The Exchanges

Q builder, and you'd make Lego villages, or like Lego buildings, and Lincoln Logs, and other things, and eventually, which I think is a natural progression, you came across the dominoes, and they're those dominoes that I think most people think of with like the, like for game, for the games, like with the dots on them, right? And, uh, and did you have a set of those dominoes at home?

A So I did, and it, the way it started is, I was at my grandparents' house, and, you know, everyone really has, like, the small 28 dotted domino pack, and one day I was super bored, so I was like, oh, I'm just gonna set up these dominoes for fun, knock them down, and I really loved watching them fall. It was just, like, super satisfying to see them, like, go in a chain reaction, like, it actually did something, and that led me to go onto YouTube. This was, like, I think way back in the day. I was nine. I was a very young child. This was when YouTube was pretty new, and I just searched Domino's because I was like, you know, if I really love watching Domino's fall, maybe there's some videos that I could see. Yeah. And I found the most amazing community of Domino builders who, like, all around the world were making Thousands upon thousands of dominoes and knocking them down and beautiful structures. Like I remember watching one video. It was the Mona Lisa in dominoes in like 4000 pieces and it completely blew my mind. Like I had no idea that you could even build dominoes in this way. Like this was truly an art form in the sense that you can make designs, you can make different pictures, you could even stack them to make towers and structures. And from my knowledge, like, at that time, I only thought you could make a domino line. Yeah. So, to see all of these, like, different tricks …

AI assessment note: “So I did, and it, the way it started is”

Q Alright, so you start posting videos and making more of these videos, and I guess at a certain point, you start to get inquiries from businesses who want to work with you?

A Yeah, I remember my first business inquiry was when I was 13 years old. It was a spec commercial for Campbell's Soup, and they wanted me to build the soup can out of Domino's, and, you know, at the time, I'm, I'm 13 years old, and I'm getting this job offer, so my dad takes a look at it, and now, you know, he's my chief operating officer now, but it started as like a parent helping in when I was 13, He would screen all the emails, make sure it's legit, and get on phone calls, and we'd, we'd talk to them to make sure that we'd get the design right, and it was really quite a learning curve, because I did not expect any of this to, you know, turn into something more than just for fun as, like, just a hobbyist YouTuber, right? A YouTuber didn't even exist at that point, and At this point, I was a teenager, and people started contacting me now to make commercials, or do things for TV and film, and after a couple of videos went viral on YouTube, just so many people had eyeballs on my work, and it just snowballed into more and more opportunities.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I remember my first business inquiry was when I was 13 years old.”

Q So as these domino setups got more and more elaborate, were you starting to design them, like, on a computer first? Like, is that how the process starts?

A Yeah, so sometimes I will use a computer to design the projects. There's a couple of programs, um, one on Excel, and a couple that are coded by domino builders, uh, like from scratch, where essentially you can insert an image, and that will transform it into a pixelated version, um, of what you're trying to build, and that'll be based off of, like, all of your domino colors. So if you enter in, like, you have 400 white, 400 black, 300 red, for example. It'll take what your inventory is, and you'll be able to convert that image into the exact size that you want, almost like a pixel art grid, and then you can, like, change the colors, you can do manual designs, you can do it all from scratch. Um, it's, like, very flexible.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, so sometimes I will use a computer to design the projects.”

Q got, I think the most dominoes you set up is 32,000. And, and, you know, if you do the math and it's like maybe 10 seconds of domino depends on the domino. I mean, that is dozens and dozens and dozens of hours. You know, how do you, how do you sort of divide your time? I mean, are you working on setting up dominoes for eight hours a day?

A Yeah, it's really difficult because it's not just the dominoes that I have to think about. I'm also thinking about creating the video and filming and doing social media and emails and all that kind of stuff. So I'll admit I don't set up dominoes every single day, but what I'll try to do now is I'll try to partition my day so it's like one day I'll, I'll focus on building and maybe I'll set up, you know, a couple thousand dominoes over a period of five hours. And then the next day, I'll have an admin day, and I'll focus more on doing emails and catching up and doing strategic planning and thinking of video ideas, more computer-based work. So I kind of, like, separate and have to shift gears, because when I'm switching in between, it, it's hard to kind of focus on one thing.

AI assessment note: “I'll try to partition my day so it's like one day I'll focus on building”

Q So, all right, so you get this first set of dominoes, and, and these, a lot of these companies were making them in like, in like Germany, they're like precision crafted dominoes, and so I guess you, you start to what, just experiment even more with building these elaborate domino chain reaction type things?

A Yeah, so getting more dominoes opened a whole new avenue for making things like giant three-D pyramids, or, you know, I'd even make logos or, or people's faces out of dominoes and spell out different types of words, and with traditional dominoes with the dots, they typically only come in one or two colors, or it could be wooden, but with toppling dominoes, I had a whole color palette, so it was really like, I was painting, but with dominoes, and that allowed for so many different combinations, and color patterns, and, you know, different types of shapes. It's, it's really something that I never could have imagined was possible, but I kind of fell into this new form of art, and it just, it just completely captivated me.

AI assessment note: “getting more dominoes opened a whole new avenue for making things like giant three-D pyramids”

Q was in 2016, the producers of the film Collateral Beauty reached out, um, to have you set up dominoes for the film's opening credit scene, which is, it's awesome. Will Smith, like, sets off the dominoes, and they go off, and so do you remember when they contacted you, and were you like, wait, what? You want me to work on a movie with Will Smith and all these people?

