The following is a conversation with Mr. Beast, the mastermind behind some of the most epic and popular videos ever made.
下面是与“Mr. Beast”先生的谈话,他是创作一些最史诗般且最受欢迎的视频的幕后策划者。
And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description is the best way to support this podcast. We got House of McAdamius for a satiating and delicious snack, 8th sleep for you guessed it, naps, and better help for mental health.
现在,让我们快速地提一下赞助商吧。在说明中了解他们是支持这个播客的最佳方式。我们有麦克阿达米斯之家提供美味可口的小吃,还有 Eighth Sleep 让你享受充足的午睡,和 Better Help 为心理健康提供帮助。
And now onto the full ad reads. As always no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting but if you skip them please do check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff maybe you will too.
This show is brought to you by House of McAdamius. It seems like it was just yesterday that they became a sponsor and I became aware of their existence. Just before they became a sponsor they sent a giant box of delicious snacks. And it seems just like it was yesterday that I ate all of those snacks of a period of a few days. And was a happier man for it.
This month I'm much stricter on my diet and trying to be much more responsible with my consumption of snacks. I think moderation is key for that. But in general I think first of all, McAdamia to me I think is one of the more delicious nuts but it is definitely the healthiest or at least one of the most healthy.
I think it's pretty much the healthy. I remember when I first started keto many many years ago I did a bunch of research on which nuts I can and can't have. I guess if I want to be ultra low carb and everybody recommended McAdamia as like the one that has all these nutrients and all that kind of stuff. I'm sure there's a lot of science you can look it up. I think there's like Omega 7 or whatever those different kinds of fats. It doesn't matter. The points are delicious and the raw ingredient or the McAdamia nut that house McAdamia provides is just delicious and of course they do all kinds of snacks around that.
And my task whenever I do an ad read or talk to anybody like my neighbors or friends about how some academia is not to do any sexual innuendo. That's job number one. My brain is that of a silly person. At heart I'm still a child and I will forever remain a child like that time wait song. I don't want to grow up. Maybe that's the name of the song or the lyrics but I'm just going to go with it.
And there's a good chance to mention that time wait is somebody that I've dreamed of talking to on this podcast for a long time. He's a very difficult interview to get. He's dropped a few crumbs to me of hope. You know saying like yes maybe one day. So I hold onto that hope. Like a hold onto the delicious house of McAdamia nuts with child leg join my eyes. Go to house of McAdamia's comm slash legs to get 20% off your first order.
This episode is also brought to you by 8th sleep and it's new pod 3 mattress. There's been a few days over the past 3 weeks where I've been extremely stressed because of some of the things going on in my life. You know how life is it's an up and down process both the ups and downs contribute to the beauty of the whole experience.
Anyway when things are kind of difficult. I saw the scape in friends in books in moments of simple joy in moments of peace and I think the best escape is a good nap. A full night sleep of course but also a good nap. It's kind of magical how much your mind can just become completely refreshed.
The beauty of the world can be richly rediscovered through the process of a nap. It's incredible just 20 30 minutes. It's kind of amazing at least my brain is like that. So sometimes when I'm feeling crappy I'll just give it a nap. I'll give it a good night's sleep and see how I feel again in the morning and almost always if not right away just maybe a couple of times I feel better.
Anyway that's why you want to really make sure that the surface the mattress all kinds of technology that you surround yourself with in terms of sleep you use the best stuff and that's why I look forward to sleeping on that cool surface that an A sleep cover provides. It's just it's just incredible. I look forward to nap since the sleep is just because of that A sleep cover. Check it out and get special savings when you go to 8sleep.com slash Lex.
This episode is also brought to you by BetterHelp spelled H E L P help. Speaking of the ups and downs of life. I think it's interesting you know the kind of roller coaster your mind can go on. At least my mind can go on. One moment I feel blissful and happy and everything is beautiful and one moment I feel cranky and just a little bit down.
这一集也由BetterHelp赞助,拼写为H E L P help。说到生活中的起起落落,我觉得很有趣,你知道自己的思维会像过山车一样上上下下。至少我是这样。一会儿我感觉快乐喜悦,一切都很美好,而另一刻我感觉脾气暴躁,有点儿沮丧。
And one of the things I've learned is to just kind of allow the passage of time to cure all things. But I think that's not necessarily the full picture because you should probably treat your mental health very seriously and talk through it with the therapist. There's some deep ocean of feeling there that may lay unexplored and it's I think beneficial to explore it with the good therapist.
I think one of the most accessible easiest ways to get access to a good therapist, a licensed professional therapist is BetterHelp. That's why my big support of what they do. I mean that's really the first barrier is make it super easy and of course make it affordable. And that's what BetterHelp does. Click them out at BetterHelp.com slash Lex and save on your first month.
This is the Lex Reuben Podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description. And now dear friends, here's Mr. Beast. I'm here with Mr. Beast, the brilliant mastermind behind some of the most popular videos ever created.
Do you think you'll ever make a video that gets one billion views? I think maybe one of the videos we've already made might get a billion views. Which one do you think? Probably like the screen game video with enough time. I mean it's only a year old and it's already on 300 million or some of the newer ones we've done. I've gotten like 100 million views in a month. So those four projected over 10 years because YouTube's not going anywhere. Probably one of those. So over time they don't necessarily plateau. It's interesting.
We're literally jumping around here. I love it. It's good. So I'm a firm believer that it's much easier to hypothetically get 10 million views on one video than 100,000 on 100. And part of why it's much easier in my opinion is like if you make a really good video it's just so evergreen and it never dies. Because when you open up YouTube and look at the videos they're just serving you whatever they think you'll like the best. And so if you just make a great video and it's constantly just above every other video, you know even two years down the road then they'll just keep serving it and never stop. You know, which is why it's much easier to make one great video than a bunch of mediocre ones.
What about one billion subscribers? You've passed PewDiePie's the most subscribed to YouTube channel. When do you think you get a billion? Let me do some math real quick. So around 120. So you think about this? No, I don't. Honestly, I, because one thing you'll find if you want to gain subscribers, if you want to get views, if you want to make money and almost any metric in this video creation space, if you want something, it all comes back to. Okay, well then just make great videos. So instead of like focusing on all these arbitrary vanity metrics, I just kind of focused on the one thing that gets me all that, which is make good videos. But I do think we will, when they hit a billion subscribers, I don't have a plan on going anywhere, even though we're only on 120 million right now on the main channel. I think like we're doing around 10 million a month now and YouTube just, yeah, I just don't see it going anywhere. And I don't see any reason why I'd ever get burnt out or quit. So I think what the enough time, yes.
I wanted to ask you those family friendly questions before I go to the dark questions. So now we have dark questions, but if you wanted to hook them, you would start off with the dark question. That's how you get them. Okay. Well, let me ask you about the Twitter poll you posted, a $10,000 death poll you tweeted. If someone offered you $10,000, but if you take it a random person on their dies, would you take the $10,000 and 45% of people said, yes, that's at least at the time I checked 850,000 people committing murder for just $8.5 billion in total. So what do you learn about human nature from that?
That's a good question. Honestly, this is like late at night when I threw that up to you, I was just like, this will be a funny thing. I assumed it'd be 90% known, like 10%. Yes. But there are a lot of serious people for you guys listening. I just did this random Twitter poll. I was like, would you take 10 grand if it meant someone ran them in the world died? And a lot of the replies on the tweet were like, hell, yeah, why not? And I was just not expecting that. And so I don't really know. I mean, I feel like your take would be better than mine. Was it disturbing to you, surprising to you? A little bit. Yeah. But obviously a lot of people were trolling, but you know, when you read through those replies, I do think like 10% of them were dead serious.
Well, I think sometimes the trolling and the laws reveal a thing we're too embarrassed to admit about the darker aspects of our nature. So I don't know if you listen to Dan Carlin's hardcore history podcast. He has an episode on painful payment, which he describes throughout history how humans have been really attracted to watching the suffering of others.
So public executions, all that kind of stuff. And he believes that's in all of us that, for example, if something like a YouTube or a different platform streamed a public execution or streamed the torture of another human being, a lot of people would say that's deeply unethical, but they would still tune in and watch. And that we're we're attracted to that drama, and especially the most extreme versions of that drama.
And so I think part of the laws reveal something that's actually true in that poll that like your answer so much better than mine. Do you think about that maybe even with this good game?
So I think how many how many views does this what game currently have 300 million? Yeah, so like this. So just imagine thought experiment, how many views that video would get if it was like real. Yeah, because I mean YouTube is like, I will turn a blind eye. We won't take it down. Yeah, I mean, I've obviously probably have billions of views.
How do you think you will die? And do you think it'll be during a video? Actually doing something dumb like going to space when I'm in like older like trying to go to Mars or something like that. I know for a fact it won't be on a video. Every video we do with safety experts and stuff like that. So it's not really risk, but yeah, I could see myself like, you know, after a million people go to Mars or something like that, I'd probably like, you know, let's go and something like that maybe. So not in the name of a video just for the Hollywood. Heck no.
Are you open to taking risks when you should videos? You just went to Antarctica. I mean, like you're putting yourself in the line a little bit, right? Of course, but, you know, we had that video on the works for three years and then we consult with tons of experts radar the entire path. We're going to walk beforehand to see if there's curvasas. So we know there's no curvasas. We do training. We consult with experts and we have survival guides there with us and you know, monitor the weather and everything. So it's like any variable that where we could get harmed, we just pre-plan for it.
Same thing with beard alive. Like I had David Blaine spent a week underground and so I consulted with him and consulted with basically anyone who ever buried themselves alive, you know, the coffin we used to bury me. We did so many tests like that coffin was buried 10 times before I was, you know, for really longer than 50 hours. It tested the airflow and everything to the point where I was safer in that coffin underground than I was above ground. Like, so we just tend to just not leave anything up to chance, you know?
Another strange question then. So you recorded these videos to yourself, you know, five years, 10 years from now. Have you recorded a video that's to be released once you die? Well, first off, I am just glad that not every one of your questions have to do with like views or things like that. It's nice getting different questions. So this is good.
No, seriously. It's a load. No, but it's fine because a lot of people just be like, how much money do you make? You know, just something. Everything's always about money now for when people talk to me. So it's nice. But for the videos I made for you guys who probably don't follow me too closely, when I had 8,000 subscribers and I was a teenager, I filmed a bunch of videos and scheduled them years in the future. And I said, I filmed one more. I was like, hi, me in a year. And the video went up a year later.
And it was just like, hey, I think you'll have 100,000 subscribers. And then I did one more. I was like, hi, me in five years. I was like, hey, in five years, I think you'll have a million. And then one that hasn't come out yet, but comes out in two years, is what was high me in 10 years. And I tried to predict 10 years later how many subs I'd have. So what he's referring to. And yes, there are some that are scheduled like 20 years in the future. And so if I don't die, I'll just move them up.
And I remember, because I filmed these though like seven years ago, but it was, I remember saying a line like, you know, if I'm dead, then I'm currently just in a coffin and like whatever, blah, blah. And because the only way the video will go up is if I'm not alive and if I'm not alive, then I won't be able to push back the schedule of low dates. So we'll go public automatically.
And so yeah, I have a couple of those. If I knew I was going to die of like cancer or something and I had like three months to live. And I would log every day, I'd film so many videos and then I would just schedule upload a video a week for like the next five years. So it's like I'm still alive and I would completely act like I'm still alive and everything. And I think something like that would be cool.
I don't know why, but I've fantasized, not fantasized, but I've dreamt about that a lot. Like I don't know. If I only had 30 days to live, what would I do? And for me, I would try to make like a decades worth of content and schedule upload it. So they automatically go public in the future. And so it's just like I never died. I'm just there.
Yeah, it's the kind of immortality, but it's also kind of troll on the concept of time that you can die in the physical space, but persist in the digital space. I actually, I recorded a video like that because I had some concerns and I just thought it's also a good exercise to do. A video would like to be released if I die. And it was actually really interesting exercise. It's cool. Like it shows like what you really care about. I guess it's like writing a will. But when you're younger, you don't think about that kind of stuff.
Exactly. Mine was just dumb. Yeah. I'm bones at a coffin. Yeah. Yours was probably so serious.
完全正确。我的只是愚蠢。嗯。我就像棺材里的骨头一样。嗯。你的可能很严肃。
No, it's fun actually. When you realize it's like there's no point to be serious at this point. It's a weird thing. I guess you've done this, but it's a weird thing to address the world when you physically use no longer there. So like you know this would only be released if you're no longer there.
You know what's funny of all the people listening to this?
你知道所有听这个的人中最有趣的是什么吗?
Yeah.
好的。
We're probably the only two people that have made videos for when we die. It's like such a niche thing in the fact that we're bonding over. It's kind of funny.
我们可能是唯一为死后制作视频的两个人。这个主题很独特,但我们就是通过它来交流。感觉很有趣。
I think people should think about doing that. It's not just about YouTube. It's also social media because think about it. Like there's going to be a last tweet and a last, I don't know, Facebook posts, a last Instagram post. And yeah, I feel like there's some aspect that's meditative to just even considering making a post like that. And also it's a way for the people that love you to kind of like celebrate. Do you think that would help them cope or not? Like if someone randomly watching this did film a video, you know, for if they accidentally dying some freak accident to be given to their family, do you think that would, and it was like a genuine.
I think it would really help. I mean, it depends because like, how would you even intro that? Like, hey, mom, if you're seeing this, you know, it means I'm probably dead. Yeah, exactly. That's how you interact. That's the opener. I just want you to know. Yeah, I guess. Yeah. And I guess you could say in a kind of funny way, but and just talk about the things that mean a lot to you. Because otherwise you are at the risk of the last post you have is like, like, I don't know, talking shit about like Donald's like that. But then you're dead. That's it. 100 years. I don't know. I do recommend it. It's like the Stoics meditate on death every day in the same way you kind of meditate on your death when you make a video like that. Because it's actually not just even talking to yourself. It's talking to the world. And it like for some reason, at least for me, they made it very concrete that there's going to be an end. And I'm like, it's almost, it's over for me. If I'm making the video, it's over for me. It's just an interesting thought experiment. I recommend people try it.
Yes. I, it's hard because like, what if you just die and then you just see nothing forever, you know, nothing. It just fades to blackness and you're just like that for trillions upon trillions to billion squared years. And it's just, it's scary. But also before you're born, you don't remember those, what, X amount of years either. So that gives me a little comfort. But, you know, it's definitely very scary. Something I'd rather not think about in time like 80. I'll deal with that problem then.
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I don't know if I told you this, but I'm kind of hopeful that someone like Elon and one of these like freak smart people would just like be like, you know what, screw it. I'm going to figure out a way where we can slow down aging, get it where, you know, we can live to be two, three hundred years old and just like set their sights on that and then just kind of save us. So be really nice.
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Like it's, it's almost absurd to think that in our lifetime, they won't figure out a way to just even slightly slow down aging where we could live to be like a hundred, twenty or hundred thirty. And then that extra time, they won't figure out some way where we could live to be 200. Like, obviously not immortal, but I don't, I don't see how in my lifetime, the life expectancy doesn't just expand.
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But it also could be that the immortality is achieved in the digital realm. Like it could be long, long after you're gone, there's a Mr. Beast run by a Chad G.P. T. Exactly. Yeah, that consumes everything I ever said, everything I ever wrote. And I don't want that. I want to live. What do you smart people out there figure it out? I'll keep you entertained when I need you to figure out how to keep me alive. You know, you may tell 200. That will make me happy.
也有可能是通过数字世界实现永生。就像是在你去世很久很久后,有一个由 Chad G.P. T 经营的 Mr. Beast。没错,它会收录我说过的一切,我所写的一切。但我并不想要这样。我想要活着。你们这些聪明的人能找出解决办法吗?当我需要你们为我想办法时,我会让你们感到娱乐。你知道的,如果你们能够让200个人知道,那会让我很开心。
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Well, that's, that's funny. Who owns the identity of Mr. Beast wants the physical body is gone? Like is it illegal to create another Mr. Beast that's Chad G.P. T. I don't know what the laws are on that. Yeah. I mean, once I'm dead, I don't care. Well, but you just said you did care. I mean, there could be a, like many Mr. Beast that are created after, after you're gone.
