Three Identical Voices, One Million YouTube Views

Three identical brothers, one million YouTube views, and a rapidly growing podcast that's capturing their community's attention. Meet Houston and Alexander, two-thirds of the triplet team behind "Anything Flies," a podcast that transformed from casual lunch table debates into a media platform with impressive reach.

What started as six high school friends discussing sports has evolved into a polished production featuring the three brothers and their friend Nash. With 870 subscribers and climbing, these young content creators have tapped into the power of consistent, quality content centered around their community. Their journey illustrates how dedication to craft and willingness to experiment can turn a simple idea into something truly special.

The brothers share how they approached their high school baseball coach with a bold proposal to provide game coverage—complete with live commentary, highlight reels, and behind-the-scenes content. Their persistence paid off, creating not just entertaining content but a valuable service for families who couldn't attend games in person. This initiative perfectly demonstrates how podcasting can bridge gaps in community connection.

As they prepare to attend Cedarville University together where they'll continue their golf careers (they've been playing since age four), the brothers reflect on production techniques, content strategies, and how they'll maintain their creative momentum through college. Their entertaining formats like "Beard or No Beard" and blind rankings of everyday items showcase their knack for engaging audiences beyond just sports talk.

Whether you're interested in starting your own podcast, building a YouTube presence, or simply appreciate stories of young entrepreneurs finding their voice, this conversation offers practical insights and genuine enthusiasm for the power of storytelling. Listen now to discover how three identical voices created a unique media presence that's just getting started.

Transcript

Justin 0:39

I think you're pink, which means you're blue. You can't hear anything, can you? No, I can't. I can't hear you.

Houston 0:47

Okay, we couldn't hear you, can you hear me now? Yeah, okay, I can hear myself.

Justin 0:52

And then just give me volume in the headphones.

Houston 0:55

That's good for me, maybe a little less A little less. Yeah, that's good.

Justin 1:00

How about you?

Houston 1:01

right where you had it, it's good, okay, good, alright, so I'll.

Justin 1:08

I'll record the. It's kind of loud for me. I got the audio recording, but I'm also going to use Audacity okay make sure I got this last one saved, but I'm also going to use audacity.

Justin 1:22

Okay, um, make sure I got this last one saved. Like the second podcast I did was really good is with animals are special. Okay, so the doctor and then one of the vet techs and like it was just awesome. Podcast is great. I got all the audio, was good, but I never hit record. So it was literally just nothing and I so mad, um, let's go. So now, like I'm so scared to like have a really good podcast and miss it. Um, so I usually do do both ways. I'm just gonna check the video. All right, we're recording. You guys ready to go? I'm ready to do it. I feel like I say the same thing every time.

Houston 2:08

All right, we're recording.

Justin 2:11

I appreciate you guys coming on.

Houston 2:12

Yeah, of course.

Justin 2:16

So, Houston not like the city. And then, Alexander, I almost called you Austin again. I apologize if I do that. I don't know why. No, you're good, I don't know why. Thanks for coming on, guys, of course, thanks for having us.

Justin 2:27

Got a little tour of Brick House, blue Sweet. It's a sweet facility, it is. Yeah, it's a cool spot. Everybody never knew this was here. So that's part of what I love about this is like getting people to see the space and like I think there's a lot of people in the community that could use it more for sure. Um, we were. I was just telling you like I feel like realtors, like anybody who works out of a home office that needs a place to like meet with clients. Yeah, it's a really cool spot. And then for us podcasters, it has has a podcast studio Sweet.

Houston 2:59

That's great yeah.

Justin 3:00

Have you guys ever used a podcast studio?

Houston 3:02

That's our first time. Sweet, our studio is in our basement. Yeah, I like it.

Justin 3:07

So you guys recently graduated from New Albany, right? Uh-huh, tell me about that. Tell me about New Albany, tell me about your experience there. You're triplets, right? Yeah, yeah, we're triplets, okay.

New Albany Memories and College Plans

Houston 3:16

So, yeah, it was a blast Bittersweet. That it's over. Yeah, I feel like that's how everyone is after high school for the most part.

Justin 3:26

for the most part, For sure.

Houston 3:27

But yeah, the school was great A lot of great people, a lot of good friends, yeah, yeah.

