YouTube Masterclass 2025 with MrBeast, MKBHD & Casey Neistat

22:51And I want to talk about that video, the dollar versus series. Talk about the inspiration because I don't think people realize how you came to that. And then I got a ton of follow-ups. Yeah, 100%. So for the$1 versus, the thing is, we've all seen BuzzFeed did it. But also, not only did BuzzFeed, but it's just like people across every format on YouTube, beauty channels, gaming channels, everyone was doing videos where they'd compare something cheap to something expensive. And they usually did well. And what I like to do is if I see something going viral across like multiple formats all across YouTube, then it's like, OK, that seems to be something people really like.

23:28And, you know, they're really interested in that content. So maybe I should just do that in a really beast way on the channel. And sometimes creators like Nick Giovanni, who's one of the biggest food creators out there, don't even bother with certain ideas if they're not outliers or haven't already performed well on other channels. Because this is a sign that viewers may not be interested. It comes down to a deep dive on, you know, has this been done before and how did it do? I think that's always important to look at. Not to say that you can't take a concept that has been done before and not make it better.

23:57Yeah. But if people aren't interested in something, there's sometimes where it's just like, this may not be worth our time. You mean looking at it in terms of other channels, other genres. Yeah. It can be really helpful to go and see, okay, 10 people have tried to make a video trying the best burgers in the world and no one seems to be that interested in it. And so that might not be worth the time. And that's a good sort of first test to see, has this been done? You can also do this with shorts. I was actually with Jimmy when he was filming this running video, which was inspired by Daniel LaBelle and adapted to feel more like Mr.

24:25Beast with bags of money. And it's crazy how much Jimmy tries to elevate things because he filmed this entire short when I was there. Then he scrapped it because it didn't look good enough and went back to film again with different props. And I even tried taking part in the running video when the money was the heaviest. And let's say it got a little embarrassing for me. I gotcha. Thank you. We'll give him some power. My god, this is... Two, one.

24:55But here's where it got even more interesting. Jimmy saw that that short did well on his channel. And then he did it again. This time with bigger and bigger Feastable Vars, which I think is a key nuance. In other words, you could also study your own outliers and then double down. And actually, Patty Galloway told me how he does this with his creators, like Jesser, to help him grow past 25 million subscribers. It's just a simple question of, you know, what are the five or six best performing videos I've made on my channel? Could I make them again in some form? Could I adapt them? Could I make a series out of this video?

25:26With Jesser going to three NBA games in 24 hours, we've done that same video four times, probably going to go on five, six times. Each time we just put a little twist. It's like playoff games instead of regular games. It's seven games in four days instead of three. You know, it can kind of go infinitely like that. And now if you're wondering, okay, well, John, how in the world do I find these outlier ideas? Well, there's actually a step-by-step process that I've outlined here, and I'll show you a much faster way to do it in a few moments. But to find an outlier in your niche, all you have to do is this.

25:55Number one, open up your YouTube app and search three to four words related to your niche. Then go to search filters and sort by view count, video, and anytime. This is key because essentially you're asking YouTube to turn off its algorithm for just a moment to show you the videos that have the most viewed. Then scroll and click on these top videos and then click one more time to see the subscriber count of the channel that uploaded the video. And what you're looking for here are videos that have over five times more views than the subscriber count of the channel that uploaded it. And if you make a list of these outliers and reference them, they'll help you so much when you brainstorm your ideas.

26:34Now, what if there was a way to find outliers even faster? Or what if you could automatically get ideas on how to adapt that outlier based on your niche? Well, that's exactly what you could do with Spotter Studio, which is a sponsor of today's video. With Spotter Studio, you can go to the Outlier tab and filter videos about their outlier score. You can also look up 2x outliers, 10x, filter by long form, short form, and here's the best part. You could just press this brainstorm button and it generates ideas customized to your channel. and you go to this link you'll get an extended free trial spotter studio and because i always want to go above and beyond for you guys i'm doing two things one i'm hosting a free online workshop for anyone who signs up in the next two weeks and on top of that i'll be picking nine of you from that group to fly to la to come to the lighthouse to spend a day getting mentored by me colin samir and april lynn and yes we'll be roasting your videos and if you've already joined spotter studio don't worry you're already eligible just make sure to add 10 or more ideas to your idea bank, then hit the share with an expert button so I see it.

