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All-In Summit: MrBeast on his journey, business model, and the future

September 19, 2023 / 34:23

This episode features Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, discussing his rise to fame, content creation strategies, and business ventures. Key topics include his early YouTube journey, the evolution of his video concepts, and insights into his philanthropic efforts.

Jimmy shares how he started making videos at age 13 and the challenges he faced with his mother initially not understanding his online pursuits. He recounts the moment he revealed his success after hitting 10,000 subscribers.

He explains the origins of his unique video ideas, such as counting to 100,000, and the pressure to continuously innovate. Jimmy emphasizes the importance of common sense and restraint in content creation, especially in light of dangerous trends among peers.

Jimmy also discusses his business model, including the launch of his chocolate brand and the challenges of scaling operations in a small town. He highlights the significance of quality control and the lessons learned from previous ventures.

Finally, he talks about his philanthropic work through Beast Philanthropy, which includes building food banks and feeding hundreds of thousands of people, showcasing his commitment to making a positive impact.

TLDR

MrBeast discusses his YouTube journey, innovative content strategies, and philanthropic efforts in this episode.

Episode

34:23
00:00:00
let's bring him out Jimmy Donaldson Mr [Music] [Applause] Beast going what's up everybody let your winners
00:00:17
ride Rainman [Music] David we open source it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with love you
00:00:27
queen of K so uh look at the pH wow wow guys no selfies no selfies sending it to their
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kids as we speak yeah what are do your fans have like a a like a name like beasties or something
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beasties besties that's Taylor Swift beasties is pretty good so I think everybody all of you guys know Jimmy but
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let me just tell you the the quick story um I hate when people describe me in front of me but go for
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it uh Jimmy started youtubing when he was 13 years old and this is an incredible example I mean Jimmy's
00:01:09
basically an athlete so if you take a guy who basically spends 10,000 hours at something and he you know there's a
00:01:15
Steph Curry outcome there's a LeBron James outcome and there's a Jimmy Donaldson outcome so what does this one
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look like he starts posting videos online he starts iterating iterating iterating at 16 I think he had like no
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2016 or so he had like 30,000 followers some nominal number kept tweaking putting in the thousands and thousands
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of hours stumbled into college for two weeks stumbled out uh and then fast forward now a decade since he started
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this um he's basically the most followed human on earth after Messi and uh Cristiano Ronaldo although in terms of
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content creation um he's basically the top two or three most followed people on YouTube Twitter Tik Tok uh sorry not
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Twitter uh x x um billions of views event-based viewing so you know when he launches videos uh noon Eastern Time on
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Saturdays every two weeks um if you're not watching them probably people you know definitely you know your kids their
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friends it's just a spectacle um and so that's how you know you've become mute so let's start at the
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beginning um how did your mom react because you know cuz Sue seems like a she's like a and she's she works for
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Jimmy she's like a head of compliance okay she just makes sure no one steals money it's a it's a nice fun R so what
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what happened when you showed up and you're like hey mom I've been streaming secretly and I have these followers yeah
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well you know what's interesting actually is uh you should encourage your kids to have hobbies and and want to do
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these things uh my mom thought it was crazy that I was talking to people on the internet so I ended up just lying be
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like oh it was a a joke I just have a friend I'm talking to every night online or or on Skype or whatever um and then
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once I hit 10,000 subscribers I told her yeah that was I was a lie I don't have any friends I just making videos um and
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she just didn't understand it she was just like what does this mean um yeah where where did the idea for all these
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spectacles originate from like how how that that the first few that really broke through how did you guys come up
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with them or how did you come up with them yeah the well the thing is like for people if you want to get like
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hypothetically 100 million views on a video the easiest way is to like do something cool no one's done before and
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one of the first ones was I saw no one had ever counted to 100,000 in a row so I was just like I'll just count to
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100,000 I watched that video for about five minutes yeah more than normal it's 40 hours long but the retention is 2
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minutes so I was like and you look like how old are you when that 15 years old or I was like 18 yeah it's hilarious
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yeah so I just started cuz I didn't have money so I just started how many views does that have I think that one like 30