Justin 3:33

So you guys grew up in New Albany, then we did.

Houston 3:35

We've been in New Albany our whole life. Nice yeah, pretty much the same for me. Great community yeah, hard to like leave this place, you know. Yeah, but I think we're both excited for college and what we've got in store.

Justin 3:49

Yeah, yeah, it's got to be bittersweet right, it is it is yeah, I mean I came from a small town and I loved it. Like like, yeah, it's tough, it's tough and then I kind of realized, like the area I was better off getting outside of it. Yeah, um, new albany's not a place like that. Like you could stay here forever if you end up back here. You're doing pretty good exactly, exactly right um, so where you guys headed off to next uh, we're, we're both.

Houston 4:13

Actually, all three of us are going to cedarville university where's that? At that's in the springfield area okay yeah, and we're going to play on the golf team there, nice god, you guys are smart.

Justin 4:23

Did you go?

Houston 4:23

so you golfed in high school yeah, we, we've golfed since we were four, pretty much all right what's your other brother's name, ethan ethan.

Justin 4:30

Yep, um, who's a better golfer?

Houston 4:32

I am me uh what do you so?

Justin 4:36

what do you, guys shoot?

Houston 4:38

um, we're right around par for the most part, okay, yeah all right, much better than me.

Justin 4:44

Golf is like.

Justin 4:45

I wish I was better at golf because, like a lot of people say that yeah, yeah, yeah because it's fun, right, and like, like you don't want to go be in an embarrassment and that's me, I'm the embarrassment. Like you don't want me on your scramble. Yeah, uh, last scramble I went to was actually pretty cool. It was, um, it was for like narcs division, like police. Um, that's a good friend of mine is in da and he's like, oh, we got a golf outing down in columbus, can you come? And I'm like, yeah, but I don't, like I used to be an athlete like I don't know. So we end up in dead last, like we could have cheated five strokes and still been a dead last.

Houston 5:19

But but we got this trophy with like this quirky-looking dude with a bent golf club, I would say some outings give out last-place prizes. It was awesome I never got invited back.

Golf Careers and Finance Studies

Justin 5:30

But it was still fun. Yeah, so well, that's pretty cool. We'll go play in college, so will you guys? What course is out there?

Houston 5:38

We get like National Golf Links is right off the highway. Okay, there's courses like Springfield Country Club. We're actually playing a tournament this weekend called Windy Knoll about 20 minutes from campus Nice, there's Beaver Creek. There's a lot of good courses around there.

Justin 5:56

Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, free golf, I mean it's fantastic.

Houston 6:04

So all three going to play golf. Yeah, somebody's got to figure out how to decipher you guys apart um, it'll be weird because, like everyone in new, since we grew up in new albany, everyone knew we were triplets going into high school yeah and so, like it's interesting, it'll be interesting to see people's reactions. Yeah, like when going into college, when you, when they figure out we're triplets.

Justin 6:22

If you guys don't play, pranks on people when you first get there. You're missing out we might have to. That would be some gold content.

Houston 6:29

We never did it in high school, but we might have to in college.

Justin 6:33

I've seen the videos of twins walking by somebody twice.

Houston 6:38

Yeah, that'd be fun.

Justin 6:41

That's great. Are you all studying the same thing?

Houston 6:43

as of now, we're all studying finance okay um, I didn't really like. I didn't really understand all the like the specifications of the business majors, so I just chose finance because it's in the business uh school.

Justin 6:55

So if I change, I change yeah, finance is a good place to start.

Houston 6:58

Yeah, yeah, I mean that that's kind of how I was. I wanted to be in the business realm of things. Just picked finance because I feel like it's kind of like the basic one or whatever.

Justin 7:06

It's kind of the backbone to business. You can understand the finance piece because there's a lot of business owners and I was one of them who, like I, knew nothing and certainly didn't know finance.