27:34And if you're seeing this after two weeks, don't worry about that either. You'll still get the extended free trial to spotter studio, which should help your channel a ton. Okay, moving on. The next tip is to copy with taste. So once you find these ideas and outliers, don't just copy and paste. Do what I like to call copy with taste. And here's a little spectrum I created to remember it. Put your own spin on it, adapt from outside your niche, meld it with other ideas. We'll talk about how to do this in a second. But I thought But Jimmy actually brought up a great nuance about all of this. If you watch someone's video and you can't tell the difference between their video and my video besides the budget, then it's like, yeah, you're copy and paste.

28:08But yeah. But like, you know, me and Ryan might sometimes do similar videos. I'm not even saying he's copy. But like Ryan and I could like I will go visit hotel rooms,$1 versus Ryan will go visit scary, scary Airbnbs. And it doesn't feel the same. Right. And that's like and that's the thing. Like Ryan has his own voice. He's quirky. And he's just like, you know, let scenes breathe more and blah, blah. and that's like ryan's style and then our style is like a little bit quicker and just show you cool things and spending more money and you know making it epic and um so yeah that's not that he's copying us but in general that would be like doing it with taste and then the copy and paste is yeah you know there are tons of other people who after our hotel video just went literally sometimes hit the same hotels same thing use my same text on screen speak like me act like me use my cuts use the same timing pacing and it's like be more like ryan invent your own style we need more people like that.

28:59We need less people that just look at Ryan, look at me and other big creators and just, you know, literally copy and paste. Like if people wanted to watch my style videos, they'll just watch my video. We don't need someone else doing my videos with lower budget, less effort. And that's why when you adapt outliers with taste, you get this amazing string of ideas where Mr. Beast elevates a BuzzFeed concept, but does hotel rooms instead of donuts and takes it up to$1 million. Then Ryan Trahan puts his own spin on it by only focusing on cheap hotels. And then Nick Giovanni does cheap restaurants instead of hotels, and a cycle of creativity continues on and on.

29:32In fact, there's this great quote from the late Virgil Abloh who said, you only have to make a 3 % tweak to an existing concept for it to be innovative. That's it, 3%. And it's coming from one of the best designers of all time. And one of the best ways to make a 3 % change or copy it with taste is to look at different genres, eras, or mediums. So I'll even change the genre of a similar concept from donuts to hotels to cheap hotels to restaurants, which kept it innovative. But besides looking outside your genre for inspiration today, you could also look back at different eras, just like Zach King did to grow past 40 million subscribers.

30:08And I'm not talking about looking back at eras like the early 2000s. I'm talking about even further back. Zach told me that he and his team study filmmakers like Buster Keaton from the 1920s, like literally 100 years ago, because so few creators are looking that far back to come up with ideas today. Oh, I love Buster. And I noticed that he does so many jump cuts that are reminiscent of what you're doing today. Yeah, it's so good. This is so good. We share all these clips internally. Really? Every once in a while. But I love Buster Keaton. I studied him. We did a video referencing Buster at the back of the car, and the car drives off and I'm on the tire.

30:46Now it's one of his gags. But we just added them. It's like, how do you 10 % that or 50 % it? It's fun to reference those because for sure the young generation does not know what that is. And the third way to copy with taste is to change the medium. So by medium, I mean like film, TV, radio, YouTube. This is honestly one of the more straightforward ones, but it's also the more competitive because a lot of people are already adapting the medium of TV for YouTube, but there's still a lot of opportunity. Like for example, ARAC did this, I trapped 25 strangers in a box, which is basically a YouTube version of Big Brother or the Sidemen's Tinder in real life is a faster paced and YouTube version of MTV's next dating show.

31:26Or honestly, I'll give credit where credit is due. My man on the street videos were totally inspired by Jimmy Kimmel's Can You Name a Country segment? Except I wanted to know if people can name more celebrities or creators. or another example of changing mediums entirely is going from a shot in a tv show like severance and adapting it to a still image for a thumbnail just like jimmy said in our interview it's just interesting that you can draw inspiration from anywhere like basically one of my thumbnail guys chucky watched severance and one of the opening shots is that uh image in the top middle where this uh lady is laying on a table he's like we should do this for a thumbnail and i was like what does that even mean and he sent me that snapchat with a circle and a human and i was even more confused, the image in the top right.

