The Joe Rogan Experience - #1788 - Mr. Beast
Episode Date: March 7, 2022Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson is an internet personality, businessman, and philanthropist. He operates several popular YouTube channels, a delivery based fast food restaurant, MrBeast Burger, and two... philanthropic programs: Beast Philanthropy, and Team Trees.
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The Joe Rogan Experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
I've done quite a few, I've never...
Okay, here, hold up, just talk to me for like a minute.
Okay.
This is so freaky to me.
Is it really?
You had to hear my own voice.
We need to put this on the video.
Okay, good, we're recording already.
Have you ever had a guest like freak out no you're the first freak out because of headphones and not
so it's because I hear my own voice I'm very conscious of that so now I'm like fuck my
inflection or whatever is it uh sounds fine okay no I know it sounds fine it's just fuck whatever
I'll suck it up you don't have like a button you can press to kill it?
No, no.
What the fuck?
So when you play video games, you don't hear yourself, right?
No.
Yeah, I don't either.
But yeah, I hear it's different.
Sorry.
Yeah, don't worry about it, dude.
That's what you sound like.
Now you know.
I mean, I've seen videos.
I knew what I sound like just in real time hearing it.
It sounds like I'm speaking to myself.
Fuck it.
But you're not.
You're speaking to myself. Fuck it. But you're not. You're speaking to me. The purpose of it is when you and I talk and we can hear each other's voice at the same sound level, we don't talk over each other.
Because people tend to talk over each other just normal.
In one-on-one conversations?
Yeah, normal conversation.
People talk over each other accidentally.
But when you hear both sounds, both voices at the same sound level, it sounds really clunky in your ears.
It's imperative when you have three people.
If you have three people and you don't have headphones on,
it'll be a disaster.
Everyone starts talking over each other.
And then when you're listening to it, it's like unlistenable.
It's hard to.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
All right, so we're just rolling right now?
We're rolling, man.
What's happening?
How are you?
First of all, let me just tell you how impressed
I am with what you've done.
I think what you've done is amazing because your channel and what you've
done on YouTube is completely unique. It's completely you. Your personality comes through,
the way you've crafted these things that people have to do, these tasks and these games and this
fun shit you do. And it's wildly popular.
And I didn't know about it until I guess about a year ago.
I told you my 11-year-old is fucking obsessed with your show.
Obsessed.
And she told me, and we were in a hotel in Vegas.
I was there for the UFC and she was watching YouTube.
I'm like, what are you watching?
She's like, oh my God, it's Mr. Beast.
And she was so into the show. And then I watched it.
And I was like, wow, this is actually really entertaining.
It's fun stuff, man.
Thank you.
Yeah, it's been crazy because I've been doing it since I was 11.
Really?
Yeah, so now I'm 23.
And so it's just like basically every year it just got crazier and crazier.
And I used to make a dollar a day.
Well, the first few years I wasn't even making money off YouTube.
But once I started making money, I was making a dollar a a day and i saved up for a couple months i bought a
microphone saved up for half a year i got a computer and i've just always reinvested it and
so it's like literally just all i i mean i was like as awkward as they came uh no money no nothing
and i just basically just obsessed over youtube every day for a decade are your first episodes
available the 11 when you're 11 years old? No,
because I had a friend when I was 13 that
found my channel, and so I deleted
all the videos. I got really self-conscious.
Oh, no! So everything
from 13 and up is there, and yeah, they're fucking
terrible. That's still cool. So what
did you do when you first started? What
was the first idea?
The very first video,
weirdly enough, I played this stupid game
and some hacker killed my base when I was 11
and so I uploaded it. And my first
video got 20,000 views instantly
because all the people that played the game was like,
oh shit, you can hack in this game. It's a game
called Battle Pirates. I guarantee you no one listens. What is it called?
Battle Pirates. No one here has ever heard of it. Battle Card?
Battle Pirates. Battle Pirates. Yeah, it was a
really small game. But I uploaded that
and it got 20,000 views. And that was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me because I was hooked from Pirates. Yeah, it was a really small game. But I uploaded that, and it got 20,000 views.
And that was probably the best thing that could have ever happened to me because I was hooked from day one.
Literally, like most people, it takes hundreds of videos before you get like one view.
And somehow the very first video I uploaded at 11 got like 20,000 views.
And then I was just like, oh, I fell in love, and I've been hooked ever since.
Wow.
So it was kind of almost by accident.
Essentially, yeah. It was that. Because this So it was kind of almost by accident. Essentially, yeah.
It was that.
Because this was way before YouTube was even a thing.
Like, you know, no one was really a YouTuber.
Hardly anyone made money.
When did YouTube first get – when did it launch?
Like 2006 or whatever.
YouTube was a thing, but, like, the partner program wasn't really a thing.
No one was making money.
It was definitely back before it was cool.
Like, when I was doing YouTube when I was 14 and 15, like, now, you know, it's cool if you want to really a thing. No one was making money. It was definitely back before it was cool. When I was doing YouTube when I was 14 and 15, now it's cool if you want to be a YouTuber in high school or middle school.
Back then, no one gave a fuck.
You know what I mean?
It was like you're just worried they would try to play your videos in class or make fun of you or stuff like that for it.
But how did it evolve to what it is now?
Was it a vision?
Was it a slow sort of a gradual increase in numbers?
Yeah. I mean, it was about as slow as it gets. So when I was a young teenager, I was getting
no views, had no money, had no equipment. And so for the most part, it was just like,
I was just trying to scrounge money so I could buy equipment because I was using my brother's
old laptop. And so my first couple hundred videos, I didn't have a microphone. Like imagine just like crackly, terrible voice. And so once I got monetized, I saved up for a few
months. Like I told you, I bought a microphone. I can just give you a mile high history. And I
saved up for like six months. I mean, I was just doing video game videos and they were terrible,
but I saved up, I got a real computer. And so now I could actually record the video game at
high quality. I have a microphone. I'm like 15.
And I just kept going and going.
Trying to figure out what are some of the hot spots.
Essentially, up until 18, I had been doing YouTube pretty religiously, but I was making no money.
This is kind of the turning point was when I graduated from high school.
And my whole life, I was like, I want to be making enough money by the time I graduated to do this full time.
And I wasn't. I was still only making a couple hundred bucks a month. So I graduated high school and my whole life I was like I want to be making enough money by the time I graduated to do this full-time and I wasn't I was still only making a couple hundred bucks a month so I graduated high school and my mom was like either move out or go to a community college
and I didn't have enough money to move out but I really just I hated school with a passion
but she forced me to go to community college and that was that was the worst thing ever like that
that made me hate life like borderline suicidal I I just can't stand having to just sit there and listen to this dumb stuff and listen to some
teacher read out a book. So what I did was I would act like I was going to community college,
but I would just work on videos in my car and edit and stuff like that. I had straight zeros.
And so now the clock had started because once my mom found out, I was screwed.
Were you aware of that? Like you're running a risk?
Yeah, exactly.
And so I would act like I was going to college that whole time, but I wasn't.
And I didn't have enough money to move out.
And that was kind of when I was just like 15 hours a day, all in.
I was like, I'm fucked if this doesn't work.
And actually, I had some videos pop off.
I couldn't tell you which ones, but I had a month where I made 20 grand
because I just had some videos just do really, really well.
And then I came home and I was like, yeah, I haven't been going to college.
And I moved out the next day.
My mom almost had a heart attack because she didn't understand YouTube or anything back then.
And she was like, man, this guy's going to work at McDonald's.
I wasted all this time.
I invested 18 years and this is what I get.
Where were you living?
What part of the country?
North Carolina.
That's where I've lived almost my whole life.
And so how does she feel now?
Oh, she's great.
Is she flabbergasted?
She's beyond happy.
Yeah, she loves it.
Put her in front of her friends.
She loves talking about it, obviously.
Oh, I always knew little Jimmy was going to be a success.
No, no.
She doesn't try to hide it.
We would fight all the time.
Even in high school, I never once studied.
I literally wouldn't even take my books home.
Like, I legit don't think I studied once all of high school at my house.
And so we would fight a lot.
I didn't have the best grades.
And so I would just make videos, and she didn't understand it,
especially because back then it was just a whole different world.
Like, yeah, there wasn't really a thing as a full-time YouTuber and stuff.
And so it was a lot of arguments, a lot of drama, but it ended up working out.
She's happy.
The thing is, it's like nobody saw this coming, right?
So you can't blame her.
Especially me.
In the middle of North Carolina in a small town, I had horrible acne.
Especially back then, really awkward.
It's like no one.
People would have bet a million dollars that I wouldn't be a YouTuber.
It makes no sense. But I just like, I have, you know,
hyper obsession and I love this and, you know, given enough time, anyone can solve it.
Well, there's a lesson in that for people really. Like to just, if you do have a hyper obsession to something, there's a lot of people that think that because they're bad at school or because
they're not interested in school, that they're destined to be a loser. Yeah. And that's not true.
The problem is school is too rigid.
Like regular public school system, sit down, underpaid teacher, disinterested, not really
connected with the work.
You're not connected with it.
You just can't wait to go home and do what you like to do.
Exactly.
And you get this thought in your head like, oh my God, I'm going to be a loser.
I mean, that's how I was when I was in high school.
I thought I was going to be a loser.
Well, and you take it a step further because I thought, especially if you're, like, extremely
passionate about something at a young age, where most kids are, then you're even, it's
more exacerbated that it's like, you know, I didn't talk to anyone.
I hardly had any friends because I was so obsessed with YouTube.
Back then, just no one cared.
So it's like, I thought I was just, thought I just didn't even know how to speak.
Literally, I just couldn't hold a conversation with a single person because people would just tell me all you talk about is YouTube.
And I would try to talk about something else.
But back then, I was so hyper-obsessed that I literally just didn't know how to.
But what were you obsessed about?
Were you obsessed about other channels, your channel?
Everything from learning how to editing, the pacing of the videos, ideas, what's going viral, what's trending, what's hot.
Especially back then, I had no idea what worked.
I mean, I had to like self-teach myself everything, even, you know, frame rate on cameras, coloring of the video, just stuff like that.
And how did you learn?
Did you learn from YouTube?
Yeah.
So like YouTube videos and tutorials or something?
Most of my growth came actually after I graduated high school.
Basically what I did was I somehow found these other like four lunatics.
We were – three of us were college dropouts.
One was a high school dropout.
And one, I don't know, he just like quit his job.
We were all super small YouTubers.
And we basically talked every day for a thousand days in a row and did nothing but just like hyper study.
Like what makes a good video?
What makes a good thumbnail? What's good pacing? Like how to go viral. And we would just call it like daily
masterminds. We would just get on Skype every morning. And like some days, like I'd get on
Skype at 7am and I'd be in the call until like 10pm. And then I'd go to bed, I'd wake up and I'd
do it again. And, you know, we'd do things like take a thousand thumbnails and see if like there's
a correlation to the brightness of the thumbnail to how many views it got or like you know like videos that get over 10 million views it's like
how often do they cut the camera angles or like things like that really so you you micro analyzed
everything yeah just i mean for like we were very religious about it and so that's that's where most
my knowledge came from is i just surround myself with these lunatics and just every day like we
didn't do anything we had no life uh but everybody had sort of a similar vision yeah exactly so we all had
like 10 20 000 subscribers when we met and by the time we stopped talking we all had millions of
subscribers and we we all hit a million subscribers like within a month it's crazy because it's like
if you envision a world where you're trying to be great at something and it's just like you learning
and fucking up and learning from your mistakes also my mom told me not to curse sorry mom if someone could just like edit out the swear
words and give it to me mom yeah so i could give it to my mom to listen to that would be great um
but like you know you mess up you learn from your mistake you mess if you learn from your mistake
you in two years you know might have learned from 20 mistakes or if you have like four other people
who are also messing up and when they uh learn from the mistake they teach you what they learn
stuff like hypothetically you two years down the road have learned like five times more of the
amount of stuff so it just like helps you grow exponentially way quicker if that makes any sense
it does it does so but it's interesting that you thought about it that way in sort of a systematic
approach like exactly this is not dumb luck uh no i mean it was like like they say 10 000 hours
of math or something. We probably
put it like 40, 50,000 hours. We're talking like every day, all day, like literally nothing. We
had no friends outside of the group. That was your life. I'm actually rereading that book right now,
that Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers, that talks about that 10,000 hours principle. It totally
applies to what you did. A hundred percent. I mean, it sounds like you were just all day,
every day,
which makes sense. What do you have now?
90 million subscribers?
Across everything, we're closing in on
200 million subscribers. Jesus!
Have you seen our dub
channels? No.
Can you pull that up? Just search MrBeast
and Estefaniel. So we actually, which
I'm kind of curious why you don't do this. We do our videos
in other languages as well.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
I can't wait to show you this because I actually have a really cool story.
Just go to the channel.
Who does this?
We do.
So you hire someone?
Yeah, we have voice actors and everything.
Wow. So these are the exact same videos on my main channel,
but we pay voice actors to dub over them.
We translate the text in the video, everything.
MrBeast in Espanol.
Yeah, that was actually one of the fastest growing channels last year.
That's so smart.
Okay, now click on a video so we can kind of hear it.
And so scroll down so you can see the comments.
It's all in Spanish.
That's dope.
Yeah.
So that's now just, I won't pull them all up.
Any other countries?
Yeah.
Search MrBeastBrazil.
We do a bunch of them.
Oh, so you got a Portuguese translator as well.
Yeah.
Wow.
That's dope.
Yeah.
Same thing here.
I love it.
Oh, man.
What a great idea, man.
Yeah.
And so, because, you know uh if you
google it it's like only whatever less than 10 of the world speaks english so 90 of the world can't
even enjoy your content and when i realized that i was like wait a minute 90 of my the world can't
even watch this stuff um and so go back to the spanish one real quick because that's our biggest
one and sorry for anyone watching who doesn't have the visual so set it to most popular yields like we just started doing this like six months ago and it's
crazy like how viral some of these videos are 51 million yeah and the problem with me is like
i don't know if someone's going to translate if they're going to say exactly what i said well you
have quality control so we have like before a video gets uploaded we have three different people
who basically write the transcript and then if the words don't line up on all three, then – or sorry.
Let me think about the process.
We have something like that because I was worried about that as well.
I think we take the original transcript and then we have it dubbed.
And then after stuff, we have like two different people write out.
And if it doesn't line up with the original, then there's like – it's a red flag and we look at it.
Interesting.
Yeah, we built some system where I don't have to worry about that.
And the final point is in Spanish, the guy who does my doves is the same
guy who does spider-man we managed to convince him so a lot of those comments are like why does
he sound like spider-man or is mr b spider-man that's hilarious yeah and so what we do is when
we go into these markets we get celebrities to do my my voice so then like the local people in the
language freak out so like japan's coming up and
i can't say who but we secured like a giant voice actor from an anime to do my doves and whenever
we launch in japan i know they're gonna lose their freaking minds that's a brilliant idea
that's so smart so you have how many employees then uh i mean across everything over a hundred, I don't know. Wow. And what are you 23? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. It's wild. I think I just had the blessing
of finding what I loved at a young age. So like, cause to get to this level, it takes, you know,
a decade. Most people don't find what they love till they're young twenties. So they'd be where
I'm at in their thirties. I just lucked out and found it when I was really young.
It's that, but it's also your vision.
One of the things that I was really impressed by when I started looking into you after my daughter introduced me is that you invest so much money into the show. All the money I make.
Why do I need money?
So you don't go crazy?
You don't have a Ferrari or anything nuts?
No.
I think living your life chasing a nicer and nicer car and a bigger and bigger box to live in
is kind of a dumb way to go about life.
Yeah.
Funny enough, I lived in
a super below average home, and
I kind of learned why famous people
don't live in below average homes, because
someone broke in, stole everything I owned.
I had to get a little nicer house for security reasons,
but before I was robbed,
my place was a little duplex, $700 a month.
You get a roommate's 360 split.
Right.
Yeah, and just drive a normal car.
Well, now I drive a Tesla just because of getting off of gas and stuff like that.
But, yeah.
So you don't go crazy at all with cash?
No.
I really try not to.
I think that's just a bad way to go about life also it is a little hypocritical because I run a nonprofit
and you know we have you seen our beast philanthropy channel no can you pull
that up as well we do a lot of stuff for helping people and so also if I lived in
a ten million dollar mansion well I'm feeding people and trying to help people
else in my eyes it's also a little hypocritical as well so in every area I
just I feel like it's just better if I just live below my means
you're just very wise for a young
man because a lot of 23 year olds
would be balling out of their fucking mind
right now
I also have some stories about that too but
I did have a phase where I did
ball out a little bit and then I realized
this doesn't make me happy
what did you do during the balling out phase
I bought an i8 and I also bought some designer clothes, like some $1,000 shirts and stuff like that.
Ironically, all of which was stolen when my house was broken into.
So it was kind of perfect because I was like, I don't know if I really care about this stuff anymore.
And then someone just stole all my expensive shit and I was like, perfect.
Did you set aside a bunch of fuck you money at least so that you never have to worry about money again?
I've always reinvested back in the channel.
Sometimes I run out of money and I have to take a loan.
Really?
Yeah.
You've taken a loan?
Multiple times.
But you're making astounding amounts of money.
Yeah, but hypothetically if you do a brand deal
and a brand owes you half a million dollars,
sometimes they don't pay for four months.
Well, I already spent that half a million dollars
when I gave it away in that video.
So it's like, there's never been a point
where I'm like negative, technically money's
inbound, but sometimes you just have to wait, but I got to keep going and keep filming, you know?
Wow. That's just, it's very unusual that someone would spend that much money reinvesting in the
show. Yeah. That's which ironically is why we made more money last year than any other YouTuber on
the platform. Cause it's, I don't, the thing is, for YouTube, a lot of people are very young.
And so I think it's like there's so much money in this industry,
but most people are so young that they just don't even realize
the opportunity they have and they don't understand a lot of these things.
And so I think it shouldn't be revolutionary that I reinvest all my money.
That's something businesses have been doing for centuries.
You know what I mean?
It's not that crazy.
But I think just like I was saying, like people are just so young and they don't understand like, you know, the opportunity you have here. I mean, if you have
50 million people that watch everything you do, you can start a business and you can do anything.
