I'm here with MrBeast, 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 Squid 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 are projected over 10 years because YouTube's not going anywhere.
Probably one of those.
And they don't necessarily plateau.
It's interesting.
We're literally jumping right in.
Yeah, let's go.
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 YouTube, 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,
even two years down the road, then they'll just keep serving it and never stop.
Which is why it's much easier to make one great video than a bunch of mediocre ones.
What about 1 billion subscribers?
You've passed PewDiePie's and most subscribed to YouTube channel.
When do you think you get a billion?
Let me do some math real quick.
So we're on 120.
Do you think about this?
No, I don't, honestly.
Because one thing you'll find if you want to gain subscribers, if you want to get views,
if you want to make money, almost any metric in this video creation space, if you want
something, it all comes back to, okay, well, then just make great videos.
So instead of focusing on all these arbitrary vanity metrics, I just kind of focus on the
one thing that gets me all that, which is make good videos.
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 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 with 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 questions.
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 earth
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 too, I was just like, huh,
this will be a funny thing.
I assumed it'd be 90% no and like 10% yes, but there are a lot of serious people for
you guys listening.
I just did this random Twitter poll or I was like, would you take 10 grand if it meant
someone random in the world died?
And a lot of the replies on the suite 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 the people were trolling, but I actually, you know, when you read through
those replies, I do think like 10% of them were like 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 listened to Dan Carlin's hardcore history podcast.
He has a episode on painful attainment, 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 a 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 attracted to that drama and especially the most extreme versions of that
drama.
And I think part of the Laws reveals something that's actually true in that Paul that like
your answer is so much better than mine.
Do you think about that?
Maybe even with the squid game?
Like, so I think how many, how many views does the squid game currently have 300 million?
Yeah, something like this.
So just imagine thought experiment, how many views that video would get if I was like real
squid game.
Yeah, assuming YouTube was like, we'll 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?
Probably doing something dumb like going to space when I'm in the 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 be like, you know what, let's go.
Something like that.
Maybe.
So not in the name of a video, just for the helmet.
Heck no.
Are you open to taking risks when you shoot videos?
You just went to Antarctica.
I mean, 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
crevasses.
So we know there's no crevasses, 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-planned for it.
Same thing with buried 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 way 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 little dark.
It's a little dark.
But it's fine because a lot of people just be like, how much money do you make?
You know, it's just something I just, everything's always about money now for when people talk
to me.
So it's nice.
But for the videos I've made for you guys who probably don't follow me too closely,
when I had 8,000 subscribers and I was a teenager, I filmed a bunch of videos and scheduled
them years in the future.
And I said, I filmed one where 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 where 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, that's 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.
And because the only way the video 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 upload date.
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, I would vlog every day.
I filmed 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 fantasize, not fantasize, but I've dreamt about that a lot.
Like, I don't know, if, 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 a kind of immortality, but it's also a 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 a 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 in a coffin.
Yeah.
Yours is probably so serious.
No, it's fun actually.
What you realize is 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, the
physically use no longer there.
So like, you know, this would only be released if you're no longer there.
Exactly.
That's a weird exercise.
You know what's funny of all the people listening to this, you know, we're probably the only
two people that have made videos for when we die.
It's like such a niche thing and the fact that we're bonding over it's kind of funny.
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 posts.
And yeah, it's, 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 your, 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
died in some freak accident that we give them to their family, do you think that would,
and it was like a genuine.
I think it would really help.
I mean, it depends.
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 intro it.
That's the opener.
I just want you to know.
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah.
And I guess you could say it 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, but then you're dead.
That's it.
A hundred 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 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 because if I'm making the video, it's over
for me.
It's an interesting thought experiment.
I recommend people try it.
Okay.
Are you afraid of death, by the way?
Yes.
I, it's hard because like, what if you just die and then you just see nothing forever,
you know?
Yeah, the nothingness.
It just fades to blackness and you're just like that for trillions upon trillions to
billions squared years and it's just, it's scary.
But also before you're born, you don't remember those X amount of years either.
So that gives me a little comfort, but now it's definitely very scary.
Something I'd rather not think about until I'm like 80, I'll deal with that problem
then.
I don't know if I told you this, but I'm kind of hopeful that someone like Elon or one
of these like freak smart people will 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, 300 years old and just like set their sights on that and then just
kind of save us.
So it'd be really nice.
Like 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 120 or 130.
And then that extra time, they won't figure out somewhere where we could live to be 200.
Like obviously not immortal, but I don't see how in my lifetime, the life expectancy doesn't
just expand.
Well, it also could be that the immortality is achieved in the digital realm.
Like it could be long be long after you're gone as a Mr. Beast run by a Chad GPT type
system.
Exactly.
Like I've never said everything I ever wrote and thought, but I don't want that.
I want to live.
What do you smart people out there figure it out?
I'll keep you entertained, but I need you to figure out how to keep me alive.
Give me until 200.
That will make me happy.
Well, that's, that's funny.
Who owns the identity of Mr. Beast once the physical body is gone?
Like is it illegal to create another Mr. Beast that's Chad GPT based?
I don't know what the laws are around that.
Yeah.
I mean, once I'm done, I don't care.
Wow.
But you just said you did care.
I mean, there could be a AI, like many Mr. Beast that are created after, after you're
gone.
Yeah.
I mean, that'd be cool to be able to like train up a model and, and let them lose.
So my content lives on, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But somehow feels like it diminishes the value you contribute.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's an authentic, but it's also, there's, there's some aspect to the finiteness of
the art being necessary for its greatness.
Oh, 100%.
Yeah.
The second I think starts spamming out videos, the videos lose all meaning in its pointless
sense of money grab.
If you run YouTube for, uh, how long should you run it for a year?
How would you change it?
How would you improve it?
It's hard because, you know, obviously I'm biased because we're, 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 and wonder, like, what are these, what are these 10 videos
on my homepage?
When I click on a video, my suggestion, I don't ever wonder what these are like I, I, and
maybe it's cause I'm very adamant about like the kind of videos I watch and I try not to
watch videos that I don't 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 the comment section on
YouTube.
It's just so bad.
Um, but that, I know that's not something that's going to 10 X 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.
You know what I mean?
Like, have you ever clicked on something on the front page of Reddit and then most uploaded
reply to it is like, go check out my site right here and it's like trying to scam you
out of $1,000.
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 posts and just see what people have to say.
And I almost wish like you had that same feeling when you read the comments on a YouTube video.
Instead, it's like, it's so many people just copy and pasting so many bots that just grab
the top comment for your previous video and paste it over.
So top comments and every video is the same and the things that break through that are
just scammers trying to get you to give them $1,000 for a free, you know, fake ad.
That comment section is one of the most lively on the internet.
So be amazing if YouTube invested in creating a natural community, like where people could
do high effort comments and be rewarded for it.
Like on Reddit.
Yeah.
Like actually write out a long thing.
That would make me so happy.
Cause 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 $8 a month, any, I've noticed like any tweets I get from verified
users now, they're usually not just garbage troll takes.
Like these are people paying $8 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.
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.
Well, I should say sort of we had, we just like a couple of hours ago had a conversation
with Elon and you guys sent an exchange of some excellent ideas.
So yeah, I'd legitimately think, obviously you're exceptionally busy, but I legitimately
think it would be awesome if you somehow participate in the future of Twitter.
Yeah, it would be fun.
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.
I think the most exciting thing is he's, you know, 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.
And so it's going to, I mean, it'll be interesting to see which way it goes when you just kind
of take a move, quick, break things, whatever type approach to social media.
I'm actually pretty curious to see what features he rolls out.
So what would be your first act as Twitter CEO?
I can't spoil it.
Okay.
I got to get hired.
What do you think about video on the platform?
On Twitter?
Yeah.
Do you think that's an interesting, or is it like messing with the medium, the nature
of the platform?
I think Twitter will always be closer to TikTok than it is to YouTube, like at least in this
current form.
I don't, 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.
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, why does, you should just ask Elon that.