32:08And I was like, Chucky, I don't know, maybe you're drinking alcohol, even though he doesn't. And somehow that led to this thumbnail we ended up doing here in the bottom right, which actually worked pretty well. And it was kind of nice, because usually my thumbnails have my face and the left side. And I've been looking for ways to not have every thumbnail be the exact same. And that was a good breakaway that people seem to like. It's not like we got that from a different YouTube thumbnail. Like he was literally just watching severance it's you know so look outside your genre across mediums or back at different eras for better inspiration so the next tip is to find popular problems here's the thing youtube is the world's second largest search engine after google and it's estimated that there are over 6 billion searches per day of people trying to watch videos to answer a question to get advice solve a problem and so forth so as a creator especially if you're just starting out and growing you'd be crazy not to try to make content to meet that search demand.

33:03You see, just as entrepreneurs make products to solve problems, we as creators can make content to solve problems. But the question remains, how do you find the most popular problems in your niche to make content about? Well, there's three ways to do that. First is the incognito mode method. Two is the Quora method. And three is to poll your audience. The incognito mode method, well, for that one, you just have to go to incognito mode in your browser, then go to YouTube and start typing in video ideas or search queries. And I let autocomplete tell you what most people are searching for. You see, by doing this in incognito mode, you're not letting your past searches change the autocomplete.

33:39So you're seeing the autocomplete based on the masses based on their searches. Second, you can go to Quora and figure out what are the most popular questions that people are asking in your niche. All you have to do is search your topic and filter by all time. And I love Quora because it's literally a place where people ask questions and the upvotes tell you what the most amount of people need help answering. And if you make content about that, you're golden. Third and perhaps most underrated is poll your audience. You know, you can use the poll features on Instagram, YouTube community, LinkedIn, and so forth to treat your audience like a focus group.

34:13I mean, if you follow me on Instagram, you'll already know that I ask your thoughts on topics for my next videos or even thumbnails you like best. And I constantly go through our Discord community to see if there's a pattern of questions or problems that I could help with in my next video. Basically, the goal is to make content that falls in the middle of this Venn diagram, where what you know and what you're excited about matches up with what people want to hear about, whereas so many creators don't even ask their audience and just make content that feels totally out of touch. And the next tip to remember is that interested is interesting.

34:46All right, I know, I know, we've talked a lot about data, but sometimes you just gotta say, screw the data, Screw the algorithm because there's a lesson here that dates back to one of YouTube's first viral videos, the double rainbow guy, which I never really considered until it was pointed out by Dan Mace, who is the creative genius behind a lot of Mr. Beast and Casey Neistat's videos. Interested is interesting. I think it's like, so remember the first ever viral video? I'm pretty sure for me, the first ever viral video that I saw was a double rainbow. Oh my God. Oh my God.

35:27Yeah. Everybody's seen the double rainbow. That video went viral because of the man's reaction to the double rainbow. He was enthusiastic about the rainbow. Like Casey's content and what he does is he's just so interested in it that it becomes interesting. And if you think about it, it makes sense. I mean, that's why even Casey's videos about public bathrooms or bike lane violations get millions of views. And yeah, OK, now he has a huge following. But it all started by being so interested in something that it became interesting to all of us. And I still believe in all the tactics and the data that we discussed so far.

36:03But the big caveat to all of this is this. If you can barely contain your excitement about a video idea, then just make the damn video. Trust me, the audience will feel it. because at the end of the day, YouTube, this thing is about transferring the energy that you feel in front of the camera to the person watching it in front of their screen. Okay, I know, okay, that was a little mushy-gushy, but I wanna follow up with another tactic. All right, the next tip is to avoid eye fatigue. This one drives me crazy because so many creators over-edit their videos, and you don't even have to have any technical editing skills to implement this tip.