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million yeah just me Counting but it's like it's funny because it's like look at this idiot he counted to 100,000 how
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much money has it made that one I don't know ballpark what do you think I mean most videos probably like $5 RPM so 150
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Grand okay yeah great okay so you launch this thing and then it starts to go and
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then how do you scale the ideas because it it does become a bit of a hamster wheel like how do I one up myself and do
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you always feel this pressure to have to one up yourself from the last video literally yeah it's it's uh well
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essentially obviously I've just been doing this for 14 years years and also you said 10,000 hours I think people
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should change that saying to 10,000 days and I'm I'm almost at my halfway point to 10,000 days I think that's how people
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should start looking at things because to be honest 10,000 hours is pretty easy what is that like 10 hours a day for
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three years um just a random thing but um yeah just uh I don't know we would get 100,000 views on a video take the
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money do another video get 150,000 and I've just kind of reinvested the money for 14 years and even to this day
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whatever I make I just spend it the next month on content and the videos have just progressively gotten bigger and
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bigger and it's gone from me counting to 100,000 to seeing what happens if you put a Lamborghini in the world's largest
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Shredder you know just random things you know well you also seem to have some pretty good judgment where maybe some of
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your contemporaries don't uh we've seen that need to get the next view lead to people doing increasingly dangerous
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stunts like this um taking a model X over some Hill I think Dober did that some other person was swinging somebody
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on a crane maybe you could talk a little bit about restraint and understanding like hey even though this is going to
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get a lot of views and maybe some of you are contemporaries I won't give the specific names of people but they've
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done some really idiotic things and and gotten hurt yeah so how do you know when
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a conversation you know and some of these ideas kind of maybe go over the line yeah well I mean the obvious answer
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is common sense so right okay next question but no no no no but the the thing is like obviously if it's there's
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a lot of things people do that they know will get views because of outrage and it's just easy to do but you know if
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you're trying to build a long-term brand you don't want to just constantly piss people off just to get attention like
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eventually it stops working so the real answer is you just got to not go what is
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the easiest way to get views what is you know what do people actually want to watch that you know isn't just going to
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get views because they're angry essentially you have um if you in um Greenville North Carolina you basically
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have your own college campus yeah you know it's like buildings Lots Studios all these young people dynamically
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running around doing all this stuff I mean when I saw it I was like this is a tech startup it felt like Facebook
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circuit 2006 accepted in Greenville why did you think you could pull this off there yeah well the thing is you know as
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as you scale up you're not really especially when you're in your young 20s you're just kind of doing whatever you
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got to do to keep up with growing and making the videos so you just kind of blink and 10 goes to 20 employees to 50
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to 100 and how do you get people to go there like what is it that you're giving them yeah where they would leave New
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York or LA and whatever job is to try to do this with you yeah that's the hard part I'm still still trying to figure it
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out most people it's it's a lot of convincing to be honest uh I would highly recommend you don't build a
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company in a middle of nowhere Woods in North Carolina city like ours it's most people don't want to live there um so
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usually it's just like people who you know their job is kind of their life and they're very passionate about what they
00:07:23
do so it's like we provide you a cool job where one day you get to bury me alive the next you get to you know
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figure out how to send me to space or whatever um but the real answer you just got to find people where work is their
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life and so they don't care but anyone who does they hate it well that's actually a feature in some ways right
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which is how Silicon Valley used to work by the way this is what I was going to say how do you recruit for that and and
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what do you do when you find out that there are people that you know want work life balance and don't don't want to do
00:07:51
the level aren't willing to commit the way you're willing to commit for yeah I mean like I said that's the part I'm