Like, I don't know if that's a YouTube thing, but when a YouTuber posts a video, why do they
have to link to YouTube?
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?
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'd be the easiest solution.
But who gets like, when you watch the ads on a YouTube video that's embedded in 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.
That's really interesting.
But yeah, because the Twitter, whatever the dynamics of the comments, especially once
the spam bots are taken care of, Twitter just works.
So Reddit is a nice comment section for the internet.
It's like slower pace, more deliberate, like higher effort.
Twitter's like this high-paced, like ephemeral kind of stream, but the upvoting, the downvoting
works much better because you can do retweeting, right?
Because the social network is much stronger than it is on YouTube.
Like the interconnectivity.
Yeah, on Reddit, you're going to get the top replies or going to be the most refined ones
whereas Twitter stuff flows to the top that's not super refined.
But like you're saying, it's more off the cuff stream of consciousness, which a lot of people
prefer because it's a little more personal.
How do you think Twitter compares to YouTube in terms of how you see its future on role
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 that's just what it does because it's owned by Google.
But Twitter, I don't know.
I mean, it's one of those things like you can't predict if 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's for certain.
Things are going to be rolled out, but who knows, honestly.
You responded to Elon saying Twitter's unlikely to be able to pay creators more money than
YouTube.
What do you think that is?
Well, yeah, because I think the tweet I responded to is one where he was saying that users will
jump over if Twitter can potentially pay more than other platforms.
And I was just saying, obviously, because Google has Google AdWords and 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's going to just magically or any platform
give a creator the ability to make higher CPMs than on YouTube.
It's kind of crazy.
Some creators in December, Q4 because the ad rates are higher because of Christmas and
everything, some creators literally make like $30, $40 per 1,000 views.
That's after YouTube's cut.
It's almost hard to think about how high the RPMs get.
And even then, once you pull out of finance and cars, the high CPM niches and you move
into just normal stuff.
It's still just crazy.
The sheer 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, I would say, masterfully, it's like part of the video.
Are you talking about brand deals?
Brand deals, is that what you would call that?
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, it's 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 content.
And ideally, use the money in the video to make it better.
Like the easiest thing you do when you do a brand deal is just tell people how you're
using money from the brand deal to make your content better.
And if you do that, no one cares.
Now they're supporting you for it and you go from being a sellout to like, oh, I'm doing
this to make better videos for you guys.
I don't know if you can share, but with those brands, when you have discussions with them,
are they strict about how long you need to be talking about it?
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 the artistic element, we just don't really
work with anymore because it's just, we get 100 million views of video now.
And I can confidently 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 before smaller creators?
It's a lot harder.
Yeah.
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 A, it'd be less cringe, people would be less likely to go, tap, tap, tap, skip.
And obviously it would convert better, but they're just so afraid and they want this
standardized thing.
Say these words and 45 seconds, right here at this three minute mark.
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.
The brand loves that.
Like the point is they, so the funny thing about podcasts is different than YouTube videos.
Podcast people actually do listen to ads a lot because they, it's slower paced and they
like the, the creator voice, like talking about the thing.
But in general, I just don't believe you should be talking about a thing for a minute exactly
and that's going to be effective.
I want to see the data for that.
I think what's much more effective is the way you do ads, which is like integrating
to the content.
There's a lot of effort into making a part of that, like doing the brand deals and I
just, it's difficult to have that conversation.
It's like a very strenuous conversation you have to have with brands.
You have to have 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.
Of the viewers on YouTube though, because most of the people.
Okay, sure.
Or all of them.
It's just interesting because you're, you're speaking very specifically like 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're having this conversation, it's all I could think about.
God damn it.
There's probably like 50% of these people have no fucking clue what he's saying and
we're about to torture him for five minutes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Probably.
But that's something I can't turn off in my brain.
Less than 50%.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Is that exciting to you?
That there's like 50% of people don't have not watched a Mr. Beast video.
Isn't that an opportunity?
Yeah.
I guess it's an opportunity to grow.
I don't know.
Honestly.
I was just kind of excited to hang out with you.
Yeah.
Me too.
Today was a lot of fun.
Who cares that there's mics?
Yeah.
So it's kind of like having a buddy to go along the 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, no, I never even put any thought into like that demographics or 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 will lose?
And I'm like running all those calculations in the background and that whole conversation
like the lock.
Anyway, it's just something I can't turn off.
My like bells are like, error, error, this is bad.
What are the different strategies for high retention, for your videos and 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.
So it boils down to, I mean, do you think at the level of a story or do you think like
literally watching five seconds at a time, am I 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 saying it, they're immersed.
And so a big like to really boil it down to a simple level, you just want to get people
where they're immersed in the content and then just kind of hold them there.
We had this discussion offline and by the way, I should mention that this is like late
at night.
It is.
What time?
It's nine 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?
We just do it.
We always do this.
He's like, No, I got it.
I got it.
He's going to have to rub it in.
And now he flew to the wrong airport, airport with the, or a city with a similar name to
ours.
Just same name, same name in a different state.
And I was like, that's why you should let us book it.
And so he's on one hour of sleep and he's literally been dying all day before the podcast.
He downed like two things, coffee.
We've been going all day hard.
Yeah.
I've been, I got to interact with you.
That I should say that this gave me an opportunity to, I got a ride from a stranger and it was
an incredible person that I got to interact with him.
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 cause I could, you know, 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 a honey.
So that was a beautiful moment, you know?
I was so confused.
You tweeted about that and like steals like Lex, my assistant was like, Lex isn't here
yet.
And I saw your tweet and I was like, he's here.
Yeah.
Seals like, no, he's still flying.
Like an hour ago, he just tweeted about a nice diner.
Yeah.
It was a 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.
I was like, hmm, something's not adding up.
Yeah.
I feel like a such an idiot cause apparently the world has cities like Springfield, right?
Like every single state has a Springfield.
Oh, really?
I think so.
I think that's a, that's like a Simpsons joke, right?
But like it's the city and 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 Georgetown, I think the most pop, I forget what the most
popular one was, but there's like a list of people get, when they run out of ideas, they
just keep using the same thing all the time.
They're your Achilles heel.
Anyway, I got to, I got to meet a bunch of people from, from your team is just 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, the React, the gaming channel, to Mr. Beast
Burger, to Feast the Bulls, all that.
The big thing is, especially in this content creation, cause it's not like anything that's
done on Netflix or, 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 a, like a thing you, there's no one like plug and 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 super viral YouTube videos, you know, like we do,
there's just no one you, you can really pull from.
Like sometimes I'll hire people from game shows, right?
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, 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.
Cause 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 cause 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 this channel, they'll be like, oh, I hope
to be working on movies or this and they see like working on a YouTube channel as a
launchpad 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.
The biggest thing is like, what do you want to be doing in 10 years?
And their answer isn't, you know, making content on YouTube or, you know, if their answer
is anything like movies or traditional stuff like that, it's like just a hell no.
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 and just doing
epic stuff.
Yeah.
Well, and yeah, the media as well.
Cause those, it's just, it's hard to put it into words, but there's, it'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, I mean, so, um, and it's
not scripted.
And so you have to overfilm, overshoot things overcompensate for like the dumb way of going
about it.
And a lot of traditional people would be like, well, just plan what you're going to say and
just plan the angles.
You can cut the cameras in half.
You can save 50 grand here.
You can save a, you know, 75,000 dollars editing this and that.
And it's like, yeah, but that's not authentic.
Like that's, you know, blah, blah.
You get it.
And it's almost so obvious that it hurts that I 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 just stylistically visually.
I don't have to think.
I can just watch a video and it just, it just screams in my head like, this is what, this
is what should change based on the, you know, million videos I've watched and all these viral
videos I've consumed.
Like this is blah, blah, blah, 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 it's optimal.
Obviously my taste is at the end all of y'all.
But that's something that kind of torments me if that makes any sense.
Oh, you can't enjoy a slow movie.
No, I can't.
And that's not to say there's no-
The retention on the Godfather is horrible.
