I think
it would serve you better in the long run.
You can do all the things
that you want to do.
With an engineering degree.
But you'll have an engineering.
All you wanted was a little more fun.
Yeah, I was playing with
Twisted Metal with Greg
all the time.
I was having such a good time.
So I thought that was reasonable
and I'm actually glad
that my dad told me that,
because I feel a little bit cooler
that I can say I have
an engineering degree
it just a bit better.
That's all of it is.
But then when you did graduate,
when I graduated, I
immediately got married,
and I took a job with IBM.
I felt like I was much more pulled
to that responsible decision
and I had, the financial
security of the job
that they offered was
something that, oh, gosh,
I just I couldn't walk away from that.
But I did still have that pull,
to all of the things that you described,
and I would add to that,
that the way that we were able
to engage with an audience,
and with Christmas Conference every year,
like, as we talked about last week,
our passions were so aligned to, like,
pour so much of any of our
free time into that was like,
I didn't want to give that up, or,
I knew that I will miss that
just as much as anything
if not the most.
It was a passion.
It's like entertaining a crowd.
was also a hammering for us.
The expectation was that
we would continue emceeing the conference.
I don't remember what
the conversation was,
but it was an open invitation
and we knew we wanted to do
that Christmas Conference.
But you decided to also
take a job as an engineer.
The reason being I fell in
love with my wife, Jessie,
who was still a student.
That's, right?
We got married the summer
after her sophomore year in college.
You cradle robber.
And you can't go on staff with a wife
that's in college.
With a child.
And so, I was like, okay?
I'm gonna use this engineering degree.
I'll try this out for a little bit.
She's actually finished school like,
she got the double major in like three
and a half years at Carolina,
which somehow she did
that while married to me.
But anyway.
You agreed to continue to be the host
of the Christmas Conference every year.
And at some point, maybe now
maybe a year or so later.
Like I would be like a co-MC
but right from the beginning.
I was there with you, us working together
on a volunteer basis,
not as official staff
but as volunteers to show
up to take our vacation
to store up our vacation
from my engineering jobs,
and then blow most of it, December 26,
through the but and then.
So then I remember months
leading up to the end of the year
and the conference, we would get together,
every single week I would
drive from my house in Apex
to the edge campus at Carolina
where Jessie was still going to school
and you guys had the house.
And every week we get together
and we plan for months
and months leading up to this thing.
It was our one,
opportunity to still have that audience.
Yeah.
And to come up with stuff.
We would write songs.
We come up with video concepts,
we figure out the sketches
and stuff that we're gonna do.
Crowd interaction stuff on stage.
Yes, it was all very,
very meticulously planned.
And also, there's a lot of anxiety like,
I was having a great time,
but I just remember,
it's funny in light of
how much content we put out there now,
and how many things that we get ready for
and all of a sudden do.
I remember just being
so stressed out about
Christmas Conference, like enjoying it,
but like so stressed out
about how it was gonna go.
And it's funny how?
The same way we are now.
No, I'm saying yeah, right?
But it seems so like,
dude, that was so simple.
It was such a small thing.
It was five days of getting
out there a few times,
like, but everything it's always relative,
but it was it is always relative
to whatever you were experiencing.
It was over 1000 college students
it was our only audience.
We were also writing
songs at that same time.
So like, I got married in 2000.
We started getting together
then you and Jessie
weren't married until 2001.
I would get together at your apartment.
And we would write songs.
We wrote enough songs by
getting together every week
that we also made a CD at that point.
'Cause Jessie host the
Grammy was 2001, right?
Yeah.
Right, yes.
Yeah.
So we were writing all the songs.
The first album was 2001.
So we made a CD of comedy songs,
some of which one of those
songs the Unibrow song.
We performed on stage
at Christmas Conference
along with Tim playing harmonica.
I think this is the thing
that is gonna be news
to everybody.
So we talked about those early
songs like the Unibrow song,
the Facebook song.
That which was a few years later, but yes.
All those early songs
and the Unibrow song was the first thing
that was ever featured on
the homepage of YouTube.
Again, we told this story before about
how my home video of Locke crying after
the Carolina beat state was featured.
And that was YouTube wanted to feature it
and we were like, listen,
that's just a home video,
will you feature the work
that we actually care about?
And that was The Unibrow Song.
That was kind of the beginning
of us getting traction
on YouTube but anyway,
that was many years later,
that was 2006 or seven.
But anyway, those are songs
that we wrote at the time.
We wrote them for Christmas conference.
We wrote them to perform live
To perform live
period.
Yeah, The Unibrow Song was I mean,
in the first batch of songs that we wrote,
but actually, we wrote a
song because a friend Greg,
who we talked about last
week was getting married
in December of 2000.
Yeah.
And at his rehearsal dinner,
we were like, hold on.
We're in your wedding party.
That means where your rehearsal dinner,
your rehearsal dinner means
that everybody sitting down
and cheers eating and some
people are gonna give a toast.
That's an audience.
Greg, we're gonna write a song
and perform it for your
family and Jen's family
at your rehearsal dinner.
So we wrote a song and the chorus was.
♪ We've seen Greg naked ♪
♪ Soon you will too ♪
♪ Hope you enjoy it more than we do ♪
Right?
And Tim played the harmonica
and sing it with us.
And then although we were his roommates.
And then on the way home
from that rehearsal dinner
with Christy and Jessie.
And again, we've told this
story, this part of it.
They said.
I remember they were sitting in the car
waiting for us to get back to the car
and they had been talking.
Yeah.
And we got in the car.
And they said, "We just think
"that y'all need to do something with this
"with your comedy thing
that you just did in there.
"Because you know what?
"It really worked.
"Those people were really into it.
"And there's something there
and y'all need to pursue this."
It was a pivotal moment.
The implication was.
I mean we were 80 people
in the room laughing at us
making fun of the groom.
they had the vision to say,
there's something here.
But the implication was to pursue it
beyond just doing Christmas Conference
because we were already doing that.
And I think that's why when
we started writing songs,
we took that song that we wrote for Greg,
we changed the lyrics and made it about
The Unibrow.
The Unibrow
and performed it at Christmas
Conference a month later,
or whatever.
Right?
And then we started in early 2001
we started writing more songs,
that then we made a CD, we're like, well,
we got all the songs will make a CD,
we're just trying stuff,
and we would sell it at Christmas
Conference the next year.
Yeah, and so, I mean, again,
we ended up in seeing
the Christmas Conference
for a total of 10 years,
but just some of the
stuff that we were doing
again, this is like, we were
figuring out what Rhett
and Link comedy was.
And it was a combination of,
getting up there in front
of a group of people.
I think this is one of the reasons
that we do things like this podcast,
and we do Good Mythical Morning
we do things the way that we
do is just like the two of us
talking to a group of people
is because the foundation of it
was getting out there at conference
and doing routines together,
loosely scripted things.
Yeah.
Interacting with people
going out into the crowd,
making these videos, singing the songs,
all the things that basically
are all the pieces of our carrier.
We're we did it, I'll give some example.
Yeah.
One of the first videos we made,
and none of the videos were religious.
All the videos were just purely comedic.
I think,
I don't know that we
call ourselves comedians
but over time, we started
to think of ourselves
as comedians, you start to
make a musical comedy CD,
and you start to think
of yourself in this way,
on this totally different
track in this Christian world.
But we were very self-conscious
to never be Christian comedians,
because just like way back in
the days of the Wax Paper Dogs
we were very self-conscious
being a Christian band.
It's like there was a stigma
associated with, okay?
A second rate comedian.
No, we just want to make things
that we think are as funny as possible.
And we can plug them into this context,
in these conferences where it's like,
you find it funny here,
you can find it funny anywhere, hopefully.
Yeah.
