Mo Mooncey "The Hoop Genius", Sky Sports NBA Presenter, on building your audience as a content creator
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Mo Mooncey, aka "The Hoop Genius", is an NBA Analyst and Presenter at Sky Sports in London. Mo is also the Founder of Hoop Genius, a popular basketball YouTube channel and podcast in the UK. Mo went from writing and producing videos in his dorm room to being on the NBA Heatcheck on Sky Sports. Brian and Mo go behind the scenes to talk about how Mo got started creating content, how he grew his audience, and how he leveraged his work for better opportunities in media.
Transcript
Brian Bosche:
Hey everyone, it's Brian Bosche with the creativeBTS Podcast. Today I'm so excited to introduce Mo The Hoop Genius, AKA The Hoop Genius, NBA analyst and presenter at Sky Sports. What's up, Mo? Thanks for coming on.
Mo Mooncey:
I'm all good, man. How're you doing? Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
Brian Bosche:
I know, we coordinated time zones. You're in London, I'm in Seattle. You never sleep though, so I think you could've been flexible for a lot of my times.
Mo Mooncey:
That's what I was saying. I think it's, what, 8:00 AM for you and I'm saying we could do it later in the day, we can do it earlier, whatever works.
Brian Bosche:
I know, you're like, "4:00 PM Pacific Time, whatever, I'll be up even when there's no NBA."
Mo Mooncey:
Nonstop, man. I've always been this way. As soon as I learned how to watch the NBA online back when I was a kid, because we didn't get it on the channels here, as soon as I discovered those old streaming sites back in the day, sleep was just gone out of the picture for me. So here we are.
Brian Bosche:
I'm 29 so I'm a little bit older than you and I'm needing my eight hours a night. Luckily I'm on Pacific Time so I can fit in my NBA earlier in the night.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah man. Eight hours for me, I don't remember the last time I had eight hours. I think I got eight hours the day after the season was put on hiatus because I thought, "You know what? Finally I can have one day to sleep." So I had that one night sleep and then the NBA started showing reruns of the classic games and I was like, "Well, you guys have got me again."
Brian Bosche:
I'm in. So we initially connected a few years ago I think when I was in London doing NBA cutout photography projects, putting the Skybox '90s players on different London courts. I've seen you over the last few years. You were founder of The Hoop Genius, which you have a podcast, you have a YouTube channel, you're basically launching your own media company, and now I've seen you grow into working with Sky Sports doing the Heat Check Ovie Soko every week and it's pretty amazing to see kind of that growth. I wanted to have you on to really just talk about for these individual creators, for these individual journalists who are really trying to break it into sports media and media in general.
Brian Bosche:
Would just love to hear more about your story and kind of get advice on what can you do as someone early in your career to really break into the media business, because as we talked about before we started recording, it's a kind of traditional industry that's hard to break into but you see a lot of younger journalists really just breaking rules, getting in there and really making a name for themselves. So, would love just to hear a little bit about your professional background and how you got into journalism.
Mo Mooncey:
Well it's a weird one because I actually went to law school. I didn't study journalism. I've never studied it formally in terms of university, college, any of that. I actually was doing a law degree, but about one day in after my first lecture, I decided I don't want to be a lawyer. The reason why I picked a law degree is because I looked at David Stern, Adam Silver, all of those top, top guys at the NBA, they all have that background in law. So I was doing it more for the kind of skills of critical thinking and putting an argument together and that kind of thing. But there was no way I wanted to be reading 1,000 page case files every night and waking up early to go to the courtroom.
Brian Bosche:
Or the CBA.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah. The CBA. That's as legal as I'll go though. That's the one document I want exception for.
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, exactly.
Mo Mooncey:
So, while I was at university I realized going down ... I've never been one to go down the traditional path. I didn't really want to go to university in the first place. That's a whole nother story but I found myself there and I find myself with more free time kind of than everyone else because if I'm being honest, I didn't really go to many of the lectures. I didn't really do much of studying. I've been blessed with a good memory, so I'm the guy that everybody hates because I just read the textbook the night before the exam and I can just remember it and do those answers there.
Mo Mooncey:
So I had a lot of free time on my hands. I was just living my life. I was 18 years old playing basketball with my friends. I played basketball since I was 12, 13 years old, quite into it. I was really passionate about it. Most people here are into football, soccer-
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, which is rare in London, in England.
Mo Mooncey:
However you want to call it, but I just fell in love with the NBA and basketball as a sport because it's so fast paced, end to end, nonstop. Football games, I used to play football and I would watch football and it's like sometimes you're there for 90 minutes and it's a nil-nil draw and it's like, how are you ending a game on a draw? How has no one won? So I fell in love with basketball-
Brian Bosche:
You're speaking like every American I know who describes football.
Mo Mooncey:
I know, I get so much criticism from people here when I say stuff like that because that's the culture here. But I've been in love with basketball and then I got to the university level and as I was coming out of school, high school, I guess you guys would call it, I had a few options on the table playing for a few teams in Europe. I had a few offers for tryouts with them. Suffered a few injuries. Pretty much everyone in this industry has the same excuse of ... But it was clear to me that I was never going to make the NBA. I can hold my hands up. I consider myself a good hooper but nowhere near NBA level because those guys are on a different planet. I looked at playing in a British basketball league and stuff like that, but there's not a lot of money to be made in these kind of leagues outside of the Euro league, the NBA and those big name ones.
