Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Mr. Beast's Journey to 50M Subscribers, His Current Content Strategy, & Critiques of the MKBHD Channel

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

Mr. Beast is arguably one of the largest YouTube creators in recent digital history. He literally lives and breathes YouTube and YouTube content strategy. We were lucky enough to spend some time picking his brain about his love of YouTube, the creation of his massively complex videos, and even a few scholarly critiques of our MKBHD tech channel. Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganell https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com Music by KamrenB: https://spoti.fi/2WRJOFh Mr. Beast: https://bit.ly/2Kyn8H8 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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you can book your Uber ride in advance. 90 days in advance. Perfect for all you forward thinkers and planning gurus. Reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance. Uber Reserve. See Uber app for details. Hello, welcome back to Waveform. We're your hosts. I'm Marques. And I'm Andrew. And this podcast, the whole point of the podcast, if I just rewind all the way, zoom all the way out, is so we can talk about the stuff that we talk about in the studio anyway. Now, that happens to be tech all the time. Most of the time.

Yeah, we're into tech, and that makes a lot of sense. But we're also YouTubers, and we talk a lot about YouTube, and we talk a lot with fellow creators. So Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr. Beast, is someone you've probably already heard of if you're in the YouTube world already, but he's someone I've known for a little while. And for the maybe three people listening that don't know the Mr. Beast channel, how would you describe the MrBeast content? I was trying to think of like one word. And at first I thought extreme. That kind of feels like extreme sports, but just like all his videos are like to the extreme.

Yeah, extreme. It's a, I wrote down variety, but also he basically invented like the extreme challenges type of genre. Yeah, like, cause I don't want to want to just say it's like all philanthropy stuff because we all know him now as like giving stuff away all the time. But I think the first thing I remember him doing was like counting to 100,000 or spinning a fidget spinner for like 10 hours live on YouTube. Exactly.

I think that's the, I think maybe the best way to do it, I'll read some of his latest titles and what's happening. He, I survived 24 hours straight his latest titles and what's happening. I survived 24 hours straight in ice. 39 million views, by the way. I Ubered people and let them keep the car. 30 million views. Would you rather have a Lamborghini or this house?

45 million views. Last to leave this $800,000 island keeps it. 58 million views. I feel like this is like if there was a more fun version of the guinness book of world records and it was all on one channel and it was one person pretty much doing it's pretty incredible yeah so obviously he's he's a major face on youtube but like every time i talk to jimmy it's always fascinating like the way his brain works and like processing what makes good on youtube what makes good video what makes a click YouTube, what makes good video, what makes a clickable video, what makes a good strategy on YouTube. And it's kind of all he ever thinks about. And it's every time we talk, it's

like kind of all we could talk about all day long. I mean, and he has the credentials for it, too, because it's got to be the biggest channel on YouTube for like probably at least the past two years. I mean, when I was editing this, I realized that I'm not subscribed to him because I just thought I was subscribed to him because he is on my front page all of the time and I still watch all of the videos anyways. That's just how gigantic he is. How dare you? Yeah. No, sorry, Jimmy.

So we talked about that. We talked about YouTube strategy. We talked about building a team the way we are here at the studio. It was a fun conversation. I also asked him sort of about how he'd apply his own philosophy to other genres like tech on YouTube. So kind of the fun thing about these conversations with creators is no matter where you're at,

like if you're a creator who's just getting started making videos or if we're even thinking about starting making videos, or if you already have thousands or millions of subscribers, these conversations are always pretty useful in some way, and especially with someone like MrBeast. It was fun, figured I'd record it. It's a fun chat, so without any further ado,

here's MrBeast. All right, Jimmy, they call you MrBeast, but let me just give the full intro. So 51 million subscribers on the main channel, MrBeast. There's MrBeast2, MrBeastGaming, MrBeastShorts, MrBeastReacts, MrBro, and Beast Philanthropy, co-founder of Team Trees, which has gone over 20 million trees planted around the world and once ran a marathon in the world's largest shoes. Jimmy, MrBeast, thanks for chatting. Thank you for having me. I love how I joined the Zoom call literally 30

seconds ago. We're jumping right into it. I love how I joined a Zoom call literally 30 seconds ago. We're jumping right into it. I love the energy. Yeah, no, all the things he listed is true. And just, I don't know, I just, I love YouTube. I love making innovative content. And it's just kind of gotten to the point where my videos have gotten so expensive that I've had to build other channels or other companies to kind of fund my videos.

And yeah, just lots of fun stuff to talk about. So I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, 100%. I'm definitely going to talk about a lot of that stuff. First of all, you should definitely start a podcast talking about YouTube and just what happens behind the scenes. I'm sure a lot of people would listen to that, would watch that. I know we could talk about it forever.

But I guess if I just start with like your creator, you have, you mentioned innovative content. What is your like next year on YouTube look like? Okay. So I'll give a little brief overview just in case, you know, a lot of your audience doesn't watch me maybe. Basically videos that we did last year were like we bought a few hundred thousand dollar firework. We lit off the world's most expensive firework. As he mentioned, we walked a marathon in the world's largest pairs of shoes, which is one of the most brutal things I've ever done.

And I've counted to 100,000. I've done a lot of stupid things. But like my feet were out of commission for like a week after doing that because each shoe was like five and a half pounds. It was crazy. And so just kind of like out there, stuff like that. after doing that because each shoe was like five and a half pounds it was it was crazy um and so just kind of like out there stuff like that but we also do feel good stuff like going to a store and buying everything in the store and donating uh that stuff to a food pantry or homeless shelters

and um just i'm drawing a blank but there there is a lot of stuff like that as well so it's really all over the place and one of the things i'm trying to figure out is like how do i just i need to like to be able to describe what i do better because it's like right now it's just kind of like i wake up and i'm like you know that seems really cool i feel like people want to watch that let's just go do that as long as it's like you know good and helps people but i feel like um with elon you know how he's trying to make humans multi-planetary and you know what his goal is i feel like that's really cool and i want something like But anyways, I don't want to sidetrack too much. So for this coming up here, just just everything and anything like like I said at the start, we're we're trying to go bigger and bigger.

