Building a Media Empire: Ballen Studios’ Nick Witters

Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription software errors.

Jeff Umbro: This week on Podcast Perspectives. What is the biggest mistake that new creators make?

Nick Witters: They're too afraid to take chances. They've been doing the one thing all by themselves, the same thing, and any deviation, they think the whole house of cards is going to fall apart, but it's not true.

Jeff Umbro: Nick Witters is the CEO of Ballen Studios, a media company renowned for its compelling storytelling across various platforms.

Before leading Ballen Studios, Nick served in the U. S. Air Force and later pursued a career in entertainment law, where he worked with prominent digital creators. His diverse background has equipped him with a unique perspective on content creation and management. In his role at Ballen Studios, Nick collaborates closely with co founder John Allen, better known as Mr. Ballen, a former Navy SEAL turned storyteller famous for his strange, dark, and mysterious narratives. Together, they have expanded the brand's reach through podcasts, YouTube content, and other media ventures. Nick's leadership has been instrumental in forming strategic partnerships, including a notable deal with Amazon Music to distribute exclusive content.

Nick, how are you? Thanks for joining.

Nick Witters: I'm swell. I'm swell. How are you?

Jeff Umbro: I'm great, man. I say this to everybody, but with you it's different. You actually have, like, three careers prior to the one that you're working now. Can you give, like, a little bit of an overview of kind of who you are and how you got to where you are today, as the CEO of Mr. Ballen Studios?

Nick Witters: Yeah, I grew up in a single wide trailer in the woods in Washington State, joined the military when I was 18, deployed when I was 20, got out when I was 22, went to undergrad, used the GI Bill, went to law school, became a lawyer, really loved the show Entourage and the fact it's, it was a real thing.

I was like, then I could maybe try to do it and then, you know, pounded on every door in Hollywood, got into the mailroom while all my friends that got out of law school went and got six figure jobs, I got a nice 15 bucks an hour.

Jeff Umbro: Whoa.

Nick Witters: Yeah. When I left, you know, it's like, oh, now that, you know, they wanted to have the assistants, you know, they would listen to them. So I think they bumped them up to 20, but in COVID hit, I bounced. And, you know, as everyone knows, relationships are everything. And a buddy of mine called me up, who we were in the mailroom together, my really, my, my brother Giacomo, and he's like, I'm working at this, you know, digital YouTube management company.

And I was like, why? He's like, dude, they rep Mr. Beast. I was like, who is that? But I just didn't know YouTube. I'm the guy that would like change the starter on my truck or like watch some news clips or something like that. And then I actually at the same time was getting, I found out I had more GI Bill benefits.

So I was like, post COVID, places weren't really hiring. I had a separation from law school, took the bar past the bar, no one was hiring. So I went to go do my MBA and I got approved at this like top 20 business school. So it was like, go do the MBA and have a JD/MBA but no job, or go and do this like YouTube thing.

But the real, the real pitch was that, you know, he goes, dude, you want to be the biggest negotiator, like on the planet. And these, this guy is doing like Super Bowl views every video. And I was like, well, I'm not that dumb. I can probably understand what that means when it comes to a brand deal, but I had the luxury of going to get my education at WME and I worked in the branding and endorsements department. So I kind of, you know, cut my teeth there and then worked for the head of the talent department. So that helped with the talent management side of it, but also being a lawyer. And then I worked in the non scripted department, which really helps out the studio now because we have a production studio.

So, and then Rip, after I think maybe a year, year and some change, he's like, I hate it here. He's like, I want you off by myself. And I was like, I want that too, but I want to learn a little bit more. He's like, dude, you already know it. No, one's helping you, right? I'm like, well, no. He's like, we're leaving. I was like, we're leaving, dude.

You don't tell a Navy SEAL. No.

Jeff Umbro: So you, you know, left the mailroom, you were apprenticing under some of the agents at WME. And you ended up working with Jimmy, Mr. Beast, the biggest YouTuber in the world. What are a few of the things that you learned from that experience that you took with you moving forward?