Mo Mooncey:
So I kind of thought, "How can I still be around the game and still have an impact?" So I did a coaching course, did a refereeing course and looked at those two as options, and as we were saying earlier, I never sleep. So I'm up all night and I'm just tweeting about NBA nonstop. I'm tweeting about the games, I'm tweeting about the players, giving a little bit of my insight because although I never played at an NBA level, I do think I have some insight into the game itself because I have played to a good standard. So I see the game a little bit differently from the everyday fan who might not have played a good quality level.
Mo Mooncey:
So people really started to enjoy my insight and one day I got a call from a friend, my big bro Taff. He rang me and he said, "Yo, what're you doing?" I was like, "Chilling." You know me, man. I'm just chilling. He says, "Listen, I've got a proposition for you. I'm in New York right now. I've just been at this tech conference and there's this new news website starting and they're looking for writers, and I want you to cover the NBA and sports section for them." I was like, "Bro, what are you on about, man? I'm not a writer." And he goes to me, "Look, you tweet about it all day. Just get 20 of your tweets and put them on a page and it becomes an article." That's the recipe.
Brian Bosche:
That's great advice. You're writing on Twitter all the time.
Mo Mooncey:
So I took the chance they gave me and I started writing for ... It was called Slant News at the time, and it was a revenue sharing based platform. So for every article I wrote, I was receiving 70% of the ad revenue. And so I wrote ... Yeah, it was a pretty sweet deal but at first I wrote my first article and it didn't do too ... It got like 84 views. It generated like five cents, so I've done it and I'm like, "Oh man, maybe this ain't for me," and then my boys over here, they really got behind me. They were like, "No, man. That's the first word. You've got to stick with it."
Mo Mooncey:
So I stuck with it and I kept trying and I started taking writing about the NBA seriously as a craft so I was literally spending 24 hours watching games. If I wasn't watching games, I was going through all the stats and if I wasn't doing that, I was reading other great writers and trying to develop my own personal style. So as I developed as a writer and as I grew, the readers coming to my articles really took off in a big way. So I think within the first nine months I had over two million readers.
Mo Mooncey:
This is what a lot of people who have only met me recently and heard about me recently doing the on camera stuff, they don't realize I have a huge-
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, you were writing before.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, I had a huge writing base that really put me in good stead. And then through that I started getting a few opportunities to speak with NBA players on the phone because obviously over here we don't have access to them, so I did my first ever phone interview ... it was with Nikola Vučević and I remember it was the most nerve wracking thing. I'm like, "Oh my God, an NBA player on the phone. I was just watching this guy last night." So I started doing a few phone interviews and the reason why I spoke to Vučević was because the Magic and the Raptors were coming over to London for NBA London, so I managed to talk myself into a press credential and I bear in mind I'm 18 at the time.
Brian Bosche:
How did you do that? That's like a dream job. Yeah, how did you do that?
Mo Mooncey:
Well, quite simply, is my readership base at the time of two million people interested in just NBA was far bigger than anyone over here outside of the Sunday Times or whatever the newspapers are here. I was like, "Look, I write online articles and I've got this many ... You can expect anywhere between 50,000 and a million people to read each one." So I got lucky. There's some great people over here that do the NBA's PR so I was blessed enough that they took a chance on me.
Mo Mooncey:
So I went to the NBA London global games and met the coaches and the players-
Brian Bosche:
I saw the photos from that.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, it was honestly a dream come true. I never thought that I would be that close to the NBA court. So I was writing for Slant News and did a few cool things. I think the best interview I did, I did an interview with Kevin Durant on All-Star Weekend but it was done ... Cisco, the tech company, were testing out a new ... it was like a facial tracking video call, so there was all different people and if you looked away it would pan off the camera to someone else so it could recognize when you're talking.
Mo Mooncey:
So they wanted to test it out and they were testing it All-Star Weekend. I got a call saying, "Hey Mo, we've got some players at All-Star Weekend but you need to be in the Cisco office in two hours." I was at university. My university, University of Leicester, is an hour and a bit train away from London. So I literally dropped what I was doing and sprinted like ... My friends were so confused because I just ran off. I sprinted all the way to the train station, hopped onto the train, got to London and literally sprinted all the way to the office, got there just in time. I sat down and there's Kevin Durant, Draymond Green, Pau Gasol, and I'm like, "Oh my God, what is going on?"
Brian Bosche:
It might be good that you didn't have time to get nervous. You just had to get there and do the interviews.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, yeah I was just so focused on not being late because, you know, if I'm late, I'm not doing it. So I sat there and I've done the interview and then I'm on the train home and I'm thinking, "I just spoke to the biggest players in the world and I've got this many millions of people reading my work, but there's still a company taking a 30% cut of it. If I owned the platform, I would get 100% of it. I wouldn't be needing to give 30% to the company."
Mo Mooncey:
And looking around the model that they use for their website, out of everyone else who was writing, with no disrespect to them and there were some great people, but no one was touching the numbers anywhere close to what I was touching on there. So I thought I'm going to start my own platform and take 100% of the audience. Obviously 18, 19 years old, you're quite naïve. I just was expecting the two million to just transfer over. I didn't realize I would be building from the ground up again, but I took a chance on myself. I did a few freelance bits just to get some money, pay the bills and covered up expenses of university.
Brian Bosche:
So is your audience mostly in the UK and Europe or does it span mostly in the United States?