And, you know, there's only so much I can make on a brand dealer or selling merch on my main channel. So we recently started a gaming channel, which is now up to like 200 million views a month. And that's been going really well. And I have a few other channels i want to get up and running and uh yeah just my goal is just to build other channels other companies like we we launched a nationwide restaurant and that's been going really well and just have all these things uh just funnel money into my main channel so i can afford to just burn money and just focus on making the best videos possible and um yeah and then beast philanthropy is uh and there's so much like i honestly just talking about it now i'm like man like no wonder i'm always stressed out and overworked i got so much stuff going on um but do you have like a job description when if someone asks you like

if they somehow don't know and you have to explain what you do in like one sentence do you have like a yeah i would say we just try to do spectacle content i mean if i were to break it down to simplest form that that is essentially it because everything i'm doing points back to the main channel and uh i mean just one last thing in this brief synopsis that's all over the place i i have adhd you probably can already tell but i um you know i i went through that phase like a lot of people who come into money early on in their life and bought nice clothes, like expensive clothes and nice car and stuff like that. But I realized, like, obviously, that doesn't make you happy. I feel

like more and more people in the masses are starting to realize that. So with philanthropy and stuff like that, I've just been really enjoying just helping other people and giving away money and things like that, which is stuff I'd love to uh dive into because if you're listening to this and you think some materialistic object's gonna make you happy it won't you know you heard it here first or maybe second i i agree with you there's a lot of there's just so much stuff man i i almost i don't know where to start but you lead me because if you leave me on my own i'm just gonna veer everywhere you guide me okay okay here about let's just talk youtube for a bit so i know when i'm making a tech video

i'm so in the tech world of like how to make a good tech video um i make the video the video's finished and as i'm uploading it i am creating the title and thumbnail i imagine that's probably not how it goes at mrBeast Productions. You're going to trigger me if you keep talking like that. What is your, I imagine, how many, is it every video that you do title and thumbnail first? Oh yeah, 100%. Because at the end of the day, you know, if someone doesn't click a video, they don't watch it. You know what I mean? If your video has 10 million views, that means 100 million people saw it and 90 million people said yeah it's just not interesting enough i'm just not gonna watch it

you know what i mean like you easily could have got more views if the and it's not just the the title and thumbnail which and i can dive deep into it but if if the video was just more interesting in general uh because a lot of ctr that people don't account for is also like, what was the viewer's experience with the last video they watched? You know what I mean? Like if I clicked on one of your videos, because you obviously make good content and you put effort in, I'm going to be more likely to click your next video, no matter what it is, just because I enjoyed the previous one. So that has a lot to do with it as well. But yeah, I mean, why would you, the one thing that decides whether or not, you know, 10 million or 50 million of those 100 million people watch your video, why would you not, you know, plan on that beforehand and make that an integral part of the process?

I mean, I work on it. It's a solid part of the process, but I feel like knowing how big of an impact it has, it probably should be an even in your case you should literally make the title and thumbnail before you even film the first shot of the video and you should be like all right is this actually good do i like it because the thing is and and now i don't want some people that misconstrued this and think like oh well you don't do what's great videos you only do what's clickable but the thing is if you truly are creative and you have a plethora of ideas like hundreds or thousands like you brainstorm an hour a day you come up with a you have a plethora of ideas, like hundreds or thousands, like you brainstorm an hour a day, you come up with a dozen videos a day, you do that for a year, you know, you have unlimited ideas, then you have tons of options, right? But, you know,

if you just only do videos on a whim, and I know not you because you're more tied to tech and that dictates what you do, but just people in general, especially people more like me. One thing that would help is if you had more ideas, because if you only have three and none of them really make a good thumbnail or whatever, then you're going to be like, well, these are great content, da, da, da. But if you just have like hundreds of great ideas, then you have more options to choose from. You can choose the ones that are great content while also interesting, if that makes sense. Right. No, it does. If we stick to the click-through rate talk for a second, so we have, we're lucky enough to have a connection with YouTube and we get to actually talk to them about what YouTube does,

but I think a lot of their algorithm is still kind of a secret sauce. So we know some things are true and we know some other things that we kind of think are true. Do you have any unconfirmed theories about the YouTube algorithm, the way it works? Like you mentioned the performance of the previous video will directly affect the next video just based on the channel behavior,

the audience behavior on your channel. One I have is like, this almost doesn't matter, but I feel like I've never seen a channel with multiple videos that are both on trending for more than about four hours, because it seems like as one rises the other gets kicked off do you have any other random unconfirmed theories yeah well i mean your your theory makes sense because you know there's two videos sitting up there people would be like youtube's bias you know how much trending scrutinized um for me let's

see um because for the most part just so everyone knows on my view on the algorithm is i feel like it's actually pretty well optimized i mean if a video is clicked and watched which is literally all youtube could want um they typically do well i it's very rare that i see a video that actually like is interesting and like great content that doesn't blow up you know like sometimes it takes a few months or even like a year, but eventually they do get views, right? The algorithm is really great at matching the audience with the content they want. But no, not really.

There's nothing really weird like that. Like when we start a new channel, if we make a video that has good AVD and CTR, it just, you know, slowly does well over time. Just for those who don't know, that's average view duration and click-through rate. Just to fill everybody in. Do you ever have a video that, like, randomly gets, like, scooped back up by the algorithm without you changing anything about it?