So everything we created was,
more often than not,
there was no religious undertones
or there was no message.
It was just, this is just to be funny.
And we were on stage, we
were introducing speakers
and stuff like that.
You might contextualize
something like a video
where you're a dog, like life as a dog,
but it's just you crawling
around on all fours
and then having POV shots of you as a dog.
I don't even know why it
was funny probably was.
'Cause Who Let The Dogs Out
was popular at the time.
Okay, yeah,
it all makes sense at this point.
Sometime that's all you
need as a song and an idea.
People at conference,
you had to share a bed
with like a roommate.
It'd be like four people,
two people to a bed.
So we made this sketch called
the invisible bed fence.
If you got to share a bed with somebody
that you don't want to be
romantically involved with.
You just string up this
invisible bed fence,
kind of like a what you would
have for a dog in a yard.
Yeah.
And it would shock you so
we created a fake commercial
for this product.
And it was on YouTube for a while
but it had copyrighted music
because that was back in the day
where no one thought about that
so now it's been taken down.
We also filmed some videos.
While at conference,
we went over to the mall across the street
from the conference in Greensboro
and we took nose hair trimmers,
and we trimmed strangers nose hairs
and then tried to sell them
this amazing new device
they've never seen.
And if that sounds like it's funny,
that one is still on YouTube
because it's got royalty free music.
I don't think it's funny.
I think it's embarrassing.
I think we should pull it down.
But just for posterity,
it's still up there.
It's so bold that we did it.
We would also do things on
stage like bits on stage
where we would invite students on stage.
Where we got two guys to,
we had an idea called
y'all gain 12 pounds,
which I think is probably would be
a little bit more
controversial 20 years later,
but at the time, it seemed
funny to get two guys
who were in relatively good
shape to try to gain 12 pounds
over the course of five days.
And you know what?
They did.
In less than five days,
and I think four days, one
of the guys gained 12 pounds
and then we changed the name of it
to y'all gained 14 pounds.
Right, right?
And it was just a dude who was drinking
whole milk.
Whole milk every day.
Hey, can you believe that?
Somebody could gain 12 pounds?
I mean, is that something
that wrestlers do?
Wrestlers lose that weight really easily,
but that we've now what if we
get them to gain the weight?
We did another one called
the gradual haircut.
We got two guys out there.
And every day, a conference
we would cut more of his hair off
giving him a different
hairstyle that so he looked like
an idiot the entire conference.
Right?
This is just good, clean, fun, man.
Yeah.
We were loving it.
I mean, and again, we
were just volunteers.
I worked at a cubicle.
You worked at a cubicle
and then we'd get together.
We'd get together once a week
and we come up with this
stuff and ever all year long
we'd be looking towards
Christmas Conference
where we could unleash these ideas we had.
And I'll say one thing
before we take a break and talk about
the sort of the pivotal
thing that happened.
But I think it's important
to acknowledge like I said,
I think that the old
video is not funny, right?
We needed a cocoon to develop in.
I'm just gonna be honest with you.
Right?
We were kind of late
bloomers in a lot of ways.
And like, there are really
talented like teenagers
who are like, really funny.
You think about somebody like Bo Burnham?
Yeah, exactly.
Like that dude was doing next level,
genius level content in
comedy as a 15 year old.
We were not doing that as 25 year olds.
In fact, we were still in,
and I'm not saying we're like comedic
geniuses at this point.
We've got a lot of lucky breaks,
but we're a lot better than we were.
But we needed sort of
a sheltered environment
we could not have succeeded
in a place where comedy
was what was expected.
Right?
We succeeded in a place
where comedy was a surprise.
It was like going to church
and having a funny pastor.
Right?
We were funny pastors,
let's just be honest.
And that's how we got away with it.
Because people were there for the meat
which was what are we gonna
learn about Jesus, y'all
that's why we're all here.
And we were like, well, right
before you learn about Jesus,
these two Nimrods are gonna get up there
to use a biblical reference Nimrod.
It is.
These two Nimrods are gonna get up there
and just cut the flu and
some people are gonna like it
Cut the flu at your nose hairs.
And you know what, some people
are gonna be annoyed by it.
A lot of people were I'm
sure 'cause we thought
we were so great.
Yeah.
And we weren't.
But we needed that environment
to develop and that's
why we just owe a lot to,
again, Mike Mahaffey, giving
us the opportunity to do this
believing in us, letting us develop.
He thought it was funny.
And then Mark worked with us
at the Christmas Conference.
Right and Mark working directly with us
for many, many years.
For the main meeting.
And Todd as well was involved.
So I think that yeah, we got so lucky,
like we would not our idea
of full-time entertainment
growing up was the guy
who came to our dance.
And in DJ, the dance.
Yeah
And just like, wore boots
and had this like, speaker
that he kind of came out with.
We are like a magician.
We didn't understand what
full-time entertainment was.
We didn't have any appreciation
for what comedy was,
besides just what we had seen on TV.
And we didn't have a plan
that this was gonna lead
to something beyond that
but it was irresistible
for us to stay involved in what it was.
And that's why nine years after
you graduated from college,
we were emceeing this conference,
Still.
still.
There's a pivotal moment,
again involving my brother,
shortly after we graduated,
and we had emceed conference a few times,
that I think sort of represents
the next big evolution,
the next big step.
He could see that we
were trying really hard.
Yeah.
And we're gonna talk about
that in just a second.
But first, actually,
Link is to the same T-shirt.
I'm wearing the same
shirt, you can still buy,
go to mythical.com, get
all types of goodies.
There's other T- shirts there.
And you know what, and
now we're selling Bibles.
No we're not.
Oh, guys I'm still on the
fence about how much I can joke
'cause we haven't fully
unpacked everything.
Yeah.
But there it is.
There's a Bible joke.
Mythical.com, rapid boys,
let's get back in it to this.
Okay.
So again, I don't know
exactly what year it was,
but it had to be between 2000 and 2002.
Yes, let's say 2001.
Just say 2001.
Your brother was the?
My brother was on staff at UNC.
Yep.
'Cause they had their own weekly meeting.
Every campus has several ministries,
but most major colleges have
a division of crew chapter.
I don't know what the technical term is.
So, Cole says, "Hey, I got an idea
"for you guys to do a
comedy show on campus."
That's an outreach.
That's the term that we use was outreach.
And the whole idea behind
outreaches it is an event
where the intention is you bring people
who are not Christians to the event
so you can reach out to them
and share the gospel with them.
So that hopefully they
will become Christians,
their lives will be
changed that's the premise
and we always being super self-aware.
One of the things we were
very self-aware about,
and actually very critical about
when it came to the church is the idea of
what we call bait and switch evangelism.
So this is the idea where
you tell somebody like,
hey, there's gonna be
this cool debate like
we're debating creation and evolution,
or there's a guy coming
and he's an FBI profiler.
And he's gonna give a speech all about
the fact that he's,
'cause this is literally
something that happened.
And he's an FBI profiler,
and he's gonna talk about
his career in profiling people.
And you get somebody who's not interested
in spiritual things to be
interested in that thing,
the bait, you bring them to the event,
they hear about the thing,
but then pretty early on,
sometimes at the very end,
all of a sudden, there's a switch.
It's like, hold on, they're
talking about Jesus now,
and they're telling me that the
most important thing in life
is a relationship with Jesus.
And that's why all these people are here.
And this FBI profiler is saying,
"Listen, I'm an FBI profiler.
"I'm really good at it I
just demonstrated that,
"but the real important
thing in my life is Christ."
And maybe he did a better
job of transitioning
than you just did but there was--
That's a paraphrase.
But it would switch up,
and there will be an opportunity
for you unsuspecting guests
to make some sort of a decision.