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Yeah. I mean, that'd be cool to be able to like train up a model and let them loose. So my content lives on, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. But it somehow feels like it diminishes the value contribute. Yeah. It's authentic, but it's also, there's, there's some aspect to the finiteness of the art being necessary for it's point. Oh, yeah. The second I think starts spamming out videos. Yeah. The videos lose all meaning and it's pointless and it's a money grab.
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If you run YouTube for a, how long should you run it for a year? How would you change it? It's hard because, you know, obviously I'm biased because we're doing really well, but I feel like when I open up YouTube on my television, I get the videos I want to watch. I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't ever open it. I'm wondering like, what are these? What are these 10 videos on my homepage? And when I click on a video, I suggest I don't ever wonder what these are.
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Like I, I, and maybe it's because I'm very adamant about like the kind of videos I watch and I try not to watch videos that I want to get recommended more because I just, that's how I think, but I'm very happy with how it is at the moment. I think one thing though that I just hate with the passion is a comment section on YouTube. It's just so bad. I know that's not something that's going to 10X the growth of the platform, but if you think about it, you go to Reddit to read comments and somehow like the, you know, usually the top 20 posts on a popular Reddit post are not spam.
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You know what I mean? Like have you ever clicked on something on the front page of Reddit and then most of voted reply to it is like, go check out my site right here and it's like trying to scam you out of a thousand dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I can't even think of one instance I've ever had that happen. So like Reddit, it's so nice to click on post and just see what people have to say. But I almost wish like you had that same feeling when you read the comments on a YouTube video.
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Instead, it's like it's so many people just copy and pasting so many bots that just grabbed the top comment for your previous video and pasted it over. So the top comments and every videos are the same and the things that break through that are just scammers trying to get you to give them a thousand dollars for a fruit, you know, fake ad. That comment section is one of the most lively on the internet. So it would be amazing if YouTube invested in creating an actual community like where people could do high effort comments and be rewarded for it.
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Like I read it. Like actually right out of long time. That would make me so happy because like when I upload a video, I usually go to Twitter to see feedback. Like I read my comments and I'll flip through newest, but it's just I feel like Reddit and Twitter just give me so much better filtered feedback, especially now that with Twitter blue because people pay eight dollars a month. I've noticed like any tweets I get from verified users now, they're usually not just garbage troll takes.
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Like these are people paying eight dollars a month like they're usually relatively sensible. And so it's been pretty nice. Like after I upload a video, I just go on the verified tab on Twitter and just see what people have to say. And anyways, I live for the day that YouTube's like that.
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What do you think about Twitter? What do you think about all the fun activity happening recently since Elon bought Twitter? I think he should make me CEO like I tweeted.
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Well, I should say sort of we had, we just like a couple hours ago, had a conversation with Elon and you guys in exchange of some excellent ideas.
嗯,我应该说我们有点像刚刚讲了几个小时,在和伊隆及你们交换一些非常棒的想法。
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So yeah, I legitimately think obviously you're exceptionally busy, but I legitimately think it'll be awesome if you some help participate in the future of Twitter. Yeah, it would be fun.
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Because there's so much possibility of different ideas. First in the sort of the content, like dissemination hosting and all the different recommendations, like the search and discovery, all the things that YouTube does well.
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I think the most exciting thing is he's willing to move fast. And so I think there's going to be a lot of interesting things that come out of it because he's just moving quick and a lot of these more mature platforms just take years to do the simplest stuff and they're very bureaucratic.
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So it's going to, I mean, it'll be interesting to see which way it goes when you just kind of take up, move quick, break things, whatever type of approach to social media. I'm actually pretty curious to see what features he rolls out.
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So what would be your first act as Twitter CEO? I can't spoil it. Okay. I got to get hired.
那么,你担任推特CEO后的第一步工作是什么?我不能泄露。好的。我得先被雇用。
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What do you think about video on the platform? I mean, do you think that's an interesting or is it like messing with the medium, the nature of the platform?
你对于这个平台上的视频怎么想?我的意思是,你认为这是很有趣的,还是会影响到平台媒介的本质?
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I think Twitter will always be closer to TikTok than it is to YouTube. I got at least in this current form. I don't see 20 minute, one hour long videos or whatever, you know, even 15 minute videos being watched over there. I see it more as like the short and snappy stuff closer to TikTok.
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But at the same time, Twitter is a really good comment section for the internet. I mean, it's almost weird why, like why doesn't Twitter allow you to embed YouTube videos? Like why does, you should just ask Elon that.
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I don't know if that's a YouTube thing, but when YouTube are posted video, why do they have to link to YouTube? Why can't they just embed it on Twitter and you just play it there? I mean, wouldn't that just solve a lot of problems?
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Yeah, but then the two companies that have to agree to integrate each other's content. I don't know, but it seems like a win-win. I mean, well, it's more of a win for Twitter because then people don't have to leave the platform. I mean, that would be the easiest. But who gets, like when you watch the ads on a YouTube video that's embedded in a Twitter, who gets the money? It would still be YouTube, but at least then right now people just post a link and it takes you off Twitter and it just kills your session time on Twitter.
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That's really interesting. But the, yeah, because the Twitter, whatever the dynamics of the comments, especially once the spam bots are taken care of, Twitter just works.
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So Reddit is a nice comment section for the internet. It's a slower pace, more deliberate, like higher effort. Twitter's like this high-paced, like a femoral kind of stream, but there's the, the upvoting, the downloading works much better because you can do retweeting, right? Because the social network is much stronger than it is on YouTube, like the interconnectivity.
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Yeah, on Reddit, you're going to get the top replies are going to be the most refined ones. You're stuff flows to the top that's not super refined, but like you're saying, it's more off the cuff stream of consciousness, which a lot of people prefer because it's a little more personal.
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How do you think Twitter compares to YouTube in terms of how you see its future on roll in 2023? I mean, I think YouTube's going to be YouTube and not much is really going to change, but it's going to keep growing just because, you know, that's just what it does because it's owned by Google. But Twitter, I don't know.
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I mean, it's one of those things like you can't predict if a, you know, a year from now an economy is going to be in a recession or booming. And I think Twitter's kind of the same thing. One thing for certain, a lot of things are going to be rolled out, but who knows, honestly.
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You responded to, you know, I'm saying Twitter's unlikely to be able to pay creators more money than YouTube. What do you think that is?
你回应说,你知道的,Twitter不太可能比YouTube给创作者更多的钱。你认为这是为什么?
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Well, yeah, because I think that Twitter responded to as one where he was saying that the, you know, users will jump over if Twitter could potentially pay more than other platforms. And I was just saying, obviously, because Google has Google AdWords and I mean, that's Google's whole thing. It's putting ads on stuff.
They've been doing it better than anywhere else in the world for a very long time. It's very unlikely in the next few years that Twitter is going to just magically or any platform, you know, give a creator the ability to make higher CPMs than on YouTube.
It's kind of crazy. Like some creators in December, you know, Q4 because the ad rates are higher because of Christmas and everything, some creators literally make like $30, $40 per 1000 views. That's after YouTube's cut. Like it's almost like hard to think about, like how high the RPMs get.
And even then, once you pull out a finance and cars, the high CPM niches and you move into just normal stuff, it's still just crazy. There's sure volume of creators and the fact that all of them get these multi-dollar CPMs at scale. It's pretty beautiful.
So you do, I don't know what you would call them, but like integrated ads in your videos and you do it, I would say masterfully, it's like part of the video. You're talking about brand deals. Brand deals, is that what you would call that? Yep. So it's a brand deal. It's part of the video. It's still really exciting to watch. And yet there's a plug for the brand.
In general, just brand deals since you brought it up, integrating them well. I think that's something a lot of creators don't do. Like, they'll just do a brand deal out of the blue. They'll just be filming a video and then around the three minute mark. Just start talking about a random company. And I feel like if you don't want viewers to click away and you want people to not get pissed off and call you to sell out, you got to find a way to integrate into the content.
And ideally, use the money in the video to make it better. Like, the easiest thing you're doing, you do a brand deal is just tell people how you're using the money from the brand deal to make your content better. And if you do that, like, no one cares. Now they're supporting you for it. And you go from being a sell out to, like, oh, I'm doing this to make better videos for you guys, you know?
I don't know if you can share, but with those brands, when you have discussions with them, how they strict about how long you need to be talking about it, or is it more about their leaving control to you about the artistic element of it?
The problem is the ones who don't give us artistic element, we just don't really work with anymore. Sure. Because it's just, you know, we get a hundred million views of video now. And I can comfortably say I know how to entertain them and convert them better than these random brands.
So, yeah, if they don't give us that freedom, I just won't work with them. So you have that leverage, but for smaller creators. It's a lot harder. And they're going to just say 45 seconds. Here's what you say. Take it or leave it. And it's like pretty brutal.
Because I think just in general, if brands were more accommodating to let creators tell their story of the brand and talk about the brand in a way that felt a little more natural, I think it would be, hey, it'd be less cringe. If people would be less likely to go, you know, tough, tough, skip. And obviously it would convert better, but they're just so afraid. And they want to standardize things.
Say these words and 45 seconds right here at this three-minute mark.
在这三分钟的标记处,说出这些单词并用45秒的时间。就像中文母语者那样说话。如果需要,可以改写。
Yeah, I often think about how to resist that. You just don't do them, though, right? Not on YouTube, right? On the audio, I do ads in the very beginning. And I say you can skip them if you want. But the brand loves that.
I don't, like the point is they, so the funny thing about podcasts is different than YouTube videos. Podcasts people actually do listen to ads a lot because they, it's slower paced and they like the creator voice, like talking about the thing.
But in general, I just don't believe you should be talking about, I think, for a minute exactly and that's going to be effective. I want to see the data for that.
总的来说,我认为你不应该随意谈论一件事情,我想,精确地说一分钟,这样才能有效。我想看看数据。
I think what's much more effective is the way you do ads, which is like integrating into the content, like put a lot of effort into making a part of that, like doing the brand deals. And it's just, it's difficult to have that conversation.
It's like a very strenuous conversation you have to have with brands, each one at a time. And I just wish there was more of a culture to say, like the quality of the ad read matters a lot more than the, like the silly parameters, like the timing of it, like how long it is, the placement of it, all that kind of stuff.
What percentage of your viewers do you think have seen one of my videos before? What percentage of the viewers on YouTube, right? Yeah, of your viewers on YouTube, though. Yeah, most people are over or all of them.
It's just interesting. I'm just speaking very specifically about my brand deal process. And so in my head, I'm like, I wonder what percentage of these people even have any idea what he's talking about? That's interesting.
I love the thinking about numbers. The whole time we have this conversation, it's all I could think about. I got damn it. He's probably like 50% of these people have no fucking clue what he's saying. And we're about the torture in for five minutes.
I think there's like 50% of people don't have not watched the Mr. Beast video. Isn't that an opportunity to like.
我觉得大约有50%的人还没有看过Mr. Beast的视频。这不是一个机会吗?
Yeah, I guess it's an opportunity, girl. I don't know. Honestly, I was just kind of excited to hang out with you.
嗯,我猜这是个机会,女孩。我不知道。说实话,我只是很兴奋能和你一起出去玩。
Yeah, me too. I mean, it's not. Who cares if it's Mike's?
是啊,我也这么觉得。我是说,这不是什么大不了的事。谁关心它是不是迈克的?
Yeah, so it's kind of like having a buddy to go along to journey as I'm just kind of eating shit and doing my normal grind. It was like kind of fun. And also you just say really wise stuff constantly. So honestly, I never even put any thought into like the demographics of what I could gain.
It's just interesting because like my retention brain, when you talk about something, I'm instantly like, hmm, what value are they going to get? How many of them are going to be interested? What percentage of people do I think we'll lose? And I'm like running all those calculations of background. And that whole conversation like the. It's just something I can't turn off. My like bells are like air, air, this is bad.
What are the different strategies for higher retention? For your videos in general? It's like how do you cook good food? You know what I mean? That's like the same kind of question.
I see. So there's so many different ways that you're. So it boils down to. Do you think at the level of a story or do you think like literally watching five seconds at a time, am I going to tune out here? Am I going to tune out here? Am I going to tune out here?
It's all of it. You need the overarching narrative and then you also need the micro where every second, you know, needs to be entertaining. And you. Basically what's interesting is the longer people watch something, the more likely they are to keep watching. So you don't have to try as hard in the hypothetically back half of a video as you do in the front.
Like even right now, we're so deep into this where a lot of people listening are probably just going to keep listening relatively close to the end unless we just have a really boring part of this conversation because they're just. They're just saying it. They're immersed.
And so a big. To really boil it down to a simple level, you just want to get people where they're immersed in the content and then just kind of hold them there.
那么,简单来说,你只是想让人们沉浸在内容中,并将他们留在那里。所以这是一个很重要的事情。
We had this discussion offline. And by the way, I should mention that this is like late at night. It is. What time is. It's at 9 o'clock.
And I only slept one hour last night because I'm an idiot and I flew to the wrong location. Well, here. We're like, hey, let's just book you a hotel to fly. He's like, no, I got it. We're like, you sure? You just do it. We always do this. He's like, no, I got it. He's going to have to rub it in.
And then today, I come to find out he flew to the wrong airport, the airport with a or a city with a similar name to ours. Same name. Same name in a different state. And I was like, that's why he should've let us book it. And so he saw one hour of sleep and he's literally been dying all day. Before the podcast, he'd downed like two things in coffee. We've been going all day hard.
Yeah, I've been getting to interact with you. I should say that this gave me an opportunity to. I got a ride from a stranger. It was an incredible person that got to interact with them. So there's so many kind people around here, just like this kind of southern energy. And then I got to go to a diner because I could. There's only one hour between me arriving and having to fly out. So I went to a diner, there's a really kind waitress that called me honey. So that was a beautiful moment, you know?
I was so confused. You tweeted about that. And I still was like, my assistant was like, Lex isn't here yet. And I saw your tweet and I was like, he's here. He was like, no, he's still flying. I was like, four. Like an hour ago, he just tweeted about a nice diner. Yeah. I didn't realize you flew to the diner. It was a diner in a different state. And then you had to fly over here. And then I called you and you didn't answer. That's like something's not adding up.
Yeah, I feel like a such an idiot. Because apparently the world has cities like Springfield, right? Every single state has a Springfield. Oh, really? I think so. I think that's a. That's like a Simpsons joke, right? That's like the city in the Simpsons, the Springfield.
And I think every single state or most of them have a Springfield. And the same is true for like a Georgetown. I think I almost forgot what the most popular one was. But there's like a list of the people get. When they run out of ideas, they just keep you in the same goal. They're your Achilles heel.
You know, I got to meet a bunch of people from your team. There's just an incredible human beings. So let me just ask on that topic, how do you hire a great team? Like what have you learned about hiring for everything, for the main channel that you do, for the React, the gaming channel to Mr. B's burger, to Feastables, all that?
The big thing is, especially in this content creation, because it's not like anything that's done on Netflix or different content medians. I really need people who are coachable and like really see the value in what I care about, because it's a very specific way of going about things. And it's like a thing. There's no one like plug-in play.
Like if Netflix wanted to hire someone to do a documentary, there's probably tens of thousands of people you could hire that have worked on documentaries before. But if you want to hire someone to make Superviral YouTube videos, like we do, there's just no one you can really pull from.
Like sometimes I'll hire people from game shows, right? And they have all these preconceived notions about pacing and how a video should be. And you have to spend like the first year like breaking all these habits and, you know, and they think they're better than you.
Like a lot of people in traditional think they're better and they think their way is better than what we do. And so for me, it's almost easier to hire people that are just hard workers that are obsessed and really coachable and just train them how to like be good at content creation and production, than to hire someone from like traditional, which is the only way to really do it, because there's not that many YouTube channels that have scaled up, so it's not like there's a huge talent pool of people who've worked on YouTube channels.
So it's easier just to train someone than just pull them from traditional, because traditional people just, I don't know, they have all these opinions and things and they just think our way of going about things is dumb.