You know what I mean? Um, that's very valuable. Well, the thing is, is that you're treating this
like an established business. And I think there's a lot of people that get into YouTube and they're
just, they have no idea what they're doing and they have no business sense. And even though you didn't pay
attention in school, you're obviously wise enough to recognize that the right thing to do is to
invest. That's what makes it unusual. Because like you give a 23 year old the kind of money that
you're making, most of them are going to just go fucking crazy. Oh, it's think even younger,
because I started getting money when I was so there's there's so many things
I want to say on that because I agree and I feel like I have some good advice to add for people in those positions
but
There's a couple things first first off the to be like this
Successful as a youtuber you kind of have to understand like there's like three different pillars that make like a like
Get us where we are like you have to have the business sense reinvest higher scale up
I mean the things we're doing are huge logistical nightmares. Have you ever tried
to buy a private island and
you buy a private island and there's no beach and
so you have to terraform a beach and build a pier and stuff like
that? Is that what you did? Yeah.
You guys bought an island? Yeah, because we
did a video where Last Leave Island keeps it.
And so we buy an island and it looks better
on the internet and then you go see it and there's no beach.
Fuck, now you've got to import 5,000 pounds of sand
and stuff like that. Where's the island?
Somewhere in the Bahamas.
Someone won it.
So the person who left.
Someone won a fucking island?
Yeah.
We're actually about to do
something similar again
coming up.
How much does an island cost?
That one was like 800 grand
and then we put like
100 grand into like
renovating it
and then.
Wow.
How big is the island?
It was huge.
Like three football fields or something like that.
It took quite a while to walk to the other side.
This is it?
Yeah.
Yeah, that one.
I bought this entire island.
You can get an island for $800,000?
Yeah, in the Bahamas.
That's kind of a shock.
How many islands are in the Bahamas?
I'm going to be honest.
I have no idea.
But that beach you see there, we had to build that beach.
Really?
Yeah.
So that sand wasn't there
We had to import it so it was just like rocky coastline exactly and we needed a beach to film on so we basically had
To build a South Park and so did you put a house up there?
No, is it just a person who wanted just sold it? Oh, did they really yeah right away? Yeah? He's like I don't fucking want
And so these people how do you find them?
This one.
The contestants.
It's different for every video.
This one, I'd have to see them all in particular.
Like, this one was a mix of random people and my boys.
The hard thing is, like, sometimes I love pulling random people.
But if you grab random people, sometimes people just don't know how to act on camera.
And they freeze up. And they're really not good for content.
And so like in an ideal world, everyone in my videos is just purely random, which is
what I'm trying to get towards because I'm trying to get better at like filtering out
the random people that just freeze up and aren't good on camera.
That one's a little older.
So some of those are like people I knew because I knew they'd make good content.
Because I would bring someone in a video and they'd win something and, and they'd just freeze up, and they'd do nothing.
They'd just be like, oh, thanks.
And then all the comments were like, no one just says, oh, thanks,
when you win $100,000.
This is fake.
Mr. Beast is fake.
All this is fake.
And I'm like, no, it's real.
The fact that he's acting like that shows it's real.
But the masses don't understand that.
So I have to be very strategic on how I pick people,
or everyone's just like, oh, this is fake.
They didn't react.
So how do you pick people? Do you have have an audition do you have a conversation with them do you meet them I literally just hired a casting director and usually we just like get
large amounts of people they filter through and we're just looking for like people a do they need
it like do they actually need this help would it benefit their life you know obviously they can't
be super rich and then also it's literally just like put a camera in front of them and do they freeze up that's it i just can't have people
like freezing up because then it just like it i don't know it's just not content and it's i can't
just pause the show and like explain like oh they're not talking right now because they you
know so when they meet you is it for the first time yeah when we film it's usually for the first
time so the casting person sets everything up and they get these applicants from –
It really just depends on the video because some videos like Squid Game, there's 456 people.
That one we dropped like a shirt.
We grabbed 100 random people that bought the shirt.
And then the other 356 we just got from a local college.
We literally just went there, put out flyers, and the first 356 people that called, we just brought them in.
You brought them in but did you vet them?
No, because there were so many people.
That's what I'm saying.
It's like different videos.
Did you see that Squid Game video?
I saw part of it, yeah.
Yeah, that was wild.
That was the most expensive thing we've ever done.
How much did it cost?
A little over $4 million.
Jesus Christ.
Yeah, because we had CG, recreated all the sets.
And the thing is, there's not really room for error.
You know what I mean?
Like, this shit has to work, you know?
And so, like, you know, engineering.
Like, the glass bridge, we legit had to build the glass bridge.
Wow.
We dropped them and safety and all that stuff.
Yeah.
And when you're doing this, are you bringing in stunt people?
Like, how are you coordinating all this?
For?
For, like, to set up challenges?
Like, if you're doing something where you drop people off off a how do you make sure that they don't die?
Well, there's foam below it. And obviously,
it's safe. Everything we do,
we safety test beyond belief. That video we had
over 100 different people working on.
Wow.
I don't even know how many
people we had working on that Clash Bridge thing. That one was very
stressful. Because also, it's like, you know,
you spot a trend. Squid Game's hot. It's not like you have
six months to pull it off. It's like, fuck, this is trend squid game's hot it's not like you have six months to pull it off it's like fuck this is hot it's not gonna be hot in a couple
months like we're doing it we gotta do it in the next month and so it's like we it was basically
like three or four warehouses just filled with like these crazy like sets and and all this stuff
has to move concurrently um yeah i mean it's it's hard without the visuals to even be again to
explain it because like like the first set we had was, like, literally, like, the size of a football field.
And we need to go to the very beginning.
Yeah, that's the glass bridge one.
But, yeah, look at this set.
Like, those are real walls we built.
Those things are fucking huge.
Sorry, Mom, for swearing.
Sorry, Mom.
Yeah.
Oh, well.
Like, you can't even tell the scale of how big that room is in the shot.
But that's 456 people.
And look how tiny they are.
What are you hitting them with?
So, again, this is like the crazy stuff that people don't even realize we have to do.
So we had to build these squibs on them.
So when people got out, because in Squid Game you got shot when you got out.
Right.
We can't shoot people.
So the next best thing is we put a device on them that when they get out, it just shoots
out ink to signify that they got out.
So everyone had a device strapped to their chest that we had to custom build.
And we had to build software in an app.
And then we had like 100 spotters around.
So if I said red light and they kept moving, the spotter would click the app on their app and basically pop their squib.
So you developed an app specifically just for this?
Yeah.
That's hilarious.
I wish I had it on me.
So you would see all 456 people.
You'd see their face.
And then when they got out, the spotter would pop them out.
That's the thing.
There's so much stuff that goes on behind the scenes to make this stuff happen.
People don't even realize.
And that's why no one else does what we do because it's stressful.
It's hard.
And it's brutal.
Wow.
And where did you get the doll?
The doll that spins its head around?
That one?
You built that?
Yeah, some company in Europe, they built it for us. It was like 50 grand.
What do you do with that after you're done with it?
That's the problem, because none of our videos are the same. Usually we give stuff away,
or we just put it in storage, but I don't know.
Where is that doll now?
I don't want to lie to you. I have no earthly idea. I'll buy it. Oh, you'll buy it? Yeah, I want to put that doll in? I don't want to lie to you I have no earthly idea
I'll buy it
Oh you'll buy it?
Yeah I want to put that doll in my studio
Okay
I think that would be dope as fuck
Wouldn't it?
The little doll head?
Come on man
That thing would be cool as shit
To have that here
So now skip to the next scene
I mean because I can run you through it
That's why
Like this originally was supposed to cost
Two million dollars
But as we're going through it
It's like oh fuck
Now it's two and a half
Oh fuck it's three And I was like okay you can't get any more than
three million and next thing you know like you actualize the budget afterwards it's like fucking
four million dollars holy shit and this is did you have to take all this down once you were done
yeah and then so you just lease these warehouses no we we own them we have them okay we have one
of the largest studios on the east coast oh so you built warehouses specifically so that you can do all kinds of stuff like this.
Well, and so you can pause it.
He can suggest this.
That's kind of the problem for me is like we're reinvesting so much money in the videos and pushing them to the max, but I also need space.
Right.
Because like the videos are so big that – so if you want to – you can't just work on a video for a week.
You've got to be working on it months in advance.
And so you basically got to always be working on an ideal world six to ten videos.
Well, if one video takes up your entire warehouse, how the fuck do you work on the other five?
So like space is a huge bottleneck.
And I'm in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina.
There's not tons of studio space and stuff like that.
So we have like three or four studios that we – the newest one is what I call our campus that we built.
It's a giant $10 million studio.
And it's kind of like a money game
because I want to reinvest and go big on videos,
but I also need to build infrastructure.
So it's kind of like a balancing act.
But we built this huge, it's 70,000 square feet,
or 55,000 of like studio space.
Because also the problem is if you get like warehouses,
they always have beams and you can't film if there's beams.
So it's like, it was easier just to renovate this place.
Sorry, I'm just going on random tangents.
No, it's good.
It's great.
I love it.
And so basically we have this ginormous warehouse, soundproof.
I can do shit like blow up a car in it because there's like a thousand sprinklers that you'll drown before you burn to death in there or like light a fire or anything, which is good.
So we can do dumb shit.
It's like the perfect wonderland, but even then like even though this place is great and it's ten million dollars
It's still like usually only houses one or two videos
So we need to build another one and it's just usually like a money game now
How much micro managing do you do because I'm looking at this and I'm seeing like you've got everything you've even got the cookies like
In the shape of the umbrella so they like have to get someone who makes the cookies for you.
Oh, of course.
Make sure that you can still cut them out with a needle.
That's one of the easiest things.
Yeah, but even that being easy, it's like you've got to make sure everything's right.
Yeah.
I can imagine one screw-up, like if someone makes bad cookies that you can't cut through right.
Of course.
And they crumble.
Oh, we do test on test on test on test leading up.
Dude, this one was crazy, the tug-of-war scene.
Look at that set.
Isn't that freaking crazy?
That's amazing.
Yeah.
So they're over foam, so they just drop down into a giant pile of foam.
That's incredible, dude.
That's probably one of the coolest shots I've ever gotten.
Yeah, I mean, this is like something that looks like a set from Fear Factor or something.
I mean, it really looks like a big time. Wait, look at this one, too. Pause it there. Look at that shit. It's crazy. Yeah, I mean, this is like something that looks like a set from Fear Factor or something. I mean, it really looks like a big time. Wait, look at this one too. Pause it there. Look at
that shit. It's crazy. Yeah.
I love it. No, it's really cool.
I love what you do. I just
think it's amazing how much dedication
you have to this. Thank you. Because no one's telling
you to do this. This is not like you have
like Universal Studios is behind you and
they're like, Mr. Beast, this is what we planned
and we have hired these people.
You're doing all of this yourself.
Taking all the risks, coming up with the ideas and every step.
Now people – it's like – what's it saying?
It's like you're crazy until you're a genius or whatever.
I don't know.
Not that I think I'm a genius, but it's like basically up until like two years ago,
every step of the way, too, people are throwing tomatoes and telling you you're stupid for
reinvesting.
Everyone thinks you're off your rocker you've lost your mind and everyone
also thinks like the life cycle of youtubers like two years and it's like well you know in two years
you're gonna be irrelevant when it's only two years if you just don't do interesting shit you
know yeah well i think it's two years if you don't continually push yourself exactly innovate can
yeah if you're innovating adapting and like doing cool stuff i mean you can have a career as long
as 10 years in in my opinion.
But that's the same in everything, I think.
I mean, that's the same in television shows.
How many television shows are really popular for a while and then they drop off?
Yeah, exactly.
Because they don't innovate.
Yeah.
Yeah, they get the cookie-cutter formula.
Also, that video, too, looking at the view count reminded me.
I think Netflix in total has 220 million subscribers.
And that video just crossed 220 million views.
Wow.
So it was a big dub.
I mean, obviously it worked.
I mean, just incredible.
Incredible that you were able to pull it all off during the time where Squid Games was really relevant.
Because if that came out today, I'm sure it would be really interesting.
But people wouldn't be obsessed with it.
No one would give a fuck.
Yeah, because when Squid Games first came out, I i mean it was a phenomenon for like a couple of months
exactly you got a small window to act in yeah and you got to design everything and build everything
and i also want to put out there i have some amazing people on my team because that video
without like i mean i've so arguably some of the smartest people in the world when it comes to just
creating viral content and youtube and stuff like that without them that wouldn't be possible because
it's not like i'm over there designing every little set and I'm
custom building the squibs that we're rigging on them and designing the app. It's taken a long
time, but I would literally, without a doubt in my mind, say we have the smartest people in the
world when it comes to making viral content. And no one else can do this type of stuff. You have
to be very nimble. You have to really think outside the box. And it's like, one day you're
trying to figure out how to secure a sub. The next you're trying to figure
out how to go to Antarctica. The next you're building Squid Game
in real life. The next you're burying me alive for 50 hours.
You know, it's like, you have to,
it's like, you don't find people that
specialize in this stuff. It's like, just people,
I don't know, who just have a willing to learn
and adapt and like, you know, keep, because
it's all different. And how do you find these people?
How do you find these people that you work with?
I mean, it's been hard. A lot of them are just like lunatics that really love doing
interesting things because it is fulfilling because like it's different. It's not like
you're going and doing the same cookie cutter stuff every day. So a lot of people find that
fulfilling. And usually it's people with good work ethic that want to learn and then we kind
of train them up. It's kind of been my best result because like I said, no one specializes
in all that stuff. You know what I mean? Also people who work in unscripted or like shows like that,
where it's not like a set, uh, plan typically do better in our environment. But like someone
who worked, like if you worked on wheel of fortune, you would do horrible in our environment.
You, you wouldn't even understand. It's like, cause like, you know, we don't tell you what to
do. We kind of like give you a little bit of rain to make decisions and you got to pivot. And it's
like, no, no one knows. We've never built Squid Game in real life before. We don't know
if it's possible to like build a 40 foot wall in this Coliseum. It's like they might cap you at 35.
Well, then now you have to decide, well, does 35 still look good on visual, on the camera and stuff
like that? So it's like people who are also able to think for themselves a little bit.
So, I mean, do you guys have like weekly meetings where you talk about this stuff?
I mean, we work in the office every day.
Are you working every day?
Well, not every day, but, you know.
Pretty close to it.
Yeah, I mean, if it's closer to a video, you know, it gets crunch time.
But, like, right now, we're not even really filming that much because we've just had a lot of videos fall through because of COVID.
Is it stressful to have, like, such a big staff?
Yeah.
I mean, my life is very stressful because we haven't even touched on like have you seen our gaming channel or our reaction channel?
No, I want to get to all that but I just just the way the whole thing is structured is fascinating to me because
Obviously you're at the top and you're the guy who was calling the shots and it's your channel
But it seems like you've got a whole ecosystem under you. Of course. And you're fucking 23 years old
I mean that's wild shit to be managing all i i could step away and those guys could create just the most viral videos ever we have a
machine these people are geniuses i mean it i i lucked out with quite a few of them they're
really intelligent the way you put them together was just finding people that you thought were
interesting i mean how long did it take to develop a 100 employee roster yeah well not all 100 are
on the main channel right because like
uh we have the gaming channel which probably has like 24 people like on our gaming channel we have
like five four or five people that like their full-time job is just to build the maps like
everything we do in minecraft we custom build and we custom code stuff and then we have a dozen
people that work on a react channel the main show i don't know where we're at but uh it's probably
like half of it um and i don't know, they're just like the people, they just come from
everywhere. I don't even know how to explain it. Cause it's like, I basically just hired one person
a month every month for like the last five years, essentially. Wow. That's, that's amazing. So like,
what is a typical day for you? Like when you're trying to figure out like what you're going to
make a video of next, do you get together with your friends and brainstorm do you have like an idea
that you come up with while you're driving your car or something so that's where it gets interesting
i've i so the difference between a video on youtube and this is where i can go infinitely
in depth the difference between a video with a million views or 10 million views usually isn't
that like the 10 million view video or actually a better example of a million views and 30 million
views the video with 30 million views usually didn't put in 30 times the effort. Like they might've
put in two or three times the effort and just had a way better idea. Does that make sense?
Yes.
And so once you kind of understand that, which I understood, like I kind of started to understand
that like when I was 19, you realize that like the idea is so freaking important. Like you could,
theoretically, most YouTubers watching this, you could pull triple the views with half the work if
you just had better ideas.
Like no joke.
It's that extreme.
And so once you realize how important an idea is, you just obsess over, well, how do I get more ideas?
How do I get better ideas?
So I used to just spend an hour every day brainstorming ideas.
I don't anymore.
But like probably like four years that just every day I just spend an hour.
And I would just do something different.
One day I'd use a random word generator.
Like, I don't know, just say a random word.
Dog.
You know, I adopted 100 dogs.
I gave my friend 50 dogs.
Or I gave a dog a million dollars for dog treats.
Whatever.
So I'd take in random words.
I'd see what pops in my head.
I'd write those down.
And I'd take in another random word.
And I've studied it very intensely.
I've tried lucid dreaming to see if I could trick myself to come up with ideas while I'm sleeping and stuff like that.
I work really well when I intake inspiration and I see what pops in my head.
That's the most effective way for me to come up with ideas.
So it's like I just try different ways of intaking inspiration, whether it be traveling, random words, flipping through a dictionary, things like that.
And that's always, for me, the way to like consistently come up with
good ideas wow so you you actively seek these ideas out and you try to come up with different
ways to just have them manifest yeah exactly and then once you do then you sit down with the crew
and you go okay how do we make this and then how does that work it's a long time but then we you
know the we can't start working on the video until we know what it is.
I've a guy named Tyler who I've known for years.
I went to high school with.
He's just phenomenal.
And so then we have to write the video and actually figure it out.
So if I want to bury myself alive for 50 hours, what does that look like?
What are we doing in there?
Because until you know everything you're doing, you can't start working on it.
And then you come up with it.
And then we have our people who basically make it happen um but then the problem is it's like oh well you you wrote you wanted a a giant ball in a coffin but like they're like oh well you can't get a giant ball and so then it's like
just months of back and forth like figure and this is where most people fall apart and why like this
wouldn't work in traditional media because it's like you don't write a script and then just hand
it to them especially because it's non-scripted like you know so you just say, like, here's what we need, and they just do it,
and then it magically happens.
Because once they start working on it, there's all these things like,
oh, well, this is impossible, this is impossible.
So it's like a back and forth for months.
And then usually it's like, well, since this didn't work,
that means this doesn't work in the hypothetical thing.
Like, you know, you can't light a firework in the coffin or whatever.
Or, like, you can't light a fire.
If, like, one of the bits was me to cook food, well, because of the ventilation, you can't light a fire in there.
And so then it's like you got to change it.
So it's like a lot of back and forth like that over the course of months.
