MrBeast Shares His Best Business Advice

23:51Correct. And so there we're listening and we're like, so who is this guy? This guy's been following you around all day. Who is this? And how do you run this? How do you train people? And you were like, you described this process of cloning. And I swear, I saw like Like five billionaires make a note to themselves. So can you describe what is your cloning principle? What does that mean? Well, the thing is like as a founder, because I assume a lot of your viewers run this. Founders and investors. Yeah, like you're constantly having to put out fires. You're constantly having to do things. And that's a flaw.

24:17You're always going to be putting, like having to work on stuff, but you should view anytime you have to work on things as a flaw. And it's like, how do you, what's the fastest way to stop working on something? Every time you work on it, have someone on your hip and have them learn how to do it. essentially clone you to do that task. And so anytime I've, I don't ever work alone anymore because anytime I'm doing something, that's a problem. And like, someone should be doing this in six months. And so that's, that's just like the cheat code to doing it. Um, and it's cloning, not training. Why? Well, we would call now that I have hundreds of employees now, I think we're probably closing on 500.

24:49So it's a lot more training, but like clones are more like the all in people who are going to like run your company one day and make high, like, and have the upside to like live with you. And, and, you know, cause like someone who's making$40 ,000 a year. They're not going to live with you and follow you around 15 hours a day. Right. But early on, you had that. You had people literally like... Yeah, I still have people like that, but it's like, that's just a small subset of it. So yeah, on the core team, yeah, 100%. It's just like, the thing is, the more you know about everything going on, the better.

25:15Because a lot of what you do in one part of one vertical business in finance or in this or that affects other parts. And so the more you understand the whole business, the more you understand the ripples you create across things, the better efficiently and better you can do these kinds of things. And so just having a clone who knows everything about the whole business as opposed to just one section just makes it where they can just make decisions so much faster and they can cut through red tape and it just makes it so much easier for you to just like because like when you're in hyper growth scale you don't know like what the next fire is going to be or the next things is to fix and so you just have a couple versions of yourself it's just so nice because it's like oh this thing over here in editing is falling apart all right cloned that you followed me around for the last three years you know what i would do just go fix it you know what i mean so i don't have to go fix it every part of a company is not like it's not like you look at a thing you're like editing editing is its own thing no Editing is people editing, right?

26:00Everything is people. And so what I liked about the way you were doing it was, I think on the outside, people hear this, they're like, I'm following you around all the time. Live with you. That's crazy. I would, you know, that's, that's harsh. I met the people doing it and they were like, this is the greatest opportunity. Exactly. I came here for this. I wanted to, I want to be great. He's given me the opportunity to be great. Not everybody wants this, but I really want this. You can either go to college for like, not even four years, go to college for three years, or you can follow Sean around for three years and like just all day, every day.

26:29And the version of you that follows Sean around for three years will make way more money. You'll be way more experienced, way more valuable to him. Or you could just go to any one of his competitors and you'll make 10 times more than if you got - Have you ever heard the Warren Buffett cloning story? No. So Warren Buffett, when he was young, he wanted to learn investing, right? So he goes to the guy who wrote the book on investing, Benjamin Graham. And he's like, Mr. Graham, I want to, I'm Warren Buffett. I'm a big fan of your work. I want to work for you. I will work harder than anyone you know.

26:54And you know what? I'm willing to work for you for free because this matters so much. I want to learn from you. And Ben Graham goes, son, your price is too high. And he was born. It was like surprising. And then later he's like, he was so right. I got so much more out of working every day at Ben Graham's hip than him getting my free labor. Actually, the value exchange was like completely he was correct. And that always stuck with me because it's so true. Like, dude, how do you if you want to learn, that's the best way you could possibly learn. and as a founder, you know, ultimately you want judgment to scale.

27:26So it's like, if people in your company can think, what would Jimmy do and get the right answer, now you got two Jimmys, right? You know, like for the most part, they can make decisions. And then other times it should be like, what would Jimmy do? Okay, Jimmy's not always right. In this instance, he's an idiot. Let's go call him out on it. What will he say when I tell him what I'm actually going to do? Yeah. And then they think even one step further, which is like my, like long-term clones are great. They'll be like, okay, well, Jimmy's going to want data back. He's not going to care about an opinion.