Yeah, so you want people who have the humility to have a beginner's mind, even if they have experience. And see the value, like actually, you'll still get it, it's so crazy, like especially some of my other friends that are scaled up through YouTube channels, there's people that will come on and you'll ask them, like what do you want to be doing in five years?
And instead of saying, oh, I want to be working on the channel, they'll be like, oh, I hope to be working on movies. Or this one, and they see like working on a YouTube channel as a launch pad to go into traditional. And it's like, no, like you just don't get it. This is the future. This is the end goal. This is your career. And so I'm just so tired of having those kinds of conversations, like I feel like people really should be coming around.
Are there like recurring interview questions that you ask? Is there ways to get? Yeah, but the biggest thing is like, what do you want to be doing in 10 years? And their answer isn't making content on YouTube, or if there are answers, anything like movies or traditional stuff like that, it's like just a hell now. Like it just won't even remotely work. So you really want people to believe in the vision of YouTube? Yeah, I mean, ideally, it's like, oh, working here. You know what I mean?
So it's less about the medium and more about just being on a great team that's doing epic stuff. Yeah, well, and yeah, the medium is well, because those, it's just, it's hard to put into words, but there's just two completely different ways of going about things. You know, like our videos aren't scripted, and you know, it's a lot more run and gun. And when we, if we hypothetically blow up a giant car or whatever, like you only have one take, you know what I mean? And it's not scripted. And so you have to over film, overshoot things, over compensate for like the dumb way of going about it.
And a lot of traditional people would be like, well, just play what you're going to say. And just play in the ankles. You can cut the cameras in half. You can save 50 grand here. You can save a, you know, 75,000 hours editing. There's in that. And it's like, yeah, but that's not authentic. That's, you know, blah, blah. You get it. It's almost so obvious that it hurts to have to like, constantly have these conversations, but it's what we live in.
But there's also a detail like there's a taste. Like I've watched a bunch of videos with you, and it's clear to you that you've gotten really good. I don't know what the right word is. Style or taste to be able to know what's good and not in terms of retention, in terms of, yeah, just stylistically visually. I don't have to think. I can just watch a video and it just screams in my head.
Like this is what, this is what you change. Based on, you know, million videos I've watched and all these viral videos are consumed. Like this is as bubbable or what's optimal and things like that. It's almost like your brain's like a, you know, like a neural net and like if you consume enough viral videos and enough good content that you just kind of start to like train your brain to like see it and see these patterns that happen in all these viral videos.
And so that any time I watch a video or a movie or anything, I just can't stop thinking about what is optimal. And so it's like, it gives me a headache. Sometimes when I watch something too slow or I don't think is optimal, obviously my taste isn't the end all be all. But that's something that kind of torments me. If that makes any sense.
Oh, you can't enjoy a slow moving. No, I can't. And that's not to say there's attention on Godfather's horrible. No, I've tried to watch that movie like three times. But isn't that not to say slow movies are bad? Like there's an audience for it. It's just obviously not what I've trained my brain to like and in social media and YouTube right now, like this is not the meta.
And in general, like you said in neural network, you're training your brain in part on actual data, right? So you're actually is data driven. So you're looking at like in terms of thumbnails and titles and different aspects of the first five, 10 seconds. And throughout the video, the retention, all that. You're looking at all that for your own videos to understand how to do it better. So that's where the neural network is training.
Basically, there are ways you can kind of see like the most few videos on YouTube every day and stuff like that. I just kind of consume those every single day. And I've been doing that for way too many years. And then you just start to know his patterns.
Like the thumbnails on the most few videos or videos that go super viral tend to be clear, tend to not have much clutter, tend to be pretty simple. Titles tend to be less than 50 characters. Intro's tend to be this, stories tend to be this. And you just kind of like after you see those thousands and then tens of thousands of time, it just starts to click in your head. Like this is what it looks like, you know?
So how are you able to transfer that taste that you've developed to the team? So like, because you said like broad things, but I'm sure there's a million detailed things. Like what zoom to use on the face to use in the thumbnail, right? Like the answer is whatever makes the best video.
Because the problem is the more, which I have so many friends who are like this, they'll make like checklist for their editor. So like, you know, this be in this be, and you need to have like a three-part arc in this. But the problem is that's how you, the more constraints you put on the team, the more repetitive and less innovation you get. And the more like, you know, after 10 videos, people are in there and they're like, I've already seen this.
So to me, and I'm 24, you know, I'm probably, my mindset will change in the next 10 years. I just haven't been in this industry too long, but the only way to like really make innovative content and keep things fresh is to not put constraints on or put as little as possible. And so that's where I'm very hesitant on all that stuff because the more I say the more they're gonna be like, oh, then that's what we do. And then, you know, I'll say one time like, oh, you know, ideally there's a cut every three seconds. And then next thing, you know, every video, there's like cut every three seconds or whatever.
So it's hard because I try to give as little, little training, not training, but as little facts or as possible and more just make suggestions, if that makes any sense.
You mean publicly or to your team? To my team, yeah.
你是指公开地还是对你的团队?对我的团队,是的。
What was, so you talked about sort of teaching your voice or your style, whatever we want to call it to other people on the team so they can be kind of Mr. Beast replacement. So what's the process of teaching that?
So you don't want to, no, I got your constraints. You're more time about like, what I would call almost like cloning, like Tyler and other people like that. Yeah.
所以你不想的,我知道你的限制了。你更关心的是,我会称之为几乎仿制,像泰勒和其他人一样。是的。
So when we were hanging out today, I was showing him how we have multiple people and they've come, it's almost like talking to the camera to have you turn slowly to the camera. I was like, it was, have it. Is it weird to you to not be looking at the camera? This whole interview, I constantly have been turning towards the camera, like I'm talking to him. It's a habit.
Because my whole life, I've just been talking to a camera. Who are you thinking about when you look at the camera? Do you like imagine somebody?
因为我一生中都在和相机说话。你看着相机的时候想着谁?你会想象着某个人吗?
I'm fully thinking about the person just sitting, watching it. I almost, it's weird. When I'm looking at the camera, I don't see a camera. I'm like in a haze, picturing what the viewer is seeing when they watch it. That makes sense. And that's where I'll be saying things or doing something. And then like when I'm watching, I'm like, that's not what I want. And then I'll freeze up. It's very weird when I'm filming.
And then for people who haven't worked with me too much, they'll think like, it's very weird. Like how I go about it. Because I'll just be doing whatever, like lighting a firework. This is a thousand hour fire. I'll go to light and I'll like freeze. Because in my head, I'm like, this, I don't know, I don't like how that floater, how that shot looked. Because it's weird. I can perfectly picture what I'm filming by just looking at the camera and then putting myself through the lens of the camera while making content. I can do it at the same time.
So you're like real time editing. In my video. That's something that didn't at the start come natural to me. But in the last, probably like five years, it's happened. And so I would say it's one of my greatest strengths, but I don't know how I developed it.
But anytime I'm filming anything, like it's almost like the right side of my brain, I just can just look at it and I see exactly what I'm filming. And I can just picture it. Well, that's probably recording the video, being the talent for the video and then watching the editing and like analyzing your care for and do that over and over. Yeah, you do that over and over. You do that over and over. You do that a thousand times, yeah.
You do the editing more than the being in front of the camera. So like you start to see yourself from that third person perspective. Exactly. It actually helps with the nerves of it too. Like you see it as creating a video versus performing. Right. Yeah, yeah. I think so.
You know, it's weird. I've never been nervous talking to a camera. It's harder for me to talk to a person than to talk to a camera, which I feel like a lot of people say that though that are whatever make content, right? Interesting. I've heard that so many times. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just awkward and dull. Maybe they're practiced.
To me, it's, I mean, both are terrifying, but being in front of the camera about yourself is so much easier. Really? Yeah, so much easier. I've referred a million times over. But that's my whole life. Yeah. So it's just, that's why it's interesting.
Like you've spent more of your time talking to people. Yeah. It comes natural and I talked to a piece of plastic. Oh, I guess you're talking to a person too. There's just then on the other side of the camera. Yeah, there's just a pixel on a screen.
So cloning. How do you achieve that? Oh, yeah, that's right. This whole rabbit show. So I was showing him that I have a lot of people in the company who were able to think like me and basically make decisions like I would make if I was like, if you were asked, hey, in this video should we climb a mountain or should we dig a hole? Right. And like, you know, they would pick the same answer. I'd pick 90 plus percent of the times.
And so like one example is Tyler, who I was showing you. And he was pitching stuff for content. And like you can see, like this, he was on point. And basically for just four or five years, we just spent an absurd amount of time together and worked on every single video together and we worked side by side. And same thing with my CEO, James, he literally lived with me for a couple of years.
I'm a big fan of just like finding people who are super obsessed and all in and A players that, you know, they really just want to be great. And they're just dumping everything I have in them. And I think you were saying, because I'd love to find that and develop that.
You're saying you're basically for a long time just said everything you were thinking to them. Exactly. Like James, the guy who's basically right him and right now, for two years he lived with me. And we probably talked on average of those two years, seven hours a day.
I mean, every time I had a phone call, I'd don't on speaker and I'd let him listen. Anything I was reading, any content I was consuming, like really just training his brain to think like me. So that way, he could just do things without my input, without me having to constantly watch over him or give him advice. And that's where we've gotten, like, so for the first six months, he didn't do anything. He just studied me and studied everything I cared about and how I spoke and blah, blah, and then the next six months, he started taking on some responsibilities. And now he can just run the company.
And, you know, I don't ever really have to check it on him. Like most of the decisions he makes are exactly what I would do. And so I call that cloning. I don't know what other people would, but it's just like finding people that are really obsessed and they just kind of really want it and just be like giving them an avenue to like get it if that makes any sense. Another way to see it is you're converging towards a common vision. And that makes like brainstorming much more productive.
Yeah, it just makes it where I don't have to be so involved in everything because I just have these people I know will think like I will, at least relatively close to it. So I can kind of almost be in multiple places at once per se. And so these things that, you know, I still approve every idea we film and, you know, everything before we film with all the creative, I approve it, but I don't have to like be in that weeds and nuances and do all this minor stuff. I can just let them handle it. I can just do the more macro things.
I got a chance to sit in to a lengthy brainstorming session with Tyler and others. That was really cool. Can you talk about the process of that of people pitching ideas and you pitching alternatives or shutting down ideas and just going, like plowing through ideas very quickly? I mean, you kind of just described exactly what we did.
Yeah. Yeah, but the ideas are really, really good. It's just tossing out, like, different categories of ideas and then also fine tuning them to see, like I know I changed, like thinking about the titles and the thumbnails. I work so well off of inspiration.
It's like, that's something like give me anywhere, I don't know, like your relatives. Space, space. Yeah, like I went to space, you know, what happens if you blow up a newkin space or I went to the moon, I went to Mars, right? Because you said that one word, it was able to inspire me to come up with four ideas.
And so that's just, it's for me, if you, the way to get a hundred million views on videos, you need something original, creative, something, people really need to see, ideally never been done before, all these, like, things. And so you need, like, if you want to consistently go super well, you need just a constant stream of ideas.
And the only way I've really found that I can consistently come up with a hundred million view videos is to intake inspiration and then see what my brain outputs. And so that's kind of at its core foundation what I'm doing there. So like, intake a lot of random inspiration to see what spawns in my mind so I can output it.
But the neural network of your brain is generating the video, the title, the thumbnail, all like jointly. Exactly. And that only comes because I spent 10 years my life just obsessively studying all that stuff. Because you, I mean, it seems like you would literally potentially shut down a video just because you can't come up with a good title.
Yeah, or a good thumbnail. Or a thumbnail. Yeah, I mean, that's what happened to 70% of those in that pitch session. I was just like, oh, what was one of them genius versus a hundred people or yeah, like maybe average intelligence versus genius. So I'm like that. Yeah, I was like, what the heck is the thumbnail? Even if the title was good. Yeah, I mean, this so many, but yeah, people don't click, they don't watch.
That's so interesting. But you developed over time the ability to kind of give it what, what makes for a good title? Short. Not just short. It's also, I mean, if someone reads it, or they like do they have to watch it? It's just so intrinsically interesting that it's just going to fuck with them if they don't click on it. You know what I mean?
So it doesn't have to be short, but it has to be like, you almost want to have a retention to word by word reading. Ideally, it's a title also that, you know, because the titles don't live in a vacuum, right? So it has to lead into the content. So ideally, the title represents content that you would want to watch for 20 minutes. So if it's a 20 minute video and the title is I stepped on a bug, it's not going to, because it's all of it combined. It's the click the rate is going to be much lower. And then if it was like a five second video, people might click it.
So you got to, like, even nuances of the length of the video based against the title will affect whether people want to click it, because sometimes they just all add up. I mean, it's that, yes, ideally, you want it below 50 characters, because above 50 characters and certain devices, you run the chance of it going dot, dot, dot. So like, I took a light pole and I saw how many dollar bills I could stack on top and they would just go dot, dot, dot, because it's too long and it can't finish it.
And that's the worst thing because then people don't even know what they're clicking on. And so it's going to do even worse. Short, simple, ideally, and just so freaking interesting, they have to click. And it is a good segue into the content and it represents the length of the content. And there's probably stuff. It's hard to convert into words for you.
Like I stepped on a bug versus stepping on a bug versus Mr. B stepped on a bug versus that bug stepping video. So it's like, yes, the more extreme the opinion, typically the higher the click, the rate. If you can like, uh, pay it off in the content, then it just super charges it. So like, well, so you have a kind of estimate of the extreme. Like, uh, this, this water, right?
And you're like, Fiji water sucks. Yeah, that would do fine. But if you said Fiji water, it's the worst water bottle. Or the worst water I've ever drank in my life. Yeah. Way more extreme opinion would do way better. But you have to deliver. Yeah, but then you have to deliver. Because the more extreme you are, the more extreme you have to be in the video. Yeah.
That's almost inspiration for you to step up. Yeah. But you can be more extreme and a positive way. A lot of people, it's easier though. Positive, uh, negative clickbaits much easier than positive clickbait. It just is. It's so much easier to get negative clicks. And so a lot of people are just, in my opinion, you know, a little bit lazier and they just take the route.
Like, oh, well, this one gets the same amount of clicks. And it's easier. Less effort. The positive one is doing a large number of numbers of something. Like I spent this number of hours doing this. Well, whatever. If you just wanted to help people or, right, it's just harder to get 10 million views on a video helping people. Then it is to get 10 million views on a video tearing down a celebrity. You don't mean or whatever negative video you want to insert there.
Well, that said, most of your videos are pretty positive.
嗯,话虽这么说,但你的大部分视频都是很正面的。
Yes. But not a lot of people do those kinds of videos because they're hard.
是的。但是不是很多人做那种视频,因为它们很难。
Yeah, they're hard. Yeah.
是的,它们很难。嗯。
Some of that is giving away money, right?
其中一部分是在送钱对吧?
Yeah. What's the secret to that? What's, how do you do that? Right.
嗯,那是什么秘诀呢?那是怎么做到的?好的。
Yeah. And the way money or in a video that made it to make it compelling.
对啊。而且,如何用钱或者视频让它变得引人注目也是很重要的。
Is it that. So there's a number that is better than another number, right? The higher number is always better than the lower number.
这是不是这样呢,有一些数字比另一些数字更好,对吧?更高的数字总是比更低的数字好。
Yeah. I felt the most part. And you know, it's interesting.
是的,我感受到了大部分。你知道的,这很有趣。
Like some videos will give away a million dollars. Some videos will give away half a million. There's not really, I guess, so I'm retracting what I just said. I was more joking with that. But there's no difference whether I put 500K or a million.
There's probably not even really a difference between 100K or a million. I haven't really looked into it.
100K和一百万之间可能并没有真正的区别。我还没有仔细研究过。
Like some of our mostly videos are not us giving away a million dollars. And sometimes the million dollar videos just don't do as well as the other ones.
So there is a certain point where a dollar amount is just a large dollar amount to an average human. And so I think that point is 100K. Like anything above 100K, the average human is just like, that's a lot of money. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't, 100K and a million, like, doesn't really move the needle. And that makes sense.
