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

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Mr. Beast, the mastermind behind some of the most epic and popular videos ever made. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description is the best way to support this podcast. We got House of McAdamius for a satiating and delicious snack, 8th sleep for you guessed it, naps, and better help for mental health. Choose wisely, my friends. Snacks, naps, or mental health. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting,

Starting point is 00:00:37 but if you skip them, please do check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by House of McAdamias. 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 of a period of a few days. And was a happier man for it. This month, I'm much stricter on my diet and trying to be much more responsible with my consumption of snacks. I think moderation is key for that. moderation is key for that. But in general, I think, first of all, macadamia, to me, I think, is one of the more delicious nuts, but it is definitely the

Starting point is 00:01:35 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 macadamia as like the one that has all these nutrients and all that kind of stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of science. You can look it up. I think there's like omega seven, so whatever, those different kinds of fats, it doesn't matter. The points are delicious and the raw ingredient or the mechidemia nut that house mechidinus provides is just delicious and of course

Starting point is 00:02:10 they do all kinds of snacks around that. And my task whenever I do an ad read or talk to anybody like my neighbors or friends about house mechidinus is not to do any sexual innuendo. That's job number one. My brain is that of a silly person. At heart, I'm still a child, and I will forever remain a child. Like that time-weight song, I don't want to grow up. Maybe that's the name of the song or the lyrics,

Starting point is 00:02:41 but I'm just going to go with it. And there's a good chance to mention that Tom Ways 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 mecha Damian nuts with child-like join my eyes. Go to houseofmecha Damians.com slash Lex to get 20% off your first order. This episode is also brought to you by 8th Sleep and its new pod 3 mattress. There's been a few days over the past, let's say three weeks,

Starting point is 00:03:28 where I've been extremely stressed because of some of the 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 it 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.

Starting point is 00:04:18 It's 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 nights, I'll feel better. Anyway, that's why you want to really make sure that the surface, the mattress, all kinds of technology that you surround yourself with in terms of sleep.

Starting point is 00:04:45 You use the best stuff and that's why I look forward to sleeping on that cool surface that an A-sleep cover provides. It's just incredible. I look forward to nap since the sleep is just because of that A-sleep cover. Check it out and get special savings when you go to 8sleep.com slash Lex. This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp spelled H-E-L-P-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H-H At least my mind can go on. One moment I feel blissful and happy and everything is beautiful and one moment I feel cranky and just a little bit down. And one of the things I've learned is to just kind of allow the passage of time to cure all things.

Starting point is 00:05:43 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 the therapist. You know, there's some deep ocean of feeling there that may lay unexplored and it's, I think, beneficial to explore it with the good therapist. I think one of the most accessible easiest ways to get access to a good therapist, a licensed professional therapist, is better help. That's why my big support 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 better help does. Check them out at betterhelp.com slash lex and save on your first month. This is the Lex Reuben Podcast to support it,

Starting point is 00:06:33 please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends, here's Mr. Beast, the brilliant mastermind behind some of the most popular videos ever created. Do you think you'll ever make a video that gets one 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 the Squid Game video with enough time. 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 a hundred million views in a month. So those four projected over 10 years because YouTube's not going anywhere. Probably one of those. So over time they don't necessarily plateau.

Starting point is 00:07:25 What's interesting, we're literally jumping around here. Yeah, let's go. 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 like, if you make a really good video, it's just so evergreen and it never dies.

Starting point is 00:07:43 Because YouTube, 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, you know, even two years down the road, then they'll just keep serving it and never stop. You know, 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 a billion?

Starting point is 00:08:11 Let me do some math real quick. So around 120. Do you think about this? No, I don't. Honestly, I, because one thing you'll find if you want to gain subscribers, if you want to get views, if you want to make money, and 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 like focusing on all these arbitrary vanity metrics, I just kind of focused on the one thing that gets me all that, which is make good

Starting point is 00:08:36 videos. But and that, 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 like we're doing around 10 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

Starting point is 00:08:58 before I go to the dark questions. So now we have dark questions. But if you wanted to hook them, you would start off with the dark questions. That's how you get them. OK. Well, let me ask you about the A 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

Starting point is 00:09:21 45% of people said yes, that's at least at the time I checked 850,000 people committing murder for just 8.5 billion dollars in total. So what do you learn about human nature from that? Yes, a good question Honestly, this is like late at night when I threw that up to you. I was just like, huh? This will be a funny thing. I assumed it'd be 90% known, like 10% yes, but there are a lot of serious people

Starting point is 00:09:48 for you guys listening. I just did this random Twitter poll. 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 sweet were like, hell yeah, why not? And I was just not expecting that. And so I don't really know.

Starting point is 00:10:02 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, you know, obviously a lot of 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 listen to Dan Carlin's hardcore history podcast. He has an episode on painful taming, 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

Starting point is 00:10:42 of us that, for example, if something like a YouTube or a different platform streamed a public execution or streamed a 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 Tracted to that drama and especially the most extreme versions of that drama. And so I think part of the laws reveal something that's actually true in that poll that like your answer so much better than mine. Do you think about that maybe even with this good game like so I think how many how many of you used this with game currently have 300 million? Yeah, it's like this.

Starting point is 00:11:25 So just imagine a thought experiment, how many views that video would get if it was like real. Yeah, because I mean YouTube is like, well, turn a blind eye. We won't take it down. Yeah, I mean, I've obviously probably have billions of views. How do you think you will die and do you think it'll be during a video? Probably doing something dumb, like going to space, when I'm older, like trying to go to Mars

Starting point is 00:11:49 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 be like, you know what, let's go and something like that maybe. So not in the name of a video, just for the Hollywood.

Starting point is 00:12:07 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 gonna walk beforehand

Starting point is 00:12:21 to see if there's curvasses. So we know there's no curvasses, 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-plan for it. Same thing with beard 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

Starting point is 00:12:47 before I was, you know, for a really 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?

Starting point is 00:13:12 Well, first off, I am just glad that not everyone of your questions have to do with like views or things like that. It's nice getting different questions. So this is good. No, seriously. It's a load of it. No, but it's fine because a lot of people

Starting point is 00:13:24 just be like, how much money do you make. No, but it's fine because a lot of people just be like, how much money do you make? 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've 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

Starting point is 00:13:40 and scheduled them years in the future. And I said, I filmed one more. I was like, hi, me in a year year and the video went up a year later. And I was just like, hey, I think you'll have 100,000 subscribers. And then I did one more, 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,

Starting point is 00:13:55 but comes out in two years, is it was hi 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 are some that are scheduled, like 20 years in the future, and so if I don't dial, just move them up. And I remember, because I've filmed these though like seven years ago,

Starting point is 00:14:12 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. And because the only way the video will go up is if I'm not alive, and if I'm not alive, then I won't be able to push back to schedule of low dates. So go public automatically. And so yeah, I have a couple of those.

Starting point is 00:14:30 Like 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 up a little 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've fantasized, not fantasized, but I've dreamt about that a lot.

Starting point is 00:14:53 Like, I don't know. 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 just like I never died. I'm just there. Yeah, it's a kind of immortality, but it's also kind of troll on the concept of time.

Starting point is 00:15:16 Yeah, 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 really interesting exercise. It's cool like it shows like what you really care about I guess it's like writing a well when you're younger. You don't think about that kind of stuff But exactly my was just dumb. Yeah, my bones at a coffin. Yeah Here's this probably so serious. No, it's fun actually We we realize it's 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

Starting point is 00:15:49 when you 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. Yeah. You know, we're probably the only two people that have made videos for when we die. It's like such a niche thing in 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,

Starting point is 00:16:11 because think about it. Like there's gonna be a last tweet and a last, I don't know, Facebook posts, a last Instagram post. And yeah, 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 you're 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 dine some freak accident

Starting point is 00:16:40 To be given 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 interact. That's the opener.

Starting point is 00:16:53 Oh, I just want you to know. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, and I guess you could say 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, I don't know, talking shit about, like McDonald's, like McDonald's order. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:17:11 That's, but then you're dead. That's it, 100 years. I don't know. 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,

Starting point is 00:17:25 it's talking to the world. And 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 over for me. If I'm making a video, it's over for me. It's just an interesting thought experiment. I recommend people try it. Okay.

Starting point is 00:17:43 From a euo-fr of death, by the way? Yes. It's hard because like what if you just die and then you just see nothing forever, you know? Yeah, there's 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.

Starting point is 00:18:03 But also before you're born, you don't remember those, well, X amount of years either. So that gives me a little comfort. But, you know, it's definitely very scary. Something I'd rather not think about in time like 80. I'll deal with that problem then. 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 would 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, three hundred years old and just like set their sights on that

Starting point is 00:18:30 and then just kind of save us. So be really nice. Like 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 a hundred, a hundred, a hundred, a hundred, thirty. And then that extra time, they won't figure out some way where we could live to be 200.

Starting point is 00:18:44 Like obviously not immortal, but 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 after you're gone, there's a Mr. Beast run by Chad G.P.T. types system. Exactly.

Starting point is 00:19:02 Yeah, that consumes everything I ever said, everything I ever wrote, and I don't want that. I 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. You know, give me until 200. That will make me happy.

Starting point is 00:19:15 Well, that's funny. Who owns the identity of Mr. Beast once the physical body's gone? Like, is it illegal to create another Mr. Beast that's Chad G.P.T. based? I don't know what the laws are on that. Yeah. And once I'm dead, I don't care.

Starting point is 00:19:29 Well, but you just said you did care. I mean, there could be a, like, many Mr. Beast that are created after you're gone. Yeah. I mean, that'd be cool to be able to like train up a model and let them loose. So my content lives on, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But somehow feels like it diminishes the

Starting point is 00:19:47 volume 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 it's point. Yeah. One, 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 long, she's run it for a year. How would you change it? How would you improve it?

Starting point is 00:20:10 It's hard because, you know, obviously I'm biased because 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. I'm and wonder like, what are these? What are these 10 videos on my homepage? When I click on a video, I suggest I don't ever. I don't I don't ever open it. I'm and wonder like what are these one of these 10 videos on my homepage when I click on a video My suggest 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

Starting point is 00:20:35 I 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. But I know that's not something that's gonna 10X the growth of the platform, but if you think about it, you go to Reddit to read comments. And somehow, usually the top 20 posts on a popular Reddit post are not spam.

Starting point is 00:21:00 You know what I mean? Have you ever clicked on something on the front page of Reddit? And then most of the other people replied 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.