Justin 7:15

Yeah, it got me in some trouble. So, um, that's cool, that's cool. So, uh, tell me like the podcast, tell me like how this started, where it evolved from. Um, and you and I'll back up a little bit, because you guys asked me and I was like wait, let's, like let's record, because it happens all the time, like I'll start talking and then it's awkward. So I'm just like try to be quiet, but yeah. So you asked me how I got started and it was basically like a business partner of mine was listening to a podcast and it was kind of like the godfather of podcasting. He was the first guy that brought in I'll forget his name now, but he's an MTV guy and he was the first one to bring like radio to ipods or something. And he was like this guy was raving about how like hyper local podcaster, like the future of like communication and communities and like. So I was like checked it out, I was listening to it. I'm like I think like it's gonna happen and I'm like we could probably do this, like we gotta find a host yeah well, here I am, because I was like, if we're probably do this We've

Justin 8:20

got to find a host. Well, here I am, because I was like, if we're going to do it, just do it. That's kind of how I am. I just jumped in and yeah, so Brickhouse Blue was just finishing up, I heard there was going to be a podcast studio, so I just came here and I was like, do you guys want to do an episode? And then I got just kind of grown from there.

Justin 8:37

Like people started reaching out, I'd love to do it. So I don't really have any motive Like I. It's just it's it's in a community where people are in and out, it's hard to like get to know people and it's not especially as fast paced as things are now. So I think it's cool just to sit down with people and like get to know people and and I hope I can keep things current with, like the baseball guys um, I'm, I like sports, so it's probably gonna be a big part of this, uh, but I've got to meet like so many other awesome people, which has been really cool, which is the best part it is yeah, it is I. I just recorded one with with dr ozo, with your concierge md, and we were just kind of talking about technology and instagram and like how, like this is just so much better.

Houston 9:21

yeah, you know, like and you get to see everyone's perspective on things exactly, exactly, um.

Birth of "Five Cast" Podcast

Justin 9:27

So I try and keep it like free of politics and yeah and like honestly, just genuinely like a way for people to get no other people in the community, um, which is awesome, so, um, so how'd you guys get started?

Houston 9:41

so I we kind of just started, we had we, our big friend group was like I don't know. One day we just said we should start a podcast, all like eight, ten of us, whatever it was, and they're like all right, we should actually do this yeah and then we did it and then some guys like, nah, I don't it started.

Houston 9:59

It started six of us. And then the six six of us were like, yeah, we'll do it, let's do it, uh. And then two of them went to college, they dropped out of it. And then then the six of us were like, yeah, we'll do it, let's do it. And then two of them went to college, they dropped out of it, and then now it's just us three and one of our buddies named Nash.

Houston 10:11

Okay so there's four of us right now, but it kind of just started like boys at a lunch table talking about sports, brazen each other for how bad their takes are and saying like that's not the take or whatever, and then moving it on and actually starting it. That's pretty much how it went through yeah yeah, it's.

Houston 10:30

I mean we started it in like a like open space in our friend's house, um, and then we quickly moved it to our house just because we already had three of the six guys yeah, a lot that allowed us to make a lot more content, helped us grow, um, and then ever since then we've just been like up and like the stuff we have in the studio and, um, kind of the content we put out and yeah the quality of our content. So it's, it's helped us grow and, um, we've loved it. We're about a year and a half into it, so you guys are crushing it.

Justin 10:59

Yeah, like, give me some numbers um so some numbers.

Houston 11:03

He knows him better than me, yeah, so we're. Yeah, so we have 870 subscribers so far. Wow. About the same on Instagram. Weirdly enough, it's like 885 or something like that. Wow, we already have reached a million views on YouTube, which is insane. That's nuts. So we're closing into our Because you're making the big bucks on YouTube.

Justin 11:24

Now, exactly, it's crazy how big those numbers have to be.

Houston 11:27

Yeah, it is. We're not even there yet.

Justin 11:29

Yeah, I mean it's got to be big numbers.

Houston 11:32

So we're closing in on our first 1,000 subscribers. We're doing well. We kind of hit a dry spell here or there, but that's how every industry is. So we're excited for college. We're hoping some more opportunities come through. We were very, uh, fortunate with the baseball team to cover them. That helped us get a few more, yeah, um, followers here there and we just enjoy it.

Baseball Coverage and Team Support

Justin 11:52

so yeah, I was gonna say so. You guys, you must love baseball, like. So tell me we like the whole following the baseball team, how'd that come about?

