Clix Podcast: Making Millions From Fortnite, Dropping Out of School at 13 & Building His Empire
DOUBLE COVERAGE PODCAST
In this episode of Double Coverage, Mystic Zach interviews Clix, a top Fortnite e-sports player, streamer, and entrepreneur. Clix shares his journey from
Key takeaways
- Clix dropped out of middle school at 13 and became a professional Fortnite player, winning $170,000 in his first year.
- He started his own charity, giving away gaming computers to aspiring players, which helped launch a professional Fortnite player.
Main topics
- E-sports career and success in Fortnite
- Charity work and giving back to the community
Notable quotes
"I dropped out of school when I was 13. I switched to online school, but I didn't do anything. I just played Fortnite every single day."
Conclusion
Clix's journey from a young dropout to a successful e-sports athlete, entrepreneur, and
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) Like you ever rotate Endgame 30 moving alive? searching for you. you need 100 damage or you're gone and you have $100,000 in the lineupupupupupupupup to win this game. I haven't either. What's up guys? Mystic Zach here. Welcome back to episode 23 of double coverage. Today I'm joined by sports but e-sports. My main man clicks. Great to meet you. Gamer, live streamer, now entrepreneur. Thank you for having me, dude. Thank you. You're our first e-sports. Streamer. still sports. That's right. I'm very athletic. They used to call me like the most athletic streamer other than I show speed. Did they? No. No. No, I made that up. Yeah, so you're not into any other sports or not? Well, I'm a big basketball like I play a lot of basketball. Like, all right, for real, I'm the best basketball four-night player. The best basketball four-night. Okay, so you'd beat Peterbott and stuff. Oh, what I? What I robbed Peterbott? It's not a very high standard. No, the best, what are you versus Lacey if he had two knees. Okay, so this isn't a controversial, right he six owed me the other day but but in a wheelchair no no no before the aced like a month ago but it was just all three pointers and it was his possession and he was just shooting I was like letting him shoot yeah he could shoot so but before that I would smoke them all right all right so the low bar but but out of the fortnight players you're you're up there you know faxity is he's another four night streamer was me and him versus Marlin and Lacey you guys one $2,500 each wow all right congratulations thank you bro They should have had you at the Fanatics games. They actually, bro, they invited me to go, uh, wait, isn't there something this Thursday? It was this past weekend. There's another thing this week? I don't know. I got invited something. Yeah, I'd four-night tournaments. Yeah, you could have competed against Bieber and everyone. Really? Yeah. Oh, Bieber's good, though. So, Bieber's on fire. Yeah. So we're here in Dallas tomorrow. You've got two events going on. It sounds like a packed out schedule. Yep. You've got a tournament of some kind, right? Yep, yep. Explain that real quick. So I'm my own. tournament. It's like a game mode in Fortnite. It's called Pro League Endgame. It's 32 players. Last One Alive wins. So we have eight pros and then 24 people that grinded to get to play against the pros. So that's tomorrow for $5,000 for Europe and North America. Beautiful. And then later on in the day, make a wish, right? Early on in the day. Yep. And make a wish with Good Good Good and Top Golf. And we're doing with Garrett Clark. You know what Garrett Clark is? I do. Top golf goat or golf go. Golf entertaining good good go. I don't think you'll beat him. Are you serious? I think I got Garrett. You want to lock money? I will log money that I beat Garrett. Have you seen my goal form? I have not. I posted on my story. It's a, I don't have my phone on me. It's a good form. All right. I'll show you my form. I actually, I was golfing with Kai Trump. And she told me all the lessons and every single thing. I'm teched out. That's a fire coach. Yeah. You can't do better than that. I'm teched out. So, no, but I also, you've done a lot of charity work, a lot of philanthropy work. How important is it for you to give back? Dude, that's like, ever since I started when I was 13, I started eight years ago. Success to me looked like, okay, win four night tournaments, stream, pull viewers, make money. But as I got older, now I'm 21, it's like, okay, I want to see other people succeed because purely of me giving them a chance, access to a career. So I give away computers. That's my thing. I give away gaming computers. Kids run out to me. Yo, give me a, clicks, give me a PC. And that's my favorite thing is literally to give away PCs. there's a professional player in Fortnite right now purely because of the fact that he beat me in a 1 v1 and I gave him like a jacked out