Nick Witters: Kind of like with anything, if you do it too long, there's this sense of like being institutionalized, right? Like, someone who's an agent for 10 years at WME probably isn't going to be that good at being a digital talent manager, unless maybe they're a digital talent agent. But even with those constructs and those confines, I don't think there's as much creativity as, like, in the sense that I learned managing Jimmy day to day, which was, Wait, so he just throws up titles and then thinks of thumbnails and then builds the story out.

But then also like his ability to just really understand his space specifically, so deep knowledge of what he was doing, spectacle giveaways, and virality. And so a guy who started a YouTube channel giving away 10 grand to a homeless guy, then goes and opens up a chocolate company and then a snacks brand and then a burger thing.

And just, it was just the possibilities felt endless. And I was like, all right, depending on the creator, there's similarities in that, right? So really being able to stretch your mind and go, how do I build this out? So, yeah, so working with Jimmy was really about the education piece and that you can create your own reality.

And even though everyone tells you, no, and you can't do it or you shouldn't do it. I mean, it's, it's all just depends on the creator. And then just like deep, deep knowledge of YouTube, like understanding the platform. I mean, he was damn near at the YouTube, you know, headquarters once a month, it felt like, right?

And, you know, he had all his editors just, if you didn't know, you know, ABD, CTR. You know, just what that meant, what was a good percentage, what wasn't, you know, and then, and then just being ahead of the curve, like he had a bunch of different YouTube channels that were different language channels, and then he finds out that there's, YouTube is rolling out a program where you could put different audio files on a single video, so you just put all the transcripts, you know, Spanish, Portuguese, et cetera, on a single channel, And then got rid of those other channels.

So then that's why his, you know, he's got 300 or something million subscribers. And I was managing him when he had about 40.

Jeff Umbro: Talk about like when John came to you, John Allen, how did that relationship start? I know it was through Night and then you touched on this, but like you guys went off on your own.

You have now worked for two, at least two, many more, actually, that you manage YouTube first creators who have exploded, what are the similarities there? Like, what are the things that both of, that both john and Jimmy were doing every day and are still doing every day that you had a front row seat to?

Nick Witters: I mean, you said it, they're doing it every day, right?

And that's, and that's tough, I guess, for someone just starting out that has to balance a job and maybe a career, you know, doesn't have the proper runway to go, Hey, I'm going to do just this and only this, but just like, I mean, like an insane passion for what they're doing. Like no one does it better than Jimmy.

No one does it better than John. And me personally, as a combat vet, I've always loved working with veterans. So when I was at William Morris, I worked with vets, Nate Boyer was my first client and I started the veteran hiring program. And the reason I'm saying this is because when I got tonight, Giacomo, you know, he's a reoccurring character in my story, he flagged John for me. And he's like, dude, there's this dude on Tik Tok. He's blowing up. He's a, he's a former Navy SEAL and you love working with veterans. I was like, all right, so I'm gonna go and reach out. Have you guys tried to sign him? Yeah, we tried to sign him for like the last eight months. He just won't, he won't, he doesn't want a manager. He doesn't care.

And I'm like, I look around, I'm like, yeah, cause there's no managers here that I would even want to manage me, let alone someone that would be able to communicate with the Navy SEAL and build trust with that person. And so I was like, give me his email, and I emailed him, you know, subject line, Combat Vet, Love Your Content, Love Your Show.

And then the body, it was like, Hey, you know, my name is Nick, you know, former attorney, combat vet. I manage Jimmy day to day. And I love your stuff. If there's anything I could just be helpful with I'm not trying to sign you, literally not even bringing you a deal. I'm just saying, Hey. You know, you don't have anyone in your seat, in your circle, that is giving you any sort of like advice, I'm happy to, to be a sounding board.

And he responded and was like, yeah, dude, let's get on a call. So we scheduled a call and it was a week later. And I remember I was like, yes, let's go! It was like a month after I got to Night, it was really quick, but I went there, you know, as a coordinator, I guess that's just the title that it was, but it was, you know, the CEO's right hand guy.

So I did, you know, the best job anyone could have done managing Jimmy and helping, you know, build out the management company and sign my own client that they couldn't sign. So when we ended up pulling Rip, it didn't matter. I was like, he was my client and I didn't take any clients. And I made them, you know, I closed so much deals for Jamie and I made sure when I left, he had a replacement, well, as much as someone could replace me, I guess, but we left because John was just like, at a management company, you have to manage multiple clients.