36:33So most creators jam way too many visuals on screen that cause your eyes to dart all over the place and get fatigue, which will inevitably lead to viewers clicking off. Case in point, we have a Discord community with over 6 ,000 creators who share their videos, thumbnails, and ideas for feedback, and I wanna share a few seconds of a video from a creator who shared this. And I say this out of love, but just look at this frame alone. I'm sorry. I mean, my eye has to be in four places at once. The top visual, the bottom visual, what's on the monitor, what's on the notebook. I mean, this just continues on and on, and countless creators do this without realizing in their videos as well.

37:06In contrast, here's what we did during my interview with Mr. Beast, where he's talking about these six different versions of a thumbnail, a lot going on. But we literally zoomed in and dimmed everything else out but the one visual he's referencing. So there's no question what you should focus on at any given moment. This is even more important now with so many YouTube views coming on TV where the screen is bigger. So you don't wanna have people darting their eyes and craning their necks while they're watching your videos. So make sure you have one primary focal point. And for shorts, it's slightly different, but same principle.

37:37And here's a guide for that. anything around here is off limits it's too far away from the center focus and it overlaps with the UI the buttons on YouTube TikTok and Instagram anything here is safe because it's where the eye naturally looks your text hook should go here to make it more prominent your eyes go here and your captions go here right below and again if you want this template while you're editing or to give to your editors that's also in the YouTube hack pack I mentioned earlier the next tip is to remember the paradox of production. So few creators understand this and it kills their growth.

38:10Simply put, the smaller you are, the more your production value matters. The bigger you are, the less it does. And people who say, oh, your camera or your gear doesn't matter. They're honestly naive. Yes, story is more important than that. But for new creators, your viewers are beyond impatient and your production value and your prep are your first impression. So get a freaking mic, set up some lights, script so you don't ramble. And we'll about how to do that in a second or at least prep some bullet points you know people say oh it's inauthentic it's overly rehearsed whatever it's not it just means that you care and maybe you're the next i show speed or emma chamberlain but they're the exceptions and you know even speed told me during our interview about how his spontaneous live streams actually take a lot of planning it's a lot it's a lot that go into these streams that people don't see like people just see the 15 second clip of me you know what i'm saying but it's a lot that goes into that just for that 15 seconds.

39:02Or even off-the-cuff comedy YouTubers like Liza Koshy said in her interview that she scripts her videos in advance. And a perfect example of this is her dollar store series. Wait, so you're going to the dollar store. You're picking up like a basketball. What? This is only 79 cents? Come on, man. It's a dollar store. Get this cheap stuff out of here. Oh my God, this is a dollar? A dollar? A baller? A dollar? Dang, that's so cheap. I can go balls to the wall in this place. That joke was scripted. Absolutely. Weeks before I'm going to the dollar store and looking at each product, understanding what I could do and how I can write a joke around a specific word on that product and raise it up to camera and then hopefully give a natural, effortless delivery when it comes to day of shooting.

39:45So it takes some pre-production that I never really talked about. Eliza also said her parody video of Vogue 73 Questions, which now has 32 million views, took seven attempts to film, even though it looks all improv. All right, now flip it. Okay, let's say you do have a bigger audience. What do your viewers want to see? They want to see you, but raw, unedited. And I think that's one of the reasons why our behind the scenes videos with Mr. Beast took off because people rarely see them in an unedited context like that. I mean, that's also why we love docu-series or even these FaceTime TikToks of celebrities because after seeing them so overly produced everywhere, we want to see it all stripped away.

40:20And I actually had a chance to ask Will Smith about this because he's obviously been in some of the biggest productions ever. And now he's active on social. So I can't wait to share that video. But as newer creators, you're not there, not yet. And to be honest, production value is just a fancy schmancy way of saying, respect your viewers' eyes and ears. Only then will they respect you with their attention. The next tip is simplify your speech. All right, so when it comes to scripting, during my interview with MKBHD, he showed me the video scripts and we talked about how they tend to be at a sixth grade speaking level, despite him talking about in-depth topics like tech.

40:54And in fact, many other YouTube creators like Ryan Trahan, Tom Scott, and so forth, tend to hover around that fifth to seventh grade level. So for YouTube, you need to simplify how you talk without dumbing it down, that's the key, especially if you're making videos about a popular problem, for example. So for that, I always try to follow this cheat sheet, which I call the three Bs, basic, bold, brief. And you could probably tell by now that I love alliteration. So the first B stands for basic. Make sure you translate jargon into simple words like instead of leverage, say use. Instead of optimize, say perfect.