27:53So I'm going to just go do all the research and grab the data. And then they'll, they'll ask me something and I'll say, blah, blah. And they'll be like, I knew you were going to say that. And they'll hand me things. I'll be like, well, what about this? I knew you were going to say that. And I'll be like, oh, great. And by the way, it's not just you. Even other, there was like a guy who, he was also cloning people. He's like, yeah, I'm the, I'm the main guy for this part of the business. So I need to be training people. So this is how I'm doing it. Zero to one is so difficult, but then one to three, you know, like is so much easier.

28:16So that's like the hard part is like training that for like downloading, I'll pick or anything, like writing the videos, right? Like obviously I used to write all the videos myself, taking all that and getting where someone else could do it without keeping the essence of like what makes it viral and what makes it good and not feeling too corporate and scripted because we're not scripted, et cetera. Like going from zero to one, that took like five years. But then, you know, him training the next two people is great because I don't have to do it. And he trains those two and those two train the next.

28:39And so it's just like that first clone is so imperative and then they can do the rest. That's great. You want to do the next one? All right, sure.

28:49Possible is possible. Fuck yeah. Impossible is possible. All right. So this is, I asked your, I'm friends with Rohan, the guy who runs your TikTok. Yeah. I go, tell me the thing where you realize like this guy's built different. This guy thinks differently than a normal person would. And I was like, that's the story I want. And he goes, I don't know how to explain it. This is the quote. Jimmy will give you an impossible mission, but he'll say it in a way that makes it seem totally possible. And then he leaves the room and you're like, God damn, this is impossible. He goes, for example, Jimmy came to me and said, I need 10 million TikTok followers a month, Ron.

29:21He goes, and every month I told Jimmy, it's impossible like a hundred times. And he told me, do it 500 times. He told me to do it 500 times. I think we had two months or even 10 million. That's what he told me. He goes, I didn't do it most months, but I did do it like two months. and we got way further than we ever would have got had he not laid down like kind of this impossible gauntlet. So that's one story. I'm sure there's like a thousand of these, but like, do you live by this? I guess, how would you talk about that? Well, I don't try to just give people KPIs that I think aren't possible just to torture them.

29:52I just like, I think most people there, when you ask them to do something like very incredibly difficult, like what I first did, I want to bury myself alive for a week. Like people's first inclination is just, that's not possible. and like technically almost anything is possible it's so it's just like so my first thing is just like why do you say that like let's go through the gambit and then they'll always be like well it's just not possible and then you just have to be like go do the fucking research and then they'll come back and it's like is it too expensive because we can figure out ways is it too unstable we can navigate safety or whatever it is and so it's like i hate when people tell me something can't be done just tell me the cost and like what the problem where the bottleneck is yeah and then if like then let's look at those and objectively if it's too expensive or something that's not worth investing time into or what then that's fine and then I'll kill it but just tell me something because like half the stuff I did if I just listened to people and they told me it wasn't possible like I wanted the Eiffel Tower for a video not possible why why why is that not possible go get the fucking Eiffel Tower like until the head of the president of France tells you no it's possible like I don't and then when he says no ask his kids see if they have some sway well that's a given while you're on the phone like we just filmed a video where we had the three pyramids of Egypt and we were like, you know, spending, like we were there for a hundred hours.

31:04It's crazy video. We explored the pyramids. It's like my favorite video ever. Same thing. Like you can't just have the three pyramids. I'm like, did Egypt tell you that? Like, what do you mean? Go make some phone calls. You know what I mean? And it's just constantly, even today, when I'm not with my core group that I've trained very well, it's just always like, you can't do that or no. Or they'll go make a phone call. Or, okay, fine, Jimmy. We'll go try to get the pyramids. They'll go away. They'll come back a day later. you can't have the pyramids i'm like who'd you call this tourist guy who like works at the pyramids i'm like okay call the head of tourism like how do you get their number okay well that's different you didn't ask me how to get the head of tourism's number you asked me you just told me it was not possible like so now like please don't do that again like we got to figure out what the problems are let's figure it out and then we make calls and you figure it out the next thing you know it's and so it's just like that's a big thing that you have to like if you really in my opinion and want to innovate and do things that are, you know, have never been done before and push boundaries.

