The Exchanges

Q and you, I guess you find a place to live together, right, in like an off-campus house. And you're just, you know, you're regular students there. And, um, tell me a little bit about how you started to meet, because this is, you didn't meet Tyler right away. I think first you met two other guys who would eventually become part of Dude Perfect. How did you meet those guys?

A That's right, so we, Tyler is a year younger than the rest of us, so you're correct, we met him the following year actually through Garrett, which we'll get to, but my brother and I show up on campus, and we actually went to, I mean, let's call it what it is, right? There's this thing called Fish Camp at A&M, and it's essentially an awesome brainwashing camp to help people that don't know all the traditions about Texas A&M, and then there's kind of a similar one that's a little more Christian-oriented called Impact Camp. And we all went to both of them, but at the Christian one, we happened to meet each other, and so my brother and I met, uh, Garrett, and we also met a guy named Sean, and we all kind of hit it off real quick, and so we kind of grouped up very quickly that freshman year.

AI assessment note: “at the Christian one, we happened to meet each other, and so my brother and I met”

Q Corey, were you, were you ever even slightly resentful of the other guys? Because you were also going home and editing this stuff, and that's a lot of work. Were you ever like, God, those, you know, I gotta do all this work.

A Honestly, I don't know that I would have described it as resentful. I mean, sure. Did thoughts cross my mind of, hey, these guys are not having to do Dude Perfect as much as I am? Sure. But the reality was they were working crazy hours with their other jobs. So we were both doing the same amount of, of work hours wise because they had full-time jobs during the week and we all had DP during the weekend. So, you know, logically I couldn't really go there, but I think we were all so excited about what could be with Dude Perfect that we just powered through, but it, it hit a breaking point. And for me it was the, the kind of physical piece.

AI assessment note: “Honestly, I don't know that I would have described it as resentful.”

Q not grow up knowing each other, But both of you would end up going to Texas A&M in College Station. Um, Corey, what was your kind of thinking? I mean, you were 18 and ready to go to college. Were you thinking, yeah, maybe I'll, I'll do what my dad does and, and be a, like a, a spiritual leader? Or, or did you have other thoughts in your mind?

A That was definitely at least a leading candidate in my mind. So my brother and I went to school together. We pretty much did everything together. I mean, I'm sure that, uh, Some twins go the opposite direction, but we enjoyed, you know, hanging out together and stuff. So that was never really a question of if we were going to go to the same college or not. So we went together. We both worked at the Apple store seasonally off and on in high school and college. And so I'd say there are two kind of top career paths for both of us where we're either going to go into some sort of sports ministry because we both love basketball so much, or we were going to work, try to corporately at Apple. And that's why we chose to be communication majors and Speech comm majors at Texas A&M.

AI assessment note: “That was definitely at least a leading candidate in my mind.”

Q How'd you do at school? I mean, were you a good student?

A Honestly, I was a good student. Kobe always squeaked me out slightly. When we graduated college, he squeaked into summa cum laude, and I was nothing, right? I was just right below that to where they don't say anything. So alphabetically, his name comes right before me. And so, you know, in front of 30,000 people, this is A&M, huge stadium. Kobe walks across, and it takes him a long time to kind of say his whole John Kobe Cotton. Summa cum laude. And everyone claps, and it's William Corey Cotton. It's just as short, nothing after it, and so it's these little moments that I, uh, think about, but we enjoyed competing, and honestly, it's been a fun dynamic.

AI assessment note: “Honestly, I was a good student. Kobe always squeaked me out slightly.”

Q It was like a strip mall, right? It was like a, what, 2000 or 3000 square foot or something like that?

A Correct. It was a public facing building, but it was a cool space, right? And so we knew we physically needed somewhere to office out of, but we didn't want it to be your typical, you know, cube farm, and so we made it as cool as we could, and we built it out in a cool way, and it was, it was very, you know, sporty on the inside, an activity base, and a basketball goal, hanging on the wall, and shuffleboard, and ping pong tables, and pool tables, and a space that was very, you know, natural to film in, and so I think when people saw that, I think it was like, oh, these guys are serious, like, This is the first time we've ever seen anyone online basically create a space.

AI assessment note: “Correct. It was a public facing building, but it was a cool space”

Q And you just held the camera and would, like, start filming Tyler or each other, or what?

A It started with recreating that shot with Tyler and Garrett, so Tyler goes in the corner, does his hook shot, and I think the dynamic shifted when we saw it on camera, I know that's silly to say, but when we were looking through, you know, playing it back on the camera, it just has a different vibe, right? And especially when you've never done this kind of thing before, It just looks fun to try and do again, and so it started with that shot for Ty, but then someone else said, hey, I want a shot, and someone goes, you know, across the fence and throws it, or one of the guys climbed on the roof, you know, or someone does a bounce shot off the chimney, and we were just having fun in our backyard.

AI assessment note: “It started with recreating that shot with Tyler and Garrett”

Q me a little bit about that, because there's a discipline in going to that every week, or more than, more than once a week. Was that connected to just the way you were raised, or was it, was it part of a discipline? Like, Getting up and exercising every day. I mean, tell me, yeah, tell me about what, why you, you guys would go to Bible study every week.