41:23instead of competencies, say skills. The second thing is to be bold. Remove words from your speech that can undermine your authority without you realizing it. Like possibly, it might, I think. There's a time and place for that, but most times it just undermines your authority. Be more assertive. The third thing is be brief. And these are just rules of thumb, but they'll become instinctual over time when scripting your videos. So avoid more than 25 words in a sentence because you'll start to ramble. Avoid more than three sentences in a paragraph because you're jumbling a lot of thoughts into one section.

41:55And my biggest pet peeve by far, avoid double descriptions. Like you don't need to say the room was clean and tidy. Just say the room was clean. We get the point, move on. The next tip is to hone your off-camera craft. So there's two parts to being a good YouTuber. Being good on camera by doing all the things that we're talking about here, improving your production, your speaking, your thumbnails, your editing. But the second thing, the X factor to all of this is having a skill off camera. And the more uncommon that skill or craft, the easier it is to honestly have a real career on YouTube. And I'll give you an extreme example of that, followed by a more relatable one.

42:28So the extreme, but a great example of this is Matthew Beam. Before he had millions of subscribers, few people know that he was an auto mechanic who painted and wrapped hundreds of cars off camera before he ever did it on camera with hits like making a real-life Lightning McQueen or a SpongeBob paddy wagon. Looking at the larger creators, they all have their own unique value. And mine was being in the car industry. I think the average age in my industry was like 55. I was always the youngest person. So I thought there's probably a good likelihood that I'm the only person that's really into YouTube that can like paint a car, know someone that can wrap a car and do something like that.

43:01So I realized that that was like my advantage. And if you look at Matt's videos now, it's clear he's kept honing his craft off camera with bigger and bigger projects. Another example of this is Dr. Mike, who keeps treating patients even though he's well past 10 million subscribers. I can't give up practicing clinical medicine because it makes me understand better the problems people have. It allows me to relate better to people, use better language where I can actually see one-on-one if they're understanding what I'm saying. And it just makes you just more valuable, but also happier. Even when the channel is not performing as well as you hope, going to the office and having someone tell you your notes are late or your patient mad that you're five minutes late to their appointment, that's valuable.

43:45And people will always belittle it. so valuable being able to see the exact outcome of your work right there in the moment so so valuable it's what keeps him sharp because he's in the trenches he's hearing about the latest problems from his patients and that could spark a content idea that could help even more people or another example is Hayden Hillier-Smith who makes content about editing and he told me the same thing it's fun doing the podcast but for me I still want to maintain the right to still be talking about editing and so I need to make sure that I'm still in the thick of it yeah and so I I'm still very much taking on as many jobs as I can, as long as they're reasonably balanced.

44:21And I could go on and on. Creators like Dream worked with another Minecraft creator before becoming one of today's biggest gaming YouTubers himself. Nick Giovanni honed his cooking skills before becoming one of today's biggest food channels. And Peter McKinnon, who is the king of photography tutorials, said this. My wife was always a huge advocate, still is, of practicing your craft. so if she sees me just pounding videos after videos after videos she's like when was the last time you went on like just took photos not for instagram i was like ah you should probably do that like she's like because as much as you're the teacher and as much as you're the guy inspiring everyone else to get out there and do it you still need to like follow the passion that got you here in the first place and if you're not learning you're unlearning so you got to make sure you keep your skills sharp and you know i try to do the same as well off camera i work with so many creators of all different sizes, brands, executives who bring me in.

45:12Like just the other week, I was working with LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. And when they hired me to come help with their content and social media, it helps keep me sharper. No matter how big this channel grows, I like working with other people to understand, okay, what problems are they facing and what content can I make? Because all this stuff on camera, to be honest, the speaking, the editing, the packaging, that's a must. You need that to survive on YouTube. But it's the stuff off camera that helps you thrive. It's the stuff that happens in Dr. Mike's office or Nick's kitchen or Matt's auto shop.