game and computer and now he competes against me every single day. That's awesome. So that's like the dream. That's what I want to do all the time. I love it. So you just said you started at 13. How does someone start at 13 years old? Because it sounds crazy. In any other profession, you can't start at 13. That's true. So how did you start at 13? Did you watch the 4-9 World Cup a long time ago? I did. When Buga won? Yes. Okay. So I'll go all the way, all the way back. when I was five years old. I was playing call of duty. I was sneaking in my brother's room every single day, trying to, like, play, because I'm five years old, and he would always play. And as time got on, I kept on playing. I played Minecraft, Counterstrike, and Fortnite came out when I was, I think, either 13 or 12, let's just say 12. And I was begging my dad for a computer because I don't have one. My brother has one I was to play. And he got me a computer, but he said, you have to pay me back this summer, or you have to work with me for the whole year. And I said, all, I'll pay you back. I paid him back in two weeks. It was like $1,600. I don't know. It was $13 or $1,600 purely off of wagering people for money. It's not allowed now, but back then you could want to be one for like $50 if we want to be one. So I paid them back in two weeks. And then I think it was like six months later or eight months later, I qualified for the World Cup the most out of anyone, which was I believe five times or six times around there. And I won 170 grand. It was a crazy experience of my life. Obviously, Buga won like $3 million. You're 13 at this point? Yeah, I was 13 at this point. I dropped out of school, dropped out of middle school, dude. You dropped out of school in middle school. Yeah, a lot of people look at me, most stupidest kid ever. It was very stupid. Did you ever get your degree, or were you still like doing like, were you like homeschooled? How does that work? No, dude. That's the craziest part. I dropped out when I was 13. Well, I switched to online school, but you know, like online school. I didn't do anything. I just played four night every single day. So my last year was eighth grade and then I never touched school again, never went to high school, just played for a middle school education. Yeah. Yeah. Hell, hell, yeah. We're getting here. Wow. That's right. That's crazy. Education wasn't my thing, to me honest. Like, I don't like the math stuff and the science and the history. I really just- You only got to eighth grade. And you can get to the hard stuff. Well, bro, multiplication, you serious? Yeah. Division? I was going to, like, algebra or something. Bro, I don't know. That stuff. But I'm actually good at Matt. All right. 12's table. I could get you on that. There you go. So dropped out at eighth grade, you made $170 grand at 13 years old. And then are the views like just multiplying as you're winning these tournaments? Yeah, that's a good question. Ever since I qualified for the World's Cup that many times, I started playing with a duo at the same time called Skeptic. Do you remember the blue hair kid he killed? Yep. I was doing it with him. And he was like very popular for killing Tfu and stuff. And I, people say I carried him. So that's kind of how viewers started coming to my stream. And dude, it just started rampaging up literally. I think I started averaging 20,000 viewers concurrent on Twitch. and every single tournament just kept on getting bigger and bigger and bigger and I kept on winning more and more and more and more. None of like the, I didn't win World Cup but the smaller tournaments the FNTS weeks and this, that and third, I was winning and people just started watching me and everyone used to think that I cheated by macroing. It's really, it gets deep. The lower gets deep but basically it means you could steal a wall faster. I'm trying to explain it where you can understand it. No, no, no, that's good. Oh, good, okay. So everyone just started watching me, Tifu and all them. That's how I, really took off. What percent would you say you attribute towards your gaming skills and what percent would you say you attribute towards your personality in terms of getting views? Which ones played a bigger role? Ooh. So to get viewers in, it's the gameplay because they want to watch, you're the best four-night player in the world. They want to watch that. But to keep them hanging is that's personality to build a community that we have eight years later with the same people watching, even new people, younger people, older people. That's the personality, and I feel like as I got older, and as I, I used to be the biggest talker, dude. Like, there's clips of me saying crazy to ninja Tifu myth. Like, it was pretty bad. But that was my personality as a kid. I'm still toxic, but back then I was really toxic. And you got all those toxic kids that watched