Which that's a very nuanced piece of information that applies to very few people. But yeah.
这是一个非常微妙的信息,只适用于极少数人。不过,嗯。
Well, no, I think it applies as fascinating. It's fast, our relationship with money is fascinating. Like why is it so exciting to get, I mean, I, you know, the times I found like 20 bucks in the ground are like incredible. I know why, right?
Why are you so happy? Like what exactly is so joyful about that?
你为什么这么开心?具体哪些事情让你这么高兴呢?
I mean, it depends where you are in life with the situation is, yeah, I don't know. There's also a gamified aspect to it. It's exciting.
我是说,情况取决于你在生命中的位置,是的,我不知道。它还有一种可玩性。很令人兴奋。
Yeah. No, I get it. Like why people want to see if you win money? It's just interesting that past 100 grand, it doesn't really seem to make a difference. Like it's the same basically.
So you found that to be true with all the money you've given away that just didn't click the rate like obviously in terms of someone receiving it.
那么你发现,尽管你一直在捐赠钱财,但在接收方面没有取得预期的效果。
Yeah, a million dollars changes to life drastically more.
是的,一百万美元会让生活发生巨大变化。
Like that's the difference. Like, oh, if you wanted to, you could really quit your job. Suppose 100K is like not really.
就像这有什么区别一样。就像,哦,如果你想的话,你真的可以辞职。假设10万就像不太够。
You probably do like a scientific study, like a formula giving away money to click through rate.
你可能会喜欢科学研究,就像一种公式,可以帮助你提高点击率并获得更多的收益。
Yeah, there could be some kind of denture to turn. It definitely, the returns level off dramatically after 100K. That's basically the premise.
嗯,可能有某种假牙可以翻转。毕竟,在10万之后,回报率急剧平缓,这基本上是前提。
What about 10,000?
10000块怎么样?
No, there's 100,000. It's funny because this is such a small niche thing. But yeah, 100,000 does it from what I see in our videos get more clicks than 10,000, but the difference between 100,000 million is just so little.
I just think big number, big number to a lot of people will pass that point. Yeah. So for 100,000, you can like a given average salary. You can probably live for a year given the day out every salary is in America. So that's like a big, that feels something.
So on the thumbnail side, again, that's going to be much harder to say probably. But you know, offline, you know, I got a chance to look at a bunch of thumbnails and it's fascinating which ones do well and which ones don't.
Is there something you could say about what are the elements of a thumbnail that work well?
你能否谈谈缩略图中哪些元素能够发挥良好作用?
Is this also deeply in sync?
这个也深度同步了吗?
Well, that's where, yeah, it's the same thing. How do you cook good food? But it's easier if you pull up a thumbnail and I could be like, that's why that's good. That's why that's bad.
That's a, like an example would be like one of my friends, I was, he just uploaded a video recently and I called him and I was like, what is this?
就像我朋友们的其中一个例子一样,他最近上传了一个视频,我打电话给他时就问他,这是什么意思?
Because he's a very, very smart guy. And in the thumbnail, he's getting chased by cops, but the cops were wearing yellow vests. So they didn't look at cops. Like, oh, why are the cops in your thumbnail wearing yellow vests? It's like, that makes it so much more boring. And he was like carrying a flag, but the pole and the color of the flag were the same color. So it's like, it's a little harder to see the flag.
I was like, also, you're wearing like a shirt with like five different colors. Like, so it's like, it's hard to tell what even what your outline is. And then in the background, there are cars and I was like, well, if you have cops chasing, you know, why not make the cars cop cars? And, you know, and it's like, because in my head, I'm like, dang, if you just did those like four or five things, the video probably would have got like seven X's of views.
How much iteration? Because I also got a chance to see the number of iterations you do on a, I don't know, just a brand thumbnail. It's a problem now. It's an addiction. Is it? So you kind of, there's a lot of the versions were really good. Yeah. How do you know what to do?
I love how you, when we pulled up that, the burger one, and we were flipping through them, you're like, that's really good. I was like, oh, that's version like one of like a thousand. But even the sketch, the idea was good. Like already even the original idea is strong. Yeah.
So one of our coming up videos, we made the Wldz largest plant based burger. And the thumbnail we were thinking is like me standing beside the burger because it's six feet tall. And that's that's why he's talking about. So like just picture a giant six foot tall burger, super wide thousands of pounds. And then I'm beside it. And then it's like eating the Wldz largest burger. Like you, that's just something you have to click. Like, so you were saying like, how would you describe a good thumbnail? Like that, you know what I mean?
But I think you said the one I noticed first, that was good where you were very small in it. Relative to the, and you didn't like that one. I need to come forward a little bit. And also the photo we took was just my upper body. Yeah. So they photo manipulative and creating my legs photoshopped. And that's why I said I don't like it because my right leg was a little like off. It was like bent the wrong way. You know, it's like those legs of Photoshop.
Well, I mean, does the physics of the thumbnail have to even make sense? I mean, you can just like exaggerate the head size and all that kind of stuff. 100%. Yeah, things don't have to be relative. Yeah. You can have a car in the background and be three times the size because yeah, everyone might thumbnails my face is in the, you know, left side very big. So brand recognition. So just people know, oh, especially because now that a lot of people copy our videos, it's just nice to like, you know, everyone else might make thumbnails like this, but this is mine. And obviously we usually over deliver and do bigger stuff.
Would you recommend to other creators that want to make it big and they seem to be, and then look up to you to copy some elements of you or to really try to be unique, unique. 100% unique. You're not the next Mr. Beast quote-unquote meals were saying that third person, but whatever is not going to do what I'm doing better. They're going to just invent their own way. Like you're just not going to do what I do better than me. You know, I have so many, I literally have the best people in the world working here. And I reinvest everything I make even to this day.
You know what I mean? Like it's absurd. The amount of money it's spent on content. And I don't care. I'll just stop sleeping and I'll just film every other day. Like you're just not going to beat me at my own game. And that's fine. You should it. Like I didn't get where I am by just beating someone else at the own game. I just found my own lane and innovating and adapted. And so yeah, there's a lot of people that do copy me and it's fine, whatever do it, but just know you're not going to get to where I am doing that. And so I advise you don't.
You give away a lot of the secrets, basically everything about how you operate. Is there, I don't hold anything back. Go for it. How do you think about that? Because that's all, that's pretty rare. I think, and this is definitely not most people in my stance. I don't think would take this or my position would take this stance, but I see every other YouTuber or person on social media, even is we're also focused super heavily on YouTube. But last year, we were also the most followed TikTok creator in the world as well. I actually were most subscribed to YouTube channel world and the most followed TikTok account in the world.
But in general, I just see everyone else as collaborators, not competitors. I don't think giving advice and helping other creators do well in any way harms me. And I think it only brings more value to my life.
How was it jumping on TikTok and trying to understand that platform from scratch? Yeah. So from being a successful YouTuber to understand it, a totally different algorithm. A bunch of different algorithms. It's interesting.
Well, not even just the algorithm, just the content. I'm going from basically 15 minute short films to one sub one minute vertical content. It's a whole different, just ballpark. And so the first little while is doing TikTok. It's just kind of figuring out what does Mr. V's look like in this short form content? But recently, we really started to catch our stride and come up with some original concepts and figure out how to innovate over there, just like we did on YouTube. Because I didn't want it to just be shitty YouTube videos.
And so like an example is we played the rock for 100K and rock favorite scissors. And the loser had to donate 100K to charity. We went to random people on a campus and we offered them. So I said, I'll give you $100. If you fly to Paris and give me a baguette. And then they said, no. And I was like, I'll give you $300. If you fly to Paris and give me a baguette. And I was expecting this person to say no. And it go up to like 10 grand. And he's like, yes. And so he flew to Paris, got a baguette and brought it back and gave it to me. And that across everything got like 450 million views. And it, because it's just really cool just to see this random guy get on a plane, spend a day in Paris and we cut it up real nicely and bring it back. And so we're starting to find just tons of original content over there.
But it seems like an epic video to make for a one minute. Exactly. No one on short form is doing it. That's the thing. It's like, it's just so funny because like TikTok's been big for a while now, years. And then, you know, as we started to really figure out things on the YouTube channel and get it cranking where I have some free time, we set our sights on TikTok and like, okay, what are people not doing? How do we make it better, put it more effort, make it good? We did the same thing we did at YouTube, just different over on TikTok and it worked. And now we're the fastest or most followed TikTok account in 2022.
And it's just funny that no one else did that. And you're not afraid to do epic stuff, which I also during the brainstorming, some of the ideas you're like, that's better as a short, that's crazy. That's crazy. Yeah, but can you remember one? Because I remember I said that a bunch, but I can't think of one. All I remember is that there were like epic videos. Like really, you're going to do that for a one minute video. Yeah, that's crazy.
So like, are you posting similar content to a YouTube short as a TikTok? Yeah, those were just double up. It's just hard. You know, what's actually pretty fascinating in people who do social media listening to this, we'll probably find this pretty interesting is, picture like the content creation meta three years ago versus now where you can make sub one minute vertical content and it go viral on TikTok, it go viral on YouTube shorts, go viral on Instagram reels, it goes viral on Facebook, it goes Reddit.
You know, you swipe through vertical content now and Twitter when you click on a video and you flip through it. So this is actually very weird. This is the first time in the history of I guess Western social media that one form of content could actually go super viral on every single platform. It's never been like that before. So they're going viral individual there like, like I can post something on, I can post something on TikTok that will get a hundred million views and then post it on shorts and it'll get 200 million views and then post it on Instagram and it get 50 million views and then, you know, I haven't yet, but you know, you can then turn around and tweet it and it get tens of millions of views and you can post it on Reddit and it get tens of millions of views and Facebook can get tens of millions of views.
And that's just what's in the thing. Three years ago, Twitter didn't have, because a lot of you probably don't even know this, but when you tap on a video now and you swipe down, it just turns into TikTok. That wasn't a thing even a year ago. Reddit, that wasn't a thing a year ago, probably two years ago. That wasn't a thing on Instagram, three years ago. That wasn't a thing on YouTube, right, with YouTube shorts. So this is all new and I don't, it's weird. I haven't heard a single person talk about it.
So this is the first time where content can actually go viral on every single platform and you don't have to write or film a video for Facebook, film a 12 minute video for YouTube, film a sub 60 second video for TikTok, write a tweet for Twitter and post this on Reddit. You can just do the same thing on every platform.
And the fact that your content has gone viral on multiple platforms regularly means that virality is not accidental. Or sometimes it can be, of course, but it's just not. It can be engineered. It's, yeah, so many people say it's luck and they're like, you're just lucky or this or that. But what do we have to probably like a thousand videos over 10 million views? Like, we don't ever have a dud.
Like, you can call it luck, but I think it can be trained. I, I, I counsel YouTubers all the time and show them how to go from getting a couple million views a month to 10 millions views a month very easily. And even certain ones like, just one of my friends, like he was just really struggling.
And so I just started showing him basically everything I know and just doing like once every week, sometimes once every two weeks calls, anyone from $10,000 about that on YouTube to over 400,000, just doing these little counseling calls. And so I mean, people can make excuses all they want and say it's just luck or say, you know, well, anyways, I don't even want to quote all the other stuff, but it's just, it is, it is a teachable skill. It's a learnable skill. You can study your way to consistently make viral videos, no matter how small your channel is.
Even if you have zero subscribers, you could if you actually studied hard enough and like, basically if you knew what I knew and some of these, so I don't sound so arrogant, also like some of these other friends I have that I'd say are the smartest people in the world when it comes to content creation online. If you had the knowledge that was in our heads, you could do it very easily. I see people do it all the time.
And what's even more interesting is I go on podcasts and I say everything I know and these people are also very open. Some of them I know it's all out there. And a lot of people instead of just studying that and trying to absorb and apply it in their own way, they're just like, no, it's just luck. So you do lay it all out there, but I got to push back to one interesting thing.
I think a crucial component of your success is the idea stage, the idea generation. The brainstorming I heard today, but getting really good at generating ideas. So it's not just the selection of the thumbnail and the title, that creative process. It's also just the engine of generating really good ideas.
Of course. I would say that is probably the thing that needs to be trained the most for most creators. They just don't put enough ideas on paper. Yes, but also a lot of creators also just don't, which I didn't either for the longest time just didn't make good enough content. Content that's worthy of getting 10 million views. In the idea or the execution of the idea? Both.
Think about how many people just make videos they film under 20 minutes and they don't really put any effort into it. My first 500 videos didn't deserve to get a million views. There's a reason they did. They're terrible. But at the time I thought they did. I'm in the mindset of a lot of small YouTubers, or I thought those videos deserved a million views and I thought they were the only people who made it.
But I'm watching back now and I can tell you exactly why the videos were just horrible. What was the breakthrough for you to start realizing to start having a self-awareness about these videos aren't good enough? You're probably still going through that. You're probably still growing to see. Three to six months used to look back and hate your videos or at least see things you could improve and be like, oh, I could have done this better. That better. If not, then you're not learning quick enough. In my opinion at least.
Where's the source of that learning even for you now? It's just looking at metrics. I just got back from a mastermind where I just got like 10 of the smartest people I knew and we just locked ourselves in a cabin and taught each other stuff constantly every day. Not every day now. Probably every other day I go on a walk and I just call random people. I'll just teach me something.
You just have to have a never-ending thirst for learning. That's very imperative, especially if you want to get on top and then stay on top. The only way to do it is to constantly be learning or someone who is learning is just going to have a leg up on you in the knowledge game.
My teenage years were studying virality and studying content creation. Now, I'm studying how to build a content company so I can actually produce the crazy ideas I want to produce, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. On that, the business side, we talked about hiring. Do you have trouble with firing people?
是的,关于商务方面,我们谈到了招聘。你是否在解雇员工方面有困难?
No, I'm pretty sure almost every person, yeah, actually every person I've ever fired, we just give them severance. I like to see it more as it's no ill-will. If I fired you, if there's some other job you want me to help you get, I'll DM them on Twitter.
If you want to go work for, I don't know, insert whatever, MTV, give me someone to DM, I'll DM them. I try to make it more like a transition and do whatever we can to make it as easy as them.
Something was just not working for you because you want people like you said, super passionate because at the end of the day, if you hold someone that onto someone that you don't see being here in 10 years, you're just doing them with the disservice, you're just giving them more in grain, more enrooted in where they are. The sooner you do it and help them move on to their new life, the better.
Given all the wisdom you have now, if you were to give advice to somebody, or if you were to start over again, you had no money. What would be the first 10 videos you tried to make on a new channel?
I guess that's advice for a new person. Nobody knows you.
我猜那是给一个新人的建议。没有人认识你。
Yeah, nobody knows me. I have a thing that I have a mask on. And you also, I guess, don't have the wisdom. But if I don't have what I have in my head, then I would say just fail.
Like just a lot of people get analysis paralysis and they'll just sit there and they'll plan their first video for three months. Yeah. I'm any of you listening. If you, especially if you have zero viewers on your channel, your first video is not going to give you. Period. It's not your first 10 are not going to give you. I can very comfortably say that.
So stop sitting there and thinking for months and months on end and just get to work and start uploading. All you need to do this applies to people that have not uploaded videos, but have dreams of being a YouTuber is make a hundred videos and improve something every time.
Do that. And then on your 100 first video, we'll start talking like maybe you can get some views. But you know, your first 100 are going to say, there are very freak cases like Liza Koshy or Emma Chamberlain who have really good personalities and it doesn't take them so as many videos.
And it's just like people who are seven foot five and making an MBA. Like yes, there are freak cases you can find. But for the average person like us, you know, who don't have these exceptional personalities and you know backgrounds and filmmaking, just make a hundred videos, improve something each time and then talk to me on your 100 first video.
Well, the improve something is time is the tricky one. How do you improve something each time?
嗯,改进某件事情的时间是棘手的。每次如何都要改进呢?
The second one just put more effort into the script. The third one, try to learn a new editing trick. The fourth one, try to figure out a way that you can have better inflections in your voice. The fifth one, try to, you know, study a new thumbnail tip and implement it. The sixth one, try to figure out a new title. There's infinite ways.