And then you get a final product, which is why you need intelligent people working on it so they can like do that.
And they can occasionally make decisions on their own without having to push it all up to me because then I want to kill myself.
And this has been all just a trial and error sort of thing from the beginning of your first videos to now.
Do you ever stop and look at,
when you've got a video like that that has 224 million views,
and look at how insane your reach is and go,
how the fuck?
I know.
It's crazy.
Well, and that's just in English.
You have the other channels, other languages as well.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
I don't even know how to put it into words.
I mean, it is crazy.
It's like, obviously, it just feels like numbers on the screen.
But if I tried to visualize 100 million people, it's unfathomable.
Now, you're in an unusual situation, too, because YouTube is, you know, it's a weird place because it's got these, you have like partnership deals, right?
So you get a piece of the ad revenue, but you essentially don't have a contract.
Like YouTube can just go, you know what?
Fuck Mr. Beast.
Let's get rid of him.
Why would they?
Of course they shouldn't.
It's a terrible idea.
But you're in this weird, like if they change the way they monetize things for any reason.
I know that has happened to certain people, right?
monetize things for any reason. I know that has happened to certain people, right? Where they used to have some sort of a deal with YouTube where they were making videos and for whatever reason,
YouTube demonetized them and they go into full blown panic. Yeah. I mean, obviously-
You're not controversial in the sense of- Yeah, we're not anywhere near the line. And like,
a lot of that isn't YouTube. It's like the advertisers putting pressure on them and
they're just trying to –
But if you had been – my point was have you been approached to be independent of something like that?
Because you're so big at this point.
You could have your own servers, your own website, your own deals with advertisers where you get 100 percent of the revenue rather than –
I love YouTube.
I mean like you got to think about it like YouTube comes pre-installed on Android.
Obviously Google owns YouTube or Alphabet, but also Google.
And so people go there through Google.
I mean, like, all roads point to YouTube.
I love being the biggest creator on YouTube.
I fuck going and doing my own thing.
That sounds stupid.
Like, hell no.
Like, I can have, you know, one of the largest audiences in the world.
Instead of thinking about building my own platform, I'd rather think about building businesses, leveraging my audience off of YouTube. Like, you know, like Beast Burger and our the world and i can i instead of thinking about building my own platform i'd rather think about building businesses leveraging my audience off of youtube
like you know like beesberger and our snack brand and other stuff like that i feel like that's a
better use of time instead of just nuking my audience well i don't think it would nuke your
audience my point is i think you're so big that you would just transfer anywhere yeah but you
would take that but then you don't have like because we're constantly gaining new growth new
and new people like last year we gained uh on the main channel alone we're the most subscribed to channel in the world we gained 36 million
subscribers on the main channel like really yeah if i had my own platform it'd be like one or two
million you know what i mean right like so it's like and it's it's still going up you know across
all the channels we're getting like seven million subscribers a month like that would just plummet
if i use my own platform do you have an ultimate plan for all this? I mean, I just love YouTube.
It's been my life's passion.
Do you ever meet them?
People at YouTube?
Yeah.
Do you ever go there and have a powwow?
No.
I mean, I've talked to some people, but it's like I don't really need anything.
Bro, they should massage your feet.
They really should.
They should sit you down.
Jimmy, you're doing so well.
Yeah, YouTube, if you're listening, I'll take the foot massage.
Yeah, that's what they should be doing with you.
They should set up a throne.
You sit there with a crown on
and then they dunk your feet in the thing
and they do your nails. And so I might
have a different view than most people, but
I didn't have much and it's all
100% of everything. I've never worked a job.
I've never made anything.
It's all been from YouTube. It's incredible.
I used to make a dollar a day. So I love this platform
more than anything. Listen, I love YouTube too.
All the problems that they have.
I think it is absolutely amazing that they've created this thing where someone can make a living and an incredible living just creating content.
Anyone in the world can.
Yeah.
If you – I don't know how to say this.
It doesn't sound arrogant.
But if you knew what I know about how to make a good video and go viral, even if you had zero subscribers, you could be making $100,000 a month in half a year.
Anyone in the world can be a successful YouTuber.
And to me, that's the beauty of the platform.
Yeah, it really is.
And it's very unique in that there's a lot of other platforms,
but no one ever figured out a way
where someone could be fully dedicated to it
and make a living off it.
I guess maybe Twitch.
And then I guess there's a few other ones
where people make money.
But not at this scale of YouTube.
No, not even close. Not even close to this scale. That was one of the most difficult things about
going to Spotify was leaving YouTube. Because I was like, man, our growth on YouTube is pretty
crazy. I don't know if that's a smart move to just leave. And so the compromise was we could
still put clips up on YouTube. That was really the only way I was willing to do it.
I wasn't willing to just abandon.
It was a great idea because that's – I don't really use Spotify that much,
but all the time your clips occasionally pop up on my homepage on my TV.
And so if you – in my world – because there are these different worlds now.
There are some people that only use TikTok.
So if you're not on TikTok, you just don't exist in in the world that's kind of how i view it in my world
it's it's pretty big youtube so like if you just were not exist on youtube like you wouldn't exist
to me you know hypothetically in my world yeah well i i mean i exist on tiktok but it's not me
like someone's just uploading my content on tiktok really yeah at a certain point in time i guess i
should step in and do something on TikTok, but TikTok is such
a sketchy fucking application.
Have you ever seen the breakdown
that these software engineers have done of TikTok?
Of how intrusive it is?
No. They said it's the single
most disturbing piece of software
they've ever had to back engineer. Because
the amount of
cross-platform
spying it does.
Well, I know if you travel to a different state,
like even now in Texas,
my TikTok feed will be a lot more Texas content.
It's definitely location-based.
And I have had instances
where I would say certain things in conversations,
and then later that night,
I would get it in my feed, something similar.
Like if I talked about dogs a lot,
and then I'd weirdly start getting TikToks about dogs. I have noticed that type of stuff. My friend told me that she was talking to
this lady and they were just having a conversation. And then she looked at her TikTok and TikTok
suggested her. Based on that conversation? So TikTok knew that her and this lady were next to
each other physically because their phones were next to each other. Wow. So TikTok suggested that
she follow that lady.
That's crazy.
That's spooky. And TikTok can be pretty addicting.
I actually recently uninstalled it just because,
even though my TikTok's mostly like gym and like actually finance stuff,
so it's like I actually don't, I enjoy the content on it,
and I don't think it makes me a worse person,
but I found I was spending like two hours a day on TikTok,
and I was like, ah.
Just scrolling through videos?
Yeah, that's what I was like.
That's a little much, so I uninstalled it.
And I was like, ah.
Just scrolling through videos?
Yeah, that's what I was like. That's a little much.
So I uninstalled it.
Yeah, it's a fine line between enjoyment, getting something out of the content, and then just this weird empty obsession.
Where you're just spending time staring at other people's stuff.
Yeah.
But I think you can curate the feed, though, where it is beneficial, which is what I tried to do.
And I had it in a good place where, like, you know, when I opened TikTok, it would motivate, it would motivate me to work out and it would motivate me to go work. So it's good. But
sometimes it'd take a little long because you can see your time on app. And so usually I try not to
spend more than an hour and a half a day on social media. So when I saw that two hours, I was like,
fuck. Do you know the difference between the way China does it versus the way the American does it?
No. It's really interesting. China, first of all, between the hours of 10 a.m. and 6 p.m., kids are not allowed on it. They can't be on it.
Really? They won't let them on it. Second of all, when you're on it,
the difference between TikTok in America is dances and people doing pranks and people doing
things to try to get viral views. In China, it highlights scientific achievements, athletic achievements. It highlights people doing things, accomplishing things.
Wow.
So it's a lot more curated.
Yes, much more.
But curated by the CCP, or whatever, in conjunction with, where they're trying to elevate the quality of the lives of the kids that are addicted to this TikTok.
of the lives of the kids that are addicted to this TikTok.
So instead of them being addicted to putting piss in the hand soap container,
instead of doing something like that,
what they're doing is showing science experiments.
They're showing innovation.
They're showing kids accomplishing great athletic goals. And it's motivating people to do good things and improve themselves,
which is totally possible here.
But the problem is you would have to have some sort of like overview, like some sort of Orwellian restrictions.
Oh, way to inject it.
Brought down from the governments to make sure that kids only see that kind of thing.
But here in America, if you did that, like people just wouldn't use it.
They'd be like, oh, well, fuck this.
I'm going to Instagram Reels or YouTube.
Exactly.
So do you put stuff on TikTok as well?
Yeah, we use TikTok.
So you have like a team that does all that kind of stuff?
Exactly.
I'd say like 1% or 2% of my time go to TikTok.
Like 90% plus goes to YouTube.
Because essentially, at the end of the day, I can hire creative people to help come up with bits.
I can hire production people to help do the videos and editors. The only thing I can't outsource is like me actually filming, you know,
at the end of the day, that's like the only thing that like, I'm the only person that can do.
So in an ideal world, I spend as much time as my, or much of my time as possible filming and not
doing other stuff because we have multiple different channels and stuff like that. So
like peak performance would be me, like 90% of my work week is just filming shit and nothing else.
Yeah, I mean, when you're
in the middle of all of this and you have
all the stuff going on, whether it's the social media
stuff and the filming stuff and the coming
up with the new content and new ideas
and then managing the fact that you have a hundred
fucking people working for you. Well, we haven't even gotten into the
side companies or the side channels either.
No, the Beast Burgers and all that jazz.
Yeah. First of all, where's Mr. Beast Burger?
How many of them do you have?
So right now we don't have any physical.
We have 1,600 virtual restaurants.
Oh, so you order it online and then they deliver it?
Yeah, so like let's say you own a mom and pop restaurant.
You literally just sign up, go through the course,
you learn how to make all the stuff on a menu,
and you just order our ingredients and our packaging,
and then you just flick it on on Uber Eats store-grubhub and you can start taking orders and we let you keep a majority of the revenue.
So it's basically like it's a win win for restaurants, especially when COVID first hit.
It was like huge for a lot of restaurants because I was pushing it really hard back then.
And like some restaurants, you were literally laying off people and they started serving Beast Burger and some of them doing like 10 grand a week.
Not like in total revenues, whatever,
their cut was lower, but it allowed them to not have to lay off part of their workforce or keep
their employees and stuff like that. And so, yeah. And this idea came out of what?
We were approached by some company and the more I thought about it, the more I just realized it
was just a great idea. So we have a partner, basically a guy who's been doing restaurants
his whole life. So actually that's how we started because he owned 300 restaurants.
So we launched with his 300 restaurants.
And like that first day, they all sold out.
They were having to like run to local stores to buy ingredients to keep up with orders.
Like the Uber Eats like delivery lines were like out the door.
It was pretty bad.
So we had to like quickly expand up.
And we've just been adding like 50 restaurants a week ever since.
Wow. Yeah. And so now we're about to start doing our first physical restaurants as
well and that should be fun your mom must be so baffled a kid she thought
wasn't doing Jack's virtual restaurants yeah it's incredible man that's yeah
it's actually insane and so we've been doing it for like probably like 15
months now and we're
about to cross 100 million in top line revenue across the restaurants.
Wow. So that's one side business. What other side businesses do you have?
So we just launched our snack brand. Our first thing is a chocolate bar. It's just basically
only four ingredients, just a slightly healthier version of a chocolate bar. Problem is if you make
things too healthy, which is what I've found with my restaurant, is I would love to wean people
off super unhealthy stuff. But if you, like we did lettuce wrap, where you just replace the bun
with lettuce, no one orders it. If you go too extreme on the healthy side, just no one cares.
So it's like, I found the best spot is just to make things 20% healthier, and then people still
order it. If not, then it's just useless. I wanted to do a snack brand and I'm experimenting
with that. It's just basically slightly
better for your chocolate bar. Just higher quality ingredients
a little bit less ingredients. What do you put in it?
Well, you can just pull it out. There it is.
Mr. Beast bar. Like I said, it's not crazy
healthy.
It's got quinoa on it.
I love that one.
I have some out there. I'll have you taste test it.
I'm sure it's good. Quinoa mixed with chocolate.
Bro, they put chocolate on ants and people eat it.
I mean, everything with chocolate is good.
Well, and so our big marketing stunt for this, because everything I do, it's got to be a spectacle,
is 10 random people are going to get flown down to compete for a chocolate factory in a video.
So we're still working on building the chocolate factory.
That's what I was doing yesterday before I flew out here.
So when you say a chocolate factory, is it going to be a real place that makes chocolate?
No, it's going to be kind of like the Willy Wonka one where it's decked out.
Most people, I feel like, are just going to take the money instead.
They can keep the chocolate factory or I'll just give them like half a million dollars.
99% of people, I feel like, would rather just take the money.
Yeah, because then you'd have to sell the chocolate factory.
Exactly.
Because in Willy Wonka, it's not like it was a chocolate factory.
It was like they had the chocolate river and all that.
So that's what we're trying to figure out right now.
We're literally building a chocolate river,
and I'm trying to figure out how do you keep chocolate flowing
and from going bad and being fucking disgusting and shit like that.
So you said you're trying to make your chocolate bars healthier.
Do you use Stevia for sweeteners, or is it just all sugar?
What is it? I mean, honestly, i'm still educating myself in this stuff so i'd rather not go in depth because you could probably run circles around me on this type of stuff uh nutrition
stuff yeah exactly um just i think just like uh just getting the here i mean just pull it up and
you just roast it okay let's see the ingredients so here we go created by
experts just where does it have an ingredients list out in about maybe yeah
hit about I can also probably just pull it up about page there must be something
I'm not clicking somewhere here if you want to just search for and then pull it
up once you find it.
So other than that, are there other businesses you have that are like sidebands?
Yeah, so the dub channels I showed you, we're actually building a dub studio in Mexico.
We're building dub studios across the world, and we're actually doing that for other creators as well.
So to dub foreign languages onto English videos.
Yeah, so if you were a YouTuber and you wanted your videos in a bunch of other languages,
just come to us.
We'll start up the channels.
We'll translate the thumbnails, translate the content, do it all for you.
So you have like a whole business set up in Mexico.
Well, our business is Unilingo.
Here it is.
Sugar cane, cocoa bean, cocoa powder, sunflower, lecithin.
So that's all that's in there.
Yeah.
That's good. total sugar where's that
oh 13. okay total sugar that's whatever like i said i wanted to take it extreme but the problem
is if you go too extreme then no one will order it so that's where like i i'll admit it's not like
the healthiest possible it's a snack though yeah exactly not supposed to be that healthy it's a
jogger bar but eventually if we could crack the code that's what i'd love like because you It's not like the healthiest possible. It's a snack though. Yeah, exactly. It's not supposed to be that healthy. It's a fucking chocolate bar.
But eventually if we could crack the code, that's what I'd love.
Like, cause you know, most of the food we eat is fucking garbage for us.
And so I wish you could just be like, you know, this is the perfect chocolate bar.
And then we just magically get people to actually eat it.
Are you, you said you work out a lot?
I'm starting to get into it.
But no, the problem is it's like, so we just have so much shit going on and it's like
one week i'm burying myself alive the next week we're dealing with squid game when i'm not like
not filming it's so fucking easy like to work out but it's like it's hard to like get a routine
going because like like we just went to south africa and we were going to antarctica for a
couple of days and like that's like a 12-day trip and you know it's so it's like it's weird yeah
but but i'm also being a pussy. Like in an ideal world,
I should be working out way more consistent than I am.
Listen, man, just relax on yourself.
Sounds like you're doing a lot.
You're getting a lot done.
I want to be the best.
Well, you obviously are trying to do that
because you're amazingly accomplished at 23 years old.
It's super impressive.
Thank you.
So when you're going to like South Africa,
like what did you do in South Africa?
Well, we just flew to South Africa as a stop to Antarctica.
But annoyingly, when we were about to get on the plane to go to Antarctica, because we're going to spend 50 hours in Antarctica,
we were going to climb a mountain that's never been climbed before in Antarctica, do all this cool shit.
The group that went before us gave the group in Antarctica COVID. Everyone there had COVID.
So they had to leave.
And so there's no one there to clear the ice runway for us to land.
So we went to South Africa and literally just flew back because we couldn't go to Antarctica.
I know.
It's brutal.
And there's only a little window where you can go to Antarctica twice a year.
One's in February.
And because of that, the window was missed.
So now we can't go.
They don't test the people before they fly to Antarctica?
I would think that's so isolated.
That would be like... They have to test you if you're
going to go to the Bahamas. I know.
I don't know how it happened, but yeah, so
now we can't go again until November,
which is annoying because we had already...
We've been working on that video for over a month.
We're going to go to this part and play with the
penguins. We're going to climb this mountain. The content was
phenomenal. And you're out there. We have
the team. You're in Africa, ready to go there. And then it's just like, nope. And so it's
like, it's also opportunity costs because we could have been filming a video that would have been
uploaded, which that's why I haven't uploaded in a month because that fell through. And so it's like,
not only did that fall apart, but it's like the opportunity costs, it sucks.
Now that sounds a little dangerous. Like you're climbing a mountain?
I mean, we have experts there.
They'll make sure we're safe.
Right, but you're climbing a mountain in Antarctica.
I mean, it seems just by nature.
I mean, the company we were working with does this stuff all the time.
And they assured us it was safe.
Have you ever seen that film, 12 Peaks?
My friend actually recommended it, but I haven't seen it yet.
It's incredible.
It's incredible. It's really wild. But one of the more confusing moments is when you recognize how
many people climb Mount Everest. And there was one part where there was a window, a small window of
good weather. And so the queue of people trying to get to the top of Mount Everest was hundreds
of people long. I saw a picture on Twitter.
Near the peak, there's like 50 people waiting to go.
The star of the film, he took that photo.
That's one of them.
He took a photo of the people in front of him that were trying to get up to this mountain, the top of Everest.
Yeah.
That's a weird one because it's so –
it used to be this thing where it's like you would go to this far off land and you would climb this rugged mountain and there was no one out there and it was so hard to do.
But now hundreds of people in a day.
Look at that.
Crazy.
Oh, wow.
I didn't see that one.
That's insane.
That's the –
I mean even crazier.
You got like the free solo guy just climbing without anything.
Yeah, well, he doesn't do this stuff.
No, no, but yeah.
Yeah, but Alex Honnold, he's been on a couple of times.
He's a fascinating guy.
Yeah.
He scares the shit out of me.
I would love to speak to him.
My hands start sweating just talking to him.
Yeah.
Just like what he does because it's like he's up 1,500, 2,000 feet hanging on by his fingertips with a bag of chalk.