A It's a good question. I think a combination of both, right? It was a little bit how we were raised. I think all of us had a really good experience growing up. I say in the church, but really, I just mean with our faith. And because of that, we, we met people that felt the same way and there's just a bond there. It doesn't mean that we weren't really good friends with other people that didn't necessarily believe the same things as us, but I think we, Grew up and experienced what it was like to have really close, strong friendships with guys that could back you up and had your back and things like that. So then when we moved and we were all on our own, that's something we were looking for. We were looking to replicate some of the friendships and kind of brotherhood that we had in high school and growing up in, in our own separate lives. And that's how essentially we met these guys combined that with, with basketball.

AI assessment note: “I think a combination of both, right? It was a little bit how we were raised.”

Q So, you put this out on the YouTube channel, on Corey's YouTube channel, and I'm assuming you wrote, hey, watch us do the world's longest basketball shot, and did it just go crazy overnight?

A Yeah. This was a simpler video in a sense, right? So everything we'd done up until this, probably three or four videos, had been, you know, what someone would probably call a montage. Almost felt like a music video. Multiple shots, music behind it, all spliced together. This one we wanted to try something different, and obviously we didn't film multiple shots in the stadium, we just did this one. And so in our heads, we were like, man, we got this. This is gonna be one super shareable clip. It's gonna be awesome. And it's funny, we Put it up, and we were expecting this, like, instant reaction. People were going to go crazy over it, and we put it up, and, and for a while, it just kind of went flat.

AI assessment note: “we were expecting this, like, instant reaction... and for a while, it just kind of went flat.”

Q So what happened? How did it get attention?

A So, it was probably three days later, and you know, we were all split up. I think maybe we had done the shot right before some sort of vacation. Maybe there was a break in, in our schedule, and so I remember my brother and I hopped on a plane to North Carolina with our family. My grandparents lived in North Carolina, and so we hop on the plane, and I mean, I was like literally thinking about how sad I was about the fact that that cool video we had shot recently didn't do well, and you know, whatever, let's just go on vacation and not worry about it, and my brother and I hop on this plane, And we're flying, and it's about a two-hour flight, and so as we land, we flip our, you know, my phone back off airplane mode, and all of a sudden, my phone just starts vibrating like I'd never seen mine or anyone else's do before, and I mean, I thought it was, uh, broken. And so, you know, finally, the screen kind of slows down enough for me to read a text message or two, and what people had said was something to the effect of, hey guys, your most recent video has two million views, and it was shared on Yahoo's homepage. And so that turned out to be what had happened. Yahoo's homepage, which I don't know if you remember, but that was like the spot. It was a thing.

AI assessment note: “your most recent video has two million views, and it was shared on Yahoo's homepage”

Q All right, so you are a pretty, you're a media company now. What's the ambition? I mean, what do you guys want this to be? Because it's, you know, some people might say, oh, those are the trickshot guys. Some people might say, oh, those are the YouTube guys. Some people might say, oh, that's those guys that do that live show. Tell me, tell me the vision.

A I mean, the truth is, I think we like all the things you just said, right? I think we want to be relevant on all the platforms, right? Anything that's popular, we want to have a presence there and, and just continue to kind of shine our, our light in, in those different areas. And so we're, we're trying to do a bunch of different things. We've got a movie that we're, you know, just starting to work on. And so we're, we're kind of trying to tackle it all. And it's, it's, it kind of goes back to us being competitive guys, right? There's a piece of, a piece of it that's the business side. And we think that part is fun and You know, just like any entrepreneur, we like growing the business, and then there's also a piece of us that, you know, no matter what we do, we're still competitive guys, and we like to try and, you know, tackle some different areas, and if that means that, you know, we want to make a movie, then hey, let's try it. That's a completely new experience, and you know, we want to see it happen.

AI assessment note: “we want to be relevant on all the platforms, right? Anything that's popular”

Q Have you had big, big arguments between the five of you at certain points?

A I mean, we're brothers, right? Like, we have known each other for 1416 years at this point, so anything that you can imagine with family, you know, with five brothers, that, that's what's happened. So we've certainly, you know, been upset at each other many times, and that's a lot of people, that's a lot of cooks in the kitchen to try to agree and try to vote, and so as you can imagine, it gets messy, but I think we've all just, we've aligned on the things that really matter, right? We've majored on the majors and minored on the minors, and so our You know, tentpole things, right? Quality, and that people can trust everything we put out. Like, those things continue to kind of guide what we do, and so I think as a group, you know, we didn't have to convince each other about those things over and over again.

AI assessment note: “we've certainly, you know, been upset at each other many times”

Q And what about camera work? Did you, did you hire a professional camera team, or did you already have a team at that point?

A No, we sure did, and I think we were probably still at the, about the same cameras as we started with, to be Totally honest. We may have upgraded one step, whatever step that was at the time. My big stipulation when we moved from Austin to Dallas was that I really needed some help on the editing side. So I told the guys, Hey, I will, you know, uproot my life and leave all my friends and family and stuff over here. If you guys are cool with us taking a total leap of faith and not only all going full time, but being willing to throw enough salary at somebody to where we can hire an editor to help me. So it was, it was tricky because we didn't even know if we had enough money to To make this whole thing make sense for us to begin with, but then we had to hire somebody, you know, on top of that. So it was tough, but it was definitely the right call, no question.

AI assessment note: “My big stipulation when we moved from Austin to Dallas was that I really needed”