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still trying to figure out to be 100% honest it's I I think at some point I just got to move out of the middle of
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nowhere in North Carolina don't don't recommend it building a big company in a small city employees you have now
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they're around 250 so you consider maybe moving it to Los Angeles or something to
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be closer to but just like somewhere where it's like a decent size city would probably be more optimal one that has an
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airport would be nice sure Jimmy um one of the things you say a lot is I'm still
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trying to figure it out I think that's the key to your success having spoken to you a bunch I get the sense that you're
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on this kind of insatiable Journey like you I mean you speak in a very grandiose
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way about what you're trying to do it's just there's no there's no fraking limit
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and you see it in your videos but you also see it in how you've kind of iterated I tell people like there's no
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one else on Earth no entrepreneur in history where you can go track them longitudinally from the first thing they
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did all the way through to today if you want to understand this entrepreneur it's all in the open go check it out and
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now you'll see the grind and you'll see what it took to get here and it doesn't stop every week you've got some new
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record-breaking 24-hour video coming out and it's [ __ ] nuts what's the the the
00:09:03
mission where's it all going and help just frame for the audience for everyone like how do you think about where you're
00:09:08
going the the beauty is there's well YouTube as that's my main platform you know obviously if you buy an Android
00:09:14
phone YouTube's pre-installed and alphabet owns it so when you search things on Google it takes you to YouTube
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a lot of time so YouTube is just massive I mean billions of people use it on a monthly basis and so being big on
00:09:26
YouTube you know we get 100 million views on a video in the first seven days which you know up before the last couple
00:09:32
years that's never been possible in history so it's it's definitely a very interesting time where you can get you
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know just unfiltered access to basically unlimited people and then um you know we
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just I've weirdly enough it's not why I got into it but it ended up just working
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out that way that I spent 14 years of my life just studying how to make the most
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optimal videos what type of content people want and we just kind of mased the art of going viral and YouTube just
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so happens to be such a big platform and so it's pretty nice because now like they've been saying we're getting around
00:10:01
a billion views a month and um yeah we can just but where do you want to take it well recently we started getting into
00:10:07
um selling long term yeah yeah well we started getting into selling some cpg products so we started with chocolate
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and it's nice because the same people who I would take pictures with in Walmart when they see our product there
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they're like oh it's the guy from YouTube and they'll buy it and so um just kind of right now just anything in
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retail is great because you know you just put things on a shelf and people buy it and you know um it's like it's
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it's much easier than like doing something complicated I tell I tell people it's almost as if you think your
00:10:37
job is to make people happy is that a good way to frame like about your job yeah yeah the other thing that's I I
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find just extraordinary about your business is you're essentially built Walmart without any of the cost
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structure any brand you decide to build will immediately have the first 10 million customers yeah the beauty is we
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don't have like essentially don't have to do marketing so marketing cost but also zero distribution cost um that can
00:11:02
go one of two ways with the Mr Beast bger yeah you you learned a lot of lessons there maybe went too fast you
00:11:08
didn't expect it to be so popular and you lost control of that and then with Mr with the uh
00:11:13
febles stuff you nailed it so maybe you could tell us the lessons from each of those projects um well yeah the beauty
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of a febles is you I mean kind of like I said you just put on a shelf and people
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go there and buy it I don't you want to ask me something more specific about on be be honest about the
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insane amount of product development work you personally do and how deeply you care about making it work um because
00:11:42
I think that's what's missing for a lot of people well no and then my point was Mr Beast Berger you kind of loaned your
00:11:47
name yeah to it and it it didn't have the same quality control yeah well that one I can't talk about but oh okay no
00:11:54
problem I was wondering yeah no problem yeah little okay let's just admit this last few questions R shitty let's reset
00:12:00
no I think it's a great question you just can't talk about bring it back let's go back to the two smarter people
00:12:05
here we start David do you have a question I want to I want to I want to ask about um I better go on to a new
00:12:12
topic here real quick um the thing I've been really Blown Away by is just how elaborate your Productions are I mean
