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The following is a conversation with Mr. Beast, the mastermind behind some of the most epic and popular videos ever made.
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And now, a quick few-second mention of each sponsor.
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Check them out in the description.
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It s the best way to support this podcast.
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We got House of Macadamias for a satiating and delicious snack, 8sleep for, you guessed it, naps, and BetterHelp for mental health.
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Choose wisely, my friends.
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snacks, naps, or mental health.
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And now onto the full ad reads.
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As always, no ads in the middle.
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I try to make this interesting, but if you skip them, please still check out our sponsors.
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I enjoy their stuff, maybe you will too.
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This show is brought to you by House of Macadamias.
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It seems like it was just yesterday that they became a sponsor, and I became aware of their existence, because before they became a sponsor, they sent a giant box of delicious snacks.
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And it seems just like it was yesterday that I ate all of those snacks over a period of a few days and was a happier man for it.
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This month, I m much stricter on my diet and trying to be much more responsible with my consumption of snacks.
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I think moderation is key for that.
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But in general, I think, first of all, macadamia
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to me, I think, is one of the more delicious nuts, but it is definitely the healthiest, or at least one of the most healthy.
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I think it s pretty much the healthy.
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I remember when I first started keto, many, many years ago, I did a bunch of research on which nuts I can and can t have, I guess, if I wanna be ultra low carb, and everybody recommended macadamias as the one that has all these nutrients and all that kind of stuff.
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I m sure there s a lot of science.
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You can look it up.
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Omega-7s or whatever, those different kinds of fats.
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It doesn t matter, the points are delicious.
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And the raw ingredient of the macadamia nut that House of Macadamias provides is just delicious, and of course they do all kinds of snacks around that.
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And my task, whenever I do an ad read or talk to anybody, like my neighbors or friends about House of Macadamias, is not to do any sexual innuendo.
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That s job number one.
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My brain is that of a silly person.
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At heart, I m still a child, and I will forever remain a child.
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Like that Tom Waits song, I don t want to grow up.
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Maybe that s not even the name of the song or the lyrics, but I m just gonna go with it.
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And this is a good chance to mention that Tom Waits is somebody that I ve dreamed of talking to on this podcast for a long time.
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He s a very difficult interview to get.
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He s dropped a few crumbs to me of hope, you know, saying like, yes, maybe one day.
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So I hold onto that hope like a hold onto the delicious house of macadamia nuts with childlike joy in my eyes.
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Go to HowSomeAcademias.com slash Lex to get 20% off your first order.
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This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep and its new Pod 3 mattress.
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There s been a few days over the past, let s say, three weeks where I ve been extremely stressed because of several things going on in my life.
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You know how life is.
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It s an up and down process.
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Both the ups and downs contribute to the beauty of the whole experience.
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Anyway, when things are kind of difficult, I sought escape in friends, in books, in moments of simple joy, in moments of peace.
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And I think the best escape is a good nap.
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A full night s sleep, of course, but also a good nap.
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It s kind of magical how much your mind can just become completely refreshed
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the beauty of the world can be richly rediscovered through the process of a nap.
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It s incredible.
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Just 20, 30 minutes, it s kind of amazing.
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At least my brain is like that.
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So sometimes when I m feeling crappy, I ll just give it a nap.
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I ll give it a good night s sleep and see how I feel again in the morning.
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And almost always, if not right away, just maybe a couple of times, I ll feel better.
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Anyway, that s why you wanna really make sure that the surface, the mattress, all kinds of technology that you surround yourself with in terms of sleep, you use the best stuff.
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And that s why I look forward to sleeping on that cool surface that an Eight Sleep cover provides.
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It s just incredible.
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I look forward to naps and sleeps just because of that Eight Sleep cover.
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Check it out and get special savings when you go to eightsleep.com slash Lex.
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This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P, help.
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Speaking of the ups and downs of life, I think it s interesting, you know, the kind of roller coaster your mind can go on.
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At least my mind can go on.
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One moment I feel blissful and happy and everything is beautiful and one moment I feel cranky and just a little bit down.
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And one of the things I ve learned is to just kind of allow the passage of time to cure all things.
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But I think that s not necessarily the full picture because you should probably treat your mental health very seriously and talk through it with a therapist.
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You know, there s some deep
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ocean of feeling there that may lay unexplored.
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And it s, I think, beneficial to explore it with a good therapist.
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I think one of the most accessible, easiest ways to get access to a good therapist, a licensed professional therapist, is BetterHelp.
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That s why I m a big supporter of what they do.
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I mean, that s really the first barrier is
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make it super easy, and of course, make it affordable.
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And that s what BetterHelp does.
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Check them out at betterhelp.com slash Lex and save on your first month.
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This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here s Mr. Beast.
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I m here with Mr. Beast, the brilliant mastermind behind some of the most popular videos ever created.
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Do you think you ll ever make a video that gets one billion views?
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I think maybe one of the videos we ve already made might get a billion views.
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Which one do you think?
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Probably like the squid game video with enough time.
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I mean, it s only a year old and it s already on 300 million, or some of the newer ones we ve done have gotten like 100 million views in a month.
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So those four are projected over 10 years, because YouTube s not going anywhere.
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Probably one of those.
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So over time, they don t necessarily plateau.
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It s interesting.
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We re literally jumping right into it.
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I love it.
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It s good.
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So, I m a firm believer that it s much easier to hypothetically get 10 million views on one video than 100,000 on 100.
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And part of why it s much easier, in my opinion, is like, if you make a really good video, it s just so evergreen and it never dies.
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Because YouTube
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When you open up YouTube and look at the videos, they re just serving you whatever they think you ll like the best.
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And so if you just make a great video and it s constantly just above every other video, even two years down the road, then they ll just keep serving it and never stop, which is why it s much easier to make one great video than a bunch of mediocre ones.
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What about one billion subscribers?
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You ve passed PewDiePie as the most subscribed to YouTube channel.
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When do you think you get a billion?
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Let me do some math real quick.
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So we re on 120, so you think about this.
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No, I don t, honestly.
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Because one thing you ll find if you want to gain subscribers, if you want to get views, if you want to make money, almost any metric in this video creation space, if you want something, it all comes back to, okay, well then just make great videos.
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So instead of focusing on all these arbitrary vanity metrics, I just kind of focus on the one thing that gets me all that, which is make good videos.
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And I do think we will one day hit a billion subscribers.
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I don t have a plan on going anywhere.
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Even though we re only on 120 million right now on the main channel, I think like we re doing around 10 million a month now.
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And YouTube just, yeah, I just don t see it going anywhere.
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And I don t see any reason why I d ever get burnt out or quit.
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So I think with enough time, yes.
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I wanted to ask you those family-friendly questions before I go to the dark questions.
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We have dark questions, but if you wanted to hook them, you would start off with the dark questions.
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That s how you get them.
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Okay, well, let me ask you about a Twitter poll you posted, a $10,000 death poll.
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You tweeted, if someone offered you $10,000, but if you take it, a random person on earth dies,
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would you take the $10,000?
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And 45% of people said yes.
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That s, at least at the time I checked, 850,000 people committing murder for just $8.5 billion in total.
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So what do you learn about human nature from that?
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That s a good question.
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Honestly, it was like late at night when I threw that up too.
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I was just like, huh, this will be a funny thing.
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I assumed it d be 90% no and like 10% yes, but there are a lot of serious people.
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For you guys listening, I just did this random Twitter poll where I was like, would you take 10 grand if it meant someone random in the world died?
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And a lot of the replies on the tweet were like, hell yeah, why not?
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And I was just not expecting that.
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And so I don t really know.
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I mean, I feel like your take would be better than mine.
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Was it disturbing to you, surprising to you?
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A little bit, yeah.
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But obviously a lot of people were trolling, but when you read through those replies, I do think like 10% of them were dead serious.
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Well, I think sometimes the trolling and the lulls reveal a thing we re too embarrassed to admit about the darker aspects of our nature.
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So I don t know if you listen to Dan Carlin s Hardcore History Podcast.
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He has a episode on painful attainment.
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which he describes throughout history how humans have been really attracted to watching the suffering of others.
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So public executions, all that kind of stuff.
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And he believes that s in all of us.
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That, for example, if something like a YouTube or a different platform
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streamed a public execution or streamed the torture of another human being, a lot of people would say that s deeply unethical, but they would still tune in and watch.
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And that we re attracted to that drama, and especially the most extreme versions of that drama.
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And so I think part of the lulls
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reveal something that s actually true in that poll?
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That, like... Your answer is so much better than mine.
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Do you think about that, maybe even with the squid game?
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So I think, how many views does the squid game currently have?
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300 million?
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Something like this?
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Yeah, somewhere around that.
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Just imagine, thought experiment, how many views that video would get if it was real.
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Yeah, assuming YouTube was like, ah, we ll turn a blind eye, we won t take it down.
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Yeah, I mean, obviously, it d probably have billions of views.
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How do you think you ll die, and do you think it ll be during a video?
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Probably doing something dumb like going to space when I m older, like trying to go to Mars or something like that.
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I know for a fact it won t be on a video.
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Every video we do, we have safety experts and stuff like that, so it s not really risk, but yeah, I could see myself like, you know, after a million people go to Mars or something like that, I d probably be like, you know what, let s go, and something like that maybe.
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So not in the name of a video, just for the holiday.
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No, heck no.
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Are you open to taking risks when you shoot videos?
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You just went to Antarctica.
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I mean, you re putting yourself on the line a little bit, right?
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Of course, but we ve had that video in the works for three years.
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And then we consult with tons of experts, radar the entire path we re going to walk beforehand to see if there s crevasses.
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So we know there s no crevasses.
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We do training, we consult with experts, and we have survival guides there with us, and monitor the weather and everything.
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So it s like any variable where we could get harmed, we just pre-plan for it.
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Same thing with Buried Alive.
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David Blaine spent a week underground.
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And so I consulted with him and consulted with basically anyone who ever buried themselves alive.
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You know, the coffin we used to bury me, we did so many tests.
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Like that coffin was buried 10 times before I was, you know, for way longer than 50 hours.
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It tested the airflow and everything to the point where I was safer in that coffin underground than I was above ground.
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Like, so we just tend to just not leave anything up to chance, you know.
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Another strange question then.
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So you recorded these videos to yourself five years, 10 years from now.
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Have you recorded a video that s to be released once you die?
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Well, first off, I am just glad that not every one of your questions have to do with like views or things like that.
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It s nice getting different questions.
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So this is good.
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No, seriously.
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No, no, but it s fine because a lot of people just be like, how much money do you make?
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You know, it s just something I just, everything s always about money now for when people talk to me.
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So it s nice.
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But for the videos I ve made, for you guys who probably don t follow me too closely, when I had 8,000 subscribers and I was a teenager, I filmed a bunch of videos and scheduled them years in the future.
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And I said, I filmed one where I was like, hi, me in a year, and the video went up a year later.
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And it was just like, hey.
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I think you ll have 100,000 subscribers. 
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And then I did one where I was like, hire me in five years.
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I was like, hey, in five years, I think you ll have a million.
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And then one that hasn t come out yet, but comes out in two years, was hire me in 10 years.
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And I tried to predict 10 years later how many subs I d have.
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That s what he s referring to.
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And yes, there are some that are scheduled, like
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20 years in the future.
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And so, if I don t die, I ll just move them up.
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And I remember, because I filmed these though, like, seven years ago.
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But it was, I remember saying a line like, you know, if I m dead, then I m currently just in a coffin and like, whatever, blah, blah, blah.
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Because the only way the video would go up is if I m not alive.
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And if I m not alive, then I won t be able to push back the schedule upload date.
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So, it ll go public automatically.
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And so, yeah, I have a couple of those.
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Like, if I knew I was going to die of like,
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cancer or something.
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I had like three months to live.
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I would vlog every day.
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I d film so many videos.
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And then I would just schedule upload a video a week for like the next five years.
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So it s like I m still alive.
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And I would completely act like I m still alive and everything.
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And I think something like that would be cool.
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I don t know why, but I ve fantasized, not fantasized, but I ve dreamt about that a lot.
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Like, I don t know, if I only had 30 days to live, what would I do?
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And for me, I would try to make like a decade s worth of content and schedule upload it so they automatically go public in the future.
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And so it s just like I never died.
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I m just there.
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Yeah, it s a kind of immortality, but it s also a kind of troll on the concept of time.
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That you can die in the physical space, but persist in the digital space.
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I actually, I recorded a video like that, because I had some concerns, and I just thought it s also a good exercise to do.
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A video would like to be released if I die.
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And it was actually a really interesting exercise.
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It s cool.
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It shows what you really care about.
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I guess it s like writing a will.
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But when you re younger, you don t think about that kind of stuff.
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Exactly.
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Mine was just dumb.
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I got my bones in a coffin.
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Pierce is probably so serious.
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No, it s fun, actually.
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What you realize is there s no point to be serious at this point.
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It s a weird thing.
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I guess you ve done this, but it s a weird thing to address the world when you, the physical you, is no longer there.
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So you know this would only be released if you re no longer there.
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Exactly.
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That s a weird exercise.
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You know what s funny?
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Of all the people listening to this, we re probably the only two people that have made videos for when we die.
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It s such a niche thing, and the fact that we re bonding over it, it s kind of funny.
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I think people should think about doing that.
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It s not just about YouTube, it s also social media.
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Just think about it.
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Like, there s gonna be a last tweet, and a last, I don t know, Facebook post, and a last Instagram post.
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And yeah, I feel like there s some aspects that s meditative to just even considering making a post like that.
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And also, it s a way for the people that love you to kinda
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like celebrate.
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Do you think that would help them cope or not?
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Like if someone randomly watching this did film a video, you know, for if they accidentally died in some freak accident to be given to their family, do you think that would, and it was like a genuine, I think it would really help.
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I mean, it depends because like, how would you even intro that?
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Like, Hey mom, if you re seeing this, you know, it means I m probably dead.
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Yeah, exactly.
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That s how you intro it.
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That s the opener.
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I just want you to know.
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Yeah, I guess.
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Yeah, and I guess you could say it in a kind of funny way, and just talk about the things that mean a lot to you.
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Because otherwise, you re at the risk of the last post you have is like, I don t know, talking shit about McDonald s.
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McDonald s, screwing my order.
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Exactly.
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And then you re dead, that s it, 100 years.
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I don t know, I do recommend it.
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It s like the Stoics meditate on death every day in the same way you kind of meditate on your death.
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of death when you make a video like that.
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Because it s actually not just even talking to yourself, it s talking to the world.
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And for some reason, at least for me, they made it very concrete that there s going to be an end.
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And I m like, it s over for me.
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If I m making the video, it s over for me.
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It s an interesting thought experiment.
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I recommend people try it.
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Okay.
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Are you afraid of death, by the way?
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Yes.
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It s hard because
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Like, what if you just die and then you just see nothing forever, you know?
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It just fades to blackness and you re just like that for trillions upon trillions to billions squared years and it s just, it s scary.
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But also, before you re born, you don t remember those X amount of years either.
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That gives me a little comfort, but no, it s definitely very scary.
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Something I d rather not think about until I m like 80.
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I ll deal with that problem then.
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I don t know if I told you this, but I m kind of hopeful that someone like Elon or one of these like freak smart people would just like, be like, you know what, screw it.
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I m going to figure out a way where we can slow down aging, get it where, you know, we can live to be two, 300 years old and just like set their sights on that and then just kind of save us.
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So it d be really nice.
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Like it s almost,
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absurd to think that in our lifetime they won t figure out a way to just even slightly slow down aging, where we could live to be like 120 or 130, and then that extra time they won t figure out some way where we could live to be 200.
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Like, obviously not immortal, but I don t see how in my lifetime the life expectancy doesn t just expand.
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Well, it also could be that the immortality is achieved in the digital realm.
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It could be long after you re gone as a Mr. Beast run by a Chad GPT-type system.
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Exactly.
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Yeah, that consumes everything I ever said, everything I ever wrote.
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I don t want that.
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I don t wanna live.
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SPEAKER_00
One of you smart people out there, figure it out.
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SPEAKER_00
I ll keep you entertained, but I need you to figure out how to keep me alive.
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SPEAKER_00
Give me till 200.
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That will make me happy.
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Well, that s funny, who owns the identity of Mr. Beast once the physical body is gone?
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Is it illegal to create another Mr. Beast that s Chad GPT based?
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I don t know what the laws are around that.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, once I m dead, I don t care.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, you just said you did care.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there could be AI, like many Mr. Beasts that are created after you re gone.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, that d be cool to be able to train up a model and let him loose so my content lives on, I guess, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but it somehow feels like it diminishes the value you contribute.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s inauthentic, but it s also, there s some aspect to the finiteness of the art being necessary for its greatness.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the second that thing starts spamming out videos, the videos lose all meaning, and it s pointless, and it s a money grab.
1
SPEAKER_01
If you ran YouTube for, how long should you run it?
1
SPEAKER_01
For a year, how would you change it?
1
SPEAKER_01
How would you improve it?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s hard because, you know, obviously I m biased because we re doing really well, but I feel like when I open up YouTube on my television, I get the videos I want to watch.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t, I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t, I don t ever open it and wonder, like, what are these?
1
SPEAKER_00
What are these 10 videos on my homepage?
1
SPEAKER_00
When I click on a video, I don t ever wonder what these are.
1
SPEAKER_00
And maybe it s because I m very adamant about the kind of videos I watch.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I try not to watch videos that I don t want to get recommended more because that s how I think.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I m very happy with how it is at the moment.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think one thing, though, that I just hate with the passion is the comment section on YouTube.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just so bad.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I know that s not something that s going to 10x the growth of the platform.
1
SPEAKER_00
But if you think about it, you go to Reddit to read comments.
1
SPEAKER_00
And somehow, usually the top 20 posts on a popular Reddit post
1
SPEAKER_00
are not spam.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, have you ever clicked on something on the front page of Reddit and the most upvoted reply to it is like, go check out my site right here.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s like trying to scam you out of $1,000.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I can t even think of one instance I ve ever had that happen.
1
SPEAKER_00
So, like Reddit, it s so nice to click on posts and just see what people have to say.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I almost wish like, you had that same feeling when you read the comments on a YouTube video.
1
SPEAKER_00
Instead, it s like,
1
SPEAKER_00
It s so many people just copy and pasting so many bots that just grab the top comment for your previous video and paste it over.
1
SPEAKER_00
So the top comments on every videos are the same.
1
SPEAKER_00
And the things that break through that are just scammers trying to get you to give them $1,000 for a free, you know, fake ad.
1
SPEAKER_01
That comment section is one of the most lively on the internet.
1
SPEAKER_01
And so it d be amazing if YouTube invested in creating an actual community, like where people could do high effort comments and be rewarded for it, like on Reddit.