me and love the personality. And that's how I built the community. So you're a local guy here in Dallas? Yep. Had a move here when I was, let's go back a second. Moved out of Connecticut. I was born Connecticut when I was 16 to New Jersey. We got a mansion with all my homies rented out with a bunch of four-night players, best friends, and it was insane. Just like that, Four-night announced that they are now switching the servers from East Coast, where you have to live in East Coast, to Central, which is the hub, is Dallas, Texas. So if you want to compete at that top level, you need to live in Dallas. Wow. Yeah. That's crazy. And you're still competing at the top level eight years later? Yep, we just won FNCS. Me and Lacey won the Pro Am. Two week or a week and a half ago. What were the qualifications to get into like that program? That proam is a little bit different, but let's take the top four night championship, which is called FNCS. Yeah. That is out of probably 250,000 people trying to get in, only 50 teams make it. And we made it's not based on cloud. It's based on cloud. No, nothing's based on cloud on this game. It's purely about skill, qualifiers, this and then and the third. So there's like divisions that you need to get. to the top division then you need to get top 120 or something 150 and then it keeps on going down until 50 teams where do your skills rank amongst the best fortnight players oh i don't know bro in america in in america yeah like like we're always arguing like who's the best basketball player in the world who's the best who are the best quarterbacks like i guess in america okay right now i have like eight hundred fifty thousand dollars earned in just the game i would i would say I would say we're top 10. We're top 10 in America. Europe's like a whole different. We only play once a year against each other at like Lans. But for N.A., I'd say, top 10. And has it gotten harder to be at that top 10 level as the years have gone on as you've got more and more stuff as you're getting more entrepreneurial? It's hard. It is hard to compete against kids. For example, like Peter, it's always, it's always clicks versus Peter. Yeah. It's he greased me when I'm doing good. It's like, it's terrible. Peter, I'm using Peter. as an example because he's one of the best gamers in the world. But he looks like he kind of just only plays the game. What are you trying to say right now? He kind of looks like he's like, he's kind of more like stereotypical. Yeah. Like what we picture, like drinking Red Bull in the basement, just like grinding the game out. So he, yeah, he is a gamer at heart. Like if I just looked at you too, I would, I would pick him. He just looks like he only. Yes. No, he does only play Fortnite. Like he wakes up, plays Fortnite. You look like you go out. side more. Thank you, bro. Oh, I still play minimum eight hours a day, no matter what. But he's, yeah, he's up there. He's really up there. Yeah, so how many hours is he playing, like 16? Well, right now he's on his, like, kind of like, it's weird. Right now he's probably playing 15 hours. I don't know. 15 hours. Maybe. The thing is, I don't know his schedule. Like, sometimes he's like lazy as shit. He only plays like six hours. And sometimes he's like $15. That's crazy. But our major is in two weeks. So I think he's going to Oh my God, that's crazy. Yeah. 15 hours of gaming. I mean, dude, that's how it is over here too. Yeah. I'm playing minimum right now at least 12 hours day. How do you, like, so there's like different buckets in which you contribute your time to. There's health, there's wealth, there's family, their friends. How do you balance that playing that much Fortnite? Dude, it's hard. It's hard. I have a girlfriend, too, of two years. She's beautiful. She's amazing. But we're long distance. So that helps that part, especially. Yeah. Because it's like we're seeing each other once every year. two weeks and that that time is I'm not streaming not playing the game it's like it's our time right and the second she goes home in Arkansas I'm locked in dials and I don't need to focus on anything or just focus on the craft and she's in law school so she's just as busy which is helpful but family stuff is hard because they live in Connecticut what a funny couple the eighth grade dropout and the lawyer yes sir yes sir no she is dude she's a genius bro that's why it works you know you have to have opposites attract right I mean I'm not I'm not I'm not smart when it comes to school smart, but the industry, like, I feel like I have good knowledge. No, of course. Yeah. All the industry, but she, dude, she's the smartest person in the world when it comes to anything school, anything like life, dude. She's genius. Wow, I like that pairing. Yeah. I have a friend like that. I was fiance is a lawyer. 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