Chances are, your parents strongly advised you more than once to never throw things in the house. Chances also are that you will do the same with your kids one day — if you haven't already.

Daniel and David Hulett obviously didn't listen. And so, what started as a way to alleviate boredom during the COVID lockdown has led to international fame and, yes, fortune as masters of trick shot videos.

"When we first started this in 2020, it was all for fun," said Daniel, a '21 CNU graduate and former Captain soccer player. "It's been nothing we could have ever imagined."

Nearly six years since this all started, the Hulett Brothers are red hot. They have 3.56 million followers on TikTok, 2.13 million on Instagram and 5.6 million on YouTube.

They have appeared on the NFL Pregame Show and been invited to the Ryder Cup and U.S. Open. They've filmed trick shots with Paige Bueckers, Brock Purdy and Eli Manning  — the latter a special thrill for the lifelong New York Giant fans.

Their 60 partners include the NFL, NHL, MLB, FanDuel, Wilson, Netflix, Wimbledon and the FIFA World Cup.

And next month, they'll be in Milan for the Winter Olympics as part of NBCUniversal's Creative Collective program. According to its web site, the creators will "tell the stories of the Games through their eyes with unrivaled on-the-ground access in Milan and Cortina."

If you've never seen their videos before, here's fair warning before getting started: You'll quickly become addicted. They object is to make people smile, and it's hard not to.

Words alone can't describe what they do, but here's an attempt: Picture a skateboard with a dart placed flat on one end. Twelve feet away, give or take, a dart board lies on the floor (numbers up) with a purple balloon on top in the center.

Daniel steps on the opposite side of the skateboard, which launches the dart toward the board. It soars through the air, pops the balloon, and — believe it or not — hits the bullseye.

Or David tossing a cap eraser that lands perfectly on the eraser end of a pencil, which is sticking out of a Solo Cup. Or Daniel flipping a baseball bat that lands on the cap end, again perfectly, on top of what appears to be a textbook.

All capped by the brothers jumping around and screaming "LET'S GOOOOO!!!!"

Can't picture it? This should help.

"How we started was almost like bar games, or a ring toss game," David said. "Throw a ball into a cup and things you would do messing around with your buddies. And it's kind of evolved from that to make it more high-quality production to some degree."

The hardest part is continually coming up with new ideas. Creativity isn't the issue. An obsession to keep setting the bar higher is.

"We always want to be outdoing ourselves by doing cooler and more creative shots," he said. "I don't think we're going to run out of ideas — we have a big list of ideas on our computer. But coming up with the ideas has become more challenging over the years."

Most of their magic is created and filmed in a warehouse off George Washington Highway in York County. But they also travel a lot — local, national, and soon to be international.

The Hulett Brothers never claim or even imply their tricks are successful in one take. Some require dozens, hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of attempts.

In July of 2023, they began flipping a Jefferson nickel so it would land on its edge. They got it … four months and 70,000 attempts later. It became their white whale.

"We did it for probably a good 40 hours over the course of two, three weeks," Daniel said. "We don't do this very often, but we stopped that trick for a full three months. It was starting to affect our sleep and our life outside of the office. It was unhealthy.

"We were debating which shot to try next, and David was like, 'Hey, why don't we try the nickel flip again? We don't have anything else to try right now.' And I was like, 'Dude, we are not doing that.'"

David persevered, and Daniel stuck the landing within the first hour into the reboot. They went bonkers as usual, but this reaction clearly was a bit different.

"It was a relief of never having to do it again," David said. "We finally put it to bed."

Another marathon trick had one brother (they alternated) atop an eight-foot ladder. The plan was to perfectly drop a sheet of paper through a shredder placed atop four rows of Solo Cups.

Daniel nailed it first but felt they should do it over because David, in his excitement, tackled him and knocked the shredder off the platform. Then David dropped it through.

That trick was one of the several suggestions they receive.

"Someone DMed in, I think it was, the summer of 2022," Daniel said. "It was something along the lines of 'Paper is the most unpredictable object in the world. If you can think of a trick shot with that, that would be so cool.'

"And we were like 'challenge accepted.' I think it took us over 25 hours."

Their inaugural video was much simpler. It was late March of 2020, just after the lockdown hit, and they were doing schoolwork downstairs on a ping pong table. After all, who doesn't do schoolwork on a ping pong table?

Needing a break, David began trying to bounce a ping pong ball off the wall and into a cup. He nailed it after a few tries, Daniel got it on film, and they posted it for their friends.

"We did it just to keep everyone and ourselves entertained," David said. "We kept making the challenges harder and harder, and we kept getting positive feedback from everyone. We really enjoyed it, so we kept on going."

With additional props — golf clubs, pots, pans, balloons, tennis rackets, darts, toilet paper rolls, K-Cups, and a few gazillion Solo cups — they took it to a new level. And over the next six months, their lives began to change.

On June 6, 2020, the Hulett Brothers posted their latest video. It was a compilation of 10 bits, including David flipping an empty can of Red Bull (another partner) into a tin water container and Daniel chipping a golf ball into what appears to be that same container.

Each bit was great, and the production was solid. And three months later, SportsCenter included it among its Top 10. 

"Overnight, it went to like a couple million views," Daniel said. "And the next day it was like 10 million. A couple weeks later, it was sitting at like 27 million. So that's what blew us up to the world, I guess."

Daniel, 26, has a B.S. in business administration from CNU. In several of those early clips, Daniel is oft seen sporting his CNU Soccer apparel. He lives with his fiancé, Christopher Newport assistant volleyball coach Katie Crofford, in Newport News. David, 24, has a B.S. in quantitative finance from James Madison and lives just up I-64 in Richmond.

No one, least of all Mom and Dad back home in Northern Virginia, saw their careers taking this detour.

"We have four kids, and the oldest two (Josh 31, and Jacquelyn, 29) went the typical internships to full-time corporate jobs," said the Huletts' father, Jeff. "I think without the pandemic, they would have followed the Hulett family business path.

"They wanted to find a way to connect with people and bring joy to people's lives. This is how they did it."

Patti, their mother, was happy to see Daniel and David find an outlet during the lockdown. Even if it did lead to more, let's say, activity around the house.

"I would go running every day to get out of the house," she said. "I'd come back and, oh my god, they had taken over the kitchen, and they were throwing toast across the counters. They were like, 'We're gonna clean it, we're gonna clean it!'

"They saved me from going crazy, too. It was such a weird time. And they never broke anything!"

Yet another amazing feat for the Hulett Brothers.

Editor's Note: Daniel Hulett played men's soccer for the Captains from 2017-2021 and appeared in 54 career games with 50 starts. The defender finished his career as part of one of the most dominant defensive units in program history. In 2019, the CNU defense allowed just 12 goals, setting the program record for goals against average (0.54); Daniel started all 19 games and played the third most minutes for the Captains that season (1,712). He would go on to earn second team All-Conference honors as a senior after helping lead Christopher Newport back to the NCAA Sweet 16.