Lex Fridman Podcast: #351 – MrBeast: Future of YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram

The following is a conversation with MrBeast, the mastermind behind some of the most epic

and popular videos ever made.

And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor.

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This show is brought to you by House of Mechadamias, it seems like it was just yesterday that they

became a sponsor, and I became aware of their existence, because before they became a sponsor,

they sent a giant box of delicious snacks.

And it seems just like it was yesterday that I ate all of those snacks over a period of

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my consumption of snacks, I think moderation is key for that.

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nuts, but it is definitely the healthiest, or at least one of the most healthy.

I think it's pretty much the healthy.

I remember when I first started keto, many, many years ago, I did a bunch of research

on which nuts I can and can't have.

I guess if I want to be ultra low carb, and everybody recommended macadamias as like the

one that has all these nutrients and all that kind of stuff.

I'm sure there's a lot of science.

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The points are delicious.

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My brain is that of a silly person.

At heart, I'm still a child, and I will forever remain a child, like that Tom Waite song.

I don't want to grow up.

Maybe that's not even the name of the song or the lyrics, but I'm just going to go with

it.

And there's a good chance to mention that Tom Waite is somebody that I've dreamed of

talking to on this podcast for a long time.

He's a very difficult interview to get.

He's dropped a few crumbs to me of hope, you know, saying like, yes, maybe one day.

So I hold on to that hope, like a hold on to the delicious House of Macadamia nuts with

childlike joy in my eyes.

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This episode is also brought to you by eight sleep and it's new pod three mattress.

There's been a few days over the past, let's say three weeks where I've been extremely

stressed because of several things going on in my life.

You know, you know how life is.

It's an up and down process.

Both the ups and downs contribute to the beauty of the whole experience.

Anyway, when things are kind of difficult.

I saw an escape in friends, in books, in moments of simple joy, in moments of peace.

And I think the best escape is a good nap, a full night's sleep, of course, but also

a good nap.

It's kind of magical how much your mind can just become completely refreshed.

The beauty of the world can be richly rediscovered through the process of a nap.

It's incredible.

Just 20, 30 minutes.

It's kind of amazing.

At least my brain is like that.

So sometimes when I'm feeling crappy, I'll just give it a nap.

I'll give it a good night's sleep and see how I feel again in the morning.

Almost always.

If not right away, just maybe a couple of times, I'll feel better.

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Speaking of the ups and downs of life, I think it's interesting, you know, the kind of roller

coaster your mind can go on.

At least my mind can go on.

One moment I feel blissful and happy and everything's beautiful and one moment I feel

cranky and just a little bit down.

One of the things I've learned is to just kind of allow the passage of time to cure

all things.

But I think that's not necessarily the full picture because you should probably treat

your mental health very seriously and talk through it with a therapist.

There's some deep ocean of feeling there that may lay unexplored and it's, I think, beneficial

to explore it with a good therapist.

I think one of the most accessible, easiest ways to get access to a good therapist, a

licensed professional therapist, is BetterHelp.

That's why I'm a big supporter of what they do.

I mean, that's really the first barrier is make it super easy and, of course, make it

affordable and that's what BetterHelp does.

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And now, dear friends, here's MrBeast.

I'm here with MrBeast, the brilliant mastermind behind some of the most popular videos ever

created.

Do you think you'll ever make a video that gets 1 billion views?

I think maybe one of the videos we've already made might get a billion views.

Which one do you think?

Probably like the Squid Game video with enough time.

I mean, it's only a year old and it's already on 300 million or some of the newer ones we've

done.

I've gotten like 100 million views in a month.

So those four are projected over 10 years because YouTube's not going anywhere.

Probably one of those.

So over time, they don't necessarily plateau.

It's interesting.

We were literally jumping around.

I love it.

It's good.

So I'm a firm believer that it's much easier to hypothetically get 10 million views on

one video than 100,000 on 100.

And part of why it's much easier, in my opinion, is if you make a really good video, it's just

so evergreen and it never dies.

Because when you open up YouTube and look at the videos, they're just serving you whatever

they think you'll like the best.

And so if you just make a great video and it's constantly just above every other video, even

two years down the road, then they'll just keep serving it and never stop.

Which is why it's much easier to make one great video than a bunch of mediocre ones.

What about 1 billion subscribers?

You've passed PewDiePie's the most subscribed to YouTube channel.

When do you think you get 1 billion?

Let me do some math real quick.

So we're on 120.

So you think about this?

No, I don't, honestly.

Because one thing you'll find if you want to gain subscribers, if you want to get views,

if you want to make money, almost any metric in this video creation space, if you want something,

it all comes back to, okay, well, then just make great videos.

So instead of focusing on all these arbitrary vanity metrics, I just kind of focus on the

one thing that gets me all that, which is make good videos.

And I do think we will, when they hit a billion subscribers, I don't have a plan on going

anywhere, even though we're only on 120 million right now on the main channel, I think we're

doing around 10 million a month now and YouTube just, yeah, I just don't see it going anywhere.

And I don't see any reason why I'd ever get burnt out or quit.

So I think with enough time, yes.

I wanted to ask you those family friendly questions before I go to the dark questions.

So now we have dark questions right now.

But if you wanted to hook them, you would start off with the dark question.

That's how you get them.

Okay.

Well, let me ask you about the Twitter poll you posted, a $10,000 death poll.

You tweeted, if someone offered you $10,000, but if you take it, a random person on earth

dies, would you take the $10,000?

And 45% of people said, yes, that's, at least at the time I checked, 850,000 people committing

murder for just $8.5 billion in total.

So what do you learn about human nature from that?

That's a good question.

Honestly, this is like late at night when I threw that up too, I was just like, huh,

this will be a funny thing.

I assumed it'd be 90% no and like 10% yes, but there are a lot of serious people for

you guys listening.

I just did this random Twitter poll or I was like, would you take 10 grand if it meant

someone random in the world died?

And a lot of the replies on the suite were like, hell yeah, why not?

And I was just not expecting that.

And so I don't really know.

I mean, I feel like your take would be better than mine.

Was it disturbing to you, surprising to you?

A little bit, yeah.

But obviously a lot of the people were trolling, but I actually, you know, when you read through

those replies, I do think like 10% of them were like dead serious.

Well, I think sometimes the trolling and the Laws reveal a thing we're too embarrassed

to admit about the darker aspects of our nature.

So I don't know if you listened to Dan Carlin's hardcore history podcast.

He has a episode on painful attainment, which he describes throughout history, how humans

have been really attracted to watching the suffering of others.

So public executions, all that kind of stuff.

And he believes that's in all of us, that for example, if something like a YouTube or

a different platform streamed a public execution or streamed the torture of another human being,

a lot of people would say that's deeply unethical, but they will still tune in and watch.

And that we're attracted to that drama, and especially the most extreme versions of that

drama.

And I think part of the Laws reveals something that's actually true in that poll that like

your answer is so much better than mine.

Do you think about that?

Maybe even with the squid game?

Like, so I think how many, how many views does the squid game currently have?

300 million?

Yeah.

Something like this.

So just imagine thought experiment, how many views that video would get if it was like

real.

Yeah.

If it was like, we'll turn a blind eye, we won't take it down.

Yeah.

I mean, obviously, it'd probably have billions of views.

How do you think you'll die?

And do you think it'll be during a video?

Probably doing something dumb like going to space when I'm in the older, like trying to

go to Mars or something like that.

I know for a fact it won't be on a video.

Every video we do with safety experts and stuff like that.

So it's not really risk, but yeah, I could see myself like, you know, after a million

people go to Mars or something like that, I'd probably like, you know what, let's go.

And something like that, maybe.

So not in the name of a video, just for the helmet.

Heck no.

Are you open to taking risks when you shoot videos?

You just went to Antarctica.

I mean, you're putting yourself in the line a little bit, right?

Of course.

But, you know, we had that video on the works for three years and then we consult with tons

of experts, radar, the entire path we're going to walk beforehand to see if there's crevasses.

So we know there's no crevasses.

We do training.

We consult with experts and we have survival guides there with us and, you know, monitor

the weather and everything.

So it's like any variable that where we could get harmed, we just pre-planned for it.

Sometimes they would bury it alive.

Like I had David Blaine spent a week underground and so I consulted with him and consulted

with basically anyone who ever buried themselves alive, you know, the coffin we used to bury

me.

We did so many tests.

Like that coffin was buried 10 times before I was, you know, for way longer than 50 hours.

It tested the airflow and everything to the point where I was safer in that coffin underground

than I was above ground.

Like, so we just tend to just not leave anything up to chance, you know.

Another strange question then.

So you recorded these videos to yourself, you know, five years, 10 years from now.

Have you recorded a video that's to be released once you die?

Well, first off, I am just glad that not every one of your questions have to do with like

views or things like that.

It's nice getting different questions.

So this is, this is good.

No, seriously.

It's a little dark.

It's a little dark.

But it's fine because a lot of people just be like, how much money do you make?

You know, it's just something I just, everything's always about money now for when people talk

to me.

So it's nice.

But for the videos I made, for you guys who probably don't follow me too closely, when

I had 8,000 subscribers and I was a teenager, I filmed a bunch of videos and scheduled them

years in the future.

And I said, I filmed one where I was like, hi me in a year.

And the video went up a year later and it was just like, Hey, I think you'll have 100,000

subscribers.

And then I did one where I was like, hi me in five years.

I was like, Hey, in five years, I think you'll have a million.

And then one that hasn't come out yet, but comes out in two years is what was high me

in 10 years.

And I tried to predict 10 years later how many subs I'd have.

So what he's referring to.

And yes, there, there are some that are scheduled like 20 years in the future.

And so if I don't die, I'll just move them up.

And I remember, because I filmed these though, like seven years ago, but it was, I remember

saying a line like, you know, if I'm dead, then I'm currently just in a coffin and like

whatever, blah, blah, blah.

And because the only way the video would go up is if I'm not alive and if I'm not alive,

then I won't be able to push back the schedule upload date.

So we'll go public automatically.

And so yeah, I have a couple of those.

If I knew I was going to die of like cancer or something, and I had like three months

to live, I would vlog every day.

I filmed so many videos and then I would just schedule upload a video a week for like the

next five years.

So it's like I'm still alive and I would completely act like I'm still alive and everything.

And I think something like that would be cool.

I don't know why, but I fantasize, not fantasize, but I've dreamt about that a lot.

Like, I don't know, if, if I only had 30 days to live, what would I do?

And for me, I would try to make like a decades worth of content and schedule, upload it so

they automatically go public in the future.

And so it's just like I never died.

I'm just there.

Yeah.

It's a kind of immortality, but it's also a kind of troll on the concept of time.

Yeah.

That you can die in the physical space, but persist in the digital space.

I actually, I recorded a video like that because I had some concerns and I just thought it's

also a good exercise to do a video would like to be released if I die.

And it was actually a really interesting exercise.

It's cool.

I like what you really care about.

I guess it's like writing a will, but when you're younger, you don't think about that

kind of stuff.

Exactly.

Mine was just dumb.

Yeah.

I'm bones in a coffin.

Yeah.

Yours is probably so serious.

No, it's fun, actually.

What you realize is like there's no point to be serious at this point.

It's a weird thing.

I guess you've done this, but it's a weird thing to address the world when you, the

physically use no longer there.

So like, you know, this would only be released if you're no longer there.

Exactly.

That's a weird exercise.

You know, it's funny of all the people listening to this.

You know, we're probably the only two people that have made videos for when we die.

It's like such a niche thing and the fact that we're bonding over it's kind of funny.

I think people should think about doing that.

It's not just about YouTube.

It's also social media.

Just think about it.

Like there's going to be a last tweet and a last, I don't know, Facebook posts, a last

Instagram posts.

And yeah, it's, I feel like there's some aspect that's meditative to just even considering

making a post like that and also it's a way for your, the people that love you to kind

of like celebrate.

Do you think that would help them cope or not?

Like if someone randomly watching this did film a video, you know, for, if they accidentally

died in some freak accident through giving it to their family, do you think that would,

and it was like a genuine, I think it would really help.

I mean, it depends because like, how would you even intro that like, Hey mom, if you're

seeing this, you know, it means I'm probably dead.

Yeah, exactly.

That's how you intro it.

That's the opener.

I just want you to know, yeah, I guess, yeah, and I guess you could say it in a kind of

funny way, but, and just talk about the things that mean a lot to you because otherwise you

are at the risk of the last post you have is like, like, I don't know, talking shit

about like Donald's, but then you're dead.

That's it.

A hundred years.

I don't know.

This, I do recommend it.

It's like the Stoics meditate on death every day in the same way you kind of meditate on

your death when you make a video like that, because it's actually not just even talking

to yourself.

It's talking to the world.

And it like, for some reason, at least for me, they made it very concrete that there's

going to be an end.

And I'm like, it's almost, it's over for me because if I'm making the video, it's over

for me.

It's just an interesting thought experiment.

I recommend people try it.

Okay.

Are you afraid of death, by the way?

Yes.

I've, it's hard because like, what if you just die and then you just see nothing forever,

you know?

Yeah.

The nothingness.

It just fades to blackness and you're just like that for trillions upon trillions to

billion squared years and it's just, it's scary.

But also before you're born, you don't remember those what X amount of years either.

So that gives me a little comfort, but now it's definitely very scary.

Something I'd rather not think about until I'm like 80, I'll deal with that problem

then.

Yeah, I don't know if I told you this, but I'm kind of hopeful that someone like Elon

or one of these like freak smart people will just like be like, you know what, screw it.

I'm going to figure out a way where we can slow down aging, get it where, you know, we

can live to be two, 300 years old and just like set their sights on that and then just

kind of save us.

So it'd be really nice.

Like it's, it's almost absurd to think that in our lifetime, they won't figure out a way

to just even slightly slow down aging where we could live to be like 120 or 130.

And then that extra time, they won't figure out somewhere where we could live to be 200.

Like obviously not immortal, but I don't, I don't see how in my lifetime, the life expectancy

doesn't just expand.

Well, it also could be that the immortality is achieved in the digital realm.

Like it could be long, long after you're gone, there's a Mr. Beast run by a chat GPT

type system.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That consumes everything I ever said, everything I ever wrote and I don't want that.

I don't want to live.

What do you smart people out there figure it out?

I'll keep you entertained, but I need you to figure out how to keep me alive.

Give me until 200.

That will make me happy.

Well, that's, that's funny.

Who owns the identity of Mr. Beast once the physical body is gone?

Like is it illegal to create another Mr. Beast that's chat GPT based?

I don't know what the laws are on that.

Yeah.

I mean, once I'm done, I don't care.

Well, but you just said you did care.

I mean, there could be a AI, like many Mr. Beast that are created after, after you're

gone.

Yeah.

I mean, that'd be cool to be able to like train up a model and, and let them lose.

So my content lives on, I guess.

Yeah.

But it somehow feels like it diminishes the value you contribute.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's an authentic, but it's also, there's, there's some aspect to the finiteness of

the art being necessary for its greatness.

Oh, 100%.

Yeah.

The second I think starts spamming out videos, the videos lose all meaning and it's pointless

and it's a money grab.

If you run YouTube for a, how long should you run it for a year?

How would you change it?

How would you improve it?

Well, because, you know, obviously I'm biased because we're, we're doing really well, but

I feel like when I open up YouTube on my television, I get the videos I want to watch.

I don't, I don't know.

I don't, I don't ever open it and wonder like, what are these, what are these 10 videos

on my homepage?

When I click on a video, my suggestion, I don't ever wonder what these are.

Like I, I, and maybe it's because I'm very adamant about like the kind of videos I watch

and I try not to watch videos that don't want to get recommended more because I just, that's

how I think, but I'm very happy with how it is at the moment.

I think one thing though that I just hate with the passion is the comment section on

YouTube.

It's just so bad.

Um, but that, I know that's not something that's going to 10x the growth of the platform.

But if you think about it, you go to Reddit to read comments and somehow like the, you

know, usually the top 20 posts on a popular Reddit post are not spam.

You know what I mean?

Like, have you ever clicked on something on the front page of Reddit and then most upvoted

reply to it is like, go check out my site right here and it's like trying to scam you

out of $1,000.