Yeah, no, exactly.
I've tried to watch that movie like three times, but that's 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 in social media and YouTube
right now.
Like there's just 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 data driven.
So you're looking at like in terms of thumbnails and titles and different aspects of the first
five, 10 seconds and then throughout the video, the retention, all of that, you're looking
at all of that for your own videos to understand how to do it better.
So that's where the neural network is training.
Yeah.
Basically, there are ways you can kind of see like the most few videos on YouTube every
day and stuff like that.
And 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 notice 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, intros 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, I have so many friends who are like this, they'll make
like checklists for their editors, they'll make, you know, this be in this be and you
need to have like a three part arc and then 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 going to be like, all right, I've
already seen this.
So to me, and I'm 24 and you know, I'm probably, my mindset will change over 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 going to 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 the next thing, you know, every video, there's like cut every three
seconds or whatever.
So it's, it's hard because I try to give as little train, not training, but as little
a 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.
So we talked about sort of teaching your voice or your style, whatever we want to call it
to other people on the team, so they can be kind of a Mr. Beast replacement.
So what's the process of teaching that so you don't want to,
No, I got you.
So you're more talking about like what I would call almost like cloning, right?
Like, like Tyler and other people like that.
Yeah.
So when we were hanging out today, I was showing him how we have multiple people in the company.
It's almost like talking to the camera to have you turn slowly to the camera.
I was like, it is 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 and I'm talking
to him.
Yes.
It's a habit.
Because my whole life, I've just been talking to a camera.
Who are you thinking about when you're looking at the camera?
Do you like imagine somebody?
I'm fully thinking about the person just sitting watching it and 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.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
And that's where I'll be saying things or doing something and then like when I'm watching
it, I'm like, that's not what I want.
And then I'll freeze up.
It's very weird when I'm filming.
And for people who haven't worked with me too much, they'll think like, I don't know,
it's very weird how I go about it because I'll just be doing whatever, like lighting
a firework.
All right.
This is a $1,000 firework and I'll go to light and I'll freeze because in my head I'm
like, I don't know.
I don't like how that flowed or 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 the 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 it carefully and do that over and over and over and over
and over.
10,000 times.
Yeah.
You do the editing more than being in front of the camera.
So like you start to see yourself from that third person perspective.
Exactly.
And maybe that 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 what?
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 dumb.
Maybe they're practiced.
To me, it's, I mean, both are terrifying, but being in front of the camera by yourself
is more.
So much easier.
Really?
Yeah.
So much easier.
I prefer it 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 talk to a piece of plastic.
Oh, yeah.
I guess you're talking to a person too.
Yeah.
And on the other side of the camera.
Yeah.
There's just a pixel on the screen.
So cloning.
How do you, how do you achieve that?
Oh yeah.
That's right.
That's a whole rabbit show.
So I was showing him that I have a lot of people in the company who are able to think
like me and basically make decisions like 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 when he was pitching some content
and you could 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 like 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 my right hand man right now, for two years, he lived
with me and we probably talked on average of those two years, seven hours a day.
I mean, anytime I had a phone call at dawn on speaker and I'd let him listen at 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 being 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 and all the creative, I approve it, but I don't have to like be in the weeds
and nuances and do all this minor stuff.
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.
I mean, 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 how do I change, like thinking about the titles and the thumbnails.
I work so well off of inspiration.
It's like, it's something, like give me any word.
I don't know.
Space.
Yeah.
Like I went to space, you know, what happens if you blow up a nuke in space or I went to
the moon, I went to Mars, right?
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 fast, 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 is just 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 of 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 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.
Like that.
Yeah.
I was like, what the heck is the thumbnail?
Even if the title was good.
Yeah.
I mean, there's 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, are they like, do they have to watch it?
Is it 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?
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.
The click through rate is going to be much lower than if it was like a five second video.
People might click it.
They've 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 to blow 50 characters because above 50 characters
on 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.
They're 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 you, it's hard to convert into words for you like, I stepped
on a bug versus stepping on a bug versus Mr. B stepped on a bug versus bug stepping video.
So it's like, yes, the more extreme the opinion, typically the higher the click through rate.
If you can like pay it off in the content, then it just super charges it.
So you'd have a kind of estimate of the extreme this water, right?
If you're like, Fiji water sucks, that would be fine.
But if you said Fiji water, it's the worst water bottle or the worst water I've ever
drank in my life, 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 in a positive way.
A lot of people, it's easier though, positive, negative clickbait is 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, 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 or whatever, if you just wanted to help people
or, it's just harder to get 10 million views on a video helping people than it is to get
10 million views on a video tearing down a celebrity, whatever negative video you want
to insert there.
Well, that said, most of your videos are pretty positive.
But not a lot of people do those kinds of videos because they're hard.
Yeah, they're hard.
Some of that is giving away money, right?
What's the secret to that?
What's, how do you do that right?
Yeah.
Give away money?
I mean, a video to make it compelling.
So there's a number that is better than another number, right?
The higher number is always better than the lower number, yeah, for the most part.
It's interesting, 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.
Some of our most few 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's 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.
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.
Well, no, I think it applies.
It's fascinating.
It's fascinating.
Our relationship with money is fascinating.
Why is it so exciting to get, I mean, the times I've found like 20 bucks on the ground
are like incredible.
Really?
I don't know why.
Why?
Why are you so happy?
What exactly is so joyful about that?
I mean, it depends where you are in life, what the situation is.
Yeah.
I don't know.
There's also a gamified aspect to it.
It's exciting.
Yeah.
No, I get it.
Like why people want to see people win money.
It's just interesting that past 100 grand, it doesn't really seem to make a difference.
It's the same basically.
So you found that to be true with all the money you've given away?
Just didn't click through rate.
Like obviously, in terms of someone receiving it, yeah, a million dollars changes their
life drastically more.
That's the difference.
Like, oh, if you wanted to, you could really quit your job.
As opposed to 100k, it's like, not really.
You probably do like a scientific study, like a formula, giving away money to click through
rate.
Yeah.
There could be some kind of demachine return.
Definitely.
The returns level off dramatically after 100k.
100k.
That's basically the premise.
What about 10,000?
No.
There's 100,000.
Is that the big one?
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 and a million is just so little.
I just, I think big number, big number to a lot of people past that point.
Yeah.
So for 100,000, you can, like a given average salary, you can probably live for a year,
even given what they have average salaries in America.
So that's like a big, that feels something.
Yeah.
I think it's also just more when they read the title.
It's just like, it's a lot of zeros.
Fuck loads of zeros.
Fuck loads of zeros.
Okay.
Click.
Yeah.
Oh man.
That's fascinating.
So on the thumbnail side, again, that's going to be much harder to say, probably.
But offline, I got a chance to look at a bunch of thumbnails and it's fascinating which
ones do well and which ones don't.
Is there something you could say about what are the elements of a thumbnail that work
well?
Or is this also deeply interesting?
Well, that's where, yeah.
It's the same thing, like how do you cook good food?
But it's easier if you pull up a thumbnail and I can be like, that's why that's good.
That's why that's bad.
That's a, like an example would be like one of my friends, he just uploaded a video recently
and I called him and I was like, what is this?
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.
So I was like, well, why are the cops in your thumbnail wearing yellow vests?
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 I was 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.
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, 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 got like seven X the views.
How much iteration?
Cause I also got a chance to see the number of iterations you do on a, I don't know, just
a brand of thumbnails.
It's a problem now.
It's an addiction.
Is it?
So you kind of, there's a lot of the versions are really good.
Yeah.
How do you know when to like stop?
I love how you, when we pulled up that, uh, the burger one and we were flipping through
them, you're like, that's really good.
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.
Like one of our coming up videos, we made the world's largest plant based burger and
the thumbnail we were thinking is like me standing beside the burger cause it's six
feet tall.
And that's, that's what 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 world's 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?
Like, but I think you said the one I noticed first that was good where you were very small
in it.
Religious.
And you didn't like that one.