A Oh yeah, it was wild. I remember I was a senior in high school, and they contacted me, I believe it was Warner Bros. And essentially, they wanted me to be on set for two weeks, setting up these elaborate domino projects for Will Smith, and kind of teach him how to build dominoes, and have him go in and pretend to knock them down. And it was such a big project that I actually had to hire some of my, my friends who are also domino builders to help out and build these domino projects. And I had, I remember literally taking off two weeks of school in the middle of senior year to just be on a movie set. No big deal. Um, but it was the most incredible experience. I had never been on a Hollywood film set and everyone there was so nice and We got to see all the behind the scenes of how they put together the film, and one thing you might not even see in the movie is we had to make props by gluing together domino structures piece by piece so they could bring them in and then take them out when they needed it so we didn't have to rebuild it each time.

AI assessment note: “Oh yeah, it was wild. I remember I was a senior in high school”

Q business. So one of the things that you did very wisely was in 2020 you launched your H-five branded dominoes, what you did with Spin Master. You know, it makes sense from a branding perspective for you to put your name and face on, on dominoes. I've seen it, and it looks really cool. But, you know, what, what was the value proposition here besides your name and your brand?

A So it's important to note that there actually weren't toppling dominoes in retail. They only had game dominoes in stores. So a huge factor that we tried to break to the table was we can get precision-engineered toppling dominoes in retail and And back it by a domino artist who, you know, at the time, and still now, was the number one most subscribed domino artist on the web. And Spin Master, um, they really believed in the proposition that a YouTube content creator can create a product and promote it with their following, but also having someone who's an expert in dominoes who knows how to make something designed Forward toppling was a huge, huge factor. And people might not know this, but dominoes are really technical. Like, it seems just like a simple rectangle, but there's a lot that goes into creating a domino. Like, the, the surface texture that we have on the dominoes are very grippy in a way, so that it doesn't slide and hit other dominoes by accident. And The size of the domino really makes a difference. It has to be a perfect two by one ratio, and the corners have to be really square in order to build them as tall as possible. If you have rounded corners, it's not going to be very stable, and the weight is also really important too. If it's, if it's too heavy, it's not going to topple right, and if it's too light, certain tricks aren't going to work either. So there's …

AI assessment note: “we can get precision-engineered toppling dominoes in retail”

Q I mean, what happens if you spend, like, 20, 30 hours building something, and you have to redo it?

A Yeah, it's, it's really sad. It's happened quite a lot of times, but, you know, it's just part of the process with building. I, I learned that really early on too. I used to set up maybe like 50 dominoes, it would knock over by accident, and I, I'd get so upset, I'd have to take breaks in between and come back to it later. But, you know, now it's happened so many times, I, I kind of just, you know, take a moment, take a deep breath, Do something else for an hour, and then, you know, come back when I feel ready. And I kind of see it as, like, even though it's a failure, I can rebuild it. Like, at the end of the day, it's dominoes. This is all fun. Like, I can set it up again. I can set it up in a better way the next time, and use that kind of as, like, an opportunity to learn, you know. Even though there's a lot of failure involved, I try to see it as Something that will get me better, you know, maybe I'll learn how to set up the dominoes better or prevent fails by making safety gaps and all that kind of stuff.

AI assessment note: “take a deep breath, Do something else for an hour, and then, you know, come back”

Q And you would just follow the dominoes as they fell?

A Yeah. I would just click record and follow it with my camera. Um, at first it was pretty shaky. I, I didn't really know what I was doing, and it was definitely a learning process as I was building dominoes, learning how to You know, record my videos, how to edit them, how to put together the video. And that just came from practice, you know, watching videos and starting on Windows Movie Maker and then working my way up to different types of software. But I learned that, um, filmmaking is actually a really great, uh, hobby for me as well. Like, in addition to the dominoes, it's something that I kind of fell in love with and wanted to learn more. So that in turn helped with the YouTube videos.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. I would just click record and follow it with my camera.”

Q So tell me about the process, like, bring me into the process of making your videos. I mean, do you have a crew that helps you Set them up. I mean, if you're doing like, I don't know, tens of thousands of dominoes, is it just you?

A I'd say for most of my videos, it is just me, um, but there are events here and there where I'll get together with builders all around the world, and we'll set up, you know, hundreds of thousands of dominoes with 20 builders. Those are only a couple times a year, but, uh, I, I have a home studio, I live and work in the same place, so we've kind of just, you know, taken out all the furniture, and I've used that to build dominoes, and I'd say it's pretty chill where I am right now. Like, I'm filming it all. I'm doing domino building. Occasionally I'll have a friend come over and, you know, set up another camera, but it's, it's mostly just myself right now.

AI assessment note: “I'd say for most of my videos, it is just me”

Q Alright, so give me a sense of, of where you sort of want to take this business that you've built, right? I mean, brand studio, TV show, uh, product, obviously just the standard, the videos that are still, still where most of your subscribers are watching you make content. Where do you sort of see this going and growing?

A Yeah, so my vision is to really future-proof domino art as an art form that's just as popular as Lego or another building toy. Like, I really see domino as something that anyone can enjoy, and not just learn from, but also have fun building in a way that's very educational. You know, I've seen so many people, they watch my videos as, as kids, and They get inspired to set up Domino's, and we've gotten so many emails of people saying that building with Domino's has helped their child learn how to become patient, or learn how to use their hands and make elaborate things and become very precise. Like, I really believe there's something with Domino's that helps people in, like, very Deep ways. Like knowing how to persevere and how to overcome failure when something goes wrong. Yeah. And thousands of dominoes crash over by accident. Like I'm one to, to really understand that. And I want to try to spread that message on a much broader and global scale. You know, there's so many benefits to not just setting them up. Like there's team building involved. There's creativity. You're learning about physics and design and I think there's so much opportunity to just get it into schools and have the H-V domino creation sets get into classrooms, start workshops, library programs, but we're just trying to get dominoes out there and, and show them, like, this is an art form that is, is great for …

AI assessment note: “my vision is to really future-proof domino art as an art form”