Houston 11:58

we put we played baseball till freshman year okay and then we stopped to focus on golf. We we never played travel just because golf always got in the way yeah so we've always been decent um buddies with those guys yeah and then we obviously freshman, sophomore year we didn't have the podcast junior year we we did it and we kind of thought about it junior year yeah and at the time our we, we knew guys in that were seniors last year, but we weren't like that close so like we didn't really want to ask them.

Justin 12:26

Yeah.

Houston 12:28

And then this year we had a bunch of classes with the guys and we got really close with the guys. So we talked with all the captains. I ate lunch with like three of the baseball guys and one of the captains and then we just reached out to Coach Sandman and he was all in about it. He was all about it. So that was really helpful. That was big helpful, because if the coach doesn't want it then you can't really, oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

Justin 12:57

Yeah, I thought the stuff you guys covered was awesome. It's cool. It's like for those guys to feel like the interviews after were really funny like you could tell they're like what's going on here, like this is kind of cool.

Houston 13:10

And the parents loved it too, because, for like the grandparents that live somewhere else or can't make it to the baseball games, that was the big reason why we did it, just for us we have grandparents that can't come watch our golf games just because they can't walk all 18.

Houston 13:25

And so like that was kind of our big motive, just so like grandparents and family could watch him. Yeah, I mean, sam coach salmon was good about it. Funny enough he didn't he. Actually we reached out to him junior year because, um, one of our good buddy, graham who I don't think you had in, but he was a pitcher for the team he was like, yeah, you guys should totally do it. Part of me was hesitant to reach out because he's like oh, we're only like two months into this yeah, I don't know how this is gonna go.

Houston 13:47

But I reached out, he didn't, he ended, he didn't end up, uh, responding. But I reached out again. I was like, all right, this year we're gonna make it happen. Um. So he responded and um, I just met with him one day. I just kind of went over like what he wants us to do, what he doesn't want us to do, yeah and he was.

Houston 14:03

He was really nice with that. He was pretty much just like whatever you want to do, go with it. I'll let you know if it crosses the line yeah he was. He was helpful in that. All the coaches loved it as well, and they're all super, super helpful with yeah, with it all.

Justin 14:15

Yeah, they pretty much let us do what we wanted.

Houston 14:16

Like we, we first, like our first game, we were out in left field like near the foul pole thinking we should just stay away. We didn't want to, we didn't want to intrude, yeah and then we were like I I was talking to grady, one of the captains, and grant thunberg at lunch one day. I was like you think we could get into that booth up there? And they're like, yeah, I think it's just mike the announcer in there yeah, and I was like you sure, I don't push any buttons.

Houston 14:41

And and sam man was like yeah, go ahead.

Justin 14:44

So were you guys were actually like commentating the whole game? Yeah, oh nice, I didn't know that. Yeah, I would commentate.

Houston 14:50

And our brother Ethan would be like at the desk with me, just like add in something, and then him and our friend Nash would be we were like our, we were like the videographer didn't realize that.

Justin 15:07

Yeah, I wish I would now see I try not to do like, try not to like, have all the answers going into this like I just want to scratch the surface. Um man, that's, that's got to be fun, that's really because we would film.

Houston 15:12

We do highlights for the guys too. Yeah, so, like I was, I was in charge of the live stream and nash was in charge of the highlights, and then sometimes I had to do scoreboard too for the guys. Yeah, so we helped him out in more ways than one.

Justin 15:25

Uh, that's cool though Like that's awesome to stay, like to stay involved in the sport. You know, like I talk about youth sports a lot and like it's it's so few kids end up playing varsity sports, yeah, and like I don't know, when I was playing football we had somebody who, who was a good like doing something similar as a GA and then he became a recruiting coordinator and then, like he's traveled all over with, like with in some big programs. I think last I talked he was like he was the recruiting coordinator at Houston. Wow, um yeah, which is pretty crazy. Doing like all just started like doing video for our, you know, six and four, four, sorry, four and six football program.

Justin 16:10

Um yeah, so you got to like stay around the sport. That's so cool yeah because there's so much more around sports than the athletes exactly um, and athletes don't always make the best, like like they're not always the best commentators or the best coaches, or um I mean the parents loved it too.