You had to come forward a little bit.
And also the photo we took was just my upper body.
So they photo manipulate and creating my legs, Photoshop.
And that's why I said I didn't like it because my right leg was a little like off.
It was like bent the wrong way.
Cause I had to build those legs in Photoshop.
Well, I mean, does the physics and the thumbnail have to even make sense?
I mean, you can just like exaggerate the head size and all that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
100%.
Yeah.
Things don't have to be relative.
You can have a car in the background and be three times the size.
Yeah, every one of my thumbnails, my face is in the, you know, left side very big.
So brand recognition.
So just people know, oh, especially cause 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, that want to make it big and they
see Mr. Beast and they look up to you to copy some elements of you or to really try to be
unique?
Unique.
100% unique.
Like I said, Mr. Beast, quote unquote, it's weird 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 I spend 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 shouldn't.
Like I didn't get where I am by just beating someone else at their own game.
I just found my own lane and innovated 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'd advise you don't.
You give away a lot of the secrets, basically everything about how you operate.
Is there a...
I don't hold anything back.
Go for it.
How do you think about that?
Because 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, because we're also focused super heavily on YouTube, but last year we were also the
most followed TikTok creator in the world as well.
Actually, we were most subscribed to YouTube channel in the 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?
So from being a successful YouTuber to understand it, a totally different algorithm, fundamentally
different algorithm.
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 I was doing TikTok, it was just kind of figuring out what
it does Mr. V's look like in this short form content.
But recently we've really started to catch our stride and come up with some original
concepts and figure out how to innovate over there just like we did on YouTube.
Because I didn't want it to just be shitty YouTube videos.
And so an example is we played The Rock for 100K and Rock, Paper, 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
will 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 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 one minute.
Exactly.
No one on short form is doing it.
That's the thing.
It's just so funny because TikTok's been big for a while now, years.
And then as we started to really figure out things on the YouTube channel and get it cranking
where I have some free time, we set our sights on TikTok and like, okay, what are people
not doing?
How do we make it better, put in more effort, make it good?
And we did the same thing we did at YouTube, just different over on TikTok and it worked.
Now we're the 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 also during the brainstorming, some of the
ideas, you're like, that's better as a short.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
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.
Are you posting similar content to a YouTube short as a TikTok?
Yeah.
Those were just double up.
It's just hard.
What's actually pretty fascinating and people who do social media listening to this will
probably find this pretty interesting is picture like the content creation meta three years
ago versus now where you can make sub one minute vertical content and it go viral on
TikTok and go viral on YouTube shorts, go viral on Instagram reels, it goes viral on
Facebook, it goes Reddit, 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
or content could actually go super viral on every single platform.
It's never been like that before.
So they're going viral individual.
They're not like interbreeding or whatever.
I can post something on TikTok that'll get 100 million views and then post it on shorts
and it'll get 200 million views and then post it on Instagram and it get 50 million views
and then I haven't yet, but you can then turn around and tweet it and it get 10s of millions
of views and you can post it on Reddit and it get 10s of millions of views and Facebook
can get 10s of millions of views and that just wasn't a 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, but 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.
Sometimes it can be of course, but it can be engineered.
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.
You can call it luck, but I think it can be trained.
I counsel YouTubers all the time and show them how to go from getting a couple of million
views a month to 10 million views a month very easily and from even certain ones.
Just one of my friends, 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 and he went from $10,000 a month 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 brainstorm 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 and getting that.
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 don'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 them 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.
I thought those videos deserved a million views and I thought the algorithm hated me.
But I'm watching back now and I can tell you exactly why.
The videos are just fucking horrible.
You know what I mean?
So 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.
Every six months you should look back and hate your videos or at least see things you
could improve and be like, oh, I could have done this better, that better.
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?
Just look at the metrics.
I mean, I just got back from a mastermind where I just got like 10 of the smartest people
I knew and we just locked ourselves in a cabin and taught each other stuff constantly every
day.
Not every day now.
Probably every other day I go on a walk and I just call random people.
I'll just say, yeah.
There's nothing.
I mean, 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 just to constantly be learning or someone who is learning is
just going to have a leg up on you in the knowledge game.
What kind of stuff are you, because you've talked about offline that you just love learning
of all kinds.
It doesn't matter.
But in terms of videos, are you studying videos, are you studying?
Recently not as much.
Before, because to get to the videos I want, I have to build this business and scale up
and hire.
So more of my recent time has been, like my teenage years were spent 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.
So yeah.
On that, the business side, we talked about hiring, do you have trouble firing people?
No.
I'm pretty sure almost every person, yeah, actually every person I've ever fired, we
just give them severance and I like to see it more as it's no ill will.
Like if there's, like if I fired you, if there's some other job you want me to help
you get, I'll DM them on Twitter.
Like, you know, if you want to go work for, I don't know, insert whatever, MTV, give me
someone to DM.
I'll DM them.
Like, you know, I try to make it more like a transition and do whatever we can to make
it as easy as possible.
And then 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 you, onto someone that you don't
see being here in 10 years, you're just doing them a disservice.
You're just giving them more ingrain, more enrooted and where they are.
And the sooner you do it and help them move on to their like 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, won't be the first 10 videos you tried to
make on a new channel.
I guess that's advice for a new person.
And nobody knows you.
Yeah.
Nobody knows me.
Yeah.
I just 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 and I'm, any of you listening, if you, especially if
you have zero views on your channel, your first video is not going to give views.
Period.
It's not your first 10 are not going to give views.
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 100 videos and improve something every time.
Do that.
And then on your hundred and first video, we'll start talking like maybe you can get
some views, but, you know, your first hundred are going to start.
There are very freak cases like vice-a-coachy 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 the NBA like, yes, there
are free 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 hundred and first video.
Well, the improve something each time is a tricky one.
How do you improve something each time?
The second one just, I don't know, 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 no, 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 just brainstorm like, okay, I don't have money.
What are some viral things?
Like, I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is something as simple as when I count
to a hundred thousand, which is what I did do when I was poor and like that work.
But like, what's something like that I could do that would be even more attention gathering.
Yeah.
You were, as part of the brainstorm, you would throw out a lot of ideas and people throw
out a bunch of ideas and one of the questions is, is this even doable?
Right?
Yeah.
First off, come up with ideas you think would do well and then ask yourself later if they're
doable.
Yeah.
Because there's, there's different ways you can accomplish something.
Don't be cynical about the doability 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 our hundred million subscriber an island.
Yeah.
You know, you can't find private islands that, you know, don't look like shit for less
than $10 million.
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, 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 paths.
Boom.
Now it's a really nice island, but it's actually affordable because we don't have $10 million
spent on 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 $10 million or we're 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.
And 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.
Like 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 no way you're going to build a brick wall for under a hundred 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 specific, 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 see.
I see.
So let's say I'd like two million subscribers on this podcast.
Yeah.
Like how would you 10x that without sacrificing what it is?
10x your stuff.
Does it matter?
So you've talked about what success.
Yeah.
It's different for everyone.
Like is 10xing your definition of success?
No.
Well then it's going to be right off the bat.
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 and 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 could
do this to get more views and he'll just be like blank.
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.
Yeah.
It's so fun to focus on the numbers and 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.
So it's, 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 more data driven, even on podcasts, but I'm really
afraid of that.
On the flip side, I think part of the appeal is that you don't care about that kind of
stuff.
But there could be stuff that doesn't have to do anything with that and 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, I mean, and it'd be nice to understand that, but yeah, again, I'm worried
about polluting the creative process.
At the end of the day, it's, this is a true case of it's your own intuition.
Like, you know, your viewers better than anyone else, whatever, see, I'd like to push back
on that.
I really don't.
You do.
I don't 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?
350.
Exactly.
But I'm not paying attention.
You're the only one who's watched every second of all 350 of them, probably.
That's just, that's just not, no, I haven't, but the, well, because you did it.
So you do know what's in all of them.
Sure.
You do.
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 Lex viewer and what do
they want?
I don't think like that.