Yes, 100%. And I'm not even going to act like a know-it-all. I have no idea why it happens, but, yeah, if we popped over my channel, you'll just see videos. Like, I had this one video six years ago uh i don't know i was a teenager i was stupid but i just uploaded a video titled like get this video to a million views and for like five years it had like no views getting like a view a day and then um one

someone posted it to reddit which was kind of funny and it got like 10 000 views from reddit whatever again nothing crazy. And then like two days later, it fell back down to like, you know, basically no views. And then out of nowhere, it just spiked up. And it was like 50,000 views a day, 200,000, half a million. So that was something I noticed not too long ago. It looks like the external traffic to the video

kind of got it like re-indexed. And the algorithm was like, oh, this video exists, and then it started promoting it. Yeah, it's weird how that works. There's a couple of old videos that actually do it repeatedly. One of my earliest videos, again, like you mentioned, you're a teenager and you made a dumb video.

Like two or three of my earliest videos ever, so it's like a squeaky 12-year-old kid. Yep. I know what you're talking about, because I get them. Every time those pop off, they're on my homepage. I don't know. I don't know why YouTube picked those but they are very persistent about those couple of videos, which is funny. Well, to help give a little context, I mean, when I see those on my homepage,

I click because it's like, you know, a smaller, younger version of you and it's just really intriguing. It's like, you know, how did that turn into what he is now like let me click let me watch this is interesting so it makes sense yeah that's interesting do you ever change anything about videos like significantly long after you've published them like I I never change well I won't say never I think of all my 1300 videos I've changed the title after I upload maybe four times. I almost never change the thumbnail. Or maybe I add some links to the description, add some tags, whatever stuff gets updated.

But do you ever, like, make major changes to a video after it's already sort of performed in the first couple days? Yeah, definitely. To anyone watching, if you're trying to be a YouTuber, you're in luck. I'm basically just telling you everything I've spent my entire life researching. And I do my best not to say things that I don't think are true, but obviously. So for changing thumbnails on older videos, yes. Basically, you should always be improving your thumbnail game. Just always.

And it's the same with you. If you watch a video a year ago, you probably were like, yeah, there's so many little things I could have done better. This could have been better paced, the music could have been better, whatever, better quality. For me, it's the same way with thumbnails. When I make them, I think they're amazing. There's nothing that could be better. And then six months later, as I learn new tricks, I'm like, what the heck is this?

There's shadows on my eyes, and this sucks, and the background could be brighter and cooler. So it's usually stuff like that where I just see my video and suggest, and I'm just like, what the hell was I thinking? Let me just fix that up. You know what I mean? Go in and upload a new thumbnail, stuff like that? Yeah, exactly. Or just sometimes I'm like, I just completely missed the mark. Because the thing is,

if you change a thumbnail on an old video, it doesn't matter if it's five years old. If the CTR goes up, like you said earlier, click-through rate, then YouTube will promote the video more. So 100%, I've done it multiple times with other people and I've seen it happen a bunch where like, people go through and they change all their titles and thumbnails to just be more interesting,

not to be misleading. And their back catalog passively got way more views per day just because they changed it. That's a good little pro tip. Go back through your catalog and actually give it some thought about how they could be better and improve those numbers. Here's a super pro tip if you really want to optimize it. You grab like three, four, whatever of the smartest people, you know, right. You know, obviously if you have 10,000 subscribers, you're not going to be able to, you know, get one of us, but just like that, you know, personally go reach out to other YouTubers around your size and then have like a weekly mastermind where that's what you do.

And like the first week have all four of you like go through and just rip apart all your titles and thumbnails. And then the next week do it for one of them and the next week one of them because like it is helpful to get other people's opinions on things like this that could just be there's just so many unlimited possibilities for things you could do and titles and thumbnails and like some people just have different experiences and they've done different things and they think about different things so getting their perspective you know they could be like oh put a helmet on that guy. And then you'd be like, oh yeah, if he had a helmet on, it would look cooler or whatever, you know? And so it's always good to

get other opinions. Yeah. I'll second that. We all have our own little communities, even inside of tech, there's people, we all talk to each other and we sort of, we don't necessarily have a brainstorming thumbnail session, but maybe we'll add that to the list of stuff we talk about. I'm going gonna ask a question that i don't even know if this is a mr beast question but we'll see i kind of feel like i already know the answer but you ever upload a video that's like within an hour you can just tell it's tanking right away yeah it's not performing the way you thought it would what would you do about it or what have you done about it uh well in the past i would i would ruin my day i

mean i'd be the saddest person on the planet especially like if we spent you know months working on the video and tons of money um but you know as i've matured and and um you know i'm 22 and so now that i'm a little bit older i think it's really you just gotta look at it objectively right is the title as good as it can be get 10 people's opinions is the thumbnail as good as it can be get 10 people's opinion you know youtube does have uh built an editor so you go is there anything i can cut out you know that will make the retention better to ask 10 people and then after that just move on you know what i mean like there's there's not much else you can do just those three things and then uh if there are things you messed up that

you can't fix write them down and just like put them on a wall put them somewhere like and next time you film a video remind yourself of it and just make sure you don't do it again. And, um, you know, it's really all you can do. Yeah. Do you, so the business section, the business behind a YouTube channel or a series of channels in your case is really interesting to me. Do you look at videos, let's say on the Mr. Beast channel, on like a per project basis? Like I need this video that we've been working on all month to get X views or it's not worth what we're putting into it? Or is it like a monthly basis? Or are you always subsidizing from other channels? Or is it all these things? Well, there's a lot to unpack there. But for the main channel, my goal is just

to make the best content possible. Like I don um necessarily look at a video that we're about to film and go like oh like if this doesn't get blank views or i might jokingly but at the end of the day it's just like i just want to make the best content that i think the most people want to see and i don't even care if it makes money i don't care if it's profitable i don't care how long it takes i just want to make the greatest videos possible because i know like that by having that mindset like people won't care how long it takes. I just want to make the greatest videos possible because I know that by having that mindset, people won't get bored of it. And if I'm losing money and I'm putting countless hours of my own time,

and I have a team also pouring tons of hours into these videos, and they're just so, and not just creating them, but then we're also pouring countless hours into just thinking of them, and we're probably spending more time editing our videos You know our team than any other youtuber I mean because some of these shoots we have like 10 cameras with