1
SPEAKER_01
Like actually write out a long thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
That would make me so happy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because when I upload a video, I usually go to Twitter to see feedback.
1
SPEAKER_00
I read my comments and I ll flip through newest, but it s just, I feel like,
1
SPEAKER_00
Reddit and Twitter just give me so much better filtered feedback, especially now that with Twitter Blue, because people pay $8 a month, I ve noticed any tweets I get from verified users now, they re usually not just garbage troll takes.
1
SPEAKER_00
These are people paying $8 a month.
1
SPEAKER_00
They re usually relatively sensible.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so it s been pretty nice.
1
SPEAKER_00
After I upload a video, I just go on the verified tab on Twitter and just see what people have to say.
1
SPEAKER_00
And anyways, I live for the day that YouTube s like that.
1
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about Twitter?
1
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about all the fun activity happening recently since Elon bought Twitter?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think he should make me CEO, like I tweeted.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, I should say sort of we had, we just like a couple hours ago had a conversation with Elon and you guys had an exchange of some excellent ideas.
1
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, I legitimately think, obviously you re exceptionally busy, but I legitimately think it would be awesome if you somehow participate in the future of Twitter.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it would be fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
because there s so much possibility of different ideas, first in the sort of the content, like dissemination, hosting, and all the different recommendations, like the search and discovery, all the things that YouTube does well.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think the most exciting thing is he s willing to move fast, and so I think there s gonna be a lot of interesting things that come out of it because he s just moving quick, and a lot of these more mature platforms just take years to do the simplest stuff, and they re very bureaucratic.
1
SPEAKER_00
So it s gonna, I mean, it ll be interesting to see which way it goes when you just kind of take a move quick, break things, whatever type approach to social media.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m actually pretty curious to see what features he rolls out.
1
SPEAKER_01
So what will be your first act as Twitter CEO?
1
SPEAKER_00
I can t spoil it.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_00
I gotta get hired.
1
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about video on the platform?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, do you think that s an interesting, or is it like messing with the medium, the nature of the platform?
1
SPEAKER_00
I think Twitter will always be closer to TikTok than it is to YouTube, at least in its current form.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t see 20 minute, one hour long videos or whatever, even 15 minute videos being watched over there.
1
SPEAKER_00
I see it more as like the short and snappy stuff closer to TikTok.
1
SPEAKER_01
But at the same time, Twitter is a really good comment section for the internet.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s almost weird why, like, why doesn t Twitter allow you to embed YouTube videos?
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, why does, you should just ask Elon that.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I don t know if that s a YouTube thing, but when a YouTuber posts a video, why do they have to link to YouTube?
1
SPEAKER_00
Why can t they just embed it on Twitter and you just play it there?
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, wouldn t that just solve a lot of problems?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but then the two companies would have to agree to integrate each other s content.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, but it seems like a win-win.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, well, it s more of a win for Twitter, because then people don t have to leave the platform.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, that d be the easiest solution.
1
SPEAKER_01
But who gets, like, when you watch the ads on a YouTube video that s embedded in Twitter, who gets the money?
1
SPEAKER_00
It would still be YouTube.
1
SPEAKER_00
But at least then, right now, people just post a link and it takes you off Twitter, and it just kills your session time on Twitter.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s really interesting, but yeah, because the Twitter, whatever the dynamics of the comments, especially once the spam bots are taken care of, Twitter just works.
1
SPEAKER_01
So Reddit is a nice comment section for the internet.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s like slower paced, more deliberate, like higher effort.
1
SPEAKER_01
Twitter s like this high-paced, like ephemeral kind of stream, but there s the vote, the upvoting and the downvoting works much better, because you can do retweeting, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Because the social network is much stronger than it is on YouTube, like the interconnectivity.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, on Reddit, you re gonna get, the top replies are gonna be the most refined ones, whereas Twitter, stuff flows to the top that s not super refined, but like you re saying, it s more off-the-cuff stream of consciousness, which a lot of people prefer, it s a little more personal.
1
SPEAKER_01
How do you think Twitter compares to YouTube in terms of how you see its future on Roland 2023?
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think YouTube is going to be YouTube and not much is really going to change, but it s going to keep growing just because, you know, that s just what it does, because it s owned by Google.
1
SPEAKER_00
But Twitter, I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s one of those things like you can t predict if, you know, a year from now, an economy is going to be in a recession or booming.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I think Twitter is kind of the same thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
One thing s for certain, a lot of things are going to be rolled out, but who knows, honestly.
1
SPEAKER_01
You responded to Elon saying Twitter s unlikely to be able to pay creators more money than YouTube.
1
SPEAKER_01
What do you think that is?
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, yeah, because I think the tweet I responded to is one where he was saying that users will jump over if Twitter can potentially pay more than other platforms.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was just saying, obviously, because Google has Google AdWords, and that s Google s whole thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s putting ads on stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
They ve been doing it better than anyone else in the world for a very long time.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s very unlikely in the next few years that Twitter is going to just magically, or any platform, give a creator the ability to make higher CPMs than on YouTube.
1
SPEAKER_00
Kind of crazy, like some creators in December, you know, Q4, because ad rates are higher because of Christmas and everything, some creators literally make like $30, $40 per 1,000 views.
1
SPEAKER_00
That s after YouTube s cut.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, it s almost like hard to think about, like how high the RPMs get.
1
SPEAKER_00
And even then, once you pull out of finance and cars, the high CPM niches, and you move into just normal stuff, it s still just crazy.
1
SPEAKER_00
The sheer volume of creators and the fact that all of them get these multi-dollar CPMs at scale, it s pretty beautiful.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what you would call them, but like integrated ads in your videos and you do it, I would say masterfully.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s like part of the video.
1
SPEAKER_00
Are you talking about brand deals?
1
SPEAKER_01
Brand deals.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that what you would call that?
1
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
1
SPEAKER_01
So it s a brand deal.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s part of the video.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s still really exciting to watch.
1
SPEAKER_01
And yet there s a plug for the brand.
1
SPEAKER_00
In general, just brand deals, since you brought it up, integrating them well.
1
SPEAKER_00
I think that s something a lot of creators don t do.
1
SPEAKER_00
They ll just do a brand deal out of the blue.
1
SPEAKER_00
They ll just be filming a video and then around the three-minute mark just start talking about a random company.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I feel like if you don t want viewers to click away and you want people to not get pissed off and call you to sell out, you ve got to find a way to integrate into the content.
1
SPEAKER_00
And ideally, use the money in the video to make it better.
1
SPEAKER_00
The easiest thing you do when you do a brand deal is just tell people how you re using money from the brand deal to make your content better.
1
SPEAKER_00
And if you do that, no one cares.
1
SPEAKER_00
Now they re supporting you for it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you go from being a sellout to like, oh, I m doing this to make better videos for you guys.
1
SPEAKER_00
You know?
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t know if you can share, but with those brands, when you have discussions with them, are they strict about how long you need to be talking about it?
1
SPEAKER_01
Or is it more about they re leaving control to you about the artistic element of it?
1
SPEAKER_00
The problem is the ones who don t give us artistic element, we just don t really work with anymore.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because it s just, you know, we get 100 million views a video now, and I can confidently say I know how to entertain them and convert them better than these random brands.
1
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, if they don t give us that freedom, I just won t work with them.
1
SPEAKER_01
So you have that leverage, but for smaller creators- It s a lot harder, yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
And they re gonna just say, 45 seconds, here s what you say, take it or leave it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And it s like pretty brutal.
1
SPEAKER_00
Because I think just in general, if brands were more accommodating to let creators tell their story of the brand and talk about the brand in a way that felt a little more natural, I think A, it d be less cringe.
1
SPEAKER_00
People would be less likely to go, you know, tap, tap, tap, skip.
1
SPEAKER_00
And obviously it would convert better, but they re just so afraid and they want the standardized thing.
1
SPEAKER_00
Say these words in 45 seconds right here at this three minute mark.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I often think about how to resist that.
1
SPEAKER_00
You just don t do them though, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Not on YouTube, right.
1
SPEAKER_01
On the audio, I do ads in the very beginning and I say, you can skip them if you want.
1
SPEAKER_01
The brand loves that.
1
SPEAKER_01
The point is they...
1
SPEAKER_01
So the funny thing about podcasts is different than YouTube videos.
1
SPEAKER_01
Podcast people actually do listen to ads a lot because it s slower paced and they like the creator voice, like talking about the thing.
1
SPEAKER_01
But in general, I just don t believe you should be talking about a thing for a minute exactly and that s going to be effective.
1
SPEAKER_01
I wanna see the data for that.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think what s much more effective is the way you do ads, which is like,
1
SPEAKER_01
integrate into the content, like put a lot of effort into making a part of that, like doing the brand deals.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I just, it s difficult to have that conversation.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s like a very strenuous conversation you have to have with brands.
1
SPEAKER_01
You have to, each one at a time.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I just wish there was more of a culture to say like, the quality of the ad read matters a lot more than the, like the silly parameters, like the timing of it, like how long it is, the placement of it, all that kind of stuff.
1
SPEAKER_00
What percentage of your viewers do you think have seen one of my videos before?
1
SPEAKER_01
What percentage of the viewers on YouTube, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, of your viewers.
1
SPEAKER_01
Of the viewers on YouTube, though, because most people... Okay, sure, or all of them.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just interesting because you re speaking very specifically about my brand deal process, and so in my head, I m like, I wonder what percentage of these people even have any idea what he s talking about.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s interesting.
1
SPEAKER_01
I love the thinking about numbers.
1
SPEAKER_00
The whole time we re having this conversation, that s all I could think about.
1
SPEAKER_00
God damn it.
1
SPEAKER_00
There s probably like 50% of these people have no fucking clue what he s saying.
1
SPEAKER_00
And we re about to torture him for five minutes.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, probably.
1
SPEAKER_00
But that s something I can t turn off in my brain.
1
SPEAKER_01
Less than 50%.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
1
SPEAKER_01
Is that exciting to you?
1
SPEAKER_01
That there s like 50% of people don t...
1
SPEAKER_01
I ve not watched the Mr. Beast video.
1
SPEAKER_01
Isn t that an opportunity?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I guess it s an opportunity to grow.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know.
1
SPEAKER_00
Honestly, I was just kind of excited to hang out with you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, me too.
1
SPEAKER_00
Today was a lot of fun.
1
SPEAKER_00
Who cares if there s mics?
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it was kind of like having a buddy to go along the journey as I m just kind of eating shit and doing my normal grind.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was like kind of fun.
1
SPEAKER_00
And also you just say really wise stuff constantly.
1
SPEAKER_00
So honestly, no, I never even put any thought into like the demographics or what I could gain.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s just interesting because like my retention brain, when you talk about something, I m instantly like,
1
SPEAKER_00
Hmm, what value are they going to get?
1
SPEAKER_00
How many of them are going to be interested?
1
SPEAKER_00
What percentage of people do I think we ll lose?
1
SPEAKER_00
And I m like running all those calculations in the background.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that whole conversation, like the lot, anyway, it s just something I can t turn off.
1
SPEAKER_00
My like bells are like, error, error, this is bad.
1
SPEAKER_01
What are the different strategies for high retention for your videos and in general?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s like, how do you cook good food?
1
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
1
SPEAKER_00
That s like the same kind of question.
1
SPEAKER_01
I see, so there s so many different ways that you, so it boils down to, I mean, do you think at the level of a story, or do you think like literally watching five seconds at a time, am I gonna tune out here?
1
SPEAKER_01
Am I gonna tune out here?
1
SPEAKER_01
Am I gonna tune out here?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s all of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
You need the overarching narrative, and then you also need the micro where every second, you know, needs to be entertaining.
1
SPEAKER_00
And you basically,
1
SPEAKER_00
What s interesting is the longer people watch something, the more likely they are to keep watching.
1
SPEAKER_00
So, you don t have to try as hard in the hypothetically back half of a video as you do in the front.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, even right now, we re so deep into this where a lot of people listening are probably just going to keep listening relatively close to the end unless we just have a really boring part of this conversation because they re just in it, they re immersed.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so a big, like to really boil it down to a simple level, you just want to get people where they re immersed in the content and then just kind of hold them there.
1
SPEAKER_01
We had this discussion offline, and by the way, I should mention that this is late at night.
1
SPEAKER_00
It is.
1
SPEAKER_00
What time is it?
1
SPEAKER_00
It s nine o clock.
1
SPEAKER_01
And I only slept one hour last night because I m an idiot, and I flew to the wrong location.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, here, we re like, hey, let s just book you a hotel and a flight.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s like, no, I got it.
1
SPEAKER_00
We re like, you sure?
1
SPEAKER_00
We can just do it.
1
SPEAKER_00
We always do this.
1
SPEAKER_00
He s like, no, I got it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I got it.
1
SPEAKER_01
He s going to have to rub it in.
1
SPEAKER_00
I know.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then today, come to find out, he flew
1
SPEAKER_00
to the wrong airport, airport with the, or a city with a similar name to ours.
1
SPEAKER_01
Same name, same name in a different state.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, that s why you should let us book it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so he s on one hour sleep, and he s literally been dying all day.
1
SPEAKER_00
Before this podcast, he downed like two things of coffee.
1
SPEAKER_00
We ve been going all day hard.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I ve been, I got to interact with you.
1
SPEAKER_01
I should say that this gave me an opportunity to, I got a,
1
SPEAKER_01
a ride from a stranger, and it was an incredible person.
1
SPEAKER_01
I got to interact with them.
1
SPEAKER_01
So there s so many kind people around here, just like this kind of southern energy.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then I got to go to a diner, because I could, you know, there s only one hour between me arriving and having to fly out.
1
SPEAKER_01
So I went to a diner, there s a really kind waitress that called me honey, so.
1
SPEAKER_01
That was a beautiful moment, you know.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was so confused.
1
SPEAKER_00
You tweeted about that.
1
SPEAKER_00
And like, Steel s like, Lex, my assistant was like, Lex isn t here yet.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I saw your tweet.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, he s here.
1
SPEAKER_00
Steel s like, no, he s still flying.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, for like an hour ago, he just tweeted about a nice diner.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was a diner.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was a diner in a different state.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then you had to fly over here.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then I called you, you didn t answer.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, hmm.
1
SPEAKER_00
I was like, something s not adding up.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I feel like such an idiot because apparently the world has cities like Springfield, right?
1
SPEAKER_01
Every single state has a Springfield.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, really?
1
SPEAKER_01
I think so.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s like a Simpsons joke, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s the city in the Simpsons is Springfield, and I think every single state or most of them have a Springfield.
2
SPEAKER_00
And the same is true for like Georgetown.
2
SPEAKER_00
I forget what the most popular one was.
2
SPEAKER_00
But there s like a list of these.
2
SPEAKER_00
People get, when they run out of ideas, they just keep using the same thing over and over.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re your Achilles heel.
2
SPEAKER_00
I got to meet a bunch of people from your team, they re just incredible human beings.
2
SPEAKER_00
So let me just ask on that topic, how do you hire a great team?
2
SPEAKER_00
What have you learned about hiring for everything, for the main channel that you do, for the React, the gaming channel, to MrBeastBurger, to Feastables, all that?
2
SPEAKER_01
The big thing is, especially in this content creation, because it s not like anything that s done on Netflix or different content medians, I really need people who are coachable and like really see the value in what I care about, because it s a very specific way of going about things.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s like a thing, there s no one like plug and play.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like if Netflix wanted to hire someone to do a documentary, there s probably tens of thousands of people you could hire that have worked on documentaries before.
2
SPEAKER_01
But if you want to hire someone to make super viral YouTube videos, you know, like we do, there s just no one you can really pull from.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like sometimes I ll hire people from game shows, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And they have all these preconceived notions about pacing and how a video should be.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you have to spend like the first year like breaking all these habits and, you know, and they think they re better than you.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like a lot of people in traditional think they re better and they think their way is better than what we do.
2
SPEAKER_01
For me, it s almost easier to hire people that are just hard workers that are obsessed and really coachable and just train them how to like be good at content creation and production than to hire someone from like traditional, which is the only way to really do it because there s not that many YouTube channels that have scaled up.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s not like there s a huge talent pool of people who ve worked on YouTube channels.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s easier just to train someone than just pull them from traditional because traditional people just, I don t know, they have all these opinions and things and they just think our way of going about things is dumb.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so you want people who have the humility to have a beginner s mind, even if they have experience.
2
SPEAKER_01
And see the value.
2
SPEAKER_01
Actually, you ll still get it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s so crazy.
2
SPEAKER_01
Especially some of my other friends that are scaling up their YouTube channels.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s people that will come on and you ll ask them, what do you want to be doing in five years?
2
SPEAKER_01
And instead of saying, oh, I want to be working on this channel, they ll be like, oh, I hope to be working on movies or this or that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they see working on a YouTube channel as a launchpad to go into traditional.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, no.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like you just don t get it.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is the end goal.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is your career.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I m just so tired of having those kinds of conversations.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like I feel like people really should be coming around.
2
SPEAKER_00
Are there like recurring interview questions that you ask?
2
SPEAKER_00
Is there ways to get
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but the biggest thing is like, what do you want to be doing in 10 years?
2
SPEAKER_01
And that their answer isn t, you know, making content on YouTube or, you know, if their answer is anything like movies or traditional stuff like that, it s like just a hell no.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like it just won t even remotely work.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you really want people to believe in the vision of YouTube?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, ideally, it s like, oh, working here, you know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
So it s less about the medium and more about just being on a great team that s doing epic stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, and yeah, the media as well, because those, it s just, it s hard to,
2
SPEAKER_01
put into words, but it s just two completely different ways of going about things.
2
SPEAKER_01
You know, like, our videos aren t scripted, and you know, it s a lot more run and gun.
2
SPEAKER_01
And if we hypothetically blow up a giant car or whatever, like, you only have one take, you know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s not scripted, and so
2
SPEAKER_01
You have to overfilm, overshoot things, overcompensate for the dumb way of going about it.
2
SPEAKER_01
A lot of traditional people would be like, well, just plan what you re going to say and just plan the angles.
2
SPEAKER_01
You can cut the cameras in half, you can save 50 grand here, you can save $75,000 in editing, this and that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, yeah, but that s not authentic.
2
SPEAKER_01
You get it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s almost so obvious that it hurts that I have to constantly have these conversations.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s what we live in.
2
SPEAKER_00
But there s also a detail, like there s a taste, like I ve watched a bunch of videos with you and it s clear to you that you ve gotten really good.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what the right word is, style or taste, to be able to know what s good and not in terms of retention, in terms of just stylistically, visually.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t have to think.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can just watch a video and it just screams in my head, this is what should change based on the million videos I ve watched and all these viral videos I ve consumed.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is blah, blah, blah, what s optimal and things like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s almost like your brain s like a,
2
SPEAKER_01
you know, like a neural net.