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 to investigate that would be very, very difficult and then you
have to start looking at the numbers, you have to start to like consider the demographics.
The only way I know that anybody even watches it is cause 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, that's, that's the data point and they're like cool people.
But you know, I don't know, like 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 know.
Do you have a sense of who's, I mean, like you're so huge that everybody watches.
Yeah.
But no, I still do.
I would 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 ramble, random sample size, yeah, it's
probably like a male boy that plays video games.
Like that's the best way I would describe it.
But I don't try to pertain to them.
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, you know, 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, you know, 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 4%, that's still three to 4% of 100 million views is a lot of people that age.
So we, we hit a large group of, of kind of every demographic, if that makes any 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 could 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 focused.
We would honestly just have to pull the, because it's the same way, if you went to Gordon Ramsay,
you said, how would a new cook cook better?
You know, it's like, even then that's not even specific.
You have to go channel by channel.
You really do.
Or I'm, I'm giving horrible advice because if there was these just golden rules, everyone
would do it.
You know what I mean?
Like if there's these magical little principles.
How quickly, when you look at a channel, can you kind of give advice?
Yeah.
It's, 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
ingrained in like, okay, the typical viewer is this, they're from here.
Here's how they're feeling, you know, because there are people who make videos for rednecks
and like the rednecks taste of content is just so much different than obviously women
watching makeup videos, which are so much different than, you know, teenage boys watching
a Minecraft video.
They're just all different.
So the biggest thing you have to do is put your heads, your head in the headspace 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, just generating a lot of ideas.
I think the first time I've talked to you was on clubhouse, actually, I mentioned something
about robots and like almost immediately went to generating a bunch of ideas around
robots.
Oh yeah, easily.
100 robots versus 100 humans.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'll market a robot throw a potato.
I think your idea, like I think the first idea was, because you just said so many ideas
I've never even thought of, but 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've, yeah.
But there's still ideas.
Like I think the first one you said, because we're talking about quadruple, like robot dogs,
you said to replace a biological dog with a robot dog and see if the owner notices something.
You were just quickly brainstorming different ideas of like, this was years ago, I remember
it.
Yeah.
Which is 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.
Yeah.
I think that was like 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, is you keep, keep things.
It's much easier to make a video around a good idea, obviously, than a bad one.
You just send yourself up for success.
Okay.
So that's for 10Xing already popular channel.
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.
Do you have any 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 get people to click a video, you can get them to watch it, but
you can't really fake whether or not they're satisfied.
They don't lie, the surveys.
Maybe one person here, they're my troll, but once you aggregate enough, it's a pretty
clear tell-tale of the video.
So either you're making a great video or you're not.
What is it, minimizing the non-regrettability?
Yeah.
I think Elon tweeted, that's what he's trying to do on Twitter.
For Twitter.
And that's interesting.
That's basically the survey metric.
How happy you are that you've been using the platform.
Yeah.
Elon tweeted, we want to limit the amount of regrettable minutes people spend on Twitter
and the first thing I thought, it's like, that's something YouTube already has unlocked,
like their whole survey system and 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 mean, I don't think anyone's going to do what YouTube does better than them, 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.
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.
So 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 would you rather have a million dollars or
10 million subscribers?
That's where it gets a little tricky.
Because now it's like, hmm, a million dollars life changing amount of money.
But if you semi-knew what you're doing, you probably make a million dollars off of 10
million subscriber channel, but there's a little bit of risk.
So a million dollars might not be enough to build a strong team because you don't know
how to do it.
So you might waste all of that money.
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 subscriber versus 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 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 trends, to understand
social behavior and all that?
No.
All your, not all, but a lot of the questions are analytic space.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's so fun.
Because I love it.
I mean, it's just a giant social experiment, right?
You can watch what people share.
Yeah.
It's like a fascinating look.
So I hate that.
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 one, this was fitted.
I love it.
This is funny.
I mean, this isn't me like trying to make, I love you and I actually, 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 hearing 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.
And I don't at all.
I actually, I just follow the thread 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.
They're 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 and
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 of which information isn't or isn't made available through search
and discovery?
I'll be honest.
I'd never really think about it.
You just try to make fun videos.
Yeah.
I'm kind of more in 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'm just kind of in 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?
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 a centralized entity.
That's too big of a responsibility.
Yeah.
There's the misinformation stuff.
And then there's also just like the videos where they do something that causes what happened
back in the day, we're at apocalypse, and a lot of creators revenue plummets because
people are doing videos that advertisers don't seem acceptable, and then now all these big
advertisers are pulling, and the little guys are getting hit because ad rates dropped by
30%.
And the person who just quit his job to go full-time consecration 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.
With 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.
Yeah.
So they know how to improve their content, they can understand it, they can...
Exactly.
If it's a wrong shadow banning, like as a society that wishes not shadow ban this kind of content,
that means you should be 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.
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.
But to be fair, that's a huge responsibility.
The amount of content that YouTube is upload on YouTube 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, crowd-sourced it, crowd-sourced it the way Wikipedia crowd-sourced
it.
Right.
And then you open a random Wikipedia article.
But people criticize Wikipedia because there is a political lean to the editors of Wikipedia,
and then they get 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...
I like to hear that stuff out.
I'm just going to make fun...
Cool videos?
Yeah, yeah.
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 fun.
That was a really fun video.
Thank you.
I mean, there's a lot of things I can comment about that, but what was the hardest part
of making that video?
The hardest part was just getting out there.
It's just so remote.
And 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 on the planet.
And it's just very breathtaking.
If you have the chance to ever go to Antarctica, I would recommend it.
It was probably in the video, we climbed a mountain that wasn't named, so we can name
it.
And standing on top of that mountain and just seeing kind of like nothing, because once
you get outside the outskirts and you get deep in Antarctica, there's no penguins.
Nothing lives there at all.
And so there's just nothing.
And every direction is 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.
So the sun's up 24 seven 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 this several times.
It's how beautiful.
Yeah.
And so it's just, yeah, it's just very beautiful.
What about shooting itself like the technical aspects of shooting it?
Oh, I mean, well, so somehow we lucked out one of the days was like the warmest day in
like forever that's been in Antarctica is like is positive degrees.
But at certain parts, it's 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 or 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 does, how do
you go from the idea stage to the actual execution to the final video was, can you take me through
like a full process of like where we're talking to bought some crazy wild ideas today?
How do you go from that to a final video where you click publish?
Well, I mean, obviously first things first, you gotta figure out the idea and then it
just depends.
I mean, pick any video you can think of on 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.
Yeah.
So for that one, step one, one of the most popular, yeah, that video did really well.
So we promise 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
up.
Yeah.
So step one, you build that team.
Okay.
We got the team.
Now, what do we need?
And 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 out in 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'd be funny if I brought the house in on the
intro.
Yeah.
You know, find a crane that can lift up a house so I can drive it in and drop it in
the intro.
And it's like an iterative process where you're like, okay, this would be funnier.
So this is not all up front that you've written.
Yeah.
Ideally it would be, but as you kind of see things, you get inspired and then you think
of more and more.
And this would be better with a crane.
Yeah.
It'd be better if I dropped out of the house.
Drop it.
Yeah.
That was crazy that you decided to do that.
So fearless in the kind of crazy stuff you willing to do.
Exactly.
I'm a broken record, but whatever makes the best video possible.
Yeah.
That's all you focus on.
Okay, so what about the delegation of like, who gets to, what are the cameramen, like
the people operating the cameras, who's responsible for different things?
Is it like a distributed process?
Well, that's where whoever the lead cam would be on that video, would just decide it.
That one, cause we shot over a hundred days, we didn't, a lot of it was just Sean and the
guy who was in the circle just vlogging.
I just gave him a camera and he figured it 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 stand
by 24 seven.
It made more sense to do set hours and yeah, it was, it was hard, but you know, explaining
it in hindsight, it sounds so simple, you know.
And I guess like the more, cause 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.