Yeah.

I can't even think of one instance.

I've ever had that happen.

So like Reddit, it's so nice to click on posts and just see what people have to say.

And I almost wish like you had that same feeling when you read the comments on a YouTube video.

Instead, it's like, it's so many people just copy and pasting so many bots that just grab

the top comment for your previous video and pasted it over.

So the top comments and every videos are the same.

And the things that break through that are just scammers trying to get you to give them

$1,000 for a fake ad.

That comment section is one of the most lively on the internet.

So it'd be amazing if YouTube invested in creating a natural community, like where people

could do high effort comments and be rewarded for it, like on Reddit, like actually write

out a long thing.

That would make me so happy.

Cause like when I upload a video, I usually go to Twitter to see feedback.

Like I read my comments and I'll flip through newest, but it's just, I feel like Reddit

and Twitter just give me so much better filtered feedback, especially now that with Twitter

blue, because people pay $8 a month, any, I've noticed like any tweets I get from verified

users now, they're usually not just garbage troll takes.

Like these are people paying $8 a month.

Like they're usually relatively sensible.

And so it's been pretty nice.

Like after I upload a video, I just go on the verified tab on Twitter and just see what

people have to say.

And anyways, I live for the day that YouTube's like that.

What do you think about Twitter?

What do you think about all the fun activity happening recently since Elon bought Twitter?

I think he should make me CEO.

Like I tweeted.

Well, I should, I should say sort of we had, we just like a couple of hours ago had a conversation

with Elon and you guys had an exchange of some excellent ideas.

So yeah, I, I, I'd legitimately think obviously you're exceptionally busy, but I legitimately

think it'll be awesome if you somehow participate in the future of Twitter.

Yeah, it would be fun.

Because there's so much possibility of different ideas.

First in the sort of the, the content like dissemination, hosting and all the different

recommendations like the search and discovery, all the things that YouTube does well.

I think the most exciting thing is he's, you know, willing to move fast.

And so I think there's going to be a lot of interesting things that come out of it because

he's just moving quick.

And a lot of these more mature platforms just take years to do the simplest stuff and they're

very bureaucratic.

And so it's going to, I mean, it'll be interesting to see which way it goes when you just kind

of take a move, quick, break things, whatever type approach to social media.

I'm actually pretty curious to see what features he rolls out.

So what would be your first act as Twitter CEO?

I can't spoil it.

Okay.

I gotta get hired.

What do you think about video on the platform?

Twitter?

Yeah.

Do you think that's an interesting or is it like messing with the, the medium, the nature

of the platform?

I think Twitter will always be closer to TikTok than it is to YouTube, like at least in its

current form.

Like I don't, I don't see 20 minute, one hour long videos or whatever, you know, even 15

minute videos being watched over there.

I see it more as like the short and snappy stuff closer to TikTok.

But at the same time, Twitter is a really good comment section for the internet.

I mean, it's almost weird why, like why doesn't Twitter allow you to embed YouTube videos?

Like why, why does that?

You should just ask Elon that.

Like, I don't know if that's a YouTube thing, but when a YouTuber posts a video, why do

they have to link to YouTube?

Why can't they just embed it on Twitter and you just play it there?

I mean, wouldn't that just solve a lot of problems?

Yeah.

But then the two companies that have to agree to integrate each other's content.

I don't know, but it seems like a win-win.

I mean, well, it's more of a win for Twitter because then people don't have to leave the

platform.

I mean, that, that'd be the, the easiest solution.

But who gets like, when you watch the ads on a YouTube video that's embedded in a Twitter,

who gets the money?

It would still be YouTube.

At least then right now people just post the link and it takes you off Twitter and it just

kills your session time on Twitter.

That's really interesting.

But the, the, yeah.

Cause the Twitter, whatever the, the dynamics of the comments, especially once the spam

bots are taken care of, Twitter just works.

It's really nice.

So Reddit is a nice comment section from the internet.

It's like slower pace, more deliberate, like higher effort.

Twitter's like this high pace, like ephemeral kind of stream, but there's the vote, the

upvoting, the downvoting works much better because you can do retweeting, right?

Cause the social network is much stronger than it is on YouTube.

Like the interconnectivity.

Yeah.

On Reddit, you're going to get the top replies are going to be the most refined ones for

Twitter.

Stuff flows to the top.

That's not super refined, but like you're saying, it's more off the cuff stream of consciousness,

which a lot of people prefer because it's a little more personal.

How do you think Twitter compares to YouTube in terms of how you see its future on roll

in 2023?

I mean, I think YouTube is going to be YouTube and not much is really going to change, but

it's going to keep growing just because, you know, that's just what it does because it's

owned by Google.

But Twitter, I don't know.

I mean, it's one of those things like you can't predict if like, you know, a year from

now, an economy is going to be in a recession or booming.

And I think Twitter is kind of the same thing.

One thing's for certain, a lot of things are going to be rolled out, but who knows, honestly.

You responded to Elon saying Twitter is unlikely to be able to pay creators more money than

YouTube.

What do you think that is?

Well, yeah, because I think the tweet I responded to is one where he was saying that the, you

know, users will jump over if Twitter can potentially pay more than other platforms.

And I was just saying, obviously, because Google has Google AdWords and I mean, that's

Google's whole thing.

It's putting ads on stuff.

They've been doing it better than anyone else in the world for a very long time.

It's very unlikely in the next few years that Twitter is going to just magically or any platform,

you know, give a creator the ability to make higher CPMs than on YouTube.

It's kind of crazy, like some creators in December, you know, Q4 because the ad rates

are higher because of Christmas and everything, some creators literally make like $30, $40

per 1,000 views.

And that's after YouTube's cut.

Like it's almost like hard to think about like how high the RPMs get.

And even then, once you pull out of finance and cars, the high CPM niches and you move

into just normal stuff, it's still just crazy.

The sheer volume of creators and the fact that all of them get these multi-dollar CPMs

at scale, it's pretty beautiful.

So you do, I don't know what you would call them, but like integrated ads in your videos

and you do, I would say, masterfully.

It's like part of the video.

Are you talking about brand deals?

Brand deals.

Is that what you would call that?

Yeah.

So it's a brand deal.

It's part of the video.

It's still really exciting to watch.

And yet there's a plug for the brand.

In general, it's just brand deals since you brought it up, integrating them well.

I think that's something a lot of creators don't do, like they'll just do a brand deal

out of the blue.

They'll just be filming a video and then around the three minute mark, just start talking

about a random company.

And I feel like if you don't want viewers to click away and you want people to not get

pissed off and call you to sell out, you got to find a way to integrate into content.

And ideally, use the money in the video to make it better.

Like the easiest thing you do when you do a brand deal is just tell people how you're

using money from the brand deal to make your content better.

And if you do that, like no one cares.

Now they're supporting you for it and you go from being a sell out to like, oh, I'm

doing this to make better videos for you guys.

You know, I don't know if you can share, but with those brands, when you have discussions

with them, are they strict about how long you need to be talking about it?

Or is it more about they're leaving control to you about the artistic element of it?

The problem is the ones who don't give us artistic element, we just don't really work

with anymore because it's just, you know, we get 100 million views of video now.

And I can confidently say, I know how to entertain them and convert them better than these random

brands.

So, yeah, if they don't give us that freedom, I just won't work with them.

So you have that leverage before smaller creators.

It's a lot harder.

Yeah.

And they're going to just say, 45 seconds, here's what you say, take it or leave it.

And it's like pretty brutal.

Because I think just in general, if brands were more accommodating to let creators tell

their story of the brand and talk about the brand in a way that felt a little more natural,

I think it would be less cringe.

People would be less likely to go, you know, tap, tap, tap, skip.

And obviously it would convert better, but they're just so afraid and they want this

standardized thing.

Say these words and 45 seconds right here at this three minute mark.

Yeah.

I often think about how to resist that.

You just don't do them though, right?

Not on YouTube, right?

On the audio, I do ads in the very beginning and I say you can skip them if you want.

The brand loves that.

But the point is they, so the funny thing about podcasts is different than YouTube videos.

Podcast people actually do listen to ads a lot because they, it's a slower pace and

they like the, the creative voice, like talking about the thing.

But in general, I just don't believe you should be talking about a thing for a minute exactly

and that's going to be effective.

I want to see the data for that.

I think what's much more effective is the way you do ads, which is like integrating

to the content.

There's a lot of effort into making a part of that, like doing the brand deals and I

just, it's difficult to have that conversation.

It's like a very strenuous conversation you have to have with brands.

You have to have each one at a time.

And I just wish there was more of a culture to say like the quality of the ad read matters

a lot more than the, like the silly parameters, like the timing of it, like how long it is,

the placement of it, all that kind of stuff.

What percentage of your viewers do you think have seen one of my videos before?

What percentage of the viewers on YouTube, right?

Yeah.

Of your viewers.

Of the viewers on YouTube though.

Yes, yeah.

Most of the people.

Okay.

Sure.

Or all of them.

It's just interesting because you're, you're speaking very specifically like about my brand

deal process.

And so in my head, I'm like, I wonder what percentage of these people even have any idea

what he's talking about.

That's interesting.

I love the thinking about numbers.

The whole time we're having this conversation, it's all I could think about.

God damn it.

Because there's probably like 50% of these people have no fucking clue what he's saying

and we're about to torture him for five minutes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Probably.

But that's something I can't turn off in my brain.

Less than 50%.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Is that exciting to you?

That there's like 50% of people don't have not watched a Mr. Beast video.

Isn't that an opportunity?

Yeah.

I guess it's an opportunity to grow.

I don't know.

Honestly, I was just kind of excited to hang out with you.

Yeah.

Me too.

Today was a lot of fun.

Who cares if there's mics.

Yeah.

So it was kind of like having a buddy to go along the journey as I'm just kind of eating

shit and doing my normal grind.

It was like kind of fun.

And also you just say really wise stuff constantly.

So honestly, no, I never even put any thought into like that demographics or what I could

gain.

It's just interesting because like my retention brain, when you talk about something, I'm

instantly like, hmm, what value are they going to get?

How many of them are going to be interested?

What percentage of people do I think will lose?

And I'm like running all those calculations in the background and that whole conversation

like the lock.

Anyway, it's just something I can't turn off.

My like bells are like, error, error, this is bad.

What are the different strategies for high retention for your videos and in general?

It's like, how do you cook good food?

You know what I mean?

That's like the same kind of question.

I see.

So there's so many different ways that you.

So it boils down to, I mean, do you think at the level of a story or do you think like

literally watching five seconds at a time, am I going to tune out here?

Am I going to tune out here?

Am I going to tune out here?

It's all of it.

You need the overarching narrative and then you also need the micro where every second

you know, needs to be entertaining and you basically, what's interesting is the longer

people watch something, the more likely they are to keep watching.

So you don't have to try as hard in the hypothetically back half of a video as you do in the front.

Like even right now, we're so deep into this where a lot of people listening are probably

just going to keep listening relatively close to the end unless we just have a really boring

part of this conversation because they're just, they're just saying it, they're immersed.

And so a big, like to really boil it down to a simple level, you just want to get people

where they're immersed in the content and then just kind of hold them there.

We had this discussion offline and by the way, I should mention that this is like late

at night.

It is.

What time is it?

It's nine o'clock.

And I only slept one hour last night because I'm an idiot and I flew to the wrong location.

Well, here we're like, Hey, let's just book you a hotel to fly.

He's like, no, I got it.

We're like, you sure?

We just do it.

We always do this.

I got it.

He's going to have to rub it in.

I know.

And then today, coming to find out, he flew to the wrong airport, airport with the, or

a city with a similar name to ours.

Just same name.

Same name in a different state.

And I was like, that's why you should have let us book it.

And so he's on one hour of sleep and he's literally been dying all day before the podcast.

He downed like two things, coffee.

We've been going all day hard.

Yeah.

I've been, I got to interact with you.

I should say that this gave me an opportunity to, I got a ride from a stranger and it was

an incredible person that I got to interact with him.

So there's so many kind people around here, just like this kind of Southern energy.

And then I got to go to a diner cause I could, you know, there's only one hour between me

arriving and having to fly out.

So I went to a diner.

There's a really kind waitress that called me a honey.

So that was a beautiful moment, you know?

I was so confused.

You tweeted about that and I steals like Lex, my assistant was like, Lex isn't here yet.

And I saw your tweet.

And I was like, he's here.

Yeah.

So he was like, no, he's still flying.

I was like, four, like an hour ago, he just tweeted about a nice diner.

Yeah.

It was a diner.

It was a diner in a different state.

And then you had to fly over here.

And then I called you and you didn't answer.

I was like, hmm, something's not adding up.

Yeah.

I feel like a such an idiot because apparently the world has cities like Springfield, right?

Like every single state has a Springfield.

Oh, really?

I think so.

Whatever.

That's like a Simpsons joke, right?

That like it's the city and the Simpsons, the Springfield and I think every single state

or most of them have a Springfield.

And the same is true for like Georgetown, I think the most popular, I forget what the

most popular one was, but there's like a list of these people get, when they run out of

ideas, they just keep using the same thing over and over.

They're your Achilles heel.

Anyway, I got to, I got to meet a bunch of people from, from your team is just an incredible

human being.

So let me just ask on that topic, how do you hire a great team?

Like what have you learned about hiring for everything, for the main channel that you

do, for the React, the gaming channel, to Mr. Beast Burger, to Feastables, all that.

The big thing is, especially in this content creation, because it's not like anything that's

done on Netflix or different content medians, I really need people who are coachable and

like really see the value in what I care about, because it's a very specific way of going

about things.

And it's like a thing you, there's no one like plug and play, like if Netflix wanted

to hire someone to do a documentary, there's probably tens of thousands of people you could

hire that have worked on documentaries before.

But if you want to hire someone to make super viral YouTube videos, you know, like we do,

there's just no one you can really pull from, like sometimes I'll hire people from game

shows, right?

And they have all these preconceived notions about pacing and how a video should be.

And you have to spend like the first year like breaking all these habits and, you know,

and they think they're better than you, like a lot of people in traditional think they're

better and they think their way is better than what we do.

And so for me, it's almost easier to hire people that are just hard workers that are

obsessed and really coachable and just train them how to like be good at content creation

and production than to hire someone from like traditional, which is the only way to really

do it because there's not that many YouTube channels that have scaled up.

So it's not like there's a huge talent pool of people who've worked on YouTube channels.

So it's easier just to train someone than just pull them from traditional because traditional

people just, I don't know, they have all these opinions and things and they just think our

way of going about things is dumb.

Yeah.

So you want people who have the humility to have a beginner's mind, even if they have

experience.

And see the value.

Like actually, you'll still get it.

It's so crazy.

Like especially some of my other friends that are scaled up through YouTube channels, there's

people that will come on and you'll ask them like, what do you want to be doing in five

years?

And they'll be like, oh, I want to be working on the channel.

They'll be like, oh, I hope to be working on movies or this and they see like working

on a YouTube channel as a launchpad to go into traditional and it's like, no, like you

just don't get it.

This is the future.

This is the end goal.

This is your career.

And so I'm just so tired of having those kinds of conversations.

Like I feel like people really should be coming around.

Are there like recurring interview questions that you ask?

Is there ways to get?

Yeah.

The biggest thing is like, what do you want to be doing in 10 years?

And that their answer isn't, you know, making content on YouTube or, you know, if their

answer is anything like movies or traditional stuff like that, it's like just a hell no.

Like it just won't even remotely work.

So you really want people to believe in the vision of YouTube?

Yeah.

I mean, ideally it's like, oh, working here.

You know what I mean?

So it's less about the medium and more about just being on a great team and just doing

epic stuff.

Yeah.

Well, and yeah, the media as well.

Cause those, it's just, it's hard to put it into words, but there's, it's just two completely

different ways of going about things.

You know, like our videos aren't scripted and, you know, it's a lot more run and gun.

And when we, if we hypothetically blow up a giant car or whatever, like you only have

one take, you know, and it's not scripted.

And so you have to overfilm, overshoot things, overcompensate for like the dumb way of going

about it.

And a lot of traditional people would be like, well, just plan what you're going to say and

just plan the angles.

You can cut the cameras in half.