00:12:19
some of these videos are incredibly elaborate in the production values and in the storytelling the one that comes
00:12:25
to mind for me is the the squid game uh series with I mean that looked like Monumental logistically to pull off and
00:12:34
terms of set design and every other way um I mean I guess tell us more about what goes into that and you know what
00:12:40
I'm kind of hearing from you with the 250 people you have working you've built this whole town it sounds like the old
00:12:46
Studio system you know like back in Hollywood like Warner Brothers back in the 1930s where they had their own Lots
00:12:53
their own actors their own everything and it was very different back then like we heard Gwyn saying that like most time
00:12:59
on assess is like waiting around it doesn't sound like that's what's going on with you you've like so you're back
00:13:04
to kind of the original Studio system yeah exactly I mean like I said um the beauty is we don't have a studio that
00:13:10
tells us what we can or can't do or you know the distribution or anything it's just we we own it all so we just make
00:13:16
whatever videos we think will be viral and you know um obviously we have the direct connection and so the the big
00:13:21
thing is like obviously YouTube you know at the moment you don't make that much from ad Revenue so to do these big
00:13:27
multi-million dollar videos it's just not really possible possible which is why doing things like feas and other
00:13:31
products to generate revenue on the back end is why we're able to do that and other people aren't because it's like
00:13:36
you know if you get even if you get a 100 million views on a video the RPM's $5 it's only 500 Grand you know what I
00:13:42
mean so it's not that crazy which is why people aren't able to do these big budget spectacles like we are um even
00:13:49
because most people don't even get anywhere near that kind of viewership and so it's like the beauty is creating
00:13:53
the model where we turn around and we use that to sell products sell a couple hundred million of that a year and then
00:13:58
we use that to put it back into the content is there pressure to tone down like the consumerism or the giving away
00:14:06
money like do some I'm sure there's a faction of people that either find that offensive or they think it's
00:14:12
exploitative how do you deal with that no no not really to be honest um most people think it's cool that because it's
00:14:18
like it's kind of fun to watch someone receive you know $10,000 or Lamborghini or house or I like the last thing we did
00:14:25
was I ordered pizza and tipped the guy a house and like uh that was cool um my bad I actually
00:14:32
ordered two pizzas one from Domino's and one from Pizza Hut and the guy who got there first got the house I mean there
00:14:37
was the so the Domino's guy got it so order do but I think like no but didn't you do something it was curing
00:14:45
blindness 10 carens who got upset and people were like but there were people right like 10 carens got upset it was
00:14:51
like at the end of the day as long as I I think what I'm doing is good and right
00:14:54
and helping people like obviously at the scale of our views you know that video got 200 million VI views of course some
00:15:00
subsection is going to be mad it's just kind of at the that number it's just inevitable that people be unhappy
00:15:07
there's a piece of your business that actually many people probably don't know about outside the commercial part which
00:15:12
is Beast philanthropy you want to tell people about the size of the food bank you've built and how that works um sure
00:15:18
uh so I just I feel we're talking about it myself but we essentially just started a charity and then made a
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YouTube channel where you know whatever we do with the money from the charity we
00:15:27
film it so then generat revenue on the back end and obviously those videos go on to raise a lot of money for donations
00:15:33
and so it's just kind of a cycle where we upload a video a week and we were able to build a couple food banks and
00:15:38
feed a couple hundred thousand people that kind of stuff you want to talk about the
00:15:49
business model uh in the future so you have basically this YouTube business yep and that goal is essentially just
00:15:58
maximize growth yeah just make content people want and get as many views as possible and as J
00:16:03
said build distribution and direct it at these old Legacy companies are there things but you said you wanted to do
00:16:08
things that were just like it seemed less offline right so I'm sure you you looked at online things yeah uh I mean
00:16:15
right now it's just like the the reason we started with chocolate is obviously like in the last 50 years there hasn't
00:16:21
been any like major chocolate company that has spawned up like Hershey's lent Mars far they're all like 100 years old
00:16:27
and so it's kind of just a sleepy space where they don't really innovate and it's kind of boring and no one really
00:16:32
cares and so um obviously eventually we'll do online because it's much easier to get people to download an app to buy
00:16:37
a physical product but it's just kind of perfect because the Shelf space never changed and people want something new
00:16:42
and so you know uh it was easy to take over you know how big how big is that how big is that business for you can you
00:16:50
say uh this this is our second year we'll do a couple hundred million wow okay wait so we just we just guessed
00:16:57
about the math here you said million um views a month at $5 CPM so it's 5 million a month for the video so 60
00:17:04
million a year and the chocolate bars will do 200 uh I mean we're not really public about it but it'll do a lot of
00:17:11
Revenue figure it out it'll do something more than a penny what do you think about the success of
00:17:17
prime you know how do you look at that is that yeah they're killing it I mean yeah that's a a great case study it's
00:17:23
just you know I I heard you never two years ago Revenue right well I don't know about that but or at least I can't
00:17:30
say publicly but I can't say like you never would have thought like you know tens of millions of kids or at least
00:17:35
millions of kids would be so enthusiastic about a sports drink you know I mean it's crazy the kind of
00:17:40
demand they've created like kids literally collect Prime bottles and then Tik to go viral showing off their
00:17:46