And at this time, John's, we were building out John's business. I think by then I had hired an internal salesperson. We launched the podcast, you know, we were bringing on writers. We developed a training program, like, but I was armchair quarterback CEOing that stuff, cause I was like, it's your business, you know, I'm just your manager and I'm going to help advise, but I'm also going to help you get where you want to go. And if you want to build this thing, this is how I see it, you know, being built. And we, you know, put our minds together and did it.

And you know, that and signing a bunch, you know, essentially you sign 10 to 15 clients and you just do a bunch of brand deals. And so I had the luxury of seeing what Reed did with Jimmy, which was focus on one client and I saw what John was doing and he was doing it every day and he was the best at what he was doing. And so I took a bet on him. He took a bet on me.

Jeff Umbro: What does Mr. Ballen look like today? I know that you guys are doing a bunch of different things and I want to come back to the idea of like a YouTube creator becoming a podcast creator, but like, just bird's eye view, what are the assets that you guys are doing all, like day to day?

Nick Witters: You know, it started with YouTube and then, you know, every creator needs to, you know, feel the urge to create and not feel like it's just a job or homework. And so, I signed him in the summer of 21, and then by December, we had actually already, we had launched, his goal was that he wanted to launch this foundation, MrBallen Foundation. And we wanted, he wanted it launched by that December, so January 1st, his audience and himself could start giving to victims of you know, heinous crime. It's called the MrBallen Foundation.

To date, I think we've given over a million and a half dollars to victims of essentially true crime situations.

And we're not true crime, by the way. We're actually like 25 percent true crime. It's strange, dark, and mysterious.

Jeff Umbro: Strange, Dark, & Mysterious horror, paranormal, et cetera. Often gets grouped into true crime.

Nick Witters: Yeah. And it's, it's easy to do a podcast and say it's true crime. I mean, that was the point, right? But it's actually 50 percent true crime.

Mondays are always our brand new true crime. Thursdays are remastered best of YouTube, you know, beautiful audio redone and then put on Thursday on the podcast. And so it really is pretty much 50 50. And on YouTube, it's maybe 20 percent of the stories he tells. Then the next thing after the foundation, he goes, you know, what's next, dude?

He's like, dude, this feels like homework. I'm not creative. You know, I'm like, I do, and I get it. Right. And so it's like my email inbox. And so, he's like, no, what are we, what's the next thing? And, you know, my job as a manager is to be the one to figure it out. And, and I was like, you know, there's this podcast thing that's kind of been ringing in my mind. And he's a storyteller and there's not much to the video version of it, right? It's him telling you a story and you don't need to be watching him to get the story, but you do because it's MrBallen and that's the show. And I go, I go, I go, close your, I go play one of your YouTube videos and just close your eyes.

And I was like, it's a podcast. I was like, the next move is podcasts. He's like, all right, how do we do it? I'm like, I don't know. Let's figure, I'll figure it out. And I hadn't, you know, I had limited knowledge of podcasts, right? And so I reached out to anyone who knew more of podcasts than I did, which was pretty much everybody.

And I just took a bunch of notes. I took a hundred something calls and I combined it all into something I could understand and explain to him and then developed a launch strategy based off the assets that we had at the company, which he had, you know, Facebook show, Snapchat show, he had Tik Tok, X, blah, blah, blah, million, he had a big YouTube channel that was week to week.

So we had a ton of marketing power. You know, you have YouTube community posts, you have mid rolls, you can do end rolls, you can cut that up. You can, he has Instagram and all this stuff. So we, we have plenty of marketing power, but we need to figure out how to do it.

So that's when we first started, as to your question was like, give us the, you know, the TLDR on the business. So YouTube and then podcasts, but within podcasts, we developed our marketing arm, which is now kind of our like superpower. And it's been built out probably 10x since then. And I've always looked at YouTube and any sort of content as marketing, right?

And so marketing division, and then we have a podcast network. Cause when you have a hit show, you should do something with it. So you should start other shows cause you can do feed drops, of course. But to be honest, those really don't work. That's why, you know, you go to some iHeart or wherever and Hey, we'll do the show with us, we're going to do feed drops.