Mo Mooncey:
It's like 40% UK and Europe, 40% United States and then loads of fans in the Philippines as well so-
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, national sport.
Mo Mooncey:
Shout out to those guys, you know?
Brian Bosche:
National sport of Philippines is basketball.
Mo Mooncey:
So I launched HoopGenius.com and I was doing my own thing and then I got a few months into that, and I was on Twitter and I just saw ... It was like, I don't know if you remember that one week where it seemed almost every writer got fired. Vice let all their writing team go and all of the-
Brian Bosche:
Was that the transition to video?
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, so I looked to this. I'm like, "Why is everyone getting fired? You can't fire me, I own my own website, but there must be a reason they're getting fired." And then everyone starts pumping out video content and so I thought, "All right, cool. I've got to transition into the video space." So I called up a few of my friends who were good with cameras and stuff. I'm like, "Look, I'm trying to do this." So they gave me some advice and the hilarious part is now I'm on TV twice a week and I'm on podcasts, I'm on everything, and so many people ask me, "Oh, can you give me some advice about being on camera and stuff?" There's actually a Facebook status that I've got on my Facebook memories from four years ago today, five years ago today, and my status was ... It was a link to my first ever YouTube video and it was like, "I hate being on camera but someone says life starts at the end of your comfort zone so I'm giving this a try."
Mo Mooncey:
I came across that the other day and I was thinking-
Brian Bosche:
That's amazing.
Mo Mooncey:
... "Damn. If I'd never taken that chance on that first YouTube video, who knows what I'd be doing today." So made that transition to video, just started small making videos for Twitter, Instagram, that kind of thing just talking about players, doing little breakdowns and then started on the YouTube side of things, and then I got into freelancing, so I hosted a few different things for different brands. Probably the highlight of that, I went to the Jordan brand Jordan Classic, the European, Barcelona. So the brand Pro Direct who were doing it at the time, who were sponsoring it, they called me and they were like, "Hey Mo, do you want to go to Barcelona?" And I'm like, "What kind of question is this?" And then they were like ...
Brian Bosche:
"Yes, at Jordan Classic, yes please."
Mo Mooncey:
And they were like, "Do you want to spend a week with Ray Allen?" And I was like ... Obviously I'm a Celtics fan, right?
Brian Bosche:
So why Celtics?
Mo Mooncey:
I hung up the phone and they called me back, and I said-
Brian Bosche:
You're a Celtics fan so you don't like Ray Allen.
Mo Mooncey:
No, no. I said, "Are you guys for real or are you my friends trying to play a prank?" Because I didn't believe that it was happening. I was shocked and so that's when I really saw the potential in the presenting and video space. But to answer the question on why the Celtics, my family actually all live in Boston.
Brian Bosche:
Oh wow.
Mo Mooncey:
So my mom's family all live there. It's just her that lives in the UK. That's why I'm here which is hilarious because out of all my cousins, guess how many of them actually even like basketball. Zero.
Brian Bosche:
You had to go to London to become an NBA fan.
Mo Mooncey:
It's just I'm the only one in the family who's an NBA fan and I'm the only one who doesn't live in the United States.
Brian Bosche:
So are you team Ray Allen or are you team Rondo? Would you invite Ray Allen on the vacation?
Mo Mooncey:
You know, I'd invite all the guys. I feel like they need to sort it out because I've spoken to a lot of the guys from that team and everyone's got a different story, so you're never going to know the truth. I spoke to Ray about it and what he said was very different to what the media reported and then like KG and those guys, what they said is very different to what Ray said. So it's one of those things no one's ever going to know and of course athletes, they're super competitive, especially in those ... Tensions run high, especially when you're like game seven of an Eastern Conference Finals. Things get said and people do things, whatever. So, Ray's a great guy and the rest of the guys are amazing people as well, so it's sad that there's bad blood there, but yeah. So Boston because my family's there and when I got into it, the first game I went to is a Celtics game obviously in Boston, so that's that.
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, the Garden's amazing, or TD Garden now. But to go back, I want to go back to starting The Hoop Genius. So, Creative BTS, we typically go kind of deep in the weeds of, "Okay, you want to start a YouTube channel. You're calling some friends who have experience in video." How did you actually get set up? What was your first setup like? What was your first camera setup? Frequency of making those videos? What was it like getting that off the ground when you're uncomfortable on camera for the first time?
Mo Mooncey:
So what people don't know is I actually made almost 100 videos and didn't release any of them because-
Brian Bosche:
Oh wow, before ... Just like right when you started?
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, yeah. Before I put out my first video I made so many and I was constantly looking at ... I don't like that or I need to do this better. My first setup wasn't actually mine. So I called one of my friends who has a camera. Shout out to my boy Limbs. He came through. He had the Sony ... I can't remember what model it was now because it was like five years ago. It was Sony. It was a really nice one. It had a shotgun mic on top and had literally one light just behind the camera. We had one bright light shining on. I stood in front of a play wall similar to this one and it was that. And then obviously-
Brian Bosche:
Was this just in a flat? Where are you doing this?
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, it was in my dorm room, so my college flat where I was living with my friends. So it was like behind the camera was a complete mess but they cleared out the space for me to stand so it'd look presentable. So that was when he was there but when he wasn't there I was actually just putting my iPhone down and just practicing talking into a camera, because being a creator, most of the times you're on your own. Now there's TV crews that film and camera people but when you get to the roots of it, you're on your own and it's very strange to just be in a room on your own and just talking to no one and you've got to put on this personality of, "Hey guys, smash the like button. Welcome to my ..." You know, that kind of vibe.