That's the beauty of content creation online. There's literally infinite ways from the coloring to the frame rate to the editing to the filming to the production to the jokes to the pacing to every little thing can be improved and they can never not be improved. There's literally no such thing as a perfect video.
So if you knew everything you know now, but no money, step one would, I'd just brainstorm like, okay, I don't have money. What are some viral things? Like, I mean, the first thing that comes from my mind is something as simple as when I count to a hundred thousand, which is what I did do when I was poor. Like that work, but like what's something like that I could do that would be even more as a central guy?
Yeah, as part of the brainstorm, you would throw out a lot of ideas. People would throw out a bunch of ideas and one of the questions is this even doable, right?
是的,作为头脑风暴的一部分,你会提出许多想法。人们会提出很多想法,其中一个问题是这是否可行,对吧?
Yeah. First off, come up with ideas you think would do well and then ask yourself later if they're doable.
首先,想出一些你认为会做好的点子,然后稍后再问问自己是否可行。嗯。
Because there's different ways you can accomplish something. Don't be cynical about the durability of stuff. Yeah, because there really are so many different ways you can accomplish a goal.
Like when we give away an island, like we give a hundred million subscriber island, you know, you can't find private islands that, you know, don't look like shit for less than ten million dollars.
So this isn't doable, right? All right. The idea doesn't exist. Not doable. Exit off. But then, you know, you dig into it and you, you know, find different alternatives and you find, okay, well, what if we just buy a two million dollar island that sucks and then spend a million dollars, you know, importing some sand, let's build a beach, let's import 300 trees, let's build a little bit of canal, let's cut some past. So now it's a really nice island, but it's actually affordable because we don't have ten million dollars to spend on a video, but we can afford to spend three and a half and lose whatever a million dollars on that video.
So like that's an example of like, yeah, if you just went off the gut test, you'd be like, this isn't doable, you know, every island is ten million dollars or screwed. Like if we go cheaper, it's just a terrible island. No. And so if you, like, there are so many different ways you can achieve what you want. You really got to push through notes, which not a lot of people do. You have to have like a more of a dominant personality and just a willingness to, when people tell you it's not possible, just actually go through all the variables and eliminate them all yourself. Have a stubbornness and a resilience to failure, maybe.
For what we do and creators online, it's very imperative that you have that a no isn't a no to you. You really have to like think and just like we take a personality test and like just having a dominant personality is a better indicator that when someone tells you, oh, there's still way you're going to build a brick wall for under 100 grand, you know, you'll be like, okay, and then still go check the next 10 vendors and you know, figure it out.
Yeah. What advice would you give to an already established channel like with one, two, three, four million subscribers, how to like 10 exit, like increase it without losing maybe. Yeah, that's where it's very like channel by channel. You can't give general advice. Okay. Because if I do millions of creators are going to see this and then they're going to do it, and I'm going to fuck them over. Oh, I say, see. So let's say I'd like two million subscribers on this podcast. Yeah. Like how would you 10x that with our sacrificing what it is?
10x your stuff doesn't matter. So we you've talked about with success. Yeah. It's different for everyone. Like is 10xing your definition of success? No. Well, then it's going to write off the bad. It's hard because if you don't give a shit about 10xing, it's even harder than 10x. He does this because he likes helping people. That's one thing I've found throughout this day. Every time I talk data, it's so funny with him because it's like, you know, you can do this to get more views and he'll just be like playing. I don't feel like that doesn't register anything. He just like doesn't care.
Which is it's really. I'm really nervous about that. I'm really nervous about the numbers affecting because it's so fun. Oh, yeah. It's so fun to focus on the numbers. And I'm I'm really worried about that. But at the same time, you should be cognizant of that because you've created not just some of the most watched videos, but some of the most amazing videos ever. Because there's a strong correlation there. It's not like you're selling your soul to make a highly viewed video. It's actually, if you look at the metrics, it helps you understand what is compelling and not. And so I feel like I am I feel like there's some value to investigate what work when people tune on and when not to be date more data driven, even on podcasts, but I'm really afraid of that.
I think part of the appeal is that you don't care about that kind of stuff. There could be stuff that doesn't have to do anything with that. And it has to do with stylistic choices of lighting and cameras or maybe with, for example, topics. Yeah. You know, like, even what you've asked me here is like different than what most people ask me. Yeah, so it could be that I mean, and they'd be nice to understand that. But yeah, again, I'm worried about polluting the process.
I didn't think this is a true case of its young intuition. Like you know your viewers better than anyone else. It's whatever. So I'd like to push back on that. I really don't. You do. I do. I do. But well, name one person who knows your viewers better than you. Somebody that looks at numbers of podcasts. No, you know your viewers. You know, you're the only, how many episodes have you done? Uh, 350. Exactly. But I'm not paying it. You're the only one who's watched every second of all 300 videos. Probably. That's just, that's just not. No, you haven't. But the, well, because you did it. So you do know what's in it. Sure. It's your content.
I'm telling you, you do. And this is just one of those moments where you're an intelligent guy and you just have to trust your like instincts. Like just think what is the typical ex viewer and what do they want? I don't think like that. My tip. But that's all you would have to do. And whatever your gut tells you, that would be the best guess.
You don't know what the typical viewer is though. I don't, I don't, because I, to investigate that will be very, very difficult. And then you have to start looking at the numbers. You have to start to like consider demographics. The only way I know that anybody even watches it is because I'll sometimes run into people like when I run along the river and they'd be like, I love you Lex. It's like, okay, well, that's, that's the data point. And they're like cool people.
But you know, I don't know that I don't have any other, it's difficult, man. It's difficult to know, it's difficult to know who listens to boxes, difficult to do. Have a sense of who's, I mean, like you're so huge that everybody watches. Yeah. But no, I still do. I'd say if you were to just put a gun to my head and you're, you're like, all right, we're going to pick a random person that watched your last video and you have to like, roughly guess what they are. And if you're not close, we'll kill you. I would say probably like a teenager that plays video games. Like some, like that would be probably the typical one. And then there are people that are maybe a little bit younger, a lot of people that are older as well. But in a random sample size, yeah, it's probably like a male boy that plays video games.
Like that's the best way I've described it. But I don't try to pertain to him. I just make whatever I think is interesting and good content. And this is what we were talking about before. Even though hypothetically 35 to 40% of my audience is women, which is less than a majority, if we get 100 million views of video, that's still 30 to 40 million females that watch every video, which is probably the largest views per video for women on the whole platform, which you wouldn't think that.
You know, like I can't think of a single other creator that gets more women to watch their videos than that. And so it's just anything, even like people above the age of 30, even if it's only like three or four percent, that's still three to four percent of 100 million views is a lot of people at that age. So we hit a large group of kind of every demographic. That makes sense.
So what if we look at other maybe more challenging kinds of channels or not? But if we look at educational, for example, like lectures, or if we look, yeah, educational, it can be short videos like how would you 10X that? Like something on robotics and biology, on science and engineering and all that. That's more educational focus. We would honestly just have to pull that, because it's the same way, if you went to Gordon Ranson, you said, how would a new cook cook better? You know, it's like, even then that's not even specifically, you have to go channel by channel.
如果我们看一下其他可能更具挑战性的渠道呢?但如果我们看一下教育渠道,比如讲座,或者我们看一下,是的,教育渠道可以是短视频,比如你如何10倍提升?比如关于机器人和生物学,关于科学和工程等等。这更加专注于教育。我们必须老实地去做这件事,因为这和如果你去 Gordon Ranson,问一个新厨师如何做得更好是一样的。即使那时也并不特别,你必须逐个渠道进行考虑。
You really do, or I'm giving horrible advice, because if there was, you just go and rules everyone do it. You know what I mean? Like if there's these magical little principles, how quickly can when you look at a channel, can you kind of give advice? Yeah, it's like surface love at the start. And then the more, if we watch 10 videos, I feel like I'd have a good profile and I could tell you, in my opinion, you know, especially once I look at the analytics and I get more and grain and like, okay, the typical viewers, this, they're from here. Here's how they're feeling, you know, because there are people who make videos for rednecks and like the rednecks taste of content. It's just so much different than obviously women watching make a videos, which are so much different than, you know, teenage boys watching a Minecraft video. They're just all different.
So the biggest thing you have to do is put your heads, your head in the head space of the viewer and see the content, how they would. Because if you just try to only give your taste, which is what a lot of people do and things from your perspective, it's very biased and it's just not going to work for everyone. And that's actually how you do more harm than good, which is something I'm very careful of. Yeah, but at the same time, it's generating a lot of ideas.
I think the first time I've talked to you was on clubhouse actually. Yeah, I mentioned something about robots and like almost immediately went to generating a bunch of ideas around the box. Oh, yeah. I'm going to do robots versus 100 humans. Yeah. I'll mark in a robot throw potato. I think your idea, like the first idea was because you just said so many ideas I've never even thought of. But it's, it shows the value of basically brainstorming with people that think differently.
But at the end of the day, my ideas are probably, you know, might lean towards some people a little bit younger than your audience, like some of the stuff I'm, yeah, there's still the ideas.
说到底,我的想法可能比您的听众更偏向一些年轻人,有些东西我在想,但是想法还是有的。
Like I think the first one you said, because we're talking about quadruped robot dogs, we said to replace a biological dog with a robot dog and see if the owner notices something. You were just quickly brainstorming the ideas of like, how, this is years ago, I remember it.
Yeah. It's just, I mean, it's like, oh, yeah, I never really thought about that kind of sort of, it's the basic, the tension between what does it take for a robot and AI system to replace the biological systems that we, the biological creatures that we love in our lives. But like that was like the, the pace of idea generation was the thing that struck me today. And in general, it's like, that's how you get at good videos as you keep, keep, it makes, it's much easier to make a video around a good idea.
What's the hardest number? The numbers that matters click through rate average, view duration and surveys. What's the hardest number to optimize for? Probably surveys, you know, do you have any, do you have an insight into the surveys at all?
No, not really. But if you just click on a bunch of random videos online, you'll eventually get a survey. What's this video transformative? Heartwarming, inspiring. What people rate does make a difference? And it's like, you can, give people a click of it. You can get them to watch it, but you can't really fake whether or not they're satisfied.
They don't lie, the surveys, you know, you know, maybe one person here there might troll, but once you aggregate enough, it's a pretty clear telltale of the video. So either you're making a great video or you're not. What is it minimizing the non-regretability?
Yeah. I think Elon tweeted that's what he's tried to do on Twitter. Twitter, and that's interesting. That's basically the survey metric. How happy you are that you've been using the platform. Yeah. We want to limit the amount of regrettable minutes people spend on Twitter. And the first thing I thought was like, that's something YouTube already has a lot. Like their whole survey system went feedback loop.
How tough is it to take on YouTube, you think? Like for Twitter? Yeah, for Twitter for anybody else. I mean, it's going to be basically impossible. I mean, YouTube's not going anywhere. And I don't know. I don't think anyone's going to do what YouTube does better than them. Or at least not in the next 10 years.
You asked on Twitter, would you rather have $10 million or $10 million subscribers on YouTube? What would your own answer be at various stages in your career? If I had nothing, I would say $10 million.
So because with $10 million, you can hire some people and pump out content with like a million or two, get 10 million subscribers and then keep the other 8 million. So that's if you believe in your ability to grow a channel, if you do. Yeah. If you don't believe in your ability to grow a channel, then you shouldn't take the 10 million subscribers because you're just going to kill the channel.
So the 10 million is definitely a better question than you would rather have a million dollars to 10 million subscribers. That's where it gets a little tricky. Because now it's like, you know, a million dollars life changing amount of money. But you know, if you semi-know what you're doing, you probably make a million dollars off a 10 million subscriber channel, but it is a little bit of risk.
A million dollars might not be enough to build a strong team because you don't know how to do it. So you might waste all of that money. Yeah. Or they just keep it and retire.
Yeah. Okay. That's true. Yeah. Because 10 million is just so high. It's like just never work again. Who cares? For the average human, that's so much money. It's interesting to me also to the value of the subscribers or the value of the dollar. I suppose how valuable is the subscriber for like what percentage of the videos, like how active the subscribers in watching the video?
Um, for you. That's hard. I don't know. I was actually thinking more about the subscriber to dollar. Like if someone has 10 million subscribers, have they made 10 million dollars? I don't know why that kind of popped in my head. It's an interesting thought.
Do you ever, when you analyze videos, do you ever analyze videos like we've talked about offline of other videos across the YouTube in general to understand, to understand, to understand social behind all this? Not all, but a lot of the questions are analytic space.
Yeah. It's something I love it. I mean, it's just a giant social experiment, right? Like what people like to watch, what people share. Yeah. It's like a fascinating look.
So like I said before, what percentage of your audience do you think care about this kind of stuff? Like this deeply about YouTube analytics. I think a large amount care about curiosity and exploration of interesting ideas. So in that sense, yeah, this was fitted.
I love it. This is funny. And this isn't me like trying to make it. I love you. I love you too. I love your Magnus one. And even your Hikaru one was really good. A bunch of other ones.
But I think we're getting to the point now where only analytics junkies would want to keep here more analytics talk. And the normie is probably like they've had their dose of YouTube talk for the next three years. Maybe I'm wrong. Hey, comment if I'm wrong. I could be.
I don't know your audience. See, this is where you would tell me shut up. I know my audience. You dumbass. I don't at all. I actually, I just follow the threat of curiosity. And I think there's just a lot of curious humans in the world. And to me, it's like, so the question about analytics is the question of basically stepping away, stepping outside of yourself and thinking, why the hell do I like TikTok so much? Why do I like Twitter so much? Why do I like YouTube so much? And getting even if you're not a creator, getting an insight into that is really interesting. It's like, what? Because all these platforms are fundamentally changing the nature of content. People are reading books less. They're probably going to be watching movies less and less. They're probably going to be watching Netflix less and less.
Do you ever think about the sort of the darker side of YouTube and with shadow banning a censorship and all the kind of topics, especially if you see it in other platforms like Twitter that Elon recently highlighted the shadow banning that was happening and in general, the censorship that was happening on those platforms. Do you think about the role of centralized control, which information isn't or isn't made available through search and discovery?
I'll be honest. I never really think about it. You just try to make fun videos that I'm kind of wearing my own lane. But it's not like that I don't just specifically think about it. I just like a lot of stuff in general. I can just kind of end my own lane thinking about my own stuff. But now that you're asked, I'm curious. What are your thoughts on YouTube and that kind of stuff?
Well, I'm generally against centralized censorship or shadow banning. Shadow banning is the worst one because not that the goal of creating a healthy platform where you're having great conversations and videos that are not spreading misinformation, that sounds like an admirable goal. But that's too difficult of a job for centralized entity. That's too big of a.
Yeah. There's the misinformation stuff. And then there's also just like the videos where they do something that causes. What happened back there were apocalypse. A lot of creators revenue plummets because people are doing videos that advertisers don't be acceptable and then now all these big advertisers are pulling. And the little guys are getting hit because AdWR is dropped by 30%. And the person who just quit his job to go full-time contribution now can't sustain it. So it's also. It's like a lot of different variables as well. That makes it so complicated.
Well, I think the big thing is transparency, especially around shadow banning for people. I agree. On shadow banning, you should be transparent. You should let people know. Obviously, there has to be some type of controls. People can't just post whatever. And so if you're pulling those levers, they should at least know.
Yes, so they know how to improve their content. They can understand it. Exactly. If it's a wrong shadow banning, like as a society that we should not shadow ban this kind of content, that means.
Exactly. And then if you're publicly discussing it and having that. Because if it's not known, then it's just kind of like, well, then who's pulling the strings? And how do we know they're not just manipulating things to get whatever message they want out there and silence other ones?
Yeah, and there could be sort of in the background, government influence, which is where actual freedom of speech comes into play that the government should not have any control or be able to put pressure on censorship of speech. And it gets weird if none of that is being. There's no transparency around it.