Cool. We'll go put it on our YouTube channel and get 50 million people to watch it in like 45 days. You know, the app and so we started an audio network cause I know there's a lot of value to that, but also for building out this vision of Strange, Dark, & Mysterious with John's focus of ball and studios being the, the home of the best storytellers, you know, within Strange, Dark, & Mysterious like, for example, we're branching into like strange science or, you know, spooky sports or strange sports, like Strange, Dark, & Mysterious but like sports science and history, which is not true crime, along with all the other stuff.

And then the other thing is, if you're going to have other shows, one single person can only do so many weekly always on shows. And the only shows we have are weekly always on shows, which was funny because I think my first podcast movement I went to, I met a really good friend of mine now, but I won't say the name of the business.

And he's like, yeah, we, we just do like limiteds. You know, we have some owned and operated, but we just do limiteds and we get, you know, sales department, some other stuff. But, you know, we haven't cracked the code on an always on. Our thing was that we hit, we hit the always on code, like we would crack that code.

So let's just continue to do it because we knew the formula. And we knew if we stayed in our vein, our audiences would start to overlap and aggregate and create, you know, the flywheel and feed into one another. And so John was like, well, man, maybe, you know, he's like, you're good. You're a manager. He's like, you love being a manager.

I go, I do. And he's like, let's start a management company. I go, all right, let's do it. And so I go, who are we signing? He's like, I got a few guys I like, I watch, and he started flagging them to me. And then my thing is manager is to figure out if I'm the best manager for you. And you're a client that I want to bring on because I have a certain skill set and that's building businesses with creators.

And if they don't want to build a business and they just want to do brand deals, well, there's Nine Media down the road, feel free to have fun. But if you want to build something in the, you know, in the storytelling space, which is where we focus on, then you want to be, you know, with us.

Jeff Umbro: The podcast industry in the last decade is a bunch of people who love telling stories, who, maybe they're reporters, maybe they're like artists, but like they're storytellers first and business people second, and, and that's amazing.

Like you cannot make something that people care about without the authenticity that comes from there. That said, like what we're seeing now is there's more money in podcasting and more people are coming in on the business side. And, and my hypothesis is that all of the folks that already figured this out on the YouTube front are going to come into podcasting and just eat the industry's lunch in a good way, because I think that people need to adapt, but this is what I see with you guys is like, you're so successful in the things that you're doing, because you actually come at this with a strategy in mind, as opposed to just saying like, let's be storytellers.

So first question is do you agree with that assessment? And the second is what is your view of the podcast industry as a whole? In terms of like how people are coming at the business side of it. Do you think that they need to kind of grow up a little bit and you know, take like a business first approach?

Nick Witters: No, it's cause, cause it all starts with the creator and the community, right? But you have to have that business counterpart and you also can't be the business counterpart and be the creator. That's what's, that's what I've seen as a big issue for either a lot of creators where a lot of people trying to get in the business is they don't have the proper counterpart, right?

It's like John is the storyteller. I'm the business guy and I don't want to tell stories. He doesn't want to do the business stuff. We're per, we're perfect match. And that means that everything I, you know, advise on and the decisions I make have to be the right ones. And so having that trust, but the reason why I think, you know, YouTubers will be probably the most successful because if you look, I'll give you the other example, if you're audio first and successful and trying to transfer over into video land or digital land, you have your community that's built out. YouTube is baked in with, you know, called call to action, right? CTAs.

John's first initial thing was, I'm going to call this thing. If you're a fan of the Strange, Dark, & Mysterious, then you're in the right place, because that's all we do. Okay, you're getting their attention, they're hearing you, they're listening to you, you're creating this umbrella and this world that you're bringing them into.

And then he would always do this like button joke. It's like a gag joke. He'd be like, Alright, tell, uh, you know, go, um, tell the like button you're gonna go help hang its, you know, 70 inch or 80 inch screen TV and make sure you, you miss every anchor bolt while you do it, like, it's just like a dad joke, right?