Just hearing you say it is making my hands literally sweat.
I know, dude.
Yeah.
When you watch videos of him do it, and he's just so kind of calm and chill about it.
And he's very, in the nicest way, like almost innocent and childlike in the way he talks.
Like his eyebrows are, look at that.
Look at that.
Oh my God.
Fucking Jesus Christ, man.
That's so crazy.
I mean, he's hanging by his fingertips.
Fuck all that.
Gosh dang it.
That's funny.
And, you know, the real weird thing is experts are convinced that he's going to die.
Like, the real experts.
Like, how many of those images are there of him doing that, man?
Well, I mean.
He's basically hanging by his fingers.
There ultimately are probably variables occasionally out of his control.
Look at that.
Look at that photo.
Look at that photo.
Fuck that.
Yeah.
Look.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
I mean, like, bro, if someone was like a billion dollars to do this and climb to the top of
the mountain and gave me five years to train, I would say fuck no.
Fuck no.
And the thing is, like, he'll tell you he's not even the best climber in the world,
which is really wild.
There's guys that are better at it than him.
He just has a knack for doing this and doing it without any ropes,
and he stays calm.
He knows how to just find his way up and concentrate entirely on the task at hand.
And the guy loves it.
Look at that fucking.
Oh, my gosh.
Look at my hands.
Feel my hands.
Feel my hands.
I mean, mine are sweat.
I'm good.
You don't trust me?
I don't want the Joe Rogan sweat on me.
It's good sweat.
It's very healthy.
It's got a lot of nutrients.
But that kind of stuff, you're not going to fuck around with mountain climbing.
No.
No. Don't do that. Don't die, man. like mountain climber. No, no, don't do that
Don't die man. You're too much. Oh, you don't you don't have to tell me
But the Antarctica thing when you said you're gonna climb a mountain that's never been climbed before I'm like yikes
So do you run the risk of as you continue to do these things and you keep pushing the envelope and making more and more?
Exciting content do you ever think like because let me tell you something one of the things that happened with fear factors we
did fear factor for six years and then we came back and did it for a final season in 2011 and
they were pushing it way too far it scared the shit out of me they were going with the stunts
were way bigger and that was part of the appeal they were like bigger badder crazier fear factor
and while they were filming it, I was like, man,
I am fucking nervous.
Because these stunts are so much more
chaotic. They're so much more
like the potential
for injury is so much greater.
No one got injured, fortunately, nothing serious.
I mean, bumps and bruises. Nothing serious.
Yeah, okay. You know, because
it's like, you know, it's a lot of physical contact and stuff,
but there was moments, like there was one where they had a guy, different. You know, because it's like, you know, it's a lot of physical contact and stuff. But there was moments like there was one where they had a guy, different people, that were, there was a helicopter with a bungee cord.
And you were attached to the side of this cliff with a tree and you're trying to unlock yourself.
And when you do unlock yourself, the bungee cord pulls you, snaps you out over a canyon.
And you're attached to a fucking helicopter dangling over this canyon
wow i'm like what if something breaks man like it was it was so nuts this is it right here so
these people would unlock this thing and the moment they unlocked it and then their other
their partner is uh climbing on a ladder that's below the helicopter and the moment they unlock
themselves from the tree,
the bungee cord yanks them.
Holy crap.
Yeah.
And while we were doing this,
I would come home every day from filming
and I'd be like,
we didn't kill anybody today.
I would just take a big drink of whiskey
and just sit down.
Yeah.
Like, fuck, man.
So my point is,
do you worry that as you continue to innovate and
come up with new ideas, that eventually they're going to get a little dangerous?
No, because A, whenever we do stuff, we always have experts, obviously.
So did we.
Okay. Also, I just don't push it that far. The thing is, I'm not just known for doing things
like that. Like, some of our videos are philanthropic. We'll go buy everything in a store and give it away.
Other videos, a lot of times I just punish myself.
I bury myself alive.
I trap myself in solitary confinement, stuff like that.
And then we have other challenges.
But when we put 50 people in a circle, it's not like there's, you know,
last one to leave gets half a million dollars.
It's not like there's any.
So you have no interest in pushing the envelope.
Yeah, exactly.
There are different ways to push the envelope besides that,
even though that's not even really one of the things we do that much.
So, yeah, I can push by giving away more money.
I can push by torturing myself more.
I can push by walking a marathon in the world's largest shoes.
I'm not narrowed into that one vertical.
So for me, it's not really a concern.
The world's largest shoes, is that what you did?
Yeah.
You're pulling up so we can see it.
They're actually not as big as you would think.
The problem is they are heavy.
And each shoe was five pounds.
Oh, wow.
And so it was brutal.
And I had these ginormous blisters halfway through the marathon.
It was miserable.
When you say the world's largest shoes, what do you mean by large?
It's so much easier if you just pull them up.
They were like size 40 shoes.
Oh, like the largest.
Yeah, there you go. So go back a 40 shoes. Oh, like the largest. Yeah, there you go.
So go back a little bit
so you can see the start. So it's just like a normal
marathon. Yeah. And then we just have size
40 shoes. These things are freaking heavy.
The problem is if you go any bigger
then they, it's like you can't walk
because they don't like bend or whatever. Like flippers.
Yeah. Like if you were trying to walk with flippers
on, like snorkeling flippers. I haven't, but that's
exactly what they told me.
So we did size 50, size 100, and 50 and 100, you couldn't move.
So this was as big as they could go where you could still move.
And we did the marathon.
The marathon ended.
They shut things down.
And we were still only like, whatever, seven miles in.
Look at you.
Those shoes are fucking hilarious.
Yeah.
And we basically walked it all.
How long did it take you guys?
I actually don't remember, weirdly enough.
Maybe like, so halfway through, we actually laid down and just slept.
So we like set up tents and stuff like that.
Wow.
So like, I guess technically probably like 15, 16 hours, but maybe only like nine or
10 of walking.
Were the shoes destroyed at the end?
Oh, yeah.
Look, see the duct tape?
They're falling apart.
That's hilarious.
Why were they so destroyed?
Because those aren't real shoes.
We had to build them.
This guy, we hired to build these size 40 shoes that he's never built before.
Who would have thought halfway through they start falling apart?
Also, I took a knife and I started carving out some of mine because I physically couldn't move my calves.
They were so heavy. So I had to carve out the middle to take some weight out because I just – I physically couldn't move my calves. They were so heavy.
So I had to like carve out the middle to take some weight out because I just – I wasn't going to be able to finish if they didn't get lighter.
So like I carved this like two-pound part out.
And it like – so going from five to three pounds made a world of a difference on that shoe.
Yeah, they say that every one pound on your feet is like 10 pounds on your back.
Yeah.
That's like a hiking rule.
Exactly.
It was brutal.
So someone had to make these for you.
These are not like a giant shoe
that you can buy in a store.
Yeah.
Now, where'd that idea come from?
That was years ago.
God, if I know.
Just being silly?
Yeah, I mean,
I literally have spent so many hours.
I've probably spent 10,000 hours
of my life brainstorming ideas.
I don't know where any of this stuff
comes from anymore.
I just have,
I have a sheet with like 1,000 ideas on it,
probably like 200 super ultra viral video ideas that anyone could do,
and they would instantly go viral just sitting on a Google Doc.
Really? Just waiting?
So you have no lack of content?
No, we have unlimited.
The bottleneck is more can we do it, not really do we have viral ideas,
which is backwards for most people.
Most people just don't have good ideas.
Right.
So with the bottleneck, can you do it because
is it physically possible,
or is it... They're just hard.
That's back when my videos were easier, but the
videos, obviously, have gotten harder and harder.
So like the Squid Game video, it's just like... Yeah.
It's not, can we do it?
Can we do it while also doing other videos?
What's this, Jamie?
If you can carry a million dollars, you can keep it.
Yeah, we got a million dollars, and we basically told people as much cash as they could carry, they could keep.
And we just gave them a bag.
How much does a million dollars weigh?
What's the denomination?
One dollar, obviously, because it looks better.
Is that a million dollars and one dollar in that room?
Holy shit.
And that was just one part of it.
And that's the thing.
So now this is a three-time World's Strongest Man.
If he can deadlift this car, we let him keep it.
And it's just like, this is what we call would you rather.
We do a bunch of super interesting bits.
And so just skip ahead to where he actually deadlifts it.
So if he can deadlift the car, you let him keep the car?
Yeah, which he could.
Oh, he deadlifted it easy.
Yeah, he actually did reps with it.
The size of that fucking gorilla.
Jesus Christ, he's so big. He's doing deadlifted it easy. Yeah, he actually did reps with it. The size of that fucking gorilla. Jesus Christ, he's so big.
He's doing 10 reps with a car.
That is fucking bananas.
Oh, my God.
Look at the size of him.
He keeps skimming through.
Is there any other?
So you give him a car.
That's nice.
Yeah.
Barely fits in it.
Look at this.
I know.
That was the funny part.
It was easier for him to deadlift the car than sit in it.
Have you ever seen what Shaq does with his cars?
He takes out the back seats, and he has a seat.
That makes sense.
I've seen custom cars they've made for him where the seat basically sits where the back seat should be.
Yeah.
Because he's so big.
You can't have a regular seat.
Have you seen the clip where he holds a water bottle, and it looks tiny?
Yeah.
Dude, we did a video.
We showed a video the other day of me and him doing Fear factor because he was a host on fear factor with me one day
And it's literally looks like a six-year-old standing next to his dad
gigantic human being but so when you're doing these videos and
Your do you ever have one that you do it? It just doesn't live up to what your expectations were all the time
Now I know you're about to ask me, so let me think of some.
Probably like back in the day, like one out of every four videos we filmed just never
got uploaded because they were just not good.
Yeah, because especially when I was like 19 and 20, I had no idea, right?
You know, like I'd come up with an idea.
Let's climb a building with plungers, right?
And then, you know, you can't do it.
So that's an example of one that failed.
But then other times, like we spent 24 hours on a deserted island and I don't know, the content wasn't really there. It was kind of hot. And so we were a little miserable and we
weren't really like in the funny mood. So like literally two days later, we just went back out
and redid it and re-spent 24 hours on a deserted island. And so sometimes we're like, if I don't
think the content's good enough, we'll just refilm it and stuff like that. And so do you review it with your friends?
Do you review it personally?
How do you just make those decisions?
Yeah.
So you just sit down and go, this is not up to my standards.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
That's one thing I've never struggled with.
Like if I don't think something's like good and like the best we can do and revolutionary audience will love it, I have no problem killing a video even if we spent a million dollars on it.
killing a video even if we spent a million dollars on it I think that's probably one of the main reasons for your success other than your obsession
and your dedication and discipline is that you don't have to like you don't
have to answer to anybody like you I don't know how many people could do what
you do like in to get to your position is very unique and one of the beautiful
things about something like YouTube is that you can get there because other
than this like if you work for you know if this was a show on NBC or something like
that yeah you would have to run this by so many people I'd kill myself you'd have so many yeah
kitchen staff in there trying to put their ingredient in the soup there'd be so many chefs
they'd want to standardize things so it's replicable and that's how you kill innovation
yeah and then they would also say like what do you think about us doing another show similar to yours?
Maybe one of your friends hosting, and they would try to do branch-offs.
It's brutal.
I get that vibe.
It's funny you bring it up because that's the world you came from.
I get that vibe sometimes when we work with production crews, and I kind of see a little bit of that world, how it's a lot more standardized.
When you work with production crews, do they come up with ideas you're like hey hey hey yes well it's more like uh what am i trying to say it's like they're they're used to
scripted stuff and we're not scripted so it's like they just like you don't know like some
if yeah we're planning on it taking two hours the fucking thing could take 20 hours i don't
fucking know whatever this hypothetical scene is, right?
And so, like, kind of the way we do things to them, it just seems so barbaric.
But it's like that's how you get that natural, authentic stuff that's not scripted.
And if you do work with a production company, then you have to deal with, like, I guess unions and time.
Like, they have a certain amount of time on set.
Like, it seems like you work until you get it done.
Yeah, usually.
Yeah.
Well, so actually what we do is, and this is probably one of the smartest things we've done,
is we have multiple different teams that we're working on building out.
So they rotate videos.
So Team A will do hypothetically whatever, Antarctica.
And then Team B isn't on the Antarctica video and they're working on the next video.
And then while I'm filming with Team B, Team A is working on their video.
So they like rotate.
So that way. And I'm trying to build out full fully
fledged production teams creative teams editing teams all super independent so then i can do a
video a month and each team's only responsible for one video which that's plenty of time to like
get a video done and you know and you have downtime in between your videos and stuff like that
instead of like most youtubers it's just one team and they're trying to have them do it all which
just honestly isn't sustainable.
Yeah.
Well, it seems like when you're looking at this business that you've built, it's so large.
Like there's no way you could just have one team.
They'd be dead.
Well, you'd be surprised.
That's how everyone else is building theirs.
Really?
Yeah.
I mean, people who try to do what we do.
But I mean, it's hard enough to build one team.
And so like building multiple ones, it's a lot.
Do you have a lot of guys that are trying to copy the format that you've put together?
Yeah, I just, the thing is, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't really affect me.
I don't like to waste energy worrying about that type of stuff.
At the end of the day, it's like, it doesn't hurt me, so go for it.
It actually probably helps you.
Yeah, exactly.
Because everyone gets compared to Mr. Beast.
Yeah, like, a lot of YouTubers get, like, triggered when other people, quote, unquote, take their ideas or whatever. Do everyone gets compared to Mr. Beast. Yeah, like a lot of YouTubers get triggered when other people quote unquote take
their ideas or whatever. Do they though?
They really do. I mean that's like
all the time. Like someone will do something
and it's funny. It's usually like people who copy
tons of other YouTubers and they do one thing original
and then some other people take it and they just throw a hissy fit.
Well, it's like they probably get attention
from throwing the hissy fit. Whenever we do
something, usually like thousands or
at least hundreds of other people do it and of course yeah yeah but when you do
something like the squid games thing like there's no way anybody can yeah but
see technically that's not an original idea you know what I mean so I saw some
really bitchy take on your squid game thing the copying other people's content
that he's profiting off of copying other people's content. And it's from a comedian.
I was like, shut your mouth.
You think that's easy, what he's doing?
This is so crazy.
Also, the guy who wrote Squid Game said he loved people
doing recreation of Squid Game.
Literally, he did an interview where he was like,
I love it, and he encouraged it.
Well, it's just a hater's take.
Yeah, but it's not even logical.
The actual creator of the show was like, hey, do this.
And it's like, okay, if you insist.
Haters are never logical.
But when you – my point was when you get to the position where you're at, you must have a lot of haters.
I don't really pay attention to it.
Good for you.
That's a great attitude.
Yeah.
That's what I like to hear.
It's kind of a waste of time.
It's 100% a waste of time.
It's so stupid.
But it's so common for people to concentrate on that and make response videos.
I wouldn't be a fraction.
But also, we don't really, to be honest.
And most people are positive about it.
At the end of the day, we help people.
You know what I mean?
I reinvest everything.
I don't live in a mansion.
I just try to make the best videos I can.
And tell me about, you just touched on it earlier, your philanthropy channel.
How did that get started and what are you trying to do with that?
Yes, if you want to pull that up.
So basically, I don't know, I enjoy helping people.
It's fun for me.
It's kind of like, I don't know, I don't know how to put it into words, but I enjoy doing
good.
Well, you're a good person.
Yeah, so I wanted to figure out, like, I have this ability to go viral and get views.
And so I wanted to figure out how to leverage it to, like, basically build a charity on the back.
So this is Beast Philanthropy.
100% of all the revenue on this channel goes towards our food pantry that we started.
So we basically started our own nonprofit.
And so I make these videos.
I do brand deals.
We sell merch and stuff like that in the ad revenue.
And we use that money to buy food so we can feed people.
And you say food pantry?
Like there's a sign.
So that's a physical location?
Yeah.
So we have our own warehouse.
Can you hover over a different video to see?
And how does it work?
Like people could just go there and get food?
No, no, no.
So basically, so this is where I'll
have to, we're in North Carolina. There's actually not a lot of big cities, a lot of little cities.
So we actually have like, in our city, we have the 14th largest hospital in America, even though
we're like a tiny city, because there's a bunch of small communities around. It makes sense to have
people come from these little communities to a big hospital instead of building a bunch of little
ones. And so we kind of the same model with with our food pantry where instead of, you know, supporting a big city,
which most big cities already have food pantries there,
there's all these little communities that weren't big enough where people would actually give a fuck or help them
because it just, you know, doesn't make sense, a couple thousand people or whatever.
So we built a big food pantry in a central location.
And we're more of a logistics company.
You know, we'll take like pick a certain community like Grimesland. Like every're more of a logistics company. We'll pick a certain community,
like Grimesland. Every Saturday, we'll load up food. We'll go there. And then the people in need,
we'll do a food drive and basically give them three different boxes of food, a box of dairy
products, pantry, and vegetables. And then we come back two weeks later and give them food.
So basically, they can just live off the food we supply them. And we do that to a bunch of
little communities. And we just crossed one year of operation and we were able to give away over a million meals
in our first year. That's fantastic. Oh, yeah. So in those boxes,
this one was a special episode. Someone gave us 50,000 cookies. Go back though. So where the
boxes were. Back one more. Yeah, right there. So that's what we give to everyone that comes
to the food drive completely for free. We've never charged the fucking person a dime for food.
That's enough to survive two weeks.
And it's good, nutritious food.
We actually invest in it.
We've got a really nice fridge, too, which most food pantries don't have,
so we can store a lot of cold goods like vegetables and dairy products.
Also, some of these places, their food pantries went under,
and so we come in and we take over for the old food pantries.
And people love when we do it because you go from a box of,
I don't want to dumpster on them, you know average stuff to like now you're getting
like fucking milk and dairy and yogurt and also like all these vegetables they're like what the
fuck this is free it's like over a hundred dollars worth of food um and so yeah it's it's been great
that's awesome so how does this work like if someone wants to go to the food pantry to get
food how you don't go to the food pantry to get food. You don't go to the food pantry. We do distributions where we go to places in low-income places and do distributions.
And so you would just come to the distribution and you just sit in your car, pop your trunk, we put food in, you drive off.
So you just set up a shop, like a stand on the side of the road like this year?
No, no, no.
So like they're scheduled.
Like the communities are notified beforehand.
