 I said the same thing to myself. And so everyone starts moving the font size up, but like everyone knows, and you can't really trick the teacher, and I feel bad seeing as I was an English teacher in a former life. But even I was trying to bump that font. I'm Shannon. I'm the VP of social here at GoDaddy, and this is School of Hustle, the show where we find advice and inspiration from people who are making their own way. Today we're filming from the heart of the hustle in New York City. We're filming at the WeWork Time Square. We have a live studio audience, and a fantastic guest. This is Gabe Whaley. He is the founder and mastermind behind Mischief Internet Studios. You probably know Mischief from things like late night snap hacks, man eating food, burrito time, time's newer Roman font. Gabe, welcome to the show. Hey, Shannon, thanks for having me. And I am so excited to have you because I have seen all of these ideas that you have put out there, and they're really fantastic. I hope you wasted a ton of time on our stuff. Mischief is so fascinating to me, and your website says we create internet for the internet. What does it mean to create internet? So our thing is, you know, storytelling, when I say the word storytelling, people think of things like an article or a book or a video. Like, there are mediums of storytelling that we're all familiar with, but I think, you know, thanks to the internet, there are other untapped mediums to like deliver emotion, and we're not really thinking about it. However, what we figured out is, like, you can take words and images and videos and combine these with technology to create experiences that end up leaving a little bit more of, like, a little more oomph in the story. A great example of this would be the Times New Roman Font. After we launched this, and it was like, on Good Morning America, and everyone was talking about it, people actually came to us and said, so are you guys like a type design studio? Are you a font studio? Do you like making fonts? It's like, no, no, no. We actually don't care about fonts. That's not the point, but we figured out that this was a good medium to deliver an emotion that would surprise and delight the internet. So let's unpack what it is, because when I heard about Times New Roman Font, I said, where were you when I was in college or high school, when the teacher said, write a five page essay. I said the same thing to myself. Where was I? So everyone starts moving the font size up, but like everyone knows, and you can't really trick the teacher, and I feel bad saying this, I was an English teacher and a former wife. But even I was trying to bump that font. Tell us about what Times New Roman actually is and does. So we took Times New Roman, the beloved font of all of our past times and maybe currently too, and we deconstructed it. We didn't just stretch the font, we actually rebuilt the font from the ground up, but each character is roughly five to 10% wider than its predecessor that inspired the idea. So what we did was we created a brand spanking new font that is undetectable to the naked eye, but we'll save you two to three pages on a 10 page paper. And what I love about it is you did get on Good Morning America and this caused quite a stir. Now you have one camp saying this is so brilliant and creative, but then you had other people saying you're cheating the system, people should be writing. But the point is, it's a conversation. We sparked a debate and it's an healthy debate. That's right, it's a point of view and it's a conversation. How do you ensure that you evoke a real emotion from the viewers who are engaging with what you're building? So a lot of people who might try to do something similar will think, okay, what's like a loud, stunty thing that we can do with technology? But the thing is, it's like technology is just the vessel. You have to start with the emotion. So for us, we break down on a whiteboard, just as rudimentary as possible, like how do we want to make the person feel at the end of the day? So Times New Roman is an excellent case study of this of like, we want to provide that nod and wink to the end user here. This is as mischievous as it gets. So how are we gonna do that? Well, let's take the font as our vessel, put it on a website that people can easily discover and share at TimesNewRoman.com and then release it into the wild for the internet to enjoy. And while some of the people who have enjoyed your work and engaged with your work are famous celebrities, you know, who are some of these people who have recognized your work and what are some of the things that they have said? The great thing about the internet is it democratizes access. So for example, we created this website called Late Night Snap Hacks with Casper, the mattress company. So it's basically like an interactive site full of these videos of going out scenes and all you have to do is choose which scene you want to be associated with, whether it's like at the club or at this weird party in Bushwick or at a dinner party at your friend's house, pop it open full screen, pull out your phone, take a snap and call it a day, go back to chilling on your bed. And within a day of launching that, Ashton Kutcher was talking about it on Facebook. Saturday Night Live was