And as, you know, as kind of dad joke as it is, people are liking and subscribing to the videos. And so you're creating these CTAs and they're just in there. It's part of the program. So then you go, Hey, we're going to start this podcast. Well, you can only do so many, you know, we do a weekly show on YouTube.

Well, people don't just sit and watch one YouTube video a week, they do more than that, right? So, why don't you make, make them watch or listen to more of your content? Cause that's what they really want. So you start a podcast, deviate slightly from the main, so, true crime podcast. And it was successful that way, but watching a creator and then going and listening to a podcast, who's a, who is a storyteller, there are pot.

I mean, essentially everything's storytelling, right? We're storytelling right now. But if it's like a host, co host interview host, like you're sitting there trying to watch it, right? Yeah. You could listen to it. Like, I love Guy Raz's like How I Built This. Like, I don't, I don't even know if he has a video.

I just only listened to it, right? But I love it. And if you had a video version, I'd love to go watch the one where like you had the Chobani guy on. Now pretend you're got this massive audience in audio that you don't really do a video version, or even if you did, you, do you know how many of them are actually watching it?

Because normally podcasts, you know, ingestion is why you're driving to work, while you're doing something, right? So you're not really watching the podcast, right? So then go and create that habit with your audience to just listen. And then go, Hey, by the way, you guys should go watch this thing. But they're like, well, I just like to listen to stuff.

So how you transfer the audience from one to one of the others is I think that's, that is the most difficult part for like audio first, you know, host creators versus YouTube digital first moving into audio.

Jeff Umbro: And how much were you paying attention to like the mechanical like data side of that? Like you've already talked about like, you know, average view duration, click through rate, et cetera.

When you're launching, when you're talking to a potential new partner that you want to manage or something, or when you're launching a new show, like how much of you are, is sitting down and like looking at how it's performing and then like trying to figure out how to fix it if it needs it or do something differently, and how much of this is based off of like your editorial gut,

Nick Witters: I mean, we're always in the data. Like, I mean, I have like a hundred tabs open, half of them are YouTube I have my ART19 one, I have my Megaphone one, I have all these other ones, right?

I'm always looking at the data, right? And so, that is your heartbeat for your company or for your show. You should always know what your blood pressure is. When we're doing things, we're doing it in real time. So, we launch a video on Saturday at, I think we do it at 11 a. m. now, but traditionally it was like 4 p. m. on like a Sunday, back in the day. And so, you launch the video, and you watch, and you refresh, and you refresh, and you refresh. At a certain point on the YouTube side, within a few minutes, sometimes about 20 minutes, maybe 40 minutes, depends. They'll start to get the data in real time. And so what the viewer sees when they click on the channel is not what the actual performance of the video is.

And then, you know, on YouTube, you'll get your CTR, you'll get your AVD, you'll get, and then you'll have essentially a track record of your last 10 videos, what performed the best, what performed the least. Then, you'll start to tweak. Now YouTube does this thing where you can do like A B testing and put three different thumbnails up.

It'll go and pick which one that like, has the best CTR. And it'll just push that one forward. So there's a lot of cool things that YouTube's doing right now that really benefits creators who are active, but we do the same thing for audio. Like you launch it, you know, what's different, what's different about that is not like any other, you know, I guess, platform you're loading up.

It's not real time. Like on YouTube, it's like seven minutes or 12 minutes or 15 minutes or something.

Jeff Umbro: I think the Apple data comes like 24 hours later.

Nick Witters: YouTube is so algorithm driven that the video needs to be performing at its best. So it gets suggested to more people in new viewers. In audio it doesn't do that.

So it's, it's less of a worry in audio, but you know, you are tracking it. We'll go through and say, Hey, what stories typically perform the best? Which ones typically perform the worst? Those things are easy to see. Why did this one perform? Why not? Then you have all the variables that come down to, was it a holiday weekend? Is it summertime? Any of those things are relevant, right? Is it daylight savings time now? Is it? All that stuff matters. And then, and then like portions of like, you know, of the year, right. Between like November and December, it's like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Like no one wants to know about like people getting murdered and like stolen or.

Jeff Umbro: Never really thought about that. No, no true crime over Christmas.