24 hours of footage across on each one that we have to shift through and if we're doing all these things that just Logically don't make sense. No one else will ever do that. No one else will ever put themselves through the hell That is creating a mr. Beast video. I mean, it's fun's fun but it's also you know a grind and a lot of work um then like there's just no doubt in my mind that you know well we won't fall off you know what i mean because you know why would you watch someone react to tiktoks for the 10th time when you can watch us you know a project we've been working on for months and poured a million dollars into yeah that's that's something i actually see as a similarity between our channels. There's not a ton of similarities, but the one thing that we've worked on for years in the tech space,

now that there's a billion tech channels, is we intentionally do a lot of things that we know are hard to replicate, whether it's in cinematography or depth of research or just making a great video. But that's part of the thought process is making something that's difficult to replicate. And I feel like no matter how far back you go on your channel, like you counting to 100,000 or just literally any of your ideas, you look at that and you're like, well, no one's ever going to do that. No one's ever going to get to that. How long does the average MrBeast video take to make now?

Oh, I mean, it depends. I mean, what even quant I mean, and it does, what even quantifies time, right? Each idea takes countless hours to brainstorm. And, you know, some of the harder ones, like the world's largest firework video, we didn't just launch the world's largest firework. We also launched a $40,000 firework and three $10,000 fireworks and like hundreds of other fireworks and even like a a thousand small ones and we had the world's largest um whatever the little sparkler mural in it and we also had like a thousand drone light shows it's like it's because so these videos are so much bigger than just like the main events in each video so i mean those take you know like a team of people months quite literally months i wanted

to film that firework video in 2018 and uh the firework company told us we had to give them a two-month advance. And we only had a month. And so we dropped the project. And then I revisited it in 2019. I'm like, all right, it's two months ahead of time. I want to make this happen. I want to light the world's largest firework. And we were working on it, working on it.

And after a month of working on it, it was just too much. So we had to end up dropping it. And so I'm like, 2020, after three years of wanting to do the world's largest firework on July 4th, I was like, screw it. Like we're going to just start working on this like four months in advance. And we just threw the budget out the window. We were just like, I don't care. I just, I'm tired of waiting.

If I have to go another year, I'm just going to jump off a bridge. Like just make it happen. And I mean, it's like videos like like those an unfathomable amount of time and effort and like that even though it looks like we filmed that on one night because there's so many fireworks that that was three nights of 12 hours of filming to get them all launched because there were so many so like we would start filming like monday night like from 6 p.m to 6 a.m sleep during the day tuesday night from 6 p.m to 6 a.m and so everything and then you go to editing and i mean we're working on editing videos with a team of editors for a week plus and i mean those

are brutal and then the thumbnail titles so these like especially the bigger ones i mean i i can't even put into words how much time they take and and money but there are some smaller ones like when we do hide and seek hypothetically last one last one found wins a hundred grand. Like those aren't as crazy. You just got to secure a location and, you know, set up cameras and stuff. And so those types of videos, you know, we can pull off in like two weeks as opposed to months. And so it's good to have some of those mixed in. So my team isn't having to go 100% like all the time.

But yeah, basically a lot of time. Yeah. Yeah. You just mentioned like you know 10 cameras 24 hours of footage i'm just thinking like all right that edit by itself is going to take me a couple days and like just to watch the footage yeah just to watch over everything and like pick the good spots uh which is why we have editors that work with our lead editors that just comb through footage like there are people whose job is to just watch absurd hours of footage of ours and just grab

the good parts just so then our real editors can start actually assembling it. All right. That's a great segue into building a team around you that can help you do the stuff that you want to do. I'm kind of in the midst of maybe the biggest expansion of the team we've ever had which is a lot of fun, really exciting you get a little nervous about like is it going to work but I feel like we have such great people that there's no way it doesn't work

but as you build this team because I feel like most people don't know how big your team is and like what all these people are doing how do you think about that? like how do you build a team? how did you start building this team? what's your hiring philosophy? I copied your Google Docs strategy, but how do you think of this? I'll just go all the way to the start. I started when I was 13, and from 13 to whatever,

I think 18, 19, it was all just me. Filmed, edited, ideas, all that stuff you 100% me just you know but there came a point where the videos I was doing by myself were getting so hard and so difficult that I was going from like uploading two times a week to like two times a month to once a month and I was like crap man like at this rate I'm gonna upload once a year and that's where you know 19 year old me was like I just can't keep doing this like I gotta figure out something either videos got to get easier i need more help so then um you know one of my best friends from my whole life is chris and then uh two other of my friends i just called them i was like guys like i want to keep doing bigger videos but like i can't on my own i'm overworked like can you guys just quit your jobs and come help me i swear like we'll figure it out and so that's how it started just three of my friends they had no idea what they were doing i had no idea what i was

doing they they had no no knowledge of youtube and they're just like yeah whatever we'll just do it and so we started like that and then uh yeah i was just bringing on like a person a month and scaling up and you know i would be like yeah definitely like you know five six people that's plenty and then you know as time goes on my natural yeah, definitely like, you know, five, six people, that's plenty. And then, you know, as time goes on, my natural ambition kicks in, I want to do bigger videos. I'm like, well, crap, now the uploads are going down because the videos are getting bigger. And so we just keep bringing on people because it's just not physically possible to do what we do without a big team, especially at this point. And so, yeah, now we have a few dozen people and

yeah, it's definitely not easy. One thing is there's not many, well, now we have a few dozen people and, um, yeah, it's, it's definitely not easy. One thing is there's, there's not many, well, at least in my case, I feel like for, for people like you who have videos that might, um, people from other industries might have a little bit more experience with that. It might be easier, but for, for us, like no one really has experience, like, you know, whatever, figuring out how to, I hate to keep referencing the rocket one, or I guess a better one would be how to make the world's largest shoes. Like, how do you do that? You know what I mean? I'm actually going to pull up my channel so I can stop referencing that one video over and over again. But so yeah, it's been a lot of homegrown