Is that line a bunch of people waiting for food? Yeah, this was
a special one we did for Thanksgiving where we gave away
10,000 turkeys for free. That is so
awesome, dude. Yeah, well, this
isn't our normal thing, but
yeah, basically you go
there, your first, like it'll be in the
church parking lot. How do you tell, how do these
people find out about this? Well, that's the thing. Your first
food drive, it's not as many people, but word
spreads as you do them, and you consistently show
up at the same time every second week,
and people just come and come, and eventually hundreds of
families come. Look at the line there. That's nuts.
Yeah. This one, because it was
a bigger thing, we actually
bought ads and spread it out
and stuff like that. Probably got people in turkey outfits.
Yeah. That's a turkey
holocaust right there. Look at all those dead turkeys.
I know. Hey, I mean, people ate. It's amazing. It's very cool that you did this. It's a turkey holocaust right there. Look at all those dead turkeys. I know.
Hey, I mean, people ate.
It's amazing.
It's very cool that you did this.
It's very cool.
And you see these people where you're, oh, you even made a turkey.
Yeah.
These people that are waiting in line for these turkeys.
But this isn't our normal thing. So it's, like I said, it's the distributions we do with the other food.
So essentially, like, I want to grow this channel really big, get it where, you know,
it's pulling millions
of dollars a month in revenue and do tons of brand deals and stuff like that. And then just
basically use that money to buy food and feed as many people as we can. That's so cool. I love it,
man. I just love that you do that. And that turkey thing when you're out there, how long does that
take to get turkeys to that many people? I mean, that was like a four or five hour food drive.
I mean, we're pretty efficient with the lines
and getting through it.
Did you run out of turkeys?
No, actually we had, so we had 10,000.
I don't remember the number,
but we had a few thousand left over
that we then went to other food pantries
and we gave to them to give to their communities.
That's so cool.
Yeah.
And do you have someone who organizes that for you?
Oh, of course.
Like a philanthropy manager or something?
So his name's Darren, which also shout out to darren he's literally the greatest thing that's ever happened
to me this this guy's a fucking lunatic he he he won't let me pay him for working on the charity
he's like that in love with helping people yeah and he like he puts in like 10 hours a day every
day he's a machine you can stop him if you wanted to he he loves helping people um but that's so
cool so he built it out.
So I met him.
I kind of stole him from a different nonprofit because I met him and I loved him.
I was like, fuck yeah.
There's not another person in the world I'd rather have run Beast Philanthropy.
And so now, yeah, it's its own thing.
We have people that work in the pantry, logistics people, and stuff like that.
Wow.
And how does one procure 10,000 turkeys? Well, that one, again, this is why the
beauty of Beast Fenty, that was a sponsored video by Genio, which is a company that sells turkeys.
And so we got them to give us 10,000 turkeys plus money to feed people for free in exchange for a
shout out in the video. Oh, that's amazing. That's brilliant. Exactly. And so you do all this,
you have this food drive and then people know, okay, that this is a regular thing. Exactly. And so you do all this, you have this food drive, and then, you know, then people know, okay, that this is a regular thing. Exactly. And then it builds up.
The turkey thing isn't. That was a thing that's going to be special. But normally, yeah,
exactly. And the more you do it, the more people come. And then we just guesstimate the numbers
and average it out and bring, usually bring a little extra just in case more people come this
week than others. And he just does that routinely. And right now we're doing that for like 13
communities. And then we're going to build another food pantry and scale that up and just keep
scaling up. Also, I don't want to just do North Carolina. Our next food pantry is going to be in
Atlanta and then hopefully get out of America and just keep scaling them up. Wow. So you just keep
everything you're doing, you just keep expanding and scaling up. Exactly. Because I'm not trying
to make money, so it's easy.
That's so unusual.
Well, also, that's a charity, so all the money goes back into it.
Yeah, exactly.
But it's so unusual that someone is so selfless and then that you have the vision to just,
I'm not trying to make money.
I'm just trying to grow the company.
Yeah.
Well, in that particular one, I'd be fucked if I didn't have Darren.
He's just a lunatic.
He's literally one of the smartest people I've ever met.
And the fact that he has such a philanthropic heart, the dude could probably make
five, $10 million a year working in a normal business, but he dedicates his life to charity.
I don't understand it, but I love him. Well, obviously, it means something to him.
It's important. This charity that you do with the food bank, how many employees are involved in that?
He would know better because I'm not in the weeds.
Because this is where you have to think about strategically.
The most optimal, like, you know, in a perfect world, I could be on the front lines going to the food drive, getting my food.
But the most valuable use of my time is to make videos to generate revenue to buy food, right?
Right.
So I'm more doing high-level things like figuring out what's the next viral stunt for the charity so we can do a brand deal and get a couple hundred grand in and stuff like that.
I'm not really in the weeds of like how are we going to do this food distribution tomorrow or like this ship insulates or blah, blah, blah, this.
Right, right.
But probably somewhere around a dozen right now because we're only at one warehouse.
And you eventually plan on going worldwide?
Yeah, exactly.
Just scaling it up and take – it's like by watching those videos, you're essentially feeding people literally because all the revenue goes to it. So it's like, I think like we can get to the point,
yeah, where we're supporting a dozen of these and just keep going bigger and bigger.
That's so cool. What other, like?
I don't know. This is just what, this is what I do all day. So I just.
Come up with these ideas.
No, I didn't come up with, it's just like, I mean, that's something I was passionate about,
passionate about YouTube essentially, but like, that's like a parallel thing, right?
Like I've already put in the 100,000 hours and obsessed over YouTube.
So it's like building a channel that like we leverage to grow our charity like isn't as crazy because like I already know all this stuff.
You know what I mean?
Like how to go viral and that type of stuff.
That's so dope, dude.
I just love the vision that you have for this.
It's because it's so unusual for a young person to have such a clarity and focus yeah well pull up a
mr. beast gaming I want to show you some of the other stuff too because it's it's
like the main shell isn't even all we do we've we've managed to we have one of
the largest gaming channels on YouTube and one of the large three axles on
YouTube as well so it's like I actually spend a fuckload of my time every week
filming because we have five different channels. So this is our gaming channel.
Just hit videos so you can see them.
These actually go really viral.
And so we basically apply what we do in real life to gaming.
We invited 1,000 v. 1,000.
We invited 1,000 players to fight against another 1,000 players, and the winner gets a bunch of money or whatever.
And so these do really well actually we
recreated squid game in Minecraft as well and so you know usually on Mondays
I film for gaming on Tuesdays I film for reacts and then and then I do world once
we're uploading again Wednesday through Fridays I film on the main channel and
then Saturdays when I do Beast Burger or feast bulls and like all my side
businesses I take calls and then I try not to work on Sunday.
How much energy do you have to do this?
Not enough.
I'm constantly losing my mind.
But it's all self-implied.
And at any point, I could stop.
So it's like no one's forcing me.
But it's just like, I don't know.
It's like if I don't, I get depressed.
Really?
Yeah.
It's like this is what I live for.
I don't know how to put it in words.
Because of the fact that you've just generated such an immense audience. And it's just really yeah it's like this is this is what i live for i don't know how to put in words because of the fact that you've just generated such an immense audience and it's just become
yeah and so hit videos here so this is our reaction which also averages over 10 million
views a video wow so this is all just look at that yep so this is all just you looking at stuff
online yeah whatever we think is interesting so like um you know world's unluckiest people the
eight minutes of us just reacted to people super unlucky unlucky, um, and stuff like that. And that's my, one of my best
friends, Chris. It's actually, I don't know how, but it's really funny when you just put us in a
room and just let us roast and react to things. And you do this one day a week? Uh, yes. Um,
and so actually this day is also the same day I filmed philanthropy. If you have a philanthropy
video that week as well, that's – yeah, it's a lot.
It's a lot and there's – also, well, the thing too is like – so these channels, like this channel specifically doesn't cost a lot of money to run.
So this is like mostly just pure profit, which is what I ran into is like my main channel because I kept taking the videos bigger and bigger and bigger.
They did get a point where they weren't really profitable.
Like I was losing money every video.
So I started this other channel so they would make money
so I could lose money on my main channel, if that makes sense.
Really?
Yeah, so like the gaming channel, you know, like...
So the stuff like the Squid Games, it's so cross-prohibitive.
Yeah, well, that one, because it's getting so many views,
might break even.
But yeah, other videos like buying that private island
and giving it away and terraforming it, like yeah, fuck no.
That was a big money.
You lose money on that.
Yeah, a lot of videos.
Like we did a video where we like sold houses for a dollar, right?
And yeah, like the thing, usually it's like I think things
are going to cost less than they do.
But like it ended up costing over a million dollars
and it probably only made like 600 grand.
So like that was like a $400,000 L.
And I take L's like that all the time.
But that's why I have these other things so I can afford to.
So I don't really care if a main channel video makes money or not.
It's just like in general, does everything at least semi-supplement it so I can, if that makes any sense.
It makes a lot of sense.
So you kind of have a safety net of sort of almost like backup revenue.
Yeah.
Make sure that everything is.
Essentially, if I didn't have these, the main channel videos,
I just wouldn't have been able to keep making them bigger.
And then, I don't know, like I would just be sad.
Then they'd have to be lamer,
which is another reason why people don't do what I do
because like a lot of people just aren't profitable.
Like they don't make money.
Well, I just don't think people would be as obsessed as you are.
Like you've got a very unique vision with this stuff.
It's when I'm talking to you and I recognize
the scale of it all, it's massive. That's all I do.
I understand, but you must have some sort of a social life too, right?
Not really. I don't. That's the problem. But it's not a problem. I love it. I wouldn't trade
for anything. Well, there's not a lot of human beings that ever get to a position like you're in.
It's a very rare place.
Thank you.
I mean, the question now is, like, can we keep it going?
Because, like, last year we were the highest earning YouTube channel in the world and the most subscribed to YouTube channel in the world, which is great.
And it's like, fuck yeah.
And then you realize, well, if we're going to do better this year, that's going to be pretty hard.
Because we got beat number one.
So just keep going, though.
Keep grinding. Well, it seems like you could do it. I mean one. So just keep going, though. Keep grinding.
Well, it seems like you could do it.
I mean, if anybody can do it, you could do it.
Do you have like a grand vision?
I sort of asked you this before, but like when you think of your future and you think,
like, do you have an idea in your head of where you would like all this to go to?
Because it seems like the world's your oyster.
Like you could kind of keep going and do whatever you want.
Do you have a vision?
Yeah, I mean, I do in a way see it a little bit as like Elon's PayPal.
Like, you know, maybe when I'm 30 and if I'm not doing YouTube anymore,
I'd take the money and move on to the next business like Tesla, SpaceX,
and stuff like that.
But I don't know.
I mean, right now I've spent up to this point my entire life hyper-obs obsessing over how to go viral, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube, making videos,
how to go viral. So it's like, that's really it. I just want to do this as long as I can.
And just keep growing it though. The thing is like, if it gets to a much larger place, like
you are at, what is it? 90 what million on your main channel?
91 on the main.
you are at, what is it, 90-what million on your main channel?
91 on the main.
What happens when you hit, like, 300 million?
It's like everyone in the country subscribes to you.
You just keep going.
I mean, I want to do YouTube for at least another 10 years because I don't think YouTube's going to slow down.
YouTube's still growing year over year.
No, I don't think it's slowing down either.
Exactly.
So, like, why would I not want to be the biggest YouTuber on the platform?
Like, why do I need to do anything else?
Like, I just want to keep growing, be at the top, and I think the platform is just going to get bigger with time.
But as you do more and more of these Squid Games type things, do you see yourself putting more and more time into production and more and more time to bigger it?
Because it seems like you want to ramp things up.
With each one, you want to make it grander than the one before.
Yeah.
And that's why I need the smartest people in the world
around me, because
I'm filming so much, I don't have time to be in the weeds.
Which I already have, like I told you
before, some geniuses, but I need more.
If you're out there and you know how to do production,
hit me up. But yeah,
ideally, you just build out the team so I'm not the one
having to micromanage and do it.
Where do you think you would be if it wasn't for this?
I don't know um i i i i have like a problem i'm like so obsessed like i like devote my life to
one thing and that's just all i live for it's not a problem man no i know but that's an amazing gift
true but that's where i don't know what it is i mean i could have devoted like that like laser
like focus like cocaine like addiction could have been on painting bowling balls or something fucking dumb
I'm just grateful is like at a young age
It was something like this that has infinite upside and you can just I can just obsess and I can obsess forever
You know before YouTube was there another thing that you concentrated on with that kind of hyper focus?
Um, I mean a little bit of baseball I got Crohn's when I was 15
So I like I played baseball non-stop and then when I got Crohn's when I was 15, so I played baseball nonstop.
And then when I got Crohn's, I lost like 50 pounds.
I was like, fuck that.
You got Crohn's?
Crohn's disease.
Right, but Crohn's is something that's a genetic disease, right?
Yeah.
So did it just manifest itself?
It started to emerge?
You're not born with it.
Are you not?
Yeah, most people get it when they're around 15 to 20.
Oh, really? I guess you're born with the genetics thing, but I guess it doesn't actually, the inflammation doesn't occur until that age. Yeah. And so I lost like 40 pounds
because I was going to the bathroom like 10 times a day. And so I was a little obsessed with baseball.
Um, I like literally was playing like two or three hours a day. There was a period like where I,
I actually, I kind of like quit YouTube when I was like 13, 14, like, so I can just really focus
on baseball. But then once I got that, which was probably a blessing, I was like, fuck it.
I don't care anymore.
And I just went all in on YouTube.
So this Crohn's, does this make you, do you have to seriously regulate your diet?
Yes.
Very regulated diet.
I have very, I don't know the words, like I run out of energy very easily.
That doesn't make sense.
How is that possible?
You have so much energy.
I don't. I'm probably one of the least energetic people you'll ever meet. But you't make sense. How is that possible? You have so much energy. I don't. I'm probably
one of the least energetic people you'll ever meet.
But you do so much. How is it possible that you have no energy?
I don't know because my immune system attacks
itself so it's very draining.
And so I get very tired easily.
I take a lot of naps and stuff like that.
I have a buddy of mine in Ohio that has it and he can't eat bread.
Yeah, I can't eat
a fuckload of stuff. So you can't have
one of your own burgers?
No, actually, that's fine.
It doesn't flare me up.
Even when I eat burgers, I usually take off the buns and just eat meat.
I don't really like bread that much anyways.
But, no, that's fine.
And the chocolate bar actually is good on my stomach too,
which is why I'm pretty happy with that as well.
So what is it that really fucks with you?
Weirdly enough, corn, for whatever the fuck reason.
Corn. If I want diarrhea tomorrow, just give me some fucking corn.
Really?
Yeah.
Corn, anything spicy, anything like overly, overly processed.
I'm trying to think.
What exactly is Crohn's?
What is the immune system doing?
I'm going to be honest.
I've never fully understood it.
It's something about my intestines where, like, the lining of it,
like, the immune system attacks it, so my intestines are super inflamed.
And so if it's not in remission, I basically just can't digest food
because it's just, like, it's so inflamed, food just passes through
and you just, like, shit it out.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, so it's, like, brutal, which is why when I first got it,
I lost, like, 40 pounds in, like, a really quick time span.
It's often with ulcerative colitis too.
Yeah.
A friend of mine has it.
Ulcerative colitis is a little bit more extreme version of Crohn's.
So thankfully I got a little bit of the dulled down version.
But yeah, like sometimes I'll flare up and then I'm just like, I'm dead.
I just lay in bed all day and I can't really do anything.
Is there any medication that you can take that improves it?
Yeah.
So I'm on what's called Remicade.
And so every eight weeks they just do an IV with a huge bag,
which essentially suppresses my immune system.
So that's why I get sick very easily because the answer to my immune system
attacking itself was just to fucking nuke my immune system.
Oh, Jesus Christ.
I know.
So it's a little annoying.
It's unfortunate.
I'm stuck with it.
What can you do?
And there's no thing.
It blows my mind that there's no cure because I think like – you can probably Google it.
Millions of people in America I'm pretty sure have it.
So it's like – and it's pretty fucked up.
It's annoying.
So I don't understand why there's not a better way to treat it.
Are there any sort of dietary remedies that maybe people have tried?
I'm sure if I just like dropped everything and just spent my life laser focused,
I could probably figure out some way to 780,000. 780,000
Americans currently have Crohn's.
Another 900,000 have ulcerative colitis.
Wow. Yeah. I don't know.
Honestly, I haven't really thought of...
It's just one of those things I'm so used to. It's just life.
It seems like you're such a smart guy that
dedicates yourself to things and
finds solutions. Maybe this is something you could do.
Yeah.
Maybe after YouTube, I throw my life at that.
Take the money.
Have you tried an elimination diet?
Yes, exactly.
So I don't know why I'm drawing a blank.
I mean, there's a lot of things that aggravate it.
It's like chips, cookies, or things like that.
Chips that have corn.
Yeah, exactly.
Probably an allergy maybe even to corn.
Yeah. So I've done it.
I know what to eat now where it's not like my diet isn't causing it,
but for whatever reason, sometimes it just flares up.
It's weird.
Does it say anything, Jamie, about some sort of dietary solution for Crohn's disease?
I've talked to my friend about this.
He got it around the same age as you.
His name is also Jimmy.
Let's go.
He, though, went the other way.
He has had multiple inches of his colon removed.
Does he have the bag on his side?
He did for a while, but he's pretty healthy now.
That's my worst fear is if they remove it, you then have to get the bag,
and then you shit in the bag.
Yeah, I know an older guy who has one of those.
That's my worst fear yeah that that's fucking
gross it's gross and it's scary yeah but i know people who have gotten it and they're just like
they're like when they went from being tired and miserable and all that and then they get that
surgery and they feel like a normal human it completely changed their life i mean they shit
in a bag but at least now they're happy yeah it's like six and one half a dozen the other like what
what's better i'd rather have shit in a bag and be happy.
I know.
I think about a lot because I could just have the part I have with Crohn's removed,
and then I'd be fine too.
Yeah, but, man, what if you did that and then down the road they come up with some sort of a solution?
I know.
Because I was wondering if, like, stem cells or something along those lines.
I remember because I've talked to him a long time.
I just looked it up.
I've seen when CBD was getting big, there were some talks that it could help people,
but I just checked and there was a study that said there wasn't anything conclusive on that.
Just the CBD part.
On CBD?
Yeah.
Anything that reduces inflammation.
Yep.
So they don't know what causes it or why a person gets it versus?
I could speculate, but I don't think he knows.
No, I mean, not that I know.
Does exercise help it?
Does anything help it?
I mean, your immune system attacks itself is all I know.
Wow.
Yeah.
Nothing's ever really.
