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[Music] there's a reason no one makes videos like me because no one wants to live the life I live or be in my head they they would be miserable are you
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happy um I I'm going to be honest so far more unhappy than happy well has it ever crossed your mind to quit YouTube as a whole oh yeah of course really yeah are
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you oh boy Mr Beast Mr Beast Mr Beast he is the biggest YouTuber on the planet and he's building Empires I mean is there anything this man can't do your business
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Empire is much bigger than most people realize yeah I mean I'm only 26 and we have the largest YouTube channel in the
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world and Beast games is going to shatter some pretty crazy records and we do nine figures and feasts but a lot of
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that stems from being a very confused child that's not fitting in that feels like a freak plus I really wanted to
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take care of my mom because when I was 11 we literally went bankrupt and lost everything luckily it worked out and
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it's because I'm really good at obsessing over one thing more than anyone else on the planet like us 10 millions of dollars zombies games but
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it's about making season one as good as possible and I just really love solving complex problems like how many kids do
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you think are in child labor in West Africa just on Coco Farms it's 1.5 million and so with febles we were
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trying to get over a million kids out of child labor but the ironic part is the more I help people the more I get like
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I've read over 5,000 messages telling me to kill myself I mean there's definitely times where I would cry but if my mental
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health was a party I wouldn't be as successful as I am this is the price you have to pay but when is enough enough honestly
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this has always blown my mind a little bit 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the
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show so could I ask you for a favor before we start if you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us the free simple way that you
00:01:44
can do just that is by hitting the Subscribe button and my commitment to you is if you do that then I'll do everything in my power me and my team to
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make sure that this show is better for you every single week we'll listen to your feedback we'll find the guest that
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you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do thank you so much [Music]
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Jimmy we've really just only met and you are already to me a bit of a Rubik's Cube okay in so many ways and I've been
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trying to piece the pieces together to understand the the uniqueness of you because you're so unbelievably unique we just drove over here in the car and hearing you speak about the way that you
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view life and speaking to you yesterday on the phone I've I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people and I've
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never ever met someone who has the perspective on life that you have you you are truly
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unique what do I need to understand about your earliest years to understand who you are oh boy um yeah my earliest years
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I I'm just stubborn man I just never give up I mean there was there's no world where I ever would have quit I
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just I I mean we're just jumping right into it it's a great no intro or anything just boom this how you hold
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people um when I was 11 I just said I'm going to be a YouTuber I'm going to die trying and I meant it and there was like
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even if no one still watches my videos to this day I would still be going um and so people hate it but I'm just the
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most competitive stubborn person you'll ever meet and I just never give up where did that come from I have no idea to be
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honest it honestly it feels like it was just in my DNA and my bloodstream my Mom hated it growing up we'd always argue
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and like you know she has this thing where like once Jimmy sets his mind to something he just never stops and it
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would always piss her off CU when it was YouTube and she wanted me to be studying or things like that but I really don't
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know it's it's just always been how I am and I think a lot of people have these weird Tendencies and they tend to like
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try to like uh unlearn them and like I had phases in my life where I was like am I too extreme like people are very
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intimidated by me because I just am so obsessed with work and I'm so Allin and like is this like unhealthy should I try
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to be more like a normal human especially when I was a teenager it's a lot easier it's funny when when you're
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making lots of money it's like admirable it's respectable it's like look those are traits we want but when you're not
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successful you know you're a lunatic when you have all these traits and so back then I'd occasionally be like man
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like should I try to be more normal but I just could never do it anytime I tried to I mean i' I've mentioned this before
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but one of the like things that like I have a memory of that like really is burned in my brain is like people one
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time like a high schooler told me when I was in Middle School like all you do is talk about YouTube like do like know how to do anything else like like you're
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just like a freak and I tried to like watch South Park you know cuz that's what a lot of people in my school watch
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to fit in and I just couldn't I was like this is such a waste of time I don't like I could be working right now and I
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tried to do all these things to like fit in and I eventually just like stopped talking because I just didn't relate to anyone and um people used to call me
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mute like one of my teachers literally asked like if I was mute like cuz that's how little I spoke because no one in the
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school I went to was entrepreneurial or one to build businesses and I just didn't want to do anything else and um
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yeah eventually I started to succeed found other lunatics and now life's great but you know I like to tell the story when I'm on podcast because if you
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have a younger viewer who's in that same spot you're not the problem it's your environment and you just got to put
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yourself in a better environment what about your parents mom and dad you talk about your mother a lot yeah um no I I
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don't I didn't get it from them what what influence did they both have on you um well I don't really talk about my dad much that's you know a long story don't
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need to get into it but my mom honestly it was it wasn't it's great now me and my mom have a phenomenal
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relationship but on the come up it was it was pretty rough because in 2008 they were over leverag so we literally went
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bankrupt and so they they you know had properties that they used to get other properties and then when everything
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collapsed they lost basically everything and so my mom was working two jobs and you know barely getting by and so we
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like I I didn't see her that much because when I I was coming home from school she was doing her second job so
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it was a lot because she was a single mom raising us she's working all the time you know um my I don't talk about a
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lot of this you know I have Crohn's disease so I was very sick growing up my brother also had issues as well and so
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you know we're not the healthiest kids in our teenage year she's just trying to get by and take care of us and then you
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know she comes home and she just has this brat that's being annoying and like I want to be a YouTuber and she's just
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begging me sometimes she would literally cry and beg me to do homework and I mean I
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was I was I was like I didn't I didn't mean it in a mean way but I mean I even one time I literally told her if you want my my homework done so bad why don't you just do it you know like that's that's what I told my mom like
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what am I doing I don't know like I was just like I don't I don't care like I I just want to be successful I want to
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build businesses and so it was like bless her heart luckily it worked out so now I spoiled her she's great she has
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her second home anything she could ever one she has and so the first uh thing I did was take you know start paying my
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mom take care of her once I started making money cuz she gave everything to like get me where I am and I wouldn't be
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where I am now but it was like it was like me and her spoke different languages when I was younger you know she she didn't want me to end up like
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them you know and you get screwed and uh not have much money and like the path I
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was going down was just basically like oh I'm going to be a homeless drug addict and like her brain couldn't compute the world I saw and my brain
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couldn't compute the world she saw and it was constant friction who was looking after you then if she was busy working
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and you were at home and your dad's not around who takes care of you uh I just me and my brother we're just there I was just making videos you making videos what age did that start the videos I
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started at 11 11 yeah so I I I'm 26 now I can't really remember life before YouTube like my earliest memories are basically when I started making videos you said earlier um you don't talk about
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your dad much yeah you don't have to talk tell me about it but why don't you talk about the your
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father much ah don't worry about it I know your mom has spoken about him before yeah and it was a bit of a
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tumultuous relationship yeah exactly they didn't have the best relationship I mean that's a topic for another day
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honestly kind of a sour way to start it off but yeah it's my mom is great I love
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my mom she used to cry asking you to do your homework a lot of things she she would cry because I wouldn't put money away when we started making money she would uh she thought it was too risky
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and I mean the thing is nothing she uh would say was unreasonable right looking back at it she was perfectly reasonable in what she was doing I'm just a deranged lunatic and was way too
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obsessed with building the business and way too Allin um like it's very cute one
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time she like when we had I don't remember like some month or made like 100 grand and I'm like okay perfect now
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I can spend 100 Grand this next month on videos and she like took like 5,000 of it and put it away for me in my own bank
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account without telling me but in case you know I ever went you know was overleveraged or went bankrupt like they
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did and um I found out about it and uh she's like please don't take this money just let me set aside anything stop spending everything on videos and I was like no this is perfect now I can spend
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more like this is awesome thank you Mom and like but to me I don't I don't really feel risk like I if anything it
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like Risk excites me and like I have very high threshold for it um so yeah we just we literally weren't communicating the same language but I don't remember what age it was but eventually after I took enough risks and figured it out my
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mom just said to me you know what I'm going to trust you like I have faith and everything got so much better after that
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point when like she stopped staying up all night worrying about me and worrying whether or not I was making the right decision when she's just like Jimmy I
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trust you I know this you think about this all day like I'm going to just follow your lead and our relationship has been you know perfect ever since
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then if IID asked 10-year-old Jimmy how are you doing what would what would he have said uh 10 I don't know but if you
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asked me at like 12 or 13 I probably would have been like [ __ ] like no one watches my videos I just really want to
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be a YouTuber I um I gotta I gotta make this work why did you want to really be a YouTuber because kids say that but the
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extent to which you said it and the focus that you had on that particular goal of being a YouTuber CU there's many things you could have focused on you could have been a video game player whatever whatever but YouTube is a
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particularly interesting thing because you're on camera people are seeing it there's a metric which decides how
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successful you are um was there any element of the on camera part that was helping to solve for like the feeling of isolation that you you seem to have at that time no Community yeah I