training. And yeah, like our newest video is buying everything in five stores, like, or putting a million Christmas lights on a house. How do you even get a million Christmas lights right so it's it was a lot of people that I personally just had to just train up myself like I said you you can't just find someone that just knows how to do those things like it's like hey you just quit your job come here I swear to god I'm gonna teach you everything I know I'm gonna just pour all my knowledge into you and and in six months you should be semi good at buying a million Christmas lights and doing the weird things that I do. And so it's been a lot of that because like people who come from other production companies or other parts, they just, a lot of times they

just don't get it. You know what I mean? They're like, why are you doing this? This doesn't make sense. It's not even profitable. I'm like, exactly. Now let's do it. You know? That's not, there's no like, you can't put like something on your resume that will be like well understood that you would know how to edit a Mr. Beast video or like do the things that you guys do. It's like not, it's unprecedented basically is what it comes down to.

Exactly, so it's a lot of just finding people that are coachable, hardworking, and just really just want it, you know, because we also work pretty crazy hours. But yeah, and then, you know, because we also work pretty crazy hours, but yeah. And then, you know, the ones that really grind that I try to do my best just to reward them well. And, and yeah, that's one of the things I'm most excited about as we do grow and in the

future, really just rewarding the people that helped me get where I am. So you say a few dozen people, which is like, that's a lot of people. Yeah. Do you, do you find is part of your job like being a manager slash boss kind of thing do you found like that's taking a lot of your time it's everything there's so much and i honestly just to anyone listening like i i wouldn't advise you try to go down the path i'm going it's a lot unless you are just so head over heels on YouTube that you just can't envision a world where you're not And you just don't have this on never-ending desire just to make the best videos possible like yes. It's a lot

I mean it's so stressful to build a company and build other channels and spend all this money and Taxes and and just you know like it's just just doing one of my videos it's just a large nightmare and of my videos is just a large nightmare and then trying to do them consistently. But, frick, my ADHD kicked in. What was the original question again? No, that's basically it.

It's like you spend a lot of time being the boss. You told me Steve Jobs is one of your sort of idols and I feel like that comes into play here. Yes, exactly. No, and that's the thing, right? I am hyper passionate about YouTube and creating content. And for the longest time I, uh, I was like, yeah, you know, I'll just bring someone in and they'll manage my company or whatever, but that, that never ends up working.

So yeah, if, if you want to get to the skill, you have to just learn how to be a good CEO, learn how to inspire people, lead them, you know, um, I mean, just everything, how to disseminate information, um, how to train people up, all that stuff. That, just everything, how to disseminate information, how to train people up, all that stuff. That's just like, it's a whole new world to me, because it's my first real business that I've ever ran. That does, it takes up an unfathomable amount of my time. It's just learning how to be a good leader. But yeah, that's obviously what's it's more if you have hypothetically 20 people, you know, you can get more done by being able to just effectively communicate with them and give them proper vision and putting those 20 people

to work than you ever could by them just running around like chickens with their head cut off and you just working hard. You know what I mean? So it's obviously something you got to have in your skill set. Definitely. It's something I'm trying to add to my own. So I love that. I love that your master plan is so, so open.

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So you can download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com slash waveform. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. Let's talk tech. What if you were running a tech channel? What would a Mr. Beast, I think you asked something like this on Twitter,

but what would the Mr. Beast tech channel look like? Would you still, I assume, focus straight to how to make the best, most clickable tech entertainment, or would you go another route? Yes, and I like to say best, most interesting or innovative just because clickable gives people bad connotations. You can make something clickable and it still be good content just because something's interesting. Not you, just in general to people watching doesn't mean it's bad.

But there's, you know, a lot of people who try to cheat the system, which gives, I guess, clickbait a bad name. But yeah, 100%, no matter what vertical it is uh always always always always i would um i would spend at least an hour a day brainstorming video ideas i don't as much anymore just as a disclosure uh just because i'm sitting on a ton of ideas uh and i did it for years but to anyone else like i would 100 every single day spend an hour brainstorming an idea ideas because an idea makes a difference between a million views and 50 million views i'd rather just film one great

video than 50 subpar videos you can quote me on that and then um so i would just brainstorm great ideas i'd try my best to be original and innovative because then if people only know they can only find your type of content there then they're more likely to come to you which obviously is harder with tech because everyone's going to be doing similar videos but still i don't care i would if if that's the bottleneck i'll spend five days or five hours a day brainstorming how to make the videos different and original just so they stand out and then um yeah i would just make sure i'm always working 10 times more than everyone else reinvesting every dollar i make and just going hard and and just putting in as much effort as possible. And that just doesn't apply to tech, just literally anything. And if you're doing that,

there's just no way people don't recognize it and don't prefer to watch you over someone else putting in a tenth the time, a tenth the effort, a tenth the money, a tenth the everything, you know? Yeah, I can vouch for that. You know what's kind of funny, though, about tech on YouTube is like the half of the audience is there like a regular channel like the Mr. Beast channel and maybe I'm guessing your numbers but I feel like a lot of people watch right away because they're subscribed and then the tail the long tail is probably a little bit less with search you obviously have a long tail of people watching your videos but people aren't usually searching running a mile in a marathon or in the largest shoes or something like that with tech, with tech,

it's like people are like searching for things to buy it and you have to show up for those people who are looking to buy something and then deliver the best video. So it's, it's half for those people, half for the subscribers. Uh, do you, is there any sort of balancing act in your world where there's like, you separate your audience into buckets, maybe there's a hyper passionate people who watch in the first day. And then there's like, you separate your audience into buckets, maybe there's the hyper-passionate people who watch in the first day, and then there's like the people who sort of browse the homepage and find a MrBeast video