It just feels so random.
It's weird.
Because I know people who have had it a long time before.
The literal only answer that they could have was just to get that part of their body cut out which is
just unfathomable um yeah but anyways such is life yeah my friend's um mom died from that wow
yeah back in the day when they did just used to cut chunks of your body out and she eventually passed away at a young age
as a mom she was 35 yeah it's it's horrible their motto no colon still rolling
but anyways yeah it's life i mean there i could have cancer i could have there's much worse stuff
well you have a great attitude. Now, when you look back
at all the stuff that you've done,
and the fact that you've done all this while
you're dealing with an autoimmune disease,
that's a giant inspiration to other people
that are struggling. Thank you. It really is.
I mean, yeah, if you have an autoimmune disease,
just fucking push through it.
That's what I did, and it worked.
Well, you have a very happy attitude.
I mean, obviously, you've been wildly successful in your young life, but you have a happy attitude towards
things. And I think that also is very inspirational to people. Yeah. I mean, I wish if I had thought
about this, I could probably have some like badass quote, but I mean, the gist is like,
you know, if it's Crohn's, like sitting there mourning over it or, you know, all day, like that doesn't do anything. Like if it's something that you can't, it it's Crohn's, like, sitting there mourning over it all day, like, that doesn't do anything.
Like, if it's something that it's out of your control, like, worrying about it, it quite literally is a waste of time.
Yeah.
Well, you're very into time management, obviously.
You kind of have to be because you have so many things on your plate.
I mean, essentially, yeah, the more I film or work, it directly correlates to the more money we bring in
to the bigger videos we can do.
So, yeah, it's essentially just a formula
where my time goes optimally for videos.
Do you have a lot of guys coming to you for advice?
Yes.
Like, hey, I want to be like Mr. Beast.
You know, actually, here, can you pull up my Twitter?
I have something cool I want to show them.
I mentor YouTubers a lot.
You'll probably find this cool.
One of the people I've been mentoring recently,
he was doing $24,000 a month, and then he recently had a $400,000 a month on YouTube.
Wow.
Yeah. So I tweeted out the before and after of his revenue. And so, yeah, just click on that
left image. So this was before I started mentoring him. He was doing 4.6 million views a month,
24 grand. And then probably like seven, eight months into it, we got him up to 45 million views and he had a four hundred
thousand dollar month Wow and what are your what kind of advice you're giving
someone like that that makes such an exponential change in the amount of
interactions yet um the biggest thing is it's much easier as weird as it sounds
it's much easier to get five million views on one video than 100 000 views on
50 videos does that make sense a little bit um like a lot of people like they like you could
upload one great video a year and get more views than if you uploaded 100 mediocre videos it's like
it's very exponential like essentially like to well now i'm going to dial back to to go
to do on youtube you just need people to click your videos and watch them.
That's literally all YouTube wants.
And so if you get people to click your video 10% more and watch your video 10% longer than mine, you don't get 10% more views.
You get, like, four times the views, right?
So you have to think, like, an exponential, right?
Like, a 10% better video is four times the views, not 10% more views.
Right.
And so, like, once you understand that and you, like, like funnel your energy better, it like, it makes a big difference.
So it's usually like,
just like,
don't make your video shit.
Put in effort,
you know,
like put in way more effort,
like really hyper obsessed
over these videos,
like triple the amount of time
you're putting in that,
into that video
because you're not going to get
triple the views.
You're going to get 10 X of views.
And like,
because like you,
YouTube's trying to serve people
the best content possible,
right?
They don't want to serve you
a hundred lame videos.
They just want to serve you one good one
So it makes sense logically like your your home page is the curated the best videos possible, you know
and so it's it's really just like making these videos really really good helping them put out a little bit of team like an editor because
Like you know if you're doing five jobs, then you can only put 20% of your time to each
Well, if you hire an editor, he can put a hundred percent of his time into that
So he's even if he's like 20% worse than you, he's still going to do a way better job just because
that's where all his time's going and he's able to obsess over it. You can't spend 10 hours a day
editing, but he can. Have you always had this logical, analytical approach to things like this?
Yeah. I love this stuff. Yeah. This is what I live for. So it's like kind of going through
and doing that for everything. And usually, in case he's uploading less and even though he went he's making over ten times more it's
with less videos ironically so and the videos are just better and the fans are
happier everything about it's just better so you mentor this guy did you
know him previously I did I knew him a little bit he's like he's always had
great thumbnails but he wasn't the best at making good videos which is those are
the easiest people to mentor they can get people to click but he wasn't the best at making good videos, which is, those are the easiest people to mentor. They can get people to click, but they can't get people to stick around.
So then, you know, I've obsessed over how to make good videos. So now I just teach them how to make
a video good, and then boom, the channel just goes skyrocket. But how do you have time to mentor
people with all the things on your plate? I find it fun. For me, it's kind of like therapeutic to
go on a walk, call someone, and then just roast their channel. Is that what you do? You roast
their channel? Like, not meanly, but it's just like, yeah.
Just honestly.
Yeah, I'm like, I can tell you're a little lazy here.
You could have put a little bit more effort.
The hook was a little weak.
Why didn't you do this or the payoff or whatever?
And you don't ask anything of them?
Him?
No, I don't own any of his channel.
I just do it for fun.
That's a wild thing to do, man.
That's so cool that you're doing that.
Yeah.
He's going to kill it.
I think he could go on to make –
Who is this guy?
The thing is –
You don't want to say it?
Yeah, exactly.
Because some people know who he is, and then they're going to be like,
oh, you're really successful because of Mr. Beast, which I don't want to hear.
Oh, right.
Well, look at you.
Good for you, man.
So you just look at that as an exercise.
Yeah, it's fun.
I do that for a lot of people.
It's just – I don't know.
It also –
How many is a lot?
Probably like six or seven. It's always rotating.
It's also like me
playing evil mad scientist. I
tell them things and then I kind of see how the theories
work on their channel and
confirm what I know and it's like, oh,
yeah, it is true. His stats went up
10% and his views 5x or things
like that. So I also get a weird enjoyment of
being able to, because it's nice because I don't
have to do it.
Like I can say, oh, do this, this, and this and then just hang up.
I don't have to go film the fucking video and then I just talk to them next week and
I can just look at the numbers and be like, okay, this worked, this worked and kind of
like see it, which I really enjoy getting to do that.
That's just so selfless of you because –
Well, I'm getting data and I'm learning and it's helping me better
understand what works but yeah i guess theoretically i could bully these people into giving me half
their channel if i wanted no no i'm not i'm not saying that i mean i'm i wouldn't ever expect
that you would do that but the fact that you're willing to spend the time and give them what you've
learned that's really cool i've done podcasts where i've literally laid out exactly how to go
viral every little thing i know and they're just sitting out there and it's funny because people that's really cool. I've done podcasts where I've literally laid out exactly how to go viral,
every little thing I know, and they're just sitting out there.
And it's funny because people listen to them and then just explode on YouTube and make tons of money.
And it's just kind of funny because it's literally just out there.
And some people still pay hundreds of dollars for a YouTube course or anything.
Who teaches YouTube courses?
There's ones all over the place.
Are there really?
Yeah, millions of people are trying to be YouTubers.
So the YouTube courses, are they taught by successful YouTubers?
I mean, you just Google it and we pick them.
I mean, like there are tons of YouTube gurus.
I mean, what I know is Daryl Eves, who he, well, I don't even, I don't know how public he is with his stats.
He's very intelligent.
He knows what he's doing.
So like his will be legit.
But also, I don't want to trash people.
I don't know.
There are other ones.
Yeah, yeah.
No, I understand what you're saying.
So you just get a satisfaction out of watching people improve and grow and knowing that you
do really have a very comprehensive understanding of how this business works.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
And I also, I'm just so fucking obsessed with this shit, I can't stop talking about it.
Wow.
In an ideal world, I probably wouldn't tell everyone every fucking thing I know about going viral all the time, but it's just like, that's me.
That's literally all I've ever done. It's like, if you did the same thing every day for 10 years,
like how do you talk about anything else? You know? But it's just amazing that it's still
an obsession of yours. Like even though you're number one, even though you just keep being more
and more wildly successful, it seems like if I guessing, you're more obsessed now than ever.
Yeah, if you took it away from me,
I don't know what I would do.
I love YouTube more than anything.
Like, you get, technically,
you get the unlimited upside money-wise,
influence-wise, power-wise, whatever.
Whatever stick thing you're chasing.
Like, with YouTube, you can get it all.
You know what I mean?
It's like, I can't think of a more fulfilling job.
And I'm completely in control
and I can do whatever the fuck I want.
Well, those are all positives for sure.
Yeah.
But it's so unusual for someone to find a thing.
Like for a lot of people, people that I know and even people that like deep into their 30s, they don't know what they want to do.
They don't have a thing, and they, for whatever reason, they don't connect to a thing that gets their juices flowing, that gets their engine running.
It's the saddest thing in life.
It's the saddest thing in life.
Yeah.
Because if you can find a thing that's an obsession that you can make your occupation.
I don't know who said that once.
Steve Jobs.
What did he say?
Wasn't it, if you can find what you love, there's no greater thing or something like that?
It's like you'll never work a day in your life.
I think it's an older quote than that. Search Steve Jobs if you find what you love. There's no greater thing or something like that. It's like you'll never work a day in your life. I think it's an older quote than that.
Search Steve Jobs if you find what you love just in the background.
Yeah.
That really is one of the keys to a happy existence because I have so many people that I know that don't like what they do.
So many people that I know.
And they do it and maybe some of them are really successful at it, but they don't like it.
Yeah.
The way you get that exponential growth is to obsess over
thing for decades not years and so like since they don't truly love what they do they never get that
like crazy crazy success so for you when you release a thing like the squid games video you
just get a wild rush oh gosh yeah especially that video you're on like fucking cloud nine for
usually about a day you're just like punching the
air you can't you can't i you know i can't sleep i'm excited for just because that was so big a
normal video not as much i'm so numb to it i've done it a thousand times thousands of times now
um but yeah that video like you know i'm calling everyone like what do you think because that was
our first time ever using cg in a video too so i was just like did you think this was cringe what
do you think and you know most people are stroking me off and telling me it was good.
And so that felt great.
Yeah, that was good.
Probably one of the few, like, actual, like, days where I was, like, genuinely happy.
Now, are you happy because what makes you more happy?
Like numbers, the grand scale of things, just seeing your vision come to fruition? Kind of all of it.
Yeah, the vision, seeing people recognize the work
we put in like because some videos we put a fuckload of work in and well that one clearly
yeah exactly so that one they see but other times you know sometimes i also i have a lot of really
critical people around me which i want i don't want yes men that just tell me everything's good
like sometimes i'll pour my heart and soul in a video and then i'll get a call right after upload
and someone just like one of my friends he it was like a bounty hunter video and i thought I thought it was, like, one of our best videos, and he's just like,
honestly, I think this video is a little lazy, and he's like, here's 10 things you could
have done better, and I agreed with, like, four of them, but, like, I remember, like,
that made my heart sink.
I was like, fuck this guy.
Fuck him.
Fuck.
And I was like, no, no, like, this is what you want.
You want honest feedback, and I was like, this is good.
You really do want honest feedback.
Exactly.
And when it hurts, it's probably better.
Exactly.
So you got to check yourself and realize, yeah, this is good. You really do want honest feedback. Exactly. And when it hurts, it's probably better. Exactly.
So you got to check yourself and realize,
yeah, this makes you better.
So I have a lot of people like that.
And Squid Game was one of those videos where like none of them were like saying negative.
They were saying positive.
And that to me was what felt the best
because these are like the most critical motherfuckers ever.
And they were just like, this is good.
And they didn't say anything bad.
I saw the Bounty Hunter video.
That was one of the first ones my daughter introduced me to.
So what about the Bounty Hunter video do you think could have been better?
Which he said, which I agree, that the beginning felt a little fake
when I threw the knife and they were tied up.
The rope wasn't as visible.
We were on an island for that.
I don't know why everything's on fucking islands.
We didn't have the best realistic looking rope,
so it looked a little kiddy.
So I agree with that. We could have made it looked a little kiddy. So I agree with that.
We could have made it look a little more real.
And then he had certain parts that were a little stretched out and could have been a little quicker.
And then also, he was like, which this is something I suck at,
because with YouTube, you're trying to hook people and keep them engaged,
especially when you're in the tens of millions of views.
But part of the problem with moving so quick is sometimes you don't get as much depth in the person
because depth can be portrayed as boring.
It's a constant balancing act of depth
but also keep moving quickly.
He's like, there wasn't much depth with the bounty hunter.
I don't really know. He's like, I don't even know his name.
I agree.
In an ideal world, but again, it's not scripted,
but in an ideal world, while he's doing action
because action's interesting,
he gives depth. If you're just driving
and you're telling a life story, that's fucking boring but if you're running after me and somehow i don't
know if this makes sense maybe life story's not the right thing but and you tell it that while
action's gone now it's interesting and i can kind of include it right does that make sense it does
make sense so you're so that's really interesting because what you were trying to do is you're
trying to just you had an accomplishment this is You're trying to get the bounty hunter to chase you guys and all that jazz.
But even post-production or post-publication, you're still looking at ways you could have added more entertainment to it.
Of course.
Hooked people deeper.
Made it more complete.
Well, I mean, we're not looking at also how we could.
We're trying to figure, because that's not scripted.
Like, that is just a bounty hunter.
We didn't tell him what to say. So, also, we're trying to make a story out of him chasing me right and like the those videos are the most fucking stressful videos on the planet
because what we're setting that stuff up for for forever and at any point if he catches me the
video is over and everything else past that point was just for nothing and so how long did it take
for him to catch you uh that one was probably like 10 hours 11 hours um yeah but it's like there's no room for error right you fuck up at any point and he
can't because you can't i can't just be super far away then there's no tension it's a boring video
i have to be close there has to be a possibility at all time that he could catch me or it's a
boring video and so that means like at all any point the video could fuck up, and then we just fucking,
everything's to shit,
all that work,
all that effort's just out the fucking window.
He catches me.
I give him the $100,000,
the video's over.
It's not fake.
What would you do with that?
Would you just try again
and have another bounty hunter?
Yeah, probably.
I'd just eat the $100,000.
But renting all this stuff,
I mean,
it would probably be like a quarter million dollar L
because just everything's so expensive.
Right.
And then we'd probably just do it again next week.
Yeah.
With a different one.
Um, how do you pick a bounty hunter?
Uh, just casting person.
I know that's where a lot of them weren't the, the most entertaining and it's not like
they're like hit men.
They're like bounty hunters that would like, you know, people who bail on bail and they
go bounty hunt and stuff like that.
Um, they, we, I know they went through quite a few to like find one that actually had a
little bit of a personality. Um, cause you know, I don't, I quite a few to like find one that actually had a little bit of a personality.
Um, cause you know, I don't, I don't want someone like super hardcore serious.
Yeah.
So over the years you've kind of perfected your method of creating these tasks in these
games that you play.
I mean, you've, they're all different though.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
Like that video is completely different than the video where we put 50 people in a circle,
which is different than where people competed for an Island, you know?
Right.
Which is why like a production company would have a problem with it because it's not a
formula that you could just recreate.
Exactly.
That's why I'm still not consistently uploading, you know, because then you have shit like
the Antarctica thing happened or, or this thing happened.
Like, I mean, you just don't know.
How often do you upload to the main channel?
Right now, probably around twice a month.
Well, actually right now once because Antarctica fell through.
But ideally, we're going to get back up to starting this month twice.
And then as we build out the other teams, hopefully by the end of the year, we're doing every single week.
That's what I want in an ideal world every week.
One a week?
Yeah, of course.
Well, actually, in an optimal world, speaking purely analytically, if I'm putting that brain on, I would be uploading twice a week.
I would upload every Thursday and Saturday.
That's what would be optimal, which is where I inevitably do want to get to.
But, I mean, then I'm spending, like, ungodly amounts of money, ungodly amounts of people.
I mean, I'm going to also be filming probably, like, 90% of my waking hours.
It would be, like, crazy.
Or working hours, which is what I eventually want to ramp up to.
Because, like I said, I don't spend most of my time filming.
I spend most of my time working on videos.
But in an ideal world, I spend most of my working hours filming
because that's the only thing in the world I can do and no one else can.
Right.
Do you anticipate, like, how hard would it be to hand over the reins,
the creative reins to other people which would allow you to film?
I'm always going to have to have the final say and be pitched.
But, like, you can always narrow it down where, you know,
the pitching takes less and less.
But I'm never, I'm always,
I have a guy named Tyler who fucking crushes it
and I'd say out of anyone in the world,
he understands how to write content better than,
any YouTuber could hire him
and he would just instantly probably triple their attention.
It's crazy, he's really good.
But still, I'm always gonna have to hear it
before we film it and stuff like that
just to put my little spin on it.
Now, this Squid Games thing was the first time you used CG.
Yeah.
Do you anticipate using that in the future?
I do, yeah.
Because then you could really get crazy as the technology evolves too, right?
Yeah, but we can't be cringe with it.
When I use CG, it's not like I'm trying to hide that it's CG.
Because we're still like – at the end of the day, we are a YouTube channel and it's my channel
and so I don't want it
to make it feel like Hollywood.
You know what I mean?
But yeah,
I see it as a way
to enhance that.
It's not like,
there's never going to be a world
where I'm just filming
in front of a green screen,
but if I have something cool
and I just want to extend it,
that's kind of where I see CG useful
if that makes any sense.
Yes.
Do you upload to Facebook?
Yes.
What are your thoughts on meta?
I'm going to be honest.
I have no idea about anything meta.
Really?
Yeah.
I'm like literally, you can probably tell by talking to me.
I'm like 95% laser focused on YouTube.
I understand.
Yeah.
So like Facebook is usually just our videos just shortened a little bit because their
attention spans are a little bit shorter and we just make them vertical and put them over
there.
I'm just fascinated by where augmented and virtual reality go
and where it's going to take us in terms of, you know.
Most people, it's a big commitment to put the goggles on
and to hold the controllers and to stand in a room.
And the engagement that those like VR, whether it's Oculus or what have you,
that they have in comparison to like people playing with their phones, like people going on social media.
There's no comparison, right?
Yeah.
It's a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the people.
But I'm wondering if there's going to be a tipping point because, you know, I'm from an age where I grew up with no internet.