Houston 16:26

Anytime we'd pull up, they'd be like hey five, five. Cast is here like yeah, that's awesome yeah, we actually ended up making t-shirts for the guys too cool yeah, cool, that's really cool.

Justin 16:38

Uh, kudos to you for sticking it out with, with, with sandman, because I know what it's like. Like I've questioned what I'm doing a million times. Like when I get no's or I get somebody who says yes and then cancels people are busy man, like like for me, like I'm asking somebody to take a couple hours out of their day, and like everybody, of course, is like what's your motive? Like why is he doing this? Yeah, I'm like I'm not trying to. It's like I'm not trying to get a gotcha, like I'm not trying to. So I understand the hesitation with some people. But, yeah, there's been times where, like I'm just striking out on getting people to do it and I'm like am I really like is there a need? Yeah, but then like put an episode out there and like everybody's like man, that was awesome, I didn't know, you know. So kudos to you for sticking it out.

Houston 17:18

Yeah.

Justin 17:18

I'm sure you've gone through those phases of like. Am I wasting my time?

Houston 17:22

Yeah, there's been a lot of those, you know. Especially when you get into the dry spouts, it's kind of like dang. What is this for Exactly?

Justin 17:33

It's still worth it, but then you do something like beard or no beard.

Houston 17:36

Yeah, exactly, and then you crush it.

Justin 17:38

I was trying to think how we could do that on here, and that's what I need to pick your guys' brains Like how you do, like that's just stuff you're editing afterwards.

Houston 17:48

Yeah, we'll just like film it and then like we'll just be like we've got to do a video today and we're like, all right, we could do beard, no beard. We could do top five, we could do this or that. We could do a list of top five, like best top five in receiving yards in the NFL and stuff like that, and then we just go down and film it and then it's the three strikes, and then you edit it and produce it.

Justin 18:14

yeah yeah, it's pretty cool. So, software wise, um, I'm not afraid to like get into the nuts and bolts of podcasting because, like there, there's people here at brick house blue that have approached me. Like I, I mean I really want to start this and I'm like, look if I can do it. Like, yeah, anybody can do it. Yeah, it's, we were talking about video. Video is the worst part. The audio piece of it is actually pretty easy, unless you're going to do a ton of editing. But I feel like nowadays, like there's not much editing.

Houston 18:43

I don't do the editing, but I don't think there's that much editing on the audio part. Yeah, I do all the editing and the audio part is the easiest.

Houston 18:56

Like we'll put all our episodes on spotify and that takes me like maybe three minutes and the longest time is waiting for it to upload to spotify, whereas the youtube part if, if I don't prepare ahead of a time for like the stuff we gotta put on, it's gonna take me maybe 30 minutes to an hour. Yeah, so, but I'd say the audio part, the only thing for editing is just cutting out the the times where you do like and we've started doing like, stating the question that we're gonna answer and so like the only time there's really an edit for that is if you mess up the question that we're gonna ask it's pretty simple.

Justin 19:24

So you just clip that and yeah um, yeah, for this I want it like I'll trim the front and the back.

Houston 19:29

Usually that's about it and that's it um, I don't do much more than that, maybe a little bit here or there Sometimes, if somebody isn't close to the microphone or they're quiet, I might have to turn their volume up.

Justin 19:39

Yeah yeah, so I use Audacity to record. What are you guys using?

Houston 19:46

Well, lately we were using OBS Studio to record and that's got video and audio.

Podcast Production and Technical Details

Justin 19:52

Yeah, is that like Riverside? No, we and that's got, that's got video and audio, yeah, but uh, is that like riverside?

Houston 19:57

no it's just yeah, we used to do river, didn't? We used to do riverside, yeah, for like once or twice, but this is like a whole different thing. This is what a lot of streamers use to stream, but I just hit record with it instead oh okay, um, and then I just import the audio that we record separately with an audio recorder, because it's just just better quality than what obs studio picks up yeah, um, interesting, yeah.

Justin 20:16

so I've tried like everything, uh, not that. But I was like the audacity is like this, it's easy, it's free, like it records really, like that works really well for audio. I started using riverside because I did a remote one where I had some people in the studio and some remote and that was pretty cool because I was able it was the Nash family, they were on Family Feud, so I was able to share my screen, show some video. So that was kind of cool. But then I want to do everything, most of what I do here, so I don't really need that remote piece of it. But then I kept using it to record because it is kind of quick to edit in there.