You can save 50 grand here.

You can save a, you know, 75,000 dollars editing, this and that.

And it's like, yeah, but that's not authentic.

Like that's, you know, blah, blah, you, you get it.

It's almost so obvious that it hurts that I have to like constantly have these conversations,

but it's what we live in.

But there's also a detail, like there's a taste, like I've watched a bunch of videos

with you and it's clear to you that you've gotten really good.

I don't know what the right word is, style or taste to be able to know what's good and

not in terms of retention, in terms of just stylistically, visually.

I don't have to think.

I can just watch a video and it just, it just screams in my head, like this is what, this

is what should change based on the, you know, million videos I've watched and all these viral

videos I've consumed.

Like this is blah, blah, blah, what's optimal and things like that.

It's almost like your brain's like a, you know, like a neural net and like if you consume

enough viral videos and enough good content that you just kind of start to like train

your brain to like see it and see these patterns that happen in all these viral videos.

And so that any time I watch a video or a movie or anything, I just can't stop thinking

about what is optimal.

And so it's like, it gives me a headache sometimes when I watch something too slow or I don't

think it's optimal.

And obviously my taste is at the end all of y'all.

But that's something that kind of torments me if that makes any sense.

Oh, you can't enjoy a slow movie.

No, I can't.

And that's not to say there's a-

The retention on the Godfather is horrible.

Yeah, no, exactly.

I've tried to watch that movie like three times, but that's not to say slow movies are bad.

Like there's an audience for it.

It's just obviously not what I've trained my brain to like in social media and YouTube

right now.

Like there's just not the meta.

And in general, like you said in neural network, you're training your brain in part on actual

data.

Right?

So you're actually data driven.

So you're looking at like in terms of thumbnails and titles and different aspects of the first

5, 10 seconds and then throughout the video, the retention, all of that, you're looking

at all of that for your own videos to understand how to do it better.

So that's where the neural network is training.

Yeah.

Basically there are ways you can kind of see like the most few videos on YouTube every

day and stuff like that.

And I just kind of consume those every single day and I've been doing that for way too many

years.

And then you just start to notice patterns like the thumbnails on the most few videos

or videos that go super viral tend to be clear, tend to not have much clutter, tend

to be pretty simple titles tend to be less than 50 characters, intros tend to be this,

stories tend to be this.

And you just kind of like, after you see those thousands and then tens of thousands of time,

it just starts to click in your head.

Like this is what it looks like, you know.

So how are you able to transfer that taste that you've developed to the team?

So like, because you said like broad things, but I'm sure there's a million detailed things

like what zoom to use on the face to use in the thumbnail, right?

Like the answer is whatever makes the best video, because the problem is the more, which

I have so many friends who are like this, they'll make like checklists for their editors.

So like, you know, this be in this be, and you need to have like a three part arc and

then this, but the problem is that's how you, the more constraints you put on the team,

the more repetitive and less innovation you get in the more like, you know, after 10 videos,

people are going to be like, all right, I've already seen this.

So to me, and I'm 24 and you know, I'm probably my mindset will change over the next 10 years.

I just haven't been in this industry too long, but the only way to like really make innovative

content and keep things fresh is to not put constraints on or put as little as possible.

And so that's where I'm very hesitant on all that stuff, because the more I say the more

they're going to be like, Oh, then that's what we do.

And then, you know, I'll say one time like, Oh, you know, ideally there's a cut every

three seconds.

And the next thing, you know, every video, there's a cut every three seconds or whatever.

So it's, it's hard because I try to give as little train, not training, but as little

a facts or as possible and more just make suggestions.

If that makes any sense.

You mean publicly or to your team?

To my team.

Yeah.

Well, so you talked about sort of teaching your voice or your style, whatever we want

to call it to other people on the team, so they can be kind of a Mr. Beast replacement.

So what's the process of teaching that so you don't want to,

No, I got you.

So you're more talking about like what I would call almost like cloning, right?

Like, like Tyler and other people like that.

Yeah.

So when we were hanging out today, I was showing him how we have multiple people in the company.

It's, it's almost like talking to the camera.

It's a habit.

Yeah.

You turn slowly to the camera.

I was like, it is.

Have it.

Is it weird to you to not be looking at the camera?

This whole interview, I constantly have been turning towards the camera like I'm talking

to him.

Yes.

It's a habit.

Cause my whole life, I've just been talking to a camera.

Who are you thinking about when you're looking at the camera?

Do you like imagine somebody?

I'm fully thinking about the person just sitting watching it and I almost, it's weird when

I'm looking at the camera.

I don't see a camera.

I'm like in a haze picturing what the viewer is seeing when they watch it.

Yeah.

If that makes sense.

And that's where I'll be saying things or doing something and then like when I'm watching

it, I'm like, that's not what I want.

And then I'll freeze up.

It's very weird when I'm filming.

And for people who haven't worked with me too much, they'll think like, I don't know.

It's very weird.

Like how I go about it.

Cause I'll just be doing whatever.

Like lighting a firework.

All right.

This is a $1,000 firework and I'll go to light and I'll like freeze cause in my head I'm

like this, I don't know.

I don't like how that flowed or how that shot looked cause I, it's weird.

I can perfectly picture what I'm filming by just looking at the camera and then putting

myself through the lens of the camera while making content.

I can do it at the same time.

So you're like real time editing the video.

That's something that didn't at the start come natural to me, but in the last probably

like five years, it's happened.

And so I would say it's one of my greatest strengths, but I don't know how I developed

it.

But anytime I'm filming anything, like it's almost like the right side of my brain I

just can just look at it and I see exactly what I'm filming and I can just picture it.

Well, that's probably recording the video, being the talent for the video and then watching

the editing and like analyzing it carefully and do that over and over and over and over

10,000 times.

Yeah.

You do the editing more than being in front of the camera.

So like you start to see yourself from that third person perspective.

Exactly.

And maybe that actually helps with the nerves of it too.

Like you see it as creating a video versus performing, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think so.

You know, it's weird.

I've never been nervous talking to a camera.

It's harder for me to talk to a person than to talk to a camera, which I feel like a lot

of people say that though, that are whatever make content, right?

Interesting.

I've heard that so many times.

Or maybe not.

Maybe I'm just awkward and dumb.

Maybe they're practiced.

I, to me, it's, I mean, both are terrifying, but being in front of the camera by yourself

is more.

So much easier.

Really?

Yeah.

So much easier.

I prefer it a million times over.

But that's my whole life.

Yeah.

So it's just, that's why it's interesting.

Like you've spent more of your time talking to people.

Yeah.

It comes natural.

And I talked to a piece of plastic.

Oh, yeah.

I guess you're talking to a person too.

Yeah.

And on the other side of the camera.

Yeah.

There's just a pixel on the screen.

So, so cloning.

How do you, how do you achieve that?

Oh, yeah.

That's right.

That's a whole rabbit show.

So I was showing him that I have a lot of people in the company who are able to think

like me and basically make decisions like I would make if I was like, if you were asked,

hey, in this video, should we climb a mountain or should we dig a hole, right?

And like, you know, they would pick the same answer I'd pick 90 plus percent of the times.

And so like one example is Tyler, who I was showing you when he was pitching some content

and you could see like this, he was on point.

And basically for just four or five years, we just spent an absurd amount of time together

and worked on every single video together and we worked side by side.

And same thing with my CEO, James, he literally lived with me for a couple of years.

I'm a big fan of just like finding people who are super obsessed and all in and a players

that, you know, they really just want to be great and they're just dumping everything

I have in them.

And like you were saying, because I'd love to find that and develop that you're saying

you're basically for a long time just said everything you were thinking to them.

Exactly.

Like James, the guy who's basically my right hand man right now, for two years, he lived

with me and we probably talked on average of those two years, seven hours a day.

I mean, anytime I had a phone call at dawn on speaker and I'd let him listen at anything

I was reading any content I was consuming, like really just training his brain to think

like me.

So that way he could just do things without my input, without me having to constantly

watch over him or give him advice.

And that's where we've gotten like, so for the first six months, he didn't do anything.

He just studied me and studied everything I cared about and how I spoke and blah, blah.

And then the next six months, he started taking on some responsibilities and now he can just

run the company and, you know, I don't ever really have to check it on him.

Like most of the decisions he makes are exactly what I would do.

And so I call that cloning, I don't know what other people would, but it's just like finding

people that are really obsessed and they just kind of really want it and just being like

giving them an avenue to like get it, if that makes any sense.

Another way to see it is you're converging towards a common vision and that makes like

brainstorming much more productive.

Yeah.

It just makes it where I don't have to be so involved in everything because I just have

these people I know will think like I will, at least relatively close to it.

So I can kind of almost be in multiple places at once per se.

And so these things that, you know, I still approve every idea we film and you know, everything

before we film and all the creative, I approve it, but I don't have to like be in the weeds

and nuances and do all this minor stuff.

I can just let them handle it.

I can just do the more macro things.

I got a chance to sit in to a lengthy brainstorming session with Tyler and others.

That was really cool.

Can you talk about the process of that, of people pitching ideas and you pitching alternatives

or shutting down ideas and just going like plowing through ideas very quickly?

I mean, you kind of just described exactly what we did.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, but the ideas are really, really good.

It's just tossing out like different categories of ideas and then also fine-tuning them to

see like how do I change, like thinking about the titles and the thumbnails.

I work so well off of inspiration.

It's like, it's something like give me any word.

I don't know.

Space.

Yeah.

Like I went to space, you know, what happens if you blow up a nuke in space or I went to

the moon, I went to Mars, right?

Because you said that one word, it was able to inspire me to come up with four ideas.

And so that's just, it's for me, if you, the way to get a hundred million views on videos,

you need something original, creative, something people really need to see ideally never been

done before, all these like things.

And so you need like, if you want to consistently go super route, you need just a constant stream

of ideas.

And the only way I've really found that I can consistently come up with a hundred million

view videos is to intake inspiration and then see what my brain outputs.

And so that's kind of at its core foundation, what I'm doing there is just like intake a

lot of random inspiration to see what spawns in my mind so I can output it.

But the neural network of your brain is generating the video, the title, the thumbnail, all like

jointly.

Exactly.

And that only comes because I spent 10 years of my life just obsessively studying all that

stuff.

Because you, I mean, it seems like you would literally potentially shut down a video just

because you can't come up with a good title.

Yeah.

Or a thumbnail.

Yeah.

I mean, that's what happened to 70% of those in that pitch session.

I was just like, Oh, what was one of them?

Genius versus a hundred people?

Or.

Yeah.

Like maybe average intelligence versus genius.

Like that.

Yeah.

I was like, what the heck is the thumbnail?

Even if the title was good.

Yeah.

I mean, there's so many, but yeah, people don't click, they don't watch.

That's so interesting.

But you developed over time the ability to kind of give it what, what makes for a good

title?

Short?

Not just short.

It's also, I mean, if someone reads it, are they like, do they have to watch it?

Is it just so intrinsically interesting that it's just going to fuck with them if they

don't click on it.

You know what I mean?

It doesn't have to be short, but it has to be like, you almost want to have a retention

to word by word reading.

Ideally, it's a title also that, you know, because the titles don't live in a vacuum,

right?

So it has to lead into the content.

So ideally the title represents content that you would want to watch for 20 minutes.

So if it's a 20 minute video and the title is, I stepped on a bug, it's not going to,

because it's all of it combined.

The click through rate is going to be much lower than if it was like a five second video.

People might click it.

They've got to, like even nuances of the length of the video based against the title will

affect whether people want to click it because sometimes they just all add up.

I mean, it's that, yes, ideally you want to blow 50 characters because above 50 characters

on certain devices, you run the chance of it going dot, dot, dot.

So like I took a light pole and I saw how many dollar bills I could stack on top and

they would just go dot, dot, dot because it's too long and it can't finish it.

And that's the worst thing because then people don't even know what they're clicking on.

And so it's going to do even worse.

They're simple, ideally, and just so freaking interesting, they have to click and it is

a good segue into the content and it represents the length of the content.

And there's probably stuff, it's hard to convert into words for you, like I stepped on a bug

versus stepping on a bug versus Mr. B stepped on a bug versus bug stepping video.

So it's like, yes, the more extreme the opinion, typically the higher the click through rate,

if you can like pay it off in the content, then it just super charges it.

Oh, so you'd have a kind of estimate of the extreme.

This water, right?

You're like, Fiji water sucks.

Yeah.

That would do fine.

But if you said Fiji water, it's the worst water bottle or the worst water I've ever

drank in my life.

Yeah.

Way more extreme opinion would do way better.

But you have to deliver.

Yeah.

But then you have to deliver because the more extreme you are, the more extreme you have

to be in the video.

Yeah.

That's almost inspiration for you to step up.

Yeah.

But you can be more extreme in a positive way.

A lot of people, it's easier though, positive, negative clickbait is much easier than positive

clickbait.

It just is.

It's so much easier to get negative clicks.

And so a lot of people are just, in my opinion, a little bit lazier and they just take the

route like, oh, well, this one gets the same amount of clicks and it's easier, less effort.

The positive one is doing a large number of numbers of something.

Like I spent this number of hours doing this or whatever, if you just wanted to help people

or, it's just harder to get 10 million views on a video helping people than it is to get

10 million views on a video tearing down a celebrity, whatever negative video you want

to insert there.

Well, that said, most of your videos are pretty positive.

But not a lot of people do those kinds of videos because they're hard.

Yeah, they're hard.

Some of that is giving away money, right?

What's the secret to that?

What's, how do you do that right?

Yeah.

Give away money?

You mean a video to make it compelling?

So there's a number that is better than another number, right?

The higher number is always better than the lower number.

Is it?

Yeah, for the most part.

And it's interesting, some videos will give away a million dollars, some videos will give

away half a million.

There's not really, I guess so, I'm retracting what I just said, I was more joking with that.

But there's no difference whether I put 500k or a million.

There's probably not even really a difference between 100k or a million.

I haven't really looked into it.

Some of our most few videos are not us giving away a million dollars and sometimes the million

dollar videos just don't do as well as the other ones.

So there's a certain point where a dollar amount is just a large dollar amount to an

average human.

And so I think that point is 100k, like anything above 100k, the average human is just like,

that's a lot of money.

It doesn't, it doesn't, 100k and a million like, doesn't really move the needle.

And that makes sense.

Which that's a very nuanced piece of information that applies to very few people, but yeah.

Well, no, I think it applies.

It's fascinating.

It's fascinating.

Our relationship with money is fascinating.

Why is it so exciting to get, I mean, I, you know, the times I've found like 20 bucks

on the ground are like incredible.

Really?

I don't know why.

Why?

Why are you so happy?

Like what exactly is so joyful about that?

I mean, it depends where you are in life, what the situation is.

Yeah.

I don't know.

There's also a gamified aspect to it.

It's exciting.

Yeah.

No, I get it.

Like why people want to see people win money.

It's just interesting that past a hundred grand, it's, it doesn't really seem to make

a difference.

Like it's the same basically.

So you found that to be true with all the money you've given away that just didn't click

through rate.

Like obviously in terms of someone receiving it, yeah, a million dollars changes their

life drastically more.

Like that's the difference like, oh, you, if you wanted to, you could really quit your

job.

As opposed to a hundred K is like, not really.

You probably do like a scientific study, like a formula, giving away money to click

through rate.

Yeah.

There could be some kind of demachine return.

I definitely, the, the returns level off dramatically after a hundred K.

That's basically the premise.

What about 10,000?

Uh, no, there's 10, 100,000, it's funny because this is such a small niche thing.

But yeah, a hundred thousand does it, from what I see in our videos, get more clicks

than 10,000.

But the difference between a hundred thousand a million is just so little.

I just, I think big number, big number to a lot of people pass that point.

Yeah.

So for a hundred thousand, you can like a given average salary, you can probably live

for a year, given, given what they have average salaries in America.

So that's like a big, that feels, yeah, I think it's also just more when they read

the title.

It's just like, it's a lot of zeros.

It's a lot of zeros.

Fuck loads of zeros.

Okay.

Click.

Yeah.

Oh man, that's fascinating.

So on the thumbnail side, again, that's going to be much harder to say, probably.