31:58You have to like have a mindset amongst your people that it's not, nothing is impossible. It's just how much does it cost? How do you do it? And then you just make an objective decision. It seems to me like when you solve these impossible problems, you have to think on like a lower level rather than a higher level. Have you heard the story of Elon getting his rockets from Texas to Florida where they launched them? No. So the normal way everyone gets their rockets to Florida is on a barge, right? But it takes like three months and costs a bunch of money. Didn't he fly it there? He drove it there.

32:25He's like, no, we're going to drive it instead. And they're like, well, it's way too big. Well, first answer was, it's impossible. Can't do it. Yeah, yeah. And he said, let's go. And he has a great line, which is, physics are the only laws. Everything else is a suggestion. And he's like, is it physically impossible to get it to Florida? No. Okay, we agree on that. Great. Now let's continue to figure out where the bottleneck is. And it's like, oh, the boat, too long, too expensive, whatever. And so, you know, oh, well, it's impossible to get it through overpasses. And so they he's like, well, what would be the shortest way to get there without encountering a single overpass?

32:54So they go they do this like extremely circuitous Route all on back roads and they're like but even if we do that there's still problem with power lines and telephone wires And so they have like some of the smartest people on earth Driving in a van in front of these rockets with big poles and they just push up the telephone wires so we can go under and then they go to the next telephone wire. And it's just like, you just have to like approach it like a caveman almost to like to beat the impossible. Do you find that's the case a lot? Yeah, quite a bit. And a lot of it is just a willingness. It's just people who love what they do and people who really love problem solving will, you know, figure these things out.

33:31And so it's just having the right person in the right seat at the right time who like actually wants to go deep and like people, there are certain people where you give them something that seems impossible and they will be giddy and they'll be like, fuck yeah, I can't wait. Like I have people like that where I could call and be like, what's something? They don't wake up until it's hard. Well, it's like, I guess if I wanted a different world wonder, if I was like, I want the Taj Mahal for a week, right? And there are like people in our company that I called and said that, like, I promise you they would smile and be like, okay.

33:58Like they didn't see that as a challenge. They'd go to war to figure it out. And then not in my company, but just there are other people that you would say that. Oh my God. You know, and so you just got to get the right people who just deeply enjoy solving problems and like see it as a challenge. And like, there are people built that way. And those are the people that really succeed in that environment. And even a different example, that's not getting the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower. One of my favorite videos of yours where the first time I was like, all right, respect. It was before I met you.

34:24I was like, okay, respect. Ben was telling me about you. And he goes, he made a video said, I'm going to cut through this table with a plastic knife. Oh, my gosh. I remember this weirdly very well. I was sitting in high school. and I just like I had a I don't know after lunch I just had a I put the uh plastic knife in my pocket for some reason I don't remember why and then I just put my hand in my pocket I was like oh plastic knife and then I just started like scraping against the desk and I was like oh wow I'm like kind of like I could cut this desk in half like just like your stupid little high school desk I just did this for like five minutes till like the teacher was like what the fuck are you doing stop and then I just was like looking at the little indenture and I was doing the calculation in my head, I was like, it'd take me like 10 hours to cut through this, according to my math.

35:08I was like, fuck it. I think that would be like a video where people would be interested. So I went to the store on the way home and I bought like a thousand plastic, like the cheapest plastic knives I could find. And then I just got this like$20 foldout table and I just went in my room, hit record on the camera and I just went to town because the plastic knives would get dull after like a minute. And I was just cutting through it. And I think that took 12 hours to cut through the table of plastic knives or something. But that's what I'm saying. It was no money. It was no money. wasn't Taj Mahal.

35:34It was like creativity or first boredom. Boredom is the key. It was like how Einstein discovered relativity. But that video did so well and it's like so dumb. It's just like how many licks does it take to get to a center of tizzy fight? How many plastic knives does it take to cut a table? It was just like people were like what a fucking idiot. Did you do it with one by the way? No, no, no. Or did you go through like a video? Probably thousands. Okay, gotcha. That's insane. By the way, that's a spoiler. I think that one we kind of copied number eight which is no doesn't mean no way. And there's a big difference Yeah, impossible is possible and no doesn't mean no.