2
SPEAKER_01
And like, if you consume enough viral videos and enough good content that you just kind of start to like, train your brain to like, see it and see these patterns that happen in all these viral videos.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that anytime I watch a video or a movie or anything, I just can t stop thinking about what is optimal.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so it s like, it gives me a headache sometimes when I watch something too slow or I don t think it s optimal.
2
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, my taste isn t the end all be all.
2
SPEAKER_01
But that s something that kind of torments me, if that makes any sense.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, you can t enjoy a slow-moving movie.
2
SPEAKER_01
No, I can t.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s not to say there s no- Your attention on The Godfather is horrible.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve tried to watch that movie like three times, but that s not to say slow movies are bad.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s an audience for it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s just obviously not what I ve trained my brain to like.
2
SPEAKER_01
And social media and YouTube right now, that s just not the meta.
2
SPEAKER_00
And in general, like you said, in neural network, you re training your brain in part on actual data.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right, so you re actually, it s data-driven, so you re looking at, in terms of thumbnails and titles, and different aspects of the first five, 10 seconds, and then throughout the video, the retention, all of that, you re looking at all of that.
2
SPEAKER_00
for your own videos to understand how to do it better.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s where the neural network is training.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Basically, there are ways you can kind of see like the most viewed videos on YouTube every day and stuff like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I just kind of consume those every single day.
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve been doing that for way too many years.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you just start to notice patterns.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like the thumbnails on the most viewed videos or videos that go super viral tend to be clear, tend to not have much clutter, tend to be pretty simple.
2
SPEAKER_01
Titles tend to be less than 50 characters.
2
SPEAKER_01
Intros tend to be this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Stories tend to be this and you just kind of like after you see those thousands and then tens of thousands of time It just starts to click in your head.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like this is what it looks like, you know, so how are you able to?
2
SPEAKER_00
Transfer that taste that you ve developed to the team so for like because you said like broad things But I m sure there s a million detailed things like what zoom to use on the face to use in the thumbnail, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
like
2
SPEAKER_01
The answer is whatever makes the best video.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because the problem is the more... I have so many friends who are like this.
2
SPEAKER_01
They ll make like checklists for their editors.
2
SPEAKER_01
They ll be like, you know, this beat and this beat.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you need to have like a three-part arc and then this.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the problem is that s how you... The more constraints you put on the team, the more repetitive and less innovation you get.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the more like, you know, after 10 videos, people are going to be like, all right, I ve already seen this.
2
SPEAKER_01
to me, and I m 24, and you know, I m probably, my mindset will change over the next 10 years.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just haven t been in this industry too long.
2
SPEAKER_01
But the only way to like, really make innovative content and keep things fresh is to not put constraints on, or put as little as possible.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that s why I m very hesitant on all that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because the more I say, the more they re gonna be like, oh, then that s what we do.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then, you know,
2
SPEAKER_01
I ll say one time like, oh, you know, ideally, there s a cut every three seconds.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the next thing you know, every video, there s a cut every three seconds or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s hard because I try to give as little
2
SPEAKER_01
not training, but as little facts as possible and more just make suggestions, if that makes any sense.
2
SPEAKER_01
You mean publicly or to your team?
2
SPEAKER_01
To my team, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you talked about sort of teaching your voice or your style, whatever we want to call it, to other people on the team so they can be kind of a Mr. Beast replacement.
2
SPEAKER_00
So what s the process of teaching that?
2
SPEAKER_00
So you don t want to- No, I got you.
2
SPEAKER_01
So you re more talking about like, what I would call almost like cloning, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like Tyler and other people like that.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when we were hanging out today, I was showing him how we have multiple people in the company.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s almost like talking to the camera.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you turn slowly to the camera.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was like, anyways, have it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is it weird to you to not be looking at the camera?
2
SPEAKER_01
This whole interview, I constantly have been turning towards the camera.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m talking to him.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a habit.
2
SPEAKER_01
Because my whole life, I ve just been talking to a camera.
2
SPEAKER_00
Who are you thinking about when you re looking at the camera?
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you imagine somebody?
2
SPEAKER_01
I m fully thinking about the person just sitting, watching it.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s weird, when I m looking at the camera, I don t see a camera.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m like in a haze picturing what the viewer is seeing when they watch it, if that makes sense.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s where I ll be saying things or doing something and then like when I m watching, I m like that s not what I want and then I ll freeze up.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s very weird when I m filming.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then for people who haven t worked with me too much, they ll think like,
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, it s very weird like how I go about it because I ll just be doing whatever, like lighting a firework.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is a thousand dollar firework and I ll go to light it and I ll like freeze because in my head I m like this, I don t know, I don t like how that flowed or how that shot looked because it s weird.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can perfectly picture what I m filming by just looking at the camera and then putting myself through the lens of the camera while
2
SPEAKER_01
making content.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can do it at the same time.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, you re like real-time editing?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s something that didn t at the start come natural to me, but in the last probably like five years, it s happened.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so, I would say it s one of my greatest strengths, but I don t know how I developed it.
2
SPEAKER_01
But anytime I m filming anything, like it s almost like the right side of my brain, I just can just look at it and I see exactly what I m filming and I can just picture it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, it s probably recording the video, being the talent for the video, and then watching the editing, and analyzing it carefully, and do that over and over and over and over.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you do that 10,000 times, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
You do the editing more than being in front of the camera.
2
SPEAKER_00
So you start to see yourself from that third-person perspective.
2
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then maybe that actually helps with the nerves of it, too.
2
SPEAKER_00
You see it as creating a video versus performing.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s weird, I ve never been nervous talking to a camera.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s harder for me to talk to a person than it is to talk to a camera, which I feel like a lot of people say that, though, that are, whatever, make content, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve heard that so many times.
2
SPEAKER_01
Or maybe not, maybe I m just awkward and dumb.
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe they re practiced.
2
SPEAKER_00
To me, both are terrifying, but being in front of the camera by yourself is most- So much easier.
2
SPEAKER_00
Really?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so much easier.
2
SPEAKER_01
I prefer it a million times over.
2
SPEAKER_01
But that s my whole life, you know?
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s just, that s why it s interesting.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like you ve spent more of your time talking to people.
2
SPEAKER_01
It comes natural.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I talk to a piece of plastic.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh yeah, I guess you re talking to a person too.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s just on the other side of the camera.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, there s just a pixel on a screen.
2
SPEAKER_00
So cloning, how do you achieve that?
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, that s right.
2
SPEAKER_01
This whole rabbit trail.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I was showing him that I have a lot of people in the company who are able to think like me and basically make decisions like,
2
SPEAKER_01
I would make if I was like, if you were asked, hey, in this video, should we climb a mountain?
2
SPEAKER_01
Or should we dig a hole?
2
SPEAKER_01
Right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And like, you know, they would pick the same answer, I d pick 90 plus percent of the times.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so like, one example is Tyler, who I was showing you, and he was pitching some content.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you could see like this, he was on point.
2
SPEAKER_01
And basically, for just four or five years, we just spent an absurd amount of time together.
2
SPEAKER_01
and worked on every single video together and we worked side by side.
2
SPEAKER_01
And same thing with my CEO, James.
2
SPEAKER_01
He literally lived with me for a couple of years.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m a big fan of just like finding people who are super obsessed and all in and A players that, you know, they really just wanna be great.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then just dumping everything I have in them.
2
SPEAKER_00
And like you were saying, cause I d love to find that and develop that.
2
SPEAKER_00
You re saying you re basically for a long time just said everything you were thinking to them.
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, James, the guy who s basically my right hand man right now, for two years, he lived with me, and we probably talked on average of those two years, seven hours a day.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, anytime I had a phone call, I d throw it on speaker, and I d let him listen, anything I was reading, any content I was consuming, like really just training his brain to think like me.
2
SPEAKER_01
So that way, he could just
2
SPEAKER_01
do things without my input, without me having to constantly watch over him or give him advice.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s where we ve gotten.
2
SPEAKER_01
So for the first six months, he didn t do anything.
2
SPEAKER_01
He just studied me and studied everything I cared about and how I spoke and blah, blah.
2
SPEAKER_01
And then the next six months, he started taking on some responsibilities.
2
SPEAKER_01
And now he can just run the company and, you know.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t ever really have to check in on him.
2
SPEAKER_01
Most of the decisions he makes are exactly what I would do.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I call that cloning.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what other people would, but it s just like finding people that are really obsessed and they just kind of really want it and just feeling like giving them an avenue to get it, if that makes any sense.
2
SPEAKER_00
Another way to see it is you re converging towards a common vision and that makes brainstorming
2
SPEAKER_00
much more productive.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it just makes it where I don t have to be so involved in everything because I just have these people I know will think like I will, at least relatively close to it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So I can kind of almost be in multiple places at once, per se.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so these things that, you know, I still approve every idea we film and, you know, everything before we film it, all the creative, I approve it, but I don t have to like be in the weeds and nuances and do all this minor stuff.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can just let them handle it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I can just do the more macro things.
2
SPEAKER_00
I got a chance to sit in to a lengthy brainstorming session with Tyler and others.
2
SPEAKER_00
That was really cool.
2
SPEAKER_00
Can you talk about the process of that, of people pitching ideas and you pitching alternatives or shutting down ideas and just plowing through ideas very quickly?
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you kind of just described exactly what we did, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, but the ideas are really good.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s just tossing out,
2
SPEAKER_00
like different categories of ideas, and then also fine tuning them to see like, how do I change, like thinking about the titles and the thumbnails.
2
SPEAKER_01
I work so well off of inspiration.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s like, it s something, like give me any word, I don t know.
2
SPEAKER_01
Space.
2
SPEAKER_01
Space, yeah, like I went to space, you know, what happens if you blow up a nuke in space, or I went to the moon, I went to Mars, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Because you said that one word, it was able to inspire me to come up with four ideas.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that s just, it s, for me,
2
SPEAKER_01
The way to get 100 million views on videos, you need something original, creative, something people really need to see, ideally never been done before, all these like things.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so you need like, if you want to consistently go super viral, you need just a constant stream of ideas.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the only way I ve really found that I can consistently come up with 100 million view videos is to intake inspiration and then see what my brain outputs.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so that s kind of at its core foundation, what I m doing there.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s just like intaking a lot of random inspiration to see what spawns in my mind so I can
2
SPEAKER_01
output it.
2
SPEAKER_00
But the neural network of your brain is generating the video, the title, the thumbnail, all that jointly, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, and that only comes because I spent 10 years of my life just obsessively studying all that stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it seems like you would literally potentially shut down a video just because you can t come up with a good title.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, 100%, or a thumbnail.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, that s what happened to 70% of those in that pitch session.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was just like, oh, what was one of them?
2
SPEAKER_01
Genius versus 100 people, or?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like maybe average intelligence versus genius.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I was like, what the heck is the thumbnail?
2
SPEAKER_01
Even if the title is good?
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, there s so many.
2
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, people don t click, they don t watch.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s so interesting.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you developed over time, the ability to kind of give it what what makes for a good title?
2
SPEAKER_00
Short?
2
SPEAKER_01
Not just short.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s also, I mean,
2
SPEAKER_01
If someone reads it, do they have to watch it?
2
SPEAKER_01
Is it just so intrinsically interesting that it s just gonna fuck with them if they don t click on it?
2
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
2
SPEAKER_00
So it doesn t have to be short, but it has to be... You almost want to have a retention to word-by-word reading.
2
SPEAKER_01
Ideally, it s a title also that, you know, because the titles don t live in a vacuum, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So it has to lead into the content.
2
SPEAKER_01
So ideally, the title represents content that you would want to watch for 20 minutes.
2
SPEAKER_01
So if it s a 20 minute video, and the title is I stepped on a bug, it s
2
SPEAKER_01
It s not going to, because it s all of it combined.
2
SPEAKER_01
The click-through rate is going to be much lower than if it was like a five-second video.
2
SPEAKER_01
People might click it.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, you got to, like, even nuances of the length of the video based against the title will affect whether people want to click it, because sometimes they just all add up.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s that, yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
Ideally, you want it below 50 characters, because above 50 characters on certain devices, you run the chance of it going dot, dot, dot.
2
SPEAKER_01
I took a light pole and I saw how many dollar bills I could stack on top and they would just go dot dot dot because it s too long and it can t finish it and that s the worst thing because then people don t even know what they re clicking on and so it s going to do even worse.
2
SPEAKER_01
Short, simple, ideally, and just so freaking interesting they have to click and it is a good segue into the content and it represents the length of the content.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s probably stuff it s hard to convert into words for you, like I stepped on a bug versus stepping on a bug versus Mr. B stepped on a bug versus bug stepping video.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s funny you bring that up.
2
SPEAKER_01
So it s like, yes, the more extreme the opinion, typically the higher the click-through rate.
2
SPEAKER_01
If you can pay it off in the content, then it just supercharges it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so you have a kind of estimate of the extremeness.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, like this water, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
If you re like,
2
SPEAKER_01
Fiji water sucks, that would do fine.
2
SPEAKER_01
But if you said Fiji water is the worst water bottle, or the worst water I ve ever drank in my life, way more extreme opinion would do way better.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you have to deliver.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but then you have to deliver, because the more extreme you are, the more extreme you have to be in the video.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s almost inspiration for you to step up.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but you can be more extreme in a positive way.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s easier, though.
3
SPEAKER_00
Negative clickbait is much easier than positive clickbait.
3
SPEAKER_00
It just is.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s so much easier to get negative clicks.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so a lot of people are just, in my opinion, you know, a little bit lazier and they just take the route like, oh, well, this one gets the same amount of clicks and it s easier, less effort.
3
SPEAKER_01
The positive one is doing a large number of numbers of something.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like I spent this number of hours doing this.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or whatever, if you just wanted to help people.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just harder to get 10 million views on a video helping people than it is to get 10 million views on a video tearing down a celebrity.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_00
Or whatever negative video you want to insert there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, that said, most of your videos are pretty positive.
3
SPEAKER_00
But not a lot of people do those kinds of videos, because they re hard.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they re hard.
3
SPEAKER_01
Some of that is giving away money, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
What s the secret to that?
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you do that right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Give away money?
3
SPEAKER_01
In a video to make it compelling.
3
SPEAKER_01
So there s a number that is better than another number, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
The higher number is always better than the lower number.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, for the most part.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you know, it s interesting, like, some videos will give away a million dollars, some videos will give away half a million.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s not really, I guess, so I m retracting what I just said.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was more joking with that.
3
SPEAKER_00
But there s no difference whether I put 500k or a million.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s probably not even really a difference between 100k or a million.
3
SPEAKER_00
I haven t really looked into it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, some of our, most of our videos are
3
SPEAKER_00
not us giving away a million dollars, and sometimes the million dollar videos just don t do as well as the other ones.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there is a certain point where a dollar amount is just a large dollar amount to an average human.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I think that point is 100K.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like anything above 100K, the average human is just like, that s a lot of money.
3
SPEAKER_00
100K and a million, like, doesn t really move the needle, if that makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
Which that s a very nuanced piece of information that applies to very few people, but.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, no, I think it applies, it s fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_01
Our relationship with money is fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, why is it so exciting to get, I mean, the times I ve found like 20 bucks in the ground are like incredible.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know why, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Why?
3
SPEAKER_01
Why are you so happy?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, what exactly is so joyful about that?
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it depends where you are in life, what the situation is.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s also a gamified aspect to it.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s exciting.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s fun.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I get it, why people want to see people win money.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just interesting that past 100 grand, it doesn t really seem to make a difference.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s the same, basically.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you found that to be true with all the money you ve given away?
3
SPEAKER_00
I just didn t click through it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Obviously, in terms of someone receiving it, yeah, a million dollars changes their life drastically more.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, that s the difference, like, oh, if you wanted to, you could really quit your job.
3
SPEAKER_00
As opposed to 100K, it s like, not really.
3
SPEAKER_01
You could probably do like a scientific study, like a formula, giving away money to click-through rate.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
There could be some kind of demonstrated return.
3
SPEAKER_00
I got it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It definitely, the returns level off dramatically after 100K.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s basically the premise of it.
3
SPEAKER_01
What about 10,000?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, there s 100,000.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s funny because this is such a small niche thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, 100,000 does, from what I see in our videos, get more clicks than 10,000.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the difference between 100,000 and a million is just so little.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think big number, big number to a lot of people past that point.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so for 100,000, you can, given average salary, you can probably live for a year, given what the average salary is in America.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that s like a big, that feels something.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think it s also just more when they read the title.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just like, it s a lot of zeros.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a lot of, fuck loads of zeros.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, click.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh man, that s fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_01
So on the thumbnail side, again, that s gonna be much harder to say probably.
3
SPEAKER_01
But offline, I got a chance to look at a bunch of thumbnails, and it s fascinating which ones do well and which ones don t.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is there something you could say about what are the elements of a thumbnail that work well?
3
SPEAKER_01
Or is this also deeply instinctual?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s the same thing, like how do you cook good food?
3
SPEAKER_00
But it s easier if you pull up a thumbnail, and I can be like, that s why that s good, that s why that s bad.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like an example would be one of my friends, he just uploaded a video recently, and I called him, and I was like,
3
SPEAKER_00
is this? 
3
SPEAKER_00
Because he s a very, very smart guy.
3
SPEAKER_00
And in the thumbnail, he s getting chased by cops, but the cops were wearing yellow vests, so they didn t look at cops.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was like, well, why are the cops in your thumbnail wearing yellow vests?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like, that makes it so much more boring.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he was like, carrying a flag, but the pole and the color of the flag were the same color, so it s like, it s a lot harder to see the flag.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was like, also, you re wearing like a shirt with like five different colors, like, so it s like, it s hard to tell
3
SPEAKER_00
what even what your outline is.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then in the background, there are cars.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, well, if you have cops chasing you, why not make the cars cop cars?
3
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, and it s like, cause in my head, I m like, dang, if you just did those like four or five things, the video probably would ve got like seven X of views.
3
SPEAKER_01
How much iteration?
3
SPEAKER_01
Cause I also got a chance to see the number of iterations you do on a, on a, just a brand of thumbnails.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a problem now.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s an addiction.
3
SPEAKER_01
Is it?
3
SPEAKER_01
So you kind of,
3
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of the versions are really good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you know what to like?
3
SPEAKER_00
I love how you, when we pulled up that, uh, the burger one and we were flipping through them, you re like, that s really good.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was like, oh, that s version like one of like a thousand.
3
SPEAKER_01
But even the sketch, the idea was good.
3
SPEAKER_01
Already even the original idea is strong.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so one of our coming up videos, we made the world s largest plant-based burger, and the thumbnail we were thinking is like me standing beside the burger, because it s six feet tall.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s what he s talking about.