Brian Bosche:
A lot of you have been asking about what I think about…
Mo Mooncey:
So it's kind of weird to get used to, so just getting used to that. The way I first got comfortable with talking on camera is I would get my friends to sit behind the camera even though they knew nothing about basketball and they didn't really care, they'd be on their phone or whatever, but I would just talk to them as if…
Brian Bosche:
They're the audience.
Mo Mooncey:
Forget the camera was there. I'd be looking past the camera straight at them and then that's how I really got comfortable and I started literally just with the iPhone, very, very basic, and then I went to the camera shop and ... You know, those time being young, not having much money, I basically went in there and said, "What's the cheapest camera you've got?" So I got the Canon 1200D which at the time I thought was amazing because it looks like a proper DSLR. Awesome. Take it home, there's no mic input. It's an awful camera, but you have to make things work.
Mo Mooncey:
So I've looked at it. There's no mic input so I bought an external recorder and plugged the mic into that. So I'm going around that first NBA London I told you about. I've got the camera in one hand and I'm holding a microphone and this in the other hand, and while there's massive media companies around, and they've got a whole crew of people with boom mics over the top and massive cameras. I'm just there like a complete amateur, but it got the job done.
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, it's authentic.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, it's real.
Brian Bosche:
It feels like your friend's there with you and he's sending you video and interviews back instead of just this super polished media company.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah man, and also I was looking around and I was like, "No one's got their phone out." So this was kind of before Instagram was huge like that, I reckon. I'm looking and I've just started just recording on my phone like Very Cool. This was before Very Cool Video was a thing and I was just putting on Snapchat.
Brian Bosche:
People still got mad at you for going vertical.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, and people would be like why ...
Brian Bosche:
Turn your phone you idiot.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, and so I was just putting it on Snap ... This was when Snapchat was big and then people would see it and they would send it to their friends and so on and so ... So I started getting loads of views on my Snapchat which was like ... It would be completely random. I would be like, "Yeah guys, I'm just with Jonas Valančiūnas." Everyone else in the room is looking at me like, "What in the hell are you doing?" But I'm looking at them like, "You guys are all old as hell. I'm doing me. This is how I watch things."
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, you're not doing this on Snapchat. Yeah.
Mo Mooncey:
Do you know what I mean? I don't really consume content by sitting down and watching a really long, super edited piece with fancy piano music behind. I'm trying to get to what's real. So I started off super, super basic because if I'm being real, I was broke those days. Even though I was making money, you've got to live and you've got to party so money wasn't my priority. I was working with the most basic level of equipment, so now when people come to me, like, "How do I get started?" I'm like, "Your phone, now. You've got an iPhone. The minimum that people"
Brian Bosche:
It's better than your Canon.
Mo Mooncey:
Do you know what I mean? The Canon was max res, 1080, it didn't have any stabilization. It was shaky pictures, whereas now your phone films 4K. I'm like, "You've got a phone. You've got AirPods. They've got little mics in them.
Brian Bosche:
Good audio input, yeah.
Mo Mooncey:
Just put them on. Perfect, man, and there's so much you could do. I'm sure everyone's seen your TikTok channel with all the different possibilities of stuff you can do on an iPhone. So if you're looking to get started, start with the phone and you're already starting ahead of where I started.
Brian Bosche:
Something I want to go back to, getting the hundred videos in without publishing, first of all, amazing self control there to not try to get one of those first ones out because I know people are antsy to get it out, but I think that's such an important thing is to get your reps in, find your voice. So what did you find from first time you recorded video to the hundredth where, "All right, I found my voice. I know what I want to go after." What did it take for you to get to the first published video and get comfortable there?
Mo Mooncey:
You know, I review videos in a third person point of view, because say the first 50 that I made, I think I was being too overcritical of myself. When you're listening to yourself or when you're watching yourself, you tend to notice things that the average viewer wouldn't notice just because you're so used to yourself and you want to be perfect and polished on the screen. What actually got me to put out the first video that I put out was one of my boys just telling me, "Bro, you're wasting time because if you don't do this now, someone else is going to do this now." So it wasn't something that I was happy with in the video. My boys basically pushed me into doing it. They were like, "They're good, just-"
Brian Bosche:
Giving you the confidence.
Mo Mooncey:
"Just put them out there." But I was like, "No, but I want to change this and I want to change that." I put out the first one and the first one that I ever actually put out was I'd gone at NBA London, Pro Direct, who I did the Jordan brand with, they invited me to a little exclusive session on the court of the O2 the night before the game. So it was Isaiah Thomas, the OG Isaiah Thomas, Dikembe Mutombo. It was a little skills masterclass and it was sponsored by Adidas and they gave us a pair of kicks.
Mo Mooncey:
So the first video that I put out ... Because everyone was saying to me, "Put out a video, put out a video," but I didn't know what to start with, because I'd made so many videos on so many different players and teams. I was like, "It's going to be a bit random. Should I do an intro video?" But then I went to this event and they gave me this pair of sneakers, and I love sneakers. I'm the massive ... I can't turn the camera around now but I'm next to a wall of shoe boxes here.