45:43And that's what gives them their edge and ideas. And sure, you could say, okay, John, yeah, I don't want to hone any of these off camera skills or these professions. I just want to be a pure entertainer like I show speed, Logan Paul, Emma Chamberlain, to which I say, good luck. Because sure, you may be part of the 0.01 % that gets popular from your personality alone. But that's a much harder path. And as Dr. Mike says, kids these days, when they're polled, they say their number one dream job is to be a YouTuber. And I have to redirect them in that hope and say, hey, learn something, bring some value to YouTube.

46:20Otherwise, you probably won't get popular, number one, because you won't have anything really interesting to talk about. But even worse, you might get popular. And they're like, wait, why is it worse if I get popular? Well, then you'll get popular. You're probably going to be popular for a short period of time. And at some point, it'll fall off. And then you're going to feel terrible about yourself. And you won't have a career not to necessarily fall back on, but to say, well, I've learned this. This is where my value is. They'll say, a negative comment will come in and say, you have no value.

46:49And they say something really mean. But then if you look inside and you say, well, what is my value? What am I bringing to the table? That's going to be a demon that you're really going to struggle with. Man, what a bar from Dr. Mike. All right, moving on. The next tip is earn the right to rebel. So this one has more to do with making money and brand deals, which I actually think is one of the biggest pitfalls for creators as they grow. And I want you to imagine for a second that a brand wants to give you$25 ,000 to make a sponsored video for them. And here's the kicker. You barely have to mention the brand's product at all.

47:19And on the surface, I know this makes no sense at all. But I got to bring back Casey Neistat because he does this all the time. Just ask Nike, J.Crew or the other brands that he's worked with on his video. So how do you convince them to give him full creative control? And how can you do the same or just get a little bit more control in your sponsored videos, even if you're a smaller creator? Well, it's a huge contrast to what creators normally do. They usually stick to a brand's talking points and script with no wiggle room. And typically the video underperforms as a result. But the key is what Casey did before pitching brands his wild idea.

47:52And he earned what I like to call the right to rebel. And to do that, he started by creating free ads for Nike. And soon he got their executives' attention. If you're not willing to do the work without getting paid a hundred times, then chances are you're never going to find the opportunity to do the work and get paid for it. And that's how I was able to get the thumbs up to make Make It Count. That's how I was able to get the thumbs up to make the Mercedes campaign or the Walter Mitty campaign. That eventually led to a brand deal with Nike where they asked him to make three videos. To make it count for Nike.

48:28Yeah. I think what's underappreciated about that video is I had a deal with Nike to make three videos for the fuel band. And the first two videos had significantly more emphasis and significantly more budget. And when it came time to make the third video, I called up Alex Lopez at Nike. And I was like, look, I want to do this differently. I want to do something that's way off the books and way different from what we initially scripted. I won't spend any more money. but I think I can make something much better and he was like okay just like don't screw me over don't leave me in the lurch but if you want to run wild with the creative go for it the video was Casey spending Nike's budget to fly all around the world with their Nike fuel band it was his way of living their slogan make it count now had Casey pitched the crazy idea first he probably would never have gotten the green light as a creator I've seen this firsthand too as we work with more brands on a repeat basis but can I tell you something from working on the other side the corporate side of all this, it's not just the manager or whoever you're talking to at the brand who has to approve your idea for a sponsored video or a segment.

49:29It's their boss and their boss's boss. And everyone is honestly just covering their ass. Like it's why so few big companies take big risks. Believe me, I've worked at several of them. And it's not that they don't believe in creators. A lot of them do. It's just that they don't want to be fired. Like, like actually, like if something goes wrong with your video or it underperforms or bombs, they just want to justify why they took that risk or at least explain their decision to their colleagues. And the best way to do that is for them to show your past work. Like, oh wow, this creator's videos perform well for us.

50:01So that's why we gave them more leeway. So if you give that to them first, then you'll earn that right to rebel and do crazier ideas, which is really where the breakthrough comes. And the last tip is be more like Mozart. Now, before I explain what the heck Mozart has to do with YouTube, this is probably the most personal of all the tips. And I want to share one more story from my interview with Casey. I know I'm referencing a lot, but this one has really stuck with me. You see, for 800 days straight, Casey uploaded a vlog every single day, no matter what. Knowing that you have to post every day, like did something to me, which was like, you know, screw your writer's block.