posting about it. The Lonely Island was using it on their Snapchat. Like people were naturally finding it and saying, you know what, whether I'm an influencer or a celebrity or just like an everyday human being, we all relate to that like social pressure that technology creates. And so Mischief is able to create our own technology in response to the way we live right now. Going to start my own business and I'm going to create internet, right? Tell me about that. I mean, like, how did you find the courage to do this? I mean, it's like, I have to first acknowledge that I'm incredibly lucky and all of this comes with a lot of privilege. It definitely does. So the dream was always just like, how can I figure out how to make a living and get paid to do what I was going to do anyways? Because the, I mean, life is too short and the internet is too big. Like, how can you not take advantage of like what we can do instead of like limiting ourselves to like current paradigms? I love that. I want to pause for just a second and you know, spice things up a little bit with a game that I call hustle time. All right. How do you want to feel? Give yourself a little shake and just kind of get ready. Let's go, let's do it. I feel like you shuffle the cards. The spirit of the game is we set the clock for 60 seconds and you try to get through as many questions as you can. So Jonathan, can you please set a timer? Let's roll. Two, one, go. First celebrity crush. Oh man, Charlie's. Thera, time it takes you to get ready in the morning. Five minutes. First place you'll visit when you retire? Durham, North Carolina. Sashimi or rolls? Sashimi. Most powerful emotion, anger or love? Love. Fireplace or fire pit? Fireplace. Peanut butter, cups or M&Ms? Peanut butter cups. Which would you rather add to your life? Time or value? Time. Football, NFL or soccer? Soccer. King size or fun size? King size. The best chocolate in the world comes from blank? Masked brothers. Favorite part of a s'more? The graham cracker. Which Hogwarts house would you be sorted into? Slytherin. Chocolate, milk or dark? Chocolate, yeah, chocolate milk. Drive stick shift, drive automatic? Automatic. If a GD granted you three wishes, what would you wish for? An extra wish. And? Two more. Oh, two more. One million dollars and... And? Oh man, a Ferrari. Nice job. Thank you. Would you consider a made-it moment for Mischief? Yeah, it's crazy, but it was our first thing. Really? When I started Mischief roughly three years ago, Casper had reached out. And that was sort of the impetus to be like, hey, I think this can be a thing, so let's see if they'll actually pay for this. But then the next test was, okay, they paid for it, now we need to create it and make sure it works. So the Casper suite of products that we created was a test. And that was definitely a make or break moment because we're trying to ferry an art form on the internet that doesn't really exist from a capitalist commerce perspective and create a market for ourselves. So Late Night Snap X was a huge hit and that was the first thing that we ever put out. And then naturally, any smart marketer controlling budget is like, well, you did it once, but can you do it twice? And we're like, oh, dang it, we just did it. Like we did what we said we would. So we went back and we created a chat bot, an SMS bot that only works between the hours of 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. It's called the Insomno Bot 3000. And the idea was, sometimes there are moments, no matter if you're sleeping on a Casper mattress or not, where you just can't fall asleep and you feel lonely and there's no one else to talk to because the rest of the world is fast asleep. So we created this weird sort of lackadaisical, like stream of consciousness bot that would literally talk to you about anything, but it only works at a certain time. So if you would text it during the day and be like, sorry, I'm really busy right now, my boss is looking over my shoulder maybe later and then at 11 p.m. it would be like, okay, you up, let's chat, let's just like hang out. And people loved it. It was another hit. We see advertising right now as, we all exist in a system where brands are incentivized to wave at as many strangers as they possibly can for the lowest rates. Unfortunately, they're not incentivized to get a wave back. It's really just like, if you wave at enough people, you'll eventually capture enough. But for us, we want to help brands wave at people and the people wave back and they're like, hey, I see you. It's like, and I get you. I understand you. And that's kind of how we're trying to make our art form of the internet relevant for brands. Well, along this journey, what's the best advice that you've gotten along the way? The best advice. I mean, there's the classic, like when you feel like giving up, keep going. Yeah. Sounds cliche, but it is so true because more often than not, I will hit that point in myself where it's like, this isn't worth it anymore. Like this sucks. It's tiring. Like there's so many emotions at play and I'm always balancing so many different things at one time. And especially in a creative space, people's egos are on the line because you are judged based on how good other people, strangers, think your ideas are. And for