Nick Witters: Yeah, but then you got Halloween and then you got creators that do, you know, Strange, Dark, & Mysterious that'll post like twice as much that month. So imagine if you're a sports creator and you do a bunch of different sports stories. But you do it like, Oh, Hey, during baseball season, we tell more baseball stories.

Jeff Umbro: Bill Simmons is doing like special episodes for like the Super Bowl or the NBA playoffs or whatever.

Nick Witters: Draft Kings that wants you to promote during the Super Bowl on a video that's related to that subject matter, that's also a good way to then go on the, so on the business side of things, how do we go and monetize even more when we can, when we can control it, you know, it's like, Hey, we know, you know, around October videos are going to slap a lot more.

So you guys are going to want to get that, that inventory around that time.

Jeff Umbro: So I know that you guys focus on like a special niche when it comes to like the creators that you, you work with, but like, what does that partnership look like? Is this like, you work with us, I'm going to get you like growth and money and revenue, and we're going to take a piece of that, or is it something different?

Nick Witters: So like agents traditionally, you know, they're, they're 10 percenters, right? They're, you know, they're, I guess, monitored by the Agent Talent Act, ATA. They're capped at 10%. Managers really don't have a cap, but a good manager that's building your business, that's bringing in new revenue, it's 20%. So you bring a brand deal in, it's 20%, it's new revenue.

So you don't touch the AdSense. That never happens. That's like the no go. So any creators out there. If a manager is like, Hey, let me dip into the AdSense, you better dip yourself. The second thing is, you know, you're adding in workload to these guys that are pretty much one man, one woman BAMs, right? Where they're barely getting a video out a week, hell, some even a month.

And, Oh, Hey, by the way, you got to like, think of this ad. Then you got to like record it and edit it. And, you know, and so you have to be mindful that you're also like finding ways to take stuff off their plate, right? As a manager, oh, wait, you're, you know, landlord's giving you a hard time. Give him my number. Let me talk to him.

You need to go find some, you know, you guys want to get a chef for the family instead of, you know, having to cook or eating out. I'll go find that for you. Managers, the real benefit is that you are to relieve as much and all stress as humanly possible while bringing in new revenue at the highest that you can without damaging those relationships, you don't want to sell a brand deal for some godly amount, underperform, and then never work with you again.

So there's strategies among how you get in with the brand, what you give, what you don't. Kind of a cheat code is sign a creator, start doing brand deals, build that revenue, and then figure out the next hire to get them more time back to get more content out while preventing burnout. And then your growth strategy.

Jeff Umbro: There's a creator I follow pretty closely who recently published an episode. He talks through like his creator journey a lot. He recently published something about how if he hires somebody, then it's ultimately like increasing his cost burden for his business. Well, I heard that and I was just like, no, that's crazy.

Like if you're going to hire somebody, it's because you think it's going to exponentially increase your revenue potential.

Nick Witters: 100%.

Jeff Umbro: This goes back to the idea that. You know, a creator or an artist, like often doesn't have the business sense to go with what they're trying to do. And so I love that that's what you're doing and helping people do it so well.

From my vantage point, you have been extremely successful. Obviously, I don't know your business and your life, but like, it's looking pretty good from over here.

Nick Witters: I had not had a client fire me yet. So that's a good thing.

Jeff Umbro: That's great. What's the end goal for Ballen Studios?

Nick Witters: We want to completely own like all things strange, dark, mysterious. Think of like, how long is like Twilight Zone been around? How long has, you know, Unsolved Mysteries? How long has like, when I was a kid, it was, Ripley's Believe It Or Not. So you had the curiosity, strange part. You had Goosebumps. You had, you know, Are You Afraid of the Dark?

This stuff's been around forever. It's going to be around forever. So let's just do it better. That's really what our mission is. It's like find the best storytellers, help them, incubate them. Help them get into, you know, new shows that their audience are going to like and love, build their audience, grow their footprint, and, but that's if that's what they want.

Jeff Umbro: So, unlimited budget, right now, what's the next project you work on?

Nick Witters: I see like a movie. I see a real theatrical release movie that's like, you know, Paranormal meets Blair Witch, something, like that Blumhouse 2. 0 thing, it just, it's still itching at me. So if we have, if we have a limited budget and John's got 25 plus million fans, and he has 40 some million just on YouTube, I mean, across the board, he's doing a hundred million plus impressions. I mean, I think that's just video alone.

