My Journey To Make The Forbes 30 Under 30 List Begins Tomorrow
Tomorrow my journey to make the Forbes 30 Under 30 List begins when I drop the first episode of The Smokes Show Season 2. Now there's a chance a lot of you read that sentence and thought, "What the hell does any of that mean?" Well, let me explain.
It was January of 2022 and I wanted to make a video about becoming the "boss" of the New York office. Dave had been in Miami for months, so I thought it would be funny to do a little skit where I act like I'm in charge around the office. I was talking to Rone about the idea, and he told me he'd love to film it. He said he wanted to try filming/directing more stuff (inspired by doing Frank's soda reviews) so I obviously said yes, knowing that adding Rone to any project will make it better. We released it on social media (watch on YouTube here) and it did quite well. People seemed to like it and showered me with nice compliments that I could then scroll through and read for hours on end to get self validation. There's no better feeling!
We wanted to keep the momentum going so we started to make some more. I fixed the water crisis in the office. I investigated Pat and Joey's homosexuality. I threw the party of the century. I started an OnlyFans. I tried to get cancelled. And a whole lot more. You can watch all those episodes HERE. It felt good to have a consistent series that I enjoyed doing and performed well. I've done a bunch of things here over the years, different shows and one-off videos, but I still really wanted to find something that could be my "thing." My own successful franchise/show where I was the main character and not a fourth mic sitting in the background. And while it's not like this show was putting up Mr. Beast numbers, it was getting pretty solid views and a lot of positive feedback.
The "season" culminated with the video where I pranked Ben Mintz and got him arrested. That is probably my favorite piece of content I've ever put out. It took months of planning, writing, shooting, editing, etc. but the finished product was worth it. It was the biggest video I'd ever done and also the most fun I'd ever had making one, so I knew I wanted to do more stuff like that. Not get Ben Mintz arrested every time, but you know what I mean. (Although I probably could've done the same exact thing a week later to him and it would've worked just the same).
That video felt like a natural finale to Season 1, so we went back to the drawing board and planned Season 2. One valid critique about Season 1 is that there was no rhyme or reason to the release schedule. We'd just have an idea and then make a video. Sometimes it would be a two week break. Sometimes three. Sometimes four. Sometimes five. Etc. We put out 13 episodes over ~10 months, but I knew that Season 2 would need a more consistent release schedule if it was going to go to the next level. That's something I knew would be important if I wanted to get advertisers and finally have a show that makes money for the company. So the plan was to spend some time brainstorming ideas, shooting the videos, editing them, and then releasing them on a set, consistent schedule.
To be honest, it probably took too long to finally get this season released. But the ideas got bigger and bigger so the planning and shooting and overall logistics took longer than we expected. I've also just had a ton of different things on my plate this year and more work traveling than I've ever done. Rone has his own very successful shows that take up his time. The rest of the team has a bunch of different stuff to work on. So it's not like the delay hasn't been for a lack of trying, but it's something I'll definitely try to be better about going forward. This is my favorite content that I do and I don't want to ever go another 10 months between episodes. But like I said, these episodes are bigger and better than anything we did last season so my hope is that it's worth it.
My dream has always been to make a TV show and I would say this season is definitely the closest I've come to doing it. There will be 6 episodes that release once a week that are all about a half hour each (sometimes more, sometimes less). Each episode has its own storylines and then the season itself has an overarching theme. And that theme is me trying to make the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
That is what I've spent the last 8 months of my life doing. I got my own Times Square billboard. I held my own dating show. I became a hero. I started my own million dollar business, and there's more to come as we're still wrapping up shooting for the season. Everything I've been doing has been done with one goal in mind: make the Forbes 30 Under 30 List. The list will get released at the end of November, and then the 7th episode season finale will air shortly after that to react to me making it/not making it.
Now as for if I'll actually make it.... well we'll see. I applied properly. I've had some people in contact with Forbes. And my hope is that this series gains enough traction where Forbes catches wind of it. I'm also calling on YOU the people to back my campaign by tweeting #SmokesForForbes and things of that nature.
A lot of people have worked very hard on this season and I'm very appreciate of them all. Rone is a mastermind. Zuppe is an editing wizard. Blake is a propaganda machine. And for this season, we've added to the team with Owen who has been a ginormous help in many different ways, and Tyler, Liam, John etc. who have helped out a lot with shooting. Don't mean to have this sound like an Oscar acceptance speech because this is a series that has not even aired yet and there's a chance nobody will like it, but I still just wanted to give credit where it's due.
The journey starts tomorrow night. You can watch the Season 2 premiere at 8 PM ET on the Barstool Sports YouTube. Please watch, like, subscribe and all that jazz. This season is the most excited I've ever been to release any content so I hope you all enjoy watching it as much as I've enjoyed making it.
Smokes out.