Starting point is 00:21:11 So like Reddit, it's so nice to click on post 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 paste it over. So the top comments and every video is the same.

Starting point is 00:21:29 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'll be amazing if YouTube invested in creating an actual community, like where people could do a high effort comments and be rewarded for it, like I read it. Yeah, like actually read it right out along the way.

Starting point is 00:21:47 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, I've noticed like any tweets I get from verified users now, they're usually

Starting point is 00:22:11 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 you should make me CEO like I tweeted.

Starting point is 00:22:42 Well I should say sort of we had, we just like a couple hours go ahead of conversation with Elon and you guys in exchange have some excellent ideas. So yeah, I legitimately think obviously you're exceptionally busy, but I legitimately think it'll be awesome if you some help participate in the future of Twitter. Yeah, it would be fun. Because there's so much possibility of different ideas. First and the sort of the content, like like dissemination hosting and all the different recommendations like the search and discovery all the things that you do as well. I think the most exciting thing is he's you know willing to move fast and so I think there's gonna be a lot of interesting things that come out of it because he's just moving quick and all of these more mature platforms just take years to do the simplest stuff and they're very bureaucratic.

Starting point is 00:23:25 And so it's gonna, I mean, it'll be interesting to see which way it goes. When you just kind of take up, 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.

Starting point is 00:23:43 Okay. I gotta get hired. What do you think about video on the platform? Do you think that's an interesting, or is it like messing with the medium, the nature of the platform? I think Twitter will always be closer to TikTok than it is to YouTube.

Starting point is 00:23:58 I gotta, at least in this current form. 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,

Starting point is 00:24:18 like why doesn't Twitter allow you to embed YouTube videos? Like why does, you should just ask Elon that. Like, I don't know if that's a YouTube thing but when a YouTube reposted 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 win win.

Starting point is 00:24:38 I mean, well, it's more of a win for Twitter because then people don't have to leave the platform. I mean, that would be the easiest. 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. But at least then right now people just post a link and it takes you off Twitter and it just kills your session time on Twitter. That's really interesting. But the, yeah, because the Twitter, whatever the dynamics of the comments, especially once the spam bots are taking care of, Twitter just works. So Reddit is a nice comment section for the internet.

Starting point is 00:25:09 It's a slower pace, more deliberate, like higher effort. Twitter's like this high-paced, like a femoral kind of stream, but there's the upvoting, the downloading works much better because you can do retweeting, right? Because the social network is much stronger

Starting point is 00:25:24 than it is on YouTube, like the interconnectivity. Yeah, on Reddit, you're gonna get the top replies are gonna be the most refined ones, where it's 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, it's a little more personal.

Starting point is 00:25:40 How do you think Twitter compares to YouTube in terms of how you see its's future on roll in 2023? I mean, I think YouTube's gonna be YouTube and not much is really gonna change But it's gonna keep growing just because you know, that's just what it does and 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 I you know a year for now an Economy is gonna be in a recession or booming. I think Twitter's kind of the same thing. One thing for certain, a lot of things are going to be rolled out, but who knows, honestly.

Starting point is 00:26:11 You responded to, you know what I'm saying? Twitter's unlikely to be able to pay creators more money than YouTube. What do you think that is? Well, yeah, because I think that Twitter responded to as one where he was saying that the users will jump over if Twitter could potentially pay more than other platforms. 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

Starting point is 00:26:42 a creator the ability to make higher CPMs than on YouTube. It's kind of crazy. Some creators in December, Q4, cause the ad rates are higher, cause the Christmas and everything, some creators literally make like $30, $40 per 1000 views. That's after YouTube's cut. It's almost like hard to think about,

Starting point is 00:26:59 like how high the RPMs get. And even then, once you pull out a finance and cars, the high CPM niches, and you move into just normal stuff. It's still just crazy. There's sure 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. You're talking about brand deals.

Starting point is 00:27:23 Brand deals is that what you would call that. So it's a brand deal.'s like part of the video. You're talking about brand deals. Brand deals, is that what you would call that? Yep. 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, just brand deals since you brought it up, integrating them well. I think that's something a lot of creators don't do.

Starting point is 00:27:38 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. Yeah. I feel like if you don't want viewers to click away I'm just going to be 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 the content. And ideally, use the money in the video to make it better.

Starting point is 00:27:56 The easiest thing you're doing when you do a brand deal is just tell people how you're using the 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 sellout 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?

Starting point is 00:28:17 Or is it more about their 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 a hundred million views of video now and I can confidently say I know how to entertain them and convert them better than these random brands.

Starting point is 00:28:36 So yeah, if they don't give us that freedom, I just won't work with them. So you have that leverage, but for smaller creators. It's a lot harder. Yeah, and they're gonna just say 45 seconds. Here's what that leverage, but for 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.

Starting point is 00:28:49 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, hey, it'd be less cringe. If people would be less likely to go, you know, tough, tough, tough 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

Starting point is 00:29:12 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. But the brand loves that. I don't like 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

Starting point is 00:29:37 It's slower paced and they like the the creator 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 integrated into the content, like put 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.

Starting point is 00:30:11 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 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?

Starting point is 00:30:32 Yeah, that's your viewers. Of the viewers on YouTube though. Yeah, most people. Okay, sure, or all of them. It's just interesting, because you're speaking very specifically like about my brand deal process. And so in my head, I'm like,

Starting point is 00:30:42 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 have this conversation, it's all I could think about. I got damn it. He's probably like 50% of these people

Starting point is 00:30:53 have no fucking clue what he's saying. And we're about the torture in 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

Starting point is 00:31:06 I've not watched the mr. Beast video. Isn't that an opportunity to like I guess is an opportunity girl I don't know honestly I was just kind of excited to hang out with you. Yeah, yeah me too It was a lot of who cares that it's like yeah, so it's kind of like having a buddy to go along to journey as I'm just kind of eating shit and doing my normal right it It was like kind of fun. And also you just say really why stuff constantly. So honestly, I never even put any thought into like that demographics or what I could gain. It's just interesting because like my retention brain

Starting point is 00:31:33 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 we'll lose? And I'm like running all those calculations of background in that whole conversation like the lock is, it's just something I can't turn off. My bells are like, air, air, this is bad.

Starting point is 00:31:50 What are the different strategies for higher retention? For your videos in general? It's like, how do you cook good food? You know what I mean? That's the same kind of question. I see, so there's so many different ways that you're, so it boils down to, I mean, do you think at the level of a story

Starting point is 00:32:06 or do you think like literally watching five seconds at a time, am I gonna tune out here? I'm gonna tune out here, I'm gonna 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,

Starting point is 00:32:24 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 in it. They're, they're immersed. And so a big like to really boil it down to a simple, I don't, you just want to get people where they're immersed in the content and then just kind of hold them

Starting point is 00:32:51 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's a nine o'clock. And I, uh, 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. He's like, no, I got it. I got it. It's gonna have to rub it in. And then today, I come to find out he flew to the wrong airport,

Starting point is 00:33:19 the airport with a, a city with a similar name to ours. Same name. Same name in a different state. And I was like, that's why he should've 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.

Starting point is 00:33:34 Yeah, I've been getting 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 got to interact with them. 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 because I could, you know, there's only one hour between me arriving and having to fly out.

Starting point is 00:33:57 So I went to a diner. There's a really kind waitress that called me honey. So that was a beautiful moment, you know. I was so confused. You tweeted about that called me honey, so that was a beautiful moment, you know, I was so confused you tweeted about that and I Steel's like like my assistant was like Lex isn't here yet, and I saw your tweet And I was like he's here. Yeah, he's like no, he's still flying. I was like four like an hour ago He just tweeted about a nice diner. Yeah Diner there's a diner in a different state and then you had to fly over here That was and then I called you, you didn't answer.

Starting point is 00:34:25 I was like, hmm. That's like something's not adding up. Yeah, I feel like a such an idiot. Apparently, the world has cities like Springfield, right? Like every single state has a Springfield. Oh, really? Well, I think so. I think that's a, that's like a Simpsons joke, right?

Starting point is 00:34:43 That like it's the city in the Simpsons, the Springfield, and I think so. I think that's a that's like a Simpsons joke right that like it's The the city and in the Simpsons the Springfield and I think every single state or most of them have a Springfield and the same is true for like George town. I think the most part I forget what the most pop it was But there's like a list of the people get when they run out of ideas. They just keep you They're your Achilles heel You know, I got to I got to meet a bunch of people from your team. There's just an incredible human beings. Let me just ask on that topic, how do you hire a great team? What have you learned about hiring for everything, for the main channel that you do, for the

Starting point is 00:35:20 React, the gaming channel, to Mr. B's 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 a thing, there's no one like plug-in 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

Starting point is 00:35:58 There's just no one you you can really pull from like sometimes I'll hire people from Game shows, right? 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

Starting point is 00:36:14 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 be good at content creation and production, then to hire someone from like traditional, which is the only way to really do it, because there's not that many YouTube channels

Starting point is 00:36:33 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.

Starting point is 00:36:47 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 skill 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 instead of saying oh I want to be working on the channel they'll be be like, oh, I hope to be working on movies. Or this and they see like working on a YouTube channel as a launch pad to go into traditional. And it's like, no, like you just don't get it.

Starting point is 00:37:12 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, but the biggest thing is like,

Starting point is 00:37:29 what do you want to be doing in 10 years? And their answer isn't making content on YouTube, or if there are answers, anything like movies or traditional stuff like that, it's like just a hell now. Like it just won't even remotely work. Oh, so you really want people to believe in the vision of YouTube? Yeah, I mean, ideally, it's like,

Starting point is 00:37:44 oh, working here, you know what I mean? So it's less about the medium and more about just being on a great team, that's doing epic stuff. Yeah, well, and yeah, the medium is well, because it's just, it's hard to put it into words, but there'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,

Starting point is 00:38:04 if we hypothetically blow up a giant car or whatever like you only have one take you know, I mean so you and it's not scripted and so you have to over film over shoot things over compensate for like the dumb way of going about it. A lot of traditional people would be like well just plan what you're going to say and just play in the angles. You can cut the cameras and have you can save 50 grain here you can save a you know 75,000 hours editing. There's in that. And it's like, yeah, but that's not authentic. That's, you know, blah, blah. You get it. It's, it's almost so obvious that it hurts to 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.

Starting point is 00:38:38 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 screams in my head, this is what you change.