But you know, offline, you know, I got a chance to look at a bunch of thumbnails and it's fascinating

which ones do well and which ones don't.

Is there something you could say about what are the elements of a thumbnail that work

well?

Or is this also deeply interesting?

Well, that's where, yeah, it's the same thing like how do you cook good food?

But it's easier if you pull up a thumbnail and I can be like, that's why that's good.

That's why that's bad.

That's a, like an example would be like one of my friends, he just uploaded a video recently

and I called him and I was like, what is this?

Because he's a very, very smart guy.

And in the thumbnail, he's getting chased by cops, but the cops were wearing yellow

vests so they didn't look at cops, so I was like, well, why are the cops in your thumbnail

wearing yellow vests?

It's like, that makes it so much more boring.

And he was like carrying a flag, but the pole and the color of the flag were the same color.

So I was like, it's a little harder to see the flag.

I was like, also you're wearing like a shirt with like five different colors.

Like, so it's like, it's hard to tell what even what your outline is.

And then in the background, there are cars and I was like, well, if you have cops chasing

you, why not make the cars cop cars?

And, you know, and it's like, because in my head, I'm like, dang, if you just did those

like four or five things, the video probably would have got like seven X the views.

How much iteration?

Because I also got a chance to see the number of iterations you do on a, I don't know, just

a brand of thumbnails.

It's a problem now.

It's an addiction.

Is it?

So you kind of, there's a lot of the versions are really good.

Yeah.

How do you know when to like stop?

I love how you, when we pulled up that, the burger one and we were flipping through them,

you're like, that's really good.

So that's version of like one of like a thousand, but even the sketch, the idea was good.

Like already even the original idea is strong.

Yeah.

So we, one of our coming up videos, we made the world's largest plant based burger and

the thumbnail we were thinking is like me standing beside the burger cause it's six

feet tall.

And that's, that's what he's talking about.

So like just picture a giant six foot tall burger, super wide, thousands of pounds and

then I'm beside it.

And then it's like eating the world's largest burger.

Like you, that's just something you have to click.

Like, so you were saying like, how would you describe a good thumbnail?

Like that.

I mean, like, but I think you said the one I noticed first, that was good where you were

very small in it, relative to the, and you didn't like that one.

I needed to come forward a little bit.

And also the photo we took was just my upper body.

So they photo manipulate and creating my legs, Photoshop.

And that's why I said I didn't like it cause my right leg was a little like off.

It was like bent the wrong way cause they had to build those legs in Photoshop.

Well, I mean, does the physics and the thumbnail have to even make sense?

I mean, you can just like exaggerate the head size and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

100%.

Yeah.

Things don't have to be relative.

Yeah.

You can have a car in the background.

It'll be three times the size.

Cause yeah.

And every one of my thumbnails, my face is in the, you know, left side, very big.

So brand recognition.

So just people know, oh, especially cause now that a lot of people copy our videos, it's

just nice to like, you know, everyone else might make thumbnails like this, but this

is mine.

And obviously we usually over deliver and do bigger stuff.

Would you recommend to other creators that want to, that want to make it big and they

see Mr. Beast and they look up to you to copy some elements of you or to really try to be

unique?

Unique.

100% unique.

You're not, the next Mr. Beast, quote unquote, it's weird saying that third person, but

whatever is not going to do what I'm doing better.

They're going to just invent their own way.

Like you're just not going to do what I do better than me.

You know, I have so many, I literally have the best people in the world working here

and I reinvest everything I make even to this day.

You know what I mean?

I insert the amount of money I spend on content and I don't care.

I'll just stop sleeping and I'll just film every other day.

Like you're just not going to beat me at my own game and that's fine.

You shouldn't.

Like I didn't get where I am by just beating someone else at their own game.

I just found my own lane and innovated and adapted.

And so yeah, there's a lot of people that do copy me and it's fine, whatever, do it,

but just know you're not going to get to where I am doing that.

And so I'd advise you don't.

You give away a lot of the secrets, basically everything about how you operate.

Is there...

I don't hold anything back.

Go for it.

Yeah.

How do you think about that?

Because that's pretty rare.

I think, and this is definitely not...

Most people in my stance, I don't think would take this or my position would take this stance,

but I see every other YouTuber or person on social media, even because we're also focused

super heavily on YouTube, but last year we were also the most followed TikTok creator

in the world as well.

Actually, we were most subscribed to YouTube channel world and the most followed TikTok

account in the world.

But in general, I just see everyone else as collaborators, not competitors.

I don't think giving advice and helping other creators do well in any way harms me, and

I think it only brings more value to my life.

How was it jumping on TikTok and trying to understand that platform from scratch?

So from being a successful YouTuber to understand a totally different algorithm, fundamentally

different algorithm.

What was that like?

It's interesting.

Well, not even just the algorithm, just the content.

I'm going from basically 15-minute short films to one sub-1-minute vertical content.

It's a whole different, just ballpark.

And so the first little while I was doing TikTok, it was just figuring out, what does

Mr. V's look like in this short form content?

But recently, we've really started to catch our stride and come up with some original

concepts and figure out how to innovate over there just like we did on YouTube.

Because I didn't want it to just be shitty YouTube videos.

And so an example is we played The Rock for 100K and Rock, Paper, Scissors, and the loser

had to donate 100K to charity.

We went to random people on a campus and we offered them.

So I said, I'll give you $100 if you fly to Paris and give me a baguette.

And then they said, no.

And I was like, I'll give you $300 if you fly to Paris and give me a baguette.

And I was expecting this person to say no, and it go up to like 10 grand.

And he's like, yes.

And so he flew to Paris, got a baguette, and brought it back and gave it to me.

And that across everything got like 450 million views.

And it, because it's just really cool just to see this random guy get on a plane, spend

a day in Paris, and we cut it up real nicely and bring it back.

And so we're starting to find just tons of original content over there.

But it seems like an epic video to make for one minute.

Exactly.

No one on short form is doing it.

That's the thing.

It's like, it's just so funny because like TikTok's been big for a while now, years.

And then, you know, as we started to really figure out things on the YouTube channel

and get it cranked and where I have some free time, we set our sights on TikTok and like,

okay, what are people not doing?

How do we make it better, put in more effort, make it good?

And we did the same thing we did at YouTube, just different over on TikTok.

And it worked.

And now we're the fastest growing, or most followed TikTok account in 2022.

And it's just funny that no one else did that.

And you're not afraid to do epic stuff, which also during the brainstorming, some of the

ideas, you're like, that's better as a short.

That's crazy.

Yeah, but can you remember one?

Because I remember I said that a bunch, but I can't think of one.

All I remember is that there were like epic videos.

Like really, you're going to do that for a one minute video?

Yeah.

That's crazy.

So like, are you posting similar content to a YouTube short as a TikTok?

Yeah, those were just double up.

It's just hard.

You know, what's actually pretty fascinating and people who do social media listening to

this will probably find this pretty interesting is picture like the content creation meta three

years ago versus now where you can make sub one minute vertical content and it go viral

on TikTok and go viral on YouTube shorts, go viral on Instagram reels, it goes viral

on Facebook, it goes Reddit, you know, you swipe through vertical content now and Twitter

when you click on a video and you flip through it.

So this is actually very weird.

This is the first time in the history of, I guess, Western social media that one form

of content could actually go super viral on every single platform.

It's never been like that before.

So they're going viral individual.

Yeah, I can post something on TikTok that will get 100 million views and then post on

shorts and it'll get 200 million views and then post it on Instagram and it get 50 million

views and then, you know, I haven't yet, but you know, you can then turn around and tweet

it and it get 10s of millions of views and you can post on Reddit and it get 10s of millions

of views and Facebook and get 10s of millions of views and that just wasn't a thing.

Three years ago, Twitter didn't have, because a lot of you probably don't even know this,

but when you tap on a video now and you swipe down, it just turns into TikTok.

That wasn't a thing even a year ago.

That wasn't a thing a year ago.

Probably two years ago, that wasn't a thing on Instagram.

Three years ago, that wasn't a thing on YouTube, right, with YouTube shorts.

So this is all new and I don't, it's weird.

I haven't heard a single person talk about it, but this is the first time where content

can actually go viral on every single platform and you don't have to write or film a video

for Facebook, film a 12 minute video for YouTube, film a sub 60 second video for TikTok, write

a tweet for Twitter and post this on Reddit.

You can just do the same thing on every platform.

And the fact that your content has gone viral on multiple platforms regularly means that

virality is not accidental.

Sometimes it can be, of course, but it can be engineered.

So many people say it's luck and they're like, you're just lucky or this or that, but what

do we have to probably like a thousand videos over 10 million views?

We don't ever have a dud.

You can call it luck, but I think it can be trained.

I counsel YouTubers all the time and show them how to go from getting a couple of million

views a month to 10 millions views a month very easily and from even certain ones.

Just one of my friends, he was just really struggling.

And so I just started showing him basically everything I know and just doing like once

every week, sometimes once every two weeks calls, and he went from $10,000 a month on

YouTube to over 400,000, just doing these little counseling calls.

And so, I mean, people can make excuses all they want and say it's just luck or say,

you know, well, anyways, I don't even want to quote all the other stuff, but it's just,

it is, it is a teachable skill.

It's a learnable skill.

You can study your way to consistently make viral videos, no matter how small your channel

is.

Even if you have zero subscribers, you could if you actually studied hard enough and like,

basically, if you knew what I knew and some of these, so I don't sound so arrogant, also

like some of these other friends that have that, I'd say are the smartest people in the

world when it comes to content creation online.

If you had the knowledge that was in our heads, you could do it very easily.

I see people do it all the time.

And what's even more interesting is I go on podcasts and I say everything I know, and

these people are also very open.

Some of them I know, it's all out there.

And a lot of people, instead of just studying that and trying to absorb and apply it in

their own way, they're just like, no, it's just luck, you know.

So you do lay it all out there, but I got to push back to one interesting thing.

I think a crucial component of your success is the idea stage, the idea generation.

The brainstorm I heard today, but getting really good at generating ideas.

So it's not just the selection of the thumbnail and the title, that creative process.

It's also just the engine of generating really good ideas and getting that.

I mean, I would say that is probably the thing that needs to be trained the most for most

creators, right?

They just don't put enough ideas on paper.

Yes, but also a lot of creators also just don't, you know, which I didn't either for

the longest time, just didn't don't make good enough content, you know, content that's worthy

of getting 10 million views.

In the idea or the execution of the idea?

Both.

I mean, like think about how many people just make videos, they film them under 20 minutes

and they don't really put any effort into it.

And like, you know, it's like my first 500 videos didn't deserve to get a million views.

Like there's a reason they did.

They're terrible.

You know?

Like they did, right?

And I'm in the mindset of a lot of small YouTubers where I thought those videos deserved

a million views and I thought the algorithm hated me, but I watched them back now and

I could tell you exactly why.

The videos were just fucking horrible.

You know what I mean?

Well, so what was the breakthrough for you to start realizing is to start having a self-awareness,

you know, about these videos aren't good enough.

You're probably still going through that.

You're probably still growing to see, like, yeah, every six months you should look back

and hate your videos or at least see things you could improve and be like, oh, I could

have done this better, that better.

If not, then you're not learning quick enough, in my opinion at least.

Where's the source of that learning even for you now?

Just look at the metrics.

I mean, I just got back from a mastermind where I just got like, you know, 10 of the

smartest people I knew and we just locked ourselves in a cabin and taught each other

stuff.

Constantly every day, not every day now, probably every other day I go on a walk and I just

call random people.

I'll just say, teach me something.

And I mean, it's just, you just have to have a never ending thirst for learning link.

That's very imperative, especially if you want, like, if you want to get on top and

then stay on top, the only way to do it is just to constantly be learning or someone

who is learning is just going to, you know, have a leg up on you in the knowledge game.

And what kind of stuff are you, because you've talked about offline that you just love learning

of all kinds.

It doesn't matter.

But in terms of videos, are you studying videos, are you studying?

Recently not as much.

I'm more, because to get to the videos I want, I have to build this business and scale up

and hire.

So more my recent time has been, like my teenage years were spent studying virality and studying

content creation.

Now I'm studying how to build a content company so I can actually produce the crazy ideas

I want to produce, if that makes any sense.

So yeah, on that, the business side, we talked about hiring, do you have trouble firing people?

No, I'm pretty sure almost every person, yeah, actually every person I've ever fired we just

give them severance.

And I like to see it more as, it's no ill will, like if I fired you, if there's some

other job you want me to help you get, I'll DM them on Twitter, like, you know, if you

want to go work for, I don't know, insert whatever, MTV, give me someone to DM, I'll

DM them.

Like, you know, I try to make it more like a transition and do whatever we can to make

it as easy as possible.

And then something was just not working for you, because you want people, like you said,

super passionate.

Because at the end of the day, if you hold someone that, onto someone that you don't

see being here in 10 years, you're just doing them a disservice.

You're just giving them more ingrain, more enrooted and where they are.

And the sooner you do it and help them move on to their, like new life, the better.

Given all the wisdom you have now, if you were to give advice to somebody, or if you

were to start over again, you had no money, won't be the first 10 videos you tried to

make on a new channel.

I guess that's advice for a new person.

And nobody knows you.

Yeah, nobody knows me.

Yeah.

I have a mask on.

And you also, I guess, don't have the wisdom.

But if I don't have what I have in my head, then I would say just fail.

A lot of people get analysis paralysis and they'll just sit there and they'll plan their

first video for three months and any of you listening, especially if you have zero views

on your channel, your first video is not going to give views, period.

It's not.

Your first 10 are not going to give views.

I can very comfortably say that.

So stop sitting there and thinking for months and months on end and just get to work and

start uploading.

All you need to do, this applies to people who have not uploaded videos, but have dreams

of being a YouTuber, is make 100 videos and improve something every time.

Do that.

And then on your 101st video, we'll start talking like, maybe you can get some views, but your

first 100 are going to start.

There are very freak cases like Lysocotia or Emma Chamberlain who have really good personalities

and it doesn't take them as many videos.

And it's just like people who are seven foot five and making the NBA.

Like, yes, there are freak cases you can find, but for the average person like us who don't

have these exceptional personalities and backgrounds in filmmaking, just make 100 videos, improve

something each time, and then talk to me on your 101st video.

Well, the improve something each time is a tricky one.

How do you improve something each time?

The second one, just put more effort into the script.

The third one, try to learn a new editing trick.

The fourth one, try to figure out a way that you can have better inflections in your voice.

The fifth one, try to study a new thumbnail tip and implement it.

The sixth one, try to figure out a new title.

There's infinite ways.

There's a variety of content creation online.

There's literally infinite ways from the coloring, to the frame rate, to the editing, to the

filming, to the production, to the jokes, to the pacing, to every little thing can be

improved.

And they can never not be improved.

There's literally no such thing as a perfect video.

So if you knew everything you know now, but no money.

Step one, would I just brainstorm like, okay, I don't have money.

What are some viral things?

Like, I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is something as simple as when I

count to 100,000, which is what I did do when I was poor.

And I liked that work, but like, what's something like that I could do that would be even more

attention-grabbing?

Yeah, you were, as part of the brainstorm, you would throw out a lot of ideas, and people

throw out a bunch of ideas, and one of the questions is, is this even doable?

Right?

Yeah.

First off, come up with ideas you think would do well, and then ask yourself later if they're

doable.

Yeah.

Because there's different ways you can accomplish something.

Don't be cynical about the doability of stuff.

Yeah, because there really are so many different ways you can accomplish a goal.

Like when we give away an island, like we give our 100 million subscriber an island,

you can't find private islands that don't look like shit for less than $10 million.

So this isn't doable.

Right?

All right.

The idea doesn't exist.

Not doable.

Exit it off.

But then you dig into it, and you find different alternatives, and you find, okay, what if we

just buy a $2 million island that sucks, and then spend a million dollars importing

some sand?

Let's build a beach.

Let's import 300 trees.

Let's build a little bit of canal.

Let's cut some paths.

So now it's a really nice island, but it's actually affordable because we don't have

$10 million spent on a video, but we can afford to spend three and a half and lose whatever

a million dollars on that video.

So that's an example of like, yeah, if you just went off the gut test, you'd be like,

this isn't doable.