Like, you know, I checked in on him so many different days and it's like an hour here,
two hours there, three hours there, over a hundred 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 a hundred days, it just all of it adds up.
What about like the hundred versus a hundred, a hundred adults versus a hundred kids?
What was the, what was bringing that to life?
That seems like exceptionally challenging.
Yeah.
Basically the thought process was we did a hundred kids versus, or sorry, a hundred
boys versus a hundred girls.
Yeah.
People loved it.
And as much as they did, video did really, really well.
So the second I saw that video was crushing, I was like, all right, we're doing it again.
But last time we did it, we did it in our studio.
So we built a giant room, put a hundred girls in it, sounds bad when I explain it like this.
And then a giant room, put a hundred boys and we're like, after a hundred hours, whichever
room has the most people, we'll 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 a hundred football players versus a hundred cheerleaders, a hundred this, a hundred
that, a hundred prisoners versus a hundred cops.
So just craziest ideas and we settled on a hundred kids versus a hundred adults.
And then the next step was like, how do we make it better?
The kids versus adults are 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.
That's why the cubes are outside.
And instead of doing circles, we want to make them cubes.
And then, you know, as figuring out, do we want the, 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 filmed.
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 Frankensteining in the editing to make up for basically my ignorance.
So you mentioned that you were surprised how well that, that, that one did.
A lot of creators talk about getting depressed when the videos don't do as well as they kind
of expected.
There's a kind of feeling you can get really worn out by that.
Do you, do you yourself feel that?
And also do you have advice for others that feel this?
Um, yeah, it's weird because I am a numbers guy, but also it, 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.
Man, 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 now it doesn't really matter.
It's a, if a video does bad, I just look at it and I'm like, oh, why did this video do
bad?
Uh, probably, oh, there's a little retention dip there.
I don't think people liked the thumbnail.
Maybe we should switch it.
And 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, um, respond to a video that's
doing bad, just remove emotion from the equation and just look at it and figure out how you
can approach the next one.
Is there, is there tricks to detect and being able to detach yourself from the, from that
because, because like in your case, I mean, that's true for creators, but in your case
there's, there's like a lot of money on the line.
Yeah.
Well, this video cost my life and so much time, but no, I mean, you just, I mean, I don't
know.
The only real answer is it's just a conscious effort.
You just have to unemotionally look at the video, determine the problems and then move
on.
Cause there is no secret, you know what I mean?
It's just, it's, it's that, and if you really can't bring yourself to do it, then you're
just screwed.
Honestly, maybe you're not mid for this game.
Okay.
So that's part of the development as a creator is like being able to be.
For longevity.
Yes.
Yeah.
You have to unemotionally be able to look at videos that flop and figure it out.
Uh, cause if not, just getting, you can, and not every video can be a one out of 10.
And so when a video does bad, you know, that, that just stress and depression is just going
to eventually get to you in the long run.
So you said you've, uh, failed in a bunch of videos, uh, sort of taking them to completion.
So what are some of the biggest fails?
Yeah.
Weirdly enough, as we've matured and we've done this more, we don't have that problem
as much, especially now that we're getting into the multimillion dollar budgets per video.
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 deserted island and, uh, 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 deserted island and spent another 24 hours there and re-filmed it.
Um, or, uh, 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, we were just like, we all, at one point just kind of wanted to die.
It was just miserable.
So how do, how do you avoid that these days?
Uh, well, I just went with it as a little cooler, to be honest.
And then we had literally the amount of fun we had in the video was like 10 times higher.
Oh, interesting.
So you, like there's some practical details that you just learned.
Yeah, I don't, videos that where it's very hot or, or it's on water cause 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.
Uh, like we tried to, um, anytime we do anything on a boat, like when we spent 24 hours in
a bearded or triangle or when I tried to spend like, which didn't get uploaded, but I tried
to spend like a hundred hours at sea or whatever, just like on a raft.
It just like, I, 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 suck it up.
So when you spend months in creating a video, I know this is probably stressful to some
creators.
Um, like how much stress, how do you feel when you have to click publish a video?
No, not much.
So you're able to detach yourself from it.
Yeah.
Again, and old me tons, I mean, I'd be 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 a content creator, there's different phases.
And, uh, you just like, once you get over the, 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 relevant.
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, I, 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, you know, mentally insane, you know, you have to get out of that
that game.
Cause it really messes with you.
We've talked about this a little bit, but how do you define and how do you suggest others
define success?
I'm so subjective.
Some, some people, some people success is retiring their mom, you know, for you, success is inspiring
people and educating them and, you know, whatever the peak in their curiosity, um, 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, subscribers don't correlate
to views.
Sure.
Or views, what?
Yeah, I know.
But that's more, that was a direct to you.
That was more direct to people listening because a lot of people do really care about subscribers
or even followers like on Tik Tok.
But if you look like your view on YouTube, very, very few percent, if even a percent of
your views come from the sub feed, right?
They're almost all home for your suggested.
What's the last time you clicked on your sub feed 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 something.
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, your taste evolves and it's like, it's a mess.
And so subscribers don't really matter, followers on Tik Tok don't really matter.
So anyways, they really are the definition of a vanity metric.
And but what about views?
They do, obviously.
Because if people are showing up time and time again, that's what matters.
So that's a good thing to define a success.
I just feel like that too can be a problem because I would say, if I wanted to be successful,
like as a young creator, I might start copying Mr. Beast or something like that, right?
You start trying to take shortcuts as opposed to find your own unique voice, right?
Like chasing views is a problem too, it feels like, or no, as long as you detach yourself
from them.
I mean, if you're, sounds like you're lazy, yeah, and you just want to copy someone else
to not experiment and find your own way.
But 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 and we need some different 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 and the number
of views in the short term.
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, 10 years?
Beastburger or Feastables?
No, I kind of think they're, 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 like life itself.
I do.
Every time I'm talking to someone, I'm like, okay.
What about like loved ones?
Like spending time with loved ones thinking like, we could be doing something much better
right now.
Yes.
No, that is a serious problem with, 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.
Like I always feel like I need to be learning something to justify the time I'm spending.
And so that's why it's such a nice trait because I feel like that time is being used optimally
because whether we're watching a documentary or we're going and, you know, taking an IQ
test or reading about whatever, just why modern art is the thing.
I don't know.
Whatever weird thing we decided 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, you know, hit the ground harder.
And luckily we're into a lot of the same things, which, you know, happen to be learning and
sometimes it's not learning.
Like maybe watching an anime or something like that.
But I'm a big believer and 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, obviously we're pulling this
down to like a very basic thing.
And so the, the things you're doing in your downtime, when you're not working, if it doesn't
recharge you, you're screwed.
You're just a ticking time bomb waiting to upload.
And so you got to like heavily recharge and like, so like watching, for me, anime or whatever
it is playing a board game, like that is actually kind of crucial to my success, which takes
a lot of maturing to come to that conclusion because I used to be the kind of guy that
wanted to work every hour of the day.
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're just a 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 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 the life of Mr. Beastlook
like?
Oh boy.
Well, I mean.
Or like a standard.
I mean, the perfectly productive day is we film a main channel video because those get
a hundred million a pop.
I mean, it doesn't really get any better than that.
What about like the average day when you're not on the set?
Yeah.
And you're like, like, because you're running a lot of things, right?
Yeah.
So right now we have our snack brand, Feastables, we have a restaurant chain, Beastburger.
And then we basically, which we haven't even really launched any product yet, but we have
the data company that I was showing you where we're going to roll out some tools for creators.
And then we have the reaction 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.
I kind of go, Hey guys, Jimmy's got an hour from 2pm to 3pm and everyone's just like,
I need this, I need this.
And this channel is like, I need this thing filmed or, you know, whatever, the guy who
runs my tiktok.
So I need this tiktok filmed or, um, you know, Beastburger is 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 to eight companies and just whatever they're like two to three biggest pain points
or things to need from me and just doing those based on priority and then trying to keep
it as short as possible to just the things that you're needed on.
It doesn't get more optimal than that.