collection of drink bottles that are like $3 or whatever your hand if you got kids that do that yeah it's it's wild I
00:17:52
mean so Prime was was great because obviously it's a beverage and the more shell space you get just naturally the
00:17:58
more sales but they it was more a Lifestyle brand they created where just kids felt cool drinking it until the
00:18:04
point where they would buy a 12 pack for like 15 bucks and then sell them for like $6 you know a bottle at their
00:18:09
school which is like something that happens in almost every school in America it's crazy still to this day
00:18:13
after like a year and a half one of the one of the things that I think if you taste Prime that it has is a ton of
00:18:19
sucrose right so it tastes super like bam big mouth feel um where's your thinking on like the line between nut
00:18:28
nurition versus just taste good for the products you have and the products you want to build yeah and where do you want
00:18:33
to take that agreed I I think that's very important that's why our chocolate we only use four ingredients whereas
00:18:38
Hershey's uses nine because obviously since we have this much influence we don't want to just you know make people
00:18:44
whatever we sell needs to be better than what's currently on the shelf or then it's just a net negative you know what I
00:18:48
mean better for you higher quality ingredients Etc so um yeah I mean in a nutshell that's kind of how I view it
00:18:54
and so what are these other areas and that just make maybe obvious sense if you could snap your fingers and just
00:19:00
yeah well I think the simplest thing the the more I like studied chocolate and and see it like we started with well
00:19:06
funny enough we started selling dark chocolate which 65% of kids in America don't even like so that was kind of dumb
00:19:12
but I didn't know any better so I mean the simplest thing is do milk chocolate which is what we're getting into and um
00:19:18
you know then just going down and and maximizing chocolate like doing Reese's cups and that kind of stuff um so I past
00:19:25
Chocolate I haven't really thought about it because that's basically all I'm thinking about for next year
00:19:29
okay do you think the candy business can be a billion dollar Revenue business oh
00:19:33
yeah of course I mean look at Hershey's what are they doing 12 billion a year Mars tens of billions all I mean in
00:19:40
America alone I think people spend $25 billion a year on chocolate and there's no one in those companies building a Mr
00:19:45
Beast competitor I mean from a brand there's no one of those companies that build the companies they're like 100
00:19:50
years old so they're they're all dead yeah um how do you you must have a ton of inbound to do things outside of the
00:20:00
Mr Beast realm Hollywood Etc how do you sort through all the inbound opportunities and then organized because
00:20:07
you could I would suspect be drowning an opportunity at this point with this level of notori well that's why we are
00:20:13
where we are is because we just layser like focus on one thing for essentially my entire life and so it's pretty easy I
00:20:19
just say no and then uh yeah because it's like you know obviously for to to make the view the
00:20:28
videos that the caliber we need it's just like that's been my obsession for the last 14 years almost every waking
00:20:32
hour of the day just you know obsessing over you know every little thing like if
00:20:37
even simp like simple things like when you click on a video the brightness in the video matters like if it's a little
00:20:41
too dark people are more EP to click off and not watch it you know because not everyone has their phone screen
00:20:46
brightness you did something with your mouth being open or closed in the thumbnail and it changed clickthrough
00:20:51
that was a new a test well the problem is whatever I do a bunch of other people do and I started opening my mouth in my
00:20:56
thumbnails and it's kind of annoying and then a bunch of other creators did it and I was like okay we're not doing this
00:21:02
anymore so I switched them back what's the budget on each video now so every two weeks how much money goes
00:21:08
into that video um I think right now it's around two and a half million per video oh okay yeah that's like making an
00:21:13
independent film every two weeks yeah but I mean they yeah I don't think it's that crazy though because they they're
00:21:18
getting like 100 million views in seven days so if anything any other like Medan
00:21:22
outside of social media that got that kind of viewership their budget would be like 50x you know what I mean absolutely
00:21:27
absolutely do you think that you're building Library like do you expect that a video that you created you know the
00:21:32
Olympic Games thing you did a few weeks ago in 5 years that that'll still be that'll have some value 15 years from
00:21:39
now well 15 I don't know but five yes usually whenever we upload a piece of content we'll get a couple million views
00:21:44
a month for as of right now forever but obviously eventually it'll probably die off but they they're usually pretty
00:21:50
Evergreen because right now because we have the model where we're making money outside of YouTube so I can spend more
00:21:55
it's like you have this video that's $2.5 million budget or like another video that's $2 and half thousand budget
00:22:00
and so right now usually people end up just clicking on the cooler stuff and then how do you think about the just the
00:22:07
axis of going outside the United States so different languages different countries how do you how do you deal
00:22:11
with that that's that's the best part so um I mean as as you know we we hired voice actors to dub our videos in every
00:22:17
language and I I assume a lot of you guys here are content creators and the crazy part is only 10% of the world
00:22:23
speaks English so if your content's only in English it's pretty hard to obviously
00:22:27
reach most of the the world even subtitles most people don't prefer it um so if you dub your videos hire voice
00:22:33
actors or whatever um your viewership will Skyrocket and so right now over half the people that watch my videos
00:22:38
don't even speak English which is pretty crazy um tell me about the relationship
00:22:43
with YouTube and how that's evolved over the years because I I don't know they anticipated that you know the footprint
00:22:50
of the top creators on YouTube would get so large yeah are they deeply involved in communicating with you or are they
00:22:58