That's a huge responsibility. The amount of content that YouTube is upload on YouTube that is shared by YouTube, viewed by YouTube. But even more of a reason why it would probably make sense to be transparent, because then people can help fact check it.
That's right. But that requires building a platform that makes that easy, right? To make fact checking easy, to make the Twitter now has like being able to share context and all that kind of stuff, that crowdsource it, crowdsource it the way Wikipedia crowdsource it. I mean, there's.
Right. And then you open a random Wikipedia article. But like, you know, people criticize Wikipedia because there is a political lean to the editors of Wikipedia and then they get the some articles that definitely have a bias to them and all that kind of stuff.
It's a difficult problem. It's a difficult problem to solve that ultimately, as much as possible, it would be nice for the viewer to have control of that versus the entity that's hosting it. So for the viewer to decide.
这是个棘手的问题。这个问题不易解决,但最好让观众掌控它,而不是托管它的实体。所以观众可以自行决定。
I'll just hear that stuff on that. I'm just going to make cool videos. Cool videos, yeah. Yeah.
我只是听些那方面的东西。我只是想制作一些酷炫的视频。酷炫的视频,是的。是的。
You know, let's go to Antarctica again. How was that? How was going to. You just came back from Antarctica. I watched the video. That was. That was fun. That was a really fun video. Thank you. There's. I mean, there's a lot of things I can comment about that.
But what was the hardest part of making that video?
制作那个视频最难的部分是什么?
The hardest part was just getting out there. It's just so remote. And you know, you land the plane on just this ice runway and it's so sketchy. And then once the plane takes off, you're just there. You're the most remote place in the planet. And it's just. It's very breathtaking. I don't. If you have the chance to ever go to Antarctica, I would recommend it. It was probably like the.
In the video, we climbed a mountain. That wasn't named so we can name it. And like standing on top of that mountain and just seeing. Hailing, nothing. Once you get outside the outskirts and you get deep in Antarctica, there's no penguin. So nothing lives there at all. And so there's just nothing in every direction. It's just snow and these crazy beautiful mountains and some of them stick into the clouds. And if you go during summertime, the sun never goes down. The sun's up 24-7 and it's just like spinning in circles at the top of the planet or whatever. It looks like the top. Yeah, you guys come with it several times. How beautiful it is. Yeah. And so it's just. Yeah, it's just very beautiful.
It's not shooting itself like the technical aspects of shooting it. Oh, I mean, well, so for the. Somehow we lucked out one of the days, it was like the warmest day in like forever. That's been in Antarctica. It was like, it was positive degrees. But at certain parts it was also like negative 20, negative 30. And that's where the cameras, you constantly have to be switching out the batteries and heating them up and like putting them basically in like your pants. So they'll just get way too cold. And we were prepared for much worse, but it ended up being much better than we thought.
So for that video, but in general, maybe some other challenging videos, how do you go from the idea stage to the actual execution to the final video? Can you take me through like a full process of.
Well, I mean, obviously first things first you got to figure out the idea. And then it just depends. I mean, pick any video you can think about my channel. I can take you through it.
Well, what about the. In a circle, you have to stay in a circle for 100 days.
嗯,那关于这个问题呢?在一个圆圈里,你必须待在那个圆圈里呆上100天。
Yeah. So for that one, step one. One of the most popular. Yeah, that video did really well. Yeah. So we. Problem is, we have to. This is where you get really into the nuances of the company because we have a lot of videos going out. You can't just in a vacuum be like, all right, we're not doing anything for 100 days. We're only filming this. So step one is we had to build an independent crew that could actually do that for 100 days. That way, everyone else could keep working on the normal videos and not just screw everything out. Yeah.
So step one, you build that team. Okay, we got the team. Now what do we need? Well, to do this, we need probably like 10 cameras, at least rolling at all times. So we're probably going to need to get a trailer and hook up a bunch of storage and stuff to just carry out the sheer volume of footage we're going to have. And so get a trailer, set up the cameras, go on the field, paint a circle. Now we need a house, go buy a house, bring it out there. And then it's like, oh, wait, I think it'll be funny if I brought the house and on the intro. Yeah. Find a crane that can lift up a house, so I can drive it in and drop it in the intro. And that's like an iterative process where you're like, okay, this will be funnier. So it's not all up front that you'd sort of like your car. Yeah, I'd feel it would be, but as you kind of see things, you get inspired and then you think of more and more. And there's would be better with a crane. Yeah, it'd be better if I dropped out of the house. Yeah.
That was crazy. They decided to do that. So fearless in the kind of crazy stuff you wanted to do.
那太疯狂了。他们决定这么做。你想做这种疯狂的事情,真是毫不畏惧。
Exactly. I'm a broken record, but whatever makes the best video possible. Yeah, that's all you focus on.
我知道我一直在重复,但我只想确保视频的质量最佳。是的,这是你的唯一关注点。
Okay. So what about the delegation of like who gets to what are the camera men, like the people operating the cameras, what, who's responsible for different things? Is it like a distributed process? Like, I don't know.
Well, that's where whoever the lead cam would be on that video would just decide it. That one, because we shot over 100 days. We didn't, a lot of it was just Sean and the guy who was in the circle just vlogging. We just came with the camera and he figured out. And then we'd have like for him just set hours each day that a cameraman would come. So if he had any content, he needed extra hands instead of just having someone on standby 24, 7, it made more sense to do set hours.
And it was hard, but you know, it's funny and hindsight. It sounds so simple. You know, and I guess like the more, because that one is relatively simple, I guess, because it's a low number of people. Yeah, the hard part about that is just the time. Right. Like, you know, I checked in on them so many different days and it's like, and now are here two hours there, two hours there, over 100 days adds up to be a ton of time. And even then, like, you know, if you have a 10 person crew, you know, paying them daily rates for 100 days, it just all of it adds up.
What about like the 100 versus 100, 100 adults versus 100 kids? What was the, what was bringing that to life? That seems like exceptionally challenging. Yeah, basically the thought process was we did 100 kids versus, or sorry, 100 boys were 100 girls. Yeah, people loved it. I didn't think they'd like it as much as they did. Video did really, really well. So the second I saw that video was questioning, I was like, all right, we're doing it again. But last time we did it, we did in our studio. So we built a giant room, put 100 girls in it. Sounds bad when I explain it like this. And then a giant room put 100 boys. Yeah. And we're like, after 100 hours, whichever room has the most people will give them half a million dollars. So did well. So we're like, all right, we're going to do it again. So we threw out all these different ideas. It was like 100 football players versus 100 cheerleaders, 100 this, 100 that, 100 prisoners versus 100 cops. It was crazy as ideas. We settled on 100 kids versus 100 adults.
And then the next step was like, how do we make it better? The kids versus adults are the, sorry, the boys versus girls. The first one we did was inside. And the problem was every time it was night when we did these long time lapses, you couldn't see the sun go up and down. So we're like, okay, this time I want to do it outside. So the cubes are outside. And instead of doing circles, we want to make them cubes. And then, you know, just figure out, do we want that? Yeah, just.
Those videos came up at least today as ones that are like really complicated in terms of the audio in terms of how it's filming. Yeah, that's the problem. We had a lot of audio issues because in the first one, we didn't have a roof on it. The second one, there was a roof. So there's a lot of reverb, which then in editing made it brutal. Like half the shots weren't usable and it really screwed us over. So we had to do a lot of Frankenstein-ing in the editing to make up for basically my ignorance.
So you mentioned that you were surprised how well that, that one did. A lot of creators talk about getting depressed when the videos don't do as well as they kind of expect it. There's a kind of feeling you can get really worn out by that. Do you do yourself feel that and also do you have advice for others that feel this?
Yeah, it's weird because I am a number scam, but also it used to. It used to very much, especially when I was like betting everything I had on a video when it did bad. That was devastating. I'd cry and I'd be depressed for days and it really would have a severe impact on my mood. But I don't know. It doesn't really matter. It's a video that's better just look at it and I'm like, oh, why did this video do bad? Probably, oh, there's a little retention dip there. I don't think people like the thumbnail. Maybe we should switch it. I just look at it objectively, unemotional and then just move on. And I feel like that's a much healthier way of going about it. So if a creator is listening, like that is the ideal way to respond to a video that's doing bad. Just remove a motion from the equation and just look at it and figure out how you can bring the next one.
Is there tricks to being able to detach yourself from that because in your case, that's true for creators, but in your case, there's a lot of money on the line. Yeah, one. There's videos cost my life. Yeah, so much time. But no, I mean, I don't know. The only real answer is just a conscious effort. You just have to unemotionally look at the video, determine the problems and move on. There is no secret. You know what I mean? It's just, it's that. And if you really can't bring yourself to do it, then you're just screwed. You're, honestly, maybe you're not meant for this game.
Okay. So that's part of the development as a creator is like you're being able to be detached. For longevity? Yeah. Yeah. You have to unemotionally be able to look at videos that flop and figure it out. Because if not just getting, you can, and not every video can be a one out of ten. And so when a video does bad, you know, that, that just stress and depression, it's just going to eventually get to you in the long run.
So you said you've failed in a bunch of videos, sort of taking them to completion. So what are some of the biggest fails? Yeah. Weirdly enough, as we've returned and we've done this before, we don't have that problem as much, especially now we're getting to the multi-million dollar budgets per video. It's like failure is not really an option anymore. So I'm a little more particular about what I do. But back in the day, yeah, like we would do a video where we spent 24 hours on a dessert island and we filmed it, did it all and I just, I didn't like it after the edit. So I just grabbed the boys and we went back to the dessert island and spent another 24 hours there and re-filmed it.
Or could that have been caught and prevented at the idea stage? Like where? No, it's a good idea. It was just poor execution. To be honest, when we were out there, it was hot. We were just like, we don't, at one point just kind of wanted to die. It was just miserable. So how do you avoid that these days? Well, I just went with it as a little cooler, to be honest.
Literally, the amount of fun we had in the video was like 10 times higher. Oh, interesting. So you, like there's some practical DJs that you just learned. Yeah, I know what it takes to do. Videos that were very hot or it's on water because I get super seasick. There's like a kind of like 10 things that if they have these variables, I'm down to do it. But my fun meter is not as high as normal.
Like we tried to, anytime we do anything on a boat, like when we spent 24 hours in a beer minute or triangle, or when I tried to spend like, which didn't get uploaded, but tried to spend like a hundred hours at sea or whatever, just like on a raft. It's just like, it makes me want to throw up and I get so seasick, I came in sea straight. But there are just some videos that require me to be on a boat. So I just second up.
So when you spent months in creating a video, I know this is probably stressful to some creators. Like how much stress, how do you feel when you have to click publish video? No, not much. You're able to detach yourself. Yeah. Again, and old me, tons. I feel like scratching and nervous and like my hands will be sweating like to the point where I'm almost about to puke. I'm like, I really hope people like this. But you know, I don't know. I think that's just part of maturing it.
There's different, as I kind of created, there's different phases. And you just like, once you get over the fear that you're just going to wake up one day and be irrelevant, you know, and you just, you know, accept that like you believe in yourself and you believe in your content and that you can continue to be irrelevant. Then you don't, I don't know, you kind of, it's a little bit easier to detach yourself, I guess. And that's, it's a much healthier place to be. You can't do this for 10 years if every little thing just causes these huge emotional reactions. It's like, that's why a lot of creators go a little mentally insane. You know, you have to get out of that game because they're really mess with you.
We've talked about this a little bit, but how do you define and how do you suggest all this define success? I need to. So subjective. Some people, some people success is retiring them up. Later, you know, for you, for success is inspiring people and educating them and, you know, whatever, the peak in their curiosity, you know, for other people, it's just quitting their job. So you have to self reflect on what your definition of success is because I think a lot of creators kind of don't really think, don't introspect.
Like, they kind of want to keep getting more and more subscribers kind of thing. Yeah. But subscribers is just a vanity metric, you know, it doesn't, the subscribers don't correlate to views. Sure. Or views what? Yeah, I know, but that's more, that was a direct view. That was more direct to people listening because a lot of people do really care about subscribers or even followers like on TikTok. But if you look like your view, on YouTube, very, very few percent, even a percent of your views come from the subfeed. Right? They're almost all home feeders suggested.
When's the last time you clicked on your subfeed to watch a video? Almost never. Yeah, maybe five years ago, it used to be a thing. It's not anymore. No one does. And it's getting harder and harder to find.
I subscribe to way too many channels, I think. Yeah. That's what everyone does. And you subscribe to 10 channels. They're great, but two years later, you're taste of all of them. It's like, it's a mess. And so, um, the subscribers don't really matter. Followers on TikTok don't really matter.
Um, so anyways, it really, they really are the definition. I'm a vanity metric. And, but what about views? They do. Obviously, because the people are shown up time and time again, that's what matters. Okay. So that, that's a good thing to define a success.
I just feel like, um, that too can be a problem. Because, uh, I would say, you know, if I wanted to be successful, like, as a young creator, I might start copying Mr. Beast or something like that, right? Yeah. You start trying to take shortcuts as opposed to find your, your own unique voice, right? So, like chasing views is a problem too. It feels like, or no. Um, it's as long as you detach yourself from them.
I mean, if you're, it sounds like it feels easy. Yeah. And you just want to copy someone else and not experiment and find your own way. But, yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can't make that excuse for them. And someone just isn't coming up with the original stuff and putting in the effort. You can't just say, oh, it's because they're chasing views. We need some metric for them to chase. No, they just need to find their own way.
It just feels like unique type of content will often lead to sacrifice in the number of views in the short term. Mm-hmm. By the long term, you win. Okay. Or if you do win, you win more. I guess would be a better way of putting it.
Do you think you will IPO, Mr. Beastburger or Feastables in the next five, ten years? Beastburger Feastables? No, I kind of think they're something. Actually, you know what? I just realized this is our first time talking about those. We're like an hour and a half and that's so funny. We started talking about what my retention brain kicked in.
I wonder if you have retention brain for life itself. I do. Every time I'm talking to someone, I'm like, okay. I wonder. What about loved ones? Spending time with loved ones thinking, we could be doing something much better right now. Yes. No, that is a serious problem.
Well, so we'll pause the Beastburger question. Yes. But that's why my current girlfriend, which I was telling you before when we were talking about this, is she has a genuine love for learning. And that's something I have. I always feel like I need to be learning something and justify the time I'm spending. And so that's why it's such a nice trait because I feel like the time is being used optimally because whether we're watching a documentary or we're going and taking IQ tests or reading about whatever, just why modern art is the thing. I don't know, whatever weird thing we decide to do. I'm always learning and improving, so it justifies the time.
So to maximize retention in your relationship, you want to spend time at that time learning as much as possible. Yeah. Which conveniently, I don't have to force, right? Or I want to be recharging. So when I do work, I can hit the ground harder and luckily, we're into a lot of the same things, which happen to be learning sometimes. It's not learning. Like, maybe watching an anime or something like that.
But I'm a big believer. You're either, if you, well, if you, if your goal is to be like a super successful entrepreneur, you need to either be working or you need to be doing something that decompresses and recharges you so you can work again. If your goal is to be like a really kick ass entrepreneur and obviously we're blowing this down to like a very basic thing.
And so the, the things you're doing your down time when you're not working, if it doesn't recharge you, you're screwed. You're just a ticking time bomb waiting to implode. And so you got to like heavily recharge.
And like, so like watching for me an anime or whatever it is playing a board game, like that is actually kind of crucial to my success, which takes a lot of maturing to come to that conclusion because I used to be the kind of guy that wanted to work every hour of the day. And I would try to train myself to not need that stuff. And I, you know, and I almost resented like that.
I have to do these kinds of things and it would piss me off because it's not optimal. And, you know, I just really want to make content and entertain people. But as someone who's gone down that road and, you know, you just work every day for two, three months straight and, you know, every hour of the day and then you just bomb waiting to explode and lose your mind.
And the only real sustainable thing is to just like give yourself time to recharge in between working. So there's a kind of balance you have to find. You have to.
Even, and I hate it more than anyone else because I, you know, you hate not working. Yeah. Because it's just not optimal for time like it's, it's, it's, as a human, I do need to occasionally watch a mindless show and play a board game. And it took me a very long time to like come to peace with that and not, I would have like borderline panic attacks when I do it.