Some sort of indication,
a lot of times it was just like,
indicate on a sheet of paper
and we'll send you some
information or whatever.
We didn't like that even
when we were a part of it
we didn't like it.
I was always like, this
just doesn't seem sincere.
It's like if you want people to understand
that Jesus has made a life
a difference in your life
tell them that.
Don't tell them,
hey, let's talk about this other thing
and I'm gonna suddenly.
I just never liked it, you never liked it.
Right?
So when Cole said
"Let's do an outreach."
We knew that we weren't gonna
do that kind of outreach.
But we knew we were gonna do something.
Yeah.
Because all this is an
audience at Carolina
and we believe in the cause.
And saying no to an audience,
it just felt so stupid to us.
Never say no, to an audience.
We got to find a way to do this.
What we ended up doing I don't---
Did anybody video that I hope not?
Oh gosh, well, the premise
was it was just a comedy show,
but we would bring up topics.
It was a salty,
the term that we would use
in Christian circles is
it was salty.
So Christians see themselves
as the salt of the earth.
And so you're the salt
and you're the light.
And so sometimes you just wanna be salt
you don't wanna come all the way out
and explicitly say something.
You just wanna keep it kind of salty,
and you're sort of suggesting
the message of Jesus.
Our idea was we wanted--
We wanted to dismantle some
of the preconceived notions
about Christianity, maybe hit
some of those things head on,
give the audience member...
Give the the students
who were involved in crew
who brought a friend,
something that then they
could talk about afterwards.
So like, there are multiple
topics that we hit that,
like, hey, if you're gonna
go and grab a taco afterward,
when they were talking about this
like that Christians were just.
Well, we had an.
How we would characterize.
Well, look we had until the tuxedo story.
Yeah.
So.
But that was the.
That was the prominence.
That was our version of like,
the least version of bait and switch,
we could do something that's just.
It was a conversation
for conversation start.
Part of our conversation.
It was a conversation sorry.
And then take it where you
wanna take it afterward.
So we had been really
influenced by some people
who talked about relational evangelism.
It's what the term that
was being used at the time.
Yeah.
And so it was like you have
a relationship with somebody
and sometimes you need sort of
prompts in that relationship
in the context of that
friendship to talk about things
and maybe that will then get to a place
where you can talk about Jesus
and it still sounds very manipulative
and sounds many and it
can be and is often,
but I we thought our version was less
manipulative than the bait
and switch evangelism.
Now for the show, go ahead.
When you're convinced that
your friends are going to hell,
you got to come up with something.
Right, yeah.
Oh, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I mean, I remember
Pendula said this at one point,
years ago, when I still believe
the way that I used to believe.
And he just said that, like any Christian
who actually believes that
people are going to hell,
if they don't know Jesus
hasn't completely devoted
almost every aspect of their life
to telling people about Jesus.
Something's missing.
And that seemed very logical
and motivating to me.
But from a personal standpoint.
But we're still embarrassed.
They kind of nodded us up.
We were still embarrassed about it.
Because they're so self-aware
and it was just like, something.
It still didn't sit, right?
But again, we had to find a way forward.
And we did that and we felt
like we needed to wear tuxedos.
I don't know why.
But we had tuxedos.
We ordered tuxedos and of course,
I had to have mine tailored to fit me,
but we picked it up on
the night of the show
like we picked it up and I tried it on
literally like 30 minutes before.
In backstage I'm putting my tuxedo on.
Your wig on.
Now let me just explain
at the time I was about
the same size 34 waist,
34 to 36 the length of pants.
The waist was great.
I believe these were 34 ways tuxedo pants,
but they were approximately 28 length.
No, maybe 26.
You're talking like
you're half off the chime.
They gave me half-caff.
Half-caff pants man.
That really takes the
confidence out of the comedian
in his first ever comedy show.
I mean this is over an hour.
This is like an hour and 10
minutes of us singing songs,
having monologue slash
dialogues with each other,
playing some games with the audience.
I don't think it mattered that,
I think it probably only
help that you're not stupid.
I mean we were still kind of
on the tail end of the era
of Steve Martin and Martin Short
and I think that
Okay.
They often wore those those
half-caff tuxedos anyway.
So again, like Link said "The
whole point of this thing
"was to dismantle people's
perceptions about Christians."
We started the whole night with an acronym
Christians are blank blank.
And we went through each letter
I remember R was like Republican,
like we're making fun of
people's perception that like,
people think that all
conservative, Republican,
we knew that that was like a big turnoff.
And a lot of people were like,
why are your politics
so tied to your faith?
And so we were like
trying to dismantle that.
I think in the end, it was
not a resounding success
in much of any way.
Except the fact that we did something
that wasn't a conference,
we created something, we created the show.
We created a show.
Even if it sucked, we did it
and people were simple.
The audience was sympathetic.
They laughed.
They laughed.
And it wasn't a failure.
It wasn't a failure and then--
It didn't crush us
And another pivotal moment in our careers.
We were wrapping up,
cleaning up walking out,
and I remember sitting on the
front steps of this auditorium
at UNC I can't remember
the name of that Hill Hall.
I think it may have been.
Yeah.
Sitting on the steps there.
Shane Daiki, who was also
on staff with Campus Crusade
sits us down.
He's kind of a big way,
he traveled the globe.
He was a higher up leader.
Yeah.
And he'd also emceed some
stuff that we had seen.
He was very funny guy, like.
Super funny, super nice, super.
Like great MC, sort of, like,
in the comedic style
that we were going for.
Yeah.
And he said,
"You know, guys, I think
that what you did tonight,
"could be a ministry.
"I think you guys could be
on staff with Campus Crusade
"doing what you did tonight."
And we thought about that.
And when you just have...
When you're going back to your cubicle,
and you're just thinking
about okay, a few months,
we got this now, when we done
maybe we could do that again.
And then we've got Christmas Conference
that we do every year and
I would love to do more.
Yeah.
I would love to do more.
Well, again, so we get labeled,
because we blazed a trail on YouTube.
Sometimes we get called
innovative or, again, listen.
This is how this stuff
just happened to us.
Like, we haven't blazed many trails.
What we've done is just,
we've been receptive and
open at different points.
And opportunistic.
Opportunistic and listen
when Shane Daiki said,
"You guys, you could do this full-time."
It wasn't like it was strategic for us,
we were thinking about that.
We were like, really?
That sounds awesome.
How do we do that and he said,
"Well, what you need to do
is you need to put together
"a proposal for the regional team."
So this is the team of people
at the in the mid South region
who make decisions about
who is gonna be on staff.
And that 'cause basically
the way Campus Crusade
for Christ staff, works,
and other ministries,
college ministries like it
is you get on staff by like going through
like an application or
approval process by the people
who make these decisions.
And then you just get
assigned to a campus usually.
Right?
But there are other different roles
that you can play within the organization
but everybody gets paid the same way.
And that is through something
called raising support,
meaning it isn't like
crusade has this big bank
somewhere and they just
pay people salaries.
When you get hired,
you then have to go out
and ask individuals people
for monthly donations
to build up your salary.
100% of it.
100%.
Is not backfill by like, a large fund.
Right?
So this opportunity
it was daunting because
that's what it meant.
You can't do it halfway,
you have to quit your job as engineers
and you have to raise financial support.
Once you've reached your
goal of raising support,
then you can move to your assignment.
And my brother had already gone out
and asked all the people
that I was gonna ask.
Yeah.
Think about that.
Yeah.
And for me, we had well
paying jobs as engineers.
Yo, yo.
And I had my first child on the way.
My wife Christy, she
taught school for one year
then she got pregnant.
She was on staff along
with me as a full-time mom.
So, it's not like,
she had a job, you came
on staff as a family
and raised all your financial support,
and you couldn't have any other jobs
because you needed to be fully
devoted to it or whatever.