3
SPEAKER_00
So just picture a giant six foot tall burger, super wide, thousands of pounds, and then I m beside it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then it s like eating the world s largest burger.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s just something you have to click.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you were saying, how would you describe a good thumbnail?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like that, you know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
But I think you said the one I noticed first that was good, where you were very small in it, relative to the, and you didn t like that one, I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
I needed to come forward a little bit, and also, the photo we took was just my upper body, so they photo manipulated and created my legs in Photoshop, and that s why I said I didn t like it, because my right leg was a little off, it was bent the wrong way, because they had to build those legs in Photoshop.
3
SPEAKER_01
Does the physics on the thumbnail have to even make sense?
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you can just like exaggerate the head size and all that kind of stuff, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, 100%.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, things don t have to be relative.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can have a car in the background and be three times the size.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because, yeah, every one of my thumbnails, my face is in the, you know, left side, very big.
3
SPEAKER_00
So brand recognition, so just people know, oh, especially because now that a lot of people copy our videos, it s just nice to like, you know, everyone else might make thumbnails like this, but this is mine.
3
SPEAKER_00
And obviously, we usually over deliver and do bigger stuff.
3
SPEAKER_01
Would you recommend to other creators that wanna make it big and they see Mr. Beast and they look up to you, to copy some elements of you or to really try to be unique?
3
SPEAKER_00
Unique, 100% unique.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re not, the next Mr. Beast, quote unquote, it s weird saying that in third person, but whatever, is not gonna do what I m doing better.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re gonna just invent their own way.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like you re just not gonna do what I do better than me.
3
SPEAKER_00
I literally have the best people in the world working here.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I reinvest everything I make even to this day.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, it s absurd the amount of money I spend on content.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t care.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ll just stop sleeping.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I ll just film every other day.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, you re just not gonna beat me at my own game.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s fine, you shouldn t.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, I didn t get where I am by just beating someone else at their own game.
3
SPEAKER_00
I just found my own lane and innovated and adapted.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so, yeah, there s a lot of people that do copy me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s fine, whatever, do it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But just know, you re not gonna get to where I am doing that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I d advise you don t.
3
SPEAKER_01
You give away a lot of the secrets, basically everything about how you operate.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t hold anything back, go for it.
3
SPEAKER_01
How do you think about that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because that s pretty rare.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think, and this is definitely not, most people in my stance I don t think would take this, or my position would take this stance, but
3
SPEAKER_00
I see every other YouTuber or person on social media, even, because we re also focused super heavily on YouTube, but last year we were also the most followed TikTok creator in the world as well.
3
SPEAKER_00
Actually, we were most subscribed to YouTube channel in the world and the most followed TikTok account in the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
But in general, I just see everyone else as collaborators, not competitors.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t think giving advice and helping other creators do well in any way harms me, and I think it only brings more value to my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
How was it jumping on TikTok and trying to understand that platform from scratch?
3
SPEAKER_01
So from being a successful YouTuber to understand a totally different algorithm, fundamentally different algorithm.
3
SPEAKER_00
What was that like?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s interesting.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, not even just the algorithm, just the content.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m going from basically 15-minute short films to...
3
SPEAKER_00
sub one minute vertical content.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a whole different, just ballpark.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so the first little while I was doing TikTok, it was just kind of figuring out what does MrBeast look like in this short form content?
3
SPEAKER_00
But recently we ve really started to catch our stride and come up with some original concepts and figure out how to innovate over there, just like we did on YouTube.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I didn t want it to just be shitty YouTube videos.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so like an example is,
3
SPEAKER_00
We played The Rock for $100K and rock, paper, scissors, and the loser had to donate $100K to charity.
3
SPEAKER_00
We went to random people on a campus and we offered them.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, I said, I ll give you $100 if you fly to Paris and give me a baguette.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then they said no.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, I ll give you $300 if you fly to Paris and give me a baguette.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was expecting this person to say no, and it d go up to like 10 grand.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he s like, yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so he flew to Paris, got a baguette and brought it back and gave it to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that across everything got like 450 million views.
3
SPEAKER_00
And because it s just really cool just to see this random guy get on a plane, spend a day in Paris, and we cut it up real nicely and bring it back.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we re starting to find just tons of original content over there.
3
SPEAKER_01
But it seems like an epic video to make for one minute.
3
SPEAKER_00
No one on Shortform s doing it.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just so funny, because TikTok s been big for a while now, years.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then as we started to really figure out things on the YouTube channel and get it cranking where I have some free time, we set our sights on TikTok and like, OK.
3
SPEAKER_00
What are people not doing?
3
SPEAKER_00
How do we make it better, put in more effort, make it good?
3
SPEAKER_00
And we did the same thing we did at YouTube, just different over on TikTok, and it worked.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now we re the fastest growing or most followed TikTok account in 2022.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s just funny that no one else did that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you re not afraid to do epic stuff, which also during the brainstorming, some of the ideas, you re like, that s better as a short.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s crazy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, can you remember one?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I remember I said that a bunch, but I can t think of one.
3
SPEAKER_01
All I remember is that they were like epic videos.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like really, you re going to do that for a one minute video?
3
SPEAKER_01
That s crazy.
3
SPEAKER_01
So like, are you posting similar content to a YouTube short as a TikTok?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, those we just double up.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s just hard.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, what s actually pretty fascinating, and people who do social media listening to this will probably find this pretty interesting, is picture like the content creation meta three years ago versus now, where you can make sub one minute vertical content and it go viral on TikTok, it go viral on YouTube Shorts, it go viral on Instagram Reels, it goes viral on Facebook, it goes Reddit, you know, you swipe through vertical content now, and Twitter when you click on a video and you flip through it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this is actually very weird.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is the first time in the history of, I guess, Western social media that one form of content could actually go super viral on every single platform.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s never been like that before.
3
SPEAKER_01
So they re going viral individually.
3
SPEAKER_01
They re not like interbreeding or whatever.
3
SPEAKER_00
I can post something on TikTok that ll get 100 million views, and then post it on Shorts and it ll get 200 million views, and then post it on Instagram and it ll get 50 million views, and then, you know, I haven t yet, but you know, you can then turn around and tweet it and it d get tens of millions of views, and you can post it on Reddit and it d get tens of millions of views, and Facebook can get tens of millions of views.
3
SPEAKER_00
that just wasn t a thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Three years ago, Twitter didn t have... because a lot of you probably don t even know this, but when you tap on a video now and you swipe down, it just turns into TikTok.
3
SPEAKER_00
That wasn t a thing even a year ago.
3
SPEAKER_00
Reddit, that wasn t a thing a year ago.
3
SPEAKER_00
Probably two years ago, that wasn t a thing on Instagram.
3
SPEAKER_00
Three years ago, that wasn t a thing on YouTube, right, with YouTube Shorts.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, this is all new.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t... it s weird.
3
SPEAKER_00
I haven t heard a single person talk about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
But this is the first time where content can actually
3
SPEAKER_00
Go viral on every single platform, and you don t have to write or film a video for Facebook, film a 12-minute video for YouTube, film a sub-60-second video for TikTok, write a tweet for Twitter, and post this on Reddit.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can just do the same thing on every platform.
3
SPEAKER_01
And the fact that your content has gone viral on multiple platforms regularly means that virality is not accidental.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes it can be, of course, but it can be engineered.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so many people say it s luck, and they re like, you re just lucky, or this or that.
3
SPEAKER_00
What are we up to?
3
SPEAKER_00
Probably like a thousand videos over 10 million views.
3
SPEAKER_00
We don t ever have a dud.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can call it luck, but I think it can be trained.
3
SPEAKER_00
I counsel YouTubers all the time and show them how to go from getting a couple million views a month to 10 million views a month very easily, even certain ones.
3
SPEAKER_00
And just one of my friends, like, he was just really struggling.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so, I just started showing him basically everything I know and just doing like, once every week, sometimes once every two weeks calls.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it went from $10,000 a month on YouTube to over $400,000, just doing these little counseling calls.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so, I mean, people can make excuses all they want and say it s just luck or say, you know.
3
SPEAKER_00
well, anyways, I don t even want to quote all the other stuff, but it s just, it is.
3
SPEAKER_00
It is a teachable skill.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a learnable skill.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can study your way to consistently make viral videos, no matter how small your channel is.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even if you have zero subscribers, you could if you actually studied hard enough, and like, basically, if you knew what I knew, and some of these
3
SPEAKER_00
so I don t sound so arrogant.
3
SPEAKER_00
Also, like some of these other friends I have that I d say are the smartest people in the world when it comes to content creation online, if you had the knowledge that was in our heads, you could do it very easily.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve seen people do it all the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what s even more interesting is I go on podcasts and I say everything I know, and these people are also very open, some of them I know, it s all out there.
3
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of people, instead of just studying that and trying to absorb and apply it in their own way, they re just like, no, it s just luck, you know.
3
SPEAKER_01
So you do lay it all out there, but I gotta push back to one interesting thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think a crucial component of your success is the idea stage, the idea generation, the brainstorming I heard today, but getting really good at generating ideas.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s not just the selection of the thumbnail and the title, that creative process, it s also just the,
3
SPEAKER_01
the engine of generating really good ideas.
3
SPEAKER_01
And getting that, I would say that is probably the thing that needs to be trained the most for most creators, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
That they just don t put enough ideas on paper.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, but also a lot of creators also just don t, you know, which I didn t either for the longest time, just didn t, don t make good enough content, you know, content that s worthy of getting 10 million views.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the idea or the execution of the idea?
3
SPEAKER_00
Both.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, like think about how many people just make videos, they film them in under 20 minutes and they don t really put any effort into it and like, you know.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like, my first 500 videos didn t deserve to get a million views.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, there s a reason they did.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re terrible, you know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_00
But at the time, I thought they did, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And I m in the mindset of a lot of small YouTubers where I thought those videos deserved a million views, and I thought the algorithm hated me.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I watch them back now, and I can tell you exactly why.
3
SPEAKER_00
The videos were just fucking horrible, you know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, so what was the breakthrough for you to start realizing, to start having a self-awareness, you know, about these videos aren t good enough?
3
SPEAKER_01
You re probably still going through that.
3
SPEAKER_01
You re probably still growing to see.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, every six months you should look back and hate your videos, or at least see things you could improve and be like, oh, I could have done this better, that better.
3
SPEAKER_00
If not, then you re not learning quick enough, in my opinion at least.
3
SPEAKER_01
where s the source of that learning even for you now?
3
SPEAKER_01
Just look at the metrics.
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I mean, I just got back from a mastermind where I just got like 10 of the smartest people I knew and we just locked ourselves in a cabin and taught each other stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
Constantly, every day, not every day now, probably every other day I go on a walk and I just call random people, I ll just say, teach me something.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, it s just,
3
SPEAKER_00
you just have to have a never-ending thirst for learning.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s very imperative, especially if you want to get on top and then stay on top.
3
SPEAKER_00
The only way to do it is just to constantly be learning.
3
SPEAKER_00
Or someone who is learning is just gonna have a leg up on you in the knowledge game.
3
SPEAKER_01
And what kind of stuff are you?
3
SPEAKER_01
Because you ve talked about offline that you just love learning of all kinds.
3
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t matter.
3
SPEAKER_01
But in terms of videos, are you studying videos?
3
SPEAKER_01
Are you studying
3
SPEAKER_00
Recently, not as much.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m more, because to get to the videos I want, I have to build this business and scale up and hire.
3
SPEAKER_00
So more my recent time has been, like my teenage years were spent studying virality and studying content creation.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now I m studying how to build a content company so I can actually produce the crazy ideas I want to produce, if that makes any sense.
3
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, on that, the business side, we talked about hiring.
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you have trouble firing people?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, I m pretty sure almost every person, yeah, actually every person I ve ever fired, we just give them severance.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I like to see it more as, it s no ill will.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like if there s, like if I fired you, if there s some other job you want me to help you get, I ll DM them on Twitter.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, you know, if you want to go work for, I don t know, insert whatever, MTV.
3
SPEAKER_00
Give me someone to DM, I ll DM them.
3
SPEAKER_00
I try to make it more like a transition and do whatever we can to make it as easy as possible.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then something was just not working for you, because you want people, like you said, super passionate.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because at the end of the day, if you hold someone on to someone that you don t see being here in 10 years, you re just doing them a disservice.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re just giving them more in grain, more in rooted in where they are.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the sooner you do it and help them move on to their new life, the better.
3
SPEAKER_01
Given all the wisdom you have now, if you were to give advice to somebody, or if you were to start over again, you had no money, what would be the first 10 videos you tried to make on a new channel?
3
SPEAKER_01
I guess that s advice for a new person, and nobody knows you.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, nobody knows me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, hypothetically, I have a mask on.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you also, I guess, don t have the wisdom.
4
SPEAKER_01
If I don t have what I have in my head, then I would say just fail.
4
SPEAKER_01
A lot of people get analysis paralysis and they ll just sit there and they ll plan their first video for three months.
4
SPEAKER_01
Any of you listening, especially if you have zero views on your channel, your first video is not gonna get views.
4
SPEAKER_01
period.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not.
4
SPEAKER_01
Your first 10 are not going to get views.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can very confidently say that.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, stop sitting there and thinking for months and months on end and just get to work and start uploading.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, all you need to do, this applies to people who have not uploaded videos but have dreams of being a YouTuber, is make 100 videos and improve something every time.
4
SPEAKER_01
Do that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then on your 101st video, we ll start talking.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, maybe you can get some views, but
4
SPEAKER_01
you know, your first 100 are going to stop.
4
SPEAKER_01
There are very freak cases like Liza Koshy or Emma Chamberlain who have really good personalities and it doesn t take them so as many videos.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s just like people who are seven foot five and making the NBA.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, yes, there are free cases you can find.
4
SPEAKER_01
But for the average person like us, you know, who don t have these exceptional personalities and, you know, backgrounds in filmmaking, just make 100 videos, improve something each time, and then talk to me on your 101st video.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, the improve something each time is the tricky one.
4
SPEAKER_00
How do you improve something each time?
4
SPEAKER_01
The second one, just, I don t know, put more effort into the script.
4
SPEAKER_01
The third one, try to learn a new editing trick.
4
SPEAKER_01
The fourth one, try to figure out a way that you can have better inflections in your voice.
4
SPEAKER_01
The fifth one, try to, you know, study a new thumbnail tip and implement it.
4
SPEAKER_01
The sixth one, try to figure out a new title.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s infinite ways.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s the beauty of content creation online.
4
SPEAKER_01
literally infinite ways, from the coloring, to the frame rate, to the editing, to the filming, to the production, to the jokes, to the pacing, to every little thing can be improved, and they can never not be improved.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s literally no such thing as a perfect video.
4
SPEAKER_00
So, if you knew everything you know now, but no money.
4
SPEAKER_01
Step one, would I just brainstorm, like, okay, I don t have money, what are some viral things?
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is something as simple as when I count to 100,000, which is what I did do when I was poor, and let that work.
4
SPEAKER_01
But what s something like that I could do that would be even more attention-gathering?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, as part of the brainstorm, you would throw out a lot of ideas, and people would throw out a bunch of ideas, and one of the questions is, is this even doable?
4
SPEAKER_01
First off, come up with ideas you think would do well, and then ask yourself later if they re doable.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because there s different ways you can accomplish something.
4
SPEAKER_00
Don t be cynical about the doability of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because there really are so many different ways you can accomplish a goal.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like when we give away an island, like we gave our 100 million subscriber an island.
4
SPEAKER_01
you know, you can t find private islands that, you know, don t look like shit for less than $10 million.
4
SPEAKER_01
So this isn t doable, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
All right, the idea doesn t exist, not doable, exit off.
4
SPEAKER_01
But then, you know, you dig into it, and you, you know, find different alternatives, you find, okay, what if we just buy a $2 million island that sucks, and then spend a million dollars, you know, importing some sand, let s build a beach, let s import 300 trees, let s build a little bit of canal, let s cut some paths, boom,
4
SPEAKER_01
Now it s a really nice island, but it s actually affordable because we don t have $10 million to spend on a video, but we can afford to spend three and a half and lose whatever, a million dollars on that video.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, like, that s an example of, like, yeah, if you just went off the gut test, you d be like, this isn t doable.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, every island is $10 million.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re screwed.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, if we go cheaper, it s just a terrible island.
4
SPEAKER_01
No.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so, if you, like,
4
SPEAKER_01
There are so many different ways you can achieve what you want.
4
SPEAKER_01
You ve really got to push through notes, which not a lot of people do.
4
SPEAKER_01
You have to have like a more of a dominant personality and just a willingness to when people tell you it s not possible, just actually go through all the variables and eliminate them all yourself.
4
SPEAKER_00
Have a stubbornness and a resilience to failure maybe.
4
SPEAKER_01
For what we do and creators online, it s very imperative that you have
4
SPEAKER_01
that a no isn t a no to you.
4
SPEAKER_01
You really have to, like, think.
4
SPEAKER_01
And just, like, we take a personality test and, like, just having a dominant personality is a better indicator that when someone tells you, oh, there s no way you re going to build a brick wall for under 100 grand, you know, you ll be like, okay, and then still go check the next 10 vendors and, you know, figure it out.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, what advice would you give to an already established channel, like with one, two, three, four million subscribers, how to 10x it, increase it without losing maybe?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that s where it s very specific, channel by channel.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can t give general advice.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because if I do, millions of creators are gonna see this, and then they re gonna do it, and I m gonna fuck them over.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I see, I see.
4
SPEAKER_00
So let s say I had like two million subscribers on this podcast.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like how would you 10X that without sacrificing what it is?
4
SPEAKER_01
10X your stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
Does it matter?
4
SPEAKER_00
So you ve talked about with success.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s different for everyone.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, is 10Xing your definition of success?
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well then, right off the bat, it s hard.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because if you don t give a shit about 10Xing, it s even harder to 10X.
4
SPEAKER_01
He does this because he likes helping people.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s one thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
I ve found throughout this day, every time I talk to Data, it s so funny with him, because it s like, you know, you could do this to get more views, and he ll just be like, blank.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, that doesn t register anything.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s just like, doesn t care, which is, it s really cool.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m really nervous about that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m really nervous about the numbers affecting, because it s so fun.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s so fun to focus on the numbers.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I m really worried about that.
4
SPEAKER_00
But at the same time, you should be
4
SPEAKER_00
cognizant of that because you ve created not just some of the most watched videos, but some of the most amazing videos ever.
4
SPEAKER_00
So there s a strong correlation there.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not like you re selling your soul to make a highly viewed video.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s actually, if you look at the metrics, it helps you understand what is compelling and not.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I feel like I am,
4
SPEAKER_00
I feel like there s some value to investigate when people tune on and when not, to be more data-driven, even on podcasts.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I m really afraid of that.
4
SPEAKER_01
But on the flip side, I think part of the appeal is that you don t care about that kind of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there could be stuff that doesn t have to do anything with that, and it has to do with stylistic choices of lighting and cameras, or maybe with, for example, topics.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, like- Even what you ve asked me here is different than what most people ask me.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so it could be, and it d be nice to understand that, but again, I m worried about polluting the creative process.