just like hey we a platform post a video if you like it it's that yeah that's extraordinary to me yeah I mean I kind
00:23:04
of like it because then no one can say there's favoritism or or they're helping us in any way um but agreed like even
00:23:09
when I was coming up like you know people were getting 10 million views a video and that was like mind-blowing and
00:23:14
their life cycle would be like a year and they fall off so I don't it's kind of crazy I don't really know how we
00:23:19
ended up getting this big I me was there ever a thought to tell them I need to make you know a higher minimum per RPM
00:23:25
and I'd like to cut a deal with you to hit these numbers they'd be like well then everyone's
00:23:31
going to want that cuz if they do it with me then they would open the floodgates they would just tell me spend
00:23:35
less money so got it interesting cuz no one's forcing me to spend this much money it's kind of the
00:23:41
problem technically most people don't spend hardly any money I mean and but there was a moment in time where
00:23:46
Microsoft started stealing away some YouTubers and folks for their twitch competitor did did you get those kind of
00:23:52
offers and then how did you evaluate them well the the problem is like like I said at the start you know YouTube's
00:23:57
where all the viewers are so it's like sure you can get a little bit of money but ultimately the real game is if you
00:24:02
can get a billion views a month for 10 years you know whatever the amount of Brands we could build is you know insane
00:24:08
yeah so it's it is the great success of YouTube that they've hit this level of scale exactly and and the features and
00:24:14
stuff on that like YouTube is the only platform right now where you can upload a video in different languages so if
00:24:18
someone clicks my video Mexico I'll speak Spanish whereas if you click in America that feature is in beta right
00:24:24
now yeah well they they've rolled it out to other people but on Tik Tok Facebook
00:24:27
no other platform can you do that so YouTube's the only place right now where you can actually have a global audience
00:24:32
do you provide the voiceover person or is that done automatically because they're they're working on an automatic
00:24:37
version I was told yeah and for the first or the next two years it will probably sound terrible but it's of
00:24:41
course at sometime in the near future aiing will you know we get hit up about that all the time for the all in right
00:24:47
now I've I've trained a ton of different voice models they all sound terrible um
00:24:51
but it is you know obviously getting better very quick have you published any to see what the viewership looks like uh
00:24:56
yeah aim me versus like real voice acting we it's usually so if it's a one minute video the retention with noral
00:25:03
voice 45 seconds it be 42 but it'll also be a lot of comments like why does he sound slightly off so the retention
00:25:09
isn't as bad as you would think but it's it's still like you can tell the quality
00:25:12
score is lower yeah exactly like to if the thing is like when you're using dubs you're already at a disadvantage because
00:25:18
they can choose to watch someone in their native language or watch you with a guy speaking over your lips and so if
00:25:23
it's not as good as like you're already down here a little bit worse and then if
00:25:27
you use a dubing it's even worse worse like so you you know I think video games are six times the uh revenue for movies
00:25:34
today have you thought about video games the folks I've got to assume folks approached you and how do you think
00:25:38
about the video game industry because you're you have a lot of audience overlap I got imag yeah um to be honest
00:25:43
I tried to build one and then uh like six months in I was like oh these things take years and then I was like I'd
00:25:49
rather sell chocolate so um yeah that that was kind of the extent of it I mean obviously it's a no-brainer because it's
00:25:55
much easier just to tell people to download it just click the link in description it but I've just found that
00:26:00
I don't know it's like I just keep going back to it making you know confectionary
00:26:05
products is just so much more fun and um you know 100 million people are going walk into Walmart every month and if you
00:26:11
don't have a product there there there's nothing for them to buy and so like I just want to maximize that getting
00:26:15
something in every retailer in America first one of the one of the things that you've done is you've mentored younger
00:26:21
content creators coming up um who are people that you look at that are creating things that you think are
00:26:27
interesting whether it's formats or I'm curious how many of you guys make content out there like anything okay I
00:26:34
mean we do a little bit I guess so actually do you have have any tips for us I mean our
00:26:41
our uh viewership on YouTube is embarrassing one of the one of the things he did first was he ripped apart
00:26:47
our thumbnails oh yeah he said our thumbnails were total [ __ ] I mean that remember and we gave that we gave that
00:26:52
to was I joking or was I being well I think you guys like I mean clearly it's working I think the that no one cares
00:26:59
about your guys thumbnails I think the big thing is like the value you guys provide and like that it's a but should
00:27:03
we not close our mouths now in thumbnails oh you should the mouths open yeah the mouths are open oh yeah I would
00:27:08
I would close I mean it's there's something different about each week of especially for this age group definitely
00:27:13
closed them well no I mean there no one wants to see a there's something distinctly different about what you do
00:27:20
every week it's something new it's something original we're trying to have a conversation mclocklin group kind of
00:27:27
format so I think some of those tips don't work but our audience on YouTube I think now will um exceed what we're
00:27:34
doing in podcasting ultimately because it does seem that people like to watch us uh and put it on in the background so
00:27:41
we're seeing that I think we have 380,000 you guys are doing great to be honest I remember when you first started
00:27:45
it and I was like oh this is an interesting combo but it works and like whenever something weird
00:27:52
in the world happens I'm like oh I'm going to go see what they think of it it's like it's cool where do you see
00:27:57
this we met Jimmy at poker let's do you think we no where do you think this is going to be in 20 years
