Tommy & Matthew End – That’s Amazing

At age 11 and 9 Tommy and Matthew End started a YouTube channel, “That’s Amazing,” that has grown to have a net worth of about $3 million. Revenues are largely from ads, brand partnerships, and merchandise. Hitting up the family-friendly trick shot niche, “That’s Amazing” hit its first notable success in 2016 (four years after launching the channel) by catching the viral trend of bottle flipping. Remaining successful in the entertainment industry beyond this viral moment has taken creativity, diversification, and collaboration.

Stemming from an enjoyable hobby, the young entrepreneurs engage their creative minds to generate innovative trick shot content in which they are constantly pushing their own limits of capability.

They have diversified in two key ways:

1. They have tastefully expanded the types of trick shot content they create, both in type (bottle flipping to dice stacking to card throwing) and video style (top 10, increasing the difficulty, competitive challenges, and shorts). This has kept the content interesting and new while staying on topic. Their diversification has also allowed them to ride trends and pursue their own ideas.
2. They have 3 channels allowing the brand to expand without losing focus because each channel can serve a more targeted purpose in the bigger market.

Collaboration is a quintessential and inspiring attribute that plays a distinguishing role in their journey. Tommy is lead creator. Matthew has a substantial role as co-star/creator. But together they have involved all 5 of their younger siblings (seven children in total) which has created amazing synergy, teamwork, and cross marketing, as many of the siblings have their own YouTube channels. Their siblings’ collaboration has been inadvertently key to achieving a family-friendly, kid-led tone that has granted success. The younger siblings have also acutely added a lot of interest to individual videos. The cross-channel sibling collaboration where they help and partner with each other on a regular basis led the way for later brand partnerships. As their channel grew, they have had numerous brand partnerships (e.g. with Subway and LEGO) and with fellow content creators (e.g. Dude Perfect and Zach King).

Key personal takeaways:

• Entrepreneurship can start young and bud out of a hobby.
• All it takes for a hobby to be profitable is finding the right market and serving it well.
• Catching trends can be very helpful and/but consistently innovating in a way that benefits your market is crucial to long-term success.
• Business success can derive from thoughtfully incorporating siblings – successfully and healthfully harnessing the power of family.