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think it's more to do with just I I found out that when I was at a young age probably around 11 that there YouTubers
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that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and I was just like oh that's it like just the money yeah of
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course because back back then we didn't have money and I really wanted to take care of my mom and and just my family in general so it was like everything it was
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like this is what I love doing I I've never had as much joy doing something as I do this plus I could see a path where
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I could actually retire my mom take care of her pay her back for you know all the night she worked so long so we could
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um live comfortably and things like that so it's just kind of the thing is I've one thing that irks me is when people try to like put someone's motivation into like one little bucket like we're very complex creatures and like you know
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you have a girlfriend I I I would never say oh you just like her because she's pretty but you like her because she's
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pretty but you probably also like her because she's smart you probably also like her because you know she's fun to be around she likes similar shows blah
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blah you probably if we sat here for 10 hours you could probably give me a thousand reasons why you like your girlfriend so it's like it's very
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annoying when people try to put why you like doing a certain job or building a certain business into one bucket oh you
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just do it because of money what if I do it because I like money and I enjoy it and it's a way to do this and it's a way
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to communicate with people and community and these other things you know what I mean and I think that's a common flaw we try to do it's like it's not that simple
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I think it's a lot of people can't understand someone being so relentlessly focused on something with the level of
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like commitment and sustained commitment that you've shown yeah and so and I don't know how I I agree because it's
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very weird like how like I have extreme Obsession to the point where like I just think about stuff the same like for me it's much easier to think about
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something 16 hours a day for seven days straight than it is like to like gear shift constantly I'm like really good at
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just obsessing over one thing more than anyone else on the planet i' if I were to say what's my superpower it's that I
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can just obsess endlessly about something and I can just have the same thoughts over and over and over and over
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again it's it's very weird like it's it was it was it wasn't like it was work for me grinding YouTube for those 10
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years or whatever where no one was really watching it it's just like kind of who I am it would have had to have
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been a deep Obsession because you were doing it when no one was really watching or paying attention or really when the platform was there was literally a day
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when I was uh 19 or 20 where I got I woke up joined a Skype call with my friends and where we like were reverse engineering you know why certain videos do well or whatever and I remember that call being over 18 hours long and then I
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hung up went to bed woke back up the next day and instantly got back like call and pick back like that was the level of like hours we were putting in I
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mean I didn't know anything besides just trying to make it happen was that anything else that you showed that level of obsession too so at that age no from
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I would say from 11 to well 11 to 15 it was a mix of YouTube and baseball but when I turned 15 I got Crohn's and I went from like 190 pounds down to 139 I
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lost all muscle I had and so I was like all right I'm not playing baseball in college anymore so then I was like [ __ ]
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it it's just all in on uh YouTube and um and then up until really febles it was basically just YouTube for whatever I never thought I would find like this kind of love for build like I thought it
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was specifically video making but I have found over like the last two or three years just in general I just enjoy
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entrepreneurship and I've been really deeply loving getting like obsessed with Feasta and other things and so which was
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very weird like when I first started a chocolate company it was like kind of a side thing but the more I started to
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work on it I got a lot of the same high as I got when I was making videos just in different ways and so now I'm like I
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know way too much about the chocolate industry I'm like it's pretty crazy I never imagined I would have put the thousands of hours I've poured into
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building feals and so I think just in general it's just I just really love solving consistent complex hard problems
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I think that's like what gets me out of bed and like the harder the problems the more exciting it is consistent hard
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problems I want to talk about that and also Feast tables but you mentioned Crohn's disease there and a lot of people don't know what that is and the
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impact it has on someone's life are you aware of it I am because I had a team member that had it so um in order to
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help support them at certain times when they had to leave and stuff like that I got a little bit more aware of what it means and what how it impacts you but
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could you give me your perspective on that yeah so Cron's disease words is when your immune system attacks itself
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so uh yeah when I was 15 I just started going to the bathroom 8 nine 10 times a day not digesting any food because my GI
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track is like literally just attacking itself it's very weird your immune system in your gut thinks your gut is a
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foreign Invader and so it just starts attacking itself which if you're just using the bathroom 10 times a day not
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digesting food it's why you drop weight rapidly and it hurts like crazy because it gets very inflamed and it feels like
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someone's stabbing you in the gut with Like a Knife constantly when it's really really bad which is what I had so I lost
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50 pounds which is crazy because I was already relatively lanky um and we were just trying different medicine and then
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eventually I'm on a pretty extreme medicine called Remicade where just basically you n your immune system which
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is why my voice sounds a little off right now CU I just got the flu I got covid six times I got shingles like I
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get sick all the time because for me to have my GI track stop attacking itself we basically have to shut down my immune system so I have like uh really weak immune system so I just get sick all the
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time like why I have like random rashes and things like that so it's like it pretty pretty brutal to be honest and then it randomly flares up sometimes and just makes you very sick very tired like
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I just just live life on hard mode to be honest like if someone like if you wake up and you have energy like you're
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already Leaps and Bounds ahead of me like I you know it's it's makes things way more difficult and so you still wake
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up with some days where you don't have energy of course which is really hard to believe for someone who's so productive
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for everybody looking on yeah it's you just got to really love what you do I mean and push through it it's uh it's
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pretty brutal because then you compound that with always being sick and I mean yeah like I just spent four days in a
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hospital in South Africa cuz I got the flu and it just takes me a lot longer to recover from certain things so um it's
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brutal and that's where like if I didn't work so much I would spend more time researching Crohn's because surely
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there's a better way to stop it than just destroying my immune system and ideally I don't do that deep into my 30s
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and 40s so I see it as a little bit of a Band-Aid but um you know I've met with the top Crohn's doctors in the world and
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so far they're like this is just the answer and you're just lucky your you know gut isn't attacking yourself um
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so but I don't know I I feel like the medicine they give people Crohn's is kind of silly and there's got to be a
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better way to treat it I mean the ultimate solution is they just cut me open and cut out a large part of my GI track and then there you go but you know
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it's I observed in the the team member that I had that had Crohn's just a bit of a mental roller coaster as well
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because there's an certain unpredictability to it exactly which makes life oh it's even worse when
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you're filming because you got this huge multi-million dollar set and 200 people waiting on you and you know sometimes you don't know if you're going to have a
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flare but you just got to go [ __ ] it and just down some caffeine and crank it out I got diagnosed with ADHD you did yeah I
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got diagnosed with ADHD and it made me think a lot about myself and the way that I am it's not NE I'm not the type of person to like embody the label or
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think it really means much I am just who I am have you um are you in any way neurod Divergent uh I've been told Yeah
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by Dr I ADHD I mean I'm not surprised because I just sit and obsess over things constantly but I think um I'm I'm
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happy with however my brain is wired I don't really care to change it um I I like I said I think one of my greatest
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superpowers is my obsession and I think some people would view that as a weakness but I just like if you just
00:18:40
think about solving problems three times more than everyone else like you're bound to come up with different solutions that's one of the things you
00:18:46
mentioned earlier you you like solving hard problems consistently when you think back over the last 10 years of
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your life and the the success you've had solving some of these hard problems if you were to like break it down into some
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components of um that you've learned one of them is Obsession that you've said yeah what are the others I mean it's all the typical stuff like you
00:19:10
are obviously who you surround yourself with and um luckily I just got around the right people in my later teenage
00:19:17
years because I I feed off the energy of the people probably around me it's so obvious like I start to talk like them I become interested in the things they're interested in I mean this is all obvious stuff I'm sure you've heard of billion
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times so but you know just got to I always have to be protective of the people I'm around because whatever they
00:19:35
say is what I started thinking on and that's what I started obsessing over and you know um one of the best things that
00:19:41
happened with febles is I just reached out to all the fastest growing chocolate companies all the fastest growing snack businesses and everything and just
00:19:47
became friends with a lot of the founders and you know that's what would have probably taken me eight nine years to like solve you know after 18 months
00:19:54
you know was probably one of the top 10 people in the world when it comes to running a chocolate company and understanding deeply just because it's
00:20:00
just ch codes um what about detail sweating the small stuff one of the things that I saw I was
00:20:07
reading the this that handbook that was laked on the internet and one of the things I saw throughout that was this
00:20:12
real obsession with the 1% and the small stuff how do you feel about this by the way and all of that stuff I wrote that
00:20:18
uh with with some of my employees when I was probably 22 so there are some things that I'm
00:20:24
like I read I'm like oh wow I was an idiot but for the most part most of it still stands the tested
00:20:29
um and I I do think it's very helpful you know what's funny a lot of CEOs have actually told me that they make their
00:20:34
employees read this um went around all of our slack channels we we all read it yeah which is funny because I'm like
00:20:40
damn I should make an updated version of it so everyone uh but yeah the thing is it's the the core Crux of it is like
00:20:48
extreme ownership and don't make excuses and you know um people always yeah I mean the damn I'm getting a lot of DJ Vu from when I was writing that it was just a different time back then too because I
00:20:59
just I had no idea what I was doing when I was 21 22 and I just found that I was constantly telling like teaching the
00:21:05
same or teaching people the same things over and over again and it was always just like take extreme ownership take
00:21:11
accountability like sure I guess it was out of your control but it could have been in your control if you just thought
00:21:16
through it more if you just really cared and that's what I was just trying to convey in it and the other thing that comes through in this but also all of
00:21:22
your work is just this idea something that I've learned from you just from speaking to on the phone yesterday that nothing is impossible yeah exactly and
00:21:29
watching Beast games over the last couple of weeks but also speaking to some of your team there's clearly this
00:21:35
through line with everything that you do of like extreme what it appears to me to be extreme ambition MH and it doesn't
00:21:41
appear to be extreme ambition to you in the same way that it appears to be extreme ambition to me yeah I mean it's just I mean is does physics allow it
00:21:50
then yes it's possible it just is it do we want to put the time in I mean it's I I feel like people over complicate a lot
00:21:56
of things um and something you've trained over time or have you always thought that I think I've just H it's a
00:22:03
good question I've never I don't know why but when people tell me I can't do something I and I don't know where this
00:22:09
came from it makes me just want to do it more to be honest if you tell me I shouldn't do something that's fine but if you tell me I can't then I just
00:22:15
everything in my body just wants to go [ __ ] you I obviously can I just I don't know if I should but I can and then I I
00:22:22
don't know it's like the the the thing is like to go viral you have to do something that's never been done before
00:22:28
I've told this story before of like you know if you're driving down the road and you see a cow who cares it's a [ __ ]
00:22:34
cow but if you're driving down the road and you see a purple cow you're like you've never seen that before and it's
00:22:40
something you weren't expecting you're going to go holy [ __ ] and you're going to go tell your friends about it you're going to remember that you'll probably
00:22:45
even think about it randomly once every couple years why the [ __ ] was there a purple cow and it's like it's the same
00:22:50
thing just one was a little purple and like you can apply that same like uh analogy to ideas like when you're
00:22:56
scrolling through social media to find a video to watch there's things that you know have been done before you've seen
00:23:02
it's you know roughly similar to stuff before you're just going to scrore pass it you'll never think about it again just like you'll never think about a [ __ ] cow on the side of the road and
00:23:08
then there are ideas that are like the purple cow idea which is what I try to do which are things that make you go what the [ __ ] I've never seen that like
00:23:16
I I have to click this or I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight because like why is this video no way they did this
00:23:22
right but those typically are very hard and usually to get that purple cow effect they've never been done before
00:23:28
and something's never been done before there's usually a reason because it's very [ __ ] hard so you just kind of have to train yourself to like not
00:23:34
resent very difficult complex hard original problems and actually run towards them because those are the ones
00:23:40
that you know tend to have more of the Purple Cow effect where people have to watch it and viewership is very exponential it's way easier to get 50
00:23:47
million views on one video than it is to get a million views on 50 videos right and so um and because it like kind of
00:23:54
goes exponentially and it's like you know pretty winter take all in the top videos like you just really have to lean
00:24:00
into that purple cow effect if that makes sense makes perfect sense if you if you were to distill then say we were
00:24:06
coming up with a new how to succeed in Mr BEAST's production handbook now what would be the the the top five if I was
00:24:13
applying for a job with you what five characteristics would I need to demonstrate to be successful you got to
00:24:19
be very coachable because whatever I teach you today is going to change you know a year or two from now always
00:24:24
learning always improving coachable um a big thing for me is you got to see the value in working here like you really I just I don't this isn't like a a job this is a career like if you don't you
00:24:36
know realistically see a world where you're working for me in 10 years then um it's pretty hard for me to invest
00:24:42
into you at the level I want like I'm not I don't like training someone for six months they work here for a year and
00:24:48
then I lose them what I like is I train someone for a year and then I get nine years of dividends on the back end where
00:24:54
they Crush at their job and I'm constantly paying them more because they're becoming more valuable at time like that is like the eighth wonder of
00:25:00
the world is investing heavily in an employee and then they stick around for a decade you know what I mean it's like
00:25:05
there are some of my top guys that I spent three or four years in the trenches with training and working with
00:25:10
you know they're like Tyler who writes a lot of my videos and directs them I you know probably talk to him five six hours
00:25:16
a day every day for four yeah around four years and now because I can't spend a you he spends 100% of his time writing
00:25:24
the videos directing the videos obsessed over that whereas I could theoretically Max spend five % of my time so he's going to naturally just [ __ ] on me on it
00:25:30
because he can spend way more time on it and it's like so you know I have full faith in him but the dividends that I
00:25:36
get off of him after all those years of pouring all that time and effort into him and now he knows exactly how I think
00:25:41
what I value that I don't even really have to communicate with them sometimes I can just show up to film and like I just trust that it's good you know and I
00:25:48
have a bunch of people across all my businesses like that that it's like great and if you know in a world where Tyler's still working here 10 years from
00:25:54
now I mean the amount of value out of someone like that is UN fathomable it is quite literally the eighth wonder of the
00:26:00
world for a business and it's like that's what I want but you only get those kinds of people they see the value for you know working for you and so they
00:26:07
have to like deeply believe like the more valuable I become to this company the more I'll be rewarded and they like
00:26:13
actually want to dedicate their life to the business so that's very important because if I really don't get that Vibe
00:26:18
then it's not fair to both of us because I'm not going to invest in you like I should because I don't think you're going to be here in 10 years and then
00:26:23
you're going to feel that and it creates so uh coachable uh sees the value you um
00:26:29
obviously obsessed I I don't I just don't like working with mediocre people I I mean I really just can't stand it
00:26:35
it's the fastest way to make me depressed um is if I have to work with someone who's just not Allin and just
00:26:41
loves what they do um it's just a lot of you know stuff like that that I'm sure if you listen to like a Steve Jobs
00:26:48
interview or something that he talks about it's just the the typical traits obsessed coachable Allin sees the value
00:26:54
and what is the single worst traits mediocrity I mean it's it's just like cuz they're not bad enough where
00:26:59
you fire them but not good the problem is like I mean and you see it in full effect great people just love working
00:27:05
with great people they do and there's something about being around great people that pulls some kind of animal
00:27:11
out of you that just makes you want to do more and push more and believe things aren't possible and I don't know when
00:27:16
you put me around a bunch of other successful entrepreneurs I just turned into a different human than if you put me around I don't know a bunch of people
00:27:23
who are just running small businesses and don't really care and don't really have much ambition I'm like two completely different humans and you see
00:27:28
that same thing in full effect you put a bunch of a players around more a players they just build off of each other but
00:27:35
you like put two or three C players amongst a bunch of great people and they'll start pulling them down they'll start making them not want to work as
00:27:41
much and make work not as fun and so everyone knows get rid of the C players right obviously get rid of people who
00:27:46
aren't all in blah blah blah it's the ones that are like they're not an a player but they're not a c player so it's kind of hard because you still feed
00:27:53
off the energy and if you get enough of them it just drags the overall culture down so those are like the worst um I
00:28:00
mean not everyone can be these like world-ending Monsters you know there are a lot of mundane things like you I mean
00:28:06
the book controller and accounting I mean probably doesn't have to be the best in the world but you know when it comes to like the mission critical
00:28:12
things like making videos and things like that like just the great people got to be surrounded like that's one of your
00:28:17
number one jobs as Leaders just to make sure your great people are working with other great people because that's like that's like the number one reason why
00:28:23
people leave jobs isn't money you know what I mean it's that's like number four on the list don't ask me to listen all I don't remember I just know the number
00:28:30
one thing is do they enjoy who they're working with and people will leave their job because they hate working with
00:28:36
people way before they'll ever leave because of money have you ever been frustrated that the people you've hired
00:28:41
don't match your level of obsession no because I just find the people that do are there people that do oh yeah I've
00:28:47
there's so many people in my uh business um I mean obviously you have to take care of them pay them well like they're
00:28:53
they're not the kind of people that'll just make the standard rate but um yeah like people like kitner Russ and you
00:29:00
know even people on our editing team I mean they're putting in most week same hour same amount of hours as me and they're all in see the vision it's like
00:29:07
it's hard to find those kinds of people but um you know when you do you got to treasure them and recognize that they're
00:29:13
unicorns and you have almost 500 roughly 500 people uh probably uh I think the production company were around 300
00:29:19
feasts around 100 and then probably another 40 50 scattered months everything else most Founders that I
00:29:24
speak to describe scaling headcounts as the the kind of worst past part of the job more people more problems right yeah
00:29:31
that's uh that's an understandment yep especially as someone like you who's a creative at heart and who is very
00:29:36
focused and obsessed on I guess the show and producing as you say often the I I want to produce the best videos we possibly can of course and then all this other [ __ ] comes with it which is like
00:29:48
HR which every founder I speak to hates I mean yeah I the the worst part is I just have this very once in a um I just very rare opportunity where I have so
00:29:59
much attention and so many people watch my content and and I wish I had I just wish I had more experience building businesses you know I'm only 26 and this
00:30:06
is my first real business of every every employee Milestone we hit it's my first
00:30:11
time hitting that right like when I hit 100 employes that was my first time getting there and this that this was my
00:30:17
first time going from 100 to 200 200 300 and like with what I know now I could have done it so much faster obviously
00:30:22
and it's just you know it's a little brutal because like you like scaling febles from you know 0 to 100 was way
00:30:29
easier than doing my production company because I had been through the ringer before and I learned a bunch and I get better with time and I it's just the mo
00:30:36
honestly the most annoying part is just ignorance right like because a lot of things mistakes I make I look back and
00:30:41
I'm like oh yeah I probably should have brought in people with more experience working at a larger company earlier here
00:30:46
I waited a little too long here I probably should and it's just like brutal because if I had known these things i' would be way further along but
00:30:52
I mean that's just how you learn just got to make 10,000 mistakes every founder says the same founder I've spoke
00:30:58
to says the same that unknown unknowns exactly know it's just like so that's where I mean my big thing recently has
00:31:05
just been trying to find people who have successfully skilled businesses and like bring them into my organization and learn from them because I'm just so
00:31:12
tired of like being like [ __ ] I should have known better but I didn't because I've never done this before and so I'm
00:31:17
trying to find a lot of great people who have been through it so they can like kind of Mentor me along the way so I make less mistakes which has been really
00:31:23
good um we brought in a new SE Suite recently um I it's like always a hard balance because I try not to in the past
00:31:30
I I have like you know decisions are kind of like pendulums and I have a uh a problem where I like I'll identify
00:31:37
something and I'll overcorrect the pendulum one way and I'm like h no I should have just stopped in the middle and like my overcorrection in the past
00:31:43
was like corporate people try to build too many systems and they kill Innovation and so I was very anti likee
00:31:49
people with too much corporate experience because they're going to just destroy all the creativity but you know that's why we're making so many
00:31:55
organizational fuckups because we don't have anyone who's actually built the business at this size and so you know the pendulum was on the right and I
00:32:01
swung it all the way to the left of no corporate and now I think we're in the healthy medium where you know obviously
00:32:06
the people on our SE suite and the leaders should have lots of experience managing people at this size and skill
00:32:11
but it's just finding the right people who can do it and build systems in a way where it doesn't Crush creativity and they actually value the product over
00:32:19
ease the D and my I'm on the a TV show called Dragon de in the UK and um my stuff is significantly smaller it's like a percentage of your your viewership but even I am slightly terrified with hiring
00:32:33
people because it's quite clear to me that there's a huge incentive for anyone that I work with to say that I did
00:32:38
something bad and in the early days of my first business um what happens is the journalists go to everyone that works
00:32:44
there yep and they ask them what was he like you you have the same problem you have the same conundrum where anyone has
00:32:50
an incentive that works for you when they leave so many different incentives to throw an arrow at you on the way out
00:32:57
the door how how do you contend with this yeah I mean you hit it on the head uh you know I have four or 500 people right now but we've also worked with thousands of people in the past and so I think it's just what comes with it but
00:33:09
at the end of the day you know as long as what we're doing is moral and ethical like like you said they're going to throw arrows but you know I I'm just a
00:33:16
problem solver it's like whenever I see the metaphorical Arrow I just go you know what's the problem and if we did
00:33:22
something wrong how do we fix it or if it's not an actual problem it's just rumors I mean it is what it is and so
00:33:29
yeah I think it just comes with part of it um I mean it sucks and it's unfortunate but you also to think like
00:33:34
most people don't like their jobs too and so it's not like this is even specific to our industry like you know
00:33:39
just go ask a 100 random Americans of of all the jobs that worked in their life how many did they deeply enjoy and do
00:33:45
would they have nothing negative to say so I think it's just part of it you know U it's almost like a Pastime for a lot
00:33:50
of people just to like trash talk their old jobs or whatever um has any of that stuff ever got to you any criticism
00:33:58
yeah I mean Al cism all the time does but I mean the thing is independent of that kind of stuff it's just like I mean I for we are averaging like 200 million
00:34:09
views a video like you know like uh most of it unique viewers like we're talking like two plus percent um sometimes 3% of
00:34:17
humans alive watch every piece of content I put out you know depending on how well the Channel's doing and so like
00:34:23
that means like you could I could upload a video and then with uh 365 days days later you could grab 33 random humans
00:34:30
anywhere on the planet especially because we do doves you know what's even crazier is there you know YouTube's not in China so that's like two to three% of
00:34:37
humans alive excluding China um or China's mixed in there but if you just take people excluding China it' be more like 3 to 4% um but you could just grab 33 random people on the planet and one
00:34:48
of them on average would have seen that video because the views are so [ __ ] high so yeah I mean there's a lot of
00:34:54
criticism that's thrown at me and the thing is you since stuff so Global sometimes you know transcends culture
00:35:00
and not everyone views everything and so everyone has different opinions and stuff like that which is why it will
00:35:05
drive you crazy at our scale if you try to make people happy because even if 99% of people are deeply happy which is an
00:35:13
insane hit rate like if you make a piece of content 99% of people that watch it love it that is wild which that kind of
00:35:19
stuff doesn't happen but in our case if just 1% unhappy that's 2 million people which is more than anyone else even gets
00:35:25
on video views on videos so which will feel like an insurmountable amount of criticism and feedback and it's very
00:35:31
easy to like trick your mind into thinking damn everyone hates me because you're just you know focus on the 1% instead of the 99 so I just came to the
00:35:39
point where you know I just have to have my own internal guidelines of like do I think what I'm doing is good do what I
00:35:45
think you know is moral ethical do do I believe in what I'm doing if so [ __ ] it
00:35:50
like I'm never going to be able to make everyone happy so I and if you just you let the whims of the internet kind of
00:35:56
decide what is okay and what's acceptable and and when you're being bad or good then you you you don't have a
00:36:02
spine you don't have a backbone you stand for nothing and and it it will just destroy you mentally um and so I
00:36:08
mean I don't know what age I was when I kind of got in that mindset but I just was like I'm going to decide and I'm not
00:36:14
going to let the internet decide you know what is okay and what's not and then ever since I got to that point you know people criticize me for something
00:36:20
and I'm like I don't agree then I have like it's easy for me to just go oh well I don't agree not going to make everyone
00:36:26
happy I believe what I'm doing is right and um just move on the brain isn't isn't designed for for this though no it's not this is what I've come to learn so do the podcast it goes well I'm it
00:36:38
feels like at the start everyone loves me yeah and then I get further down the line and it feels like everyone [ __ ]
00:36:43
Hates Me y because they you get attacked from you can never do anything right especially I've probably read mes like
00:36:50
comments or tweets or I've probably in my lifetime read over 5,000 messages or comments or something telling me to kill myself you know what I mean you know just like and what would possess someone
00:37:01
to tell you to like leave a comment where it's like [ __ ] kill yourself you know what I mean so agreed like you're we were not meant to receive this
00:37:08
kind of feedback from basically anyone anywhere in the world you know what I mean just all con you know consistently
00:37:13
day in and day out for for my in my case now over a decade has it ever really got to you oh yeah of course I mean it it
00:37:20
does all the time or it used to all the time I like I said what does that mean in reality if I'm a fly on a wall in one
00:37:26
of those moments where you can recall it really getting to you I mean back in the day but I wasn't as confident in my
00:37:33
ability to to be successful and you know when you're probably 20 and you're hiring all these people you're you know I I have highrisk tolerance but I'm reinvesting every dollar I make I I'm
00:37:45
you know I'm hiring my friends from school I hired my mom like these people I really care about are depending on me and then you know I upload a video and
00:37:51
it does bad and then people you know I pour all my time and effort into it but you know maybe it doesn't come across as well like the V and you know some people might have interpreted as lazy and you
00:38:02
read a comment being like wow what a [ __ ] lazy like I thought you made great videos or this this video sucked
00:38:08
and and you read that and the video is underperforming and you're like [ __ ] maybe I am being too Reckless and you
00:38:14
know I mean there's definitely times where I would cry you know just because I would just be like [ __ ] am I like not
00:38:20
doing this right or like they don't understand I put a lot of time into this or or whatever why why you sometimes
00:38:26
you're like [ __ ] does the algorithm them hate me am I being suppressed or whatever back in the day um when was the
00:38:31
last time that happened that feeling of um yeah Pro there was like a a month probably last year where I I felt a little bit of that just because um you
00:38:45
know just sometimes occasionally the rumor and drama Mill gets mun up but you just got to snap out of it and like I
00:38:51
said just go do I believe in what I'm doing do I it's like it's hard because you know anytime I do anything good it's
00:38:58
you know people are always like uh they try to we're we're like condition in America now when someone does something
00:39:04
good there's always some alterative motive and I've I've always been straightforward and just said a world where I help people is just better than
00:39:11
a world where I don't like I don't try to come up with this crazy like story of of how you know someone helped me when I
00:39:17
was younger and now I I just want to give back and cry I'm just like yeah I can make viral videos and I think a
00:39:23
world where I do viral videos that help people are better when I don't you know just kind of that's my answer um but it
00:39:29
always does suck when people try to just like I don't know the it's funny the more good you do the more people think you're secretly evil and it's like why can't I just help people because it's fun you know so occasionally those will
00:39:41
get to me and I'll just be like guys you don't even know me like and like you would think sometimes you'd read like
00:39:48
when I build wells in Africa or help blind people see or things like that you You' read some of these things online
00:39:53
you would think I'm Hitler I mean it's crazy like how people portray it and I just I don't know I wish people just
00:39:58
understand like in my opinion a world where I help people is just more fun than a world where I don't and it's really not that deep the people around
00:40:05
you how does it impact them oh how does the drama and that kind of stuff impact them um to be honest in my case it it I
00:40:12
don't think it hits them that hard because most things usually fall on me and people want to go after me because
00:40:17
I'm the guy that does good the quotquot philanthropist so usually I'm like the one that gets thrown under the bus quite a bit it's funny cuz I everyone that knows you
00:40:28
knows you yeah whether they're really successful people or people that you work with that I've spoken to everybody
00:40:33
that knows you knows who you are and it's it's remarkable to me that um someone who has done so much good in the world I've looked at your philanthropy I know what you you're doing with Feasta
00:40:44
BS and the ethical sourcing of that when I see someone that's done so much good in the world still be misunderstood it
00:40:51
almost makes it almost makes me realize that I should never fight it yeah I mean the ironic part is the more I help
00:40:58
people the more [ __ ] I get to be honest like it's it's so funny because you know like the same day I'll uh drop a video
00:41:06
where I'll uh uh you know help a thousand blind people see some other YouTuber will drop a video where they
00:41:13
just bought a new mansion and it's like everyone's like yes you know get that Mansion good job and then they'll be
00:41:20
like [ __ ] you for curing blind people Jimmy [ __ ] you you're using them and I'm like no I just wanted to inspire people
00:41:26
to do good I mean you can buy a mansion if you really want me to um so it is funny I if you're trying this is a weird sentence but if you're trying to be liked I actually don't recommend you
00:41:38
like help people like I actually think helping people will make the internet like you less than if you just like buy
00:41:45
nice cars and do like the the typical influencer path it's because they we just so conditioned in America to see it
00:41:52
as like a shield and like no one actually does good cuz they just find it fun apparently um but I mean I don't care I like I said it's just more fun than if I didn't so I mean people can
00:42:03
[ __ ] on me for helping people I don't I don't doesn't bother me anymore um but I wouldn't recommend you get into it if
00:42:08
you want to be liked because I think it's negatively correlated now interesting it is so fascinating it is I
00:42:13
swear to God man like people it's it's it's uh there I could just uh I don't know do these like uh $1 versus videos where I compare like a $1 boat to a billion dollar boat and
00:42:26
all these other things not help people and I would just get way less [ __ ] and it's it's so funny cuz no one bats an eye when I post that but when I give
00:42:32
hundreds of thousands of people in Africa clean drinking water it's like all hell breaks loose and I'm like guys I'm just trying to bring attention to a
00:42:38
cause I don't really but the thing is I'm just GNA keep doing it and I mean I think in my case most people have
00:42:44
realized I'm not going to stop so they're just kind of over you know getting mad at me and they're just like
00:42:50
all right Jimmy's just being Jimmy I think when the wind blows as well what it does is it helps you to really understand why you're doing what you're
00:42:55
doing and understand yourself mhm and so when I've been attacked for like the people I interview or whatever it might
00:43:01
be it's actually made me refocus on what my principles are yeah because you have to be really anchored to them it's like
00:43:07
I said you you have to know where your line is and as long as you're on the right side of your line then it is what
00:43:13
it is people on Twitter can say whatever they want and I I think like that's the only way to really survive at this scale
00:43:18
without going crazy is you you have to determine where the line is not let the internet
00:43:24
workaholism yes can can you give me a window into the last seven days of your life just give me paint me a picture oh
00:43:30
yes uh let me uh drink some water cuz my flu well the I don't know about the last
00:43:36
seven days but in general we uh so we're filming a video where we're doing the I'm visiting the five most deadliest
00:43:42
places on Earth so one of the places was a safari in South Africa so I flew to South Africa um to spend time in a cage surrounded by lions sick content it was
00:43:53
really good um which that was a [ __ ] to get to and then I got the flu and so spent a couple days in the hospital
00:43:58
there um and then we were going to go to Snake Island to spend time there then the W's deadliest Road and then we have a couple other places but that got postponed so instead got out of the
00:44:10
hospital went to Florida filmed with Aaron judge then I went to or no went to North Carolina we have this guy where I built a gym and I told him if he loses 100 pounds before he leaves the gym it
00:44:21
has a big red circle around it I'll give him a bunch of money so I filmed with him then worked on the coming up videos
00:44:27
um that just a lot and then flew to Florida filmed with Aaron judge flew here just landed filmed with the reunion
00:44:34
that you were at with the contestants for Beast games we're doing this podcast what time is it like 1:00 a it's just
00:44:39
off to 1: a.m yeah 1: a the latest podcast he's ever done lightweight I always do my podcast at 1: a.m um my
00:44:45
last podcast before this was like 4 a.m. um like like a couple weeks ago and then uh we're flying to San FR to film with
00:44:53
Steph then we're Steph Curry yeah Steph Curry then I think I'm going to Snake Island then the deadliest Road um and
00:45:00
then I I won't I'll basically I don't think I'll be home for another 16 days so I'm just traveling around filming for
00:45:06
the next 16 days and then um yeah I guess then I'll get home and then they'll make me film at home how does
00:45:14
everything else in your life fit into that in terms of like the gym I know you've been working out a it's been brutal it's gone to [ __ ] the last couple
00:45:19
months it's just it's really killing me to be honest it's it was like so much easier when you're bro if you don't travel constantly life is so easy when you just
00:45:31
wake up in your own bed and like waking up in your own bed and working 15 hours in you know your office or whatever so
00:45:38
easy compared to like all this [ __ ] [ __ ] where I'm like I don't know the time zone I'm in I don't know what place
00:45:44
I'm in I don't know where I'm going in two days it's like like I mean some days I'm going to bed at 10:00 a.m. other
00:45:49
days I'm going to bed at 5:00 p.m. and it's like it's a mess it's really and I I used to put up with it and and just
00:45:57
like and figure out how to do the training but it's just I don't I don't I don't know I need to truthfully whatever
00:46:03
is a priority you'll get done I just need to make it a priority again because I really do miss it it's just this the
00:46:09
hard part is putting putting Beast games in the mix because I was already like basically working you know whatever
00:46:15
every hour my eyes were away but then Beast games is such a monster of a project and I have to maintain the same
00:46:20
Youtube upload schedule and then I do a lot on fetival now and then I have a couple other businesses so I I just
00:46:26
honestly something had to to give and sadly it was working out but it's [ __ ] stupid so I need to like rep prioritize my life where I can get I
00:46:32
mean it just only needs to be 45 minutes 5 days a week it does doesn't need to be hard but the bigger problem is I'm just not sleeping like I used to because we
00:46:39
got so much going on and so when I hit it hard in the gym and then I don't get enough sleep then that causes pretty extreme fatigue the next day so it's
00:46:46
like I got to fix sleep first before that but yeah it's uh got a lot going on to be honest I'm dying how are you feeling uh right now honestly fine I'm
00:46:56
jacked up on a lot of caffeine but I mean just in in this Feast you know the flu is not helping it's it's making
00:47:02
everything like 30% harder so you know it's like life's like a roller coaster there are going to be moments where like
00:47:09
right now I'm going to answer this negatively but I don't want someone to think that's indicative of like oh every and every time you ask me this it's
00:47:14
going to be it but because of the flu and the lack of sleep I mean I'm struggling at the moment just a lot of grinding um a little happy because we
00:47:22
just dropped the ending of Beast game so it's like a little bit of emotional high but after this I'm probably going to go crashed be tired as [ __ ] in the morning
00:47:28
tomorrow which I hate um but yeah I would say I'm on like the lower end I I could use a couple good days to bring the energy back up quick one I want to talk about something we all need to take
00:47:39
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00:47:44
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00:48:35
about mental health I've heard you speak about your mental health before and I've yeah I don't well the thing is here's
00:48:41
the problem like it's uh if my mental health was a party I wouldn't be as successful as I am I mean and that's
00:48:47
just like a sad fact um like I obviously never would have buried myself alive for S days s days of solitary s days on a
00:48:53
deserted island 7 days blah blah blah um it's it's like you know being consistently uncomfortable and like cons being able to consistently suffer over
00:49:04
long periods is like arguably one of the deepest modes like there's a reason no one makes videos like me like not even close because no one wants to live the
00:49:11
life I live I mean there there are months where I'm you know I think there was one year I was flying like 200 days
00:49:16
like I was on a plane I mean it was it was a [ __ ] fest but you know to get these videos done and and I do
00:49:21
everything and it's like you know when I when I wake up tomorrow and I'm going to be pretty [ __ ] tired and feel like
00:49:26
[ __ ] I'm going to go you know I something I always tell myself is how you feel right now is why no one else
00:49:32
does what you want to do or does what you do and if you push through this that's just even you know more of a
00:49:38
reason why no one will ever be who you are and so it's like I think being able to push through unhappiness and do
00:49:45
things you don't want to do consistently year after year over the course of a decade is like the ultimate Advantage
00:49:51
like I mean I I think we'll hit a billion subscribers and uh I don't think anyone will be anywhere near close
00:49:57
because like once you make a couple million dollars why would you live the life I live like why why would you not take weekends off why would you not just
00:50:03
film locally even if it means less views so you can be on the right time schedule why would you not you know prioritize
00:50:08
your sanity and that kind of stuff it makes no sense but that's why no one else does it you spoke to Colin inir two
00:50:15
guys that I met recently um great great great guys um you said to them I'm miserable a lot of times I have mental
00:50:21
breakdowns every other week yeah I me those have gotten a little better mental break down sounds
00:50:27
extreme it's more I'm like [ __ ] why am I doing this this is so [ __ ] hard um cuz it's just a lot man you're just going constantly It's like because what's funny is I think I said that
00:50:39
years ago but that was back when all I was really was doing YouTube now I run this chocolate company and we have the
00:50:44
show and we have a couple other stuff so I think the the hardest part really is gear shifting like and so I try to
00:50:51
bucket these things correct like if if I'm on set you know and I have a 15- Hour film day like ideally the thing I'm
00:50:56
doing in between filming or like related to main Channel because I'm in the frame of mind of that and that's one thing
00:51:02
that's really helped me not feel like my head's going to explode like if I'm in Chicago at the febles office and we're
00:51:09
going through febles marketing like and then you come in and you go what do you think about this bit for this coming up
00:51:14
main Channel video then I have to like shift my frame of mind and like that constant gear shifting I it like it'll
00:51:21
make my [ __ ] head hurt if I'm like bouncing around too much I and it it also just very not quarter I am I love
00:51:27
obsessing over certain things and I find you know obsessing over things within a business isn't like switching back and
00:51:32
forth between marketing and product and a same business is pretty easy there's a long way of saying like one thing that's helped with that is like just really um
00:51:41
organizing my schedule and away where it allows my natural state of mind to like obsess over a certain business finish
00:51:47
that then move on to the next one whereas before it used to be like 30 gear Swit shs a day and that that's just
00:51:53
miserable it's just not even fun to be honest I had um Elon mus C I know someone you you spoke about quite often
00:51:59
also someone that I speak about quite often I heard him say when he was on Joe Rogan that you wouldn't want to be in my head and I think joean asked him if he
00:52:06
was happy or something and he doesn't even like consider the question to be important yeah so two questions there do
00:52:13
you think the average person would like to be in your head and secondly are you happy uh well no the
00:52:19
average person does not want to live the life I live or be in my head they they would be miserable because you're just
00:52:25
working all the time and they they would probably just ask themselves why am I working all the time why don't I why don't I do literally anything else I
00:52:31
mean because there I mean obviously I'm not a robot there are times where I'm like [ __ ] I really want to play this strategy board game I want to do this
00:52:37
thing and I'm I look at the schedule I'm like oh maybe I could do that in four days and you you know and the the hard
00:52:44
thing is it's you really have to like be delicate with the framing of your mind because it's very easy in moments like
00:52:49
that to go [ __ ] I'm like a zoo animal like I don't I don't have free will I'm like a little robot to my businesses and
00:52:56
like um and so you have to like be very careful and sometimes those emotions take over and especially because I'm a very defiant kind of guy and I'm like but I really want to do this thing but I
00:53:06
can't because I got to go film this video and I got to do this and I got to speak at this conference and I got to do this networking thing and blah blah and
00:53:12
so um yeah I think most people when that feeling comes up of like am I just a [ __ ] animal like do I have any free will they would probably get very depressed and but I've been able to like
00:53:24
work through those and and just I always try to you know your brain you just it's you just got to control your thoughts be
00:53:30
like well this is the life I chose this is you want success you want to change the world you want to do this and this
00:53:35
this is the price you have to pay you should actually see this as a good thing because this is why which is why I'm very uh diligent about how I frame
00:53:42
things in my mind like this is why no one else will do what you will do and this is a good thing this is what you
00:53:48
are feeling right now is your Mo it's you're lucky it's hard push through it and you'll be happy you did you know and
00:53:53
so that's kind of how I try to view it um but no I don't think most people would be happy living my life
00:54:00
they would be like oh let's just grab a couple million dollars and be happy are you happy uh it depends what day you ask me right now I'm having a good time um other you know when I was had the flu in
00:54:12
Africa sitting in a cage of allance [ __ ] no so what's your Baseline how would you describe your Baseline probably uh this
00:54:18
year probably so far more unhappy than happy and it's just they're just things you got to do that just aren't fun you know but I I think I I really deeply enjoy working on feasts and I'm trying
00:54:30
to spend more of my time building it the problem is it's just I uh it's just opportunity cost because I'm the only
00:54:36
one who can be in front of the camera and film and that's what's like brutal especially with Beast games is I'm just
00:54:42
filming so much it added so much [ __ ] to my yearly filming like doing this giant
00:54:48
show on top of already having the largest YouTube channel the world I was already filming some months 25 days a
00:54:53
month so I'm just like that's just the rough part is because it's like it just all rests my shoulders and if I don't
00:55:00
film there is no content like the channel just literally ceases like if I stop filming and so you know I I have
00:55:06
found more and more that I'm finding more joy in entrepreneurial things and building businesses and I I I do think
00:55:11
I'd be happier if I could spend more time doing that but it's just like weird because I could literally hire anyone in
00:55:16
the world to do that whereas I can't hire anyone to replace me on camera I always wonder someone who um is doing so
00:55:23
well on a platform like YouTube where the algorithm is always changing MH so many YouTubers I speak to say that they
00:55:28
get burnout eventually they get like creative burnout and they and they just like delete their Channel you've seen a lot of it recently over the last couple
00:55:34
years where YouTubers hit 10 million and they just stop yep has that ever crossed your mind to stop oh of course I mean
00:55:41
all the time seriously yeah but I I mean like I this I feel like that's what half this podcast has been about about how I
00:55:47
don't want to do things but I push through and do it I think they're just reasonable humans like they you know a
00:55:53
lot of them were chasing a goal of like oh I just want this money so I can take care of this things you know it could be Noble things like retire my mom or just
00:55:59
not have to worry about money and then they go why would I suffer now I'm good when was the closest you came to
00:56:05
quitting oh man probably countless times I mean all when I was in solitary confinement for seven days I mean that was [ __ ] miserable I mean I did quit a video well I've quit a lot of videos
00:56:15
like no I mean as a as a Creator um I mean I guess I never truly would have quit I mean my biggest thing would be I
00:56:21
just would have quit for like a week and been like [ __ ] let me sleep nine hours a night and like um but like I spent the
00:56:28
fir we we did a video where we spent seven days on a desert island first time we filmed it on day two I woke up on the
00:56:34
beach and I had literally I didn't know sand fleas were a thing I had like 700 bug bites up and down my legs all over my body I was sunburned I was like a little bit of meal I was like damn am I
00:56:45
going to die like this is crazy how much like bug bites are everywhere and my skin was so red and I was I couldn't see
00:56:52
straight and so I ended up quitting on day two um which is brutal cuz you spend all this time and money and you have the
00:56:57
crew out there and you flew out there and you know it's it's opportunity cost it's like that's a 7-Day window we could have got a video and uploaded it and now
00:57:03
we don't like it's you know canceling video like that is literally the worst thing that could happen from an opportunity cost perspective and that
00:57:09
was like you know and you have moments like those and it's like [ __ ] like this isn't even fun [ __ ] this [ __ ] you know
00:57:15
but but what about YouTube as a whole because I feel like YouTube is like throwing coal into a train then you just
00:57:21
have to keep throwing it in there once you started you just can never stop throwing it no you're running on a treadmill CR up to the max especially if
00:57:27
you want to be a top tier creater like me and it's just like who who can stay on the treadmill the longest cuz it never slows down if anything you're
00:57:34
making it faster um but no I mean I don't think there's ever unironically a time where I actually would have quit it
00:57:39
just breaks probably would have been nice and when you think forward that treadmill can you see yourself doing it
00:57:46
for the next two three four decades or oh yeah of course I don't have any intention of ever stopping okay um love
00:57:52
something that came into my life a couple of years ago y you announced I think over Christmas time that you had
00:57:59
proposed I think it was like Boxing Day or New Year's Eve yeah it was on Christmas day oh Christmas Day because her family was in town so I proposed
00:58:06
okay how does that fit into this craziness she's literally I you could probably count on your hands the amount of uh people on the planet that actually would make a good partner for me and
00:58:16
she's just she's just one of them she really understands that work is what you know is what I live for what keeps me going and she supports me and she
00:58:27
understands how important it is and it's the big thing is hanging out with Tia my fiance is is so frictionless we play the
00:58:33
same video games we watch the same shows we're very interested in the same things she loves learning like I do so um you
00:58:39
know it's exciting to see what you know um lecture she listened to online that day or like whatever weird book she's
00:58:46
reading and she just like everything about being around her is very frictionless which is great because like
00:58:52
obvious I don't have much time at the house and so like the last thing that I need is to come home from work and there
00:58:57
be friction and so we don't we don't fight it's I you know I sometimes I'm like wow this is like my best friend
00:59:04
this and she's hot this is great you know um and so it's like it it feels weird sometimes people I mean anyone in a listening now
00:59:15
that's in a relationship I guess the question they'd be thinking is like when do you spend time together mostly at nights um and the that but the beauty is
00:59:23
she gears her schedule around mine so like she she'll work when um I'm working and then she'll just travel with me and so honestly a lot of it is on planes a lot of it's in car rides or you know an
00:59:34
hour before bed or in the morning that kind of stuff but it's like because there are pockets of breaks on set and
00:59:40
things like that so it's just you know having it's it's really hard to find someone who is intelligent actually has
00:59:47
their own Hobbies things going for them independent that's also willing to mold their life around mine and not see it as
00:59:54
a demeaning thing because like yeah if she was just like well I have this thing going on and I have to prioritize my
01:00:00
life I would never see her but because she's willing to you know mold her life around mine uh and my work schedule that
01:00:07
that you know is that's everything um and it's rare that someone's willing to do that while you know being as in my
01:00:14
opinion at least from what I've seen as intelligent and independent as she is parents always message me and say Steve
01:00:19
wait till you have kids oh yeah that's and that's the thing like my lifestyle right now is would not work for kids so
01:00:24
I want to wait want kids but I want to wait as long as possible because if I'm going to have kids I got to be a great
01:00:29
dad like I really I really really enjoy mentoring people I love mentoring you know younger entrepreneurs and like help
01:00:36
like I've told this I think I told the story on Joe Rogan I helped one of my friends go from like 40K a month and
01:00:41
revenue to 400k on YouTube and I do kind of stuff like that all the time I just like one of my other friends has a um
01:00:48
snack cpg brand and I helped them grow to eight figures in Revenue just for fun I would just call them a couple times a
01:00:53
month and it's like there's something so satisfying about helping other people succeed and so I would love to have a
01:00:58
couple kids and just like really Mentor them into like you know being badasses but yeah not anytime soon like I would
01:01:05
be so absent if we had kids so just got to like find that right time in the VIN diagram where I could actually be
01:01:11
present in their life and your business Empire I think is much bigger than most people realize I imagine the majority of
01:01:17
people probably don't really understand the context of business so they don't really get it they might see you as a YouTuber or a Creator but from the
01:01:24
research that I've done you run a very very large business yeah I mean we'll we do nine figures and feals I mean we can say that yeah nine figures and feable so the business must be worth several
01:01:37
billions of dollars uh overall I mean you could do do something like that yeah I'm not going to get you to to try and
01:01:43
Hazard a guess I'm sure you know but I'm not going to get ask you to predict that but but the business would be worth a lot of
01:01:50
money are you a billionaire uh on paper yeah but I mean in my actual bank account I've BL a million dollars so do you pay yourself at all a little bit but I also like I have some assistance and
01:02:01
things like that so it's like I try to just pay myself what I spend you know personally a month just to like stay
01:02:07
even how how do you how do you think about money and all of this because most most people in their lives are pursuing money so that they can chill out and retire but you seem to be pursuing it purely for the sake of reinvesting it
01:02:20
back into the system money is fuel to grow a business and then you make money from the business and then keep growing
01:02:26
yeah and then you you find a business that you enjoy that you know is better for mother nature earth or people and
01:02:32
there you go you have a fulfilled life that's my theory I just don't when I'm 70 I don't want to look back and have regrets you know when is enough enough
01:02:40
such a cliche question that I'm asked enough enough like building the business never I mean I just want to keep like
01:02:45
building a business is like a video game it's it's just fun you know like with fbl right now um you know we're the
01:02:52
largest ethically soured chocolate company in America and like it's just fun to like look at something that's been done the same way for 100 years and
01:02:59
go how do we just flip this on a Ted and [ __ ] up this industry and you know how can we pay our Farmers a living income
01:03:05
you know not use child labor etc etc and so it's like you know I think if I was just doing mundane things like everyone
01:03:12
else probably I probably would be bored as [ __ ] if I would just sold chocolate like everyone else made the same
01:03:17
repetitive YouTube videos like everyone else I probably would be like all right get me out of this I want to retire but it's not what we're doing like we're
01:03:23
changing Industries we're impacting the world like this this is the point of life in my opinion you could do so much
01:03:28
with the gazillion people that list listen and watch your videos you could like start almost any business and it be
01:03:34
successful you could have almost any social impact and it be profound and save a gazillion people's lives do you
01:03:41
do you struggle with Focus uh no I mean I do wonder you know sometimes should we be doing more but I I've really found a good Groove with febles I'm very I keep looking over
01:03:52
there because there feasable sitting over there um I do feel like uh I've hit a good Groove with that um and the ethical sourcing on it and the no I mean yeah
01:04:03
obviously I get a bajillion opportunities but just you know right now this like I I think I said earlier
01:04:09
this is one of the few things in life that i' I've it's scratched the same itch as YouTube where building febles is
01:04:16
equally as fun as making videos for me it is so delicious thank you they're so delicious I'd really love to just spend
01:04:22
a moment talking about the ethical sourcing piece because I don't think that's something I didn't understand until I did some research on you yeah
01:04:29
um why why does that matter so much and what when you say ethical sourcing what's the difference between what you
01:04:35
do and what normal chocolate big chocolate in America uh well the big thing is when I got into chocolate I
01:04:40
didn't I didn't know any of these things um we we used to Source our Coco from Peru cacao um which you know ethical
01:04:47
sourcing is not really an issue there but the problem is majority of the Wolves Coco comes from West Africa and
01:04:52
so as we got bigger you know everyone's like hey you need to switch your supply chain to West Africa I'm like cool um
01:04:59
and so then I started studying and reading up about it and I um and I noticed that 46% of Labor in West Africa
01:05:05
on Cocoa Farms is child labor and I was like that's not that can't be accurate and then I started digging deeper and deeper and I was like holy [ __ ] it's just almost half a labor is child labor
01:05:16
and so I started talking to all the big chocolate companies or not all of them but as many as I could get a hold of and I was like so what what do you guys do
01:05:23
about this whole child labor thing and they they constantly just telling me like it just is what it is that's how chocolate always has been I was like
01:05:29
whoa you guys make like a billion dollars a year in profit you don't you don't see an issue with that being on
01:05:36
the back of little kids and they're like no you and then I you know I I have this crazy clip on I have a documentary guy I
01:05:43
think you saw him Jeff who follows me around crazy clip where I'm meeting with like a
01:05:48
big um I got to be as vague as possible cuz they're going to murder me got time back to them but like a big supplier
01:05:55
we'll just leave it big like that and I asked them I was like so do you have any way I can pay extra to not use child
01:06:02
labor or anything like that or any options and they were just like no and I was and I my literal documentary guy is
01:06:09
just like filming and I'm in like this big boardroom and I look at the camera I'm like holy [ __ ] they just said that
01:06:14
on camera and uh and so I did all this research and it was just like yeah no and especially in America like there
01:06:19
there's some European chocolate brands that you know try but uh in America like really no one really cared I mean
01:06:25
there's plenty of options and plenty of time to fix it plenty of money to fix it so that just kind of honestly pissed me
01:06:31
off and like that so then I just was like how do we solve this and so then it sent me down the rabbit hole the
01:06:37
everything points back to like you know to the reason chocolate and America is so cheap is because they just don't you know not the reason one of the reasons
01:06:44
they just pay the farmer so little like Farmers make less than a dollar a day um so like because of that they're forced
01:06:49
to use child labor because I mean they literally just don't even have money to pay someone who's not a child how many kids do you think are in child labor in
01:06:55
West Africa just on Coco farms uh you might have so in that 5,000 no it's 1.5 million you're joking yeah it's over a million it's crazy so what we need to do is we need to in my head get to a
01:07:06
billion dollars a year in Revenue as fast as possible while being ethically sourced and being profitable big part of
01:07:12
it is we have to be profitable while doing it because then I can point and go look we achieve scale ethically and
01:07:18
we're making money it's not that you can't do it you just don't want to and then um and maybe maybe we give them the
01:07:25
benefit of a doubt maybe they just truly don't know how to do it at scale and maybe it'll open their eyes and they'll
01:07:30
be like oh I guess it is possible and they'll start to change the ways more than likely they won't and I but over
01:07:36
time I hope we can just shine a light on it using my platform and you know um just show the model works and then I
01:07:42
don't know something I would love to do in the long run is like you know how there's like the fair trade logo maybe I
01:07:48
make my own version of it and I help other chocolate companies Source their uh cacao ethically and uh or something
01:07:53
and you know and I just educate people on like if it doesn't have the symbol it's probably using child labor and something I there's some way where I
01:08:00
could play my cards over the next 10 years where we get over a million kids out of child labor uh on Coco farms and
01:08:05
so I just got to connect the dots and figure out the correct way to do it this might sound like a Prett obvious
01:08:10
question but it's it won't be to everybody why' you care so much bro I just like I've been on these Farms I
01:08:16
don't want to get rich on the back of little kids I mean it's just kind of I I feel like it's kind of obvious
01:08:22
you know I maybe to other people on chocolate don't care but I the first thing when I heard about it I was like
01:08:28
why why is this a thing it reminds me of somewhat of again of Elon Musk and what his mission was with Tesla he kind of
01:08:34
knew that if he was able to prove that you can have fast um nice electric cars then the rest of the industry could give
01:08:40
up their excuses that it's not possible exactly um what if someone comes along though and they say Okay Jimmy we'll
01:08:47
give you five billion for feast hell no I ain't selling that [ __ ] you're never selling it no because the first thing
01:08:52
they would do to up the margins is they just dropped ethical sourcing you have people come along and offered
01:08:57
to buy your YouTube channel uh I mean yeah I've been offered a billion dollars here or crazy amounts of money there but
01:09:04
I mean it's you know what's funny is Zuck got that famous billion dollar offer for Facebook and he said what was
01:09:11
it he was like why would I sell the social media platform I would just take the money and start a new one and I kind
01:09:17
of like the one I have so why don't I just keep it and I I every time I get which I haven't in a while but you know
01:09:23
back in the day I used to like jokingly poke around just to see what people would offer me um and I would get those
01:09:28
offers and then I would always just be like yeah I I would just do the same thing I'm doing now so I might as well just keep doing what I'm doing now you
01:09:34
know the money won't really change anything well done and I don't think you you've yet to get the credit you deserve for the the lengths you've gone to with
01:09:42
febles no but I think it's really important I know you're not doing it for credit at all I know that you're doing it to get the message out there so that
01:09:48
the industry changes but I think someone like you with a platform that you have that's able to produce chocolate that is [ __ ] delicious they sent me a box of
01:09:54
it about six months ago and I I hate so much the [ __ ] I'm thinking of updating yeah I mean if you
01:10:01
hand them to me like hand me a couple bars the there's uh a lot of stuff that uh the problem is like if you look at
01:10:07
this and this you know from a distance you can't tell really the difference between the flavors like this is dark
01:10:12
sea salt this is just dark chocolate so uh I'm about to update the wrappers where we're going to put like colored tips here so you can tell the flavors
01:10:19
from far away uh I think that's very important um another thing too that uh I there's just a uh you made a mistake you put these in front of me now I'm the other thing I W
01:10:32
to um I want to I was I've been experimenting and the newer renders are looking good with putting like right
01:10:37
here every bite helps uh get kids out of child labor putting that on the front and then I I'm you know we're messing
01:10:44
around with different Machinery I feel like the images of the chocolate on the front could be a little higher quality the back is pretty ass um I want to you
01:10:51
know put some more messaging on the back of it there's a lot that needs to be like the white tips here it just makes
01:10:56
it so obvious from far away what this flavor is whereas all these blend in and so yeah brutal got to fix it you you
01:11:05
talked about your friends calling you and asking you for business advice and you helping them Drive their businesses up but just watching you there pick
01:11:12
apart your own business made me think that there's a lot of entrepreneurs that watch our show that are early in their own businesses and many of them will be
01:11:19
you're going to fail you're going to fail a ton I mean when I first started chocolate I mean it was it was hilarious
01:11:24
how bad I [ __ ] up our original Bars were like very thin there's a reason why like chocolate bars have these like break points here where they like break easily I didn't know that um and so mine
01:11:36
was just one solid sheet of chocolate but that's almost like a piece of glass whereas if you drop it it just shatters
01:11:41
into like a bunch of little pieces and um and I also didn't know that there's a thing called a a package engineer and
01:11:48
can you hand me a box of febles uh my original chocolate box when you pop these open and put it on a shelf there
01:11:55
this obviously the problem's fixed but if if this was sitting on a shelf when you grab this one these would all slide
01:12:02
forward and then they would fall out of the box and or the box would fall off the shelf because of the weight because
01:12:07
there wasn't right balance at the bottom and the lips here this this didn't used to be a thing so these were open and there was just a bottom lip here and so
01:12:14
they would fall out like that um and then the bars because we didn't have the natural break points would shatter like
01:12:19
glass who noticed that um well me and the thing is I I this a old team in feasts I would tell them like there's too many broken bars when I go into Walmart I'm seeing too many that are broken they told me like ah you're
01:12:31
worrying about this too much it's not that big of an issue it happens to everyone and I got to the point where it was just [ __ ] pissing me off because
01:12:38
I hated like grabbing a bar off the ground or seeing on the Shelf all these like shattered chocolate bars that I I
01:12:44
put like uh I paid people to put GoPros in like a a like a bag of lace ships pointed at because I couldn't get I tried to get Walmarts to give me the security camera footage and they wouldn't so I put hidden GoPros and a
01:12:55
bunch of random Walmarts just to pointed at the feastival bars just to see why are they [ __ ] breaking so much there's so many shots of like you know
01:13:02
like a mom grabbing a bar and then she'd be looking at it literally like this and then you just see the Box just go and
01:13:08
she' go and they' just fall off the shelf and then they just put it up and you you know some of the bars would be broken and it would just happen over and
01:13:14
over and over again because we didn't engineer the boxes correctly they didn't do anything wrong do you know how a typical that is what you've just said
01:13:20
that you put GoPros yeah people told me I was crazy the amount of people who tried to tell me that was illegal I was like bro I don't [ __ ] care I just need know why my bars are breaking like
01:13:26
I'll delete the footage um and so I that and uh you know I did a bunch of just data and I actually I saw there's a company called aosta where you can pay people to go into Walmart so then I I
01:13:39
started paying where every week I would send someone into every single Walmart in America to buy all the broken bars
01:13:45
fix up the boxes it's pretty expensive I think um you know it's like $100,000 just to send someone into every single
01:13:50
Walmart to clean them up $28 a pop times 5,000 um uh Walmarts and um yeah so I was sending people into Walmart to clean up the broken bars and that but I was paying so much money it was $100,000 a
01:14:02
week just to send people in and then I was buying all these broken bars because I just really didn't want people to go into Walmart and to buy a broken Feast
01:14:09
bar like that is literally the worst you know consumer experience you can have um and yeah and then I learned what a
01:14:15
package engineer is and I was like holy [ __ ] this is your full-time job to make it where my boxes don't [ __ ] fall over where have you been but on the
01:14:22
point that I was saying your obsession with the D of a product is it's completely atypical and if I was to compare this to a normal YouTuber and their e-commerce brand oh they wouldn't
01:14:32
give a [ __ ] yeah I was I probably spent thousands of hours obsessing over this product I mean I know it doesn't feel
01:14:37
like it because it's just chocolate but yeah I mean it's it's a problem from the ethical sourcing to every little thing
01:14:43
about it like I don't I don't do anything half has and didn't you drive to a ton of Walmarts don't you oh all
01:14:48
the time that's what I do every day oh [ __ ] we should go hit to Walmart we didn't even go ah he's got a plan he's
01:14:53
got to catch yeah it's my favorite thing to do is like sometimes I'll spend all night in Walmart just uh scanning products and looking at the daily
01:14:59
velocities and sales it's it's like uh I had a layover in DC I live in North Carolina then I was like wait a minute I could just rent a car and hit like 30 Walmarts on the way home and just drive
01:15:11
home and so then I drove home from DC to North Carolina and visited every Walmart on the east coast in like the middle of
01:15:17
America just to like go look at the chocolate aisle and see all the statistics and things like that I asked
01:15:22
you earlier on if you struggled [ __ ] I wish we could go visit a Walmart you know how fun that would be it's like I
01:15:29
would love to educate you on the chocol are Walmart still open now oh no they're not okay we can do it another time I
01:15:35
usually what I do is I just bang on the door and they let me in of course yeah but what you just said there I'm I feel
01:15:40
like I'm getting at something here because 99.99999% of entrepreneurs that I know that just have one thing to do just to
01:15:47
run their business don't give that many [ __ ] about the detail and you have like
01:15:52
a zillion things to do an Amazon show which is like the highest future of whatever of all time or whatever and you
01:15:58
have this massive Channel you have your philanthropy you have all of this stuff going 100 million followers on Tik Tok gazillion followers here a gazillion
01:16:04
followers the numbers are just unfathomable and you're still driving to 31 Walmarts to check if your chocolate
01:16:11
is breaking yeah well and I go in the back when I'm there if it's not on the shelf and I'll go scan it in and help
01:16:16
the employees and and is that is that the difference well you just got to know everything going on it's I mean it's
01:16:22
just first principles every if like like I I hate when someone in my business is
01:16:27
like tells me something that I don't agree with but I'm too ignorant to be able to challenge them because then it's
01:16:33
like well who am I to you know I guess I got to just take them on the word but most people tend to pick the easiest
01:16:40
route or conform to the status quo and I want to if I want to lead real Innovation and like change the industry
01:16:45
then I got to know every little facet of everything and so I mean at the end of the day you know the Shelf is where
01:16:51
people buy it so I got to intricately know everything going on at the touch point of the consumer and you know how
01:16:57
it gets there how it's being stored at the D distribution centers and then the retailer and then on the shelf and what
01:17:03
what does it look like what's the experience and everything because all these little things add up do you not feel like you spend your whole life
01:17:09
fighting people to raise their standards to your standards because you don't exist in a world of Mr beasts well that that's the thing I used to think which I I've said a couple times it was just
01:17:20
content but I realized it's just everything I do like I just want to be the best at it and that's it's weird man
01:17:26
because you just look at this choca bar and you wouldn't you'd be like who the [ __ ] cares but that's the thing it's it's what I've really enjoyed the last
01:17:33
two years is I've gone as in depth on this as I have YouTube and it's been every bit as fun I mean it's very very
01:17:39
[ __ ] difficult and and hard especially the ethical sourcing and like I recently spent a week in West Africa
01:17:44
and I I went from the bean all the way to the bar and like you worked on the farm and follow the entire QC Supply
01:17:51
Chain and everything and it's not it's like it's equally as hard as my YouTube channel but it's also equally as fun and
01:17:57
I that was just that was a big eye opener for me because I never thought I would enjoy something as much as uh my
01:18:02
YouTube channel and that's what I was saying earlier I've come to realize I deeply enjoy building businesses and solving hard complex problems even
01:18:08
though I know this is just chocolate but I get the complex thing from the ethical sourcing side just on a daily basis like
01:18:14
that that's fun with beast beast games with this with all the other things going on um your main Channel which is I
01:18:21
guess you probably still see as your baby to some degree it's like the Mothership right because it's the source of it it's what allows us to do everything like most people buying this
01:18:27
aren't buying it because of Beast games do you ever get paranoia when the views go down they haven't gone down yet
01:18:33
they've gone up every year for 14 years but do you still get that that do you still watch the video go live and look at the back end no you don't no I mean
01:18:41
because it's like we uh I don't know I just upload a video and then the next day I look at the retention and the CTR and if we [ __ ] up I just you know well what we do is we call them after action
01:18:52
reports so I get all the smartest people in my company like like uh we like we actually just did one I wish I had my
01:18:58
had it on me but like we'll we I have I pay this guy to just do a very in-depth breakdown of like here's the retention
01:19:03
chart here's every time someone clicked away here's where was the flattest here's where was the worst you know we'll take like so if I upload a video
01:19:09
that's 20 minutes we'll take our last 10 20 minute videos and we'll go you know uh the median retention on the last 10
01:19:15
20 minute videos was 10 minutes and 6 or 55 seconds is the median so if the retention on this new video is 11 minutes or above we did a good job if it's below that then we did below average and blah blah blah and and he
01:19:27
just does like a a giant like presentation and so usually two weeks after we upload we'll we'll look at that
01:19:33
with all my top people and then we'll just be like what' we [ __ ] up what we do well cool move on and has there ever been a moment in
01:19:39
real recent times where you go I think I need to spend more time on it again and get back in there and because all the
01:19:46
time you know but a lot of that stems from insecurity I mean cuz the thing is of course we we had a video recently
01:19:52
every minute someone is eliminated it didn't performed the best um you know and their like our intro was a little
01:19:59
repetitive it was a little dark it um it we had we brought back like losers from
01:20:04
Beast games to compete in a main Channel video but the problem is some people thought it was Beast games they like oh I've already seen this there was just a
01:20:10
lot of rookie mistakes there and it's very easy for me to like you know get insecure and and like be like [ __ ] this
01:20:15
is why I need to be in the weeds but the end of the day it's like it's not like when I was calling all the shots I was perfect either so as long as it's like
01:20:21
as long as when people make mistakes they learn from them I have a say like that I tell people all the time like
01:20:26
like whenever our new creatives [ __ ] up I I'll look at Tyler I go Tyler's literally cost me tens of millions of dollars in bad decisions like this isn't
01:20:33
going to be the first time you [ __ ] us out of a million dollars as long as you learn from it it's fine um and so as
01:20:38
long as like that's where these after action reports are are important because as long as we when we mess up we articulate why and it doesn't happen
01:20:45
again then it's just part of it but yeah I mean if the same thing was happening over and over and over again that'd be like [ __ ] I need to get step in but my
01:20:52
my guys are just good like they don't make the same mistake twice tell me about experimentation and testing cuz people look to you as the the real king
01:20:59
of like testing and experimentation how Central is this to the success of everything that you do very much and
01:21:04
that's the thing like that every minute video like it flopped you know and that was your your highest chance of flopping
01:21:11
is when you do something new like really really new uh one of our bigger flops before that too is we did this video
01:21:16
where it was like 10 minutes this room will explode we built this giant Tower had a guy start at the top he had to
01:21:21
make it it was a real- time shoot down press a button yeah it was just didn't perform that well people didn't really
01:21:26
like it um is kind of complicated blah blah and it's like you have to be careful because you know um I want I
01:21:34
want a culture where people feel comfortable experimenting and trying and feel fine failing and so you know when
01:21:39
that video failed or when you know that every minute this someone's eliminated like you know I don't go and yell at people or call them idiots or anything
01:21:46
like that I just I'm like what did we do wrong all right here's all the facts just make sure it doesn't happen again
01:21:52
not going to be the first time you cost me a bunch of money it's all good you know I see this as investing in you guys
01:21:57
and let's just learn from it I was gonna say because um or else if if there was a culture of that then people would just
01:22:03
make the same videos again and a lot of YouTubers just ch out the same format I'm okay with my people failing I'm okay with the video being 10 out of 10 like
01:22:09
as long as we actually took an honest good um try at it you know and and as long as we failed because we made the wrong shot call not because we were lazy not because we didn't put the effort in
01:22:21
ETC as long as if as long as it's just like we made an educated decision to test something or try something and it
01:22:28
just didn't work I'm cool with that we can do that all day and like they know that and i' I don't yell at people um
01:22:33
you know or get mad at them when they um accidentally mess up like that I've invested more than a million pounds into
01:22:39
this company Perfect Ted and they're also a sponsor of this podcast I switched over to using matcher as my dominant energy source and that's where
01:22:46
perfect Ted comes in they have the match powders they have the match drinks they have the pods and all of this keeps me
01:22:51
focused throughout a very very long recording day no matter what's going on and their team is obsessed with quality
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which is why they Source their ceremonial grade matcha from Japan so when people say to me that they don't like the taste of matcha I'm guessing
01:23:04
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can get it at tesos or Holland and Barett or in the Netherlands at Albert Heine and those of you in the US you can
01:23:39
get it on Amazon as you guys know whoop is one of my show sponsors it's also a company that I have invested in and it's
01:23:45
one that you guys asked me about a lot the biggest question I get asked is why use whoop over other wearable technology
01:23:51
options and there is a bunch of reasons but I think it really comes down down to the most overlooked yet crucial feature
01:23:57
it's noninvasive nature when everything in life seems to be competing for my attention I turn to whoop because it
01:24:03
doesn't have a screen and will armed the CEO who came on this podcast told me the reason that there's no screen because
01:24:10
screens equal distraction so when I'm in meetings or I'm at the gym my whoop doesn't demand my attention it's there
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and zero commitment that's join. woop.com CEO let me know how you get on you've just concluded today the biggest competition show I think of all time
01:24:42
well it is of all time but I think you've got 50 gu you know largest sets in history most World Records in history largest cash prize in history most
01:24:48
winners in history most contestants in history most camera yeah and what 50 Guinness World Records yeah that we know
01:24:54
of there's probably way more but yeah you said something on stage which I found quite interesting you said I kind of feel a bit sad yeah I know because
01:25:01
every Thursday I got to look forward to like seeing the internet's reaction to Beast games and now I'm gonna wake up
01:25:06
next Thursday and I don't I don't get to see what people think it's over they they describe um this in the Olympics as gold medal depression really yeah they say I think it's I might butcher these
01:25:17
numbers but 70% of people after the Olympics even if they won a gold medal mhm experience depression afterwards
01:25:23
because they they' lost their North Star that was giving them meaning in yeah no I mean I'm not I I mean I I guess I'm
01:25:31
playfully sad but I don't it's fine we just I got I have so much [ __ ] going on I don't even really get to think about
01:25:36
that kind of stuff and you're on to the next one uh yeah so we'll well Amazon let's get season two in the books already come on let's sign a contract can't really talk about it is the most
01:25:47
me and Jack were talking about earlier on it is the most incredible thing that I think I've seen on TV and I just think
01:25:52
I just I think I said you on the phone the other day I watch it knowing that unless you do another one I will never see something
01:25:58
on this magnitude and scale no one wants to do something like I mean because it's [ __ ] hard man and those sets and the
01:26:05
the thing is the reason why a lot of reality TV doesn't feel that way uh and we could have obviously done much better
01:26:10
storytelling and we will when we do future iterations but the the at its Crux like what people don't see is like
01:26:17
to have a thousand cameras recording the amount of infrastruct like we broke a world record for most camera cables ran
01:26:23
like the like the most miles of camera cables and like and the millions of dollars we had
01:26:29
to spend on storage and millions of dollars on the control room and the millions upon millions of dollars of Hardware to edit it and like having to
01:26:35
bring in Adobe to custom change the Adobe software where you could actually have that many multi cams it's like it is the the actual infrastructure to
01:26:43
actually be able to do that is incredibly incredibly difficult and um that's why usually what they'll do is
01:26:48
they'll be like all right here's a 1H hour like if you're filming a reality show here's a 1 hour window you know
01:26:54
they'll send out story producers they'll put a camera on you they'll be like yo can you say this line you're kind of our villain this is what we're looking for
01:27:00
they'll kind of tell you what to say and then they'll write the notes down and they'll catalog it for the editors whereas we're just like [ __ ] it we're
01:27:06
going to be filming you know 24/7 all these cameras you guys be yourselves we'll just capture it because you don't
01:27:12
know when someone's going to do something weird you don't know when someone's going to whisper to someone in form an alliance you don't know so you
01:27:18
literally have to just be rolling and you need these to be acceptable angles so you need multiple an a cam and a b Cam and all this which creates a
01:27:25
Monumental fuckload of footage but that's what allowed us that was I mean of amongst many things that's one of the
01:27:31
biggest uh competitive advantages we had when filming Beast games is we put in the effort to to set up all this
01:27:38
infrastructure we could actually capture it and just tell the story how it is instead of having to use story producers
01:27:43
to put words in people's mouths but it's a [ __ ] nightmare man like I had over 150 people editing that I mean we're
01:27:49
coming through unfathomable amounts of footage and and everything and I mean even things from like the uh computer
01:27:55
network and our local it constantly crashing because there's just so much footage there and like if I were to send
01:28:02
all the Beast games footage to just one editor it would probably be like $300,000 in hard drives and you know and
01:28:07
if you have 150 editors it's just impossible so we you spend millions of dollars and you build a central uh server room and so we have our own
01:28:14
server acts and everything and then you have them remote in there but even then just due to the sheer volume of footage
01:28:19
Adobe and everything was constantly crashing and it's like it was it was a nightmare on the back end but it's great
01:28:25
because that's why we were able to tell what actually happened why it feels different because we were recording
01:28:31
non-stop 247 I was wondering as I was watching it if Amazon are aware of the the fact that you're just going to give away the money like this like when you like flip the queen and it adds another $5 million that didn't affect them I
01:28:42
lost a ton of money filming the show so that that came out of my pocket because really yeah we were we spent way too
01:28:48
much money on it I lost tens of millions of dollars on that show really yeah I'm an idiot because the lines came out it
01:28:54
was like Amazon give Mr Beast 100 million to do yeah show so I'm thinking okay I'm doing the math I'm thinking okay so he spent 20 odd million on the prizes MH yeah we gave away so there
01:29:06
must be 80 million left or something I mean so episode one we spent over $15 million on those Towers building them
01:29:12
all like that was the most towers ever built the most hydraulic press or whatever used I mean that that set was
01:29:17
[ __ ] crazy man we had to build a th000 towers that were 10 ft tall safety test them all put like get it where they
01:29:24
actually work we had to literally hardwire them all and build like our own software where we could drop people we
01:29:30
had to put up all the screens I mean that was that that was that's like arguably one of the largest sets ever built in history that was just episode
01:29:36
one and that's just like the construction of the set That's not including like you said we we gave away over $20 million I think over two
01:29:41
million was in episode one and then episode two we have the city which that was a 14 million dollar set build and that was um huge I mean because that was a real City that they were living in you
01:29:53
know um and then I could yeah go but just between the 20 whatever two million we gave away plus those two sets I mean already right there you're probably you're at over $50 million how much did
01:30:04
the whole thing cost that I have been advised not to say because because people will hear big number and be like oh well I could have made a good show if I had that kind of money but the thing is they couldn't because it's if money
01:30:16
isn't everything like building and managing it is is you know infinitely harder but is it more than 100 million
01:30:22
yeah of course yeah of course I mean well I just told you how we spent 50 million and that we're only two episodes in so how out of pocket are you tens of
01:30:30
millions yeah it was not a good financial decision to make Beast games I lost money I would have more money if I didn't film it any regrets no no it's
01:30:36
great I mean for for me I was it was about making season one as good as possible you know I can't let the
01:30:42
YouTube Community down because that you know creators don't have a good rep when it comes to doing stuff on streaming
01:30:47
platforms and you know I'm getting 200 million views of video on average over the course of the first year and I'm
01:30:53
going to talk to these stream platforms and they're like H we've been burned by creators before I'm like bro I'm not a
01:30:59
Tik tocker that dances I have a production company and I routinely make spectacles and even me these streaming
01:31:06
platforms they weren't taking serious so I was like [ __ ] like if I fail it's over like no one's ever no streaming platform
01:31:11
is ever going to touch a YouTuber ever again so my big thing was just making sure this crushed and you know now the
01:31:16
doors are opening up I mean I'm getting calls from creators left and right and they're like Oho yeah streaming platforms they wouldn't talk to me
01:31:22
before now they're coming like I would tried to get a meeting with them and they were like no now they're like
01:31:27
begging to like have meetings with them and I already know of two creators that have signed deals um just on the backend
01:31:33
success of Beast games and probably I mean hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars is going to flow into Creator's
01:31:38
Pockets just because of Beast games in the next year well the UN Rotten Tomatoes which is not an easy an easy
01:31:44
critic to no you you got it was like 90% approval from fans which is pretty unheard of in Rotten Tomatoes I know um
01:31:51
but also I hear through the the grape vine that it is on track to become one of Amazon's
01:31:57
biggest shows of all time yeah see the problem is I have to wait for them to do a press release so okay yeah well I'm I'm just talking I got you I told him I'd be a
01:32:08
good boy and not leak things so but for a a YouTuber quote unquote YouTuber yeah
01:32:14
well they did release it it was their number one unscripted show of all time and then yeah I mean the it's I I don't
01:32:19
think they'd mind me saying it's very the show's very Evergreen like usually these shows get a lot of attention then kind of like Teeter off but ours is like
01:32:26
like over 700,000 new unique viewers are watching it every single day like which is pretty crazy because if we maintain
01:32:33
that like yeah it's going to shatter some pretty crazy records and what's the upside for you to continue promoting it
01:32:39
now that it's done because I put all this effort in I want people to see it yeah I don't get paid to like all the promotion I'm doing now I'm not getting
01:32:45
paid for really but I mean but I mean I guess the upside would be the better season one does you know the more money
01:32:51
I get for season two three four five Etc if I sit here with you in 10 years time Jimmy yep oh Bo and everything went to
01:33:01
plan um you're 36 at that age I already know what you're gonna ask yeah I mean I hate that kind of stuff because if you
01:33:07
ask me the problem is if you asked me this like five years ago I never would have said anything about febles or a lot
01:33:12
of the stuff I'm doing now and so the honest answer is I don't know I mean I think in what I'm doing you know
01:33:18
hopefully by then I have two billion subscribers on YouTube you know Beast games is bigger than we ever imagine
01:33:24
hopefully feastival has gotten over a million kids out of child labor by then um and you know I probably will have two
01:33:32
or three other businesses that I'm very passionate about that are hopefully crushing and yeah just I don't know and
01:33:39
personally maybe I'll have a kid by then I don't know I mean only time will tell it's it won't be until I feel like I
01:33:45
could actually have enough time to be a good dad but I I don't even know man I don't think about my personal life I
01:33:51
just think about winning and got to build some photos I found that I loved oh okay holy [ __ ] is this me or my brother me this one as well where did you get
01:34:03
these um internet these are on the internet these are like the really iconic photos that I from see really I
01:34:11
don't think I've ever seen this one really yeah I don't do you recognize anything in that photo other than no I
01:34:16
don't I was just thinking like what house am I even in I might be at a military base potentially cuz when we
01:34:23
were younger my both my parents are in the military so they're traveling a lot so this might just be like some random
01:34:28
house interesting I do recognize this like this photo in the background I'm sure you're throw up on screen I think
01:34:34
that that that was yeah that's on the hallway beside her bathroom I haven't been to my mom's house in so long um
01:34:42
interesting you you do so much for children but if you could whisper in that child's ear something about buy
01:34:51
Bitcoin what was it like two pennies back then no um I know because I wouldn't want I wouldn't say anything if you gave me a microphone to talk to him because the problem is I'd be I'd be worried that it would change you know
01:35:03
the outcome of of how I became and like I'm very even though I know earlier on I was probably sounded a little depressed
01:35:10
because shit's hard but you know I'm I am happy with the position I am in and I would be worried that you know like this is definitely a very confused child that's not fitting in that feels like a
01:35:23
[ __ ] freak not this young one I don't know what the [ __ ] he's thinking but this one right here probably is around the age where I was like [ __ ] I'm just a
01:35:29
[ __ ] weirdo I don't fit in with anyone why does no one want to build businesses and succeed but I think going through that Journey was was important
01:35:36
and it's uh yeah it just gives me a lot of conviction with things so I probably if I wasn't allowed to say buy Bitcoin I
01:35:43
just wouldn't say anything what about Taha yeah to my mom I would I mean this well what's
01:35:52
funny is these are these are two different photos of my mom you have like this version of my mom I don't think
01:35:57
there's anything I could say that would I mean cuz she's she was in the military and they just beat like systems and order into your head
01:36:05
and she this is probably right around the time where we lost everything and so this you know and she's at a very low
01:36:10
point in her life and so I don't think there's anything I could say that ever would have like convinced her that her lunatic son is heading down the right
01:36:17
path and um you know but you know you can see the difference here where it's it's almost indicative where she's smiling in this photo this is when I gave her 100 Grand this is after we made it this is after we had the whole
01:36:27
conversation where she finally is like okay I'll Trust you you know there's a the the whatever 12 13 years between
01:36:34
these two photos was a very hard journey um especially when I stopped going to college and I got straight zeros and I
01:36:40
mean she thought oh his life's [ __ ] over I just wasted 18 years of my life you know um so same thing I don't I
01:36:47
don't I don't think there's anything I could say that would have changed anything um if anything it would have just gave her a heart attack do she do
01:36:54
you tell her now what she means to you and how oh course yeah yeah and she's she's very happy and like yeah we're
01:37:01
we're in a really good spot now I I love my mom I mean because obviously I wouldn't be here without her you know what I mean if she didn't work multiple
01:37:08
jobs and do all the things she did to put me where I am I mean even little things like you know she uh would give
01:37:15
me like some months like you know 20 $30 and then I would take that money and use
01:37:20
that to like buy stuff to like help make videos or or whatever um and even just the fact that we had internet you know what I mean and things like that which you know I mean pretty basic now it wasn't as common back then you used to
01:37:33
get a phone call and you're like house internet I don't know if you would go out yeah and so like you know um it
01:37:39
wasn't the best position but she gave me all the tools I needed to succeed not you know on purpose but she must be so
01:37:46
shocked well she's used to it now but yeah I mean on the come up I mean it was yeah I mean imagine being her you know what I mean she used to when I turned 16
01:37:56
like she couldn't afford to buy me a car she couldn't she couldn't afford like the minivan we had like it was [ __ ]
01:38:03
piece of [ __ ] like needed a repair she couldn't afford it like smoke was coming out the front of it she was a an
01:38:09
absolute mess and then she comes home and I'm just like I'm making YouTube videos [ __ ] math homework mom and you
01:38:16
know and she's just like she I think she was making $40,000 a year cuz I uh we didn't talk about Fin is much when we were younger but I remember I got a $40,000 brand deal and then she told me
01:38:27
that's how much I make in a year and I was like holy [ __ ] I didn't at the time I was like I thought you made way more
01:38:33
than 40 Grand a year um and then I was like why the [ __ ] are you working like I'm getting paid this per video now on
01:38:39
brand deals and so um yeah what an incredible woman I know she's from everything she went through to know she she just needs to be happy I try not to stress her out she's been
01:38:52
through enough stress like her her job is i' I've been making her not make I mean she wants to do it but like exercise routinely do all the like system like body Health scans and you
01:39:03
know get on the vitamin grind and everything because like I'm not having kids anytime soon but obviously when I do have kids I really want her to be
01:39:09
involved and she needs to be able to play with them and things like that so I'm like you know stress is going to kill you you're not allowed to be stressed you need to do all these Health
01:39:15
protocols you need to be like cuz you know you might be in your 70s when I have kids like you need to be able to
01:39:21
move around which means you might potentially be 80 when they're like 14 or 15 like come on like what you do now
01:39:27
is indicative will represent how active you'll be able to be in my kids lives so like and we do the have these
01:39:32
conversations in a playful way so she's taking her health very serious for the future you're not a man that seems to
01:39:38
have many fears but that appears to be one of them a fear that we both share yeah exactly I mean hope she'll just
01:39:45
never die my mom's gonna live forever we'll be fine Brian Johnson we have a closing tradition on this podcast with the last guest Le a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for okay do do I
01:39:57
get hit with the question first or you get hit with the question first okay would you rather die with a sound
01:40:04
body or a sound mind sound body or sound mind oh I assume if I chose body then like that would be like Dementia or something on the mind um that's hard die
01:40:17
somebody or some mind I mean what are you if you don't have your mind I would say mine to be
01:40:24
honest amen yeah Jimmy thank you do I get to write my question now you do I want to say something to you though um I have to give you a lot of credit because so many people like us like our teams we
01:40:36
have stolen so much from you we've stolen your principles your mentality and it's made us be better creators
01:40:41
which has allowed us to live the lives that we get to live and do these things that we we love the most and um there's
01:40:46
always a cost I think to being different and to being weird there's an upside but
01:40:51
there's also a really really really big cost and you you pay that cost the most when you're younger and you have to fit into the the system and you don't get to
01:40:58
choose who you hang around with and stuff um but then as an adult as you said we all then clap for this the
01:41:04
unique ones the weird ones and we steal from them and we aspire to be them and we learn from them and you have in the
01:41:10
very short amount of time that I've been speaking to you for like a week or something have blown my mind open I got
01:41:15
to see the behind the scenes of Beast games and my entire mind as I sat there on the sofa I like remember where I was
01:41:20
sat when I saw the behind the scenes just exploded MH and you made me um in that moment realize how much I'd limited
01:41:27
myself as someone that I considers themselves to be really ambitious I'd limited myself and so I wanted to say
01:41:32
thank you because you're not just doing that for me you're doing that for tens of millions hundreds of millions of people all at the same time and you're
01:41:39
giving them the the road map but also a blueprint and the mentality and the belief that they too don't have to live
01:41:47
the life that school or the system has told them they have in the Box agre exactly so thank you so much honestly
01:41:53
cuz we need more people like you and I'm I'm your biggest fan thank you I really really appreciate you thank you all
01:41:58
right let's see if we can break into a Walmart you're so funny some of the most successful fascinating and insightful
01:42:04
people in the world have sat across from me at this table and at the end of every conversation I asked them to leave a
01:42:09
question behind in the famous Diary of a CEO and it's a question designed to spark the kind of conversations that
01:42:15
matter most the kind of conversations that can change your life we then take those questions and we put them on these
01:42:22
cards on every single card you can see the person who left the question the question they asked and on the other side if you scan that barcode you can see who answered it next something I
01:42:34
know a lot of you have wanted to know and the only way to find out is by getting yourself some conversation cards
01:42:39
which you can play at home with friends and family at work with colleagues and also with total strangers on holiday
01:42:44
I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below you can get yours at the diary.com
01:42:51
[Music] oh [Music]