Every island is $10 million or we're screwed.

If we go cheaper, it's just a terrible island.

No.

And so there are so many different ways you can achieve what you want.

You really got to push through notes, which not a lot of people do.

You have to have more of a dominant personality and just a willingness to, when people tell

you it's not possible, just actually go through all the variables and eliminate them all yourself.

Have a stubbornness and a resilience to failure, maybe.

For what we do and creators online, it's very imperative that you have that a no isn't

a no to you.

You really have to think and just, we take a personality test and just having a dominant

personality is a better indicator that when someone tells you, oh, there's no way you're

going to build a brick wall for under a hundred grand, you'll be like, okay, and then still

go check the next 10 vendors and figure it out.

Yeah.

What advice would you give to an already established channel like with one, two, three, four million

subscribers, how to like 10X it, like increase it without losing maybe.

Yeah.

That's where it's very specific, like channel by channel.

You can't give general advice.

Okay.

Because if I do, millions of creators are going to see this and then they're going to

do it and I'm going to fuck them over.

Oh, I see.

I see.

So let's say I'd like two million subscribers on this podcast.

Yeah.

Like how would you 10X that without sacrificing what it is?

10X your stuff.

Does it matter?

So you've talked about what success.

Yeah.

It's different for everyone.

Like, is 10Xing your definition of success?

No.

Well, then it's going to, right off the bat, it's hard because if you don't give a shit

about 10Xing, it's even harder than 10X.

He does this because he likes helping people and that's one thing I've found throughout

this day.

Every time I talk data, it's so funny with him because it's like, you know, you could

do this to get more views and he'll just be like blank.

I don't feel like that doesn't register anything.

He just like doesn't care, which is, it's really cool.

I'm really nervous about that.

I'm really nervous about the numbers affecting, because it's so fun.

Oh yeah.

It's so fun to focus on the numbers and I'm really worried about that, but at the same

time you should be cognizant of that because you've created not just some of the most watched

videos, but some of the most amazing videos ever.

So it's, there's a strong correlation there.

It's not like you're selling your soul to make a highly viewed video.

It's actually, if you look at the metrics, it helps you understand what is compelling

and not.

And so I feel like I am, I feel like there's some value to investigate what work, when

people tune on and when not to be more data driven, even on podcasts, but I'm really afraid

of that.

I think part of the appeal is that you don't care about that kind of stuff.

But there could be stuff that doesn't have to do anything with that and has to do with

stylistic choices of lighting and cameras, or maybe with, for example, topics.

Yeah.

You know, like, even what you've asked me here is like different than what most people

ask me.

Yeah.

So it could be, I mean, and it'd be nice to understand that, but yeah, again, I'm worried

about polluting the process.

At the end of the day, it's, this is a true case of it's your own intuition, like you

know your viewers better than anyone else, it's whatever.

See, I'd like to push back on that.

I really don't.

You do.

Who else?

Name one person who knows your viewers better than you.

Somebody that looks at numbers of podcasts.

No, you know your viewers, you know, you're the only, how many episodes have you done?

350.

Exactly.

But I'm not paying attention.

You're the only one who's watched every second of all 350 of them, probably.

That's just, that's just not, no, I haven't, but the, well, because you did it, so you

do know what's in all of them.

Sure.

I'm telling you, you do, and this is just one of those moments where you're an intelligent

guy and you just have to trust your like instincts, like just think, what is the typical Lex viewer

and what do they want?

I don't think like that.

But that's all you would have to do and whatever your gut tells you, that would be the best

guess.

You don't know what the typical viewer is though.

I don't, I don't, because to investigate that would be very, very difficult and then

you have to start looking at the numbers, you have to start to like consider the demographics.

The only way I know that anybody even watches it is because I'll sometimes run into people

like when I run along the river and they'd be like, I love you Lex.

It's like, okay, well that, that's, that's the data point and they're like cool people.

But you know, I don't know, like, I don't have any other, it's difficult, man.

It's difficult to know, it's difficult to know who listens to boxes, difficult to know.

Do you have a sense of who's, I mean, like, you're so huge that everybody watches.

Yeah.

But no, I still do.

I would say, if you were to just put a gun to my head and you're, you're like, all right,

we're going to pick a random person that watched your last video and you have to like roughly

guess what they are.

And if you're not close, we'll kill you.

I would say probably like a teenager that plays video games.

Like some, like that would be probably the typical one.

And then there are people that are maybe a little bit younger.

A lot of people that are older as well.

But in a ramble, random sample size, yeah, it's probably like I'm a male boy that plays

video games.

Like that's the best way I would describe it.

But I don't try to pertain to them.

I just make whatever I think is interesting and good content.

And this is what we were talking about before, even though hypothetically 35 to 40% of my

audience is women, which is, you know, less than a majority.

If we get 100 million views of video, that's still 30 to 40 million females that watch

every video, which is probably the largest, you know, views per video for women on the

whole platform, which you wouldn't think that, you know, like I can't think of a single other

creator that gets more women to watch their videos than that.

And so it's just anything, even like people above the age of 30, even if it's only like

three or 4%, that's still three to 4% of 100 million views is a lot of people that age.

So we, we hit a large group of, of kind of every demographic, if that makes any sense.

So what if we look at other, maybe more challenging kinds of channels or not, but if we look at

educational, for example, like lectures, or if we look, yeah, educational, it could be

short videos, like how would you 10x that, like something on robotics and biology on

science and engineering and all that, that's more educational focused.

We would honestly just have to pull the, because it's the same way, if you went to Gordon Ramsay,

you said, how would a new cook cook better?

You know, it's like, even then that's not even specific.

You have to go channel by channel.

You really do.

Or I'm, I'm giving horrible advice because if there was these just golden rules, everyone

would do it.

You know what I mean?

Like if there's these magical little principles.

How quickly, when you look at a channel, can you kind of give advice?

Yeah.

It's, it's like surface love at the start.

And then the more, if we watch 10 videos, I feel like I'd have a good profile and I

could tell you, in my opinion, you know, especially once I look at the analytics and I get more

ingrained in like, okay, the typical viewer is this, they're from here.

Here's how they're feeling, you know, because there are people who make videos for rednecks

and like the rednecks taste of content is just so much different than obviously women

watching makeup videos, which are so much different than, you know, teenage boys watching

a Minecraft video.

They're just all different.

So the biggest thing you have to do is put your heads, your head in the headspace of

the viewer and see the content, how they would, because if you just try to only give your

taste, which is what a lot of people do and things from your perspective, it's very biased

and it's just not going to work for everyone.

And that's actually how you do more harm than good, which is something I'm very careful

of.

Yeah.

But at the same time, just generating a lot of ideas.

I think the first time I've talked to you was on clubhouse, actually, I mentioned something

about robots and like almost immediately went to generating a bunch of ideas around

robots.

Yeah, easily.

100 robots versus 100 humans.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'll market a robot throw a potato.

I think your idea, like I think the first idea was, because you just said so many ideas

I never even thought of, but it shows the value of basically brainstorming with people

that think differently.

But at the end of the day, my ideas are probably, you know, might lean towards some people a

little bit younger than your audience, like some of the stuff I've, yeah.

But there's still ideas.

Like I think the first one you said, because we're talking about a quadruple, like a robot

dogs, you said to replace a biological dog with a robot dog and see if the owner notices

something.

You were just quickly brainstorming different ideas of like how this is years ago, I remember

it.

Yeah.

Which is just, I mean, it's like, oh yeah, I never really thought about that kind of sort

of, it's the basic, the tension between what does it take for a robot and AI system to

replace the biological systems that we, the biological creatures that we love in our lives.

Yeah.

I mean, like that was like the pace of idea generation was the thing that struck me today

and in general.

It's like, that's how you get at good videos as you keep, keep things.

It's much easier to make a video around a good idea, obviously, than a bad one.

You just send yourself up for success.

Okay.

So that's for 10Xing already popular channel.

What's the hardest number?

The numbers that matters, click-through rate, average view duration and surveys.

What's the hardest number to optimize for?

Probably surveys.

Do you have an insight into the surveys at all?

No, not really, but if you just click on a bunch of random videos online, you'll eventually

get a survey.

What's this video transformative, heartwarming, inspiring?

What people rate does make a difference?

And it's like, you can get people to click a video, you can get them to watch it, but

you can't really fake whether or not they're satisfied.

And they don't lie, the surveys.

Maybe one person here, they're my troll, but once you aggregate enough, it's a pretty

clear telltale of the video.

So either you're making a great video or you're not.

What is it?

Minimizing the non-regrettability.

Yeah.

I think Elon tweeted that.

That's what he's tried to do on Twitter.

For Twitter.

And that's interesting.

That's basically the survey metric.

How happy you are that you've been using the platform.

Yeah.

Elon tweeted, we want to limit the amount of regrettable minutes people spend on Twitter

and the first thing I thought, it's like, that's something YouTube already has a lot.

Like their whole survey system and feedback loop.

How tough is it to take on YouTube, you think?

Like for Twitter?

Yeah.

For Twitter, for anybody else.

I mean, it's going to be basically impossible.

I mean, YouTube's not going anywhere.

And I mean, I don't know, I don't think anyone's going to do what YouTube does better than

them, at least not in the next 10 years.

You asked on Twitter, would you rather have $10 million or 10 million subscribers on YouTube?

What would your own answer be at various stages in your career?

If I had nothing, I would say $10 million.

Because with $10 million, you can hire some people and pump out content with like a million

or two, get 10 million subscribers and then keep the other 8 million.

So that's if you believe in your ability to grow a channel if you...

Yeah, if you don't believe in your ability to grow a channel, then you shouldn't take

the 10 million subscribers because you're just going to kill the channel.

So the 10 million is definitely...

A better question would be would you rather have a million dollars or 10 million subscribers?

That's where it gets a little tricky.

Because now it's like, hmm, a million dollars life changing amount of money.

But if you semi-knew what you're doing, you probably make a million dollars off a 10 million

subscriber channel, but there's a little bit of risk.

So a million dollars might not be enough to build a strong team because you don't know

how to do it.

So you might waste all of that money.

Yeah.

Or they just keep it and retire.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's true.

Yeah.

Because 10 million is just so high.

It's like, just never work again.

Who cares?

For the average human, that's so much money.

It's interesting to me also to the value of the subscriber versus the value of the dollar.

I suppose how valuable is the subscriber for like what percentage of the videos, like

how active are the subscribers in watching the video?

For you.

That's hard.

I don't know.

I don't know about the subscriber to dollar, like if someone has 10 million subscribers

have they made 10 million dollars?

I don't know why that kind of popped in my head.

It's an interesting thought.

Do you ever, when you analyze videos, do you ever analyze videos like we've talked about

offline of other videos across the YouTube in general to understand trends, to understand

social behavior and all that kind of stuff?

No, all your, not all, but a lot of the questions are analytic space.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's so funny.

Because I love it.

Like what people like to watch, what people will share, it's like a fascinating look.

So like I said before, what percentage of your audience do you think care about this

kind of stuff?

Like this deeply about YouTube analytics?

I think a large amount care about curiosity and exploration of interesting ideas.

So in that sense, yeah, this was, this was fitted.

I love it.

This is funny.

This isn't me like trying to make, I love you and I actually, I love your Magnus one

and even your Hikaru one was really good, a bunch of other ones, but I think we're getting

to the point now where only analytics junkies would want to keep hearing more analytics talk

and the normie is probably like, they've had their dose of YouTube talk for the next three

years.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Hey, comment if I'm wrong.

I could be.

I don't know your audience.

See, this is where you would tell me, shut up.

I know my audience.

You dumbass.

And I don't at all.

I actually, I just follow the thread of curiosity.

And I think there's just a lot of curious humans in the world.

And to me, it's like, so the question about analytics is the question of basically stepping

away, stepping outside of yourself and thinking, why the hell do I like tech talk so much?

Why do I like Twitter so much?

Why do I like YouTube so much?

And getting, even if you're not a creator, getting an insight into that is really interesting.

It's like, what, because all these platforms are fundamentally changing the nature of content.

People are reading books less, they're probably going to be watching movies less and less.

They're probably going to be watching Netflix less and less.

Do you ever think about the sort of the darker side of YouTube and with shadow banning, censorship

and all the kind of topics, especially if you see it in other platforms like Twitter,

that Elon recently highlighted the shadow banning that was happening, and in general,

the censorship that was happening on those platforms.

Do you think about the role of centralized control, which information isn't or isn't

made available through search and discovery?

I'll be honest, I'd never really think about it.

You just try to make fun videos that-

Yeah, I'm more, I'm kind of more in my own lane, but it's not like, that I don't just

specifically think about it.

It's just like a lot of stuff in general.

I'm just kind of in my own lane thinking about my own stuff.

But now that you're asked, I'm curious, what are your thoughts on YouTube and that kind

of stuff?

Well, I'm generally against centralized censorship or shadow banning.

Shadow banning is the worst one because not that the goal of creating a healthy platform

where you're having great conversations and videos that are not spreading misinformation,

that sounds like an admirable goal, but that's too difficult of a job for a centralized entity.

That's too big of an responsibility.

Yeah.

And then there's the misinformation stuff.

And then there's also just like the videos where they do something that causes, what

happened back then, we're at Pocalypse, you know, and a lot of creators revenue plummets

because people are doing videos that advertisers don't deem acceptable, and then now all these

big advertisers are pulling, and the little guys are getting hit because ad rates dropped

by 30% and the person who just quit his job to go full-time consecration now can't sustain

it.

So it's also, it's like a lot of different variables as well.

That makes it so complicated.

Well, I think the big thing is transparency, especially around shadow banning for people.

I agree.

On shadow banning, you should be transparent.

You should let people know.

It, you know, obviously there has to be some type of controls.

People can't just post whatever.

And so if you're pulling those levers, they should at least know.

Yeah, so they know how to improve their content, they can understand it, they can, if it's

a wrong shadow banning, like as a society that we should not shadow ban this kind of

content, that means you should be publicly discussing it and having that.

Because if it's not, and if it's not known, then it's just kind of like, well, then who's

pulling the strings?

And like, how do we know they're not just manipulating things to get whatever message

they want out there and silence other ones?

Yeah, and there could be sort of in the background government influence, which is where actual

freedom of speech comes into play, that the government should not have any control or be

able to put pressure on censorship of speech.

And it gets weird if none of that is being, there's no transparency around it.

That's a, but to be fair, that's a huge responsibility.

The amount of content that YouTube is uploaded on YouTube is shared by YouTube, viewed by

YouTube.

But even more of a reason why it would probably make sense to be transparent.

Yeah.

Because then people can help fact check it.

That's right.

But that requires building a platform that makes that easy, to make fact checking easy,

to make the Twitter now has being able to share context and all that kind of stuff, that

crowdsource it.

Crowdsource is the way Wikipedia crowdsourced it.

I mean, there's, it's right.

And then you open a random Wikipedia article.

But people criticize Wikipedia because there is a political lean to the editors of Wikipedia

and then they get, there's some articles that definitely have a bias to them and all that

kind of stuff.

It's a, it's a difficult problem.

It's a difficult problem to solve that ultimately as much as possible, it would be nice for

the viewer to have control of that versus the, the entity that's hosting it.

So for the viewer to decide.

I'll let you figure that stuff out.

Yeah.

I'm just going to make fun.

Cool videos.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Let's go to Antarctica again.

How was that?

How was going to, you just came back from Antarctica.

You watched the video that was, that was fun, that was a really fun video.

Thank you.

Um, there's, I mean, there's a lot of things I can comment about that, but what was that,

what was the hardest part of making that video?

The hardest part was just getting out there.

It's just so remote.

And you know, you, you land the plane on just this ice runway and it's so sketchy.

And then once the plane takes off, you're just there and you're the most remote place

in the planet.

And it's, it's just very breathtaking.

I don't, if you have the chance to ever go to Antarctica, I would recommend it.

It was probably like the, in the video, we climbed a mountain that wasn't named so we

can name it.

And like standing on top of that mountain and just seeing kind of like nothing.

And cause once you get outside the outskirts and you get deep in Antarctica, there's no

penguins and nothing lives there at all.

And so there's just nothing in every direction.