Jeff Umbro: Oh, I mean, you guys, you guys are monsters. I was looking at all your numbers the other day. All of your creators are incredibly strong, but Mr. Ballen is, you know, he is, he is hopefully the next Mr. Beast.

Nick Witters: So we work with the Legendary storyteller, Rodney Barnes.

He has comic books, Killadelphia, he's done Boondocks and a ton of stuff. And there's a show that got pitched to us called Run Fool. And I knew of Rodney from one of my old roommates back in the day. And I was like, how cool is it that someone like straight up traditional TV film is like, I want to, I want to tell stories and do it on a podcast.

I'm like, that's, that's so cool, like we're breaking boundaries and we're crossing lines. And it's just exciting to see, like, I say it's still the wild west.

Jeff Umbro: I was just joking the other day. It's like, I give it a year before Mr. Beast has a podcast.

Nick Witters: He will not do a podcast. He has three things that he's focused on and nothing will deviate him from those missions.

And actually the Amazon show was one of those things early on. I remember he pitched this idea. He's like, I want to be on Netflix or Amazon or wherever premium. And I want 10, 000 people in a town that I build that the winner gets $10 million. And by the way, I've not seen Beast Games, but he had pitched that and I'm just like, I'm like, and he's still doing like 100 Person Circle, maybe, you know, quarter million giveaway cash wise.

Jeff Umbro: What's

Nick Witters: the third thing? There's, there's Amazon, there's YouTube.

I can't tell you that, but. I do know, but the Amazon thing was like a precursor to those top threes.

Jeff Umbro: He has three goals in mind and he's, he's working on them.

Nick Witters: That premium show, that was before these top three, that was like his first kind of like, this is this mega thing I'm doing. So now he's got three. Yeah. He's a beast. Why they call him Mr. Beast.

Jeff Umbro: He sure is. There is something about the spectacle of it all. My fiance and I watched Beast Games cause I've just been interested in, in learning what he's up to.

She had zero interest. And then by the second episode, she's hooked. She's like, can we watch it again? And this is not the kind of thing that we usually watch. So like he figured something out. So.

Nick Witters: I was boots on the ground when he did the Squid Game, right? And I actually sold the brand deal on that, Brawl Stars.

And yeah, it was massive. This is the biggest, it should be on record biggest deal in brand deal on YouTube history, but who's counting? It was Insane to see that and he did it in like weeks where Hollywood it would take like six months.

Jeff Umbro: Everybody's had some interaction with him and like his, everyone has a story.

You don't always get to talk to somebody who worked directly with him for years.

Nick Witters: I was sleeping in his, right next door. I was sleeping at his house. We're, you know, yeah, we were in, we're in it. It was, it was a good time. And it was, I mean, how else do you learn YouTube from, you know, other than the Michael Jordan of YouTube, you know, so I was blessed to be a part of a lot of that stuff.

And he's still a good friend of mine.

Jeff Umbro: Well, tell him we said hi over here. If he ever wants to join the show, he's welcome to.

Thank you so much, Nick, for joining us. This was awesome. Truly appreciate it and we'll have you back soon.

Nick Witters: Appreciate it. Thank you, man.

Jeff Umbro: Thank you so much to Nick Witters for joining us. You can find more about Nick on LinkedIn or at ballenstudios.com.

For more podcast related news, info, and takes, you can follow me on LinkedIn at Jeff Umbro. Podcast Perspectives is a production of The Podglomerate.

If you're looking for help producing, marketing, or monetizing your podcast, you can find us at Podglomerate.com. Shoot us an email at listen@thepodglomerate.com, or follow us on all socials at @podglomeratepods. 

This episode was produced by Chris Boniello, and myself, Jeff Umbro. This episode was edited and mixed by Jose Roman. And thank you to our marketing team, Joni Deutsch, Madison Richards, Morgan Swift, Annabella Pena, and Perri Gross. And a special thank you to Dan Christo. 

Thank you for listening and I'll catch you all in a few weeks.