Interview with Zach King

Jon Youshaei recently pulled back the curtain on the creative empire of Zach King, the digital wizard known for his mind-bending visual effects and captivating short-form videos. With a staggering 65 million followers on TikTok and 20 million on YouTube, King has built an online legacy spanning 14 years, over 3,000 videos, and more than 20 billion views. Their conversation peeled back the layers of magic, revealing the rigorous process, strategic decisions, and human touch behind an astonishingly successful creator.

The Untapped Well: Engineering Endless Ideas

For years, Zach King admits he chased a "mystical Muse," waiting for inspiration to strike while playing table tennis or go-karting. While some great ideas did emerge from this playful chaos, he eventually realized that sustainable creativity required a more disciplined approach. Today, his studio has engineered a robust system for generating, refining, and selecting ideas, ensuring the well never truly runs dry, even in a seemingly "oversaturated" social media landscape.

Every Monday, the team convenes for an "idea dump." No creative work is done beforehand; it's a raw brainstorming session where everyone, from finance to assistants, is encouraged to contribute. The goal is sheer volume, aiming for 100 to 150 concepts in a single hour. These ideas are then subjected to a "pulse session," where team members silently vote on their favorites with sticky notes. As King explains, this isn't a popularity contest, but a gauge of what truly resonates. They then dissect the favorites, questioning "Is it the setting? Is it the character? Is it the trick? Or is it actually the story?" King notes, "at the end of the day it's just about sitting down and doing the work." This rigorous process of ideation and interrogation ensures that even seemingly mundane prompts can yield a wealth of compelling content.

Key Practices:

• Structured Brainstorming: Implement weekly "idea dumps" to generate high volume, raw concepts from diverse team members.
• Democratic Filtering: Use "pulse sessions" with anonymous voting to identify ideas that resonate most broadly with the team.
• Prompt-Driven Creativity: Utilize themes or hypothetical scenarios (e.g., "Wes Anderson directs my TikToks") to spark targeted idea generation.
• Leverage AI for Visualization: Use AI tools for generating "T-sheet" images to quickly visualize concepts, especially for complex visual effects.

The Blueprint of Billions: Pre-Production & The 10% Rule

The journey from a voted-on idea to a viral video is a testament to King's meticulous pre-production and a unique "10% rule" applied on set. He walked Jon through the creation of a multi-six-figure Amazon video where his room magically fills with real water. This elaborate short started with Amazon's prompt: "Have Alexa do something magical, fictional that is not possible." The team then executed their idea dump, generating over 100 concepts before settling on the water-filled room.

Pre-production involves an intensive "yes and" phase, where ideas are expanded upon without budget constraints. "What is the heart of the idea that we really like," King muses, "and if money was endless what how would we do what would we do for that idea." Only then do they introduce a reality check, fitting the concept into specific budget tiers (A, B, or C). For the Amazon video, this meant intricate details like making King a free diver with clear goggles (so viewers could recognize him) and ingeniously integrating Alexa's round shape into a retro diving helmet. Even with such detailed planning, King reserves a crucial "10% push" on production day. After getting a "backup safety" take, they challenge themselves: "What is the extra 10%? What's going to make this more watchable or even better or funnier?" This commitment to spontaneous improvement on set often creates the most viral and memorable elements of his work.

Key Learnings:

• Deep Idea Refinement: Explore the core of an idea as if money were no object before applying budget constraints.
• Budget Tiering: Categorize projects into different budget tiers (A, B, C) to define limitations and allocate resources effectively.
• Strategic Character Design: Ensure the main character's visibility and recognizability, even when wearing costumes or masks.
• The "10% Push": Dedicate time on set, after securing a solid take, to improvise and elevate the creative vision, ensuring maximum impact.

Scaling the Spectacle: Building a Hollywood-Level Creative Team

Perhaps one of the most counterintuitive insights from King is his approach to team building, particularly in an industry often dominated by solo creators. While acknowledging that some, like Graham Stephan, thrive alone, King embraces the power of delegation. "You can do so much more once you figure out some of those like management techniques," he says, highlighting the "extra leverage" a team provides.

His hiring philosophy is surprisingly simple yet profound: "The only hiring rule we have is we'll ask the team like is this person better than you." This ensures that every new hire brings specialized expertise that elevates the entire operation. For his ambitious "Stranded" short films, for example, he empowered Josh Faap as a director/producer, recognizing Faap's superior vision and management skills for larger projects. King also learned from Hollywood legends like Lorden Miller (Lego Movies) and Pixar, adopting their "previs" approach – writing and visualizing a film multiple times through animatics and storyboards. This means "80% of the work is done in pre-production." Even editing, once a task he felt only he could do, has been successfully delegated. "There's no secrets here," he realized, when his new editor effortlessly executed his "unique" techniques.

Key Changes:

• Shift from Solo Creation: Transitioned from doing everything himself to building a robust team for increased output and leverage.
• Empowered Delegation: Identified and hired specialists (e.g., directors, editors) who possess skills "better than" his own in specific areas.
• Adoption of Pre-Visualization: Integrated Hollywood-style previs (animatics, storyboards) into the short-form workflow, prioritizing pre-production.
• Freelancer Test Period: Utilizes a six-month freelancer period to assess compatibility and performance before making full-time hiring decisions.

Beyond the Numbers: Monetization, Platform Strategy, and Personal Boundaries

Beyond the creative process, Zach King offered surprising transparency into the creator economy. He revealed that TikTok's Creator Fund paid a mere $53,958 over several months for billions of views, underscoring its inefficiency for primary income. In contrast, YouTube Shorts monetization, though nascent, paid $7,935 for 537.8 million views in two months, with a significantly better CPM. King believes Shorts payouts will improve, emphasizing the long-term value of subscribers and viewership. He also credits much of his massive reach to a "first mover's advantage," having built a substantial following on Vine and early TikTok (Musically) before they exploded. This strategy of "trying every single app that comes out that feels like has something creatively that excites me" remains core to his approach.

On a personal level, King has deliberately structured his life to maintain boundaries. He gives himself a fixed salary, just like any other employee, which simplifies accounting and reinforces a 9-to-5 mindset for himself and his team. As a father, he shared invaluable advice on being present, particularly for Jon Youshaei, who is soon to be a dad. King implements a "physical barrier," like stepping into his office to finish emails, so that "when I walk literally walk into the on the carpet in the living room it's playtime." He also encourages embracing his children's "yes and" imagination, finding that their creative play, free from adult constraints, often sparks his own fresh ideas, a reminder that the deepest roots of creativity are often found in play.

Key Insights:

• Disparate Monetization: Highlighted the vast difference in monetization efficiency between TikTok's Creator Fund and YouTube Shorts.
• First Mover's Advantage: Emphasized the critical importance of early adoption on new platforms to gain a significant head start.
• Structured Compensation: Pays himself a fixed salary to maintain a clear burn rate and reinforce a 9-to-5 work-life balance.
• Physical Work-Life Barriers: Uses physical separation (e.g., office door) to delineate work time from family time, enabling greater presence.

"at the end of the day it's just about sitting down and doing the work" - Zach King