us, we play in the world where we have to come up with ideas so good that they find the audience organically every time. It's go big or go home. It's be infamous or be obsolete. But in the back of my head, I remind myself that the difference between like the ones who succeed and the ones who don't is that sort of like technical moment where you're like, oh, I feel like quitting right now. Now is definitely not the time to quit. Like I have to not quit right at this moment. And you just have to be aware enough to recognize when that moment comes up and just sort of have it pre-programmed in your mind. So I'll start out like our bottom line, which is our output, the internet that we create for the internet. Like everything that we do needs to like surprise and delight the internet. That's our mission at the end of the day. So that's like one level. The other level is, I guess like on a more personal basis. Like I have a specific, I guess, brand on how I see the world. And for me, at the end of the day, just like I want people to think regardless of what they're doing, but like whatever your output is, are you thinking about the emotional component to it? Are you thinking about how you're gonna make someone feel how this is going to leave an impression? Like is that first and foremost in your mind? Cause your job might be based on like spreadsheets or conversions, but at the end of the day, we are all still human. And if we like let that guide us and guide all of our decisions, I think we'll be okay. I think we'll all be around for a little bit longer than we think we're gonna be. Next for you. Well, like it's particularly in this next year, we're actually designating 30% of our output to be non-branded. As we start exploring like content formats and possible like media properties that are wholly mis-shift owned. So that's a big sort of strategic shift coming into the new year. And then like we're starting to do like bigger deals with bigger brands as they come to us and figure out like, okay, what's our sort of always-on strategy to make hits and distribute hits on the internet consistently over time. Well, I have two last questions and they're not written by me. First comes from our tribe. This question comes from Gianna. How do you go about getting started in your job search once you've graduated school? You know, the best advice I have for that is figure out what you like to do already. Whether it's like for a job or not. I mean, we do fortunately live in this millennial laced world where your passion can potentially turn into something that is lucrative from a financial perspective. And so for me, I just continued like doing things. And as long as you keep doing things, you will put yourself in positions where good things can happen. That's great, thank you. And that's helpful. Now, the last question comes from a pug who we call Noodle. Now, Noodle is just so fascinating because Noodle has grown an Instagram following of 50,000 followers. Yeah, I'm gonna hire Noodle after this. Okay. Now, the thing about Noodle though is, you know, Noodle wants to roll up his sleeves and get to work and he wants to expand. Noodle wants to expand into the internet and I, you know, kind of be successful everywhere, not just Instagram. So what kind of advice would you have for somebody who really wants to be able to be big everywhere outside of that one app Instagram? Oh, so you're asking for Noodle's cross channel. That's right. Cross channel strategy. Yeah, Noodle wants to get cross channel. So you've already dominated Instagram. I think, I think, you know, you're probably, you're probably ripe for YouTube. I think you could do some good stuff on YouTube. It's, you know, take the lessons you learned from Instagram. How did you build a 50,000 follower account? So you figure out how do you tie all the magical qualities of this guy to a platform like YouTube. What are, what kind of videos is Noodle's putting out? And then- I would watch those videos. Yeah, I mean, I would watch. You're sure? You did great at School of Hustle. I would watch Noodle. There's one last thing. And I like to leave everybody with like a final thought. And I want to close on a piece of motivation and advice. Would you like to pick it? Would you like me or Noodle to pick it? I'll channel Noodle's energy and choose this one. Okay, this comes from Jim Rohn. Don't wish it were easier. Wish you were better. So what do you think that means? Do we like that? For me, that's kind of like, you know, it's easy to complain about the scenarios we're in. And something that I definitely learned through this whole experience with mischief is complaining doesn't get you anywhere. Because there's always somebody else who's not gonna complain, who's gonna figure it out and get over it. So just really ask yourself, am I really pushing it? Does it have to be easier or can I do something? Right? So I like this. I think this is great. I'm into it. I hope everyone else liked it as well. We bring School of Hustle to you every week. Follow us on GoDaddy Social. We put these out on Instagram TV, YouTube, Facebook Premiere, teasers on LinkedIn, and Twitter, we're everywhere. Please follow us, subscribe on YouTube. Let us know what you think. And we'll see you again soon. Thanks a lot, everybody.