Starting point is 00:38:58 Based on the million videos I've watched and all these viral videos are consumed, this is bubble blow, what 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

Starting point is 00:39:22 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 is optimal. Obviously my taste isn't the end all be all, but that's something that kind of torments me. If that makes any sense. Oh, you can't enjoy a slow moving. No, I can't.

Starting point is 00:39:37 And that's not to say there's attention on the Godfather's horrible. Yeah, no, exactly. I've tried to watch that movie like three times, but isn't that 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 and social media and YouTube right now.

Starting point is 00:39:52 Like this is 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 is data driven. So you're looking at like in terms of thumbnails and titles and different aspects of the first five, 10 seconds and throughout the video, the retention, all that you're looking at all 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. 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

Starting point is 00:40:33 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 for 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, I have so many friends who are like this,

Starting point is 00:41:07 they'll make like checklists for their editor. So, you know, this be, and this be, and you need to have like a three-part arc in 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 and the more like, you know, after 10 videos, people are in bed,

Starting point is 00:41:24 I've already seen this. So, to me, the more, like, you know, after 10 videos, people are in bed, I've already seen this. So to me, and I'm 24, you know, I'm probably, my mindset will change in 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

Starting point is 00:41:41 on all that stuff, because the more I say, the more they're in bed, oh, then that's what we do. And then, I'll say one time, like, oh, ideally there's a cut every three seconds. And then next thing, every video, there's a cut every three seconds or whatever. So it's hard because I try to give as little training, not training,

Starting point is 00:42:01 but as little facts are as possible, and more just make suggestions, if that makes you mean publicly or to a team to my team Yeah, what was so we talked about sort of teaching your voice or your style Whatever we want to call it to other people in the team so they can be kind of mr. Beast replacement So what's the process of teaching that so you don't want us? No, I got you to you're more time about like what I would call almost like cloning right like like Tyler and other people like that Yeah, so what when we were hanging out today. I was showing him how we have multiple people in the come it's it's almost like talking to the camera to have Yeah, you turn slowly to the camera. I was like it is have it is a weird to you to not be looking at the camera this whole interview

Starting point is 00:42:44 I constantly have been turning towards the camera, like I'm talking to him. It's a habit. Because my whole life, I've just been talking to a camera. Who are you thinking about when you look at the camera? Do you like imagine somebody? I'm fully thinking about the person just sitting watching it.

Starting point is 00:42:58 Watching. It's weird, but I'm looking at the camera, I don't see a camera. I'm like in a haze's picturing what the viewer is seeing when they watch it, that makes sense. And that's where I'll be saying things or doing something and then like when I'm watching, I'm like, that's not what I want.

Starting point is 00:43:13 And then I'll freeze up. It's very weird when I'm filming. And then for people who haven't worked with me too much, they'll think like, it's very weird, like how I go about it, because I'll just be doing whatever, like lighting a firework, this is a thousand-hour fire, I'll go to light it up and I'll't know, it's very weird, like how I go about it because I'll just be doing whatever, like lighting a firework. I, this is a thousand-hour fire, I'll go to light and I'll like freeze

Starting point is 00:43:28 because in my head I'm like, this, I don't know, I don't like how that floater, how that shot like because it's weird, I can perfectly picture what I'm filming by just looking at the camera and then putting myself through the lens to the camera while making content. I can do it at the same time. So you're like real-time editing.

Starting point is 00:43:44 In my video. That's something that didn't at the same time. So you're like real time editing. In my video? Yeah, 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

Starting point is 00:44:01 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 you care if I do that over and over and over and over. Yeah, you do that over and over. You do that. You do that over and over. You do that over and over and over. You do that over and over and over.

Starting point is 00:44:15 You do that over and over and over. You do that over and over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over.

Starting point is 00:44:23 You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that over and over. You the nerves of it too. Like you see it as creating a video versus performing. Yeah, I think so. It's weird, I've never been nervous talking to a camera. It's harder for me to talk to a person that isn't 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.

Starting point is 00:44:43 Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just awkward and dumb. Maybe they're practiced. To me, it's, I mean, both are terrifying, but being in front of the camera about yourself is so much easier. Really? Yeah, so much easier. I've referred a million times over.

Starting point is 00:44:56 But that's my whole life. You know, 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, I guess you're talking to a person too. There's just not on the other side of the camera. Yeah, there's just a pixel on a screen. So, so cloning. How do you achieve that?

Starting point is 00:45:13 Oh, yeah, that's right. This whole rabbit show. So, I was showing him that I have a lot of people in a company who were 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? Yeah, and like you know they would pick the same answer I'd pick 90 plus percent of the times and so like one example

Starting point is 00:45:34 Is Tyler who I was showing you and he was pitching stuff content and you can 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 years. I'm a big fan of just like finding people

Starting point is 00:45:56 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 I think 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 him and right now For two years he lived with me and we probably talked on average over those two years seven hours a day I mean anytime I had a phone call it don't on speaker and I'd let him listen. Anything I was reading, any content I was consuming, like really just training his brain

Starting point is 00:46:30 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. Now, he can just run the company and, you know, I don't ever really have to check it on him.

Starting point is 00:46:52 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 be like giving them an avenue to like Get it if that makes any sense

Starting point is 00:47:08 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.

Starting point is 00:47:41 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. I mean, you kind of just described exactly what we did. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but the ideas are really, really good.

Starting point is 00:48:08 It's just tossing out like different categories of ideas and then also fine tuning them to see like, I know I changed, like thinking about the titles and the thumbnails. I work so well off of inspiration. It's like, it's a something, like give me anywhere, I don't know. Like a rail space. Yeah, like I went to space, you know, what happens if you blow up a newkin space or I went to the moon, I went to Mars, right?

Starting point is 00:48:32 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 100 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 well, you need just a constant

Starting point is 00:48:52 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. It's just like in taking 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.

Starting point is 00:49:18 Exactly, and that only comes because I spent 10 years 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 good comment 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 a genius So yeah, I was like what the heck is the thumbnail even if the title was good. Yeah, I mean, this 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?

Starting point is 00:49:54 Short. Not just short. It's also, I mean, if someone reads it, or 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? It doesn't have to be short, but it has to be you almost want to have a retention to word by word reading. Ideally, it's a title also that because the titles don't live in a vacuum, so it has to lead into the content. Ideally, the title represents content that you would want to watch for 20 minutes. So if it's a 20 minute video,

Starting point is 00:50:29 and the title is I stepped on a bug, it's not gonna, because it's all of it combined. The click the rate is gonna be much lower. I mean, then it feels like a five second video. People might click it. So you gotta, like, even nuances of the length of the video based against the title will affect whether people want to click it,

Starting point is 00:50:43 because sometimes they just all add up. I mean, it's that, yes, ideally you want it below 50 characters, because above 50 characters and 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. Short, simple, ideally, and just so freaking interesting, they have to click. And it is a good segue into the content and it represents

Starting point is 00:51:12 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. Yeah. Well, I mean that bug stepping video. Anyway, that's what 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 supercharges it.

Starting point is 00:51:34 So like, Oh, so you have a kind of estimate of the extreme. Like this water, right? And you're like, Fiji water sucks. Yeah, that would do fine. But if you said Fiji water, it's the worst water water bottle or the worst water

Starting point is 00:51:46 I've ever drank in my life. Yeah, way more extreme opinion would do way better. 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 you can be more extreme and a positive way a lot of people. It's easier though positive Negative clickbaits 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, you know, 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.

Starting point is 00:52:20 The positive one is doing a large number of numbers of something. Like I spent this number of hours doing this. Well, whatever. If you just wanted to help people or, right, 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. You don't mean or whatever negative video you want to insert there. Well, that said, most of your videos are pretty positive. Yes. So what's, 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? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:52:49 What's the secret to that? What's how do you do that, right? Yeah. Like give away money or? In a video that make it to make it compelling. Is it, so there's a number that is better than another number, right? The higher number is always better than the lower number.

Starting point is 00:53:04 Yeah, I feel the most far. And you know, it's interesting, like, 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.

Starting point is 00:53:17 It's probably not even really a difference between a hundred K or a million, I haven't really looked into it. Like, some of our mostly 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 is 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

Starting point is 00:53:37 just like, that's a lot of money. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't, a hundredk and a million, like, doesn't really move the needle. And that makes sense. Which that's a very nuance piece of information that applies to very few people, but yeah. Well, no, I think it applies as fascinating. It's fast, our relationship with money is fascinating. Like, why is it so exciting to get? I mean, I, you know, the times I found like 20 bucks

Starting point is 00:54:00 in the ground are like incredible. I don't know why, right. Why are you so happy? 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.

Starting point is 00:54:16 Yeah, it's fun. No, I get it. Why people want to see people win money? It's just interesting that past 100 grand, 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 it.

Starting point is 00:54:30 Obviously, in terms of someone receiving it, a million dollars changes to life drastically more. That's the difference. If you wanted to, you could really quit your job. Suppose 100K is not really... You probably do a scientific study, a formula, giving away money to click through

Starting point is 00:54:45 rate. Yeah. There could be some kind of denture to turn. I got it. It definitely, the returns level automatically after 100K. That's basically the premise. What about 10,000? No, there's 100,000.

Starting point is 00:54:56 It's funny because this is such a small niche thing, but yeah, 100,000 does it from what I see in our videos get more clicks than 10,000, but the difference between 100,000 and a million is just so little. I just I think big number, big number to a lot of people will pass that point. Yeah, so for 100,000, you can like give an average salary, you can probably live for a year, given give them a day out average salaries in America. So that's like a big that feels something. 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 fuck loads of zeros. Okay, click.

Starting point is 00:55:27 Yeah. 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, which ones don't. Is there something you could say about what are the elements of thumbnail that work well?

Starting point is 00:55:47 Or is this also deeply in- Well, that's where, yeah, it's the same thing. How do you cook good food? But it's easier if you pull up a thumbnail, and I could be like, that's why that's good. That's why that's bad. Like an example would be like, one of my friends, he just uploaded a video recently,

Starting point is 00:56:01 and I called him, 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 vest. So they didn't look at cops. I was like, oh, why are the cops wearing yellow vest? 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.

Starting point is 00:56:21 So it's 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 know, why not make the cars cop cars? And, you know, and it's like, cause in my head,

Starting point is 00:56:38 I'm like, dang, if you just did those like four or five things, the video probably would have got like seven X of 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 notes. It's a problem now. That's an addiction.