It's just snow and these crazy, beautiful mountains and some of them stick into the clouds

and it was in the, if you go during summertime, the sun never goes down.

So the sun's up 24 seven and it's just like spinning in circles at the top of the planet

or whatever it looks like the top.

Yeah.

You guys come with this several times.

How beautiful.

Yeah.

And so it's just, yeah, it's just very beautiful.

What about shooting itself like the technical aspects of shooting it?

Oh, I mean, well, so for the, somehow we lucked out one of the days was like the warmest day

in like forever that's been in Antarctica.

It was like, it was positive degrees, but at certain parts it was also like negative

20, negative 30.

And that's where the cameras, you constantly have to be switching out the batteries and

heating them up and like putting them basically in like your pants or they'll just get way

too cold.

And we were prepared for much worse, but it ended up being much better than we thought.

So for that video, but in general, maybe some other challenging videos, how does, how do

you go from the idea stage to the actual execution to the final video?

Can you take me through like a full process of like we're talking to bought some crazy

wild ideas today.

How do you go from that to a final video where you click publish?

Well, I mean, obviously first things first, you gotta figure out the idea and then it

just depends.

I mean, pick any video you can think of on my channel.

I can take you through it.

Uh, well, what about the in a circle that you have to stay in a circle for for a hundred

days?

Yeah.

So for that one, step one, one of the most popular, yeah, that video did really well.

So we, um, promise, uh, we have to, this is where you get really into the nuances of

that company.

Cause we have a lot of videos going out.

You can't just in a vacuum be like, all right, we're not doing anything for a hundred days.

We're only filming this.

So step one is we had to build an independent crew that could actually do that for a hundred

days.

That way everyone else could keep working on the normal videos and not just screw everything

up.

Yeah.

Um, so step one, you build that team.

Okay.

We got the team.

Now what do we need?

To do this, we need probably like 10 cameras, at least rolling at all times.

So, uh, we're probably going to need to get a trailer and hook up a bunch of storage and

stuff to just carry out the sheer volume of footage we're going to have.

And so get a trailer, set up the cameras, go on the field, paint a circle.

Now we need a house, go buy a house, bring it out there.

Uh, and then it's like, Oh wait, I think it'd be funny if I brought the house in on the

intro, but you know, find a crane that can lift up a house so I can drive it in and drop

it in the intro.

And that's like an iterative process where you're like, okay, this would be funnier.

So this is not all up front that you just written, it's like, you're-

Yeah.

Ideally it would be, but as you kind of see things, you get inspired and then you think

of more and more.

Uh, and then-

This would be better with a crane.

Yeah.

It'd be better if I dropped out of the house.

Drop it.

Uh.

Yeah.

That was crazy that you decided to do that.

Uh, so fearless in the kind of crazy stuff you willing to do.

Exactly.

I'm a broken record, but whatever makes the best video possible.

Yeah.

That's, that's all you, you focus on.

Okay, so, uh, what about the delegation of like who gets to, what are the cameramen, like

the people operating the cameras, what, uh, who's responsible for different things?

Is it like a distributed process or like-

Well, that's where whoever the lead cam would be on that video would just decide it.

That one, cause we shot over a hundred days, we didn't, a lot of it was just Sean and the

guy who was in the circle just vlogging.

I just gave him a camera and he figured it out and then we'd have like for him just set

hours each day that a cameraman would come.

So if he had any content, he needed extra hands instead of just having someone on stand

by 24 seven, it made more sense to do set hours.

Nice.

Um, and, uh, yeah, it was, it was hard, but you know, explaining it in hindsight, it sounds

so simple, you know, and I guess like the more, cause that one is relatively simple,

I guess, because it's a low number of people.

Yeah.

The hard part about that is just the time, like, you know, I checked in on them so many

different days and it's like an hour here, two hours there, three hours there over a hundred

days adds up to be a ton of time.

And even then, like, you know, if you have a 10 person crew, you know, paying them daily

rates for a hundred days, it just all of it adds up.

What about like the hundred versus a hundred, a hundred, uh, adults versus a hundred kids?

What was, uh, what was, uh, bringing that to life?

That seems like exceptionally challenging.

Yeah.

Basically the thought process was we did a hundred kids versus, or sorry, a hundred

boys versus a hundred girls.

People loved it.

Honestly, I didn't think they'd like it as much as they did.

Video did really, really well.

So the second I saw that video was crushing, I was like, all right, we're doing it again.

But last time we did it, we did in our studio.

So we built a giant room, put a hundred girls in it.

Sounds bad when I explain it like this.

And then a giant room, put a hundred boys and we're like, after a hundred hours, whichever

room has the most people will give them half a million dollars.

So did well.

So we're like, all right, we're going to do it again.

So we threw out all these different ideas.

It was like a hundred football players versus a hundred cheerleaders, a hundred this, a hundred

that, a hundred prisoners versus a hundred cops.

So just craziest ideas and we settled on a hundred kids versus a hundred adults.

And then the next step was like, how do we make it better?

The kids versus adults are the boys versus girls.

The first one we did was inside and the problem was every time it was night when we did these

long time lapses, you couldn't see the sun go up and down.

So we're like, okay, this time I want to do it outside.

That's why the cubes are outside.

And instead of doing circles, we want to make them cubes.

And then, you know, as figuring out, do we want that, yeah, just those videos came up

at least today as ones that are like really complicated in terms of the audio, in terms

of how it's to film it.

Yeah.

That's the problem.

We had a lot of audio issues because in the first one, we didn't have a roof on it.

The second one, there was a roof, so there's a lot of reverb, which then in editing made

it brutal.

Like half the shots weren't usable and it really screwed us over.

So we had to do a lot of Frankensteining in the editing to make up for basically my ignorance.

So you mentioned that you were surprised how well that, that, that one did.

A lot of creators talk about getting depressed when the videos don't do as well as they kind

of expected.

There's a kind of feeling you can get really worn out by that.

Do you, do you yourself feel that?

And also do you have advice for others that feel this?

Um, yeah, it's weird because I am a numbers guy, but also it, it used to, it used to very

much, especially when I was like betting everything I had on a video when it did bad.

That was devastating.

Man, I'd cry and I'd be depressed for days and it really would have a severe impact on

my mood, but I don't know now it doesn't really matter.

It's a, if a video does bad, I just look at it and I'm like, oh, why did this video do

bad?

Uh, probably, oh, there's a little retention dip there.

I don't think people liked the thumbnail.

Maybe we should switch it.

And I just look at it objectively unemotional and then just move on.

And I feel like that's a much healthier way of going about it.

So if a creator is listening, like that is the ideal way to, um, respond to a video that's

doing bad, just remove emotion from the equation and just look at it and figure out how you

can improve the next one.

Is there, is there tricks to detect and being able to detach yourself from the, from that

because, because like in your case, I mean, that's true for creators, but in your case,

there's, there's like a lot of money on the line.

Yeah.

Well, this video cost a lot of money.

Months of my life and so much time, but no, I mean, you just, I mean, I don't know.

The only real answer is it's just a conscious effort.

You just have to unemotionally look at the video, determine the problems and then move

on.

Cause there is no secret, you know what I mean?

It's just, it's, it's that, and if you really can't bring yourself to do it, then you're

just screwed.

Honestly, maybe you're not mid for this game.

Okay.

So that's part of the development as a creator is like being able to be a,

For longevity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have to unemotionally be able to look at videos that flop and figure it out.

Uh, cause if not just getting, you can't, not every video can be a one out of 10 and

someone a video does bad, you know, that, that just stress and depression is just going

to eventually get to you in the long run.

So you said you've, uh, failed in a bunch of videos, uh, sort of taking them to completion.

So what are some of the biggest fails?

Yeah.

Weirdly enough, as we've matured and we've done this more, we don't have that problem

as much, especially now that we're getting into the multimillion dollar budgets per video.

It's like failure is not really an option anymore.

So I'm a little more particular about what I do, but back in the day, yeah, like we would

do a video where we spent 24 hours on a deserted island and, uh, we filmed it, did it all.

And I just, I didn't like it after the edit, so I just grabbed the boys and we went back

to the deserted island and spent another 24 hours there and re-filmed it.

Um, or, uh, could that have been caught and prevented at the idea stage?

Like where?

No, it's a good idea.

It was just poor execution.

To be honest, when we were out there, it was hot.

We were, we were just like, we all, at one point just kind of wanted to die.

It was just miserable.

So how do, how do you avoid that these days?

Uh, well, I just went with it as a little cooler, to be honest.

And then we had literally the amount of fun we had in the video was like 10 times higher.

Oh, interesting.

So you, like there's some practical details that you just learned.

Yeah, I don't, videos that where it's very hot or, or it's on water cause I get super

seasick.

It was like a kind of like 10 things that if they have these variables, I'm down to

do it, but my fun meter is not as high as normal.

Uh, like we tried to, um, anytime we do anything on a boat, like when we spent 24 hours in

a beer minute or triangle or when I tried to spend like, which it didn't get upload,

but I tried to spend like a hundred hours at sea or whatever, just like on a raft.

It just like, it makes me want to throw up and I get so seasick.

I came in sea straight, but there are just some videos that require me to be on a boat.

So I just suck it up.

Um, so when you spend months in creating a video, I know this is probably stressful to

some creators.

Um, like how much stress, how do you feel when you have to click publish a video?

No, not much.

So you're able to detach yourself from it.

Yeah.

Again, and old me tons, I mean, I'd be like scratching and nervous and like my hands will

be sweating.

Like to the point where I'm almost about to puke.

I'm like, I really hope people like this, but you know, I don't know, I think that's

just part of maturing it.

There's different, as a content creator, there's different phases and, uh, you just

like once you get over the, the fear that you're just going to wake up one day and

be irrelevant, you know, and you just, you know, accept that like you believe in yourself

and you believe in your content and that you can continue to be relevant.

Then you don't, I don't know, you kind of, it's a little bit easier to detach yourself,

I guess.

And that's, I, it's a much healthier place to be.

You can't do this for 10 years if every little thing just causes these huge emotional reactions.

It's like, that's why a lot of creators go a little, you know, mentally insane.

You know, you have to get out of that, that game because it really messes with you.

We've talked about this a little bit, but how do you define and how do you suggest others

to find success?

I'm so subjective.

Some people, some people's success is retiring their mom, you know, for you, success is inspiring

people and educating them and, you know, whatever the peak in their curiosity, um, for other

people it's just quitting their job.

So you have to self reflect on what your definition of success is because I think a lot of creators

kind of don't really think, don't introspect, like they kind of want to keep getting more

and more subscribers kind of thing and yeah.

But subscribers is just a vanity metric, you know, it doesn't, subscribers don't correlate

to views.

Sure.

Or views, what?

Yeah, I know.

But that's more, that was a direct view.

That was more direct to people listening because a lot of people do really care about

subscribers or even followers like on Tik Tok.

But if you look like your view on YouTube, very, very few percent, if even a percent

of your views come from the sub feed, right, they're almost all home feeder suggested.

That's the last time you clicked on your sub feed to watch a video.

Oh, almost never.

Yeah.

Maybe five years ago.

It used to be a thing.

It's not anymore.

No one does.

Um, and it's getting harder and harder to find something.

I subscribe to way too many channels, I think.

Yeah.

That's what everyone does.

And you subscribe to 10 channels.

They're great, but two years later your taste evolves and it's like, it's a mess.

And so, um, subscribers don't really matter.

Followers on Tik Tok don't really matter.

Um, so anyways, it really, they really are the definition of a vanity metric.

But what about views?

They do, obviously, because if people are showing up time and time again, that's what

matters.

Okay.

So that, that's a good thing to, uh, define a success.

I just feel like, um, that too can be a problem because, uh, I would say, you know, if I wanted

to be successful, like as a young creator, I might start copying Mr. Beast or something

like that, right?

Yeah.

Like there's, you start trying to take shortcuts as opposed to find your, your own unique voice.

Right?

So like chasing views is a problem too, it feels like, or no, um, as long as you detach

yourself from them.

I mean, if you're, sounds like if you're lazy and you just want to copy someone else

to not experiment and find your own way, but yeah, I mean, you can't make that excuse

for them.

And someone just isn't coming up with the original stuff and putting in the effort.

You can't just say, oh, it's because they're chasing views and we need some different metric

for them to chase.

No.

They just need to find their own way.

So it just feels like unique type of content will often lead to sacrifice in the number

of views in the short term, by the long term, you win.

Okay.

Or if you do win, you win more, I guess would be a better way of putting it.

Do you think you will IPO Mr. Beast burger or Feastables in the next five, 10 years?

Beast burger or Feastables?

No.

I kind of think they're, actually, you don't want, I just realized this is our first time

talking about those, we're like an hour and a half and that's so funny.

We started talking about what?

My retention brain kicked in.

I wonder if you have retention brain for like life itself.

I do.

Every time I'm talking to someone, I can, I'm like, okay, I'm wondering.

What about like loved ones?

Like spending time with loved ones thinking like, we could be doing something much better

right now.

Yes.

No, that is a serious problem with, well, so we'll pause the Beast burger question.

But that's why my current girlfriend, which I was telling you before when we were talking

about this is she has a genuine love for learning.

And that's something I have.

Like I always feel like I need to be learning something to justify the time I'm spending.

And so that's why it's such a nice trait because I feel like that time is being used optimally

because whether we're watching a documentary or we're going and, you know, taking an IQ

test or reading about whatever, just why modern art is the thing.

I don't know.

Whatever weird thing we decided to do.

I'm always learning and improving, so it justifies the time.

So to maximize retention in your relationship, you want to spend time at that time learning

as much as possible.

Yeah.

Which conveniently I don't have to force, right?

Or I want to be recharging.

So when I do work, I can, you know, hit the ground harder.

And luckily we're into a lot of the same things, which, you know, happen to be learning sometimes

it's not learning, like maybe watching an anime or something like that.

But I'm a big believer in you're either, if you, well, if you, if your goal is to be

like a super successful entrepreneur, you need to either be working or you need to be doing

something that decompresses and recharges you so you can work again.

If your goal is to be like a really kick-ass entrepreneur, obviously we're pulling this

down to like a very basic thing.

And so the, the things you're doing in your downtime, when you're not working, if it doesn't

recharge you, you're screwed.

You're just a ticking time bomb waiting to upload.

And so you got to like heavily recharge and like, so like watching, for me, anime or whatever

it is playing a board game, like that is actually kind of crucial to my success, which takes

a lot of maturing to come to that conclusion because I used to be the kind of guy that

wanted to work every hour of the day.

And I would try to train myself to not need that stuff.

And I, you know, and I almost resented like that.

I have to do these kinds of things and it would piss me off because it's not optimal.

And, you know, I just really want to make content and entertain people.

But as someone who's gone down that road and, you know, you just work every day for two,

three months straight and, you know, every hour of the day and then you're just a bomb

waiting to explode and lose your mind.

And the only real sustainable thing is to just like give yourself time to recharge in

between working.

So there's a kind of balance you have to find.

You have to.

I even, and I hate it more than anyone else because I, you know.

You hate not working.

Yeah.

Because it's just not optimal for time.

Like it's, it's, it's as a human, I do need to occasionally watch a mindless show and

play a board game.

And it took me a very long time to like come to peace with that and not, I would have like

borderline panic attacks when I do it because I'm like, I just, what am I doing right now?

Why am I doing this?

I should be, you know, like, what if one day I have to lay off an employee because we're

not doing so well?

Like, how could I justify watching this, this show or whatever I'm doing right now?

You know, it's like, there's a lot of things like that that go on in your head.

But it's necessary before you return to, uh, Mr. Beast burger.

Well, what is like a, since we're on the topic, what is a perfect day in the life, perfectly

productive day in the life of Mr. Beast look like?

Oh boy.

Well, I mean, or like a stand, I mean, the perfectly productive day is we film a main

channel video because those get a hundred million a pop.

I mean, it doesn't really get any better than that.

What about like the average day when you're not on the set and you're like, because you're

running a lot of things, right?

Yeah.

So right now we have our snack brand, feastables, we have a restaurant chain, Beast burger.

And then we basically, which we haven't even really launched any product yet, but we have

the, the data company that I was showing you where we're going to roll out some tools for

creators.