Mo Mooncey:
But I did a sneaker review. It was the Adidas crazy explosive. I've still got them. They're on a shelf in my room because they're like the first ever sneaker I'd got given. So I did a review of it and my friends were like, "Put it out." They didn't ask me to review it or make a video or anything. I just put the video out because I thought it was a good place to start, and at the time I was like, "Yeah, everyone's going to see this and think that I'm official because Adidas have given me these sneakers," and you know, like that, because you want people to think you're cool in the videos though. That was really the first one I put out.
Brian Bosche:
That was the forcing function.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, yeah, so my boys were telling me, "Look, if you don't do this now, there's 20 other people at the event. One of them might do it, and it looks good, it's smart, it's slick." So I did that and that was when I was editing. The first one I did was on iMovie. Just very simple, like very basic.
Brian Bosche:
Just doing whatever you have to do.
Mo Mooncey:
And then I did some research and then I pirated a ... I shouldn't say that, but I'm a hustler. Kids out there, Final Cut Pro is how many hundreds of pounds or hundreds of dollars. Not everyone has that, so I got Final Cut on my laptop and learned how to edit through that, and literally spent hours refining the craft of what makes a video eye catching. Little animations popping up and little images coming in to try and keep the viewer entertained.
Mo Mooncey:
So I really kind of studied video making and I looked at a lot of ... I get inspiration from a lot of different things. Obviously I look at basketball content but I might be looking at a music video and be like, "That transition is sick. I'm going to try and do that." I really try to take my video making to the next level, but I started out with the worst camera possible, a cracked version of Final Cut. So if anyone's worried about starting, right now on your phone, you can get Adobe Rush, which is a video editing tool on your phone.
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, that's what I use for all mine.
Mo Mooncey:
Exactly, man.
Brian Bosche:
It's amazing.
Mo Mooncey:
It's so easy now and I wish ... In a weird way sometimes I think if I was 18 now, I would ... by the time I get to 25, I will be so much further than I am right now, if that makes sense.
Brian Bosche:
Yep. Yeah. So when you started this, you got your first video out, did you have a content plan or were you trying to get out weekly videos? Or were you like, "All right, I'm going to focus on YouTube and Twitter and Snap?" What was kind of your strategy when you started and how did that evolve? It's been, what, three and a half years? Four years? So kind of what was your content strategy and how did you move forward with that over time? Oh, you're back, Mo. Can you hear me?
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, at first for a second, man, I didn't hear any of that, sorry.
Brian Bosche:
No worries.
Mo Mooncey:
You were saying a content plan.
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, so you get the first YouTube video out and The Hoop Genius has started. What was your content strategy moving forward? Were you weekly videos? Did you focus on specific platforms? How did you think about that and how has that changed over the last four years?
Mo Mooncey:
I'll be honest, when I started I had no idea what I was doing. I put out that video and it was kind of cool. My thing when I was writing, I would do ... I don't sleep as we've said before. I was at a point where I was publishing three written articles a day, so my content strategy for writing was very different to-
Brian Bosche:
Volume.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, because you physically ... Every video I make now, I've written a whole article and then I've done the video. So if I wanted to, I could publish every video as an article. Still to this day I write an article and then I change it to be suitable for video. So I change some of the wording, some of the structure and make it better for video. I've found it's very unfeasible to be doing three videos a day if you want that level of depth and that level of quality.
Brian Bosche:
Maybe three TikToks a day, but YouTube videos require more production.
Mo Mooncey:
At the start I did the sneaker review. The sneaker review was cool. I did a few more of those and then I just thought, "Let me just test out a few different things to kind of see what people respond to best." So then I think my first deep analysis video was a breakdown of Joel Embiid and the reason why he keeps getting injured. It was looking at his landing mechanics after he dunks.
Brian Bosche:
A little sports science.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, yeah. Kind of like that sport science but digestible for you and I and my friends and that kind of people. So then I kind of started going down that route but at the time being in law school, it was kind of ... I was just making videos whenever I felt like it. When you're that young, I feel like it's important to experience life before ... Because I could've ... I locked myself away while I was writing and I was always having ... My friends were knocking on my door like, "Yo, we're going to this party. Do you want to come?" But because the writing was giving me such a steady stream of income, I was like, "No man, I'm going to stay here, I'm going to write this, get a million views and get X amount of thousand, and then next week we'll go out and party and I'll pay for all of you guys," you know what I mean?
Mo Mooncey:
That's just how it was, but with YouTube, it doesn't make you money initially.
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, it takes a long time.
Mo Mooncey:
Unless you've got a huge audience, even people with a huge audience, depending on your ... you don't make lots and lots of money. So, because the return on my time investment wasn't directly translatable to money, I got very inconsistent. I have to hold my hands up and say I went through a period of ... my video creation was completely random. Like one day I will get an idea, start working on it, forget about it, come back two weeks later and carry on because-
Brian Bosche:
But you're still writing through this time, right? Because that's where the revenue's coming from. Yeah.
Mo Mooncey:
I'm still writing, but the thing is the videos take time because I was a beginner back then, so editing ... If you want really good edits, it takes-
Brian Bosche:
It takes a while.
Mo Mooncey:
It takes time, and the other thing is I was in uni so I wanted to live the uni life, as it is to speak, so I tried to make a conscious effort to stop saying no to doing stuff and people are having a party, I'd be like, "Yeah, I'll be there." People are doing this, I'm like, "Yo, I'll come," because I realized I'm going to be doing this forever. In my head it was like I can see the future of me just doing basketball forever, whereas before with the writing thing, for me it felt too good to be true so I was rushing it, doing three articles a day in case it disappeared one day.
