When you grow up and feel like you have something to say, how do you do it? Depending on the time you were brought into this world,  it varies. Among many other circumstances. For us, we were lucky. Growing up in the digital age gave us an interesting perspective. Getting to grow up with the modern technologies, together, eighteen months apart from each other, allowed us to really experience a lot of it together. We’re sure it was a blessing and a curse for our parents, who were and are amazing.

It started out just watching movies. Enjoying them together, as a family. We’d always take it a step further, dress in characters, and spend our time playing in a different imaginary wonderland each day. Looking back, it all makes sense how we ended up here. It’s more surprising it took us this long to figure out.

We got a little older and things suddenly changed. Our parents took Justin, older brother, to a Phoenix Coyotes game circa late nineties. “I wanna do that!” called Justin, with our parents looking to each other in shock considering we don’t come from a hockey family. Our dad is from Tempe, Arizona and so is his dad. Our mom moved from Long Island, NY when she was young so she may as well be an Arizona native too. Being supportive parents, knowing nothing at all about the sport of hockey, bought Justin equipment and signed him up at a local rink. We lived in Tempe so the closest rink was in Chandler. But yes, there’s hockey in Arizona (We used to hate that question).

Although he couldn’t skate, Justin loved being on the ice and the sport of hockey. He was hooked. We lived in a nice house with a huge “rectangle” shaped driveway that made for the perfect street hockey setup. After getting some nets and sticks, Justin began playing everyday. “Come on dude! It’s super easy!” Justin begged a timid but curious Zac. “I don’t want to get hurt” Zac cried. Justin, a technician with his words, convinced Zac to finally play. SMACK. The rubber street hockey puck flies into Zac’s forehead, who immediately started crying and ran inside. Zac was sure he’d never play but ended up playing too.

Zac was into the arts at an early age but didn't necessarily express it. He liked to draw, make up stories with toys, then into writing “comic" type material during elementary but ultimately fell back into hockey.

They both played until they they felt their time was done. At 14, Zac had knee surgery. He never regained the confidence to start playing again. He started training Kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to get into shape. Really enjoying the sport to a point of thinking of wanting to do it as a profession. That was until he broke his nose in a sparring session, realized that wasn’t for him.

Meanwhile Justin’s persistence and tenacity on the ice earned him a few “high-level” try-outs. He moved around a bit playing for different teams chasing his childhood dream of playing in the NHL. When things didn’t go as planned, things got dark for Justin, unsure what the future held for him.

Throughout all of this, our parents were trying to recover from the 2008 recession, which financially devastated us. They were able to get a good footing the insurance industry to which then Justin got his license to be an agent. Zac on the other hand, failed the test four times, which mean’t he had to wait a year until he could try again. Zac took that as a sign that it wasn’t for him, however was hired on for some basic marketing and administrative tasks.

Shortly after, we moved in together. We became focused on bettering ourselves and our situation. We had a lot of financial difficulties throughout this time, testing our will. We even had to move back home for a bit. It was good for us because we needed the humbling, probably. During this time, we grew mostly as brothers and best friends. A strength that would be too difficult to put into words without exhausting. We had great aspirations of working together and being a dynamic duo. If you know us, we have a weird sense of being completely different but still the same in a lot of ways. Our differences allow us to work together freely. Picking up where the other leaves off.

We knew we had interests in spreading a “message” of some kind and desire to entertain. “What can we do?” we asked. With the year being 2018, podcasting was starting to take off. We figured “that seems manageable for us”. We hurried to buy equipment and started immediately. It was fun for a little while but we quickly felt creatively limited. Our whole goal was to “build a brand” so we could eventually get into comedy skits, or other entertainment opportunities. Looking back it was a terrible way of going into something. If you want to do something, do that and work hard at that. We did attempt some sketches and wrote even more. During this process we found love for writing and filmmaking.

Living together, we’d go down the rabbit hole, learning everything we possibly could in the craft of film. We thought at one point we’d be able to do everything. The more into film we got, the more of a drag doing the podcast became.