4
SPEAKER_01
At the end of the day, this is a true case of it s your own intuition.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know your viewers better than anyone else.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
See, I d like to push back on that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I really don t.
4
SPEAKER_01
You do.
4
SPEAKER_00
I do.
4
SPEAKER_00
Who else?
4
SPEAKER_01
Name one person who knows your viewers better than you.
4
SPEAKER_00
of somebody that looks at numbers of podcasts?
4
SPEAKER_01
No, you know your viewers, you know, you re the only, how many episodes have you done?
4
350.
4
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I m not paying attention.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re the only one who s watched every second of all 350 of them, probably.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s just, that s just not, no, I haven t, but the... Well, because you did it, so you do know what s in all of them.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s your content, it s you people, I m telling you,
4
SPEAKER_01
You do.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this is just one of those moments where you re an intelligent guy, and you just have to trust your like, instincts, like, just think, what is the typical ex viewer?
4
SPEAKER_01
And what do they want?
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t think like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
But that s all you would have to do.
4
SPEAKER_01
And whatever your gut tells you, that would be the best
4
SPEAKER_00
You don t know what the typical viewer is, though.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t, I don t, because to investigate that would be very, very difficult, and then you have to start looking at the numbers, you have to start to consider the demographics.
4
SPEAKER_00
The only way I know that anybody even watches it is because I ll sometimes run into people, like when I run along the river,
4
SPEAKER_00
and they d be like, I love you, Lex.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like, okay, well, that s a data point, and they re like cool people, but I don t know, I don t have any other, it s difficult, man.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s difficult to know, it s difficult to know who listens to boxers.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you have a sense of who s, I mean, you re so huge that everybody watches.
4
SPEAKER_01
But no, I still do, I d say,
4
SPEAKER_01
If you were to just put a gun to my head and you re like, all right, we re gonna pick a random person that watched your last video, and you have to like roughly guess what they are, and if you re not close, we ll kill you.
4
SPEAKER_01
I would say probably like a teenager that plays video games.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like that would be probably the typical one.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then there are people that are maybe a little bit younger, a lot of people that are older as well.
4
SPEAKER_01
But in a random sample size, yeah, it s probably like a male boy that plays video games.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like that s the best way I would describe it.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I don t try to pertain to them.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just make whatever I think is interesting and good content.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this is what we were talking about before.
4
SPEAKER_01
Even though, hypothetically, 35 to 40% of my audience is women, which is less than the majority, if we get 100 million views a video, that s still 30 to 40 million females that watch every video, which is probably the largest views per video for women on the whole platform, which you wouldn t think that.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can t think of a single other creator that gets more women to watch their videos than that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so, it s just anything, even like people above the age of 30, even if it s only like three or four percent, that s still three to four percent of 100 million views is a lot of people that age.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, we hit a large group of kind of every demographic, if that makes any sense.
4
SPEAKER_00
So what if we look at other, maybe more challenging kinds of channels, or not, but if we look at educational, for example, like lectures, or if we look, yeah, educational, it could be short videos, like how would you 10x that?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like something on,
4
SPEAKER_00
of robotics and biology and science and engineering and all of that.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s more educational focused.
4
SPEAKER_01
We would honestly just have to pull the, because it s the same way as if you went to Gordon Ramsay and you said, how would a new cook cook better?
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, it s like.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, so even then, that s not even specific.
4
SPEAKER_00
You have to go channel by channel.
4
SPEAKER_01
You really do, or I m giving horrible advice.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because if there was these just golden rules, everyone would do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like if there s these magical little principles.
4
SPEAKER_00
How quickly, when you look at a channel, can you kind of give advice?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s like surface level at the start and then the more, if we watch 10 videos, I feel like I d have a good profile and I could tell you, in my opinion, you know, especially once I look at the analytics and I get more ingrained in like, okay, the typical viewer is this, they re from here, here s how they re feeling, you know, because there are people who make videos for rednecks.
4
SPEAKER_01
And like the redneck s taste of content is just so much different than obviously women watching makeup videos, which are so much different than, you know, teenage boys watching a Minecraft video.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re just all different.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the biggest thing you have to do is put your head in the headspace of the viewer and see the content how they would.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because if you just try to only give your taste, which is what a lot of people do, and things from your perspective, it s very biased and it s just not going to work for everyone.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s actually how you do more harm than good, which is something I m very careful of.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but at the same time, just generating a lot of ideas.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think the first time I ve talked to you was on Clubhouse, actually.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I mentioned something about robots, and almost immediately you went to generating a bunch of ideas around robots.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s just- A hundred robots versus a hundred humans, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
How far can a robot throw a potato?
4
SPEAKER_00
I think your idea, the first idea, you just said so many ideas I never even thought of.
4
SPEAKER_00
but it shows the value of basically brainstorming with people that think differently.
4
SPEAKER_01
But at the end of the day, my ideas are probably, you know, might lean towards some people a little bit younger than your audience, like some of the stuff I m, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there s still ideas, like I think the first one you said, because we re talking about a quadruped, like robot dogs, you said to replace a biological dog,
4
SPEAKER_00
with the robot dog and see if the owner notices something.
4
SPEAKER_00
You were just quickly brainstorming different ideas of like how to do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
This was years ago, I remember it now, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s just, I mean, it s like, oh yeah, I never really thought about that kind of sort of, it s the basic, the tension between what does it take for a robot and an AI system to replace the biological systems that we, the biological creatures that we love in our lives, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
But that was like the pace of idea generation was the thing that struck me, today and in general.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like that s how you get good videos, is you keep thinking.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s much easier to make a video around a good idea, obviously, than a bad one.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re just setting yourself up for success.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so that s for 10xing already popular channel.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s the hardest number?
4
SPEAKER_00
You said the numbers that matters, click-through rate, average view duration, and surveys.
4
SPEAKER_00
What s the hardest number to optimize for?
4
SPEAKER_01
probably surveys, you know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you have any, do you have an insight into the surveys at all?
4
SPEAKER_01
No, not really.
4
SPEAKER_01
But if you just click on a bunch of random videos online, you ll eventually get a survey.
4
SPEAKER_01
Was this video transformative, heartwarming, inspiring?
4
SPEAKER_01
What people rate does make a difference?
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s like, you can get people to click a video, you can get them to watch it, but you can t really fake whether or not they re satisfied.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like they don t lie, the surveys, you know.
4
SPEAKER_01
You know, maybe one person here and there might troll, but once you aggregate enough, it s a pretty clear telltale of the video.
4
SPEAKER_01
So either you re making a great video or you re not.
4
SPEAKER_00
What is it?
4
SPEAKER_00
Minimizing the non-regrettability.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think Elon tweeted that.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s what he s tried to do on Twitter.
4
SPEAKER_00
For Twitter, and that s interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s basically the survey metric, how happy you are that you ve been using the platform.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, Elon tweeted, we want to limit the amount of regrettable minutes people spend on Twitter.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the first thing I thought, it s like, that s something YouTube already has a lot, like their whole survey system and feedback loop.
4
SPEAKER_00
How tough is it to take on YouTube, you think?
4
SPEAKER_01
For Twitter?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, for Twitter, for anybody else.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s gonna be basically impossible.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, YouTube s not going anywhere.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know, I don t think anyone s gonna do what YouTube does better than them, at least not in the next 10 years.
4
SPEAKER_00
You asked on Twitter, would you rather have $10 million or 10 million subscribers on YouTube?
4
SPEAKER_00
What would your own answer be at various stages in your career?
4
SPEAKER_01
If I had nothing, I would say $10 million.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because with $10 million, you can hire some people and pump out content with like a million or two, get 10 million subscribers, and then keep the other eight million.
4
SPEAKER_01
So that s if you believe in your ability to grow a channel, if you... Well, if you, yeah, if you don t believe in your ability to grow a channel, then you shouldn t take the 10 million subscribers, because you re just gonna kill the channel.
4
SPEAKER_01
So the 10 million is definitely, a better question would be, would you rather have a million dollars or 10 million subscribers?
4
SPEAKER_01
That s where it gets a little tricky.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because now it s like, hmm,
4
SPEAKER_01
a million dollars is a life-changing amount of money, but if you semi-knew what you were doing, you d probably make a million dollars off a 10 million subscriber channel, but there is a little bit of risk.
4
SPEAKER_00
So a million dollars might not be enough to build a strong team, because you don t know how to do it, so you might waste all of that money.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, or they just keep it and retire, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, that s true.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because 10 million is just so high, it s like, just never work again, who cares?
4
SPEAKER_01
For the average human, that s so much money.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s interesting to me also to the value of the subscriber versus the value of the dollar.
4
SPEAKER_00
I suppose, how valuable is a subscriber for, like what percentage of the videos, like how active are the subscribers in watching the video for you?
4
SPEAKER_01
That s hard, I don t know.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was actually thinking more about the subscriber to dollar.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like if someone has 10 million subscribers, have they made $10 million?
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t know why that kind of popped in my head.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s an interesting thought.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you ever, when you analyze videos, do you ever analyze videos, like we ve talked about offline, of other videos across YouTube in general, just to understand trends, to understand social behavior and all that kind of stuff?
4
SPEAKER_01
Not all, but a lot of the questions are analytics-based.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s so funny.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I love it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s just a giant social experiment, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Like what people like to watch, what people share.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like a fascinating look.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, like I said before, what percentage of your audience do you think care about this kind of stuff?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like this deeply about YouTube analytics?
4
SPEAKER_00
I think a large amount care about.
4
SPEAKER_00
curiosity and exploration of interesting ideas.
4
SPEAKER_00
So in that sense, yeah, this was fitted.
4
SPEAKER_01
I love it.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is funny.
4
SPEAKER_01
This isn t me like trying to make, I love you.
4
SPEAKER_01
Actually, I love your Magnus one, and even your Hikaru one was really good, and a bunch of other ones.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I think we re getting to the point now where only analytics junkies would want to keep hearing more analytics talk.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the normie is probably like, they ve had their dose of YouTube talk for the next three years.
4
SPEAKER_01
Maybe I m wrong.
4
SPEAKER_01
Hey, comment if I m wrong.
4
SPEAKER_01
I could be, I don t know your audience.
4
SPEAKER_01
See, this is where you would tell me, shut up, I know my audience, you dumbass.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I don t at all.
4
SPEAKER_00
I actually, I just follow the thread of curiosity.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think there s just a lot of curious humans in the world.
4
SPEAKER_00
And to me, it s like,
4
SPEAKER_00
So the question about analytics is the question of basically stepping away, stepping outside of yourself and thinking, why the hell do I like TikTok so much?
4
SPEAKER_00
Why do I like Twitter so much?
4
SPEAKER_00
Why do I like YouTube so much?
4
SPEAKER_00
And getting, even if you re not a creator, getting an insight into that is really interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like what, because all these platforms are fundamentally changing the nature of content.
4
SPEAKER_00
People are reading books less, they re probably going to be watching movies less and less, they re probably going to be watching Netflix less and less.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you ever think about the sort of the darker side of YouTube and with shadow banning and censorship and all that kind of topics, especially if you see it in other platforms like Twitter that,
4
SPEAKER_00
Elon recently highlighted the shadow banning that was happening, and in general, the censorship that was happening on those platforms.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you think about the role of centralized control of which information is or isn t made available through search and discovery?
4
SPEAKER_01
I ll be honest, I never really think about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
You just try to make fun videos.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m kind of more in my own lane, but it s not that I don t just specifically think about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just like a lot of stuff in general.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m just kind of in my own lane, thinking about my own stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
But now that you asked, I m curious, what are your thoughts on YouTube?
5
SPEAKER_02
and that kind of stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, I m generally against centralized censorship or shadow banning.
5
SPEAKER_00
Shadow banning is the worst one, because not that the goal of creating a healthy platform where you re having great conversations and videos that are not spreading misinformation, that sounds like an admirable goal, but that s too difficult of a job for a centralized entity.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s too big of a responsibility.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, there s the misinformation stuff, and then there s also just like the videos where they do something that causes
5
SPEAKER_02
What happened back in the day where Adpocalypse, you know, and a lot of creators  revenue plummets because people are doing videos that advertisers don t deem acceptable and then now all these big advertisers are pulling and the little guys are getting hit because ad rates dropped by 30% and the person who just quit his job to go full-time content creation now can t sustain it.
5
SPEAKER_02
So, it s also, it s like a lot of different variables as well that makes it so complicated.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, I think the big thing is transparency, especially around shadow banning for people.
5
SPEAKER_02
I agree.
5
SPEAKER_02
On shadow banning, you should be transparent.
5
SPEAKER_02
You should let people know.
5
SPEAKER_02
Obviously, there has to be some type of controls.
5
SPEAKER_02
People can t just post whatever.
5
SPEAKER_02
And so if you re pulling those levers, they should at least know.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, so they know how to improve their content, they can understand it, they can- Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
If it s a wrong shadow banning, like as a society that we should not shadow ban this kind of content, that means- Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_02
You should be publicly discussing it and having that- Because if not, and if it s not known, then it s just kind of like, well then who s pulling the strings?
5
SPEAKER_02
And like, how do we know they re not just manipulating things to get whatever message they want out there and silence other ones?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and there could be sort of in the background government influence, which is where actual freedom of speech comes into play, that the government should not have any control or be able to put pressure on censorship of speech.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it gets weird if none of that is being, there s no transparency around it.
5
SPEAKER_00
But to be fair, that s a huge responsibility.
5
SPEAKER_00
The amount of content that YouTube, is uploaded on YouTube,
5
SPEAKER_00
that is shared by YouTube, viewed by YouTube.
5
SPEAKER_02
But even more of a reason why it would probably make sense to be transparent.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_02
Because then people can help fact check it.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s right.
5
SPEAKER_00
But that requires building a platform that makes that easy, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like to make fact checking easy, to make the, like Twitter now has like being able to share context and all that kind of stuff, that crowdsource it, crowdsource it the way Wikipedia crowdsource it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s, it s right.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then you open a random Wikipedia article.
5
SPEAKER_00
But like, you know, people criticize Wikipedia because there is a political lean to the editors of Wikipedia and then they get, there s some articles that definitely have a bias to them and all that kind of stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a difficult problem.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a difficult problem to solve that ultimately, as much as possible, it would be nice for the viewer to have control of that versus the entity that s hosting it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So for the viewer to decide.
5
SPEAKER_01
I ll let you figure that stuff out.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m just gonna make fun videos.
5
SPEAKER_00
Cool videos, yeah, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
You know, let s go to Antarctica again.
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SPEAKER_00
How was that?
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SPEAKER_00
How was going?
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SPEAKER_00
You just came back from Antarctica.
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SPEAKER_00
I watched the video.
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SPEAKER_00
That was fun.
5
SPEAKER_00
That was a really fun video.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, there s a lot of things I can comment about that, but what was the hardest part of making that video?
5
SPEAKER_02
The hardest part was just getting out there.
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SPEAKER_02
It s just so remote.
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SPEAKER_02
And, you know, you land the plane on just this ice runway, and it s so sketchy.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then once the plane takes off, you re just there.
5
SPEAKER_02
You re the most remote place on the planet.
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SPEAKER_02
It s just very breathtaking.
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SPEAKER_02
If you have the chance to ever go to Antarctica, I would recommend it.
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SPEAKER_02
It was probably like, in the video, we climbed a mountain that wasn t named, so we can name it.
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SPEAKER_02
And standing on top of that mountain and just seeing nothing.
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SPEAKER_02
Because once you get outside the outskirts and you get deep in Antarctica, there s no penguins.
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SPEAKER_02
Nothing lives there at all.
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SPEAKER_02
And so there s just nothing in every direction.
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SPEAKER_02
It s just snow and these crazy beautiful mountains and some of them stick into the clouds.
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SPEAKER_02
And if you go during summertime, the sun never goes down.
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SPEAKER_02
So the sun s up 24-7 and it s just like spinning in circles at the top of the planet or whatever, it looks like the top.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you guys commented several times how beautiful.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and so it s just, yeah, it s just very beautiful.
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SPEAKER_00
What about shooting itself, like the technical aspects of shooting it?
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SPEAKER_02
Oh, I mean, well, so somehow we lucked out.
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SPEAKER_02
One of the days was like the warmest day in like forever that s been in Antarctica.
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SPEAKER_02
It was like, it was positive degrees.
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SPEAKER_02
But at certain parts, it was also like negative 20, negative 30.
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SPEAKER_02
And that s where the cameras, you constantly have to be switching out the batteries and heating them up and like putting them basically in like your pants or they ll just get way too cold.
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SPEAKER_02
And we were prepared for much worse, but it ended up being much better than we thought.
5
SPEAKER_00
So for that video, but in general, maybe some other challenging videos, how do you go from the idea stage to the actual execution to the final video?
5
SPEAKER_00
Can you take me through like a full process of, like we re talking about some crazy, wild ideas today.
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SPEAKER_00
How do you go from that to a final video where you click publish?
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SPEAKER_02
Well, I mean, obviously, first things first, you gotta figure out the idea, and then it just depends.
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SPEAKER_02
I mean, pick any video you can think of on my channel.
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SPEAKER_02
I can take you through it.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, what about the, in a circle, you have to stay in a circle for 100 days.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so for that one, step one.
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SPEAKER_00
One of the most popular.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that video did really well.
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SPEAKER_02
So we, problem is we have to,
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SPEAKER_02
This is where you get really into the nuances of the company, because we have a lot of videos going out.
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SPEAKER_02
You can t just, in a vacuum, be like, all right, we re not doing anything for 100 days.
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SPEAKER_02
We re only filming this.
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SPEAKER_02
So step one is we had to build an independent crew that could actually do that for 100 days.
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SPEAKER_02
That way, everyone else could keep working on the normal videos and not just screw everything up.
5
SPEAKER_02
So step one, you build that team.
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SPEAKER_02
Okay, we got the team.
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SPEAKER_02
Now what do we need?
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SPEAKER_02
Well, to do this, we need probably like 10 cameras, at least rolling at all times.
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SPEAKER_02
So we re probably going to need to get a trailer and hook up a bunch of storage and stuff to just carry the sheer volume of footage we re going to have.
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SPEAKER_02
And so get a trailer, set up the cameras, go out in the field, paint a circle.
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SPEAKER_02
Now we need a house, go buy a house, bring it out there.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then it s like, oh wait, I think it d be funny if I brought the house in on the intro.
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SPEAKER_02
You know, find a crane that can lift up a house so I can drive it in and drop it in the intro.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s like an iterative process where you re like, okay, this would be funnier.
5
SPEAKER_00
So it s not all up front that it s written.
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SPEAKER_02
Ideally it would be, but as you kind of see things, you get inspired and then you think of more and more.