Because I think that just what am I doing right now? Why am I doing this? I should be, you know, like, what if one day I have to lay off an employee because we're not doing so well? Like, how could I justify watching this, this show or whatever I'm doing right now? You know, it's like, there's a lot of things like that that go on in your head, but it's necessary.
Before you return to, uh, Mr. Beastburger. Well, what is like a, since we're on the topic, what is a perfect day in the life, perfectly productive day in life, Mr. Beast look like? Oh boy.
Well, I mean, or like a stand, I mean, the perfectly productive days we filmed on main channel video. Like, because those get a hundred million of pop. I mean, it doesn't really get any better than that.
So right now we have our snap print festivals. We have a restaurant chain, Beastburger. And then we basically, which we haven't even really launched any product yet, but we have the, the data company that I was showing you where we're going to roll out some tools for creators. And then we have the React channel, the gaming channel, the main channel, and then we have my charity, which also has a channel.
Um, and so kind of how I've structured my life right now, uh, is whatever I have free time, we just kind of go, Hey guys, Jimmy's got an hour from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. And it's just everyone's just like, I need this. I need this. And this sounds like I need this thing filmed or, you know, whatever the guy who runs my tick sounds like I need this tick talk film or, um, you know, Beastburger's like, I need this menu item approved. We need to talk about this marketing thing. And then we kind of just look at what everyone needs. And we're like, that one looks like the most important. We'll do that.
And then so it's just kind of like, you know, if I just did that for every company in a day, then that's optimal. If I just kind of like an optimal day for me would be going down the eight companies and just whatever they're like two to three biggest pain points or things to need for me. And just doing those based on priority and then trying to keep it as short as possible.
Yeah. To just the things that you're needed on. It doesn't get more optimal. If I clear the bottlenecks or some bottlenecks for all my companies, then it's, yes, that's a perfect day. Yeah.
I mean, even just because you're like, you're showing me around and you're being a great and gracious host. But on top of that, you're just doing all these meetings. You basically, I felt bad at some points. I was like, oh, I just tricked them into going to meetings with me. You live my little meeting, buddy.
Yeah. I mean, it was fun. It was fun to see how effectively you've delegated. You basically trust the team to do a really good job on the various things. And there's just a strong team that's able to carry the flag on all the different tasks from the from the brainstorming and the main channel to the react and so on. It's really interesting.
I mean, it's really interesting when it takes to build a team like that because you very quickly build a very large team that's that's able to scale. It's just very scary because that's my first, you know, I'm 24. You know, and I think it was telling you this earlier. It's funny because six years ago, I had to raise my hand to go use the bathroom. And now I'm in charge of hundreds of people and entertain hundreds of millions of people. And so it is crazy just how quick it comes up.
And I wish I was a little bit older so I could have ran a couple of companies and failed a few companies in the past and like learn from those and apply those here because I know for a fact when I'm 34, I'm 24 now when I'm 34, I'll know so much more about running a business and scaling and hiring and how to lead people and better effectively communicate in all these different skill sets that will make me a better leader that that's the only thing that sucks is I just don't have those because I just haven't been through the lessons and I just have such a lucrative thing on my play right now and it just sucks that I have to learn the lessons with the lucrative thing, you know what I mean?
Yeah, because you're already have so much influence so much impact, but you have effectively scaled what lessons do you draw from that hard to effectively scale as a 24 year? Like, yeah, you know, that's something I feel like I actually could get a lot of value to young people who are doing it.
Like older people who've built five companies or whatever they do. I probably couldn't, you know, they're going to be like, oh, this is so obvious, but for younger first time business owners, you kind of just experiment to be honest and for us, like it's just a new space.
No one had really ever skilled up a 100 person team to build, make content on YouTube. So there wasn't no, I spent all this time like I hired one person from Disney to at one point to come in and help and obviously that was a dumb idea looking back on it, but you know, I thought, oh, they make great stuff. People want to watch and they come over here and help me build a team and you know, they build it more the traditional way and not like how it should be online.
And so then it's like, okay, and now I'm not trying to trash people like they'll try their best, but then I tried hire this one person who does this different type of media and runs a 100 person team and then you come in here and they try to build it that way and they don't really listen to you or value or see the difference. And I tried basically for building this company with like four or five different people who worked in different veins of media and you know, every single time, they just don't get it and they don't understand my world.
And the eventual solution was just like draw up my sleeves and doing myself, you know, with like James, very hit man and just like no one's ever done this and like no one's going to just give us a golden carrot and tell us how to build this company. We got to figure it the fuck out ourselves. And you have to build up people from scratch then. Yeah, exactly.
All the stuff I was talking about earlier and all the lessons I learned along the way. And so for me, that was a big part of like stop trying to have someone build this company for me and just do it myself because it's scary. I guess my whole life studying YouTube videos of our reality, not business building, but fucking, I was like, I guess we just got to do it ourselves. And that's where things really started to click and we got the exponential growth.
We started getting the right people and training them the right way and you know, just throwing conventional stuff out the door and focusing on what's actually practical for YouTube, which is just completely different than traditional media. So you train people and then those people train people and so on.
Yeah, I mean, it's just even like, you know, how you do the lighting on sets or like how you do the audio or, you know, not writing scripts. So, you know, we're just not as efficient with our filming. Like sometimes I have to have 30 cameras running. Why? Because it's not scripted. I don't know what Chris is going to do. And we started filming. He might run over there, but guess what? We got to have a plan because there's only one shot. I can't, you know, tell him not to do that.
Yeah, that's the shooting, but then there's also the editing. Yeah, and then the editing as well and not having guard rails and kind of, you know, at the end of the day, it's whatever I want the video, their job is to make a video that they think all like because it's my channel. But, you know, you can achieve that kind of however. And so it's just everything's just different, you know, it's much more, I guess, like a startup as opposed to,
Are you often surprised like with the result? Like you think a certain, like we watched a video today, those really nice, those different than you would have potentially edited it. Yeah, are you sometimes surprised by like a decision that it makes? It's like, okay, that's not the way I would have done it, but it's actually this is a cool idea. Yeah, of course. Yeah.
The thing, my biggest fear is I don't want to get trapped in like a bubble of, you know, because we are getting a hundred million views of video on the main channel. Like, about I don't want to get in this feedback loop of just, my ideas are great or, I can not feedback loop, but stop learning and improving because it is easy sometimes to be like, what we're doing is working. We need to just keep doing it.
I want to keep learning and trying new things. And I guess one way I would put it is like, you don't, when you're on a, a come up or you're growing, you don't want to test new things once you start to plateau or have a downtrend because if you're like, you know, you're skyrocketing, right, you're up, up, up, and then you level off and you start to go down and you're like, oh, this isn't working. Let's start experimenting.
Well, if you have a bad experiment, now you're in like a tailspin and you're nose diving and you have one more bad experiment, you're like screwed. Kind of, I'm oversimplifying. You want to test things while you're still growing to keep the growing from happening.
Because once you like have, you know, again, very oversimplifying that like, you know, kind of level off, you do a couple of tests that go wrong and my, you're like screwed. You know, I mean, you're already out the door. Now you're just confirming that you're out the door and online entertainment. So that's kind of how I see it.
So I think it's very imperative that you're constantly always experimenting and trying things, even if you're getting crazy, unheard of growth.
所以我认为不断尝试和试验是至关重要的,即使你已经获得了不可思议的增长。
And so that outside of the thing that brought you to the dance, you just dived right into Mr. Beastburger and Feastables. There's a whole other industry. Like what was that like?
Well, so Beastburger, we kind of, it's supposed to be like just a pop up. We just partnered with someone who had 300 restaurants and we're just like, you know, let's just sell Beastburgers for a day or two. Let's see what happens. We didn't really think it would be as big as it was.
But those first, like that first day, you know, we do six figures and sales and they all sell out and they're running to local walmart. They can't keep up with the demand. And it's like, okay, well, maybe let's just leave it open a week, whatever. And we're just doing crazy revenue.
And it's like, okay, well, let's add some more restaurants and let's just leave them open for a month. And we're just still doing six figures a day. And it kind of just went from this thing that was, I don't know, it wasn't really, I didn't really plan on running a restaurant chain. But here I am.
But didn't that in some sense also open your mind to something like Feastables?
但是在某种意义上,这难道不也让你的思维更开放,进而接受类似Feastables的想法吗?
Feastables something I've always wanted to do. Because I think just in general, American snacks are just full of so much horrible ingredients to be honest. And they're not, I don't know. I feel like they're also just hasn't been any innovation in American snacks in quite a while. And so that's just something I've always been pretty passionate about.
The thing, we built that from scratch. So we hired the CEO and built a team around them and we spent probably over two and a half years before we even launched. Just like building the right team, figuring things out and making sure it was actually ran the way I wanted. Which Feastables has just been crushing.
It's very interesting. This is something I've never talked about publicly, but having products in retail, it's like before Feastables everything I had done was online. So if you wanted to, you know, anything from the quote, quote, piece brand, you'd have to buy it online and ship it to you. But Feastables now that, you know, because it's our first product, Chocobars, we started putting that in retail locations.
So like, for example, Walmart, it's crazy. Like it's just, it doesn't make sense. Now, if you're, which I guess it does for, because we get a hundred million views of video. So a lot of people know us. If I go stand in Walmart, those people recognize me and ask for photos. Like if I stood there online, I could take 150 photos today in Walmart or 200, whatever it is.
So obviously it makes sense. Those people go Feastables. But then you just multiply that by every Walmart in America. And it just gets so crazy. And I didn't think we'd be doing the kind of revenue we are. And we're about to launch in some other, I don't know if I'm allowed to say it. But other big retail locations and convenience stores and like by the end of next year, we could be in like 40, 50,000 locations. And the numbers just don't make sense.
So, you know, what are some interesting challenges about scaling there that surprised you?
那么,你知道,在扩展方面的一些有趣的挑战让你感到惊讶的是什么呢?
The biggest problem, which I didn't think would be what's just keeping the shelves and Walmart stock to be honest. Like it, it was a supply. It was a supply chain. It was brutal.
Well, even then sometimes like, you know, you get them the stuff and there, like it takes them like a day or two to put it out in that specific location. And I had to stop promoting it because every time I'd mention it, like 40% of people would just be like, it's not there. It's not in Walmart or I can't buy it.
And so there was like a 3-V-ish month period where I just didn't promote Feastables because I was scared that someone would go buy it. And it's just not there. And so like, it took us a very long time to catch up to the demand. And also, you know, it's not like we have unlimited money. So I, but now we're relatively caught up in keeping up, but it's going to be interesting because now this year in 2023, we're going to basically, you know, 10X, they might have locations to rent.
So we're, and we're going to try to launch new products. So we're in for an interesting ride. But yeah, I just hate, I hate when I tell people, you know, like, hey, go try this product. And then they go in there with a Walmart and eventually other places and it's not there. It's just so brutal.
You know, they made that whole journey out there and they can get it. And so that's really it. Besides that, that's, it's been doing way better than I ever thought.
你知道吗,他们一路走过来,终于得到了。所以说,就是这样。除此之外,它的表现比我想象的要好很多。
You've talked a couple of places about maybe doing mobile games or computer games in the future. Yeah. Is that something you're still considering? Yes.
你有在几个场合谈到未来可能会制作手机游戏或电脑游戏。 是的,你还在考虑吗? 是的。
Because, you know, do you normally talk with people as much as we talk before? Is that at? No. No, that was the front. We spent all day today. I just look at my head. Everything you asked me is something we already talked about. Not really. Well, no, no, everything. I take it back. But sorry, the last two questions, yes.
And so it's just funny because what? No, I tried. So there's a different style of asking those questions because I, I on purpose didn't dig further. I could tell. Yeah. So I could tell you, okay, this is by the way, okay. All right. This is the first time I've ever talked to somebody as much as I did with you. So, beforehand. Yeah. On the same day. Not even six days together. We're 10 and only three hours one hour. Yeah. Yeah. Literally, it's funny.
This is a hilarious and awesome social experiment. I picked them up from a hotel and I just like harassed them all day to hang out with me. And then here we are now. I love it. I was secretly recording the whole time. Just seeing them. I'm just kidding. Anyway, so what was the question? The Bobbock.
Yeah. The interesting thing is with Beast Burger and Feastables that there's physical goods as opposed to like making mobile games or PC game, whichever one we end up doing, which is software. And I actually have a giant international audience. Like, most of my audience is obviously outside of America.
And so the problem we're running into is it just takes time to build up the supply chain and get festivals in Southeast Asia, get festivals in India, get festivals in Brazil, in Mexico and all these other places where we have giant pockets of our audience. And same thing with Beast Burger. It's just going to take probably years, unless we partner with someone who already has a distribution, which we're figuring out.
And so if I promote something in a video to a hundred million people and it's like a, you know, basically like a game, they can all download it. So they're, you know, but if I promote a festival's bar, right now it's only in America because we're struggling just to keep up with the American demand. We haven't even gotten the chance to go outside America. So I alienate a majority of my audience and it feels sort of shitty to just, you know, mention something that most of them can't buy. But on the flip side, you can't just spawn this crazy infrastructure and just have tens of millions of bars and all your products in every single store across the world before you promote it.
So you can't put the egg before the chicken. And so it's like that's, that's what I'm excited about. I want to get into less physical stuff and more stuff that everyone out is can actually use. This is the thought process. Especially if there's a social element of the gaming too, because it's not unlike festivals, like that's a product you consume. You missed it.
When you're sending it for this, we were doing some basically just laying out everything that we're planning for. So our interfaces were, we're going to start hiring the team to build it and we're kind of just laying out the game. And I was actually really curious to get your thoughts, but I can't say it because whatever I say, someone's just going to take it and run with it. But you're a pretty good idea.
About the kind of games you're thinking about. Yeah, I mean, I can imagine we also talked a little bit about it. It's super awesome. It's not like good what I did. So much good talks.
All right. The juicy talks have a new, she's like, I gotta go set up. Well, you know, I already heard a lot of awesome stuff. I mean, but that is a different kind of team you need to hire. Is that a little, never acting like going into a new field and trying to a little bit, but then I remember stuff like Steve Jobs didn't know how to code, right? And you know, he just knew what a good product was. And I feel like that's the one who wasted so much of his life playing video games. I have a good sense of it. And that might be ignorance.
Well, that's really important, right? It's not about coding is about what makes for a good game. Exactly. And again, that might genuinely be ignorance. And maybe I end up, you know, getting binned up because of what I'm saying now. But I think just like with YouTube, I just want to obsess over making a great product and things that I think my audience will love. And I think as long as I keep that as my North Star, I'll do well.
What is the path to being worth 100 billion look like? It doesn't path to being worth 100 billion look like. I don't know. Okay, let me just pause. You're 24 and there's so much awesome scaling, so many great ideas. Do you think about different trajectories with those possible trajectories might look like?
Yeah. I mean, if the goal was to just be worth 100 billion dollars, yes. And my goal, I'm a broken record. It's to make the best video possible because I know whatever else I want will come obviously to the videos, the foundation. Yeah, exactly. So to path to 100 billion dollars is keeping 100 million views of video, you know what I mean? But or more or yeah, or more. Exactly. If we can keep growing.
But you know, if we can keep feasible growing, right? And we eventually spend international and one day we're in 100,000 retail locations and we're selling the same amount of skews per unit per skews like we're currently doing. I mean, that would crush. And then obviously ideally one day we open up hundreds of beast burgers, we get it where we turn out, you know, like super sell a couple hit games. I don't want to make dozens or hundreds of games. I just want to make games that are just great. And you know, we rarely drop them what we do. They're bangers. And just, you know, whatever other stuff we end up doing, all that combined.