I'm like one of the last generations of people that grew up without an internet and didn't get the internet until I was in my twenties. And that's when it all emerged
in the, in the world. And I slowly watched it take over, but no one ever would have anticipated
that you'd have a device in your pocket that people would be addicted to. And many people
would be on it eight hours a day, just staring at people's butts. Yeah. I get what you're going
with this. Yeah. This virtual reality thing. There's a lot of people that are dismissing it a lot of people think but when i
see zucker zuckerberg put so much emphasis on this and the fact that he's even changing the name of
his company to meta yeah and i see these commercials that they're doing with like people like staring
into like these art pieces and start dancing and moving and And I'm like, where is this going? Do you think about it at all?
A little bit.
I honestly, I think the first step is definitely going to be augmented reality.
I think so too.
Like the Google Glasses or Apple Glasses and stuff like that.
And then, I don't know, it's hard to say because you're right,
technology advances so much more rapidly.
I do believe within my lifetime I will be able to put on a full suit
and just lay down and play
in virtual reality, maybe when I'm like 60,
70, and play an actual game,
have sensors hooked up, actually feel shit,
and maybe with Neuralink or some shit,
and control it with my mind and actually feel like
I'm in a different world.
It's weird because my gut's like, ah, that shit's
20, 30 years away, but in reality
in 10 years, VR is going to be more advanced than we could ever imagine.
And you're right.
It's crazy to think about.
You saw Ready Player One, I'm sure, right?
Yeah, of course.
That kind of world is not outside the realm of possibility.
In my lifetime, yeah, 100%.
Yeah.
I don't think it's going to be that long, man.
I don't think, I think, like you're saying, 10, 15 years.
I think there's going to.
Well, supply chain ramp up and stuff like that. I mean, it's going to take many, many years. Um,
and yeah, I mean, 15, 15 doesn't seem crazy. Actually even 10 seems, it's just, I don't know,
but that's like our brains aren't good at thinking about how rapidly technology advances.
What is the most advanced haptic feedback suit now, Jamie? Is there anything that's new on the horizon?
Because I know they were doing stuff that could, like if you got shot in a game, it could.
Have you ever done sandbox?
Do you know what that is?
No.
It's fun, man.
You go to a warehouse.
They have one here in Austin.
And one of them is this thing called Deadwood Mansion.
So I've done it with my family a bunch of times.
You go to a warehouse.
You put the goggles on.
They give you a haptic feedback vest, they give you plastic guns,
and you get... I have done that. I did
not know that was called Sandbox, though. And you fight
zombies. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Maybe we went to the same one. Yeah, I went to
one here two years ago somewhere in Texas. Yeah, there's one in
Austin, and then there's one... I've been to the
one in Woodland Hills, California, too. Yeah, and
did they have the lines on the ground and stuff, too?
There's some Call of Duty game they had as well where there's like walls and stuff
and they're wrapped on the ground.
No, they didn't have lines, but you're just basically in a room.
And then as soon as they turn it on, that room becomes like this virtual world.
And all your friends, like you see them in front of you and they're these avatars now,
like they're a pirate or something like this.
And then you get to do this game on a pirate ship,
and you can fight off these skeletons that are trying to kill you.
Or you're in the zombie game, and the zombies are running at you,
and you're blasting with a shotgun and blood splattering everywhere,
and they get a hold of you.
You feel them touch your suit, and you see red in front of your eyes
because they're tearing you apart, and you're trying to shoot them
and reload your gun.
It's wild, and it's really fun. my thought is like this is pong you know this is
this is a just a sort of it's really fun it's really exciting but it's gonna be it's gonna
come a time where as this technology continues to evolve and they continue to have new innovation, it'll be indistinguishable from a real experience.
Yeah.
And I don't know how far away that is.
I mean, I don't know either.
If I dedicated my life, I could probably figure it out.
But my thing is I'm wondering if it's going to come to a point in time where your show
is going to exist in a virtual reality world where someone could not just watch it,
but actually be in it and be a part of it.
Well, I mean, obviously, if virtual reality has mass adoption, of course.
It's really just when the tech gets here.
If everyone had a VR headset in their house, you probably would go to concerts in there,
too, if they just listened to some shit.
Yeah, exactly.
How good is the haptic feedback suits now?
I'm trying to look at what they were showing at CES
and see if anybody said, you got to try this,
one of those kinds of things.
I know they have things that affect your hands.
That's what I'm, it seems like the best thing they showed
were maybe some gloves, and they sound very expensive,
and I can't tell that, like they said they were turning knobs,
so I don't know how good that feels
to make it seem like you're actually turning a knob or not.
And what is the best VR setup now?
Is it Oculus? Is it HTC Vive?
It depends on what you want to do, honestly, because I've had it for a long time now.
There's not, from what I've been looking, a new game that's come out recently that's like,
oh my God, check this out.
I would have showed it to you.
Right, right.
And I don't know that there is one.
Literally all I play with my Rift is just Beat Saber.
Yeah, that's been around for a while.
You can actually get a really good workout with that.
I agree.
It's so much fun.
You're swinging your arms around.
And another thing that's really great with the Oculus, there's a boxing game that you play.
So you've got this.
with the Oculus, there's a boxing game that you play.
So you've got this, because the way Oculus is set up,
the one we had back at our Woodland Hill studio,
it was like just an iPad was controlling it, right?
So you have the headphones, and they're pretty light,
and then you have these things on, and you're in this virtual ring,
and you're boxing this character.
And every time he hits you, you see like a flash of light in front of your eyes. And so you're basically shadow boxing, but you're reacting to a thing.
So you're moving, and you get a good cardio workout.
You could actually get a really solid workout.
I've never seen this.
This popped up on the thing.
I was like, this is a preview of an Iron Man VR game, which if this is –
like this could get into like a AAA title game where they're spending a lot of money.
Any game like this where you move in game but you're not moving in real life
gives me severe motion sickness.
And I feel like it does for a lot of other people I know as well.
Obviously, you're not flying in real life and you're not moving in real life,
but you're moving in game.
That always fucks with me.
So it makes you want to throw up?
Yeah, or it just gives me a giant headache.
I wonder if there's something they can give you for that,
like a Dramamine or one of those little things they put on your wrist,
like if you get on a boat, you know?
Yeah.
I know you didn't get into Ready Player Two,
but that is part of what happens in the fictionalized world
where the thing got too real and they've upgraded it.
If you spend more than 12 hours in it,
your brain starts disconnecting and you can die.
That makes sense.
They work that into the physical world.
I'm sure Zuck's taking that into account.
We'll see.
Well, that's probably going to be where they come up with a human brain interface.
The human brain interface question, it's like how much time have you spent looking at what Elon said about Neuralink?
Outside of your podcast?
Nothing.
It's very complicated because the first steps about it are really undeniably important because the first steps about it are reconnecting people's spinal cords.
The first way that it's going to be implemented is with people that have like severe spinal cord injuries.
Yeah. So someone who has an injury like that, they'll be able to do something where this implant
interfaces with the brain and somehow or another can control the nerves or activate parts of
the body.
I'm not exactly sure how that's done, but it's going to allow people that are paralyzed
to walk.
It's crazy.
So it's, which is an undeniably amazing thing.
There's no ethical questions about that.
The ethical questions arise when you realize that you're going to be putting this quarter-sized
hole in someone's head, and then you're going to put wires into their brain, and it's going
to change the way human beings interface with information.
He said it's basically going to increase, this is his words, it's going to increase your
bandwidth,
your access to information, and
you're going to be able to talk without words.
Yeah, I remember he said that on your podcast as well.
I mean, fuck.
If anybody else said that, I'd be like, shut up, bitch.
But when Elon says it, I was like, shit.
He probably, I mean,
he's not saying that wildly.
He's probably got a plan. You a plan for coming up with something.
See, now you're making me wish I was more educated in this because that's so fascinating.
There's so much cool shit going on like VR, that.
Fuck.
There's so much cool shit and my feeling is the way the internet sort of just changed life.
If you go back to pre-internet versus post-internet,
there's a lot of problems that people have with the internet, right? There's cyberbullying. There's
a lot of people that are disconnected. A lot of kids in particular have a real problem with
social media, FOMO, and just with people bullying them and them comparing their lives to other
people. With girls in particular, there's a lot of serious psychological issues that have come
with social media.
But it came out of nowhere, man.
I mean, we're talking about the real implementation of social media, where mass scale, where it
started affecting people's lives, early 2000s.
And now here we are.
Maybe like 2010.
Yeah, really it was phones.
So iPhone 2007, right? Which took years to ramp up. Yeah, really it was phones. So iPhone 2007, right?
Which took years to ramp up.
Maybe even 2010 is a little early.
Because I agree, it's not like we've had 100 years to study how this shit affects us.
Exactly.
It's all very recent.
And it changed lives so quickly. It went from 1990, almost no one had a phone, a cell phone, to 2020, everyone has a
cell phone, to what is it 20 years from now? What is it 30 years from now? I mean, when does this
new technology get implemented and completely change the way human beings communicate with
each other? I don't think it's going to be that far away, man.
I think once it gets going, the problem is, and the way Elon was explaining it,
you're going to have such a competitive advantage if you have this chip,
if you have this neural link, you have this setup.
You could just get an infinite loan out to get it put in.
Well, not just that, but we've always had this problem where the rich get richer
and the poor get poorer.
What happens from the haves and the have-nots?
Once the haves have a fucking Neuralink, and now they have literally an infinity pill that they're taking that gets – what is that movie with Bradley Cooper?
Limitless.
Limitless.
They got a limitless pill they're taking.
And then out of nowhere, they have incredible access to information.
Imagine literally learning everything I know, everything I've spent my whole life studying,
just downloading your brain in a second.
Yeah.
And what if it gives you energy too?
Because you think about what are people taking when they're taking stimulants like Adderall?
Well, they're taking something that stimulates your brain.
I mean, it stimulates your central nervous system.
It gives your brain more information mean, it stimulates your central nervous system, but it gives your brain more
information or more energy, rather. But if you could do that electronically, where you're not
juicing yourself up with amphetamines, but instead you're enhancing all the capabilities
of your entire neural network. Yeah. Crazy.
Bro, we're going to be robots. We're going to be cyber people.
I don't know in our lives, but- I think so.
Yeah? Yeah, I think so so i think it's gonna happen quick i think once i think this is the big fear is ai right what people
are worried about is a sentient artificial intelligence that's far superior to ours
that realizes that we're not just outdated but we're kind of dangerous we ruin the environment
and just decides to get rid of us yeah and take over as the new life form.
You accidentally write something that's like,
help us solve climate change.
And it's like, the solution is just kill the humans.
Well, Marshall McLuhan wrote about this in the 1960s.
He said, human beings are the sex organs of the machine world.
Sex organs of the machine world.
Elaborate on that.
Well, we make the machines.
The machines need us to make them.
We are how they replicate.
So once the human being creates a machine that's better than it,
why would the machine keep it around?
If they create an artificial life form that can make better artificial,
like we're incredibly advanced compared to most of the creatures on this planet.
But compared to what's possible, I mean, godlike powers,
infinite powers are possible if you just scale up from what we can do now
with nuclear power and video and 5G that you could send to Australia in a second.
It's wild shit you can do right now.
Imagine how far that keeps going and where it's going to go.
Well, if it eventually goes
to an artificial creature an artificial being that someone constructs and it's not biologically
based at all so it doesn't have any of the pitfalls that we have in terms of our our reliance
on emotions and fear and our desire to breed and ego and all these different weird things that people have. Sleep, disease.
None of those.
Zero.
Zero of those things.
We'll be obsolete.
I mean, in a hypothetical world, I agree.
But the hypothetical world is being worked on right now by the smartest fucking people in the world.
That's why it's sketchy.
And that's why I'd rather just live in my own little bubble, just do my own little thing.
You figured that out with them.
You guys handle it. Here, just make sure I don't get killed by this ai and i'll just i'll be over here i'll make youtube videos i'll do my thing i'll feed people listen i'm not figuring out shit i'm just talking
i'm just talking and i get to talk to smart people but the the thing that i'm worried is it's going
to sneak up on us that and i think one of the ways that we avoid artificial intelligence – I mean if you look at like the possible pitfalls, like how does this play out?
One of the ways we avoid being obsolete is we integrate.
And that's what I think Neuralink is.
I mean I think Neuralink is a no-brainer at some point or something like that because right now your rate of learning is just as fast as you can read.
I mean it just makes sense to be able to download information if that is possible.
If that is something that can physically happen, then it's obviously going to happen eventually because it's a no-brainer.
Yeah, I had Coleman Hughes on the podcast and he disagrees.
He thinks it's going to be so much more difficult to sort of replicate the human mind because there's so little we know of the human mind.
But one of the things that I – I don't know if I've said this to him.
I forgot to say it to him.
But my position on that has always been we don't have to replicate the human mind.
We just have to replicate its ability.
Like the idea that you have to replicate the human mind, well, you have to understand the human mind
and just the neurons and all the cells working together and the human neurochemistry
and the neurotransmitters.
There's so much shit going on in the brain constantly.
It's an intensely complex process, but they don't have to recreate that.
Just make a nothing, a new thing rather, that does what the brain does but does it better.
And we've essentially started doing that with artificial intelligence computers.
I mean look what we've done with chess, right? It used to be they thought the one thing that shows that human beings are
more intelligent than computers is that computers can't beat them at chess. Well, now they beat
people at chess quick. Not only do they beat people at chess, now computers get creative,
and they come up with their own moves. What do you mean own moves?
Their own moves. They come up with their own openings. Computers come up with different
patterns of playing chess that haven't been established by grandmasters. And not just chess,
it might be actually Go that I'm thinking of, which Go is apparently much more complex than
chess.
I remember that, the AlphaGo documentary. Yeah.
Yeah.
And so these computers, here it is,
DeepMind's AI is helping to rewrite the rules of chess.
DeepMind's researchers are letting AlphaZero play with different rules
to find out how to improve the game.
They're creative, at least in the context of the game of chess.
Yeah.
So, look, that didn't used to be the case 10 years ago, 30 years ago.
They're getting better at thinking.
Like, how long?
Did you see Ex Machina?
No.
You didn't?
No.
How dare you?
What even is that?
You never saw that movie?
Wait.
Oh, my gosh.
I purely grew up on YouTube.
I haven't seen hardly any.
That's wild.
Isn't it incredible what you can accomplish with singular focus?
I know.
I said something to him earlier. He's like, is that on YouTube? I was like, no, it's it's a credit was incredible we can accomplish like singular focus I said something to him earlier is like is that on YouTube that's how you get successful at a young age oh man
this s and cut everything else out I'm not doubting that yeah but you would
love ex machina it's a fucking amazing movie it's one of my top ten favorite
movies of all time and it's a movie about this guy who's a super genius the guy on the far right he's been in Star
Wars and what's that dude's name Jamie Oscar Isaac Oscar Isaac he's awesome and
he creates and who's the girl I don't remember her name off the top my head
well let's give her some props find out but anyway it's an amazing movie it's
one my top 10 all-time favorite movies. Someone listening to this, text me to watch it.
That Oscar guy is...
Alicia Vikander.
Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac, and then Dom Hanal Gleesom is the computer coder that this guy hires.
So Oscar, the Nathan guy, is this super genius who lives in this very remote location,
and he's been secretly working on an advanced, super complex version of artificial life.
And he has literal artificial humans in this compound that you realize are human,
or you realize are not human along the way.
And one that he has this guy do, you know what the Turing test is?
No.
The Turing test is a test that was created by this guy, is it Arthur Turing?
Alan.
Alan Turing.
Alan Turing was a guy who devised a test to find out, the idea was if you could interact with a computer and not know that it's a computer,
then it would pass this test.
If you could interact with something and it would behave and think and communicate like a human being.
And so he was kind of brought on, the computer coder, to interact with this woman who was clearly a robot.
But she was so seductive and beautiful and the way she communicated was so
enticing that it was essentially passing the Turing test, even though he knew it was. And
Alan Turing, which is really crazy. Alan Turing existed. He was born in a barbaric time. And
I believe he lived in the UK and he was gay
and he was tried and prosecuted for being gay
and they made him take drugs that,
I think they made him take
like a chemical circumcision drug,
not circumcision, castration drug,
a chemical castration drug
that killed his libido
and he wound up committing suicide.
So one of the leading fathers in concepts of artificial intelligence was killed by the
stupidity and ignorance of human beings, which is really wild.
In 1952, he's convicted of gross indecency with another man and was forced to undergo so-called
organotherapy chemical castration it's crazy that's that wasn't even 100 years ago no man
wow 1952 two years later he killed himself with cyanide at just 41 years old alan turing was
driven to a terrible despair and early death by the nation he'd done so much to save.
It's an amazing story.
And it's so heartbreaking because it shows you, like, the stupidity and the ignorance and the prejudice of human beings destroying a guy who had this vision to understand, like, what possibly can be coming down the line in terms of artificial life?
Yeah.
And if he was 40 then, I mean, he would have lived to like 2000.
He would have seen some wild shit.
Yeah, exactly.
Imagine what he would have came up with once computers actually fucking worked.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
I mean, who knows how much we would have advanced his ideas and concepts.
Yeah, with all that stuff, I wish I had more value to add.
But it's like, honestly, this is like a lot of what you you just said probably like the first time i've ever thought of half that shit
really yeah i don't really really spend too much time thinking about futuristic stuff i'm usually
just you work in computers uh you work on computers yeah your shit gets uploaded to yeah
i work in content you know and that's understand yeah so it's it's interesting you're definitely
like getting my gears turning i
just i wish i had more value to add oh you're great man stop um x mocking it though you must
see it yeah you must see i'm gonna watch it you have to it's you don't have to do whatever i mean
seeing how hard you vouched for it i i kind of have to watch it i've watched it like four or
five times at least i love it yeah do you watch Do you watch films? Do you watch any films?
No.
When was the last time you saw a movie?
Well, I watched the Spider-Man No Way Home because it was cool.
Oh.
Yeah, yeah.
That just came out on Apple, didn't it?
Isn't it available now on Apple TV?
My 11-year-old that's obsessed with you is also obsessed with Spider-Man.
Yeah, everyone is at the moment.
Tom Holland's crushing it.
But growing up, since YouTube's what I do, I should consume YouTube.
So if I consumed movies or other stuff, I always saw it as a waste of time.
Unless it was culture, so then it would make sense to watch it.
It makes sense to watch Spider-Man, so I know what's going on in the world.
But for the most part, for me, what's optimal is to just watch a bunch of YouTube.
So then I better understand what's trending and how to make better videos and pacing and stuff like that.
So you're constant YouTube?
Yeah, not as much anymore, but when I was growing up,
a hardcore, I would call it an information diet.