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SPEAKER_00
This would be better with a crane.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it d be better if I dropped out of the house.
5
SPEAKER_00
That was crazy that you decided to do that.
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SPEAKER_00
So fearless in the kind of crazy stuff you re willing to do.
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SPEAKER_02
I m a broken record, but whatever makes the best video possible.
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SPEAKER_02
That s all you focus on.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so what about the delegation of who gets to, what are the cameramen, the people operating the cameras, who s responsible for different things?
5
SPEAKER_00
Is it like a distributed process?
5
SPEAKER_02
Well, that s where whoever the lead cam would be on that video would just decide it.
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SPEAKER_02
That one, because we shot over 100 days, we didn t, a lot of it was just Sean, the guy who was in the circle, just vlogging.
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SPEAKER_02
We just gave him a camera and he figured it out.
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SPEAKER_02
And then we d have like, for him, just set hours each day that a cameraman would come.
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SPEAKER_02
So if he had any content, he needed extra hands.
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SPEAKER_02
Instead of just having someone on standby 24-7, it made more sense to do set hours.
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SPEAKER_02
Nice.
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SPEAKER_02
And yeah, it was hard, but you know, explaining it in hindsight, it sounds so simple, you know?
5
SPEAKER_00
And I guess the more, because that one is relatively simple, I guess, because it s a low number of people involved.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, the hard part about that is just the time.
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SPEAKER_02
I checked in on them so many different days, and it s like an hour here, two hours there, three hours there.
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SPEAKER_02
Over 100 days adds up to be a ton of time.
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SPEAKER_02
And even then, if you have a 10-person crew, paying them daily rates for 100 days, just all of that adds up.
5
SPEAKER_00
What about like the 100 versus 100, 100 adults versus 100 kids?
5
SPEAKER_00
What was bringing that to life?
5
SPEAKER_00
That seems like exceptionally challenging.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
Basically, the thought process was we did 100 boys versus 100 girls.
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SPEAKER_02
People loved it.
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SPEAKER_02
Honestly, I didn t think they d like it as much as they did.
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SPEAKER_02
The video did really, really well.
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SPEAKER_02
So, the second I saw that video was crushing, I was like, all right, we re doing it again.
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SPEAKER_02
But last time we did it, we did it in our studio.
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SPEAKER_02
So, we built a giant room, put 100 girls in it.
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SPEAKER_02
Sounds bad when I explain it like this.
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SPEAKER_02
And then a giant room, put 100 boys.
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SPEAKER_02
And we re like, after 100 hours, whichever room has the most people, we ll give them half a million dollars.
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SPEAKER_02
So we re like, all right, we re going to do it again.
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SPEAKER_02
So we threw out all these different ideas.
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SPEAKER_02
It was like 100 football players versus 100 cheerleaders, 100 this, 100 that, 100 prisoners versus 100 cops, just craziest ideas.
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SPEAKER_02
And we settled on 100 kids versus 100 adults.
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SPEAKER_02
And then the next step was like, how do we make it better?
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SPEAKER_02
The kids versus adults, or sorry, the boys versus girls, the first one we did was inside.
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SPEAKER_02
The problem was every time it was night, when we did these long time lapses, you couldn t see the sun go up and down.
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SPEAKER_02
So we re like, okay, this time I want to do it outside.
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SPEAKER_02
That s why the cubes are outside.
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SPEAKER_02
And instead of doing circles, we want to make them cubes.
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SPEAKER_02
And then, you know, it s figuring out, do we want that?
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SPEAKER_00
Those videos came up, at least today, as ones that are like really complicated in terms of the audio, in terms of how to film it.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that s the problem.
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SPEAKER_02
We had a lot of audio issues because in the first one, we didn t have a roof on it.
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SPEAKER_02
The second one, there was a roof, so there s a lot of reverb, which then in editing made it brutal.
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SPEAKER_02
Like half the shots weren t usable and it really screwed us over.
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SPEAKER_02
So we had to do a lot of frankensteining in the editing to make up for basically my ignorance.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you mentioned that you were surprised how well that one did.
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SPEAKER_00
A lot of creators talk about getting depressed when the videos don t do as well as they kind of expected.
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SPEAKER_00
There s a kind of feeling you can get really worn out by that.
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SPEAKER_00
Do you yourself feel that?
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SPEAKER_00
And also, do you have advice for others that feel this?
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s weird, because I am a numbers guy, but also, it used to.
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SPEAKER_02
It used to very much, especially when I was like betting everything I had on a video, when it did bad, I was devastated, man.
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SPEAKER_02
I d cry and I d be depressed for days and it really would have a severe impact on my mood.
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SPEAKER_02
But I don t know, now it doesn t really matter.
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SPEAKER_02
If a video does bad, I just look at it and I m like, oh, why did this video do bad?
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SPEAKER_02
probably, oh, there s a little retention dip there.
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SPEAKER_02
I don t think people like the thumbnail, maybe we should switch it.
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SPEAKER_02
And I just look at it objectively, unemotional, and then just move on.
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SPEAKER_02
And I feel like that s a much healthier way of going about it.
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SPEAKER_02
So if a creator is listening, that is the ideal way to respond to a video that s doing bad.
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SPEAKER_02
Just remove emotion from the equation and just look at it and figure out how you can improve the next one.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is there tricks to being able to detach yourself from that?
5
SPEAKER_00
Because in your case, I mean, that s true for creators, but in your case, there s a lot of money on the line.
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SPEAKER_00
These videos cost a lot of money.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, well, months of my life and so much time, but no, I mean, you just, I don t know, the only real answer is it s just a conscious effort.
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SPEAKER_02
You just have to unemotionally look at the video, determine the problems, and then move on.
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SPEAKER_02
There is no secret, you know what I mean?
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SPEAKER_02
It s that, and if you really can t bring yourself to do it, then you re just screwed.
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SPEAKER_02
Honestly, maybe you re not meant for this game.
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SPEAKER_00
Okay, so that s part of the development as a creator is like you re being able to be- For longevity, yes, yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
You have to unemotionally be able to look at videos that flop and figure it out.
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SPEAKER_02
And not every video can be a one out of 10.
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SPEAKER_02
And so when a video does bad, that just stress and depression is just gonna eventually get to you in the long run.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you said you ve failed in a bunch of videos, sort of taking them to completion.
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SPEAKER_00
So what are some of the biggest fails?
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, weirdly enough, as we ve matured and we ve done this more, we don t have that problem as much, especially now that we re getting into the multimillion dollar budgets per video.
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SPEAKER_02
It s like failure is not really an option anymore.
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SPEAKER_02
So I m a little more particular about what I do, but back in the day, yeah, like we would do a video where we spent 24 hours on a deserted island and we filmed it, did it all, and I just, I didn t like it after the edit.
5
SPEAKER_02
So I just grabbed the boys and we went back to the deserted island and spent another 24 hours there and refilmed it.
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SPEAKER_00
Could that have been caught and prevented at the idea stage?
5
SPEAKER_02
No, it was a good idea.
5
SPEAKER_02
It was just poor execution.
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SPEAKER_02
To be honest, when we were out there, it was hot.
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SPEAKER_02
We were just like, we all at one point just kind of wanted to die.
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SPEAKER_02
It was just miserable.
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SPEAKER_02
So how do you avoid that these days?
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SPEAKER_02
Well, I just went with what is a little cooler, to be honest.
5
SPEAKER_02
And then we had literally the amount of fun we had in the video was like 10 times higher.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, interesting.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you, like, there s some practical details that you just learned.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know.
5
SPEAKER_02
Videos that where it s very hot or it s on water, because I get super seasick.
5
SPEAKER_02
It was like a kind of like 10 things that if they have these variables, I m down to do it.
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SPEAKER_02
But my fun meter is not as high as normal.
5
SPEAKER_02
Like, we tried to – anytime we do anything on a boat, like when we spent 24 hours in Bermuda Triangle or when I tried to spend like – which it didn t get uploaded, but I tried to spend like 100 hours at sea or whatever, just like on a raft.
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SPEAKER_02
It just like – it makes me want to throw up and I get so seasick, I can t even see straight.
5
SPEAKER_02
But there are just some videos that require me to be on a boat, so I just suck it up.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when you spend months in creating a video, I know this is probably stressful to some creators, like how much stress, how do you feel when you have to click publish on a video?
5
SPEAKER_00
Now, not much.
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SPEAKER_00
Are you able to detach yourself?
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
Again, in old me, tons.
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SPEAKER_02
I d be like scratching and nervous and like my hands would be sweating like to the point where I m almost about to puke.
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SPEAKER_02
I m like, I really hope people like this.
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SPEAKER_02
you know, I don t know, I think that s just part of maturing it.
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SPEAKER_02
There s different, as a content creator, there s different phases.
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SPEAKER_02
And you just, like, once you get over the fear that you re just going to wake up one day and be irrelevant, you know, and you just, you know, accept that, like, you believe in yourself and you believe in your content and that you can continue to be irrelevant, then you don t, I don t know, you kind of, it s a little bit easier to detach yourself, I guess.
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SPEAKER_02
And
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SPEAKER_02
And that s, it s a much healthier place to be.
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SPEAKER_02
You can t do this for 10 years if every little thing just causes these huge emotional reactions.
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SPEAKER_02
It s like, that s why a lot of creators go a little, you know, mentally insane.
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SPEAKER_02
You know, you have to get out of that game, because it really messes with you.
5
SPEAKER_00
We ve talked about this a little bit, but how do you define and how do you suggest others define success on YouTube?
5
SPEAKER_02
It s so subjective.
5
SPEAKER_02
Some people, success is retiring their mom.
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SPEAKER_02
For you, success is inspiring people and educating them and whatever, peaking their curiosity.
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SPEAKER_02
For other people, it s just quitting their job.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you have to self-reflect on what your definition of success is.
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SPEAKER_00
Because I think a lot of creators kind of
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SPEAKER_00
don t really think, don t introspect.
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SPEAKER_00
They kinda wanna keep getting more and more subscribers kind of thing.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, but subscribers is just a vanity metric.
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SPEAKER_02
Subscribers don t correlate to views.
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SPEAKER_00
Sure, or views, whatever.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I know, but that s more, that wasn t directed to you, that was more directed to people listening, because a lot of people do really care about subscribers, or even followers, like on TikTok.
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SPEAKER_02
But if you look, like, your view, on YouTube, very, very few percent, even a percent of your views come from the sub feed, right?
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SPEAKER_02
They re almost all home feed or suggested.
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SPEAKER_02
When s the last time you clicked on your sub feed to watch a video?
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SPEAKER_00
Almost never, yeah.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, maybe five years ago.
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SPEAKER_02
It used to be a thing.
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SPEAKER_02
It s not anymore.
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SPEAKER_02
No one does.
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SPEAKER_02
And it s getting harder and harder to find something.
5
SPEAKER_00
I subscribe to way too many channels, I think.
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that s what everyone does.
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SPEAKER_02
And you subscribe to 10 channels, they re great, but two years later, your taste evolves, and it s a mess.
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SPEAKER_02
And so, subscribers don t really matter.
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SPEAKER_02
Followers on TikTok don t really matter.
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SPEAKER_02
Anyways, they really are the definition of a vanity metric.
5
SPEAKER_00
But what about views?
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SPEAKER_02
They do, obviously, because if people are showing up time and time again, that s what matters.
5
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so that s a good thing to define a success.
5
SPEAKER_00
I just feel like that too can be a problem.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would say if I wanted to be successful as a young creator, I might start copying Mr. Beast or something like that, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
You start trying to take shortcuts as opposed to find your own unique voice, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So chasing views is a problem, too, it feels like.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or no.
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SPEAKER_00
As long as you detach yourself from that.
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SPEAKER_02
if you re, sounds bad, but if you re lazy, yeah, and you just want to copy someone else and not experiment and find your own way.
5
SPEAKER_02
But, I mean, you can t make that excuse for them.
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SPEAKER_02
If someone just isn t coming up with the original stuff and putting in the effort, you can t just say, oh, it s because they re chasing views, we need some different metric for them to chase.
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SPEAKER_02
No, they just need to find their own way.
5
SPEAKER_00
It just feels like unique type of content will often lead to sacrifice in the number of views in the short term.
5
SPEAKER_02
By the long term, you win.
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SPEAKER_02
Or if you do win, you win more, I guess would be a better way of putting it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Do you think you will IPO Mr. Beesburger or Feastables in the next five, 10 years?
5
SPEAKER_02
Beesburger or Feastables, no.
5
SPEAKER_02
I kind of think, actually, you know what, I just realized, this is our first time talking about those.
5
SPEAKER_02
We re like an hour and a half in, that s so funny.
5
SPEAKER_00
We started talking about what?
5
SPEAKER_02
My retention brain kicked in.
5
SPEAKER_00
I wonder if you have retention brain for life itself.
5
SPEAKER_02
Oh, I do.
5
SPEAKER_02
Every time I m talking to someone, I m like, okay.
5
SPEAKER_00
What about loved ones?
5
SPEAKER_00
Spending time with loved ones thinking we could be doing something much better right now.
5
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, that is a serious problem.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, we ll pause the B-squared question.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_00
But that s why my current girlfriend, which I was telling you before when we were talking about this, is she has a genuine love for learning.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s something I have.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, I always feel like I need to be learning something to justify the time I m spending.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so, that s why it s such a nice trait because I feel like that time is being used optimally.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because whether we re watching a documentary or we re going and, you know,
6
SPEAKER_00
taking an IQ test or reading about whatever, just why modern art is a thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, whatever weird thing we decide to do.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m always learning and improving, so it justifies the time.
6
SPEAKER_02
So to maximize retention in your relationship, you wanna spend that time learning as much as possible.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, which conveniently, I don t have to force, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Or I wanna be recharging, so when I do work, I can hit the ground harder, and luckily, we re into a lot of the same things, which happen to be learning, and sometimes it s not learning, like maybe watching an anime or something like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I m a big believer in you re either, if you, well,
6
SPEAKER_00
If your goal is to be like a super successful entrepreneur, you need to either be working or you need to be doing something that decompresses and recharges you so you can work again, if your goal is to be like a really kick-ass entrepreneur.
6
SPEAKER_00
And obviously we re boiling this down to like a very basic thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so the things you re doing in your downtime, when you re not working, if it doesn t recharge you, you re screwed.
6
SPEAKER_00
you re just a ticking time bomb waiting to implode.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so you got to like, heavily recharge.
6
SPEAKER_00
And like, so like, watching for me, anime or whatever it is, playing a board game, like that is actually kind of crucial to my success, which takes a lot of maturing to come to that conclusion, because I used to be the kind of guy that wanted to work every hour of the day.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I would try to train myself to not need that stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I, you know, and I,
6
SPEAKER_00
almost resented like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
I have to do these kinds of things and it would piss me off because it s not optimal and, you know, I just really want to make content and entertain people.
6
SPEAKER_00
But as someone who s gone down that road and, you know, you just work every day for two, three months straight and, you know, every hour of the day and then it s just a bomb waiting to explode and lose your mind.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the only real sustainable thing is to just like give yourself time to recharge in between working.
6
SPEAKER_02
So there s a kind of balance you have to find.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have to.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I hate it more than anyone else.
6
SPEAKER_00
You hate not working.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s because it s just not optimal for time.
6
SPEAKER_00
As a human, I do need to occasionally watch a mindless show and play a board game.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it took me a very long time to come to peace with that and not… I would have like borderline panic attacks when I do it because I m like, what am I doing right now?
6
SPEAKER_00
Why am I doing this?
6
SPEAKER_00
I should be, you know, like…
6
SPEAKER_00
What if one day I have to lay off an employee because we re not doing so well?
6
SPEAKER_00
How could I justify watching this show or whatever I m doing right now?
6
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of things like that that go on in your head, but it s necessary.
6
SPEAKER_02
Before we return to Mr. Beast Burger, since we re on the topic, what is a perfectly productive day in the life of Mr. Beast look like?
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh boy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, I mean, I mean, the perfectly productive day is we film a main channel video because those get a hundred million a pop.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it doesn t really get any better than that.
6
SPEAKER_02
What about like the average day when you re not on the set?
6
SPEAKER_02
When you re like, because you re running a lot of things, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so right now we have our snack brand, Feastables.
6
SPEAKER_00
We have a restaurant chain, Beast Burger.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then we basically, which we haven t even really launched any products yet, but we have the data company that I was showing you, where we re going to roll out some tools for creators.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then we have the React channel, the gaming channel, the main channel, and then we have my charity, which also has a channel.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so, kind of how I ve structured my life right now is whenever I have free time, we just kind of go, hey guys, Jimmy s got an hour from 2pm to 3pm.
6
SPEAKER_00
And everyone s just like, I need this, I need this.
6
SPEAKER_00
And this channel s like, I need this thing filmed.
6
SPEAKER_00
Or, you know, whatever, the guy who runs my TikTok s like, I need this TikTok filmed.
6
SPEAKER_00
Or, you know, Beast Burger s like, I need this menu item approved, and we need to talk about this marketing thing.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then we kind of just look at what everyone needs, and we re like, that one looks like the most important, we ll do that.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s just kind of like, you know, if I just did that for every company in a day, then that s optimal.
6
SPEAKER_00
If I just kind of, like an optimal day for me would be going down to eight companies and just whatever they re like two to three biggest pain points or things they need from me and just doing those.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, based on priority and then trying to keep it as short as possible to just the things that you re needed on.
6
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t get more optimal than that.
6
SPEAKER_00
If I clear the bottlenecks or some bottlenecks for all my companies, then it s, yeah, that s a perfect day.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I mean, even just me, because you re like, you re showing me around, and you re being a great and gracious host, but on top of that, you re just doing all these meetings.
6
SPEAKER_02
You basically.
6
SPEAKER_00
I felt bad at some points.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was like, oh, I just tricked him into going to meetings with me.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s like my little meeting buddy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it was fun.
6
SPEAKER_02
It was fun to see how effectively you ve delegated.
6
SPEAKER_02
You basically trust the team to do a really good job on the various things, and there s just a strong team that s able to
6
SPEAKER_02
carry the flag on all the different tasks.
6
SPEAKER_02
From the brainstorming in the main channel to the reacts and so on.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s really interesting.
6
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s really interesting what it takes to build a team like that, because you very quickly build a very large team that s able to scale.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s very scary because it s my first, you know, I m 24, you know, and I think I was telling you this earlier.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s funny because six years ago I had to raise my hand to use the bathroom and now I m in charge of hundreds of people and entertain hundreds of millions of people.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so it is crazy just how quick it comes up.
6
SPEAKER_00
I wish I was a little bit older so I could have ran a couple of companies and failed a few companies in the past and like learn from those and apply those here.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I know for a fact when I m 34, I m 24 now, when I m 34, I ll know so much more about running a business and scaling and hiring and how to lead people and better effectively communicate and all these different skill sets that will make me a better leader.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s the only thing that sucks is I just don t have those because I just haven t been through the lessons and I just have such a lucrative thing on my plate right now and it just sucks that I have to learn the lessons with the lucrative thing, you know what I mean?
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, because you already have so much influence, so much impact, but you have effectively scaled.
6
SPEAKER_02
What lessons do you draw from that how to effectively scale as a 24-year-old?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s something I feel like I actually could give a lot of value to, to young people who are doing it, like older people who ve built five companies or whatever they do.
6
SPEAKER_00
I probably couldn t, you know, they re going to be like, oh, this is so obvious.
6
SPEAKER_00
But for younger first-time business owners,
6
SPEAKER_00
you gotta just experiment, to be honest.
6
SPEAKER_00
And for us, like, it s just a new space.
6
SPEAKER_00
No one had really ever scaled up a hundred person team to build, make content on YouTube.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, there wasn t no... I spent all this time, like, I hired one person from Disney at one point to come in and help.
6
SPEAKER_00
And obviously, that was a dumb idea looking back on it.
6
SPEAKER_00
But
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, I thought, oh, they make great stuff people want to watch.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they come over here and help me build a team.
6
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, they build it more the traditional way and not like how it should be online.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so then it s like, OK, now I m not trying to trash people like they all tried their best.
6
SPEAKER_00
But then I hire this one person who does this different type of media and runs a hundred person team.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then you come in here and they try to build it that way.
6
SPEAKER_00
They don t really listen to you or value or see the difference.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I tried basically
6
SPEAKER_00
building this company with four or five different people who worked in different veins of media.
6
SPEAKER_00
And every single time, they just don t get it, and they don t understand my world.
6
SPEAKER_00
And the eventual solution was just to roll up my sleeves and do it myself, with James or a hitman.
6
SPEAKER_00
No one s ever done this, and no one s gonna just give us a golden carrot and tell us how to build this company.
6
SPEAKER_00
We gotta figure the fuck out ourselves.
6
SPEAKER_02
And you have to build up people from scratch then.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
6
SPEAKER_00
All the stuff I was talking about earlier and all the lessons I learned along the way.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so, for me, that was a big part of like, stop trying to have someone build this company for me and just do it myself.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because it s scary.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, I spent my whole life studying YouTube videos and virality, not business building.
6
SPEAKER_00
But fuck it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was like, I guess we just got to do it ourselves then.
6
SPEAKER_00
And that s where things really start to click.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we got the exponential growth and we started getting the right people and training them the right way.
6
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, just throwing conventional stuff out the door and focusing on what s actually practical for YouTube, which is just completely different than traditional media.
6
SPEAKER_02
So you train people and then those people train people and so on.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, it s just even like, you know, how you do the lighting on sets or like how you do the audio or, you know, not writing scripts.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, we re just not as efficient with our filming.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, sometimes I have to have 30 cameras running.
6
SPEAKER_00
Why?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because it s not scripted.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what Chris is going to do when we start filming.
6
SPEAKER_00
He might run over there, but guess what?
6
SPEAKER_00
We got to have it planned because there s only one shot.
6
SPEAKER_00
I can t, you know, tell him not to do that.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that s the shooting.
6
SPEAKER_02
But then there s also the editing.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and then the editing as well and not having guardrails and kind of, you know, at the end of the day, it s whatever I want.
6
SPEAKER_00
The video, their job is to make a video that they think I ll like because it s my channel, but, you know, you can achieve that kind of however.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so it s just, everything s just different.
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s much more, I guess, like a startup as opposed to... Are you often surprised, like with the result?
6
SPEAKER_02
you think a certain, like we watched a video today that was really nice, that was different than you would have potentially edited.
6
SPEAKER_02
Are you sometimes surprised by a decision an editor makes?
6
SPEAKER_02
It s like, okay, that s not the way I would have done it, but it s actually, this is a cool idea.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, of course, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
The thing, my biggest fear is I don t ever want to get trapped in like a bubble of, you know, because we are getting 100 million views a video on the main channel, like, but I don t want to get in this feedback loop of just, my ideas are great, or like that feedback loop, but stop learning and improving.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because it is easy sometimes to be like, what we re doing is working, we need to just keep doing it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I want to keep learning and trying new things.
6
SPEAKER_00
I guess one way I d put it is like, when you re on a come up or you re growing, you don t want to test new things once you start to plateau or have a downtrend.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because if you re like, you know, you re skyrocketing, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
You re up, up, up, and then you level off, you start to go down, and you re like, oh, this isn t working anymore.
6
SPEAKER_00
Let s start experimenting.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, if you have a bad experiment,
6
SPEAKER_00
Now you re in like a tailspin, you re nosediving, and you have one more bad experiment, you re like, screwed, kind of, I m oversimplifying.
6
SPEAKER_00
You want to test things while you re still growing to keep the growing from happening.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because once you like have, you know, again, very oversimplifying that like, you know, kind of level off, you do a couple tests that go wrong, you re like, screwed, you know what I mean?
6
SPEAKER_00
You re already out the door, now you re just confirming that you re out the door.
6
SPEAKER_00
and online entertainment.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that s kind of how I see it.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I think it s very imperative that you re constantly always experimenting and trying things, even if you re getting crazy, unheard of growth.
6
SPEAKER_02
And so that, outside of the thing that brought you to the dance, you just dived right into Mr. Beast Burger and Feastables.
6
SPEAKER_02
This is a whole nother industry.
6
SPEAKER_02
Like what was that like?
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, so Beast Burger, we kind of,
6
SPEAKER_00
It was supposed to be like just a pop-up.
6
SPEAKER_00
We just partnered with someone who had 300 restaurants and we re just like, you know, let s just sell Beast Burgers for a day or two.
6
SPEAKER_00
Let s see what happens.
6
SPEAKER_00
We didn t really think it would be as big as it was, but those first, like that first day, you know, we do six figures in sales and they all sell out and they re running to local Walmarts.
6
SPEAKER_00
They can t keep up with the demand.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, okay, well, maybe let s just leave it open a week, whatever.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we re just doing crazy revenue.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s like, okay, well,
6
SPEAKER_00
let s add some more restaurants and let s just leave them open for a month.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we re just still doing six figures a day.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it kind of just went from this thing that was, I don t know, it wasn t really, I didn t really plan on running a restaurant chain, but here I am.
6
SPEAKER_02
But didn t that in some sense also open your mind to something like Feastables?
6
SPEAKER_00
Feastables is something I ve always wanted to do.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I think just in general, American snacks are just full of so much
6
SPEAKER_00
horrible ingredients, to be honest.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they re not, I don t know.
6
SPEAKER_00
I feel like there also just hasn t been any innovation in American snacks in quite a while.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so that s just something I ve always been pretty passionate about.
6
SPEAKER_00
The thing, we built that from scratch.
6
SPEAKER_00
So we hired the CEO and built a team around them.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we spent probably over two and a half years before we even launched, just like building the right team, figuring things out and making sure it was actually ran the way I wanted, which Feastables has just been crushing.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s very interesting.
6
SPEAKER_00
This is something I ve never talked about publicly, but having products in retail, it s like before Feastables, everything I had done was online.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, if you wanted to, you know, anything from the quote-unquote Peace brand, you d have to buy it online and ship it to you.
6
SPEAKER_00
But Feastables, now that, you know, because our first product, Chocobars, we started putting that in retail locations.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, like, for example, Walmart, it s
6
SPEAKER_00
it s crazy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, it s just, it doesn t make sense.
6
SPEAKER_00
How, if you re, which I guess it does for, because we get 100 million views a video.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, a lot of people know us.
6
SPEAKER_00
If I go stand at Walmart, those people recognize me and ask for photos.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, if I stood there long enough, I could take 150 photos today in Walmart or 200, whatever it is.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, obviously, it makes sense those people go fight feastables.
6
SPEAKER_00
But then you just multiply that by every Walmart in America, and it just gets so crazy.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I didn t think we d be doing the kind of revenue we are.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we re about to
6
SPEAKER_00
launching some other, I don t know if I m allowed to say it, so whatever, but other big retail locations and convenience stores, and by the end of next year, we could be in like 40, 50,000 locations, and the numbers just don t make sense.
6
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
6
SPEAKER_02
What are some interesting challenges about scaling there that surprised you?
6
SPEAKER_00
The biggest problem, which I didn t think would be, was just keeping the shelves in Walmart stock, to be honest.
6
SPEAKER_00
So that supply chain.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was brutal.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, even then, sometimes you get the stuff and it takes them a day or two to put it out in that specific location.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I had to stop promoting it because every time I d mention it, 40% of people would just be like, it s not there, it s not in Walmart, or I can t buy it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so there was like a...
6
SPEAKER_00
three-ish month period where I just didn t promote Feastables because I was scared that someone would go buy it and it s just not there.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so, like, it took us a very long time to catch up to the demand and also, you know, it s not like we have unlimited money.
6
SPEAKER_00
But now we re relatively caught up and keeping up, but it s going to be interesting because now this year in 2023, we re going to basically, you know,
6
SPEAKER_00
10X the amount of locations we re in.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we re going to try to launch new products.
6
SPEAKER_00
So we re in for an interesting ride.
6
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, I just hate, I hate when I tell people, you know, like, hey, go try this product.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then they go in their local Walmart and eventually other places and it s not there.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s just so brutal.
6
SPEAKER_00
You know, they made that whole journey out there and they couldn t get it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so that was really it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Besides that, no, it s been doing way better than I ever thought.
6
SPEAKER_02
You ve talked to a couple places about maybe doing mobile games or computer games in the future.
6
SPEAKER_02
Is that something you re still considering?
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, because, you know, do you normally talk with people as much as we talked beforehand?
6
SPEAKER_00
Is that?
6
SPEAKER_00
No, no, that was the problem.
6
SPEAKER_00
We spent all day today talking about stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just clicked in my head, everything you asked me is stuff we already talked about.
6
SPEAKER_01
Not really.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, no, no, not everything.
6
SPEAKER_00
I take it back.
6
SPEAKER_00
But sorry, the last two questions.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so it s just funny.
6
SPEAKER_02
There s a different style of asking those questions, because I on purpose didn t dig further with you.
6
SPEAKER_02
I could tell, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_02
By the way, okay, all right.
6
SPEAKER_02
This is the first time I ve ever talked to somebody as much as I did with you beforehand.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
On the same day.
6
SPEAKER_01
Not even the same day.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I only slept one hour.
6
SPEAKER_00
Literally, it s funny.
6
SPEAKER_02
This is a hilarious and awesome social experiment.
6
SPEAKER_00
I picked him up from his hotel and I just like harassed him all day to hang out with me.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then here we are now.
6
SPEAKER_00
I love it.
6
SPEAKER_02
I was secretly recording the whole time, just saying.
6
SPEAKER_02
I m just kidding.
6
SPEAKER_02
Anyway, so what was the question?
6
SPEAKER_02
The mobile games.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so the interesting thing is with Beast Burger and Feastables that there s physical goods as opposed to like making mobile games or PC game, which everyone may end up doing, which is software.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I actually have a giant international audience.
6
SPEAKER_00
Most of my audience is obviously outside of America.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so, the problem we re running into is it just takes time to build up the supply chain and get Feastibles in Southeast Asia, get Feastibles in India, get Feastibles in Brazil and Mexico and all these other places where we have giant pockets of our audience.
6
SPEAKER_00
And same thing with Beast Burger.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s just, it s going to take probably years, unless we partner with someone who already has the distribution, which we re figuring out.
6
SPEAKER_00
But the beauty of software is I can make a hypothetical game or whatever we end up doing
6
SPEAKER_00
all my fans can, you know, use it tomorrow, the day I mention it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so, if I promote something in a video to 100 million people, and it s like a, you know, basically like a game, they can all download it.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, but if I promote a Feastables bar, right now it s only in America, because we re struggling just to keep up with
7
SPEAKER_01
with American demand.
7
SPEAKER_01
We haven t even gotten the chance to go outside of America.
7
SPEAKER_01
So I alienate a majority of my audience, and it feels so shitty to just mention something that most of them can t buy.
7
SPEAKER_01
But on the flip side, you can t just spawn this crazy infrastructure and just have
7
SPEAKER_01
tens of millions of bars and all your products in every single store across the world before you promote it, so you can t put the egg before the chicken.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so, it s like, that s what I m excited about.
7
SPEAKER_01
I want to get into less physical stuff and more stuff that everyone in my audience can actually use.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s the thought process.
7
SPEAKER_00
Especially if there s a social element to the gaming too, because it s not unlike Feastables, like, that s a product you consume.
7
SPEAKER_01
You missed it.
7
SPEAKER_01
When you re setting up for this, we were doing some, basically just laying out everything that we re planning for.
7
SPEAKER_01
So we re at the phase where we want to start hiring the team to build it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And we re kind of just laying out the game.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I was actually really curious to get your thoughts, but I can t say it because whatever I say, someone s just going to take it and run with it.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I have a pretty good idea.
7
SPEAKER_00
About the kind of games you re thinking about?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I can imagine.
7
SPEAKER_00
We also talked a little bit about it.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s super awesome.
7
SPEAKER_01
So much good ones.
7
SPEAKER_01
So much good talks.
7
SPEAKER_01
I have the juicy talks to have with you.
7
SPEAKER_01
She s like, I got to go set up.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, you know, I already heard a lot of awesome stuff.
7
SPEAKER_00
I mean, but that is a different kind of team you would need to hire.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
Is that a little nerve wracking, like going into a new field and trying to... A little bit.
7
SPEAKER_01
But then I remind myself, like, like Steve Jobs didn t know how to code.
7
SPEAKER_01
Right.
7
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, he just he just knew what a good product was.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I feel like as someone who wasted so much of his life playing video games, I have a good sense of it.
7
SPEAKER_01
And that might be ignorance.
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s really important, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
It s not about coding.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s about what makes for a good game.
7
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
And again, that might genuinely be ignorance.
7
SPEAKER_01
And maybe I end up, you know, getting bit in the butt because of what I m saying now.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I think just like with YouTube, I just want to obsess over making a great product and things that I think my audience will love.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I think as long as I keep that as my North Star, it ll do well.
7
SPEAKER_00
What does the path to being worth $100 billion look like?
7
SPEAKER_01
What does a path to being worth 100 billion look like?
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
7
SPEAKER_00
Okay, let me just pause here.
7
SPEAKER_00
24, and there s so much awesome scaling, so many great ideas.
7
SPEAKER_00
Do you think about different trajectories?
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
What those possible trajectories might look like?
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I mean, if the goal was to just be worth $100 billion, yes.
7
SPEAKER_01
My goal, I m a broken record, is to make the best video possible because I know whatever else I want will come, obviously.
7
SPEAKER_01
So the video is the foundation.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, exactly.
7
SPEAKER_01
So the path to $100 billion is
7
SPEAKER_01
keep getting 100 million views a video, you know what I mean?
7
SPEAKER_01
Or more.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, or more, exactly, if we can keep growing.
7
SPEAKER_01
But, you know, if we can keep Feastables growing, right, and we eventually expand international and one day we re in 100,000 retail locations and
7
SPEAKER_01
We re selling the same amount of units per SKUs like we re currently doing.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that would crush.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then obviously, ideally, one day we open up hundreds of Beast Burgers, we get it where we turn out, you know, like Supercell, a couple hit games.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t want to make dozens or hundreds of games.
7
SPEAKER_01
I just want to make games that are just great.
7
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, we rarely drop them, but we do, they re bangers.
7
SPEAKER_01
And just, you know, whatever other stuff we end up doing, all that combined.
7
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s just...
7
SPEAKER_01
Interesting because like what what s a show that s pulled a hundred million views per episode basically this Like we re doing like, you know, I mean like the Super Bowl gets praised because they get a hundred million viewers But I can t think of a show Maybe in reruns or something.
7
SPEAKER_00
So it s also a show that s has a Singular kind of figure.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you can now use as a
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, I don t have a network telling me what to do.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t have anyone.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, I can do whatever I want.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it s a very interesting position because I put out content and 100 million people show up.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then I also have a gaming channel.
7
SPEAKER_01
I put out content and 15 million people show up.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I have a React channel, I put out content and 10 million people show up.
7
SPEAKER_01
I have a TikTok and I put out content and on average, 20 million people show up.
7
SPEAKER_01
And like, and I, so.
7
SPEAKER_01
As long as I can keep that going, and then we build these businesses, it s like, it s honestly pretty scary to see what will happen, you know, over the years.
7
SPEAKER_01
Because Feastivals launched, you know, last year, 2022.
7
SPEAKER_01
So it s a relatively new thing.
7
SPEAKER_01
And Beast Burger, we just started scaling up the physical side.
7
SPEAKER_01
We haven t obviously even launched any mobile games yet.
7
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So I think I m at the antithesis of it.
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I don t see a world where my YouTube channel is irrelevant in the next couple of years.
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SPEAKER_01
I just, this is what I live for.
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SPEAKER_01
And so if I can keep that going, and then really start to expand these businesses that leverage off of it, then
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SPEAKER_01
Hopefully there s a day when I can give away a billion dollars in a video, honestly.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that would be one hell of a video.
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SPEAKER_00
Let me ask you the ridiculous question.
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SPEAKER_00
Since you went from being broke to being rich, although you keep spending all your money, does money buy happiness?
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SPEAKER_00
How has money changed your contentment, your happiness in life?
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SPEAKER_01
It s money by happiness.
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SPEAKER_01
No, not.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, to a point, yes.
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SPEAKER_01
Once you can take care of your health, you can take care of like any immediate dangers and you can take care of your family relatively.
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SPEAKER_01
No, it doesn t.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, but those things do.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, when I first came into money, one of the first things I did was retire my mom.
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SPEAKER_01
And like, that brought me tons of happiness, you know what I mean?
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And like, you know, if my brother had a medical emergency and we couldn t afford it, and I made money to afford it, that d bring tons of happiness, you know?
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SPEAKER_01
So once you take care of those basic necessities, so we ll say make over hypothetically a million dollars, no, it really doesn t.
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SPEAKER_01
Like adding an extra zero, going from 10 million to 100 million or whatever it is, makes no difference.
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SPEAKER_00
So you re, given that, are just fearless in spending the money.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, let me reframe.
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SPEAKER_01
I guess it could, for some people, if you really, I don t know, you spent your whole life obsessing over cars, it probably would bring you a little bit of joy to buy a nice Lamborghini.
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SPEAKER_01
I m coming more from the frame of mind of an entrepreneur, someone who s really obsessed with business building.
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SPEAKER_01
For me, and a lot of my friends and people I hang around, what brings us happiness is winning and building companies.
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SPEAKER_01
changing the world, like that is fun.
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SPEAKER_01
It s a complex problem you can wake up every day and it gives you something to obsess over and devote your life to.
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SPEAKER_01
Whereas just having money doesn t, you know?
7
SPEAKER_00
Well, one interesting question I have for you psychologically, so because you
7
SPEAKER_00
have become wealthy and because you give, like part of your work is giving away a lot of money, do you find it hard to find people you can trust?
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SPEAKER_00
Do people see you basically as a source of money, as opposed to another human being?
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SPEAKER_01
It s weird, because you would think yes, but I feel like I also know the right places to look.
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SPEAKER_01
But yeah, if I just walked into Target and tried to make friends with 10 random people, of course, you gotta,
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SPEAKER_01
So you can kind of sense who has the right thing in their heart.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s so obvious.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t even want to go into descriptions, but honestly, a lot of my friends, like Chandler, I played Little League with him.
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SPEAKER_01
And Tyler, the guy, I mean, I went to school with him.
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SPEAKER_01
Chris, he was my first subscriber.
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SPEAKER_01
Carl was here after we got big, but whatever, he s friends with the boys.
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SPEAKER_01
And a lot of my closer friends, even like my YouTube friends, I knew before I was big.
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SPEAKER_01
Maybe there is some merit to that, maybe it is.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know, I ve never really put too much thought into it, but maybe there s a reason I hang around a lot of these people I knew before I got big, because it s much easier.
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SPEAKER_00
And they help you keep your radar sharp of who can and can t be trusted, because you know you can trust them.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s difficult when you become richer and richer and more powerful.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, one thing you ll also find when you get rich, not even richer, but more famous.
7
SPEAKER_01
One thing I thought is, as I climbed this ladder of YouTube and got bigger, I thought there would be tons of people like me.
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SPEAKER_01
Like that takes like the kamikaze approach to building a business.
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SPEAKER_01
You just throw all your money in it, you throw all your time, you throw all your energy, you throw everything.
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SPEAKER_01
You re just like, fuck it.
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SPEAKER_01
It s this or I m dead.
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SPEAKER_01
And I thought there would be hundreds of these.
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SPEAKER_01
And there isn t.
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I mean, there s like maybe one or two.
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And I talk to those motherfuckers every single day.
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SPEAKER_01
I m sick and tired of talking to them, but I love them.
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SPEAKER_01
But it s just so interesting, because like every level I got up, I d get a million subscribers.
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SPEAKER_01
I d be like, all right.
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SPEAKER_01
Where s all these guys in the million subscribers that are fucking psychopaths?
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SPEAKER_00
And then, you know, you know, people become like conservative as they get, like, they get more, especially as they get bigger.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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And, you know, 20 million subscribers, 30.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like every step of the way.
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SPEAKER_01
It s like, I just got more and more lonely to be honest with you.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, it sounds cliche and you hear that kind of shit in movies and you re like, oh, that s not how it works.
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SPEAKER_01
But
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It is, there s just not many people that just wanna give up everything, go all in, then obsess over making the greatest goddamn videos every single day of their life.
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SPEAKER_01
They re really hard to find.
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SPEAKER_00
And be able to sacrifice everything for that video.
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SPEAKER_00
Like basically put all the money right back in.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, or the people doing it, they re on just a small scale.
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SPEAKER_01
And if I talk to them, it s just 99.9% of the time I m teaching them things.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s lonely because there s not too many people, especially in the creative space, that are as crazy as you.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it is, 100%.
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SPEAKER_01
It s so, it s not what I was expecting.
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SPEAKER_01
I was expecting there d be a lot of people like me, but.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, I guess the guy we talked to, Elon Musk, is a bit like you in that sense.
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SPEAKER_00
In a different domain.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
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SPEAKER_00
Just willingness to put it all back in.
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SPEAKER_01
And that s why I ve found right now a lot of the people I relate to don t even make YouTube videos.
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SPEAKER_01
I m veering more and more away from fellow content creators and more to just,
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SPEAKER_01
I m just looking for those other people who just share a little bit of it so I don t feel so fucking crazy all the time.
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SPEAKER_01
You know what I mean?
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SPEAKER_01
And people I feel normal around, and they tend to just be doing the randomest things, but loving it.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, I think that s really inspiring.
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SPEAKER_00
It s like the Bukowski line, find what you love and let it kill you, is really put everything
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put everything into the thing you love.
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SPEAKER_00
That s like the way to really create special stuff, but it s also the way to live out your life most fully.
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SPEAKER_01
You have to be careful giving this advice, because they re like bodybuilders.
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SPEAKER_01
They ll be like, just go to the gym, be disciplined.
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SPEAKER_01
I m disciplined, go to the gym.
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SPEAKER_01
I would argue for those people, it s not even discipline.
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SPEAKER_01
They just enjoy weightlifting, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Because there are people who are jacked, but they don t make much money or run a business, right?
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SPEAKER_01
If they were that disciplined, they would be hitting every area of their life.
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SPEAKER_01
They just really like business.
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SPEAKER_01
And there s people like me who just, to an extreme level, love building companies, right?
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SPEAKER_01
It s not even discipline for me.
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It s just in my blood.
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SPEAKER_01
It s what I wake up.
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I don t think about it.
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I don t push myself.
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SPEAKER_01
I don t need to watch a fucking motivational video to go work.
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I just do it.
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It s programmed in me at this point.
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And I couldn t imagine a world where I don t wake up and do it every day.
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SPEAKER_01
But I think that a little bit of it is genetics, and just how you re hardwired.
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SPEAKER_01
Not that it can t be trained or taught.
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SPEAKER_01
And obviously, the friend group you re in influences these things, and over time, I think can change it.
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SPEAKER_01
But someone s just not gonna be able to flip a switch and then just start doing a kamikaze approach to building a business.
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SPEAKER_01
Just like a lot of people try to flip a switch and start bodybuilding and quit majority of the time.
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SPEAKER_01
It s just not innate to them.
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SPEAKER_00
But I think a lot of us have the capacity to do that in some domain.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think if you went about it strategically, if you surrounded yourself with fellow like-minded people and slowly over time switched it, but if you just try to hardcore do it, you re just gonna lose your mind.
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SPEAKER_00
Do you ever worry about your mental health?
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SPEAKER_00
Did you take steps to protect it to, yeah, for the long run, to make sure you have the mental strength to go on?
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SPEAKER_01
Yes, weirdly enough, the best thing for my mental health was giving in to my innate nature to work.
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The most depressed I get is when I try to restrict it.
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I m like, I don t work weekends, or I don t work this day.
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SPEAKER_01
What s best for me is just to work when I feel like working, and then just not work when I don t, like, and just have no constraints.
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SPEAKER_01
Because there are just some nights where I don t want to sleep, and for whatever reason, I feel compelled to go all night.
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Whatever, like, just do it, you know, do whatever you want, is what I tell my, like,
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working brain, and I just give into it.
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SPEAKER_01
And I feel, that s where I feel the happiest.
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SPEAKER_01
And then, you know, it s typically like, when I m really in the grind mode, it ll be like seven or eight days, just nonstop going, going.
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SPEAKER_01
And then it s like, I ll realize like, oh, I need some recharge time.
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SPEAKER_01
And then go fucking binge a season of anime.
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but that s the thing, like people will tell you, don t work weekends, or don t do this, or don t work past this, or blah, blah, give you all these constraints.
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SPEAKER_01
But for me, and it s unconventional, I just give into it.
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SPEAKER_00
I think there s something really to be said for that.
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SPEAKER_00
I try to surround myself with people that, like when I pull an all-nighter, they don t go like, you should get more sleep.
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SPEAKER_00
There s a reason I pulled that all-nighter.
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SPEAKER_00
Like if I m really passionate about something, they basically encourage it.
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SPEAKER_00
I have no problem getting sleep and getting rest.
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SPEAKER_00
What I need in my life is people that encourage you to kind of keep going, keep going with the stuff you re passionate about.
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SPEAKER_01
Normal people, they don t want that life and they probably shouldn t.
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SPEAKER_01
It s not good for you.
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SPEAKER_01
But yeah, if you hang around people, just whatever, different people, you re gonna feel crazy and it s gonna wear on you.
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SPEAKER_01
Whereas if you re around similar people, it s so much easier.
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SPEAKER_01
I ve started weightlifting more and one thing that s helped is just having jack people around me.
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SPEAKER_01
They naturally just eat healthier.
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SPEAKER_01
They do.
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SPEAKER_01
They naturally just have
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freaking grilled chicken and all this shit and high-protein meals.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s just like easier for me to just piggyback and be like, oh, can you just order me whatever you re getting?
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SPEAKER_01
And they re like, I got to go to the gym.
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SPEAKER_01
And I ll be like, oh, shit, I ll just join you, you know.
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SPEAKER_01
And it s like, it s just, it s cheat codes, you know, just surround yourself with people that you want to be.
7
SPEAKER_01
And it makes it like 70% easier, in my opinion.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s like that is the cheat code to life.
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SPEAKER_01
And I wish
7
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, your audience is definitely a lot older, but to the older people listening, if you are in a place of mentorship for someone younger or have influence over younger people, you should really try to drill that in their heads.
7
SPEAKER_01
The people they are around 100% dictates the outcome.
7
SPEAKER_01
I would not be on 120 million subscribers if I didn t find, when I was around a million, I had a couple of friends that were just also psychopaths.
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SPEAKER_01
I outgrew them.
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SPEAKER_01
But at the time, it was great.
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SPEAKER_01
And I wouldn t be where I am today if it wasn t for them.
7
SPEAKER_01
And just all along the way, the friends that I hung out with had such a dramatic impact on where I am.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, I d probably have 80 million less subscribers, you know, if I wasn t so strategic about hanging out with people that I add value to and they also add value to me.
7
SPEAKER_00
So the advice for young people would be to
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SPEAKER_00
be very selective about the people you re on your show with.
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SPEAKER_01
So selective.
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SPEAKER_01
It s crazy.
7
SPEAKER_01
Chris, he s really funny, and that s why he s great for the videos.
7
SPEAKER_01
And part of why he s so funny is he consumes copious amounts of cartoons and just funny content.
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SPEAKER_01
And so I ll find, when I spend more time with Chris, I ll start just quoting these weird cartoons and shows.
7
SPEAKER_01
My speech will literally change just after a week of spending more time with him.
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SPEAKER_01
It s that quick of an effect.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, now picture that over the course of years.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, yeah, it has such a huge influence.
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SPEAKER_01
Like, pluck one of their friends out and hypothetically put me in there and, you know, there s no doubt if they re trying to become a content creator, their odds of success is 10x, right?
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SPEAKER_01
Obviously, you can t do that, but you got to find your closest version of it.
7
SPEAKER_00
And just be selective, yeah.
7
SPEAKER_00
But this also applies not just to younger, to older people too.
7
SPEAKER_01
Agreed, but it s even more, I, like, when I was a teenager, I just, you know, I couldn t relate to many people and I just thought I was like a fucking freak of nature because no one was obsessed with building businesses or any of this kind of stuff.
7
SPEAKER_01
And so like, back then, you know, that advice would have been helpful.
7
SPEAKER_01
Maybe not that particularly, but just knowing that there are, it s not that you re a freak of nature, you just haven t found people that have the same interests.
7
SPEAKER_00
So the task is...
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SPEAKER_00
not to feel sorry for yourself or somehow change yourself, it s more to find people you fit in with.
7
SPEAKER_01
Assuming which, you re not getting compliments, assume it s not something bad.
7
SPEAKER_01
If your hobby is shooting things, or shooting things you shouldn t be shooting, don t find people that encourage that.
7
SPEAKER_00
But outside of that, for sure.
7
SPEAKER_00
Actually, as an answer to what is the best advice someone ever gave you, you said, you re crazy until you re successful, then you re a genius.
7
SPEAKER_01
100%, all along the way.
7
SPEAKER_01
People gave me so much advice on why I shouldn t be doing it, why I m crazy.
7
SPEAKER_01
Every step of the way, people wanted to tell me why I shouldn t be doing this and should get a life, should stop being too obsessed.
7
SPEAKER_01
Everything, everything under the book.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then once I m successful, those same people are like, dang, you re a genius.
7
SPEAKER_01
Wow, you really, you pulled that off.
7
SPEAKER_00
Those are probably the same people that will give you advice now
7
SPEAKER_00
you re the most successful video creator of all time, stick to that.
7
SPEAKER_00
Anytime you wanna do something new, right?
7
SPEAKER_00
They ll like pressure you not to do, you know, Feastables or mobile gaming or whatever lays beyond.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s funny how people don t.
7
SPEAKER_01
Well, honestly, they re the type of people I just don t talk to anymore.
7
SPEAKER_01
I wouldn t even know what they have to say now.
7
SPEAKER_00
So most people on the team are like, yes and, they re like, whatever the idea you got, they re with it.
7
SPEAKER_01
Let s go.
7
SPEAKER_01
No, I mean, it s weird.
7
SPEAKER_01
We actually have a, my team pushes back on me pretty hardcore, which I want.
7
SPEAKER_01
I don t want yes men.
7
SPEAKER_01
And they re like, they re, James, you know, the CEO who helped me build all this, he s very adamant.
7
SPEAKER_01
Like, we re not yes men.
7
SPEAKER_01
And he trains people to really think for themselves.
7
SPEAKER_01
And even when I give them orders to like really think,
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, is this optimal?
8
SPEAKER_00
Is there context or information Jimmy could be missing that I could provide that could help him make a more updated decision?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, I m not God, you know what I mean?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like, I m human and I make errors.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so don t take what I say as the Bible.
8
SPEAKER_01
So even like in the brainstorming and so on, they can push back.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you can see it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like Tyler, anytime I said something, he would give me feedback and push back, which is what I want.
8
SPEAKER_00
I don t want him just to be like, yes, you re a fucking genius.
8
SPEAKER_00
Good job, Jimmy.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, I don t need that.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know, I need negatives.
8
SPEAKER_01
You talked about being in a relationship.
8
SPEAKER_01
What role, Jimmy, does love play in the human condition?
8
SPEAKER_00
I think, well, the big thing is love can be scary, because this is the human you re gonna spend the most amount of time with in your life.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so for a project that over 50 years, they can be a liability or an asset.
8
SPEAKER_00
I love the metrics.
8
SPEAKER_00
No, but seriously, it s gotta be someone that makes you better.
8
SPEAKER_00
For me, I can t truly love someone that doesn t make me better because
8
SPEAKER_01
in the long run across the years.
8
SPEAKER_00
Because if not, then it s like, it s a negative, you know, to everything I ve spent my life building.
8
SPEAKER_00
But luckily, I m very happy with the partner I have, like we were talking about before.
8
SPEAKER_00
I do think she makes me better.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of actually positives I ve noticed, even things as simple as like, you know, I struggle to turn off my brain at night because I m just thinking about all the businesses and how we could do better or whatever weird thing I have on my mind.
8
SPEAKER_00
But, you know, just chatting with her and hanging out with her helps me, like, basically just
8
SPEAKER_00
shut my brain off and like mellow out.
8
SPEAKER_00
And even like, there s just a ton of little things like that that I ve noticed are positives, especially when you really look for them, that are easy to gloss over if you re not.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so for me, yeah, I have someone who I think is very beautiful, very intelligent, makes me better, is constantly pushing me, okay with me working hard, makes me smarter, and just all these different things that I think, for me, love just makes me a better person.
8
SPEAKER_00
You know what I mean?
8
SPEAKER_00
Which makes me love her even more.
8
SPEAKER_00
Does that make sense?
8
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
8
SPEAKER_01
What advice would you give on finding somebody like that?
8
SPEAKER_00
Just really don t give up until you find someone that, you know, there s so many people on the planet.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there really is.
8
SPEAKER_00
There s billions of... The odds are in your favor.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like just don t settle and find someone that, you know, makes you happy.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, just like you said, surround yourself with people that make you a better person.
8
SPEAKER_01
In the same case, surround yourself with that one special person that really makes you a better person.
8
SPEAKER_00
And maybe that s just an entrepreneurial brain looking at it.
8
SPEAKER_00
Not everyone wants to hyper-optimize their life like me.
8
SPEAKER_00
But for me, to truly love someone, they have to make me a better person.
8
SPEAKER_01
In every way, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, what do you hope, you re 24, we started talking about death, let s finish talking about death.
8
SPEAKER_01
What do you hope your legacy is?
8
SPEAKER_01
When we look 100 years from now, and the AI has completely taken over, and the aliens visit and discuss with the AI what this last of special humans that existed on Earth was like, what do you hope they say about you?
8
SPEAKER_00
It s a deep one.
8
SPEAKER_00
Probably just that, because it s hard, right?
8
SPEAKER_00
Like I said before, Elon is over double my age.
8
SPEAKER_00
I could live every second I ve lived up to this point in my life and still not even be Elon s age.
8
SPEAKER_00
So I have so much time.
8
SPEAKER_00
I just hope whatever it is that it s a net positive on the world and it impacts billions of people in a positive way that makes lasting change.
8
SPEAKER_01
So you admire people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk for having sort of reached for that goal as well.
8
SPEAKER_01
To help millions.
8
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the iPhone s the most successful product ever invented.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s hard not to admire what he created, you know what I mean?
8
SPEAKER_01
And the same with sort of, as Johnny Ive talks about, like the passion, the effort they put into the designing the iPhone, that like little bit of love is transferred to the whole world.
8
SPEAKER_01
Like they get to experience the joy of that from the designer.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s what a beautiful thing to do.
8
SPEAKER_00
I couldn t think of anything better.
8
SPEAKER_00
To create something that, even after you re dead for decades, just has such a profound impact on basically half the human population.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s wild.
8
SPEAKER_01
It brings joy to people.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, I hope you do just that, man.
8
SPEAKER_01
You ve already done it for millions and millions and millions and millions of people, and I hope you keep doing it.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s so exciting to see what happens this year and next year.
8
SPEAKER_01
The sky s the limit.
8
SPEAKER_01
I can t, I mean, the videos, but all the other businesses you re in, and you as a human being as you grow, I can tell, I know, as everyone knows, you have a kind heart, and the fact that you re really damn good at actually using that kind heart to help a lot of people.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s awesome to see, man.
8
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate it.
8
SPEAKER_00
More importantly, before we go, are we gonna play Dune tonight?
8
SPEAKER_00
Some board games?
8
SPEAKER_00
I m not gonna play Dune.
8
SPEAKER_00
I have one hour.
8
SPEAKER_00
You don t wanna play board games with me?
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t wanna play board games.
8
SPEAKER_01
You don t wanna play board games?
8
SPEAKER_01
If only I wasn t an idiot and actually flew to the right airport.
8
SPEAKER_00
If you don t play board games with me, they re gonna dislike the video.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Mr. Beast.
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To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now, let me leave you with some words from the poet and philosopher, Reverend Jonath Tagore.
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Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.