Starting point is 00:56:53 Is it? So you kind of, there's a lot of the versions are really good. Yeah, how do you know what to like stuff? 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. I was like, oh, that's version like one of like a thousand. But even the sketch, the idea was good. Like already even the original idea is strong.

Starting point is 00:57:11 Yeah. So one of our coming up videos, we made the Wldz largest plant-based burger. And the thumbnail we were thinking is like me standing beside the burger because it's six feet tall. That's why 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. That's just something you have to click. So you were saying, how would you describe a good thumbnail? Like that. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 00:57:33 But I think you said the one I noticed first that was good, where you were very small in it, 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 manipulated and creating my legs, Photoshop. And that's why I said I don't like it because my right leg was a little like, off, it was like bent the wrong way.

Starting point is 00:57:55 You know it sounds like it. You know it's like those legs and Photoshop. Well, I mean, does the physics of a thumbnail have to even make sense? I mean, you can just like exaggerate the head size and all that comes out, right? Yeah, 100%. Yeah, things don't have to be relative. Yeah. You can have a car in the background

Starting point is 00:58:07 to be three times the size. Yeah, because yeah, 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 because 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 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?

Starting point is 00:58:37 Unique, 100% unique. You're not, the next Mr. Beast, quote unquote, it feels weird saying that, third person, but whatever, is not gonna do what I'm doing better, they're gonna just invent their own lane. Like you're just not gonna do what I do better than me. You know, I have so many,

Starting point is 00:58:51 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? Like it's absurd, the amount of money it's spent 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 gonna beat me at my own game, and that's fine, you shouldn't.

Starting point is 00:59:05 Like, I didn't get where I am by just beating someone else at the same game. I just fell in 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 gonna get to where I am doing that. And so, I advise you don't. You give away a lot of the secrets, basically everything,

Starting point is 00:59:24 about how you operate. Is there a... I don't hold anything back. Go for it. How do you think about that? That's pretty rare. I think, and this is definitely not... Most people in my stance,

Starting point is 00:59:35 I don't think would take this, or my position would take this stance, but I see every other YouTuber, so person on social media, even, is where I also focus super heavily on YouTube. But last year, we were also the most followed TikTok creator in the world as well. I actually were most subscribed to YouTube channel

Starting point is 00:59:49 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? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:00:09 So from being a successful YouTuber to understand it, totally different algorithm. Yeah. Fun, monthly different algorithm. It's interesting. Well, not even just the algorithm, just the content. Like I'm going from basically 15 minute short films to one sub one minute vertical content. It's a whole different, just ballpark. And so the first little while I was doing TikTok,

Starting point is 01:00:29 it was just kind of figuring out, how, what does Mr. V's look like in this short form content? But recently we 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. Yeah, you know.

Starting point is 01:00:46 And so like an example is we played the rock for 100K and rock favorite scissors and the loser had to donate 100K to charity. We did, we went to random people on a campus and we offered them. So I said, I'll give you $100. If you flat a pair, it's gonna give me a baguette and then they said no.

Starting point is 01:01:02 And I was like, I'll give you $300. If you flat a pair, it's gonna give me a baguette. And I was expecting this person I was like, I will give you $300. You thought of Paris had given 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 crossed everything got like 450 million views. And it, because it's just really cool

Starting point is 01:01:17 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 a one minute. Exactly.

Starting point is 01:01:29 No one on short form is doing it. That's the thing. It's like, it's just so funny because 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 cranking 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?

Starting point is 01:01:51 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 I also during the brainstorming Some of the ideas you're like that's better as a short That's crazy. Yeah, but you can you remember one? Can I remember I said that a bunch? I can't think of all I remember is that there were like epic videos

Starting point is 01:02:17 Like really you're going to do that for a one minute video. Yeah, it's crazy So like are you posting similar content to a YouTube short as a TikTok? Yeah, those would just double up. It's just hard. You know, what's actually pretty fascinating in people who do social media listening to this, we'll probably find this pretty interesting is, picture like the content creation meta three years ago

Starting point is 01:02:36 versus now where you can make sub one minute vertical content and it go viral on TikTok, it go viral on YouTube shorts, go viral on Instagram reels, it goes viral on Facebook, it goes Reddit, YouTube shorts, go viral on Instagram Reels, it goes viral on Facebook, it goes Reddit, you swipe through vertical content now, and Twitter when you click on a video and you flip through it.

Starting point is 01:02:51 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, they're like interbreeding or whatever. I can post something on TikTok that will get a hundred million views and then post it on shorts and it'll get 200 million views and then post it on

Starting point is 01:03:10 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 tens of millions of views and you can post it on red and it get tens of millions of views and, and Facebook can get tens of millions of views. And that, 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.

Starting point is 01:03:32 Reddit, 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

Starting point is 01:03:48 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

Starting point is 01:04:07 virality is not accidental. Sometimes it can be, of course, but it's just not. It can be engineered. It's yeah, so many people say it's luck and they're like, you're just lucky. You're this or that, but what do we have to probably like a thousand videos over 10 million views? Like we don't ever have a dud. Like, you can call it luck, but I think it can be trained.

Starting point is 01:04:25 I counsel YouTubers all the time and show them how to go from getting a couple million views a month to 10 million views a month very easily. And for even certain ones, like, just one of my friends, like 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,

Starting point is 01:04:44 anyone from $10,000 a month on YouTube to over 400,000, just doing like once every week, sometimes once every two weeks calls, anyone from $10,000 about the 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 lock 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,

Starting point is 01:05:05 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 I have that, I would 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,

Starting point is 01:05:39 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 at her 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 would say that is probably the thing that needs to be trained the most for most creators, right? That 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

Starting point is 01:06:21 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, but at the time I thought they did right now I'm in the mindset of a lot of small YouTubers, or I thought those videos deserved a million views,

Starting point is 01:06:47 and I thought the hour of them hated me. But I'm watching back now, and I can tell you exactly why the videos were fucking horrible, you know what I mean? Well, so what was the breakthrough for you to start realizing, 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,

Starting point is 01:07:03 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? It's rough. Just looking at metrics.

Starting point is 01:07:18 I mean, I just got back from a mastermind. I just got like 10 of the smartest people I knew and we just locked ourselves in a cabinmind where I just got like, you know, 10 of the smartest people I knew and we just locked Ourself 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 yeah teach me something and I mean it's just You just have to have a never-ending thirst for learning like 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 have a leg up on you in the knowledge game.

Starting point is 01:07:50 And we're kind of stuff for 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 to get to the videos I want. I have to build this business and scale up and higher. More of 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

Starting point is 01:08:15 I want to produce, if that makes any sense. So, yeah, on that, the business side, we talked about hiring. Do you have trouble with 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 well. Like if there's, like if I fired you, if there's some other job you want me to help you get, I'll DM them on Twitter.

Starting point is 01:08:36 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, I try to make it more like a transition and do whatever we can to make it as easy as possible. And that's something which is not working for you because you want people like you said, it's super passionate. Because at the end of the day,

Starting point is 01:08:52 if you hold someone that, on to someone that you don't see being here in 10 years, you're just doing them with disservice. You're just giving them more in grain, more enrooted in 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,

Starting point is 01:09:09 if you were to give advice to somebody, or if you were to start over again, you had no money. What would 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.

Starting point is 01:09:24 Yeah, I have a thing to have a mask on. And you also, I guess, don't have the wisdom. Well, if I don't have what I have in my head, then I would say just fail. Like just a lot of people get analysis paralysis and they'll just sit there and they'll plan their first video for three months. And I'm, I'm, any of you listening,

Starting point is 01:09:39 if you, especially if you have zero viewers on your channel, your first video is not going to give you a period. It's not your first 10 are not going to yous. Period, it's not, your first 10 are not gonna give yous. 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. Like all you need to do,

Starting point is 01:09:54 this applies to people that not upload videos but have dreams of being a YouTuber, is make a hundred 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, you know, your first 100 are going to say, there are very freak cases like Liza Koshy or Emma Chamberlain who have really good personalities and it doesn't take them so as many videos. And it's just like people who are seven foot five

Starting point is 01:10:17 and making an MBA. Like, yes, there are freak cases you can find. But for the average person like us, you know, who don't have these exceptional personalities and, you know, backgrounds and filmmaking, just make a hundred videos, improve something each time, and then talk to me on your 101st video. Well, the improve something is time is the tricky one. How do you improve something each time? The second one, just, I don't know, 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.

Starting point is 01:10:44 So the fifth one, try to, you know, study a new thumbnail trick. The fourth one, try to figure out a way that you can have better inflections in your voice. So 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. That's the beauty 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,

Starting point is 01:10:57 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?

Starting point is 01:11:13 Like, I mean, the first thing that comes from my mind is something as simple as when I counted to 100,000, which is what I did do when I was poor. And like that work, but like what's something like that I could do that would be even more attention-guide. Yeah 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 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

Starting point is 01:11:38 Yeah, because there's there's different ways you can accomplish something. Don't be cynical about the durability of stuff Yeah, because there really are so many different ways you can accomplish something. Don't be cynical about the durability 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 a hundred million subscriber to island, yeah, you can't find private islands that don't look like shit for less than $10 million. So this isn't doable, right?

Starting point is 01:11:59 All right, the idea doesn't exist, not doable, exit 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, show us import 300 trees, let's build a little bit of canal, let's cut some past, boom, now it's a really nice island, but it's actually affordable,

Starting point is 01:12:22 because we don't have $10 million to spend on a video, but we can afford to spend three and a half and lose whatever $1 million on that video. So that's an example of like, yeah, if you just went off the gut test, you're like, this isn't doable. You know, every island is $10 million or screwed. Like if we go cheaper, it's just a terrible island. No. And so if you, like, there are so many different ways you can achieve what you want.

Starting point is 01:12:41 You really got to push through notes, which not a lot of people do. You have to have like a 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 like you really have to like think and And just like we take a personality test and like just having a dominant personality is a better indicator that when someone tells you Oh, there's no way you're gonna build a brick wall for under a hundred grand You know, you'll be like okay, and then still go check the next ten vendors and you know figure it out

Starting point is 01:13:22 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, like channel by channel. You can't give general advice. Okay, yeah. Because if I do, millions of creators are gonna see this

Starting point is 01:13:43 and then they're gonna do it, and I'm gonna fuck them over. Oh, I see, see. So let's to see this and then they're going to do it, and I'm going to fuck them over. Oh, 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. Doesn't matter.

Starting point is 01:13:54 So you've talked about what's success. Yeah. It's different for everyone. Like is 10Xing your definition of success? No. Well, then it's going to write off the bad. 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. That's one thing I've found throughout this day. Every time I talk data, it's so funny with him because it's

Starting point is 01:14:13 like, you know, you can 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. I'm really nervous about that. I'm really nervous about the numbers affecting because it's so fun Yeah, it's so fun to focus on the numbers and I'm 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 watch 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

Starting point is 01:14:59 on and when not to be date more jaded or even on podcasts, but I'm really afraid of that. On the flip side, 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 it has to do with stylistic choices of lighting and cameras, or maybe with, for example, topics, you know, like. Even what you've asked me here is like,

Starting point is 01:15:23 different than what most people ask me. Yeah, so it could be be the I mean and they'd be nice to understand that but again I'm worried about polluting the process It's this is a true case of it's your own intuition like you know your viewers better than anyone else What it's whatever see I'd like to push back on that I really don't you do I do else name one person 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? Uh, 350.

Starting point is 01:15:50 Exactly. But I'm not paying it. You're the only one who's watched every second of all 300 videos. Probably. That's just, that's just not, no, you haven't. You do. But the, well, because you did it. So you do know what's in it all of them.

Starting point is 01:16:00 It's your content. 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 ex-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 I should investigate that will be very, very difficult. And then you have to start

Starting point is 01:16:26 looking at the numbers, you have to start to like consider 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 the data point. And they're like cool people. But you know, I don't know that 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 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'd say if you were to just put a gun to my head and you're you're like

Starting point is 01:17:00 all right we're gonna 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 random sample size, yeah, it's probably like a male boy that plays video games. Like that's the best way of describing it. But I don't try to pertain to him.

Starting point is 01:17:25 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 less than a majority, if we get a hundred million views of video, that's still 30 to 40 million females that watch every video,

Starting point is 01:17:41 which is probably the largest views per video for women on the whole platform, which you wouldn't think that. 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 four percent, that's still a three to four percent of a hundred million views is a lot of people that age. So we hit a large group of kind of every demographic. That makes sense.

Starting point is 01:18:10 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 can be short videos like how would you 10X that like something on robotics and biology on science and engineering and all that. Yeah. That's more educational focus. We would honestly just have to pull that because it's the same way if you went to Gordon Ranson you said how would a new cook cook better?

Starting point is 01:18:38 You know it's like even then that's not even specifically you have to go channel by channel. You really do or I'm giving horrible advice because because if there was, you just go and rules, everyone would do it. You know what I mean? Like if there's these magical little principles. How quickly can, when you look at a channel, can you kind of, bear it, give advice.

Starting point is 01:18:53 Yeah, 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 viewers 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

Starting point is 01:19:12 content, 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 head in the head space of the viewer and see the content how they would. As 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, it's generating a lot of ideas.

Starting point is 01:19:40 I think the first time I've talked to you was on clubhouse, actually. Yeah, I mentioned something about robots and like almost immediately went to generating a bunch 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 you went to generating a bunch of ideas around robots. Oh yeah. It's just 100 robots versus 100 humans. Yeah. I'm marking a robot throw up a tape. I think your idea, like the first idea was, you just said so many ideas I never even thought of. But it's, it shows the value of basically brainstorming with people that think differently. But at the end of the day, my ideas were probably, you know, might lean towards some people a little bit younger than your audience, like some of the stuff I'm... Yeah, but there's still ideas. Like I think the first one you said, because we're talking about quadruped robot dogs, you said to replace a biological dog with a robot dog and see if the owner

Starting point is 01:20:22 notices something. You were just quickly brainstorming the ideas of like, how, this was years ago, I remember that. Yeah. It was 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 AI system to replace the biological systems that we, the biological creatures that we love in our lives.

Starting point is 01:20:41 Yeah. And but 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, it makes it's much easier to make a video around a good idea, obviously, than a bad one. And you just send yourself up for success.

Starting point is 01:21:03 Okay, so that's for 10Xingity popular channel. What's the hardest number? You said 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 give people a click of it, you can get them to watch it,

Starting point is 01:21:34 but you can't really fake whether or not they're satisfied. Like, they don't lie, the service, you know? You know, 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-regretability? Yeah, I think Elon tweeted,

Starting point is 01:21:56 that's what he's trying to do on Twitter. Twitter, and that's interesting. That's basically the survey metric. How happy you are that you've been using the platform. Yeah, the Elon tweeted, we wanna limit the amount of regrettable minutes people spend on Twitter. And the first thing I thought was like, that's something YouTube already has a lot.

Starting point is 01:22:10 Like their whole survey system when feedback loop. How tough is it to take on YouTube, you think? Like for Twitter? Yeah, for Twitter for anybody else. Um, I mean, it's gonna be basically impossible. I mean, YouTube's not going anywhere. And I don't know. I don't think anyone's gonna do what YouTube does

Starting point is 01:22:28 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 a millionaire to get 10 million subscribers and then keep the other 8 million.

Starting point is 01:22:56 So that's if you believe in your ability to grow a channel, 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 gonna kill the channel. So the 10 million is definitely a better question when you would rather have a million dollars to 10 million subscribers. That's where it gets a little tricky. Because now it's like, hmm, you know, a million dollars

Starting point is 01:23:17 life changing amount of money. But, you know, if you, Sim, I know what you're doing, you probably make a million dollars off a 10 million subscriber channel, but it is a little bit of a risk. 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.

Starting point is 01:23:34 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.

Starting point is 01:23:55 That's hard, I don't know. I was actually thinking more 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 being in another country?

Starting point is 01:24:19 Oh, not all your, not all, but a lot of the questions are analytic space. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I love it. I mean, it's just a giant social experiment, right? Like what people like to watch, what people share. Yeah, 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

Starting point is 01:24:43 curiosity and exploration of interesting ideas. So in that sense, yeah, this was fitted. I love it. This is funny. And this isn't me like trying to make, I love you. I love you too. I love you too. Magnus one and even your Hikaru one was really good.

Starting point is 01:24:59 A bunch of other ones but I think we're getting to the point now where only analytics junkies would want to keep here 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.

Starting point is 01:25:12 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 threat of curiosity.

Starting point is 01:25:24 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 TikTok 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,

Starting point is 01:25:45 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 a censorship and all the kind of topics, especially if you see another platform like Twitter that Elon recently highlighted the shadow banning that was happening and in general the censorship that was happening and those platforms. Do you think about the role of centralized control,

Starting point is 01:26:25 which information isn't or isn't made available through search and discovery? I'll be honest. I never really think about it. So you just try to make fun videos that. Yeah, I'm kind of wearing my own lane, but it's not like that I don't just specifically think about. I just like a lot of stuff in general.

Starting point is 01:26:42 I can just kind of in my own lane, thinking about my own stuff. But, you know, now you asked, I'm curious. What are your thoughts on 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

Starting point is 01:27:13 But that's too difficult of a job for centralized entity. That's too big of it 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 there the where Atpocalypse, you know a lot of creators revenue plummets because people are doing videos that advertisers don't team acceptable and then now all these big advertisers are pulling and the little guys are getting hit and because AdWrace dropped by 30%

Starting point is 01:27:35 and the person who just quit his job to go full-time concentration 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. 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.

Starting point is 01:28:00 Yes, so they know how to improve their content. They can understand it. Exactly. 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 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 went out there and silence other ones? Yeah, there could be sort of in the background government influence, which is where actual freedom of speech

Starting point is 01:28:30 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. Yeah, let's see, but to be fair That's a huge responsibility. The amount of content that YouTube is upload on YouTube that is shared by YouTube, viewed by YouTube. But even more of a reason why it would probably make sense to be transparent, because then people can help fact check it. That's right.

Starting point is 01:28:59 But that requires building a platform that makes that easy. Right? To make fact checking easy, to make the, like, Twitter now has like being able to share context and all that kind of stuff, that crowdsource it, crowdsource it the way Wikipedia crowdsource it. I mean, there's, it's right. And then you open a random Wikipedia article. But like, you know, people criticize Wikipedia because there is a political lean to the editors of Wikipedia and then they get the some articles that definitely have a bias to them and all

Starting point is 01:29:31 that kind of stuff. 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 entity that's hosting it. So for the viewer to decide. I'm just going to make cool videos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Let's go to Antarctica again. How was that? How was going to you just came back from Antarctica?

Starting point is 01:29:51 That was I watched the video. That was that was fun. That was a really fun video. Thank you. 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 land the plane on just this ice runway. And it's so sketchy.

Starting point is 01:30:14 And then once the plane takes off, you're just there. You're the most remote place in the planet. And 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

Starting point is 01:30:33 and just seeing, having nothing. And because once you get outside the outskirts and you get deep in Antarctica, there's no penguin. So 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. The sun's up 24 seven. And it's just like spinning and circles at the top of the planet or whatever.

Starting point is 01:30:57 It looks like 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 it was like the warmest day in like forever. That's been in Antarctica.

Starting point is 01:31:14 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, so they'll just get way too cold. And we were prepared for much worse, but it ended up being much better than we thought.

Starting point is 01:31:32 So for that video, but in general, maybe some other challenging videos, 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, of course, we're talking to Boston 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 got to figure out the idea and then it just depends.

Starting point is 01:31:53 I mean, pick any video you can think about my channel. I can take you through it. Well, what about the, in a circle, you have to stay in a circle for 100, 100 days. Yeah, so for that one, step one. One of the most popular. Yeah, that video did really well. So we, problem is, we have to,

Starting point is 01:32:13 this is where you get really into the nuances of the company because 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 100 days, we're only filming this. So step one is we had to build an independent crew that could actually do that for 100 days. That way everyone else could keep working on the normal videos and not just screw everything up.

Starting point is 01:32:30 So step one, you build that team. Okay, we got the team. Now what do we need? Well, to do this, we need probably like 10 cameras, at least rolling at all times. So we're probably going to need to get a trailer and hook up a bunch of storage and stuff to just carry 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. And then it's like, oh, wait, I think it'll be funny if I brought the house in on the intro. Find a crane that can lift up a house so I can drive it in and drive it in the intro. And that's like an iterative process where you're like, okay, this will be funnier.

Starting point is 01:33:05 So it's not all up front that you'd sort of like your... I clearly would be, but as you kind of see things, you get inspired and then you think of more and more. And there's would be better with a crane. Yeah, it'd be better if I dropped out of the house. Drop it. Yeah. That was crazy.

Starting point is 01:33:20 They decided to do that. So fearless in the kind of crazy stuff you would need to do. Exactly. I'm a broken record, but whatever makes the best video possible. Yeah, that's all you focus on. Okay, so what about the delegation of like who gets to what are the camera men, like the people operating the cameras, what, who's responsible for different things? Is it like a distributed process?

Starting point is 01:33:41 Well, that's where whoever the lead cam would be on that video would just decide it. That one, because we shot over 100 days. We didn't, a lot of it was just Sean and the guy who was in the circle just vlogging. I'm just getting my camera and he figured 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

Starting point is 01:33:59 of just having someone on standby 24, seven. It made more sense to do set hours. Nice. And it was, it was hard, but hard, but it's funny and hindsight. It sounds so simple. And I guess the more, because I want to be relatively simple, I guess, because it's a low number of people. Yeah, the hard part about that is just the time.

Starting point is 01:34:19 I checked in on them so many different days. And it's like an hour here, two hours there, three hours there. Over 100 days adds up to be a ton of time. And even then, like, you know, if you have a 10% crew, you know, paying them daily rates for a hundred days, it just all of it adds up. What about like the 100 versus 100, 100 adults versus 100 kids? What was the, what was bringing that to life? That seems like exceptionally challenging. Yeah, basically the thought process was, we did 100 kids versus, or sorry,

Starting point is 01:34:48 100 boys versus 100 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 questioning, 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 100 girls in it.

Starting point is 01:35:02 Sounds bad when I explain it like this. And then a giant room put 100 boys. And we're like, after 100 hours 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 it did well. So we're like, all right, we're gonna do it again. So we threw out all these different ideas.

Starting point is 01:35:14 It was like, 100 football players, there's 100 cheerleaders, 100 this, 100 that, 100 prisoners versus 100 cops. So just crazy as ideas. And we settled on 100 kids versus 100 adults. And then the next step was like, how do we make it better? The kids versus adults, or the boys versus girls,

Starting point is 01:35:31 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. So the cubes are outside. And instead of doing circles,

Starting point is 01:35:42 we want to make them cubes. And then, you know, is 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 filming. 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.

Starting point is 01:36:03 Like half the shots weren't usable and it really screwed us over. So we had a deal out of Frankenstein-ing in the editing to make up for basically my ignorance. So you mentioned that you were surprised how well that that one did. A lot of creators talk about getting depressed when the videos don't do as well as they kind of expect it. There's a kind of feeling you can get really worn out by that. Do you do yourself feel that and also do you have advice for others that feel this? Yeah, it's weird because I am a number scam,

Starting point is 01:36:36 but also it used to. It used to very much, especially when I was like betting everything I had on a video when it did bad. I was devastated, 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. It doesn't really matter. It's a video that's better just look at it and I'm like, oh, why did this video do bad?

Starting point is 01:36:58 Probably, oh, there's a little retention dip there. I don't think people like the thumbnail. Maybe we should switch it. 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, that is the ideal way to 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

Starting point is 01:37:18 improve the next one. Is there tricks to being able to detach yourself from that? Because in your case, that's true for creators, but in your case, I mean, that's true for creators, but in your case, there's like a lot of money on the line. Yeah. There's videos cost my life. Yeah. So much time.

Starting point is 01:37:34 But no, I mean, you just, I mean, I don't know, the only real answer is just a conscious effort. You just have to unemotionally look at the video, determine the problems and then move on. Like, there is no secret. You know what I mean? It's just, it's that. And if you really can't bring yourself to do it, then you're just screwed. And you're, honestly, maybe you're not meant for this game.

Starting point is 01:37:51 Okay, so that's part of the development as a creator is like you're being able to be a detective. For longevity, yeah. Yeah, you have to, unemotionally be able to look at videos that flop and figure it out. Because if not just, you can't, and not every video can be a one out of 10.

Starting point is 01:38:04 And so when a video does bad, you know, that, that just stress and depression, it's just going to eventually get to you in the long run. So you said you've failed in a bunch of videos, sort of taking them to completion. So what are some of the biggest fails? Yeah, we're the enough as we've returned and we've done this more. We don't have that problem as much, especially now we're getting to the multi-million 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,

Starting point is 01:38:32 yeah, like we would do a video where we spent 24 hours on a deserted island. And 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. Or could that have been caught and prevented at the idea stage? I go 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 just like we all at one point just kind of wanted to die. It was just miserable.

Starting point is 01:39:00 So how do you avoid that these days? Uh well I just went with it 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 know what it takes to do. Videos that were very hot or it's on water, because I get super seasick. It's 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. We tried to spend any time, we'd do anything on a boat.

Starting point is 01:39:32 When we spent 24 hours in a beer minute of triangle, or when I tried to spend, which didn't get upload, but tried to spend like 100 hours at sea or whatever, just like on a raft, 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 second up. So when you spend months in creating a video, I know this is probably stressful to some creators. Like how much stress, how do you feel when you have to click publish video? No, not much. You able to detach yourself. Yeah. Again, and old me, tons, I feel like scratching and nervous and like my hands will be sweating like to the point

Starting point is 01:40:12 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 I kinda care, there's different phases. And, uh, you just like, once you get over 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 irrelevant, then you don't,

Starting point is 01:40:34 I don't know, you kind of are, it's a little bit easier to attach yourself, I guess. And that's, 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 mentally insane. You have to get out of that game, right? Because they're really mess with you. We've talked about this a little bit, but how do you define and how do you suggest all this define success on YouTube? So subjective. Some people, people success is retiring them up. You know, for you, success is inspiring people and educating them and, you know, whatever

Starting point is 01:41:11 the peak in their curiosity for other people is 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. Yeah, but subscribers is just a vanity metric, you know. It doesn't, subscribers don't correlate to views. Sure, or views, what?

Starting point is 01:41:37 Yeah, I know, but that's more, that was a direct view. That was more direct than people listening because a lot of people do really care about subscribers, or even followers, like on TikTok. But if you look like on YouTube, very, very few percent, even a percent of your views come from the subfeed, right? They're almost all home feeders suggested. When's the last time you clicked on your subfeed to watch a video?

Starting point is 01:41:57 Almost never. Yeah, maybe five years ago. It used to be a thing. It's not anymore. No one does. And it's getting harder and harder to find. I subscribe to way too many channels, I think. Yeah, that's what everyone does.

Starting point is 01:42:07 And you subscribe to 10 channels, they're great, but two years later, you're taste of all of them. And it's like, it's a mess. And so, subscribers don't really matter. Followers and TikTok don't really matter. So, anyways, they really are the definition of a vanity metric. And, but what about use? They do, obviously, because the people are shown up

Starting point is 01:42:27 time and time again, that's what matters. Okay. So that's a good thing to define a success. I just feel like that too can be a problem. Because I would say, if I wanted to be successful, like as a young creator, am I start copying Mr. Beast or something like that, right? Like, you start trying to take shortcuts

Starting point is 01:42:50 as opposed to find your own unique voice, right? So, chasing views is a problem too, it feels like. Or no. It's as long as you detach yourself from that. I mean, if you're, it sounds like it's really easy. Yeah. And you just want to copy someone else and not experiment and find your own way.

Starting point is 01:43:09 But, yeah. 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. We need some metric from them, Chase. No, they just need to find their own way. It just feels like unique type of content

Starting point is 01:43:23 will often lead to sacrifice in the number of views in the short term. But in the long term, you win. Okay. Or if you do win, you win more. I guess we'll be a better way of putting it. Do you think you will IPO Mr. Beesberger or Feastables in the next 5-10 years? Beesberger, Feastables?

Starting point is 01:43:42 No, I kind of think they're something. Actually, you know what, 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. Yeah. I wonder if you have retention brain for like life itself.

Starting point is 01:44:01 Oh, I do. Every time I'm talking to someone, I can, I'm like, okay, I'm wondering. But we're 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's bear question.

Starting point is 01:44:17 Yes, 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 IQ tests or reading about whatever, just why modern art is the thing, I don't know, whatever weird thing we decide 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,

Starting point is 01:44:54 as much as possible. Yeah, which conveniently, I don't have to force, or I want to be recharging. So when I do work, I can 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 kickass entrepreneur and obviously we're blowing this down to like a very basic thing. And so

Starting point is 01:45:30 the the things you're doing your down time when you're not working if it doesn't recharge you you're screwed. You're just a ticking time bomb waiting to implode. And so you got to like heavily recharged and like so like watching for me an anime or whatever it is, playing a board game, like that is actually kind of crucial to my success, which takes a lot of and maturing to come to that conclusion, because I used to be the kind of guy that wanted to work every hour of the day.

Starting point is 01:45:57 And I would try to train myself to not need that stuff. 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 I just really want to make content and entertain people. But as someone who's gone down that road and you just work every day for two, three months straight and every hour of the day and then you just bomb way into explode and lose your mind. And the only real sustainable thing is to just like give yourself time to recharge

Starting point is 01:46:26 in between working. So there's a kind of balance you have to find. You have to. And I hate it more than anyone else, because I, you know, you hate not working. Yeah, it's because it's just not optimal for time. Like it's, it's, as a human, I do need to occasionally watch a mindless show and play a board game.

Starting point is 01:46:46 And it took me a very long time to come to peace with that. And I would have like borderline panic attacks when I do it, because I'd be 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? It's like, there's a lot of things like that

Starting point is 01:47:07 that go on in your head, but it's necessary. Before you return to Mr. Beastburger. Well, what is like, since we're on the topic, what is a perfectly productive day in life and Mr. Beast look like? Oh boy, well, I mean, or like a standard. I mean, the perfectly productive days,

Starting point is 01:47:25 we filmed my 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? Yeah. And you're like, because you're running a lot of things, right?

Starting point is 01:47:38 Yeah, so right now we have our SnapRin, Feastables, we have a restaurant chain, FeastBigger, and then we basically, which we haven't even really launched any product yet, but we have the data company that I was showing you, where we're gonna roll out some tools for creators, and then we have the React Channel, the Gaming Channel, the main channel,

Starting point is 01:47:53 and then we have my charity, which also has a channel. And so, kinda, how I've structured my life right now, is whatever I have free time, we just kinda go, hey guys, Jimmy's got an hour from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. and everyone's just like, I need this, I need this, and this shale's like, I need this thing filmed, or, you know,

Starting point is 01:48:13 whatever, the guy who runs my TikTok, I was like, I need this TikTok film, or, you know, Beastburg is like, I need this menu item approved, we need to talk about this marketing thing, and then we kinda just look at whatever one needs, and we're like, that one looks like the most important, we'll do that. And then, so 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,

Starting point is 01:48:27 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 the eight companies and just whatever they're like two to three biggest pain points or things that need for me, and just doing those. Based on the priority and then trying to keep it

Starting point is 01:48:42 as short as possible. Yeah. To just the things that you're needed on. It doesn't get more optimal than that. If I clear the bottom next, or some bottom next for all my companies, then it's, yes, that's a perfect day. Yeah, I mean, even just me,

Starting point is 01:48:54 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 lived 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 from the brainstorming and the main channel to the reactions and so on.

Starting point is 01:49:26 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 that's my first, you know, I'm 24, you know, 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.

Starting point is 01:49:52 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 like 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 in all these different skillsets 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 play right now and it just sucks that I have to learn the lessons with the lucrative thing you my play right now and it just sucks that I have to learn the lessons with the lucrative thing, you know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:50:26 Yeah, because you 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? Like, yeah, you would be... Yeah, that's something I feel like I actually could get a lot of value to young people who are doing it, like older people who've built

Starting point is 01:50:43 five companies or whatever they do. I probably couldn't, yeah, they're gonna be like, oh, this is so obvious, but for younger first time business owners, you got to just experiment, to be honest, and for us, it's just a new space. No one had really ever skilled up 100 person team to build make content on YouTube. So there wasn't no, I spent all this time

Starting point is 01:51:06 like a hired one person from Disney to, 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 the traditional way and not like how it should be online.

Starting point is 01:51:22 And so then it's like, okay, and now I'm not trying to trash people. Like they'll try their best, but then I try hire this one person who does this different type of media and runs a 100 person team. And then you come in here and they try to build it that way and they don't really listen to you

Starting point is 01:51:37 or 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, they just don't get it and they don't understand my world. And the eventual solution was just like draw up my sleeves and do it myself. You know, with like James, very hit man and just like no one's ever done this and like no one's gonna just give us a golden carrot and tell us how to build this company.

Starting point is 01:52:04 We gotta figure it the fuck out ourselves. And you have to have to 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 it's try stop trying to have someone Build this company for me and just do it myself because it's scary I guess my whole life studying YouTube videos of our reality not business building but, but fucking, I was like, I guess we just got to do it ourselves. And that's where things really started to click. And we got the exponential growth. We started getting the right people and training them the right way. And just throwing conventional stuff out the door and focusing on what's actually practical for YouTube, which is just completely different than

Starting point is 01:52:42 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.

Starting point is 01:53:05 He might run over there, but guess what? We got to have a plan 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 the editing as well and not having guardrails and kind of, you know, I... At the end of the day, it's whatever I want. The video, their job is to make a video that they think all 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 like a startup as opposed to... Are you often surprised like with the result?

Starting point is 01:53:36 You think a certain... Like we watched a video today, those really nice. Those different than you would have potentially edited it. Yeah. Are you sometimes surprised by a decision that it makes? It's 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.

Starting point is 01:53:52 The thing, my biggest fear is I don't want to get trapped in a bubble of, because we are getting 100 million views of video on the main channel. 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, what 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 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

Starting point is 01:54:26 downtrend because if you're like, you know, 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, let's start experimenting. Well, if you have a bad experiment, now you're in like a tailspin, you're nose diving, and you have one more bad experiment, you're like screwed, kind of, I'm oversimplifying. You wanna test things while you're still growing to keep the growing from happening, because once you have, again, very oversimplifying that kind of level off, you do a couple of tests that go wrong, and you're screwed, you're already out the door,

Starting point is 01:54:58 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

Starting point is 01:55:12 that brought you to the dance, you just dived right into Mr. Beastburger and Feastables, this whole other industry. Like what was that like? Well, so Beastburger, we kind of, it's 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 Beastburgers for a day or two.

Starting point is 01:55:35 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 and sales. And they all sell out and they're running to local walmart so 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

Starting point is 01:56:01 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 festivals? Feasibles, 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.

Starting point is 01:56:23 I feel like there also just hasn't been any innovation and American snacks in quite a while And so that's just something I've always been pretty passionate about the thing 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've launched just like building the right team figuring things out and making sure it was actually ran the way I wanted Which feasible is just been crushing is figuring things out and making sure it was actually ran the way I wanted, which fee stables has just been crushing. It's very interesting. This is something I've never talked about publicly,

Starting point is 01:56:51 but having products in retail, it's like before fee stables, everything I had done was online. So if you wanted to, you know, anything from the Quilquo piece brand, you'd have to buy it online and ship it to you. But fee stables, now that, you know, because it's our first product, Chocobars,

Starting point is 01:57:06 we started putting that in retail locations. So like, for example, Walmart, it's crazy. Like, it's just, 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 in Walmart, those people recognize me and ask for photos. Like, if I stood there all night off,

Starting point is 01:57:24 I could take 150 photos today in Walmart, 200, whatever it is. So obviously it makes sense, those people recognize me and ask for photos. Like if I stood there all night off, I could take 150 photos today in Walmart or 200, whatever it is. So obviously it makes sense those people go five festivals, but then you just multiply that by every Walmart in America. And 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 gonna say it, so whatever.

Starting point is 01:57:41 But other big retail locations and convenience stores and like by the end and Next year we could be in like 40 50,000 locations and the numbers just don't make sense So you know, 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 and Walmart stock to be honest like it it was that it supply It was like it was brutal. Well, even then sometimes, you get them the stuff and it takes them like a day or two to put it out in that specific location. And I had to stop promoting it

Starting point is 01:58:14 because every time I'd mention it, like 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-weekish month period where I just didn't promote festivals 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

Starting point is 01:58:34 and also, it's not like we have unlimited money. So, but now we're relatively caught up and keeping up, but it's gonna be interesting because now this year in 2023, we're gonna basically, you know, 10X, they might have locations to rent. So we're, and we're gonna try to launch new products. So we're in for an interesting ride,

Starting point is 01:58:55 but yeah, I just hate, I hate when I tell people, you know, okay, go try this product, and then they go and they're looking while we're in 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's really it. Besides that, that's, it's been doing way better than I ever thought. You've talked a couple of places about maybe doing mobile games or computer games in the

Starting point is 01:59:20 future. Is that something you're still considering? Yes, because, you know, do you normally talk with people as much as we talk before? Is that? No, no, that was the front. We spent all day today. I just look at my head. Everything you asked me is stuff we already talked about. Not really. It's different. Well, 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, so good. There's a different style of asking those questions,

Starting point is 01:59:49 because I, I, on purpose, didn't dig further in the due, I could tell. Yeah, so I could tell you, okay, this is, by the way, okay. All right, well, this is the first time I've ever talked to somebody as much as I did with you beforehand. Yeah, on the same day. I know.

Starting point is 02:00:09 We've got all day together. And then only three hour one hour. Yeah. Literally, it's funny. This is a hilarious and awesome social experiment. I picked them up from a hotel and I just like harassed them all day to hang out with me. And then here we are now.

Starting point is 02:00:24 I love it. I love I was secretly recording out with me. And then here we are now. I love it. I love I was secretly recording the whole time just seeing I'm just kidding. Anyway, so what was the question? The more blocking. Yeah, so the interesting thing is with Beastburger and Feastables that there's physical goods as opposed to like making mobile games

Starting point is 02:00:40 or PC games, whichever one we end up doing, which is software. And I actually have a giant international audience. 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 festivals in Southeast Asia, get festivals in India, get festivals in Brazil, and Mexico and all these other places where we have giant pockets of our audience. And same thing with Beesburg. It's just going to take probably years, unless we partner with someone who already has a distribution,

Starting point is 02:01:08 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 festival's bar right now, it's only in America because we're struggling just to keep up with the American demand We haven't even gotten the chance to go outside America. So I alienate a majority of my audience and it feels sort of shitty to just From you know mention something that most of them can't buy but on 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

Starting point is 02:01:53 you promote it. So you can't put the egg before the chicken. And so it's like, that's, that's what I'm excited about. I want to get into less physical stuff and more stuff that everyone might out, it's can actually use. This is the thought process. Especially if there's a social element to the gaming too, because it's not unlike festivals, like that's a product you consume.

Starting point is 02:02:10 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 interface is where we want 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 I was actually really curious to get your thoughts, but I can't say it, because whatever I say, someone's just gonna take it and run with it.

Starting point is 02:02:28 But I'm pretty good at 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. It's like, good what I did. So much good talks. All right. And then juicy talks happen to you.

Starting point is 02:02:38 She's like, I gotta 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 need to hire. Is that a little, uh, never-acking, like, going into a new field and trying to... A little bit, but then I remind myself, like, Steve Jobs didn't know how to code, right? And, you know, 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.

Starting point is 02:03:03 And that might be ignorance. Well, 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.

Starting point is 02:03:21 And I think as long as I keep that as my North Star, you'll do well. What is the path to being worth 100 billion look like? Isn't path to being worth 100 billion look like? I don't know. Okay, let me just pause. You're 24 and there's so much awesome scaling, so many great ideas. Do you think about different trajectories

Starting point is 02:03:40 with those possible trajectories might look like? Yeah, I mean, if the goal was to just be worth $100 billion, yes. I'm 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, to the videos, the foundation. Yeah, exactly. So to pat $200 billion, just keep getting $100 million views of video, you know what I mean?

Starting point is 02:04:02 Or more. Or more, or more, exactly exactly if we can keep growing. But, you know, if we can keep feasible growing, right? And we eventually spend international and one day we're in a hundred thousand retail locations and we're selling the same amount of skews per unit per skews like we're currently doing. I mean, that would crush. And then obviously ideally one day we open up hundreds of beasters, we get it where we turn out, you know,

Starting point is 02:04:26 like Super Cell a couple of hit games. I don't wanna make dozens or hundreds of games. I just wanna make games that are just great. And, you know, we rarely drop them while we do their bangers. And just, you know, whatever other stuff we end up doing, all that combined, I mean, it's just interesting because like, what's a show that's pulled

Starting point is 02:04:43 100 million views per episode? like we're doing like you know me 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 has a Singular kind of bigger. Yeah, 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 what so 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

Starting point is 02:05:11 and I put out content and 15 million people show up. And every action I put out content and 10 million people show up and I have a TikTok and I put out content and on average 20 million people show up. And like, and I, 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, you know, over the years because festivals launched, you know, last year, 2022.