Houston 20:59

And then it's got some AI to like give you clips and stuff um. But you said you're creating your own clips. For the most part, yeah, I mean occasionally I'll. Sometimes what I'll do is I'll put it in opus, like you said, but I'll just like see what they clip. If I like it, I'll go in and clip it myself. Uh, there you go because we used to didn't?

Houston 21:10

we used to go back and clip it like we used to go back and clip it at the very start, but it was bad. Like you said before, this is bad quality. It's better just to do it on a separate video yeah, sometimes honestly I'll have us like redo the clip and just like act it out again oh yeah, that way it's better, that's smart that way I don't have to go digging in the video and then screen record it or edit it yeah it gets bad quality.

Houston 21:32

So yeah, because I mean it's still authentic because we already did it, like we did it all at the end.

Justin 21:36

Oh yeah. So like, yeah, it's not like we're just making it. Yeah, no, you're just getting a better version. Yeah, exactly like easier to consume. Yeah, because I noticed like there's definitely a correlation between quality of audio and video and like views and and you know interactions with it for sure. Yeah, 100, um. So when you're editing video, what are you using? Then? You're using that same software.

Houston 21:58

No, I'm putting it into cap cut on my okay most of the time on my computer, sometimes on my phone for like the shorter yeah uh length videos. But yeah, I've just always used cap cut it just easiest. I know how to use it. Yeah, it does everything I want. It doesn't really do well with captions, but for the content that we produce, most of the time you don't need captions. Occasionally I'll put some in, but nothing crazy.

Justin 22:24

Yeah, you guys do some cool stuff, the Beard or no Beard, they're like top fives and it's kind of unique.

Houston 22:33

I haven't seen the Beard or no Beard?

Justin 22:33

I've never seen, I'm sure there's something like it out there, but yeah, it's kind of cool to have something like that.

Houston 22:39

Yeah, we just did a couple days ago we did a blindly rank one about like things on a summer day, so like. I think one of them was like Chick-fil-A. Where do you blindly rank that out of five? Where rank that out?

Justin 22:56

of five, where you, where you blindly rank, pool like a pool on a hot summer day stuff like that nice and it's.

Houston 22:58

It's nice to have those things to fall back on, you know, because they're they're so quick and easy to produce that like if I don't have anything ready, I just fall back on it and I'll go downstairs and go film it real quick and it takes maybe 15 minutes total yeah from the time that we step down there to get on instagram and plus it reaches everybody.

Houston 23:14

Like it won't just be, like it's not like we're just producing a sport one yeah, so like it won't only be like boys and like a little bit of girls, it'll be everybody yeah, everybody can, can rank exactly, yeah, a summer day, yeah, out of five. Yeah, we got five things and randomly listed them off.

Justin 23:34

But you don't know what the five are Like he'll find the five and he'll ask me and you don't know what's coming. I don't know what's coming next, so you got to like reserve it.

Houston 23:43

That's the big point of it, because you got to be like Chick-fil-A is good on a hot summer day, but is it that good yeah?

Justin 23:58

So, like you got to be like, and that might be a three or four something's definitely better than a chick-fil-a, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, that's funny. I was wondering if I could drum one up for you guys, but I don't know if I'm that sharp. Um, yeah, I think it's cool to cover stuff other than sports, like I try and do that here. Like be sports are so much like so ingrained in me and I don't want it to be specific to that. Like I want to get out of my comfort zone and I have, like I've had, um, I've had people from nonprofits and like those are like the most interesting to me.

Houston 24:23

Yeah, Cause they always have a story for sure. Yeah.

Justin 24:26

Yeah, and that's kind of that's just my goal is to get stories out there yeah, um, yeah. So I need people like you to help find if you run into somebody. I mean, you guys have been here forever, so if you're like, that'd be a unique story.

Houston 24:39

We got you Likewise. Yeah, yeah, for sure, we try to branch off from the sports. We probably do 95% sports.

Justin 24:48

Yeah.

Houston 24:50

Big videos-wise. We do 95% sports, 5% non-sports, but for the most part there's always something sports-related.