Brian Bosche:
So it's almost like the long term investment was getting yourself on camera and now that you're at Sky Sports it's pretty amazing, I've talked to other guests about this where the best way to open yourself up for opportunity is to be visible and if you're just a writer and you don't have the YouTube component, you don't have the on camera component that people can see and say, "Hey, why don't you do these interviews? It looks like you can do interviews well." So talk a little bit about how did you leverage that, the Hoop Genius platform, and all the stuff you're doing on YouTube and across all the channels into getting an opportunity to be on TV, to be with Sky Sports.
Mo Mooncey:
It's an interesting story because it's actually YouTube that got me on Sky Sports. Sky bought the TV rights to broadcast the NBA in the United Kingdom not the start of this season but the start of last season. So when that started, they owned a digital creative agency and that agency was looking to put together an NBA YouTube channel because they already owned some of the biggest football channels in Europe ... in the world, actually. I think they own the number one football channel in the world. So they were trying to replicate that with the NBA, and they were looking around for people who knew about basketball in the UK. And they reached out-
Brian Bosche:
Which is a small population.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, for real. So they reached out to one of my friends, Yani. He's a great guy. He does similar stuff to me. He's on a podcast as well.
Brian Bosche:
Great guy on your podcast.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, he's a great guy.
Brian Bosche:
You guys pick on him a lot. It's really funny.
Mo Mooncey:
It just so happens he's the youngest in the group. He's like the little brother, you know what I mean? So he's got to learn the hard way.
Brian Bosche:
I was listening to the one on the NBA reopening and he's like, "I don't want to go into logistics. I don't want to go into operations," and then 15 minutes later you guys got him roped back into logistics talk and cameramen. Amazing.
Mo Mooncey:
He's a good laugh. So he was friends with a person who worked at that company and he obviously said to them, "Oh, well I like NBA. I can do this with you." And then they said to him, "Who else do you think would be good?" And he said, "Oh yeah, my friend Mo," and then so I went down and had a meeting. Apparently there's some amazing people out there in the world because when I had a meeting with the head of talent recruitment for this channel, he was like, "So many people have told me your name. It's good to finally meet you." So, whoever's out there in the world that was putting in a good word for me.
Brian Bosche:
I mean, you are building your audience for years before that. The writing. That has such a big impact with these decisions, and a unique angle because you found a voice through all your reps.
Mo Mooncey:
Yes sir, man. It's the same as playing basketball. I put the same philosophy in. If you had a basketball game, you wouldn't just turn up and start playing. You're in the gym. I'm shooting 500 jump shots a day in the week leading up to the game so that when I get to the game, my jump shot's legit. Same way with the videos. I'm making a hundred videos before I put one in public. Same way with writing, et cetera, et cetera. Thankfully they'd heard of me and then they booked me in for a test shoot, so I went down, did the test shoot and they loved what they saw and liked the level of knowledge and detail. So we did-
Brian Bosche:
Did you put on a suit for that?
Mo Mooncey:
No.
Brian Bosche:
Did you alter anything or did you went in totally authentic?
Mo Mooncey:
The only time you will see me in a suit ... There's only one day in a year. Or, multiple days in a year but only one thing. I only put a suit for NBA game nights, so All-Star game night or NBA London or NBA Paris, I'll be in a suit then. But if I'm coming to present a show, like even right now I'm wearing a Houston Rockets-
Brian Bosche:
Oh, amazing sweater.
Mo Mooncey:
It's a Warren Lewis design. He's a designer in California. But this is all part of basketball culture because what separates me from your traditional journalist, as we were saying before, is they only do journalism whereas I am like an embodiment ... This is how I see myself, as an embodiment of basketball culture. I don't think I own any clothes that aren't related to the NBA. Everything has got a little team logo or an NBA logo. I try and get all the Jordans. The NBA influences music, influences fashion, influences everything. So whether you want me to come and talk about the NBA, wearing a suit, cool, I get it. That's the done way of doing things. But if I turn up in this Houston Rockets t-shirt wearing a pair of Jordans, that's what the NBA is all about and I feel like we're not [inaudible 00:33:25] with players and stuff, the reason why I can kind of connect with them a little bit better than certain other people is because I'm relatable. We like the same stuff. We listen to the same music. We wear the same kind of clothes.
Mo Mooncey:
I remember I was wearing a similar top by Warren Lewis and I got in a bit of trouble because it's got some skulls on the back and that kind of thing, and I got in a bit of trouble with someone at one company and they were like, "Oh, you can't wear that. This is the NBA, you've got to dress properly." And then that night Fred VanVleet wore it pregame and so all the pictures from the tunnel is him wearing the same t-shirt as me. And I was like, "Look, this is the culture."
Mo Mooncey:
So I went for that first take. They liked what they saw and then we did a channel called 24 Swish. So that ran for about [crosstalk 00:34:10]
Brian Bosche:
When was this?
Mo Mooncey:
This was-
Brian Bosche:
When did this start?
Mo Mooncey:
We started in January 2019.
Brian Bosche:
'19? Okay.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah.
Brian Bosche:
So this is three years after you started The Hoop Genius?
