FazeRug in LA
Brian Awadis, better known as FaZe Rug, is a member and part owner of FaZe Clan: A professional esports and entertainment company founded in 2010. The group has players from around the world, across multiple games.
They have a roster of 85, who have a combined 215 million followers across social.
This isn’t just a bunch of kids playing video games in their basements; it’s big business.
According to the Forbes list of the most valuable Esports companies, the FaZe Clan organization is worth $240 million. Their goal is to become a billion dollar company.
Awadis’s goal was to join the FaZe Clan.
It wasn’t necessarily his parent’s dream for him. His parents were immigrants, from Iraq, who came to this country for a better life. His father eventually bought two liquor stores and achieved the American dream. His parents were looking for a more traditional career for their son.
Awadis said, “I was just in my room all the time gaming. And when I decided to have the talk with them and say, ‘I don’t want to go to college, I think I want to pursue this gaming career.’ It wasn’t a good conversation. They were like, ‘Nope. You’re not dropping out of college. I don’t believe in this YouTube stuff.’”
But he was undeterred and stayed focused on his goal. He said, “I started grinding even harder. I wanted to prove to them that this could be a career. After putting hours in every day for months, the paychecks started getting higher and higher. And then I got a check for $11,000. And my parents thought it was a scam. They thought that YouTube was going to take the money back. After a few weeks of convincing, they let me take a semester off. And in that semester off, I was like, ‘I’m going to go off. I’m going to go crazy.’ And the checks kept getting bigger and I started to do more vlog videos and included my family in them. My fans loved them.”
The ironic part of the story is that his whole family are now YouTubers. His parents have a channel, Mama Rug And Pappa Rug, which boasts over 1.3 million subscribers. His brother Brawadis has more than 4 million subscribers on his channel. YouTube is now the family business.
Part of the reason for Awadis’s massive success is that he chose to use gaming as a platform to showcase his personality and then branched out. He no longer films gaming videos, instead focusing on vlogs, pranks and comedy.
He said, “When my YouTube channel started to take off, that’s when I started to transition into vlogging. I was like, ‘I feel like I have a very interesting life outside of gaming. I have an interesting family. My whole family is funny. So, I decided to go for it. I got a vlogging camera and started vlogging my life. I showed my dog Bosley and my family. I did “day in the life” videos. And those performed so well. People loved seeing me outside of gaming. That’s what really helped me blow up.”
As his popularity grew, so did his bank account. But he was about to become even richer. And it didn’t come from brand deals or ad revenue; it was because of his ownership in the FaZe Clan.
He said, “Back then we didn’t look at it like a business. It was literally just a group of friends who started a team. We had no insight about business until 2016 and 2017, when we started getting people on board who knew about business. So, in 2017, they started giving out shares to the big members. So, they gave me a good portion and they gave seven or eight of the other guys shares. So, now I’m literally part owner of FaZe, which is incredible.”
The group has an impressive list of investors: Music mogul Jimmy Iovine, rapper Offset, basketball player Ben Simmons and more. They believe in the FaZe Clan’s ability to attract a following and make revenue.
It would be easy for Awadis to rest on his laurels but he isn’t wired that way. He’s extremely goal driven and his next goal is to hit 20 million subscribers. Currently he has 15.3 million.
He said, “I have a white board with a goal list on it. A lot of people ask me if I have goals other than YouTube. I had a goal to have my own energy drink and now I have my own flavor, Chug Rug. It’s crushing it right now. So, I also have a sales goal of how much I want to sell. Stuff like that. Another dream of mine was to work with the brand Young and Reckless and I now have a collab with them. They’re available at PacSun stores. And I just went on Ridiculousness, which was another dream of mine, It’s just so cool that my dreams are becoming a reality.”