for the first time. Yeah, no, I mean, and what you brought up there is pretty thought-provoking. Basically, a lot of people do go to your videos not for a spectacle, but rather just to know if they should buy the freaking product, right? So it's not as apples to apples with mine, which is true. I do have a bad habit sometimes of speaking in absolutes

because in tech, your content would definitely, you know, if you apply everything I said, it might be to the detriment of some things that your viewers like. But still, even though people might be coming to see if they want to buy the product or searching for the product or whatever, like you mentioned, it doesn't necessarily have to be like, I bought a thousand iPhones and made a collage of a tree or something like that. You could still go, not you, just in general, someone could still go extreme and just in that video where they like,

you know, did funny things like, you know, sat on the iPhone for 24 hours straight or, or just random dumb little extra mile things that, that, you know, make it seem more like a spectacle. But that is a good point. You got to focus more on the product and less on the spectacle for the people who are watching to see if they should buy it. Definitely. I think there's a lot of extra mile things you can kind of toss in that like any audience would appreciate for sure. Exactly. And that's what I want to touch on.

The extra mile stuff, right? I'm not telling people listening to this to go buy everything in five stores or do the dumb stuff I'm doing. Just telling you, put in effort, put as much effort in as you can. So swear to God that viewers can tell the difference and like it really will pay off in the long run. Facts. All right.

Does anything surprise you about YouTube analytics anymore? Because I feel like once you spend a decade in it, you feel like you've seen it all. You've seen every trend. You've seen the way the algorithm sort of has eventually started sorting things into what makes a good video to recommend.

Does anything surprise you anymore? No, I'm, I love data. And I love analytics. But to be honest, like the last year, especially, I rarely look at it. I mean, I just, you know, after I upload a video, like the retention graph, I'm like, yeah, it's flat. It's good. Oh, there's a dip there. What did we do? Okay. And I text, you know, the boys, I'm like, hey, make sure we don't have a running joke a little too long, or I'll text my editor but outside of that i mean it's just it's straightforward you know it's just make videos that people click and that they watch and and i people get pissed off when i say that they're like beast it's not that simple i'm like i swear it is if people click your video and they watch longer than other videos you're gonna get promoted it really is

just make videos people would want to watch man that's like the that's that was my like guiding light core philosophy from the beginning and i still like anytime i get asked like what advice would you give i'm like listen if you never make a dollar from this but you have fun make what you'd want to watch make it exist in the world that's kind of the the motto at this point exactly i mean and and that's the thing like i don't this point exactly i mean and and that's the thing like i don't want to just you know give hustle porn to the people listening like at the end of the day if you're not having fun then you're not gonna you know do it long term and like that

is the first and foremost thing because just like both of us it took us many many many years of just grinding away before we made any form of money and we got any form of success. And if we weren't genuinely enjoying it, we would have quit long before we did. Yeah. All right, so one last question I gotta ask. Oh, only one more? I'm having fun. I am.

I mean, I don't wanna take too much of your time, but this is a tech podcast, so I gotta ask a tech question. Okay. It's mandatory. Let me hear your favorite piece of tech from the past year and what phone's in your pocket right now okay uh well let's start off with the phone i just i have the iphone it's there's two cameras with the light to the right what what is that i don't

even know here we go i think it's the 10 that sounds like the 10s okay so 10s um yeah i mean it's it's cool honestly i'm just too lazy to move stuff over but i i definitely want to try out the newer iphones i actually i've never owned an android i was i was really thinking of buying one and just giving it a try um oh interesting yeah it's just i should i recommend uh would you like a recommendation uh yes i'm not no guarantees i'll switch but if i have a free day, I might take you up on it. What would you recommend I buy? Sure.

I mean, okay, right now, by the time this podcast comes out, Galaxy S21's gonna come out, and that's just a huge phone with every imaginable feature stuffed into it. So that's a fun one to consider. But if you're looking for just something different, I'll shout out the folding phones right now. Oh, God. Like Galaxy Fold 2 fold i'll pass on that no thank you i know it's like you don't want to make it the daily driver but i if you just want like a random fun gadget i i'm a big fan of those okay um that'd be fun to pull out in front

of the boys like everyone would always like freak out about it yeah that that's cool and and um i watched your video on the Porsche. It's Taycan, right? Taycan, yeah. Yeah, Taycan. I don't want to buy it. I don't believe in having it. Or not don't believe, but I just don't want to have really nice cars.

But I am thinking about trying to rent it for a few days and taking it for a ride. Because you said if it wasn't for the charging stations that Tesla has, you would prefer the Porsche over it, right? Or it would be basically the same? Yeah, and it's funny. I just had an interview with someone who did a cross-country run in two days straight of driving in a Taycan across the country and had a better experience than he did in a Tesla,

which was a really fascinating conversation. They're building that charging network very fast. So I don't think it's not problematic as much as it once was, but it's an awesome car. Well, and so that's something that I'm looking forward to just because I really love Elon. And I've read his biography multiple times, and he means a lot to me. So I am curious how that shapes up against the Tesla. So I'm trying to rent them both and rotate between driving them because I just want to see how close this competition is to them.

And I know in self-driving and stuff, Tesla's obviously winning, but still, that just came out of nowhere. I just saw your video and I was like, what is this? I didn't even know that was a thing. Yeah, if you could collab with Elon or if you could collaborate with anyone that you haven't collaborated with yet,

which I imagine you could probably collab with just about anyone anyone who would it be well i mean it would definitely be elon i mean the two people i look up to the most are elon and steve jobs and obviously steve isn't here but yeah it's just i would feel bad about wasting elon's time you know i mean like i feel like at this point i could get his attention if i want him but i'm just like i'm just, the dude's trying to save humanity. I'm going to let him do his thing. Yo, you actually did a video with him.