If I clear the bottlenecks or some bottlenecks for all my companies, then it's, yeah, that's
a perfect day.
Yeah.
I mean, even just me because you're like, you're showing me around and you're being
a great and gracious host, but on top of that, you're just doing all these meetings.
You basically, I felt bad at some points.
I was like, oh, I just tricked him into going to meetings with me.
He's like 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 brainstorming and the main channel to the reacts and so on.
Yeah.
It's really interesting.
I mean, it's really interesting what it takes to build a team like that because you very
quickly build a very large team that's able to scale.
It's just very scary because it's my first, I'm 24 and I think I 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 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 and 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 plate right now and it just sucks that I have to learn the lessons with the lucrative
thing.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I 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 old?
Yeah, that's something I feel like I actually could give a lot of value to, to young people
who are doing it.
Like older people who have built five companies or whatever they do, I probably couldn't,
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 scaled up a hundred 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 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 of the traditional way and not
like how it should be online and so then it's like, okay, now I'm not trying to trash people,
like they all tried their best, but then I hire this one person who does this different
type of media and runs a hundred person team and then you come in here and they try to
build it that way and they don't really listen to your 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, it just like they
just don't get it and they don't understand my world and the eventual solution was just
like to roll up my sleeves and do it myself, you know, with like James or a 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 kind of 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 and stop trying to have someone build this
company for me and just do it myself because it's scary like I spent my whole life studying
YouTube videos of virality, not business building, but I was like, I guess we just got to do
it ourselves.
And that's where things really start to click and we got the exponential growth and 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 when 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 there's 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 I'll 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 the video today, those really nice.
Those different than you would have potentially edited it.
Yeah.
I'm surprised by like a decision editor makes 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 ever 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, but 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, well,
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'd put it is like, when you're on a come up or you're growing, you
don't want to test new things once you start to plateau or have a downtrend.
Because if you're like, you know, you're skyrocketing, right?
You're up, up, up, and then you level off, 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, 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.
It might 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.
And so that outside of the thing that brought you to the dance, you just dived right into
Mr. Beasburger and Feastables, this is a whole nother industry.
Like what was that like?
Well, so Beasburger, we kind of, it was supposed to be like just a pop-up, like we just partnered
with someone who had 300 restaurants and we're just like, you know, let's just sell
Beasburgers 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 in 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 Feastable?
Feastable is 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 there 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.
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 Feastable 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 Feastable, everything I had done was online.
So if you wanted anything from the quote-quote piece brand, you'd have to buy it online and
ship it to you.
But Feastable is now that, because our first product, Chocobars, we started putting that
in retail locations.
So for example, Walmart, it's crazy.
It doesn't make sense, which I guess it does, because we get 100 million views of video.
So a lot of people know us.
If I go stand on Walmart, those people recognize me and ask for photos.
If I stood there long enough, I could take 150 photos today in Walmart or 200, whatever
it is.
So obviously it makes sense, those people go for Feastables.
But then you just multiply that by every Walmart in America.
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, so whatever,
but other big retail locations and convenience stores.
And by the end of next year, we could be in like 40, 50,000 locations.
And the numbers just don't make sense.
What are some interesting challenges about scaling there that surprised you?
The biggest problem, which I didn't think would be was just keeping the shelves in Walmart
stock, to be honest.
So that supply chain.
It was brutal.
Well, even then, sometimes you get them the stuff and it takes them 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, 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 three-ish month period where I just didn't promote Fiestals because
I was scared that someone would go buy it and it's just not there.
And so it took us a very long time to catch up to the demand.
And also, it's not like we have unlimited money.
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 10X the amount of locations therein.
And then 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 their local 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 couldn't
get it.
And so that was really it.
Besides that, nuts, it's been doing way better than I ever thought.
You've talked to a couple of places about maybe doing mobile games or computer games
in the future.
Yeah.
Is that something you're still considering?
Yes.
Because, you know, do you normally talk with people as much as we talk beforehand?
Is that?
No, no.
That was the problem.
We spent all day today talking about stuff.
I just looked in my head, everything you asked me is stuff we already talked about.
Not really.
Well, no, no, not everything.
I take it back.
But sorry.
The last two questions.
Yes.
And so it's just funny because...
What?
No, I tried.
It's okay.
There's a different style of asking those questions because I on purpose didn't dig further with
you.
I could tell.
Yeah.
I could tell you.
Okay.
By the way, okay.
All right.
Well, this is the first time I've ever talked to somebody as much as I did with you beforehand.
On the same day.
I know.
Not even same day.
We spent all day together.
We're talking like three hours.
And I only slept one hour.
Yeah.
Literally, it's funny.
This is a hilarious and awesome social experiment.
I picked him up from his hotel and I just harassed him all day to hang out with me.
And then here we are.
It's great.
It's awesome.
I love it.
I was secretly recording the whole time.
Just so you know.
I'm just kidding.
Anyway, so what was the question?
The mobile games.
Yeah.
So the interesting thing is with Beast Burger and Feastables that there's physical goods
as opposed to making mobile games or a 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 Feastables in Southeast Asia, get Feastables in India, get Feastables in Brazil
and Mexico and all these other places where we have giant pockets of our audience.
And same thing with Beast Burger.
It's just, it's going to take probably years unless we partner with someone who already
has a distribution, which we're figuring out.
But the beauty of software is I can make a hypothetical game or whatever we end up doing
and all my fans can use it tomorrow, the day I mention it.
And so if I promote something in a video to 100 million people and it's basically like
a game, they can all download it.
But if I promote a Feastables bar, right now it's only in America because we're struggling
just to keep up with American demand.
We haven't even gotten the chance to go outside of America.
So I alienate a majority of my audience and it feels sort of shitty to just 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 what I'm excited about.
I want to get into less physical stuff and more stuff that everyone in my audience can
actually use.
This is the thought process.
It's the social element of the gaming too because it's not unlike Feastables, like that's
a product you consume.
You missed it.
When you're setting it for this, we were doing some basically just laying out everything
that we're planning for.
So our enthophases were wanting 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 I have 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.
You know what?
I did.
So much good talks.
I think the juicy talks happened to you.
She's like, I got to go set up.
Well, you know, I already heard a lot of awesome stuff.
But that is a different kind of team you would need to hire.
Is that a little nerve wracking, like going into a new field and trying to...
A little bit.
But then I remember stuff like, like Steve Jobs didn't know how to code, right?
And you just knew what a good product was.
And I feel like as someone who wasted so much of his life playing video games, I have a good
sense of it.
And that might be ignorance.
Yeah, that's really important, right?
It's not about coding.
It's about what makes for a good game.
Exactly.
And again, that might genuinely be ignorance.
And maybe I end up, you know, getting bit in the butt 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, it will do well.
What is the path to being worth a hundred billion look like?
What is the path to being worth a hundred billion look like?
I don't know.
Okay.
I'm going to pause here, 24, and there's so much awesome scaling.
So many great ideas.
You think about different trajectories, what those possible trajectories might look like.
Yeah.
I mean, if the goal was to just be worth a hundred billion dollars, yes.
My goal, I'm a broken record, is to make the best video possible because I know whatever
else I want will come, obviously.
So the video is the foundation.
Yeah, exactly.
So to path to a hundred billion dollars is to keep getting a hundred million views
of video, you know what I mean?
Or more.
Yeah, or more.
Exactly, if we can keep growing.
But, you know, if we can keep feasible growing, right, and we eventually expand international,
one day we're in a hundred thousand retail locations and we're selling the same amount
of units 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 churn out, you know, like Supercell, 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 while 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 a hundred million views
per episode, basically, like we're doing?
Like, you know what I mean?
Like, the Super Bowl gets praised because it gets a hundred million viewers, but I can't
think of a show, maybe in reruns or something, but it's also a show that has a singular
kind of figure that you can now use as a...
Like, I don't have a network.
Tell me what to do.
I don't have anyone.
Like, I can do whatever I want.
So, it's a very interesting position because I put out content and a hundred million people
show up.