I mean, it's just interesting because like what's a show that's pooled 100 million views per episode basically like we're doing. Like you know, I mean, like the Super Bowl gets praised because they get 100 million viewers. But I can't think of a show. Maybe in reruns or something. But it's also a show that has has a singular kind of figure. Yeah, you can now use this like I don't have a network tell me what to do. I don't have anyone like I can do whatever one. So it's a very interesting position because I put out content and 100 million people show up. And then I also have a gaming channel and I put out content and 15 million people show up. And I actually don't have to put out content and 10 million people show up and have a tick dog and I put out content and on average 20 million people show up. And like, and I so as long as I can keep that going and then we build these businesses, it's like it's honestly pretty scary to see what will happen, you know, over the years because festivals launched, you know, last year, 2022. So it's a relatively new thing and Beastware, we just started scaling up the physical side. And we haven't obviously even launched any mobile games yet. So think about the antithesis of it.
I don't see a world where my YouTube channels are relevant in the next couple of years. I just this is what I live for. And so if I can keep that going and then really start to expand these businesses that levered off of it, then yeah, I mean, hopefully there's the day one where I can give away a billion dollars in a video, honestly. Yeah, that would be one hell of a video.
Let me ask you the ridiculous question since you went from being broke to being rich. Although you keep spending all your money, does money buy happiness? How has money changed sort of your content and your happiness in life?
It's money by happiness. No, not. I mean, to a point, yes, once you can take care of your health, you can take care of like any immediate dangers and you can take care of your family relatively, no, it doesn't. But those things do. When I first came into money, one of the first things I did was retire my mom and that probably tons of happiness. You know what I mean? And if my brother had a medical emergency and we couldn't afford it and I made money to afford it, that would bring tons of happiness. So once you take care of those basic necessities, so we'll say make over high-pethically a million dollars, no, it really does.
Adding an extra zero, going from 10 million to 100 million or whatever it is, makes no difference. So you're giving that or just fearless and spending the money? Yeah. Well, let me reframe. I mean, I don't know if you're for some people, if you really, I don't know, you spent your whole life obsessing over cars, it probably would bring you a little bit of joy to buy a nice Lamborghini. I'm coming more from the frame of mind of an entrepreneur, someone who's really obsessed with business building. For me and a lot of my friends and people I hang around, what brings us happiness is winning and building companies and changing the world. Like, that is fun. It's a complex problem you can wake up every day and it gives you something to obsess over and devote your life to where it's just having money doesn't, you know?
Well, one interesting question I have for you psychologically. So because you have become wealthy and because you give, like, part of your work is giving away a lot of money, do you find it hard to find people you can trust? The question. Do people see you basically as a source of money as opposed to another human being?
It's weird because you would think yes, but I feel like I also know the right places to look. But yeah, if I just walked into Target and tried to make friends with 10 random people, of course, you got to, so you can kind of sense, oh yeah, you can sense the right thing and so hardly. Yeah, it's so obvious. So I don't even want to go into descriptions.
But honestly, a lot of my friends are like Chandler. I played Little League with him and Tyler, the guy, I mean, I went to school with him. Chris, he was my first subscriber. Carl was here after we got big, but whatever. He's friends with the boys and it is a lot of my closer friends, even like my YouTube friends, I knew before I was big. So maybe there is some merit to that. Maybe it is. I don't know. I've never really put too much thought into it. Maybe there's a reason I hang around a lot of these people I knew before I got big because it's much easier. And they help you keep like your radar sharp of who can and can't be trusted because you know, you can trust them.
It's difficult and you become richer and richer and more powerful. Well, one thing you'll also find when you get rich, and I even richer but more faint. One thing I thought is, as I climbed this ladder of YouTube and got bigger, I thought there would be tons of people like me.
People, that take the kamikaze approach to building a business. You just throw all your money in it. You throw all your time. You throw all your energy. You throw everything. You're just like, fuck it. It's this arm dead. I thought there would be hundreds of me. And there isn't. I mean, there's like maybe one or two. And I talk to those motherfuckers every single day. I stick and tie to talk to them, but I love them.
But it's just so interesting because like every level I got out, I get a million subscribers. I'm like, all right. Where's all these guys and the million subscribers that are fucking psychopaths? And then you know, you know, they're like people become conservative as they get, they get more. Especially as they get bigger. Yeah. And you know, 20 million subscribers, 30. It's like every step of the way. It's like, I just got more and more lonely to be honest.
But you, you know, it sounds cliche and you hear that kind of shit in movies and you're like, yeah, that's not how it works. But it is like there's, there's just not many people that just want to give up everything. Go all in and then obsess over making the greatest goddamn videos every single day of their life. Like they're really hard to find and be able to sacrifice everything for that video. Yeah. Like basically you put all the money right back in. Yeah. Or the people doing it. They're on just a small scale. And if I talk to them, it's just 99.9% of the time I'm teaching them things. It's like, so it's lonely because there's not too many people, especially in the creative space that is crazy as you.
Yeah, it is 100%. It's so, it's not what I was expecting. I was expecting there would be a lot of people like me. But well, I guess the guy we talked to a lot more because a bit like you in that sense. Yeah, just in a different domain. Yeah, exactly.
Just willingness to put it all back in. And that's why I found right now a lot of the people are related to don't even make you two videos. So just like I'm viewing more and more away from fellow content creators and more to just, you know, I'm just looking for those other people who just share a little bit of it. So I don't feel so fucking crazy all the time. Like, you know what I mean? And like people I feel normal around. They tend to just be doing the randomest things, but you know, loving it.
Well, I think that's really inspiring. It's, it's like the Bukowski line, find what you love and let it kill you is really put everything. Put everything into the thing you love that's like the way to really create special stuff, but it's also the way to live out the life. You have to be careful given this advice because they're like, they're like bodybuilders. So it'll be like, just go to the gym, be disciplined. I'm disciplined. Go to gym.
But I would argue for those people, it's like, it's not even disciplined. They just enjoy weightlifting, right? Because there are people who are jacked, but they don't make much money or run a business. Right? If they were that discipline, they would, they would be hitting every area of their life. They just really like business. And there's people like me who just to an extreme level love building companies. Right?
It's not even disciplined for me. It's just in my blood. It's what I wake up. I don't think about it. I don't push myself. I don't need to watch a fucking motivational video to go work. I just do it. It's programmed in me at this point. And I couldn't imagine a world where I don't wake up and do it every day.
But I think that a little bit of it is genetics and just how your hardwired. Not that it can't be trained or taught and not that, you know, and obviously the friend group you're in influences these things and over time, I think, can change it.
Someone's just not going to be able to flip a switch and then just start doing a kamikaze approach to building a business. Just like a lot of people try to flip a switch and start bodybuilding and quit majority of the time. You know, it's just not innate to them. I think a lot of us have the capacity to do that in some domain. Yeah. I think if you went about it strategically, if you surrounded yourself with fellow like minded people and, you know, slowly over time switched it, but if you just try to like hard core, do it. You're just going to lose your mind.
Do you ever worry about your mental health? Did you take step to protect it to, uh, yeah, to like for the long run to make sure you have the mental strength to go on? Yes. Weirdly enough, the best thing for my mental health was giving into my innate nature to work. Any, the most depressed I get is when I try to restrict it and like, I don't work weekend, so I don't work this day. What's best for me is just to work when I feel like working and then just not work when I don't like and just have no constraints because there are just some nights where I don't want to sleep and whatever reason I feel compelled to go all night, whatever. Like, just do it.
You know, do whatever you want is what I tell my like working brain, um, and I just give into it and I feel that's why I feel the happiest and, and then, um, you know, it's typically like, but when I'm really in the grind mode, it'll be like seven or eight days, it's just nonstop going going. And it's like, I'll realize like, oh, I need some recharge time and then go fucking binge it a season of anime. Yeah. But that's the thing.
Like, people will tell you don't work weekends or don't do this or don't work past this or blah, blah, give you all these constraints. But for me, and it's unconventional, I just give into it. I think there's something really to be said for that. I try to surround myself with people that like when I don't, when I pull an all-nighter, they don't go like you should get more sleep. There's a reason I pulled that all-nighter. Like if I'm really passionate about something, they say they basically encourage it.
Because I have no problem getting sleep and getting rest. What I need in my life is people that encourage you to kind of keep going, keep going with this stuff you're passionate about. Normal people, they don't want that life and they probably shouldn't. It's not good for you. But yeah, if you hang around people, like just what a different people, you're going to feel crazy and it's going to wear on you. Whereas if you're around similar people, it's so much easier.
If you, I've started weightlifting more and one thing that's helped is just having jack people around. They naturally just eat healthier. They do. They naturally just have freaking grilled chicken and all this shit and high protein meals. And it's just easier for me to just piggyback and be like, oh, can you just order me whatever you're getting? And they're like, oh, I got to go to the gym and I'll be like, oh shit, I'll just join you. And it's just, it's cheek codes, you know, just surround yourself with people that you want to be.
And it makes it like 70% easier, in my opinion. It's like that is the cheek code to life. And I wish, obviously your audience is definitely a lot older, but you know, to the older people listening, like if you have, are in a place of mentorship for someone younger or have influence over younger people, you should really try to drill that in their heads. Like the people they are around 100% dictates the outcome.
I would not be on 120 million subscribers if I didn't find when I was around a million at a couple of friends that were just also psychopaths, you know, I outgrew them, but at the time it was great. And I wouldn't be where I am today if it wasn't for them. And it's just all along the way. The friends that I hung out with had such a dramatic impact on where I am. Like I, I'd probably have 80 million less subscribers, you know, if it was, if I wasn't so strategic about hanging out with people that I add value to and they also add value to me.
So the advice for young people would be to be very selective about the people you're also so selective. It's, it's crazy. Like Chris, you know, he's, I, he's really funny. And that's why he's great for the videos. And part of why he's so funny is he consumes copious amounts of cartoons and just funny content.
And so I'll find like when I spend more time with Chris, I'll start just quoting these weird cartoons and shows and I like my speech will literally change. Just after like a week of spending more time with him, it has like, it's like that quick out of effect. You know, now picture that over the course of years. I mean, yeah, it has such a huge influence.
Like pluck one of their friends out and hypothetically put me in there and, you know, there's no doubt if they're trying to become a content creator, there are odds of success just 10X, right? Obviously you can't do that, but you got to find your closest version of it. And just be selective. Yeah.
But this also applies not just to younger told people to agree, but they, it's, it's even more, I like when I was a teenager, I just, you know, I couldn't relate to many people. I just thought I was like, I'm talking freaking nature because no one was obsessed with building businesses or any of this kind of stuff. And so like back then, you know, that advice would have been helpful, maybe not that particularly, but just knowing that there are, you know, it's not that you're a freaking nature.
You just haven't found people that have the same interest. So the task is not to feel sorry for yourself or somehow change yourself. It's more to find the right people you fit in with. Yeah. Yeah. Assuming which, you know, you're not getting comfortable. Like, as soon as not something bad, right? Like if you're hobbyist shooting things, you know, or shooting things you shouldn't be shooting, you know, don't find people that encourage that. But outside of that, for sure.
Actually, as an answer to what is the best advice someone ever gave you, you said, you're crazy until you're successful than you're a genius. 100% all along the way. People gave me so much, you know, advice on why I shouldn't be doing that. Why I'm crazy. Every step of the way people wanted to tell me why I shouldn't be doing this and should get alive, should stop being too obsessed, everything, everything under the book. And then once I'm successful, those same people are like, dang, you're, you're genius. Wow, you really, you pulled that off.
Those are probably the same people that will give you advice now. You're the most successful video creator of all time. Stick to that anytime you want to do something new, right? Yeah. They'll, they'll like pressure you not to do, you know, feastables or mobile gaming or whatever that is beyond. Yeah. It's funny how people don't, well, honestly, the type of people I just don't talk to anymore. Yeah, sure. I won't even know what they have to say now.
So most people on the team are like, yes, and they're like, whatever the idea you got, they're with it. No, it's weird. We actually have a, my team pushes back on me, pretty hardcore, which I want. I don't want yes, man. And they're like, they're James, you know, let's see who helped me build all this. He's very adamant. Like we're not yes, man. And he trains people to really think for themselves. And even when I give them orders, like really think like is this optimal?
Is there context or information should make it missing that I can provide that could help them make a more updated decision? Like I'm not God, you know what I mean? Like I'm human and I make errors. And so don't take what I say as the Bible. So even like in the brainstorming and so on, they can push back. Yeah, you see it like Tyler anytime I set something, you'd give me feedback and push back, which is what I want. I don't want him just to be like, yes, you're fucking genius. Good job, Jimmy. You know, I don't need that, you know, I need negatives.
You talked about being in a relationship. What role, Jimmy does love playing the human condition? I think, well, the role is, the thing is love can be scary because this is, you know, the human you're gonna spend the most amount of time with in your life, you know. And so for a project that over 50 years, they can be a liability or an asset.
I love them, that is right. You know, I love them. No, but seriously, it's got to be someone that makes you better. For me, I can't truly love someone that doesn't make me better because it's. In the long run. Yeah. Across the years. Because if not, then it's like, it's a negative, you know, to everything I've spent my life building. But luckily, I'm very happy with the part I haven't, like we were talking about before. I do think she makes me better.
There's a lot of actually positives I've noticed. Even things that simple as like, you know, I struggle to turn off my brand at night because I'm just thinking about all the businesses and how we could do better or whatever weird thing I have on my mind. But, you know, just chatting with her and hanging out with her helps me. Like, basically just shut my brain off and like, mellow out.
And even like, there's just a ton of little things like that that I've noticed are positives, especially when you really look for them. That are easy to gloss over if you're not. And so, for me, yeah, I have someone who I think is very beautiful, very intelligent, makes me better. It's constantly pushing me. Okay, with me working hard, makes me smarter. And just all these different things that I think for me, love just makes me a better person, you know what I mean? Which makes me love her even more, does that make sense?
Absolutely. What advice would you give on finding somebody like that? Just really, don't give up until you find someone that, you know, there's so many people on the planet. I mean, there really is. There's billions of. The odds are in your favor. Of, yeah, like just don't settle and find someone that, you know, makes you happy. Yeah, just like you said, it's Roni's self with people. And that, that make you a better person in the same case.
So Roni's self with that one special person that really makes you a better person. And for, and maybe that's just an entrepreneur or brain looking at it. Not everyone wants to hyper optimize your life like me, but for me, to like truly love someone, they have to make me a better person. In every way, yeah.
Yeah. Well, what do you hope you're 24? We started talking about death. Let's, let's, let's finish talking about death. What do you hope your legacy is? When you, when we look a hundred years from now, and the alien, the AI has completely taken over and the alien's visit and discussed with the AI, what this last of special humans that existed on Earth was like, what, what do you hope they say about you?
Um, it's a deep one. I probably just, that, because it's, it's hard, right? Like I said before, Elon is over double my age. I could live every second. I've lived up to this point of my life. And still not even be Elon's age. So I have so much time. I just hope whatever it is that it's a net positive on the world and it impacts billions of people in a positive way that makes lasting change.
So you admire people like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk for having sort of reached for that goal as well. Yeah. Of course. To help, to help millions. I mean, the iPhone's the most successful product ever invented. It's hard not to admire what he created. You know, the same with sort of as Johnny, I've talked about like the, the passion, the effort they put into the designing the iPhone that like little bit of love is transferred to the whole world. I think it's the experience that you have that from the designer.
It's what a beautiful thing to do. You know, I couldn't think of anything better, you know, to create something that even after your dead for decades just has such a profound impact on basically half the human population. It's wild. It brings joy to people.
Yeah. Well, I hope you do just that, man. You've already done it for millions and millions and millions and millions of people and I hope you keep doing it. I can't, like it's so exciting to see what happens this year and next year. I know. Like the size of the limit. Yeah. I can't, I mean, the videos, but all the other businesses you're in and you as a human being as you grow, I can tell I know as everyone knows you have a kind heart and the fact that you're really damn good at actually using that kind of hard to help a lot of people. It's awesome to see, man.
I appreciate it. More importantly, before we go, are we going to play a tune tonight? Some board games? Not going to play a tune. You don't want to play board games with me? I want to play board games. You don't want to play board games? If only I wasn't an idiot and actually flew to the right airport. If you don't want to play board games with me, they're going to dislike the video.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Mr. Beast. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from the poet and philosopher, Rebindranath Tagore. Reach high for stars like hidden in you. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.