00:28:02
well your podcast you no I mean we have an idea where this is going this to be honest the only thing in
00:28:11
front of us right now are uh the daily from The New York Times a priest reading the Bible and serial killer podcast
00:28:19
seral killer podcast I me it's really not much ahead of all podcast or in news in all of podcasting those are the three
00:28:26
ahead of us yeah just on gal's question like are you being do you feel pressure to like elongate the content like like
00:28:34
and or have you you feel like you've optimize now the amount of time where you maximize viewership well yeah I mean
00:28:39
that's actually something we've been focused on a lot recently I think the the problem is people are like we waited
00:28:43
two weeks and it was just 15 minutes of content they actually get annoyed when it's too short so we're working on
00:28:49
elongating it but not because of like algorithms or anything it's just like people just actually don't like waiting
00:28:54
two weeks for just 15 minutes of content like they want more or more frequent videos and the problem is the spectacles
00:29:01
are so big it's much easier just to make it longer than do a whole new one to like upload more so yeah they're
00:29:06
naturally getting longer and longer right now I wonder if you did a behind the scenes on the off week yeah and just
00:29:11
had another group cuz I was watching the one you did where you were all on a um a
00:29:16
like a raft yeah and you decided to torture your team we spent seven days on a raft in the ocean I mean I was painful
00:29:23
to work but behind the scenes of that done by another group of video editors on the off week I bet you would do as
00:29:28
many views yeah the the thing is though like the mystery is part of what's cool like how does this random YouTuber give
00:29:33
a million dollars away to someone on the street or like things like that so part
00:29:37
of it is like them not knowing how it's even possible is is why it's so interesting and they click on it if that
00:29:42
makes sense yeah can you talk a little bit about um the point of view where folks say content creators on YouTube
00:29:49
have an audience and that audience ages out and then they lose that audience and
00:29:53
how you've continued to be able to grow your audience know some of the folks you
00:29:56
started with have gotten older just like the problem is like every advice is all
00:30:01
it's there's no like one size fits-all advice and so like obviously if we're talking to someone who unboxes toys you
00:30:08
know Their audience is going to grow and there's nothing they can do about it um
00:30:12
but you know for us we ideally you know one day you guys aren't going to be like
00:30:16
oh my kid loves you you'll be like I also like your content um but we try to make content that you know no matter
00:30:22
what age you are you'll enjoy it so usually they don't who here personally watches Beast yeah oh more than oh yeah
00:30:28
us too all right everybody Jimmy Donaldson the timer since 25 seconds oh we went over
00:30:35
over well you can stay up here if you want we're going to take questions from the audience I I'll take a question from
00:30:40
the audience all right I I flew out here for this let's do some more okay I'm going to moderate the question raise
00:30:45
your hand how do you stay consistent when executing so frequently I think that's
00:30:52
the hardest thing for repeat I can I'll repeat it yeah so he asked how do you stay so consistent uh with with what
00:30:58
with your execution so incredible execution so hard spot on all the time yeah uh he
00:31:05
said how do you be so consistent with execution spot on all the time um so the the thing is you just have to obviously
00:31:11
just train great people because you know if you're doing everything yourself eventually you're going to burn out get
00:31:16
different interests blah blah blah and so um I actually my top people I bought a house and we all lived together for
00:31:22
years and I just kind of trained them to think like me and you know see the world
00:31:26
like me and so a like by I top probably 12 people 95% of the time you know if you ask them something and ask me in
00:31:33
different rooms we'll give the exact same answer and the other 5% of the time will just be like very slightly
00:31:37
different thrown away a video because you were unsatisfied with it oh of course all the time how that happens all
00:31:42
the time yeah so out of 10 videos how many would be well the thing is like if you want to build viewership over time
00:31:47
if you want to go from 10 million to 20 million views a video to 30 million views a video you just have to get it
00:31:51
where every time they show up they're happy they feel like they got value out of it it's like it was worth their time
00:31:56
and investment so yeah if something's not good and they click on it then they're less likely to click on future
00:32:02
videos so you can only yeah to grow viewership like that it has to be want to take a right
00:32:11
here obv do thank you here you you repeat the question question um I don't know how to repeat
00:32:30
that one not as easy as it looks H that's how he does it he would like to know how uh your normal person and you
00:32:36
stay so authentic given this incredible your humility how do you keep your I think the beauty of it is I usually
00:32:43
spend 99% of my time in my studio so I don't really like the 100 million number on the video just looks like pixels on a
00:32:49
screen like I don't really experience it that much so I think that's kind of the
00:32:52
best part how do you walk through an airport these days or walk you know through a City it is pretty crazy huh I
00:33:00
was really worried about getting you here I kept asking them how are we going to get him through LAX I don't
00:33:05
understand the the thing is you throw a hood on and wear some glasses I and you're pretty good and you just don't
00:33:10
talk on like talk out loud or anything like that so same thing all right everybody give it up for Jimmy Donaldson
00:33:17
thank you it's F that was awesome these are your win ride rain and David and instead we open source it to
00:33:33
the fans and they've just gone crazy with [Music] it besties are my dog taking driveway oh man my Willet me we should
00:33:55
all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy they're all useless it's like this like sexual tension that they
00:34:00
just need to release somehow we need to get [Music] merch I'm going all in