Tell me about that. Now, let me interview you. See, okay, I think he'd be down because, listen, I interviewed him. It was a couple years ago now, and this was at his all-time busiest where you saw those stories about how he was literally sleeping in the factory during the Model 3 production ramp. But as far as wasting his time, he was super down to just nerd out about the stuff in the factory during the Model 3 production ramp. But as far as wasting his time, he was super down to just nerd out about the stuff in the factory and all the gadgets and the robots making the cars.

And literally off-camera, before we even fired the cameras up and talked, it was like we were nerding out about the cameras and the stabilizers and the stuff we were about to shoot with. Really? I feel like if you could come up with, I'd be so curious what a Mr. Beast collab with Elon would look like because it could be kind of anything. But I feel like it wouldn't feel like if you could come up with, I'd be so curious what like a Mr. Beast collab with Elon would look like, because it could be kind of anything, but I feel like it wouldn't feel like a waste of time.

It would feel like a lot of fun. And he's kind of out of that whole production ramp thing. I don't know if you heard about how great Tesla's doing right now. So I think it would be pretty sweet. So you're saying I should dump all my savings on Tesla stock? Well, that might be a little late.

Kidding. Yeah, no, I think in Mr. Beast, Elon collab is very much in the cards. When's this podcast going up? What date? Probably a week from tomorrow. Okay, a week from tomorrow. So, because on January 23rd,

we have something big coming out. I might have told you, we can't talk about it now until then, but yeah, so something like that. I'm curious to see what he thinks of it. To anyone listening, I'm sorry for blue-balling you. But you know, one last thing, now that I got my Elon fix from you.

You've been to Apple Park, right? Yeah, a couple times. Yeah, so, well, actually, I don't know if you're allowed to talk about it or anything. I was just curious what that building looks like,, obviously, I'm just really fascinated by that. And, you know, that was something Steve Jobs spent some of the last few years of his life working on. So it seems really cool. Oh, yeah.

It is kind of, I think, unreal is the word. It's very picturesque. Like, you know it's a circle, right? But if you stand, like, right next to the side of, like, one of the outside walls and look, it looks like a straight line. Like, that's how big the circle is. Oh, my gosh. So this is a gigantic, like, spaceship-shaped saucer of a building. Glass from top to bottom.

Like, everyone in there is obviously super talented, but they managed to make it look even better than that in all their videos and their events. We rave about this stuff all the time. But also, yeah, it's just very like, they don't let you go in and talk to people working, but everything we see as press going to the theater and going to the gym and the studio and the food court is incredible.

It's a one-of-a-kind building. It's pretty awesome. I'm jealous. I really, really want to just – I don't even want to go inside. I just want to walk around it. I just feel like that would be a really dope experience. Yeah. I think that would be – next iPhone event, I'll tell them I need to bring an extra camcorder

camera person, and I'll let you come, to bring an extra camcorder camera person, and I'll let you come, and then you can walk around and see what you can see. I'm literally down. I will fly there, be your cameraman, just so I can break away and just walk around the building and see stuff. That would be really cool. They probably have amazing security, but we'll see how long it can go. I'm having fun. I mean, let's keep going, though.

I know you're winding down. I'm going to reject it. What else do you want to talk about? All right. So you talked about, I think you tweeted this, about if you could buy stock in a YouTube channel in some way, like if you could invent some mechanism of investing in a channel that you know is going to blow up. One, what would you look for in a channel that is a telltale sign that they're going to blow up? And two, what's

a channel you might invest in right now? Okay. All right. So at the start, I would say a channel that is going to blow up. A good sign is that they are being creative and they are making good content because it's a lot easier. And I know so many people that fit this mold to teach someone who knows how to make great content and has good pacing good storytelling good ideas good energy good just all around vibes right how to make a good title and thumbnail that it is to teach which i know tons of people like this people who make good titles and thumbnails but just don't know a single thing about making an entertaining video like everything's just so off like it's so much harder to teach them filmmaking than it is to teach a filmmaker

how to just hire a guy to make a thumbnail for him. You know what I mean? Right. So that would definitely be a good sign because even though like they're both polar opposite problems, both people, like someone great with titles and thumbnails would probably get the same amount of views with someone who makes great content,

but has, you know, terrible talents and thumbnails because views go up exponentially and the higher, better you are both the more views you get anyways so yeah i would definitely pick someone who's just naturally gifted at filmmaking and then someone currently small that uh i would invest in um there was this one guy that uh he drove they're not drove he biked. I don't even want to say because I don't want to encourage people. Don't do this. No one tried to give me anything.

I knew he was coming. I didn't know he was coming, but he messaged me, so it didn't catch me off guard. But he biked across America and gave me a penny. And he had really good energy. I think it's Tucker. I don't remember his last name. But if you search biking across

america and give him a piece of penny like i think he'll be really big actually the video he did with me again he was averaging like 10 000 views a video but when he gave me a penny it got like 4 million views so that that did really well for him um who else is there i mean like there's this one channel called tyler olivera mean, he's technically not super small. I think he has, like, 1.5 million subscribers. But I think he's going to be a really big YouTuber one day. He just, he kind of gets things and he's down to grind. But I think he's just, like, lost and trying to figure out what his actual, like, content is.

Like, for example, I met Dream when Dream didn't even have 2 million subscribers, right? You met the in-person Dream. Well, I didn't meet him in person, but, yeah, I talked to him online. And I just, after talking to him for, like, 30 minutes, literally the first thing I did when I got off the phone is I called one of my friends that I love talking about data and YouTube with, and I just said, Dream's going to blow up. I was like, this Dream guy, like, it's one of the few times I have talked to a YouTuber

and, like, I just don't feel bored like he really gets it he understands things like i was like i swear to god he's gonna blow up and uh he's like okay i was like and then i i started talking to dream you know pretty frequently just because i like to stay in touch with people who know what they're doing and sure enough he he ended the year with like 15 million subscribers which uh you know like i said two million still a decent amount but um you can just tell when you talk to people by their their passion and drive like um if they're gonna do well but yeah yeah cut me off whenever because i'll go i'll go for the next hour on about no i love that yeah all right here here's a here's maybe the the biggest question i'm just gonna use your time for free because you're giving me so much good stuff.

Critique my channel. Oh, really? If you, when you look at the MKBHD YouTube channel, I know I already told you my thumbnails happen in the last like half hour of the process, but what do you, do you like look at it and go, man, Marques just doesn't do enough this. Or MKBHD channel could really benefit from

a second channel or some random thing. What do you see when you first glance at a channel like that? Okay, okay. So we'll just take your newest video. What happened to OnePlus? I mean, what is that black arrow pointing to? So there's the one phone on one side, which is their 10-year-old first phone ever, and then there's all their new phones on the right side.

I had no idea. So, you go. I have no idea what any of that is. So I mean, sure, to your core audience that, you know, they'll understand it and they'll click. But if you're just trying to grab people who aren't into tech like me, like I literally just see a white phone and an arrow to other phones that look identical to me so i don't it doesn't make me want to click um got it 2021 tech i'm ready for that one's interesting i like the cyber truck um i probably would have made the cyber truck bigger um because like i would click that just because i'm like what the fuck you know the cyber truck's coming out this year that's interesting um but then everything on the left just looks the same like see that orange and purple thing on the left yeah I can't even tell what that is yeah it's like a it's one of those weird rollable phones and then the other thing is

also it's the iPhone yeah I don't know yeah I mean the the Cybertruck's cool but just everything on the left it just again and this is the thing right and i nitpick the heck out of my thumbnails too it's like what you have there is good and and obviously that's why you get the views you you get but there's like no matter what there's always something that can be improved there's always something that and um could be better you know what i mean there's there's literally no such thing as a perfect thumbnail um so that's why like anyone listening like this isn't me saying like what he's doing. It's dumb. It's just like making a 1% change every week makes you 50% better at the end of the year. You know, that's a great way of looking at it. You know what I also have,

I have a, this giveaway video, I'm giving away 24 PS fives and 24 Xbox series X. I made what I think is an awesome thumbnail. And I have another YouTube analytics unconfirmed theory that because the video's instructing you to click a link that leaves YouTube, basically you go enter on Twitter, I think YouTube low-key doesn't like that very much. And when they see a video sending a bunch of traffic away from YouTube, they probably end up suppressing a little bit and keeping the videos that, you know, bounce you around within YouTube a little bit higher up. Does that hold any water? Well, so two things.

Obviously, videos that have high AVD and AVP, average view duration, average view percentage, get promoted more. So videos where you drive people off the site, right, it's little bit of um causation correlation and all these things that get blurred like you know you are just technically just killing the video's retention so of course it's just naturally going to do worse because people didn't watch it as long right um and then but yes you are 100 correct i i am fairly certain too like that they have session time from the time you start you watching videos on youtube to when you stop that's your session and and obviously part of what they factor in is like you know does this video lead to a longer session time or does this video just killing their session time right because like they're not going to funnel 10 million views to a video that you know

90 of people watch to get pushed off platform you know what i mean um right but also google has infinite data and knows everything and so at this point i wouldn't be surprised if they're just like oh well did they leave for five minutes and come back or did they leave and not come back to the next day and they probably factor stuff like that in but yeah there's there's let me put it this way right because i have people ask me this all the time there is no benefit that comes to the views on your video from driving people off the platform. That is just a factual statement.

There's no way driving people off it helps. So which means it can only hurt, you know what I mean? Right, that makes sense. I have all kinds of weird random theories like that, but I feel like that one is pretty fundamental. Yeah, it is. Yeah. All right, I need to go spend the next three hours

on my next video's thumbnail which is going to be the Galaxy S21 impressions I'm going to go spend at least yeah a couple hours on the thumbnail and title and make sure it's exactly what I would click and uh we'll see how it does I like it I'm excited and the thing is don't don't make too drastic of a change because clearly I mean how many views are you on this month you're i mean like you're you're killing it like people people love you people love your kind of there's a reason why you get views again anyone listening like don't just try to fix things overnight like just try to do small incremental changes and just always be improving and um yeah in a year you'll be happy you do. Yeah, if you get 1% better.

What would you say? 1% better every week. Every week. I hate when people go, if you just get 1% better every day, it's not realistic. But 1% every week in a year, you'll be 50% better.

Do it for five years and you're unstoppable. Printing that out, man. Jimmy, thanks for the time. No problem. I gotta kick you out. I'm kicking you off the waveform podcast. No, okay. Well, I had fun genuinely

like I love talking about YouTube and and um yeah since this was all about YouTube this is probably some of the most fun I've ever had doing a podcast so I appreciate you having me for sure we'll have to do it again sometime this is gonna be a video podcast sometime this year so we'll get you back on awesome awesome thank you all right, man. Do I leave? This is an ad from BetterHelp. This holiday season, do something for a special person in your life. You. Give yourself the gift of better mental health. BetterHelp Online Therapy connects you with a qualified therapist via phone, video, or live chat. It's convenient and affordable and can be done from the comfort of your own home. Having someone to talk to

is truly a gift, especially during the holidays. Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more and save 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. All right, so that is, that's been it.

That's the interview. We probably could have talked for way longer about YouTube. You wanted to, it sounded like. You could hear it in his voice, but we had to cut it. Listen, I think we should talk to more creators on the podcast. I know it's always a fun conversation. And the thing you notice when talking to people who aren't in tech YouTube is sometimes you feel like, oh, we're in kind of a little bubble here. Like there's a whole world of other things happening on this very platform.

I think on other platforms too. We've mentioned it before, but we would love to get a full-time streamer. Yeah. Twitch streamer. We got to talk to you. We got to talk to all kinds of creators in all these different genres, but that was a fun way to start. Thanks Jimmy for the time. We'll probably do it again sometime. And thanks for listening. Waveform was brought to you in part with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by Cameron Barlow.