Starting point is 02:05:32 So it's a relatively new thing and Beastware, we just started scaling up the physical side and we haven't obviously even launched any mobile games yet. So think about the antithesis 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.

Starting point is 02:05:54 That, that, 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. But does money buy happiness? How has money changed sort of your contentment, your happiness in life? It's money by happiness. No, not, I mean to a point, yes. Once you can take care of your health, you can take care of any immediate dangers and you can take care of your family relatively, no, it doesn't.

Starting point is 02:06:32 But those things do. When I first came into money, one of the first things I did was retire my mom and that probably tons of happiness. And if my brother had a medical emergency and we couldn't afford it, I made money to afford it, that bring tons of happiness. So once you take care of those basic necessities, so we'll say makeover,

Starting point is 02:06:47 hypothetically, a million dollars, no, it really doesn't. Like, adding an extra zero, going from 10 million to 100 million or whatever it is, makes no difference. So you're giving that, or just fearless and 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

Starting point is 02:07:13 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. One interesting question I have for you psychologically, 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

Starting point is 02:07:43 find people you can trust? The question, do people see you basically as a lot of money. Do you find it hard to find people you can trust? Is there a 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. So you got to, so you can kind of sense... Oh yeah, you can sense the right thing. So clearly, right though.

Starting point is 02:08:09 Yeah, it's so obvious. So I don't even want to go into descriptions. But 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,

Starting point is 02:08:34 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. But maybe there's a reason I hang around a lot of these people I knew before I got there because it's much easier. And they help you keep like a your radar sharp of who can and can't be trusted because you know, you can trust them. It's difficult when you become richer and

Starting point is 02:08:56 richer and more powerful. Well, one thing you'll also find when you get rich, I know, I have a richer but more. 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. People, that take 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.

Starting point is 02:09:16 This, it's this, I'm dead. I thought there would be hundreds of me. And there is, I mean, there's like maybe one or two. And I talk to those motherfuckers every single day. I stick and tired of talking to them, but I love them. But it's just so interesting because like every level I got out, I get a million subscribers. I'm like, all right.

Starting point is 02:09:35 Where's all these guys and the million subscribers that are fucking psychopaths? And then, you know, you know, they're like. Yeah, people become conservative as they get more. Especially as they get bigger. Yeah. And 20 million subscribers, 30. It's like every step of the way.

Starting point is 02:09:48 It's like, I just got more and more lonely, to be honest. So it sounds cliche and you hear that kind of shit in movies and you're like, yeah, that's not how it works. But it is. Like 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.

Starting point is 02:10:07 And be able to sacrifice everything for that video. 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 is crazy as you. Yeah, it is 100%. It's so, it's not what I was expecting. I was expecting there would be a lot of people like me, but... Well, I guess the guy we talked to you a lot

Starting point is 02:10:36 more, because a bit like you in that sense. Yeah, just in a different domain. Yeah, exactly. Just willingness to put it all back in, right? And that's why I've found right now a lot of the people are related to don't even make YouTube videos. Like I'm just like I'm viewing 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?

Starting point is 02:11:01 And 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 like the Bukowski line, find where you love and let it kill you, is really put everything, put everything into the thing you love. And that's like the way to really create special stuff,

Starting point is 02:11:20 but it's also the way to live out the life model. Yeah, the thing is, you have to be careful given this advice because they're like, they're like bodybuilders. So we'll be like, just go to the gym, be dismal. I'm dismal and go to gym. But I would argue for those people, it's not even dismal. They just enjoy weightlifting, right? Because there are people who are jacked, but they don't make much money around a business.

Starting point is 02:11:43 If they're that discipline, 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.

Starting point is 02:11:56 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. 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.

Starting point is 02:12:13 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 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. And it's just not innate to them. But I think a lot of us have the capacity to do that in some domain.

Starting point is 02:12:35 Yeah, I think if you went about it strategically. If you surrounded yourself with fellow like-minded people and slowly over time switched it, but if you just try to like hardcore do it, you're just gonna lose your mind. Do you ever worry about your mental health? Did you take step to protect it? To, yeah, to, for the long run, to make sure you have the mental strength to go on. Yes, weirdly enough, the best thing for my mental health

Starting point is 02:13:00 was giving into my nature to work. Any, the most depressed I get is when I try to restrict it and like, I don't work weekends, so 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

Starting point is 02:13:18 and for whatever reason I feel compelled to go all night, whatever, like just do it, you know, do whatever you want. It's what I tell them my working brain. And I just give it into it. That's where I feel the happiest. And then it's typically like, when I'm really in the grind mode, it'll be like seven or eight days. It's just non-stop going going. And it's like, I'll realize, oh, I need some recharge time. And then go fucking binge a season of anime. Yeah, but-

Starting point is 02:13:45 Listen to your brother. 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, I'll give you all these constraints, but for me, and it's unconventional, I just give in to it. I think there's something really to be said for that. I try to surround myself with people that,

Starting point is 02:14:01 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 pull that 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. 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 this stuff you're passionate about. Normal 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,

Starting point is 02:14:28 just whatever, different people, you're gonna feel crazy and it's gonna wear on you. Whereas if you're around similar people, it's so much easier. If you, you know, I've started weightlifting more, and one thing that's helped is just having jack people around, because they naturally just eat healthier. They do like they naturally just have freaking grilled chicken and all this shit and high protein meals

Starting point is 02:14:51 And it's just like easier for me to just piggyback and be like oh can you just order me whatever you're getting? Uh, and they're like I gotta go to the gym and I'll be like oh shit. I'll just join you, you know, and it's like it's just it's Cheek Coats, you know, just surround yourself with people that you wanna be. And it makes it like 70% easier, in my opinion. It's like that is the cheek 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

Starting point is 02:15:18 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. I outgrew them, but at the time it was great. I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for them.

Starting point is 02:15:40 Just all along the way, the friends that I hung out with had such a dramatic impact on where I am. Like, I'd 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're selling. So selective. It's crazy. Like, Chris, you know, he's, he's really funny. And that's why he's great

Starting point is 02:16:07 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 out of 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

Starting point is 02:16:32 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 just 10x, right? Obviously you can't do that, but you gotta find your closest version of it. And you should be selective. Yeah. But this also applies not to see younger told people to agree. But they it's it's even more I like when I was a teenager, I just, you know,

Starting point is 02:16:53 I couldn't relate to many people. I just thought I was like, oh, fucking 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 particularly, 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 interest. So the task is not to feel sorry for yourself or somehow change yourself. It's more to find the right way.

Starting point is 02:17:14 Find people you fit in with, yeah. Yeah. Assuming which, you know, you're not getting comfortable, like, as soon as it's not something bad, right? Like if you're hobbyist shooting things, or shooting things you shouldn't be shooting, don't find people that encourage that. But outside of that, for sure.

Starting point is 02:17:34 Actually, as an answer to what is the best advice someone ever gave you, you said, you're crazy until you're successful than you're a genius. 100% all along the way, people gave me so much 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 a live, should stop being too obsessed, everything, everything under the book. And then once I'm successful, those same people are like, dang, you're a genius. Wow, you really, you pulled that off.

Starting point is 02:18:03 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? They'll, they'll like pressure you not to do, um, you know, feastables or, or mobile gaming or whatever lays beyond. Yeah. It's, it's funny how people don't. Well honestly, the type of people I just don't talk to anymore. Yeah, sure.

Starting point is 02:18:28 I don't even know what they have to say now. So most people on the team are like, yes, and they're like, whatever the idea you got, they're with it. No, it's weird. We actually have a, my team pushes back on me, pretty hardcore, which I don't want, yes, man. And they're like, they, James, you know, a CEO who helped me build all this, he's very adamant.

Starting point is 02:18:50 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 should make it be missing that I can provide that could help them make a more updated decision? Like I'm not God, you know what I mean?

Starting point is 02:19:04 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 push back. Yeah, you can see it like Tyler, anytime I set something, he would give me feedback and push back, which is what I want.

Starting point is 02:19:16 I don't want him just to be like, yes, you're 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 play in the human condition? I think, well, role is, well, the thing is, love can be scary because this is, you know,

Starting point is 02:19:37 the human you're gonna spend the most amount of time with in your life, you know, and so for a project that over 50 years, they can be a liability or an asset. Love the metrics. You know, I love, love the metrics. No, but seriously, it's gotta a project that over 50 years they can be a liability or an asset. I love them, that is right. You know, I love them. 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 it's... In the long run.

Starting point is 02:19:52 Yeah. 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

Starting point is 02:20:11 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, is constantly pushing me,

Starting point is 02:20:36 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 somebody like that? Just really don't give up until you find someone that you know that there's so many people on the planet I mean there really there really is. There's billions of... The odds are in your favor. Of, 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

Starting point is 02:21:17 in the same case. So surround yourself with that one special person that really makes you a better person. And maybe that's just an entrepreneur or brain looking at it. I mean, not everyone wants to hyper optimize your life like me, but for me, to truly love someone, they have to make me a better person. In every way, yeah. Yeah. Well, what do you hope you're 24?

Starting point is 02:21:34 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? So deep one.

Starting point is 02:22:06 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

Starting point is 02:22:36 goal as well? Yeah, of course. To help millions. I mean, the iPhone's the most successful product ever invented. It's hard not to admire what he created. You know, the same with sort of as Johnny, I have talked about like the passion, the effort they put into the designing the iPhone.

Starting point is 02:22:55 That like little bit of love is transferred to the whole world. Like they get the experience that you are of that from the designer. It's what a beautiful thing to do. You know, I couldn't think of anything better, you know, to create something that even after your dead for decades just has such a Profile in fact I'm basically half the human population. Yeah, it's wild brings joy to people 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'm I can't, it's so exciting to see what happens this year

Starting point is 02:23:25 and next year, like the size delimit. 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 of heart to help a lot of people.

Starting point is 02:23:45 It's awesome to see, man. I appreciate it. More importantly, before we go, are we going to play a dune tonight? Some board games? Not going to play dune. I have to. You don't want to play board games with me? I want to play board games.

Starting point is 02:23:57 You don't want to play board games? If only I wasn't an idiot and actually flew to the right airport. I don't know what the word games with me. They're going to dislike the video. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Mr. Beast. 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, Rebindranath Tagore. Reach high for stars lie hidden in you.

Starting point is 02:24:28 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. Thank you.

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

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