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  • 80
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  • 75
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  • 75
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Episode Highlights

  • The Rise of MrBeast
    Jimmy Donaldson, known as MrBeast, transformed from a 13-year-old YouTuber to a global sensation.
    “He's basically the most followed human on earth after Messi and Ronaldo.”
    @ 01m 45s
    September 19, 2023
  • Innovative Content Creation
    MrBeast shares how he scaled his ideas and the pressure to constantly innovate.
    “How do you scale the ideas?”
    @ 04m 15s
    September 19, 2023
  • Philanthropy and Impact
    MrBeast discusses his charity work and the food banks he built to help those in need.
    “We built a couple food banks and feed a couple hundred thousand people.”
    @ 15m 40s
    September 19, 2023
  • The Rise of Prime
    Kids are reselling Prime drinks at school, turning it into a lifestyle brand.
    “It's crazy still to this day.”
    @ 18m 12s
    September 19, 2023
  • Investing in Quality
    The importance of using fewer, higher-quality ingredients in products.
    “We only use four ingredients whereas Hershey's uses nine.”
    @ 18m 36s
    September 19, 2023
  • Global Reach of Content
    Hiring voice actors to dub videos in different languages expands viewership.
    “Over half the people that watch my videos don't even speak English.”
    @ 22m 38s
    September 19, 2023

Episode Quotes

  • I just started how many views does that have?
    All-In Summit: MrBeast on his journey, business model, and the future
  • There's no fraking limit!
    All-In Summit: MrBeast on his journey, business model, and the future
  • I think what I'm doing is good and right.
    All-In Summit: MrBeast on his journey, business model, and the future
  • It's crazy still to this day.
    All-In Summit: MrBeast on his journey, business model, and the future
  • YouTube's the only place right now where you can actually have a global audience.
    All-In Summit: MrBeast on his journey, business model, and the future
  • I just want to maximize that getting something in every retailer in America.
    All-In Summit: MrBeast on his journey, business model, and the future

Key Moments

  • Counting to 100,00003:39
  • Philanthropy Discussion15:14
  • Lifestyle Branding18:00
  • Quality Ingredients18:36
  • Global Audience24:30
  • Content Consistency30:52
  • Audience Engagement31:54

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown