What started out as merely a fun plan to make a YouTube video each day has morphed into something much larger.
And now four men in their 20s have even turned down offers to star in their own TV series.
Quest student Ammar Kandil was in Montreal meeting with investors about his networking app, OneUp, when he and three friends, Thomas Brag, Matt Dajer and Derin Emre, decided to make a video each day in July of challenges they could perform in and around the city. They called it Project30.
The idea was to get out of their comfort zones, Kandil said. “The magic happens when you leave it, not when you are comfortable and secure,” he said.
The compilation video of their challenges has over a quarter million views so far.
Challenges ranged from eating hot peppers on a roller coaster to handing out flowers to strangers to meeting Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre.
“We were able to get 20 minutes in his office,” said Kandil.
Each morning, the friends would decide on the day’s activity, head out to achieve it and then come back and edit and post the video. Each challenge had to be something anyone could achieve without a lot of money or having to travel, Kandil said.
The four men had a budget of $500 to spend on the challenges over the month. They all lived together in a small one-room apartment and had part-time jobs to pay the bills.
What he learned through the experience, Kandil said, is to ask for what you want.
“One of the main messages that we wanted to send out with Project30 is all it takes is: Just ask, don’t always assume that ‘Oh, it isn’t allowed, no one will ever let me do this,’” he said. “Usually if you just ask and put yourself out there, great stuff will happen – or not.”
The lesson about hustling for what you want is something Kandil said his peers need to learn. “The thing about our generation is that our parents have such big expectations for us and we are conditioned throughout our lives that we are going to go out there, we are going to finish school, and we are going to do the best work ever and be the dream version of myself that I have ever wanted to be. And then we go out there and discover that everyone has this vision and everyone thinks that they are very special, and so people don’t have the practice of hustling for something, of working for something.”
Kandil’s favourite challenge was meeting Trevor Noah, the South African comedian who has taken over as host of the popular TV talk show, The Daily Show. “He’s been my favourite comedian for four years, since I was in South Africa,” said Kandil, who attended high school there.
The Project30 series has become so popular that the four have been flooded with offers from people who want to sponsor their next challenge – and even from TV producers who wanted to turn the series into a TV show, but the friends turned that offer down.
“Millennials aren’t watching TV anymore,” Kandil said. “We would rather be where our target audience is.”
The guys have rebranded their series Generation Y Not and plan to continue shooting and posting videos at locations around the globe. “The most common thing we were saying during Project30 was… ‘Why not?’
“We just want to send a very simple message,” he explained. “Even if the way that you want to go about life is untraditional or society might criticize you for it, just ignore that. And if you think you are doing the right thing, consulting the right people and you are surrounding yourself with the right people, then you should just go for it.”
*Please note this story has been corrected to reflect that Kandil has not yet graduated from Quest University.