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, yeah. Those three years I finished university, so I've graduated and then I was just doing freelance video editing, freelance social media stuff with different companies, trying to find a way back into basketball with a financial, viable route. So then we started just after January 2019. We did that channel for about nine months. We were doing just general NBA discussion videos, debates. We had a podcast with them and we were doing viewer Q&As kind of thing. So it was really good to get that experience. I spent a lot of time in those offices with the editors and with the producers and just trying to soak in as much knowledge as I possibly could into, "Why have you done this thumbnail in a certain way? Why have you made this video a certain length?" Because before I was just making up as I go along.
Mo Mooncey:
So I did that for about nine months and then I didn't really hear much from those guys for about 30 days, 60 days, and I was hitting them up like, "What's going on?" They were like, "Oh, come, let's have a drink and we'll chat." So I've gone and met some of the guys for drink and they're like, "Oh, we've got some bad news. The channel's not continuing." And I'm just there like, "Oh God, what am I going to do now?" And they were like, "Well the good news is Sky Sports is starting an NBA show similar to what we've done, and we can try and put your name forward and see if they like you, and hopefully, maybe, if you're lucky ..." It wasn't a very sure thing. It was like "We could try our best" kind of thing.
Mo Mooncey:
So then I went in. They took me in for a meeting with the team at Sky who were an amazing group of people. It was an honor to meet them and to work with them still. They seem to have liked me. They seem to be impressed with the knowledge and what I bring to the show. And then obviously at the same time that that was happening, the [inaudible 00:36:16] was happening and Ovie's profile just absolutely skyrocketed. So we've got now a mix on the show of JB who's kind of the traditional journalist who's the host, and then we have Ovie who's played professionally all around the world and he's got that huge kind of persona influencer as it were, and then me, who's come up through writing and YouTube and is really ingrained within the culture.
Mo Mooncey:
Over here in the UK, most NBA fans, I know them ... I make time, I make a point to ... I will try and reply to every single message I get. I'll get people I've never heard of just randomly message me, "Who do you think is better, KD or Giannis," and I'm like, "Cool, let's talk. I love basketball, man. That's what I do." So we're hitting from all three angles. That's one big thing as well in the thing. I reply to every comment everybody's ever left if I've seen it. There might be a few that's ... I've replied to every single tweet. I've replied to every comment on Instagram. That's kind of the biggest piece of advice, is you want to build a community. You want the people who follow you and support you, because that's why, when I said that they'd heard my name mentioned by loads of people.
Mo Mooncey:
I try and make it personal with everyone because I love basketball, you love basketball. We could talk about basketball all day. I love it. That's what I do best, and so ... Because I know a lot of people start things like this and they want to try ... I've seen a lot of people that will try and start a podcast or try and start a channel and they'll unfollow everyone so that their ratio looks good, and I'm like-
Brian Bosche:
I see that a lot too.
Mo Mooncey:
You know what I mean? I'll see that even people who I've been friends with and I'm following. I'm like, "What's going on here?" And they'll say, "Oh, they're trying to look cool for the ..." But what people don't realize is the number of followers you have doesn't really matter. It matters if you want to advertise FitTea on your Instagram story. Cool, you got a million followers. Yeah, drink this bougie tea and advertise it. Cool. But in real life, I did it ... Sky Sports didn't look at me and say, "You've got this many followers, let's get you on." They looked at me and they were like, "You know your stuff, you clearly are crazy passionate about this, you've got a track record of having a good audience and keeping them engaged. That's what matters." The number of followers you have, and the number of people you follow kind of is irrelevant to me. I get it-
Brian Bosche:
And was exposed that way. You see these influencers now with hundreds of thousands of followers and almost now engagement. I think there was a famous one that tried to sell her own brand and got hundreds of dollars in sales with a million followers. Followers does not mean community.
Mo Mooncey:
This is a thing that makes me laugh. I see a lot of brands, like no names mentioned, but I see a lot of brands in the sports space, in the basketball space or whatever it is, go after followers because ... go after people because they've got so many followers, right? And I just look at it and I think, "Cool, this person could have a million followers but if they follow them for ... just because they look good or they've got a football channel or whatever it is, how many sales is that going to translate for you, a basketball merchandise company? Whereas me, I may not have a million followers, but every single person that follows me only follows me because they love NBA, because I don't talk about anything else. I don't do anything else.
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, yeah, very.
Mo Mooncey:
Authenticity is the key and the other thing that people don't realize is, okay, cool, Instagram, even Snapchat has died out now. I had a massive audience on Snapchat. I don't even use the app anymore. Facebook, dead. Instagram is popular now, TikTok is growing. In 10 years' time it's not still going to be the same, so yeah, you've got a million followers but does your influence translate to real life? Because a lot of people get discouraged when they're starting, and, "I've only got this many ... I've only got 100 followers."
Mo Mooncey:
I remember that Joel Embiid video I mentioned about ... I think it got 400 views. It was the second video I ever put ... 400 views is nothing, right? But one of the people from Joel's camp saw the video and emailed me, like, "Yo, you made some really interesting points. We're actually working on a few of those things." And I'm thinking, "So, I've got 400 views on this video but arguably the most-"
Brian Bosche:
It's the quality.
Mo Mooncey:
"... Important person to have seen it has seen it."
Brian Bosche:
Success.
Mo Mooncey:
That's when I realized the number of followers, it doesn't really matter. So, to anyone who's-
Brian Bosche:
That's great advice.
Mo Mooncey:
... Trying to get into it, don't get discouraged because it's the value that you bring more so than the numbers that you bring.