And then we have the reaction channel, the gaming channel, the main channel, and then

we have my charity, which also has a channel.

Um, and so kind of how I've structured my life right now, uh, is whatever I have free

time.

I kind of go, Hey guys, Jimmy's got an hour from 2pm to 3pm and everyone's just like,

I need this.

I need this.

And this channel is like, I need this thing filmed or, you know, whatever the guy who runs

my tiktok.

So I need this tiktok filmed or, um, you know, Beast burger is like, I need this menu item

approved.

We need to talk about this marketing thing.

And then we kind of just look at what everyone needs and we're like, that one looks like the

most important.

We'll do that.

And then, so it's just kind of like, you know, if I just did that for every company

in a day, then that's optimal if I just kind of like an optimal day for me would be going

down to eight companies and just whatever they're like two to three biggest pain points

or things to need from me and just doing those based on priority and then trying to keep

it as short as possible to just the things that you're needed on.

It doesn't get more optimal than that.

If I clear the bottlenecks or some bottlenecks for all my companies, then it's, yeah, that's

a perfect day.

Yeah.

I mean, even just me because you're like, you're showing me around and you're being

a great and gracious host, but on top of that, you're just doing all these meetings.

You basically, I felt bad at some points.

I was like, oh, I just tricked him into going to meetings with me.

He's like my little meeting buddy.

Yeah.

I mean, it was fun.

It was fun to see how effectively you've delegated, you basically trust the team to do a really

good job on the various things and there's just a strong team that's able to carry the

flag on all the different tasks from the brainstorming and the main channel to the reacts and so on.

Yeah.

It's really interesting.

I mean, it's really interesting what it takes to build a team like that because you very

quickly build a very large team that's able to scale.

It's just very scary because it's my first, I'm 24 and I think I was telling you this

earlier.

It's funny because six years ago, I had to raise my hand to go use the bathroom and

now I'm in charge of hundreds of people and entertain hundreds of millions of people and

so it is crazy just how quick it comes up and I wish I was a little bit older so I could

have ran a couple of companies and failed a few companies in the past and learn from

those and apply those here because I know for a fact, when I'm 34, I'm 24 now, when

I'm 34, I'll know so much more about running a business and scaling and hiring and how

to lead people and better effectively communicate and all these different skill sets that will

make me a better leader that that's the only thing that sucks is I just don't have those

because I just haven't been through the lessons and I just have such a lucrative thing on

my plate right now and it just sucks that I have to learn the lessons with the lucrative

thing.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

I already have so much influence, so much impact, but you have effectively scaled.

What lessons do you draw from that hard to effectively scale as a 24 year old?

Yeah, that's something I feel like I actually could give a lot of value to, to young people

who are doing it.

Like older people who have built five companies or whatever they do, I probably couldn't,

they're going to be like, oh, this is so obvious, but for younger first time business owners,

you kind of just experiment to be honest and for us, like it's just a new space.

No one had really ever scaled up a hundred person team to build, make content on YouTube.

So there wasn't no, I spent all this time, like I hired one person from Disney at one

point to come in and help and obviously that was a dumb idea looking back on it, but, you

know, I thought, oh, they make great stuff, people want to watch and they come over here

and help me build a team and, you know, they build it more of the traditional way and not

like how it should be online and, and so then it's like, okay, now I'm not trying to trash

people like they all tried their best, but then I hire this one person who does this

different type of media and runs a hundred person team and then you come in here and

they try to build it that way and they don't really listen to your value or see the difference

and I tried basically for building this company with like four or five different people who

worked in different veins of media and, you know, every single time it just like they just

don't get it and they like they don't understand my world and the, the eventual solution was

just like, throw up my sleeves and do it myself, you know, with like James or a hit man and

just like, no, no one's ever done this and like, no one's going to just give us a golden

carrot and tell us how to build this company.

We got to figure it the fuck out ourselves and you have to kind of build up people from

scratch then.

Yeah, exactly.

All the stuff I was talking about earlier and all the lessons I learned along the way

and so for me, that was a big part of like, stop trying to have someone build this company

for me and just do it myself because it's scary.

Like I spent my whole life studying YouTube videos of virality, not business building,

but fuck it.

I was like, I guess we just got to do it ourselves and that's where things really start to click

and we got the exponential growth and we started getting the right people and training them

the right way and, you know, just throwing conventional stuff out the door and focusing

on what's actually practical for YouTube, which is just completely different than traditional

media.

So you train people and then those people train people and so on.

Yeah, I mean, it's just even like, you know, how you do the lighting on sets or like how

you do the audio or, you know, not writing scripts.

So you know, we're just not as efficient with our filming.

Like sometimes I have to have 30 cameras running.

Why?

Because it's not scripted.

I don't know what Chris is going to do when we start filming.

He might run over there, but guess what?

We got to have it planned because there's only one shot.

I can't, you know, tell him not to do that.

Yeah, that's the shooting, but then there's also the editing.

Yeah.

And then there's the editing as well and not having guard rails and kind of, you know,

at the end of the day, it's whatever I want.

The video, their job is to make a video that they think I'll like because it's my channel,

but, you know, you can achieve that kind of however.

And so it's just, everything's just different, you know, it's much more, I guess, like a

startup as opposed to.

Are you often surprised like with the result?

Like you think a certain, like we watched the video today, those really nice, those

different than you would have potentially edited it.

Yeah.

I'm surprised by like a decision that it makes like, okay, that's not the way I would have

done it, but it's actually, this is a cool idea.

Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

The thing, my biggest fear is I don't ever want to get trapped in like a bubble of, you

know, because we are getting a hundred million views of video on the main channel.

Like, but I don't want to get in this feedback loop of just my ideas are great or I can not

feedback loop, but stop learning and improving because it is easy sometimes to be like, well,

we're doing is working.

We need to just keep doing it.

I want to keep learning and trying new things.

And I guess one way I'd put it is like, you don't, when you're on a come up or you're

growing, you don't want to test new things once you start to plateau or have a downtrend

because if you're like, you know, you, you're skyrocketing, right?

You're up, up, up.

And then you level off and you start to go down and you're like, oh, this isn't working

more.

Let's start experimenting.

Well, if you have a bad experiment, now you're in like a tailspin, your nose diving

and you have one more bad experiment, you're like, screwed, kind of, I'm oversimplifying.

You want to test things while you're still growing to keep the growing from happening

because once you like have, you know, again, very oversimplifying that like, you know,

kind of level off, you do a couple of tests that go wrong and my you're like, screwed,

you know, you're already out the door.

Now you're just confirming that you're out the door and online entertainment.

So that's kind of how I see it.

So I think it's very imperative that you're constantly always experimenting and trying

things, even if you're getting crazy, unheard of growth.

And so that outside of the thing that brought you to the dance, you just dived right into

Mr. Beasburger and Feastables, this is a whole nother industry.

Like what was that like?

Well, so Beasburger, we kind of, it was supposed to be like just a pop-up, like we just partnered

with someone who had 300 restaurants and we're just like, you know, let's just sell

Beasburgers for a day or two, let's see what happens.

We didn't really think it would be as big as it was, but those first, like that first

day, you know, we do six figures in sales and they all sell out and they're running

to local Walmart.

They can't keep up with the demand.

And it's like, okay, well, maybe let's just leave it open a week, whatever.

And we're just doing crazy revenue and it's like, okay, well, let's add some more restaurants

and let's just leave them open for a month.

And we're just still doing six figures a day.

And it kind of just went from this thing that was, I don't know, it wasn't really, I

didn't really plan on running a restaurant chain, but here I am.

But didn't that in some sense also open your mind to something like Feastable?

Feastable is something I've always wanted to do because I think just in general, American

snacks are just full of so much horrible ingredients, to be honest, and they're not, I don't know,

I feel like there also just hasn't been any innovation in American snacks in quite a

while.

And so that's just something I've always been pretty passionate about.

We built that from scratch, so we hired the CEO and built a team around them.

And we spent probably over two and a half years before we even launched, just like building

the right team, figuring things out and making sure it was actually ran the way I wanted,

which Feastable has just been crushing.

It's very interesting.

This is something I've never talked about publicly, but having products in retail, it's like,

before Feastable, everything I had done was online.

So if you wanted anything from the quote-quote piece brand, you'd have to buy it online and

ship it to you.

But Feastable's now that, because our first product, Chocobars, we started putting that

in retail locations.

So like, for example, Walmart, it's crazy.

It doesn't make sense how if you're, which I guess it does for, because we get a hundred

million views of videos.

So a lot of people know us.

If I go stand on Walmart, those people recognize me and ask for photos.

If I stood there long enough, I could take 150 photos today in Walmart or 200, whatever

it is.

So obviously it makes sense.

Those people go for Feastables, but then you just multiply that by every Walmart in America.

It just gets so crazy and I didn't think we'd be doing the kind of revenue we are and we're

about to launch in some other, I don't know if I'm allowed to say it, so whatever, but

other big retail locations and convenience stores and by the end of next year, we could

be in like 40, 50,000 locations and the numbers just don't make sense.

What are some interesting challenges about scaling there that surprised you?

The biggest problem, which I didn't think would be was just keeping the shelves in Walmart

stock, to be honest.

So that supply, the supply chain.

It was brutal.

Well, even then, sometimes you get them the stuff and it takes them a day or two to put

it out in that specific location and I had to stop promoting it because every time I'd

mentioned it, 40% of people would just be like, it's not there.

It's not in Walmart or I can't buy it.

And so there was like a three-ish month period where I just didn't promote Fiestals because

I was scared that someone would go buy it and it's just not there.

And so it took us a very long time to catch up to the demand and also, it's not like we

have unlimited money.

But now we're relatively caught up in keeping up, but it's going to be interesting because

now this year in 2023, we're going to basically 10X the amount of locations are in.

And we're going to try to launch new products, so we're in for an interesting ride.

But yeah, I just hate, I hate when I tell people, you know, like, hey, go try this product.

And then they go in their local Walmart and eventually other places and it's not there.

It's just so brutal, you know, they made that whole journey out there and they can get it.

And so that was really it.

Besides that, nuts, it's been doing way better than I ever thought.

You've talked to a couple places about maybe doing mobile games or computer games in the

future.

Yeah.

Is that something you're still considering?

Yes.

Because, you know, do you normally talk with people as much as we talk beforehand?

Is that?

No.

No, that was the problem.

We spent all day today.

Talking about stuff.

I just looked in my head, everything you asked me is stuff we already talked about.

Not really.

Well, no, no, not everything.

I take it back.

But sorry.

The last two questions.

Yes.

And so it's just funny because.

What?

No, I tried.

It's okay.

There's a different style of asking those questions because I on purpose didn't dig further.

Would you?

I could tell.

Yeah.

I could tell you.

Okay.

This is the first time I've ever talked to somebody as much as I did with you beforehand.

On the same day.

I know.

We spent all day together.

We're talking like three hours.

And I only slept one hour.

Yeah.

Literally, it's funny.

This is a hilarious and awesome social experiment.

I picked him up from his hotel and I just like harassed him all day to hang out with

me.

And then here we are now.

I love it.

I was secretly recording the whole time just so you know, I'm just kidding.

Anyway, so what was the question?

The blogging.

Yeah.

So the interesting thing is with Beast Burger and Feastables that there's physical goods

as opposed to like making mobile games or PC game, whichever one we end up doing, which

is software.

And I actually have a giant international audience.

Like most of my audience is obviously outside of America.

And so the problem we're running into is it just takes time to build up the supply chain

and get Feastables in Southeast Asia, get Feastables in India, get Feastables in Brazil

and Mexico and all these other places where we have giant pockets of our audience.

And same thing with Beast Burger.

It's just, it's going to take probably years unless we partner with someone who already

has a distribution, which we're figuring out.

But the beauty of software is I can make a hypothetical game or whatever we end up doing

and all my fans can, you know, use it tomorrow, the day I mention it.

And so if I promote something in a video to a hundred million people and it's like a,

you know, basically like a game, they can all download it.

So they're, you know, but if I promote a Feastables bar right now, it's only in America

because we're struggling just to keep up with American demand.

We haven't even gotten the chance to go outside of America.

So I alienate a majority of my audience and it feels sort of shitty to just, you know,

mention something that most of them can't buy.

But on the flip side, you can't just spawn this crazy infrastructure and just have tens

of millions of bars and all your products in every single store across the world before

you promote it.

So you can't put the egg before the chicken.

And so it's like, that's what I'm excited about.

I want to get into less physical stuff and more stuff that everyone in my audience can

actually use.

This is the thought process.

It's the social element of the gaming too, because it's not unlike Feastables, like that's

a product you consume.

You missed it.

When you're sending it for this, we were doing some, basically just laying out everything

that we're planning for.

So our enthophases were, were wanting to start hiring the team to build it and we're kind

of just laying out the game.

And I was actually really curious to get your thoughts, but I can't say it because whatever

I say, someone's just going to take it and run with it.

But I have a pretty good idea about the kind of games you're thinking about.

Yeah.

I mean, I can imagine.

We also talked a little bit about it.

It's super awesome.

I mean, what?

I did.

So much good talks.

All right.

The juicy talks happened to you.

She's like, I got to go set up.

Well, you know, I already heard a lot of awesome stuff.

I mean, but that is a different kind of team you would need to hire.

Is that a little nerve wracking, like going into a new field and trying to.

A little bit.

But then I remember stuff like, like Steve Jobs didn't know how to code, right?

And you know, he just, he just knew what a good product was.

And I feel like as someone who wasted so much of his life playing video games, I have a good

sense of it.

And that might be ignorance.

Yeah.

That's really important, right?

It's not about coding.

It's about what makes for a good game.

Exactly.

And again, that might genuinely be ignorance.

And maybe I end up, you know, getting in the butt because of what I'm saying now, but

I think just like with YouTube, I just want to obsess over making a great product and

things that I think my audience will love.

And I think as long as I keep that as my north star, it'll do well.

What is the path to being worth a hundred billion look like?

There's a path to being worth a hundred billion look like.

I don't know.

Okay.

I'm going to pause here, 24, and there's so much awesome scaling.

So many great ideas.

You think about different trajectories, what those possible trajectories might look like.

Yeah.

I mean, if the goal was to just be worth a hundred billion dollars, yes.

I mean, my goal, I'm a broken record.

It's to make the best video possible because I know whatever else I want will come, obviously.

So the video is the foundation.

Yeah, exactly.

So to path to a hundred billion dollars is to keep getting a hundred million views of

it.

You know what I mean?

Or more.

Yeah, or more.

Exactly, if we can keep growing.

But if we can keep feasible growing and we eventually spend international, one day we're

in a hundred thousand retail locations and we're selling the same amount of units per

skews like we're currently doing, I mean, that would crush.

And then obviously, ideally one day we open up hundreds of beast burgers.

We get it where we churn out like Supercell, a couple of hit games.

I don't want to make dozens or hundreds of games.

I just want to make games that are just great.

And we rarely drop them while we do their bangers.

And just whatever other stuff we end up doing, all that combined.

I mean, it's just interesting because what's a show that's pooled a hundred million views

per episode basically like we're doing?

Like the Super Bowl gets praised because they get a hundred million viewers, but I can't

think of a show maybe in reruns or something.

But it's also a show that has a singular kind of figure that you can now use as a...

Like I don't have a network tell me what to do.

I don't have anyone.

Like I can do whatever I want.

So it's a very interesting position because I put out content and a hundred million people

show up.

And then I also have a gaming channel.

I put out content and 15 million people show up and a reaction.

I put out content and 10 million people show up and have a TikTok and I put out content

and on average 20 million people show up.

And like, so as long as I can keep that going and then we build these businesses, it's like

it's honestly pretty scary to see what will happen over the years because Feastable's

launched last year, 2022.

So it's a relatively new thing.

And BeastBurger, we just started scaling up the physical side and we haven't obviously

even launched any mobile games yet.

So think about the antivises of it.

I don't see a world where my YouTube channels are relevant in the next couple of years.

I just, this is what I live for.

And so if I can keep that going and then really start to expand these businesses that leverage

off of it, then yeah, I mean hopefully there's a day one where I can give away a billion dollars

in a video.