I would only watch YouTube,
so I was constantly just ingesting how to make better videos.
That was your isolation diet, right?
Yeah.
Crowd site.
Yeah.
So when you talk about Spider-Man,
you can't not talk about the Into the Spider-Verse.
Have you seen that one?
The animated one?
No.
I've really only seen the newest one because it was so huge.
The best one is Into the Spider-Verse.
Don't you think, Jamie?
Yeah, well, I've honestly –
That one's the shit.
But I haven't seen this one either, and I've heard they could win Oscars and whatnot,
which the other one did win an Oscar.
But they're talking like this was such a good movie.
There wasn't a lot of movies that came out there.
The newest one? Yeah, crushed it. It was phenomenal.
And I didn't even watch the old Spider-Man's
and I feel like I understood everything.
Well, I hope it wins an Oscar.
From what I even heard, this is almost like a real action
version of that animated one.
There's verses that combine
and I don't know how visually
comparable it was. I don't think it's in 3D
like the other one was. Well, the end to the Spiderverse,
the fact that it's animated, you could just do
so much more with animation because you can get
away with stuff. It doesn't
have to be realistic.
It also doesn't have to... You don't have to have stunt
people or CGI. It's all
animated. I feel like animation
does a better job of portraying emotion
with... I don't even know how to put it into words, but with like movements and stuff like that.
Because you're right, it doesn't have to be so just like realistic.
Yeah, I'm kind of amazed that they don't have more feature-length animated movies.
There's one coming out also.
Oh, when is that coming out?
Probably this year, later this year, probably this summer.
Oh, wow.
This is October 7th.
Oh, all right.
Nice.
But that's probably more an American thing because anime is exploding here.
Right.
So I am surprised it hasn't seeped over more into just the culture of what we consume here.
Yeah, it's exploding on YouTube too.
I mean, there's so much anime content on YouTube.
Yeah.
What is happening?
How is that happening? Because that's another thing anime content on YouTube. Yeah. What is happening? How is that happening?
Because that's another thing my kid's into.
Yeah.
I love anime because the stories are so weird that it inspires me.
I feel like it's actually a really good way to develop creatively.
Like Death Note.
Have you ever heard of that?
Yes.
It's one of the biggest animes.
Yeah.
The story is about a book that fell from the sky and you can write any name in it and they
die.
I watched that movie.
Yeah.
Well, the anime is obviously better.
Anyone who-
The movie's good though.
Well, the anime, if you'd like that, you'd like the anime.
It's 30 times better.
Anyone who's seen the anime is just shaking in their boots because it's a common thing.
Everyone hates the fucking movie.
What?
Yeah.
Go to the movie, Jamie, because the movie was good.
Those anime dorks need to get out of the fucking house i mean you should you should try watch a couple episodes of anime and see it's like
it's the pacing on in the anime it's it's one of my favorite shows is is really good and just uh
i don't know i feel like it just moves so much better the movie kind of made me cringe at a few
parts really yeah i mean it was silly but it was that's the thing it was a little
bit more silly whereas like the anime is like very serious and it uh really gets you because
they essentially condense what is it dozens of episodes down to a two-hour movie right and what's
his name william the fuck's his name is the voice of it the voice of the demon willem defoe that's
right yeah he's in it he's the voice of the demon. He's the guy that shows up when the dude starts putting names in the book
and has people killed.
The dude meets him in a laboratory.
There he is.
It's a cool-looking demon.
Does it show it?
Or did you skip ahead?
There it is.
They might not show it.
No, they show it.
They'll show it a little bit.
But I thought it was fun.
Yeah, right there.
Yeah.
But the point is like this, you know, the show is just something so different that you
don't find here, right?
Right.
At least when I grew up and I was watching a little bit of TV, it felt like it was just
all like crime scene shows and like different variations.
And it's like, or like game shows.
It's all like the same tried and true shit.
Whereas like, that's what I love about anime.
It's just like, you get stuff like that.
Like you'll never, ever, ever find anything like that over here um and there's
it's i don't know for me like that extra creativity is so much more entertaining
it is weird though like i wonder what is it about japanese culture where they tapped into that
and it's obviously very exciting to kids yeah or to people of all ages to be honest i mean
i don't know i don't know mass data but but just even the people I see, like everyone recently,
even like a lot of YouTubers talking about to their audience, like MMA is exploding.
It's very graphic too, man.
My kid, we were on vacation and I always give her a hard time.
I was like, which one are you watching now?
And she's like, this one's called Demon Slayer.
And she tries to explain to me, like, did you watch Demon Sl little bit i'm still working on it it's super graphic yeah i watched
it i was like jesus like they you know they really kill people yeah like it's a wild bloody mess i
know i mean that's what i love about anime is that for a lot of them they don't hold back i
i prefer that but i guess for you and your stance as a father it's a little different them they don't hold back. I prefer that. But I guess for you and your stance as a father, it's a little different.
I don't want to protect her
from fake violence.
It's weird to me that
she likes it.
When you have children, one of the weird things is
what disturbs them and what doesn't and why?
What freaks
them out and what doesn't freak them out?
What freaks her out or used to freak
her out is realistic depictions of horror you know i feel like honestly i'm the same way yeah no i mean
what you're saying that's not normal no no i think it is okay yeah but anime because it's not
realistic because it's clearly a cartoon yeah seems to be oh it's like who killed kenny like
you bastard you're like when south Park, when Kenny would die every –
do you not know fucking Kenny in South Park?
I mean I've heard the name Kenny.
I've never watched South Park.
Oh, no.
James.
Oh, no.
What is happening here?
Are we in an alternative universe?
What planet are you from?
You're talking to a YouTube baby.
A guy –
What?
I saw South Park as a waste of time.
He is younger than South Park, I do believe.
Well, South Park's current.
I know, but I mean, just the-
It's still amazing right now.
So you've never seen the South Park movie?
I've never watched South Park.
Oh my God.
You've never seen when Saddam Hussein-
But you're a comedian, so I feel like that's more relevant in your world.
I guess so.
I mean, before I was a comedian, I loved comedy.
You don't love, like, did you ever see Team America World Police?
Nope.
Jesus!
What?
You know, and you're not, but basically, this is partly why I didn't have any friends growing up.
I'm serious.
You just YouTubed out.
Yeah, no, that's the problem.
Like, that's legit what you're experiencing.
That's how I felt every day about every little thing throughout my teenage life. And's why like i felt like i was a fucking freak because i was like i just
like you listen man i get it no but like now i'm i'm confident i don't i don't give a fuck like i
find it funny but like that's what's interesting because when i was at a younger age i didn't it
confused me and i felt like a weirdo and i say that for people who are hyper obsessed listening
so that like because there are people listening to this who are probably
a little bit younger that are hyper-obsessed
over certain things and probably feel like that.
And I just surround myself
with YouTubers and people that care about YouTube, so
I don't have that problem, you know what I mean?
But you just gotta find those people that have
those same, whatever,
obsessions, you know what I mean? No, listen, it's
obviously paid off in a huge
way for you. I'm not in any way criticizing you. I get it. I no listen it's obviously paid off in a huge way for you i'm not in any way criticizing no i don't think it's so unusual and i just like bringing that up for
people to hear because like i'm serious that was like one of the like just the things i just
couldn't figure out growing up i just like i just couldn't find anyone i related to and it was i was
miserable so fucking miserable um and so but it paid off. It did.
And that's why I like saying that.
But that's the thing.
It's like, and this is the thing that gets covered in outliers and gets covered in when a lot of people try to study hyper achievers.
Like, what is it about these people that makes them so successful?
And with you, it's clearly this singular dedication to content creation.
Exactly.
To the point where you don't even fucking watch South Park.
Yep. Crazy. Where you give up everything, even if it means you don't fit in. Yeah. Yeah. To the point where you don't even fucking watch South Park. Yep. Crazy.
You give up everything, even if it means you don't fit in. Yeah. Which is what you have to do.
But it doesn't seem like it's a sacrifice for you.
That's the beauty of it. The beauty
of your story is that there's
obviously discipline,
and obviously you work hard, but
it's love. It's a passion.
You're clearly obsessed
with this. Still, all these years in, top of the food chain, you're still guns blazing and constantly trying to add more to what you're doing.
Thank you.
It's pretty dope, dude.
I agree.
I don't.
I'm grateful.
Like, genuinely just grateful that I found what I loved.
And it's not like a broken record, but, I mean, that's the type of shit they should teach in school.
You should have classes helping you find what you love.
Because once you find what you love, you don't have to tell someone to study.
You don't have to force someone to do it.
They just do it because it's built in you.
It's part of who you are.
I couldn't agree more.
But the problem is, like we were talking about earlier, that you have these underpaid teachers who are not really engaged with what they're teaching.
They're just kind of spitting it out in this large class.
They're not connecting to the students.
But even then, like what we're talking about here isn't even just supported in the curriculum.
Right.
I mean – and I don't know.
See, that's why I'd have to do research.
I don't know if everyone is like us and if they found what they love, they'd go all in or figure it out.
But I don't know.
I just feel like that's something that's just super – just in general in American culture, like just that, like helping people find their passion.
Because I feel like that's just what holds so many people back.
They're just doing shit they don't love.
100%.
But the question is like, is there enough passion projects out there for everybody to
do what you do or to do what I do?
Well, the thing is-
Just to chase what they enjoy.
Because I did YouTube for no pay for years and I did it making hardly anything.
I did this podcast for no money for years. This podcast cost me money for like the first five or
six years that I was doing it. Exactly. And so even if I was making minimum wage doing YouTube,
I'd still be way happier than if I was making like three or four times minimum wage doing
something else. Of course. Yeah. And so you also kind of have to factor that in. Whereas if you
do what you love, you don't necessarily need as much. I think with a lot of people, the problem is external pressures. Like obviously your mom
wanted you to go to college and you know, my parents didn't want me to do a lot of the things
that I did, but luckily for both of us, we didn't listen. And I think that's the thing. It's like,
but how do you transfer that to a child? How do you tell a young kid coming up,
you've got to learn how to be stubborn and you got to learn how to know when you're right yeah you got to learn how to chase down the things that actually
excite you we i mean the flip side we took some big risks i know you know i have a friend who
actually i support similar thing all in fifty thousand dollars in debt channel didn't take off
whatever and so he quit and like ruined his life so it's like i don't it's
not all sunshine and rainbows not everyone's gonna end up like us and so i i pay him like 10 grand a
month he's good he's not homeless anymore but um so it's like i don't know i don't know where the
line is where it's like where we're not giving people advice that could potentially fuck him
over because obviously that you know even though you might be less happy you have a higher chance
of not being homeless by being a sheep and doing that stuff. There's a thing like that with comedians too, right?
Because I have friends that I thought were really funny.
And going back a decade ago, I remember hanging out with them at the comedy store going, 10 years from now, this person is going to be killing it.
10 years from now, they're no better off than they were then.
And I don't know why.
And I don't know what it is.
And they can be funny.
I've seen them have really good jokes on stage, pretty good stage presence, but for whatever it is,
they've never been able to get that real traction and then just build on it with the most...
One of the things that I see with you is you have massive momentum and all this inertia that's going
towards getting things done and you keep building on it. You keep adding to the machine.
Like, ah!
Exactly.
Some people don't do that for whatever reason.
And I don't know if that's a teachable thing.
Well, I mean, there's more to it.
It's like my first brand deal.
Everyone in the world is like, oh, just set the money aside.
Put this in an IRA.
Do this thing.
And I'm like, no, I'm just going to go spend it on a video or whatever.
People always want you to set aside money or de-risk things.
And like, yeah, it's like everything kind of like points to doing what's opposite of what's optimal.
You know, what's optimal for growing a business is hella risky.
So it's like, I don't know.
It's also there's no real precedent.
I mean, there is you now.
But like in the world of this content creator creator on youtube it's not like there's like
decades of history that people could study exactly and that's one of the hardest things like if
you're trying to become like a great basketball player get a fucking mentor there's plenty of
people who have spent their lives like you know an nba players or college players at a high level
get a mentor anything you're doing if there's someone who yeah if you can get a mentor get it
it's like fucking cheat codes it's like that guy i took from 20 grand to 400 grand a month like that that would take him like a decade
on his own i was like here you go just do this you know once a week for eight months um and that's
the thing yeah for what i did no one has done it and so i never there's never any point where i
could have a mentor that could help me um and i don't even know what you were saying that inspired
this but it is something that's like a pet peeve of mine like bro it's a mentor is a fucking cheat code if you're in an
industry where you can get one get one like people like a lot of people enjoy if they're really
passionate about what they do they enjoy talking about those they'll mentor you for free just
because it's what they love but what's fascinating about a guy like you is you didn't have a mentor
and you became one exactly you figured the system and my my point would be like if i if i knew what i knew now like three years ago i mean i'd be on half a
billion subscribers or whatever like my growth would have been so much more extreme it's like
knowledge is just so op and like that's like i don't know just one of the my things i just really
want to drill in your fucking heads it's like if you're in an industry where there are other
experts like just have them teach you what they just spent the last 20 years studying don't you go on your own
20 year journey like just learn from them then start your journey you can learn so much from
people that have already accomplished things you can but at some point in time you also have to
learn how to be yourself agree yeah you leverage it you you know filter out the stuff you want to
keep or whatever but it's it's like i don't know it's just it's there's nothing more valuable in life in my opinion at least entrepreneurial wise
uh than than having someone like that you know it's massive and it's also creates a community
because like clearly you've done an amazing service for these people that you helped and
they'll probably play it forward and if they pay it forward and then they do it for other people
like i do that with comics and i see other comics do the same thing where
they help other stand-ups and and mentor them and take them on the road and give
them gigs and give them advice and you see it growing and there's like a
community that comes out of that that's also it's very valuable yeah and fun
like yeah friends good times like that's one of the cool things about your videos.
It's not just you having fun.
You have this whole gang of friends, and everyone's laughing and having a great time,
and you look down, it's like 50 million views.
Holy shit.
I know.
It's beautiful.
Which is on purpose.
And that environment, that feel is so hard to get because most people want to, again, with these big projects, you want to script it because scripting gets budget down, gets filmed.
You can take a 50-hour shoot and reduce it to five minutes.
Sorry, not five, but five hours if you script it.
You can also reduce your budget costs by like 60% if you script shit.
And so that's why you don't see a lot of stuff like what we do because no one wants to do it authentic and just like let shit happen.
Things can go wrong or take way longer they just want to script
it and then give you you know the boys lines
and shit like that but part of the things going wrong
in your videos is what makes it fun exactly
exactly and that's why I do
it the way I do which is now it's
more normal but when I was growing especially
as I'm like bringing people from LA like
hey can you help me or other people try to help make
this stuff happen it's like so unorthodox
and like everyone every person has an idea of how you could like make things more efficient
and there always points back to like some form of scripting and it's like no fuck no go away
yeah that's uh that's i mean look you've got a formula and it's not even a formula it's just
authenticity exactly like chris one of the guys in the. He's my first subscriber. He's been my friend
It's not like I went to LA and hired some actor. He just literally he's been day one
And then the other guy Carl he was my editor that Chris literally just became friends with and Chris was like
I don't want to film unless Carl's around I was like well fuck all right
Call your part of the team and and Chandler the other guy was my janitor
And we had him in a video because someone backed out or something.
So we were like, fuck it, you're here, just go in.
And then he said one line, like, it was a challenge where they couldn't leave a circle.
Or last to leave a circle wins $10,000.
And he asked at one point, he's like, can I throw my poop at the other contestants to get them out?
I was like, no.
But people thought that was the funniest thing ever, that he would think about throwing his poop.
And everyone's like, we want the poop guy back.
And so my janitor ended up just, you know,
and then he also became really good friends with Chris as well in that video.
And so now my janitor is one of our people.
And so it's like we're all just friends.
And it's not like we're hand-selecting actors from L.A. or New York.
It's literally just like, you know,
just random guys from North Carolina that get along well.
Well, I think that's why it works because no one feels like an actor
and everyone feels
like just a regular person having fun.
I guarantee you they're all hanging out right now, just like doing some dumb shit like watching
anime or whatever.
Like that's, I know.
I'm very grateful.
And how we've gone this many years, this many videos and they don't hate each other and
they still are friends.
It's, I don't know.
I feel like I've gotten a little lucky there.
Is they legit hang out and do stuff all the time.
I think it's a little bit of trickle down from the top too because you're so generous and you're so friendly and you have such a good time and you do enjoy this sort of camaraderie.
All that kind of – it always is like whoever is like the head guy, it trickles down to everyone else in the environment.
It really does.
Like, you set the tone.
Yeah, I agree.
I'm grateful.
But it's like, again, I got a little lucky.
I didn't hand select or anything.
It's just like, oh, we're all friends.
And somehow here we are.
Now they all have millions of followers.
We're all still friends.
And they're not like divas or anything.
And it's been good.
Well, listen, man, it's awesome.
I'm happy for you.
I think it's cool as shit.
I think it's an amazing example for people.
And it's also for young people to realize that there is this path,
and it's not just a path of, like, moderate success.
It's a path of massive success, gigantic 224 million view videos, and it all is done by a regular guy.
Yeah.
You have to just – and what is it?
It's like if you don't find what you love, you're going to quit before you get to that point.
You genuinely have to find what you love.
If you get any takeaway – sorry, it's like a habit to look at the camera.
Go ahead.
Look at the camera.
You have to find what you love because if you find what you love and you obsess over day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year for a decade, you're going to achieve some form of success.
But if you don't truly love it, you're going to quit way before you get that compound growth and you really get ultra-levels of success.
So in my opinion, the easiest way to be successful is just find something you truly love.
Wise words from Mr. Beast.
Last question.
Why Mr. Beast?
Where did that name come from?
Oh, you know Xbox Live?
Yes.
Yeah.
When I was like 11, it was just like it randomized and it was like MrBeast6000.
And so my username used to be MrBeast6000 on Xbox and that's what I used on my YouTube channel.
And then when I was like 14 or 15, I was like, why the fuck is there a 6,000 in this?
But I was like, fuck.
I don't know if it was getting like 100 views a video, but I was like, fuck.
It's part of my brand.
100 views a video brand, whatever the fuck that is.
I don't know.
And I had like this, I removed the 6,000, then I put it back, and I just like, every
month I'd add it back and remove it, but then dropped to 6,000 and it was just Mr. Beast
wise words for Mr. Beast
ladies and gentlemen thank you
thank you for having me my pleasure it was a lot of fun
I really appreciate it and congratulations
now I don't have to keep listening to my fucking self
sorry about that
bye everybody Thank you.