Brian Bosche:
On Creative BTS we finish every show with the parting shot, so as we close this out, you've given a ton of great advice and feedback, what would you tell someone trying to break into media, to break into this field now going forward? What advice would you give them?
Mo Mooncey:
I've got three pieces of advice that I tend to give to people. Does it have to be one or can I give you the three?
Brian Bosche:
If you can do a three part off the top of your head, go for it.
Mo Mooncey:
The first advice and the biggest advice, actually a lot of my philosophy actually comes from DJ Khalid. Remember when he was doing his Snapchat stories and it was just weird, he would just be eating his hash browns for breakfast and washing his face with [inaudible 00:41:30] but he said one thing that's, "Keep a clean face and a clean heart." So, take care of yourself. First thing is you've got to be presentable for the camera, but more importantly than that, you've got to keep a good heart which means keep good energy wherever you go. If you try and do someone wrong, it will come to the surface eventually. If you tell lies, it will come to the surface. If you're not authentic and not genuinely a good person, you will not succeed. You might have short term success but you will not be built to last. You've got to treat everyone well, whether it's like the cleaner on the set or the big boss. You've got to treat them the same.
Mo Mooncey:
I remember I was doing a show and there was a table next to me, a tiny little table, and I was like, "Guys, is this meant to be here?" They were like, "No, it's not. We'll get rid of it in a minute." So I just stood up, picked up the table and moved it to the side of the set. They were, "Whoa, what are you doing?" I was like, "Moving it." They're like, "You don't have to ... No one's ever done that before. Why are you helping us?" And I'm like, "Guys, I'm the biggest person in this room for a start."
Brian Bosche:
I'm a human being.
Mo Mooncey:
You know what I mean? If you need that table moved, who am I? So keep the good energy. That's the first and the biggest thing I could tell anyone, whatever industry, whether it's media, whether you're trying to be ... Whatever it is, the good energy is the biggest key. The second is to master your craft. You have to be obsessive with it. You have to be so consumed by it that it's all you think about, because if that's not how you are, you're not going to last in this world. If I wasn't obsessive about the NBA and didn't stay up all night watching ... I try and watch every game, which is insane. On days where there's 12 games, I'll have four different screens set up and I'm trying to watch every moment. This one goes to timeout, I'm watching this one, I'm pausing this one. So you have to be obsessed with knowing every detail of everything. That's the second biggest thing that I could tell you.
Mo Mooncey:
And the third biggest thing is you have to be willing to give up everything for what you want. I was so adamant that I would work in basketball and do what I do now that there was a time in my life where I was ... I know a lot of people say this to try and be motivational but I was ... not zero pounds in my account, minus thousands of pounds in my account. I was looking at going to the shops for dinner with a pound in my pocket to see if they'd put a reduced label on anything at the end of the day that was about to expire. That is the level of sacrifice you've got to make.
Mo Mooncey:
I'm not saying you have to go broke but I was ... Because everyone was telling me, "You've done a law degree. Become a lawyer. You'll get rich," or, "You can get loans." And I said, "No, I'm going to work in basketball and I will rather go broke trying to do my dream rather than settle for comfort and stability." If you are not willing to not eat for days and all your friends have gone on holiday and you can't go, or even all your friends are going to a restaurant for dinner and you're making up excuses because you don't want to tell anyone that you can't afford anything on the menu. You have to be willing to give up everything if you have a dream, because if I didn't do that, I might be a lawyer now. I might be working in an office, but because I was so dead set on what I want to do, nothing ever in this world can stop me from doing what I want to do.
Brian Bosche:
It sounds very similar to startups, where when we first started, you don't want to kill yourself. You don't have to go bankrupt and be in the negative, but you want to keep your burn rate super low, your personal burn rate, because if you live that expensive lifestyle, if you don't put things in control, you're not able to do those things. When we started out with hundreds of dollars in revenue a month as a company, you can't survive if you're personally burning through cash, have the nice apartment, going out. So, giving yourself the opportunity by keeping that burn rate low works for startups, media, but that's great advice.
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, and it makes the journey so much sweeter now, so when I got my first paycheck from the show, I took my family out to eat, just like normal restaurant, nothing crazy. But the fact that I could go in there, everyone could order whatever they want and I could pay for it all without having to worry and do the mental gymnastics of, "Shit, if I order this [inaudible 00:46:04] and this, I can't get this." Do you know what I mean? The simple things like that. A lot of people that do what I do, they're really into designer brands and going on loads of holidays. I haven't taken a holiday in years. The simple things, you appreciate them more because you come out of having nothing. So it really makes you appreciate the simple things.
Brian Bosche:
Well thanks so much for telling your story, Mo. Do you have anything to plug? Heat Check every week?
Mo Mooncey:
Yeah, the Sky Sports NBA. Heat Check every Tuesday we go live on YouTube. For anyone who's in the UK and listening, we're live on Sky Sports Arena on Wednesdays. When the NBA comes back, we also do a live show when the games are on, so if you don't want to listen to Reggie Miller and the other guys, feel free to tune into our show because in my opinion it's a whole lot better. But yeah, the Hoop Genius YouTube channel, I do breakdowns on there. We've got podcasts as well. Check out the Hoop Genius Podcast on Apple and Spotify. Just Hoop Genius everywhere and anywhere if you want to join the movement, join the wave there. You're welcome to join us. Appreciate you having me on, bro.
Brian Bosche:
Yeah, thanks so much, Mo. Bye.