And then I also have a gaming channel.
I put out content and 15 million people show up and I react, you know, I put out content
and 10 million people show up and have a TikTok 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 Feastable
has launched, you know, last year, 2022, so it's a relatively new thing.
And BeastBurger, we just started scaling up the physical side and we haven't obviously
even launched any mobile games yet.
So, I think I'm at the antivises 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
leverage off of it, then, yeah, I mean, hopefully there's a 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 contentment, your happiness in life?
It's money buy happiness.
No, not...
I mean, to a point, yes.
Once you can take care of your health, you can take care of 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 brought
me 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 hypothetically a million
dollars, no, it really doesn't.
Spending an extra year, going from $10 million to $100 million or whatever it is makes no
difference.
So, you're given that or just fearless in spending the money?
Yeah.
Well, let me reframe.
I guess it could for some people if you really, I don't know, you spent your whole life obsessing
over cars, it probably would bring you a little bit of joy to buy a nice Lamborghini.
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.
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.
Well, one interesting question I have for you psychologically.
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?
Good 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
in the heart.
So quickly.
Yeah.
It's so obvious.
I don't even want to go into the descriptions, but, well, 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 your radar sharp of who can and can't be trusted because you
know you can trust them.
Yeah.
It's difficult when you become richer and richer and more powerful.
Well, one thing you'll also find when you get rich, not even richer, but more fame.
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.
So that takes 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?
I'm dead.
I thought there would be hundreds of me and there isn't.
There isn't.
I mean, there's maybe one or two and I talk to those motherfuckers every single day.
I'm sick and tired of talking to them, but I love them.
But it's just so interesting because every level I got up, I'd get a million subscribers.
I'd be like, all right, where is all these guys and the million subscribers that are fucking
psychopaths?
People become like conservative as they get.
They get more.
Especially as they get bigger.
Yeah.
And 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.
It sounds cliche and you hear that kind of shit in movies and you're like, oh, that's
not how it works.
But it is.
There's just not many people that just want to give up everything, go all in, then obsess
over making the greatest goddamn videos every single day of their life.
They're really hard to find.
And be able to sacrifice everything for that video, like basically 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.
So it's lonely because there's not too many people, especially in the creative space that
are as crazy as you.
Yeah, it is.
100%.
It's not what I was expecting.
I was expecting there to be a lot of people like me.
But, well, I guess the guy we talked to Elon Musk is a bit like you in that sense.
Yeah.
In a different domain.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Just willingness to put it all back in.
And that's why I've found right now a lot of the people I relate to don't even make
YouTube videos.
I'm veering more and more away from fellow content creators and 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.
You know what I mean?
And people I feel normal around and they tend to just be doing the randomest things, but
loving it.
Well, I think that's really inspiring.
It's like the Bukowski line, find what you love and let it kill you.
It's really put everything into the thing you love.
That's the way to really create special stuff, but it's also the way to live out your life
most.
But the thing is you have to be careful given this advice because they're like bodybuilders.
People will be like, just go to the gym, be disciplined.
I'm disciplined, go to gym.
But I would argue for those people, it's not even disciplined.
They just enjoy weightlifting because there are people who are jacked, but they don't
make much money or run a business.
If they were that disciplined, they would be hitting every area of their life.
They just really like business.
And then there's people like me who just to an extreme level love building companies.
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 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 you're hardwired.
Not that it can't be trained or taught and obviously the friend group you're in influences
these things and over time, I think can change it.
But someone's just not going to be able to flip a switch and then just start doing a
kamikaze approach to building a business.
It's like a lot of people try to flip a switch and start bodybuilding and quit majority
of the time.
It's just not innate to them.
But 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 slowly over time switched it, but if you just try to hardcore 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?
Yeah, 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 nature to work.
The most depressed I get is when I try to restrict it and I don't work weekends or 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 and just have no constraints because there are just some nights where I don't want
to sleep and for whatever reason, I feel compelled to go all night, whatever.
Just do it.
Do whatever you want is what I tell my working brain and I just give into it.
That's where I feel the happiest and then it's typically like, when I'm really in the
grind mode, it'll be like seven or eight days and just nonstop going, going and then it's
like, I'll realize like, oh, I need some recharge time and then go fucking binge a season of
anime.
Listen to your body.
But that's the thing.
People will tell you, don't work weekends or don't do this or don't work past this or
blah, 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.
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
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 whatever, different people, you're going
to feel crazy and it's going to wear on you.
Whereas if you're around similar people, it just, it's so much easier.
If you, I've started weightlifting more and like one thing that's helped is just having
Jack people around because 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 like 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 like, it's just, it's cheat 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 cheat 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,
I had 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 just all along the way, the friends that I hung out with had such a dramatic impact
on where I am.
Like 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 had value to and they also had value to me.
So the advice for young people would be to be very selective about the people you saw
and so on.
So selective.
It's, it's crazy.
Like Chris, you know, he's, 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 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 is 10 X, 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 to see younger older 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 it was like a 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 interests.
So the task is not to feel sorry for yourself or somehow change yourself.
It's more to find the...
Find people you fit in with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Assuming which, you know, you're not getting compliments, like, assume it's not something
bad.
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, then you're a genius.
100% all along the way.
People who gave me so much, you know, advice on why I shouldn't be doing it, 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 under the book.
And then once I'm successful, those same people are like, dang, you're a genius.
Yeah.
Like, you pull 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, they'll, they'll like pressure you not to
do, you know, feastables or mobile gaming or whatever lays beyond.
Yeah.
It's funny how people don't.
Well, honestly, they're the type of people I just don't talk to anymore.
Yeah, sure.
I wouldn't even know what they have to say now.
The most people on the team are like, yes, and they're like, whatever the idea you got,
they're with it.
No, I mean, 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, they're like, they're James, you know, the CEO who helped me build all
this.
He's very adamant.
Like we're not Yes, man.
And, 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 Jimmy could be missing that I can provide that can 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, they can push back.
Yeah.
You can see it like Tyler.
Anytime I said something, he would give me feedback and pushback, which is what I want.
I don't want him just to be like, yes, you're a 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 play in the human condition?
I think role is, well, big thing is love can be scary because this is, you know, the human
you're going to spend the most amount of time with in your life, you know, and so for project
that over 50 years, they can be a liability or an asset.
I love the metrics.
You know, I love, 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 in the long run, yeah,
across, 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, 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 as simple as like, you know, I struggle to turn off my brain at night because
I'm just thinking about all the businesses and how we could do better or whatever weird
thing I have on my mind.
But, you know, just chatting with her and, 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, 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 something like that?
Just really don't give up until you, you find someone that, you know, there's so many people
on the planet.
I mean, there really is.
There, 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, surround yourself with people that make you a better person
in the same case, surround yourself with that one special person that really makes you a
better person.
And for, and maybe that's just an entrepreneurial brain looking at it.
Not everyone wants to hyper-optimize their 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 aliens visit and discuss with the AI what this last of special humans that
existed on earth was like, what, what do you hope they say about you?
It's a deep one.
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 in 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 that 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 is the most successful product ever invented.
It's, it's hard not to admire what he created, you know what I mean?
It's 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.
Like they get to experience the joy of 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
you're dead for decades, just has such a profound impact on basically half the human population.
Yeah.
It's wild.
Brings joy to people.
Yeah.
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'm excited.
I can't like, it's so exciting to see what happens this year and next year.
I know.
I'm excited too.
Like the sky's the limit.
Yeah.
I can't, I mean, the videos, but every, all the other businesses you're in and you as
a human being as you grow, I can tell, I know, as everyone knows, you have a kind heart and
the fact that you're really damn good at actually using that kind heart to help a lot
of people.
It's awesome to see, man.
I appreciate it.
More importantly, before we go, are we going to play Dune tonight?
Some board games?
I'm not going to play Dune.
I have to, I have one hour.
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 play board games with me, they're going to dislike the video.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with MrBeast.
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, Reverend Dranath
Tagore.
Reach high for stars lie hidden in you.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.