Right?
So, this is a huge decision.
And we were very motivated to
find a way to make it work.
I also knew that like
it was gonna be a shock
to my extended family.
If I were to announce, hey,
they were so proud of me
being a working engineer.
Right?
And proud of the volunteer work
that I was doing on the side.
But it took a while
for them to come around
to the decision that Christy and I made
and you and Jessie made
and the four of us made.
It was like the four of
us are making a decision
because Rhett and Link
really want to do this thing
because you guys gave us a speech in a car
after Greg's rehearsal dinner.
It's like, it was dicey man,
because it was freaking scary to just say,
oh, yeah, I'm just gonna quit my job
and then I'm gonna start from scratch.
And I'm just gonna get people
to give me money every month
through the organization, tax deductible.
Now the thing is, true, my
brother was already on staff
and he was already getting
supported by people.
But that kind of cut both two ways.
Not only did it mean
that a lot of people that
I was going to ask it
already been asked by him,
but I also understood
that it could be done.
I'd seen somebody do it
who my parents have seen somebody do it.
I don't know exactly what they
thought about it at the time.
I think they were probably kind of excited
that we were saying,
hey, we want to go into full-time ministry
but they were probably like,
oh, we're gonna have another son
who's going around
asking people for money.
Yeah, me and Christy side of the equation.
It was foreign to almost
everybody that we talked to,
especially both of our families
and talking about the decision
and we had a baby on the way,
I think I already said that.
But as couples,
we believed in the choice.
And as a group, we supported
each other in making the leap.
I resigned from my job at IBM.
You resigned, I think, as they
were trying to lay you off.
Yeah.
So I want to tell that story,
because that's a new piece of the story.
But let me back up just one second
'cause I want to talk
about what our proposal was
because we had to go ahead
before we could do all this quit.
We didn't want to be assigned to a campus.
Well, so specifically,
we developed a proposal which, ironically,
and coincidentally, one of our
good friends Matt Harmon had,
we had sent it to him 20 years
ago for like his opinion.
And he had it and he was like,
I just found this and he
sent it back to us last week.
Yeah, I read it this morning.
And we read the proposal,
so again, we were super into
this idea of moving away
from this bait and switch evangelism idea
that we had seen done on so many campuses.
And we wanted to equip students.
First of all, we didn't want
to go around doing outreaches.
And so if you're not gonna do outreaches,
what's the alternative?
Well, you can train.
The idea was that we
were gonna create events
that the Campus Crusade
students would come to all these
campuses in the mid South.
And the whole point was, we're
gonna do this comedy show.
But really what we're doing
is we're trying to equip you
and thinking about
the way that you talk
to people about Jesus,
we want you to get to a
place where you have friends,
and you're willing to
talk to them about Jesus,
and you learn ways to do that.
And you're not just thinking
constantly about inviting them
to events and stuff,
but you make it a part of your lifestyle.
That was the idea.
We made the pitch and
they said "Yes, do it."
And we said, we also
want to continue to host
the events that we've been hosting,
and more if there's opportunities,
they said, "Sure," so
they were very supportive.
They believed in the vision,
and they also said, "Well
you got original support.
"So get to it."
It's pretty easy to say, okay, when.
The proof is really can
you raise the money,
Right.
yourself.
But they were supportive, and
they gave us the go ahead.
And then that once they
give us the go ahead,
that was the biggest single
decision from a career,
personal family standpoint that
I made in this whole thing.
I mean, there was another,
there's a second place
that we'll talk about
when we left staff but joining
staff quitting engineering,
that was a huge moment, for the next year.
Well, I gotta tell,
Okay.
my quitting story.
Tell your quitting story.
So again, the story that
you've heard is that we quit
our jobs and became YouTubers,
you're now learning that that's
not exactly what happened.
What happened with me was,
I guess it was 2002.
So I basically it was my second year
of working in engineering,
like I'd worked a total of two years
and it was the end of that year.
Now, towards the second half of that year,
probably like September, October of 2002,
we had made the decision
that we were gonna do this
and we had gotten approval to be on staff.
And so I was like, okay, I'm going to work
at Black and Veatch, the engineering firm
that I was working at,
through the end of the year,
and then I'll tell them like,
30 days or whatever
before the end of the year
that hey, I'm quitting and I'm
gonna go do a different job.
Well, literally, like two
weeks before I told them
that I was gonna quit.
This was back when the
Enron thing was happening
and all these 'cause we
designed power plants
and so a lot the firms were just having
like rounds and rounds of layoffs.
So like for weeks, people
were getting laid off
and laid off and laid off.
And then one week, all the
engineers that got hired
on the same day as me,
all the junior engineers,
they started getting
called into the office
and they would come back
and be escorted out.
And so I was like, oh, no, I'm next
and heard something like Rhett McLaughlin
please come down to this so and so room.
And everybody at that point knew
that we were getting laid off.
I go down there I had a
conversation with my boss,
he felt real bad.
I said, hey, listen, man.
Don't worry, I was actually gonna quit.
And it sounded like it
was when a girl dumps you
and you said I was gonna dump you anyway.
But then I remember going back upstairs
to get my belongings to being
escorted out not by a cop,
but by like another employee.
And then everybody's like,
all the other engineers
are like trying to be sad,
and we know in pathetic and this one girl,
I can't remember her name,
but she was like, I'm so sorry.
And I said, you know what,
don't worry about me.
I'm gonna go be a missionary.
I'm sure that made her
feel oh, that's great.
And then as soon as I
said that, I was like,
why did I phrase it like that,
but I'm gonna just keep walking out.
I knew he was moment.
Biggest decision we ever made,
scariest decision we ever
made for the next year,
your full-time job was
meeting with individuals
usually at their home and
given them a presentation,
which ended with what you make a pledge
for annual or monthly support.
So I can do this thing that
I've told you about for an hour.
Yeah.
I did the same thing for a year.
At the end of that year,
you went to the office and started working
because you had reached financial support.
But you forgot, we also
worked at the same time
because you gotta have
money doing something.
I did not get done by
the end of that year.
It took me an additional year.
And over the course of that time,
we were both trying to work part time jobs
in order to make ends meet
while we're meeting with people.
And so for me, that was two
years of meeting with people
there was a whole section of months
where we lived with Christie's family
in the room she grew up in.
It's like, it was extremely difficult.
Well, I lived for a year
above my in-law's garage.
And you did some odd jobs for him.
That's where I impregnated
my wife with my first child.
Okay, great.
Above a garage.
Yeah, Lily was born.
Yeah, so and I my father
in law had like a bunch of,
he's a dentist, but he had a
bunch of properties and stuff.
And so I was kind of like his gopher
and just did a painted
stuff and organize stuff
and drove a truck around.
And it was just like odd jobs,
blue collar odd jobs for a full year.
It was weird.
There was a period where
I had to ask my dad, it was very humbling.
I asked my dad if he could hire me.
And my dad paid me to just
work for him laying tile.
And like, he was like, I can
pay you an apprentice rate
because you don't know what you're doing.
How about pay me the son rate?
It's like he did everything he could
and it made all the
difference in the world
but it was tough.
And then Lily was born.
And we were still raising support.
And we would take this newborn
and try to time our appointments
where she would sleep
through the whole thing
or Christy would have to leave.
And I remember one, it would
always be the same spiel.
But I remember in one spiel,
I looked up as I'm trying to be engaging
and trying to like, get people
motivated to give money.
And this guy who was a friend
of a friend of a friend
of Christy's dad, and I
knew he had a lot of money.
I looked up from like, my
presentation notes or whatever.
And the dude was asleep.
He had fallen asleep.
And it was just the three of
us in a room talking about
the ministry work we wanted to do.
I woke him up with some grants.
And he did make a pledge.
So mission accomplished.
Yeah.
So two years of that.
Then we finally start working,
We can talk about
on everything we were doing.
the process of raising support forever.
Yeah.
I've got crazy stories, but essentially.
We got too much of the
stuff other to cover.
It was awkward as you
can imagine going around
to people's homes and
asking them for money.
But yeah, so eventually
we get to the point
where we raise support.
We came on stuff while
Jessie was pregnant.
We started working in the regional office,
which was a little office
and like with cubicles,
in Apex in North Carolina,
and Jessie was pregnant at the time,
and she worked for like two
months before like January
and February then Locke
was born on January,
February 24 of 2004.
So Jessie was actually in
the office for a little bit
but then I was just left there by myself
waiting for you,
Waiting for me to get there.
to finish.
And I spent most of my time like,
we knew what we were gonna do.
Like we knew we were gonna
do some kind of show.
So I just kind of was thinking
about Christmas Conference,
of course, because always thinking about
Christmas Conference,
but kind of putting
together the groundwork
for the show that we would
take around campuses.
Yeah, and I eventually got there.
And so we were sitting in a
little cubicle environment
and there wasn't one back
room where the door was shut,
and you could edit videos.
And that kind of became
our default office.
And we would make our plans for the tour,
we would do around the mid South region
with our training seminar
and for conference,
and then at some point
in doing the tour...
Doing the tour and then coming back
and wanting to promote it.
We were like, we need to have a website.
So we created a website
and we started putting our
comedy videos up on our website
rhettandlink.com.
So 2003, we created rhettandlink.com.
In order to promote our
visits to campus like,
hey, these guys are coming.
You should come out,
check out these videos
and they were videos that we had debuted
at Christmas Conference
and stuff like that.
But now all of a sudden, we
had a portfolio on our website.
And we were still making.
We made Pimp My Stroller
after Locke was born.
And we debuted Pimp My Stroller
at Christmas Conference,
the end of that year, we showed the video
and when the video is over,
we rolled the stroller out
on stage with Lily and Locke
in the stroller and the crowd went crazy.
And that same year, like another day,
we pulled up Facebook profiles of students
in the audience and made fun
of their Facebook profiles.
And then at the end of that comedy bit,
we sing a new song that
we had written called
the Facebook song.
Right?
And that was the end of it.
And then we did our tour.
We put our videos on our website and then,
Apple released this thing called iTunes.
And they had this section
called video podcast.
I'm like, we already have videos.
It's like, hold on, this is different.
These videos are made for this platform.
And they're like, their cereal.
One of the biggest things was the
a ninja who would answer questions,
Ask a Ninja.
Ask a Ninja.
And so we said, well, what's
our version of that we can do,
because we wanted to
do stuff like that was,
our rationale was, on one hand,
we can create content
for the internet first,
and then the people who will
see it will be the people
who will want us to come to their campus.
So it's all a promotional
tool for our live tour.
And it was also the idea was,
we did like the idea of
people inviting other people,
both Christians and
non-Christians to our event,
because it was friendly
to whoever you were.
It was about training, right?
In conversations.
But we weren't trying to hide anything.
But so it was like, if
we can make these videos
and like college students
actually watch them
and care about them, then
maybe they'll be excited about
coming to the events.
So we were making videos for the events.
We were writing songs.
I want to talk a little bit
about what the event was,
because it's kind of a
really interesting time
in our lives, like.
Yeah.
It would basically be me and you,
now there was a one time when
we took Jessie and Christy
and the kids in a big van,
and it was not great.
Yeah.
We just even not tell
it or talk about that.
It was mostly me and you driving.
We had a projector and a laptop.
And your guitar
And a guitar.
And we would show up at
whatever like facility
we had been designated to do our show in,
which is usually a classroom
like a big college classroom,
like we could hold like
100 or 200 students.
And like you would meet
somebody with Crew who was like,
I'm the tech guy,
we had a projector and then
we had this like stand.
We would set all this
stuff up like the projector
and it was all in PowerPoint,
or keynote, maybe at the time.
Keynote.
And we had a little remote.
And like, we just did
the whole presentation
we didn't take anybody with us to do this.
No.
And it was like,
and then we would like do it.
And then we would like go eat somewhere,
go watch a movie, like
it was just me and you
traveling the country
together with this show.
It was awesome.
It was an interesting time.
I mean, yeah, it was,
the training part we believed in it
but personally, we
weren't that great at it.
It's not like when I
worked as an engineer,
I was like, engaging
all these people talking
about my faith.
It was like.
We were great about
talking about doing it.
We were training other
people but it was...
So there was this dichotomy of like,
on one hand, we believe
in what we're doing
and what we're saying.
But we're also very motivated
to continue to create
and engage an audience.
And that really fueled
everything we did to make
and weren't gonna do a half as,
and we were gonna honor the people
who were investing every
single month in the vision
that we laid out to them.
Right?
But we were also developing
and maybe more so than we
realized as entertainers.
And I think, especially when
we started doing the videos,
we started doing more videos.
Now, the timeline is a little bit,
interesting, because,
a lot of the videos that you can go,
we didn't join YouTube in 2006
and we'll talk about how that happened.
But a lot of the videos
when we first joined,
we just took this backlog of
videos all the way from 2003
or earlier.
Right?
We just uploaded them to YouTube
and some of those videos
are still up there.
So one of our earliest videos
is we talked about Valco,
and we've made fun of ourselves before
because we're sitting like we
did this like podcast where.
And here's why, this is what
I was getting at earlier.
We didn't care about YouTube,
but Apple seemed legitimate.
And when they were doing
video podcast we were like.
I sure like it lots of funny noises.
Let me see if I can work them out.
Okay.
Apple seemed legitimate
and when they they started
platforming these video podcast
and Ask a Ninja was the biggest one.
We said, let's develop
something for that platform
Right?
We just can't put the videos that we made
over the past few years
on and Apple's not gonna
do anything with that.
We got to have a video podcast.
That's why it was called
the Rhett and Link cast.
And so we developed that
and the rationale was
that will be promotion
for when we visit campuses
for whatever we're doing
increase our awareness
within the movement of Campus Crusade.
But it was also exciting to develop a show
that was for the internet first.
And that's the first time
that we actually did that.
And the first thing we did,
we started doing debates like
if a ninja can answer questions,
then we can play characters
who debate topics.
And we did that maybe once.
Twice maybe.
Maybe twice.
I think we did it twice.
Well, but the thing I
don't wanna get into,
some of these details are not gonna
be interesting to people.
But the one thing I want to
just acknowledge is that,
the first year that we worked,
doing this, we worked
at the regional office
and we had a little room
that we would go in,
and this is where we
would shoot our videos.
And we shot the Rhett and Link cast.
Right.
And the Valco one was
the first one that we did
when we decided on the format
of the two of us sitting
behind a table with --
With microphone.
One microphone
in front of us talking.
Right?
So that was the beginning of that format,
which as you know, led to
eventually Good Mythical Morning
many years later.
But the interesting thing is,
we've made fun of ourselves
and the way we talked
in that video and how we were talking.
Well, especially Link
was talking really sad
and really like .
The reason that, so we were
both talking so quietly,
is because we were in an
office with people working
right outside this room.
We've never talked about that.
But it's like, there's people like doing
their Campus Crusade regional office job
in the cubicles and then we're in there.
Talking about Valco.
We're sketching Valcro pictures,
and talking about them.
And part of it was,
what are you guys doing?
I mean, we're out here
doing like legitimate work.
You're in here talking about
Valco for an internet video
on this thing that nobody understands.
So it's like now it probably be better
if you didn't hear us.
So in 2000, I'm gonna
guess that it was 2005.
We knew that we needed our own space.
And it was just because
the ideas that we had
and the way that we wanted to do them
even just for what we
were doing in the ministry
was too big for this
place that we were at.
Too disruptive disrupt for
the a cubicle environment.
And I talked to my father-in-law.
And then the office
that I broke into, during
one of the Elta episodes
last year where it talks
about how we went in there
and we saw all the stuff
that place that basement in
Lillington, North Carolina,
where we first did so many of our videos.
That was the place he was like,
sure, I've got a basement.
I've got a basement and Lillington
that I'm just storing stuff in there
if you guys want to work
out of there and no problem.
And so that was the beginning,
we went in there that was
when we painted the wall green
and blue we did the checkered,
The black and white check floor.
The black and white check floor.
That are all these iconic things.
And now I've made their
way to the set of GMM.
Like that was all because
of that Lillington basement
when we knew we needed a space and.
So that we could create
a video podcast to promote
our tour as missionaries.
Yeah.
And shout out David Woodall.
Yeah.
Who was working with us at the time
he was at the regional office
and he started working closely
with us kind of just like
running camera and he helped
us lay that tile in there
and the carpet and paint
and all this stuff,
like basically getting
our office into the state
that it was for the number of years
that we worked in.
I loved it, I mean, we had
our own little basement
hideout, no one was
looking over our shoulder.
And questioning how does
this directly relate
to the ministry?
It's like, we were just going on instinct.
And we were working really hard.
But it really wasn't clear
if it was 100% aligned
or if it was worth it,
or if it was just stupid.
Well, for instance,
it was in that basement
that we conceptualized
the idea to make Looking
For Miss Locklear,
the documentary where we tried to find
our first grade teacher.
And again, we got approval
for all this stuff.
The vision was we were
gonna take that documentary
and then we were gonna use it
we had already done two tours
and so then instead of doing a third tour,
we're gonna shoot the documentary in 2000.
That was to the summer 2006.
And then we were gonna
take that documentary
and use it and screen it and
use it for training purposes.
Again, you watch a documentary,
you won't see any of that
is there's no overly--
We were using it as an apt way to say
you could take anything that
has any sort of meaning to it
and use it to get into a
conversation about Jesus.
That was the idea, but
we never got to do that
because some things changed.
And I will say, this
story may serve as like
a classic example of why
you can't give people
a lot of leeway.
It's like there's probably like.
I give credit to Don Knox.
I remember him saying, "I don't know,"
he was our he was our supervisor.
Yeah, gave us a lot of freedom.
He was like, "I don't know
exactly what you guys are doing
"but I believe in you guys
and I trust you guys."
Yeah, and I think he did
have good reason to trust us.
I do think and we had great intentions,
but some things ended up happening.
I think that being independent,
being down there making that documentary,
taking it to film festivals,
having people respond to it,
it won some awards.
It got screened on PBS as
part of the whatever that.
SCTV doc Carolina I guess.
Documentary light lens thing.
We began to get this idea that.
We began to gain confidence.
I think it was at that
point in sort of those like,
05, 06 again, June of 06, is when we shot
Looking For Miss Locklear.
But it's also when we
started our YouTube channel.
And the only reason we
started our YouTube channel
to tell a story we've
told a million times is
because somebody took that
Pimp My Stroller video
that we made for Christmas Conference
and put on our website
they put it on YouTube.
Got more views a day than
it had any year on our site.
And so then we put everything
on YouTube, but again.
Well, there's an audience there.
But it really was hey.
And all we got to do is press upload.
It was not strategic it
was like he was put things
we didn't know we were making a plan
to get off staff at that
point that's what I'm saying.
But these videos started
develop a life of their own.
I mean even the ones within
that we were making specifically
just for the podcast like we
would sing a song about Valco
or a fear of frogs and we will be talking
and then we got an email
one day from Phil Vischer.
Creator of VeggieTales.
Bob the tomato, Larry the cucumber.
Way specifically the voice
of it many of the characters
but Bob the tomato, yeah.
He created the whole world.
He created the film.
Well, I'm not gonna tell
his story, but once.
He told it in a book.
After he was pretty much
done working with VeggieTales
he was starting a new
thing called JellyTelly.
And it was a website for a
new type of kids program.
I mean, it was Christian
education for kids
like a Christian Sesame
Street with puppets
and some live action.
And he said,
he thought we could work together.
And we developed some characters.
He said he wanted us to sing songs about
the books of the Bible.
He said that between him
as one of his characters,
and then us, they wanted to
essentially sing a song about
every book of the Bible.
And they were gonna
start from the beginning
and he wanted to give us Genesis
and then they I think,
take every other book,
and then was gonna go into
this What's In The Bible
series.
DVD series
that will be sold in Christian bookstores
and also a website called JellyTelly.
And this is why you may and
many of you have found them
because they are on YouTube.
You may find these guys the
Fabulous Bentley Brothers,
which is obviously me and Link and Wigs
sitting on a stage looking
like we're out of the 50s
singing this funny songs about the Bible.
It was a part of that.
And doing that, again, we
got approval to do that
because it's like, oh, yeah,
why should we let Rhett and Link do this?
This is a great opportunity,
is still a ministry.
But we wrote two songs,
we produced them under his supervision.
We flew up to somewhere
around Wheaton, Illinois,
and then we recorded in his studio,
met him it was kind of a thrill.
He was super nice.
He had some mentorship influence on us.
We came back, we started to think,
what if we worked with Phil on this thing?
And we wrote up a proposal.
Hey, the proposal work before
we wrote up a long proposal,
a business plan for how we
could be full-time employees
and maybe partners I don't
know working with Phil Vischer
on his new endeavor.
Well, and give some context of that.
Like what led--
We were just trying to make.
Well, again, what started as,
again, I think that we
always were most passionate
just to be completely honest,
we were most passionate
about the performance
and the product and the
audience and the growing it.
We really believed in the
mission at campus crusade.
And I think yeah.
But it was really easy.
Those video podcast.
It was really easy to take
anything that we were doing
and tie it back to the mission.
But what we were really
experiencing was like,
we were growing as artists,
and we were experiencing the satisfaction
that is creating and
creating for an audience.
And when it seemed like
that could become something
that we could just get paid to do.
It started to make sense to be like,
why don't we just do this as our job.
If we can do exactly
what we wanna do that's.
And that's the whole thing about,
we could have never,
I don't think that we
could have ever succeeded
in the traditional comedy space.
I just don't.
No, no way.
We needed to do it.
We never even thought about it.
We were too smart to know that
we could try to go up on an open mic night
at Charlie Good Nights in Raleigh,
world renowned comedy club
and try to get up there.
And in when that crowd over,
we just didn't believe that we had it.
Well, we didn't we we
never talked about that.
Right?
But we were trying to make something work.
Phil Vischer, the response
to our proposal was,
I have no opportunity to like
the one you're describing
it can't work.
But we can still work on
like a piecemeal type thing
and you guys can still be on staff
but around the same time,
we started getting emails from,
people wanting to use the videos
that we were putting online.
In different shows like maybe a show
and there's that show
in England on Channel,
whatever it was that people used to.
Yeah.
Talk about.
Our video started working in breaking out.
We gave permission for our
fear frog song to be used
in a new clip show that
was gonna be on The CW.
That is the show that event
that was became online nation
that after a series of other events,
we actually audition and got
the job to host that TV show.
And what missing anything
before we get to that?
I don't think so, I mean,
I'm sure we're missing
some stuff but I mean,
the basic idea is that.
I was gonna say the unicorn
rap is one of those things
that we made it Christmas Conference.
If you'll see that it
makes a lot more sense
if you know that this is
just a video to introduce
two MCs to come on stage.
If you wanna see MCs
then come see these MCs
but it was like.
Right, right?
Well, maybe MC is just
what you call a rapper.
So then we call it the unicorn rap,
and it got a lot of views on YouTube.
Right?
But it was like the fear frog song
got the attention of the
online nation producers
at the same time, I just
get a kick out of it.
So I'm gonna go through really quickly.
Okay.
Because we had to make a video
every week for our podcast,
which the fear of frog song came from
there was also an explosion
at a chemical plant
near my house, and that
people were protesting it.
We had to make a video that week.
So we made a video called
Apex chemical explosion,
where we made fools of
ourselves at a protest.
It was funny.
Oprah was somehow involved indirectly.
We took that video, we
entered it in a radio contest
in Raleigh were the winner,
which was us got to first class
plane tickets to see the Grammys.
And they wanted us to
make a videos of the--
Was it first class?
I think it was just class.
Yeah.
It was coach man but you--
I thought the seats lay back.
I hadn't been a lot.
I don't remember.
We won the contest with
our Apex chemical explosion
they sent us to the Grammys
and said make a video
we'll put it on our radio station website
because that'll get a lot of views.
They didn't give us credentials
to get on the red carpet
but that's what we wanted to do.
We made sneaking on the
Grammy red carpet video
which you can still watch on YouTube.
When they flew us to LA to make that video
the next morning, we we
dropped off the paperwork
with the online nation producers
and met them in person and told them
what we did at the Grammys.
When we got back to North Carolina,
we sent them that video.
I think that, I was told by
them that that's the video
that made them think that we
could be hosts of the show.
So they contacted us ...
Then we got the audition
and then we got the job.
Well they said can you just
audition in a video like
here's some clips that
would be on the show
and can you just say some
things introduced the clips.
We sent that tape in and the next thing
they said, "We've selected
you to host the pilot."
We got permission from Campus Crusade
to fly out in and film The Pilot.
And if it got picked up,
we would make a decision at that point.
And then they decided to pick the show up.
And I remember finding out
that the show is a network show
2007 we're still on staff.
I came maybe as 2006 we're still on staff,
with Campus Crusade and
we we had kind of the pump
had been primed for us to
be looking for opportunities
to do entertainment full-time.
That was we were on that page,
we'd already made the
proposal to Phil Vischer.
And then we had both already decided
if this show gets picked up.
This doesn't mean we're
moving to California
but what it does mean
is that hey, we made it.
We're in the entertainment biz man.
Yeah.
And that we got the word
that the show have been picked up.
In fact, they told us
we didn't have to move
they would fly us out
like every other week.
To shoot eight episodes.
One week out of the month
to shoot a big group at a time.
And you know the story
there we shot eight episodes
but only four got aired.
But the decision to to leave
staff in order to do that
was that's the kind of
the answer to the question
that people always ask is,
how did you decide to quit your jobs
in order to become entertainers?
Well.
We got another one.
That's when we quit our job.
We quit being on staff not we
didn't quit being engineers
in order to become hosts.
This was literally three years,
almost four years after we had quit.
We had stopped being, well, I got fired
and quit on the same day let's say that
but four years after being engineers,
that's when we finally had a job
in the entertainment industry
and it wasn't to be YouTubers
it was to be TV hosts.
And also be YouTubers
because that in our minds
that legitimize us and that
we would still be making
YouTube videos that was the plan,
'cause we took the video
remember like ghost ride the farm
was we would make videos
for all the nation
and then we post them on YouTube channel.
Of course we put them
on the YouTube channel
because it was a show about YouTube.
But what I'm saying is I remember thinking
and again, I feel like
the producers of that show
were also a part of this.
I mean, I remember one of them, saying,
"Yes, pretty soon you're gonna
be pushing that stroller down
"the street in Malibu," like
selling the Hollywood dream.
Dave Hurwitz.
Yeah,
who was also before that he was
the producer of Fear Factor.
Yeah.
I'm sure Joe Rogan knew him well.
And so I was like yeah,
I'm gonna be in Malibu
little did I know that
like nobody lives in Malibu
and except like I know like Sandra Bullock
or something is like
but I was bought into the
idea that this is it, man.
We made it we've transitioned,
we're gonna be entertainers
and this is way bigger than YouTube.
Yeah.
Because at that time again, it was 2006.
We weren't making any money YouTube.
You couldn't make money on YouTube.
We were making 10s of dollars
on a website called a Rever.
That was the only place
that was doing any sort of
rev share, hence the name Rever.
But it was a much easier decision
because we were looking
for ways to do squarely
what we were passionate about,
and not have to work it around,
being in a Christian ministry.
It's not that we didn't believe
in the Christian ministry
anymore at this point.
It was just that it.
We were so passionate
about what we wanted to do.
It wasn't an alignment,
we started to see the
hints and indications
of it being disingenuous from
a precritical stand point.
I'll get into this next week
when I kind of tell my story
but I will say in that year 2006, 2007.
My perspective on my faith
had big had begun to change
I still was aligned with the mission.
I was still an evangelical Christian
that was not in question
but my perspective on it had changed,
and sort of the stage have been set
for what would kind of unfold
over the next 15 years.
Okay.
But I'll get into that.
But for now, I would just like to say that
it was an easier decision for us to make,
even though it was that it was
the second biggest decision
that we made to leave staff
and to inform all of our supporters that,
hey, we're doing we're doing this now
you no longer need to support us.
And, of course, with the
support of our wives,
we made that decision.
To conclude this conversation,
just to kind of look back,
I just have a couple of observations.
Well, just to finish
the story really quick
Okay.
before you go back
to connect it to what we've said before
the show got canceled.
After four episodes, we
did get paid to do those
four episodes, and we
made more money probably
in those four episodes
than we had made in a year
working for Campus Crusade.
I don't remember the exact numbers,
but it was pretty close to the same.
So we had a buffer
'cause we were living off
a very little amount of money.
As soon as they told us,
the show was canceled, we had nothing,
we had no job, and we had no prospects.
But we made a video about it,
which you can still watch.
We made a video about it getting canceled.
This was before YouTube Partner Program,
you couldn't make any
money off YouTube videos.
This is where the story picks up.
And we've told before,
that's when we started doing the thing
where we make cold calls to businesses
to get them to sponsor our videos.
And that was the beginning
of our quote unquote
YouTube career.
But let me say it's a very lean times.
Yeah.
For a couple of years.
On and off for several years,
but those first couple of years very lean,
in terms of not making a lot
of money off these videos
and then splitting it
between our two families.
But like I said, we were
very, very accustomed
to living off a very little money.
And so it wasn't that big of a sacrifice
but there was a couple of times there,
where I was convinced that
we were gonna have to stop
and go back and ask some of
those same people for money.
Yeah.
And thankfully, eventually,
some things fell into place
and we move past that stage.
I think when I look back on it,
there's two ways that I
like to think about it
and one is like, how did this
entire journey these like,
lost year's impact, like our style,
our brand of comedy,
and then the other thing
is just from a logistic
and historic standpoint.
Is just even having the opportunity
where everything was so pivotal.
I'm always so fascinated in how,
everybody, the vast majority of people
who are so I'll start with that.
The vast majority of people
who were making it on making
careers out of YouTube,
we're just kids who were
just doing YouTube for fun.
And then as they got popular,
they started to realize
that there was money there.
They figured out a way
to like make it a career
and people came on to help them
from a business standpoint.
But for us, we were grown
as adults with children.
When YouTube started our first video,
like Pimp My Stroller had
both of our kids in it
and it was about a
stroller for God's sake.
I mean, if it wasn't for everything that
we've stepped you through over
the last episode in this one
we would just be some
old guys who had no clue
we're just engineers it's like,
we had to bide our time
for YouTube to exist
so that then our videos that
we just had to go on it.
The Fine Brothers are
a good example someone
who's I like their IRA
age, kinda, I think,
when we interviewed them in this podcast,
it's reminiscent of their
story that they were doing
a bunch of videos that were
just living in weird places,
that then they just plopped on YouTube.
They were somehow biding their time
and creating for something
that they knew not yet
what it was.
And Campus Crusade and
the and being on staff
and everything we did there
and everything that we stepped through,
gave us the time, so that
we could be a part of
this movement, even though
we were like a generation too old for it
and then because we were a
generation too old for it
in the same way that when we talked
to Harley of Epic Meal
Time he was a teacher.
He had a level of maturity and drive,
and a different, older
perspective, I guess.
So most of those people with that,
To make it happen
make a business out of it.
Make a business out of it.
'Cause we went and we like,
incorporated well as an LLC,
I think for the first in 2007
it was about that year 2007 we started
what do we call it Rhett?
Rhett and Link Creations.
Rhett and Link creations, LLC.
It almost feels like we
knew there was something
we didn't know what it was.
It was very reminiscent
of when we are blood oath
we promised to do something
that we couldn't articulate
what it was.
We had to find a way to any audience.
We were gonna try to engage with
and we were gonna try to to meet them,
not knowing what will come up.
And I would say that,
there was at least a slight
sense of desperation.
Oh yeah.
In a lot of the things that we were doing,
which I think really led to a
lot of the things that we did,
especially it becoming a business,
it had to work, and
therefore we we made it work.
But to answer your question
about the tone of our comedy,
which is something that
people have speculated about
for years, it's one of the reasons that
if you look at a lot of our early videos,
it's like, are they Mormon or
Christian or what are they?
You now kind of understand why
so much of our comedy, especially
in the early days was so
it was clean as a whistle.
Yeah.
Except for like those videos
that we made in college
where we were naked, we
would push the envelope
within that circle of,
the Christian circle,
but the reality is, is that
all these videos were made
to be shown and experienced
within the context
of Christian events, those
first few years of videos
and therefore there's a whole lot of lines
that we couldn't cross.
There's a whole lot of
places that comedy goes
that we couldn't go.
Now I do want to--
But it's also who we were,
by and large, I mean, we did curse.
I mean, it's not like we didn't curse,
but we were never gonna
put that in a video.
Well, I was gonna say not exactly that,
Okay.
because I was gonna say
that like, our personal comedy,
the way that we would
interact with each other
the jokes that we would tell to each other
when the camera wasn't rolling.
Always been pretty off color.
There's been cursing, it wasn't like said,
now you hear and see some of
that stuff in our comedy now.
I see it less as we've changed.
We have changed everybody changes.
But.
Yeah.
I think a lot of it is just
we kind of let our guard down
because it's like the environment
that we're creating in
is not that what it was,
but because we initially
attracted an audience
that was like, oh, this is clean comedy,
and clean comedy
aficionados gathered around.
And then that was where we
got pushed back every time
we pushed another limit,
and we crossed another line.
Slowly, usually on Facebook,
everybody would complain
and some people would be like,
that's the last video I'm ever watching.
That's the last video I'm
ever letting my kids watch.
But it helps you understand the context of
why we started that way.
I think it's mostly because,
the audience we were creating for.
Yeah.
In the context of
these videos would be shown.
That's true.
Then there's also
another aspect it's like,
sometimes I'll watch
our videos old and new.
And I'm like,
if I divorce myself from
that I'm watching myself.
Say man, we were weird.
It's like, what we do is I think,
having developed in this Christian bubble
and then in this like,
other path that was
completely untraditional
has led to a certain type
of we develop certain
comedic instincts maybe
because we couldn't go
to other things.
I'll just give it as an example like,
if we can't go to blue comedy,
then we tried to push in other ways.
Or I don't like to pick apart what we do.
But I want to acknowledge that it's weird
and that it feels weird
that our instincts,
I rewatch the first episode
of the Mythical Show.
And I was like, our instincts
in the way that we did this
the way that we talked at
the top of that episode about
what it was a strange combination of like,
being informed by what
was starting to bubble up
on this thing called the internet,
but also, all of our experiences in like,
when it came to live comedy,
we were just as informed
by like the speakers
who were the funniest at the
start of their Christian talks,
as we were with any stand up comedian.
Yeah.
And I don't even know how it all
shaped who we are, but I
do know that it made us
a weird brand of comedy because,
Yeah.
we grew in this alternate
kind of like an alternate
society like a bubble.
If you can't be offensive,
you can at least be confusing.
But no, and to wrap things up,
I think that hopefully what we
demonstrated and telling a
story just like Link was saying
it's like so much of the way that we are.
And the way that our work is,
the stuff that we create is
characterized by this very,
a typical journey
that started with sort
of the first audience
that we ever had, officially
as when we started
our band until we decided to start
making YouTube videos.
And you might also appreciate
why we've never answered
the question in an interview
with well,
we quit college, we raise
support to do a ministry
that was like training students
and then we tried a couple of things.
And then like.
Yeah.
We don't tell that story
because you can't just tell
that story in a sentence.
It's easy to just say, yeah,
we got engineering degrees
did that for a while, and
then we became YouTubers.
But hopefully--
And also,
maybe there's a lot of
questions that are popping up
because of our association with,
and being in full time Christian ministry.
It's had like, again, use
hashtag EarBiscuits let us know.
I think it whatever your
take on those things are
you might start to see
what is Rhett and Link
intersection with my take
on evangelical Christianity.
I think over the next two weeks
when we share our Personal journeys
will answer a lot of those questions,
but log that stuff, hashtag EarBiscuits,
let us know, communicate
amongst yourselves,
and we'll get to it.
Yeah.
I would also ask you that
I think that this series
we're calling it, of us
talking about this stuff,
both telling the story, the
backstory of the Lost Years
that we've done in the past too,
but then also telling
our personal stories.
I know that there's a
certain cross section
of the audience out there that is probably
not interested in this and it's like,
this isn't my thing.
I don't relate.
So I'm gonna tune out.
But I know that there's a lot of people
who are like, this kind of is my thing.
This is my story, or I
there's a lot of points
where I can relate, maybe you
know someone who can relate
to this who has a similar background.
We just encourage you
to share it with them.
I think that this could
also be the kind of thing
there are probably a
certain number of people,
not a small number, who
have kind of over the years
as they have sensed sort of
a change take place in us.
And they kind of see that
through the way we talk
or they see that in our work,
have had just speculated
about what's going on with us.
Maybe they've tuned
out maybe they've said,
I'm not gonna be a part of
this new Rhett and Link,
whatever it is, this might be something
that you want to share with them as well,
so they could kind of
at least just understand
some of the context.
So thanks for doing that.
Yeah, thanks for doing that.
Should I not give a wreck?
Out of principle I'm gonna give my wreck.
You can give a wreck, man.
Wreck baby wreck.
Not related anything.
I just watched it and
it was a great movie.
I recommend watching Honey Boy.
Shia LaBeouf, plays his own father.
And it almost feels like a documentary
of his tumultuous
relationship with his father
as a child actor and,
it was tough to watch.
I mean, so if you've got
issues with your parents
or something like that,
maybe it's not for you,
but it was extremely well acted,
and it's like very, very
compelling, heartbreaking,
in a lot of ways.
But I do recommend it.
Honey Boy.
Honey Boy.
The hashtag EarBiscuits.
Next week, we'll get into
the personal spiritual stuff.
It's gonna get real real.
To watch more Ear Biscuits
click on the playlist on the right.
To watch the previous
episode of Ear Biscuits
click on the playlist to the left.
And don't forget to click
on the circular icon
to subscribe.
If you prefer to listen to this podcast.
It's available on all your
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Thanks for being your mythical best.