Honestly.

Yeah.

That would be one hell of a video.

Let me ask you the ridiculous question.

Since you went from being broke to being rich, although you keep spending all your money,

does money buy happiness?

How has money changed sort of your contentment, your happiness in life?

It's money buy happiness.

No, not, I mean, to a point, yes.

But once you can take care of your health, you can take care of like any immediate dangers

and you can take care of your family relatively, no, it doesn't.

But those things do.

Like when I first came into money, one of the first things I did was retire my mom.

And like that brought me tons of happiness, you know what I mean?

And like, you know, if my brother had a medical emergency and we couldn't afford it and I

made money to afford it, that'd bring tons of happiness.

So once you take care of those basic necessities, so we'll say make over hypothetically a million

dollars, no, it really doesn't.

Like adding an extras here, going from 10 million to 100 million or whatever it is,

makes no difference.

So you're given that or just fearless in spending the money?

Yeah.

Well, let me reframe.

I guess it could for some people, if you really, I don't know, you spent your whole

life obsessing over cars, it probably would bring you a little bit of joy to buy a nice

Lamborghini.

I'm coming more from the frame of mind of an entrepreneur, someone who's really obsessed

with business building.

For me and a lot of my friends and people I hang around, what brings us happiness is

winning and building companies and changing the world.

That is fun.

It's a complex problem.

You can wake up every day and it gives you something to obsess over and devote your life

to where it's just having money doesn't.

Well, one interesting question I have for you psychologically, so because you have become

wealthy and because you give, like part of your work is giving away a lot of money, do

you find it hard to find people you can trust?

Good question, do people see you basically as a source of money as opposed to another

human being?

It's weird because you would think, yes, but I feel like I also know the right places

to look.

But yeah, if I just walked into Target and tried to make friends with 10 random people,

of course, you got to, so you can kind of sense, oh yeah, you can sense the right thing

in the heart.

So quickly.

Yeah.

It's so obvious.

I don't even want to go into the descriptions, but, well, honestly, a lot of my friends

are like Chandler, I played Little League with him and Tyler, the guy, I mean, I went

to school with him.

Chris, he was my first subscriber.

Carl was here after we got big, but whatever, he's friends with the boys and it is a lot

of my closer friends, even like my YouTube friends, I knew before I was big.

So maybe there is some merit to that.

Maybe it is.

I don't know.

I've never really put too much thought into it.

Maybe there's a reason I hang around a lot of these people I knew before I got big because

it's much easier.

And they help you keep your radar sharp of who can and can't be trusted because you

know you can trust them.

Yeah.

It's difficult when you become richer and richer and more powerful.

Well, one thing you'll also find when you get rich, not even richer, but more fame.

One thing I thought is as I climbed this ladder of YouTube and got bigger, I thought there

would be tons of people like me.

So that takes the kamikaze approach to building a business.

You just throw all your money in it.

You throw all your time.

You throw all your energy.

You throw everything.

You're just like, fuck it.

It's this?

I'm dead.

And I thought there would be hundreds of me.

And there isn't.

There isn't.

I mean, there's maybe one or two.

And I talk to those motherfuckers every single day.

I'm sick and tired of talking to them, but I love them.

But it's just so interesting because every level I got up, I'd get a million subscribers.

I'd be like, all right, where is all these guys and the million subscribers that are fucking

psychopaths and then, you know, you know, people become like conservative as they get

more.

Especially as they get bigger.

Yeah.

And, you know, 20 million subscribers, 30.

It's like every step of the way, it's like, I just got more and more lonely, to be honest.

So do you, you know, it sounds cliche and you hear that kind of shit in movies and you're

like, oh, that's not how it works, but it is like, there's, there's just not many people

that just want to give up everything, go all in, then obsess over making the greatest

goddamn videos every single day of their life.

Like they're really hard to find.

And be able to sacrifice everything for that video.

Yeah.

Like basically, you put all the money right back in.

Yeah.

Or the people doing it, they're on just a small scale.

And if I talk to them, it's just 99.9% of the time I'm teaching them things and it's

like.

So it's lonely because there's not too many people, especially in the creative space

that are as crazy as you.

Yeah.

It is 100%.

It's, it's so, it's not what I was expecting.

I was expecting there to be a lot of people like me, but.

Well, I guess the guy we talked to Elon Musk is a bit like you in that sense.

Yeah.

In a different domain.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Just willingness to put it all back in.

And that's why I've found right now, a lot of the people I relate to don't even make

YouTube videos.

Like, so just like, I'm, I'm veering more and more away from fellow content creators and

more to just, you know, I'm just looking for those other people who just share a little

bit of it.

So I don't feel so fucking crazy all the time, like, you know what I mean?

It's like people I feel normal around and they tend to just be doing the randomest things,

but, you know, loving it.

Well, I think that's really inspiring.

It's, it's like the Bukowski line, find what you love and let it kill you is really put

everything, put everything into the thing you love.

That's like the way to really create special stuff, but it's also the way to live out your

life.

You have to be careful given this advice because they're like, they're like bodybuilders.

So it'll be like, just go to the gym.

Be disciplined.

I'm disciplined.

Go to the gym.

But I would argue for those people, it's like, it's not even disciplined.

They just enjoy weightlifting, right?

Cause there are people who are jacked, but they don't make much money or run a business,

right?

If they're that disciplined, they would, they would be hitting every area of their life.

They just really like business.

And there's people like me who just to an extreme level love building companies, right?

It's not even disciplined for me.

It's just in my blood.

It's what I wake up.

I don't think about it.

I don't push myself.

I don't need to watch a fucking motivational video to go work.

I just do it.

It's programmed in me at this point.

And I couldn't imagine a world where I don't wake up and do it every day.

But I think that a little bit of it is genetics and just how you're hardwired.

Not that it can't be trained or taught and not that, you know, and obviously the friend

group you're in influences these things and over time I think can change it.

But someone's just not going to be able to flip a switch and then just start doing a

kamikaze approach to building a business.

Just like a lot of people try to flip a switch and start bodybuilding and quit majority of

the time, you know, it's just not innate to them.

But I think a lot of us have the capacity to do that in some domain.

Yeah.

I think if you went about it strategically, if you surrounded yourself with fellow like-minded

people and, you know, slowly over time switched it.

But if you just try to like hardcore do it, you're just going to lose your mind.

Do you ever worry about your mental health?

Did you take step to protect it?

To, yeah, to like for the long run to make sure you have the mental strength to go on?

Yes.

Yeah.

The best thing for my mental health was giving into my innate nature to work and the most

depressed I get is when I try to restrict it and like I don't work weekends or I don't

work this day.

What's best for me is just to work when I feel like working and then just not work when

I don't like and just have no constraints because there are just some nights where I

don't want to sleep and for whatever reason I feel compelled to go all night.

Whatever.

Like just do it.

You know, do whatever you want.

I tell them my like working brain and I just give into it and I feel that's where I feel

the happiest and then, you know, it's typically like when I'm really in the grind mode, it

will be like seven or eight days and just nonstop going, going and then it's like, I'll

realize like, oh, I need some recharge time and then go fucking binge it a season of

anime.

Yeah.

Listen to your body.

But that's the thing like people will tell you don't work weekends or don't do this or

don't work past this or blah, blah, give you all these constraints.

But for me, and it's unconventional, I just give into it.

I think there's something really to be said for that.

I try to surround myself with people that like when I don't, when I pull an all nighter,

they don't go like you should get more sleep.

There's a reason I pulled that all nighter.

Like if I'm really passionate about something, they say they basically encourage it because

I have no problem getting sleep and getting rest.

What I need in my life is people that encourage you to kind of keep going, keep going with

the stuff you're passionate about.

People, they don't want that life and they probably shouldn't.

It's not good for you.

But yeah, if you hang around people, like just whatever different people you're going

to feel crazy and it's going to wear on you.

Whereas if you're around similar people, it just, it's so much easier.

If you, I've started weightlifting more and like one thing that's helped is just having

Jack people around because they naturally just eat healthier.

They do.

They naturally just have freaking grilled chicken and all this shit and high protein meals.

And it's just like easier for me to just piggyback and be like, oh, can you just order me whatever

you're getting?

And they're like, oh, I got to go to the gym and I'll be like, oh, shit, I'll just join

you.

And it's like, it's just, it's cheat codes, you know, just surround yourself with people

that you want to be.

And it makes it like 70% easier, in my opinion.

It's like, that is the cheat code to life.

And I wish, obviously your audience is definitely a lot older, but you know, to the older people

listening, like if you have, are in a place of mentorship for someone younger or have

influence over younger people, you should really try to drill that in their heads.

Like the people, they are around 100% dictates the outcome.

I would not be on 120 million subscribers if I didn't find, when I was around a million,

I had a couple of friends that were just also psychopaths, you know, I outgrew them.

But at the time it was great and I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for them.

And just all along the way, the friends that I hung out with had such a dramatic impact

on where I am.

Like I probably have 80 million less subscribers, you know, if it was, if I wasn't so strategic

about hanging out with people that I had value to and they also had value to me.

So the advice for young people would be to be very selective about the people you saw

and so on.

So selective.

It's crazy.

Like Chris, you know, he's, he's really funny and that's why he's great for the videos.

And part of why he's so funny is he consumes copious amounts of cartoons and just funny

content.

And so I'll find, like when I spend more time with Chris, I'll start just quoting these

weird cartoons and shows and like my speech will literally change just after like a week

of spending more time with him.

It has like, it's like that quick of an effect, you know, now picture that over the course

of years.

I mean, yeah, it has such a huge influence.

Like pluck one of their friends out and hypothetically put me in there and you know, there's no doubt

if they're trying to become a content creator, there are odds of success is 10 X, right?

Obviously you can't do that, but you got to find your closest version of it and just be

selective.

Yeah.

But this also applies not to see younger, older people too agree, but they, it's, it's

even more, I like, when I was a teenager, I just, you know, I couldn't relate to many

people.

I just thought it was like a freaking nature because no one was obsessed with building

businesses or any of this kind of stuff.

And so like back then, you know, that advice would have been helpful, maybe not that particular,

but just knowing that there are, you know, it's not that you're a freaking nature.

You just haven't found people that have the same interests.

So the task is not to feel sorry for yourself or somehow change yourself.

It's more to find the...

Find people you fit in with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Assuming which, you know, you're not getting compliments, like, I assume it's not something

bad.

Right?

Like if you're hobbyist shooting things, you know, or shooting things you shouldn't

be shooting, you know, don't find people that encourage that.

But outside of that, for sure, actually has an answer to what is the best advice someone

ever gave you.

You said, you're crazy until you're successful, then you're a genius.

100%.

All along the way.

People who gave me so much, you know, advice on why I shouldn't be doing it, why I'm crazy.

Every step of the way, people wanted to tell me why I shouldn't be doing this and should

get alive, should stop being too obsessed, everything under the book.

And then once I'm successful, those same people are like, dang, you're a genius.

Yeah.

Wow.

You really, you pulled that off.

Those are probably the same people that will give you advice now.

You're the most successful video creator of all time.

Stick to that.

Anytime you want to do something new, right?

Yeah.

They'll like pressure you not to do, you know, feastables or mobile gaming or whatever

lays beyond.

Yeah.

It's funny how people don't.

Well, honestly, they're the type of people I just don't talk to anymore.

Yeah, sure.

I wouldn't even know what they have to say now.

The most people on the team are like, yes, and they're like, whatever the idea you got,

they're with it.

No, I mean, it's weird.

We actually have a, my team pushes back on me pretty hardcore, which I want, I don't

want Yes, man.

And they're like, they're James, you know, the CEO who helped me build all this, he's

very adamant.

Like we're not Yes, man.

And he trains people to really think for themselves.

And even when I give them orders, like really think like, is this optimal?

Is there context or information Jimmy could be missing that I can provide that can help

them make a more updated decision?

Like I'm not God, you know what I mean?

Like I'm human and I make errors.

And so don't take what I say as the Bible.

So even like in the brainstorming and so on, they can, they can push back.

Yeah, you can see it like Tyler, anytime I said something, he would give me feedback

and push back, which is what I want.

I don't want him just to be like, yes, you're a fucking genius.

Good job, Jimmy.

You know, I don't need that.

You know, I need negatives.

You talked about being in a relationship.

What role, Jimmy, does love playing the human condition?

I think role is, well, big thing is love can be scary because this is, you know, the human

you're going to spend the most amount of time with in your life, you know, and so for project

that over 50 years, they can be a liability or an asset.

I love the metrics.

You know, I love, no, but seriously, it's got to be someone that makes you better.

For me, I can't truly love someone that doesn't make me better because in the long run, yeah,

across, across the years.

Because if not, then it's like, it's a negative, you know, to everything I've spent my life

building, but luckily, I'm very happy with the part I haven't, like we were talking about

before.

I do think she makes me better.

There's a lot of actually positives I've noticed.

Even things as simple as like, you know, I struggle to turn off my brain at night because

I'm just thinking about all the businesses and how we could do better or whatever weird

thing I have on my mind.

But, you know, just chatting with her and hanging out with her helps me like basically

just shut my brain off and like mellow out and even like, there's just a ton of little

things like that that I've noticed are positives, especially when you really look for them that

are easy to gloss over, if you're not.

And so for me, yeah, I have someone who I think is very beautiful, very intelligent,

makes me better.

He's constantly pushing me, okay with me, working hard, makes me smarter and just all

these different things that I think for me, love just makes me a better person, you know

what I mean?

Which makes me love her even more.

Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

What advice would you give on finding something like that?

Just really don't give up until you find someone that, you know, there's so many people on

the planet.

I mean, there really is.

There's billions of...

The odds are in your favor.

Yeah, like just don't settle and find someone that, you know, makes you happy.

Yeah, just like you said, surround yourself with people that make you a better person.

In the same case, surround yourself with that one special person that really makes you a

better person.

And maybe that's just an entrepreneurial brain looking at it.

Not everyone wants to hyper-optimize their life like me, but for me, to like truly love

someone, they have to make me a better person.

In every way, yeah.

Yeah.

Well, what do you hope you're 24?

We started talking about death.

Let's finish talking about death.

What do you hope your legacy is?

When you look a hundred years from now and the AI has completely taken over and the aliens

visit and discuss with the AI what this last of special humans that existed on Earth was

like, what do you hope they say about you?

It's a deep one, probably just that, because it's hard, right?

Like I said before, Elon is over double my age.

I could live every second I've lived up to this point in my life and still not even be

Elon's age.

So I have so much time.

I just hope whatever it is that it's a net positive on the world and it impacts billions

of people in a positive way that makes lasting change.

So you admire people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk for having sort of reached for that goal

as well?

Yeah, of course.

To help millions.

I mean, the iPhone is the most successful product ever invented.

It's hard not to admire what he created.

The same with sort of as Johnny Ive talks about, like the passion, the effort they put

into the designing the iPhone, that like little bit of love is transferred to the whole world.

Like they get to experience the joy of that from the designer.

It's what a beautiful thing to do.

I mean, I couldn't think of anything better to create something that even after you're

dead for decades just has such a profound impact on basically half the human population.

It's wild.

It brings joy to people.

Yeah.

Well, I hope you do just that, man.

You've already done it for millions and millions and millions and millions of people and I

hope you keep doing it.

I can't, like it's so exciting to see what happens this year and next year.

I know.

I'm excited too.

Like the sky's the limit.

Yeah.

I can't, I mean, the videos but all the other businesses you're in and you as a human being

as you grow, I can tell I know as everyone knows you have a kind heart and the fact that

you're really damn good at actually using that kind heart to help a lot of people.

It's awesome to see, man.

I appreciate it.

More importantly, before we go, are we going to play Dune tonight?

Some board games?

I'm not going to play Dune.

I have to.

I have one hour.

You don't want to play board games with me?

I want to.

I'll play board games.

You don't want to play board games?

If only I wasn't an idiot and actually flew to the right airport.

If you don't play board games with me, they're going to dislike the video.

That's it.

Thanks for listening to this conversation with MrBeast.

To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.

And now let me leave you with some words from the poet and philosopher, Reverend Dranath

Tagore.

Reach high for stars lie hidden in you.

Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.