50:35Like it doesn't get to happen. There were also days, many days, probably happened a dozen times over the course of the vlog where I would sit down to do the edit and I would have no audio because of my own not paying attention or something, the microphone not plugged in. But what'd you do in those cases? I go watch the videos, but I think I did like a lot of like cutting to me, sitting in the kitchen being like, look, it's nine at night. I just have ordered this audio. I don't have any, I don't have any audio. So I'm gonna put some text on the screen and like did something fun like that. Now compare that to today.

51:03Casey has only posted seven videos in the last 365 days. So I had to ask him an ironic question. I asked him, is it harder to make videos now that you have more time? Yeah, harder. In other words, does Casey feel the wrath of Parkinson's Law, the phenomenon where your work expands to fit the time that you give it? To which he said this. Do you feel like now that you don't have a daily deadline, which most YouTubers don't have, like your work kind of balloons to fit the deadline that you have? Yeah, it's much harder now because I don't need to post today. I haven't posted a video in eight months.

51:36There's no fire. There's no rush. I think that speaks to the importance of posting your work instead of spending time perfecting it. Even if you feel insecure about it, like I was surprised to learn that Casey did. I was really insecure about that. And then sure enough, I come to realize that like, no, a lot of people are tuning in because beyond the content, they've sort of formed an interest in whatever it was that I was sharing that day. And when I heard Casey say that, it reminded me of my first year on YouTube where I got so in my head that I only uploaded six videos. And whenever I went to upload a video, my desktop would look like this.

52:10I'd finish the video and save the file as final. And then I noticed that the color of the video looked a bit off. So I'd up the saturation and then resave it as final underscore final. But then I realized that the audio of the video could be clearer. So then I'd tweak it and resave it as final, but actually. And then I kept repeating this process until sometimes I honestly still didn't upload the video because it still wasn't good enough. But hearing that Casey kept posting even though he was insecure about his videos changed everything. And then it really hit home when I realized that this trend exists throughout history, that a lot of great artists throughout time were as prolific as Casey, that they cared as much about quantity as quality, even if you go back over 200 years to Mozart, because Mozart wasn't this automatic masterpiece making machine that history makes him seem to be.

52:59Some of his early critics called his music far too noisy, but Mozart just kept working, kept putting out work, and made over 600 compositions before he died at age 35, which is far, far more than his peers who only averaged 150 compositions despite them living much longer. In other words, Mozart made countless compositions that we've now forgotten to get the few masterpieces that we still remember. Or the legendary artist Monet, who made 2 ,500 pieces of art. But here's the thing about Monet that just crushes my soul and reminds me of so many creators, including myself, because that number, 2 ,500, should be way higher.

53:38But Monet was such a perfectionist that this one time he spent three years working on a set of new paintings until at the last moment, he noticed these slight imperfections in the corners of those paintings. So he took out a butcher knife and slashed through every single one of them because they weren't perfect enough for him. But curators and scholars today say that he destroyed over$3.4 million worth of art that night just because it wasn't perfect enough. Which got me thinking, how many of us are too much like Monet instead of Mozart or even Casey? How many of us slashed through our videos instead of just shipping it?

54:15And how many masterpieces have we unknowingly left on our floor because we got two in our heads? It was only once I switched my mindset from Monet to Mozart that I started to see a change in my career as a creator. Because after posting an embarrassing six videos in my first year, we've now uploaded over 270 videos that have somehow gotten over 340 million views and we're getting guests on our show that I can't believe are coming on. And yes, we've had tons of flops, more than ever, but I now realize that cringing at your past work is proof of progress and sometimes perfectionism is just procrastination in disguise.

54:53So next time you're working on your next video, be more like Mozart, not Monet. Put down your knife because every creator, every artist, even if you're as big as Cleo, Jimmy, or Casey, all of them feel some level of anxiety. But I hope no matter what that you keep creating, that you keep putting stuff out there because the only thing worse than something imperfect is something that doesn't exist. Thank you again for watching. Make sure to subscribe and ring the bell. It would mean the world with the amount of work that we put into our videos. And I think you'll like this video that builds on a lot of the topics that we talked about.

55:26and I'll see you guys in the next one.