36:04Exact same thing. And I like the clarification you had, which was like, you're not just like the asshole boss that's like, I need this impossible thing done. You know, whatever. It's more like, hey, I want to do this impossible thing or I want to do this great thing. No, okay, let's get curious before we just like make a decision here. Yeah. Why? And let's try to understand it. And if it truly is, no, which it rarely is. Yeah. But it's usually not. And then the cool thing is if you do that in the company, Do it once. People are like, oh, wow, that was interesting. Do it twice. By the third time you do it, people are like, all right, that's the way.

36:37It's contagious. By the 50th time. It's like a religion. People start to believe when they see it. I need your employees. For me, it tends to take a couple dozen times for it to stick. I'll keep pointing at it. I'm like, guys, remember what we said and then what happened? Let's take that and wrap. That's a rally cry for us now. We could do all these things. Let's immortalize that. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you that the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank and you know the type. It's got a janky interface.

37:08It's built like a 2002 tax form and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes. And then they told me I got to visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money. I can pay invoices. I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders.

37:37And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC. All right, we got three more to go. All right, here we go. Consultants. R-C code. Yeah. And honestly, because I wrote this, they're referencing my thing I wrote a couple years ago. I would update that to just say, like, experienced people are cheat codes, the right ones. Because it doesn't, because, like, my handbook, I guess that's what you would call it, leaked on Twitter.

38:10And, like, yeah, my production Bible. So many people were, like, consultants. And even consultants were, like, putting this on their website. Like, even Mr. B. Endorsed on LinkedIn. Yeah, I know. And they were, like, so many consultant tweets were, like, yes, you validated our industry. And I'm like, well, I wasn't specifically talking about McKinsey. It's just more like, especially with us because we do so many random weird things. I mean, dude, what did I say in here? Consultants are literally cheat codes. Need to make the world's largest slice of cake? Start off by calling the person who has made the previous world's largest slice of cake.

38:42Exactly. LOL. He's already done countless tests and can save you weeks worth of work. I really want to drill this point home because I'm a massive believer in consultants. Because I've spent almost a decade of my life hyper obsessing over YouTube. I can show a brand new creator how to go from 100 subscribers to 10 ,000 in a month. On their own, it would take them years to do it. Consults are a gift from God. Please take advantage of them in every single freaking task assigned to you. Always, always, always ask yourself first if you can find a consultant to help you. Exactly. Because we do so many weird different things like, oh, we're going to bury me alive?

39:11Call David Blaine. He buried himself alive. You know what I mean? How's that phone call go? Great. They're usually like, well, we don't have David Blaine's phone number. And then I'm like, okay, I'll DM him on Instagram. And I'm like, here's his phone number. call him figure out how he didn't die you know but you do these things like uh one night i was just hanging out at my house you get a call north carolina number pick up oh yeah it's usually i go on walks and then i just like i literally just close my eyes and like flip through my context and i'll like stop and you know when it's on s you'll be there and i'll just be like hmm i'll just have a random name and i'll be like teach me something sometimes the calls are one minute other times they're 20 and um yes like you gotta always be learning i feel like you're saying that almost like it's a normal thing you know like nobody does this right like that's like I don't understand why.

39:51I kind of started to steal it because I was like, why not? I'm also obsessed with learning. And sometimes maybe the mechanics of it, I was confused. So I call these people, then I just say like, hey. Teach me something. What's up? Teach me something. What's something that's come out of that? What's funny is the more you do it, the more people come to expect it too. So I'll call someone, they won't answer, and then they'll be like, let me guess, you're on a walk, sorry, I'm busy. And then I'm like, I don't even have to respond to just get it. you know because at the start you'll you know you'll go on a walk and you'll call 20 people and you'll have conversations with 10 because you know these high caliber people are always busy and the other 10 will call you throughout the next 24 hours and it's like a nuisance because you gotta be like oh i was just born on a walk i was just born on a walk so but now they everyone just gets it protocol yeah yeah they're just like yeah so it's like so funny that i've become known for that and like people will answer and like sometimes i won't even say anything they'll be like all right here's what i've learned it's like great because then i just like these are people who are, you know, some of them running companies are doing billions of dollars a year in revenue and they're learning tons of things.

40:50They're always experimenting. And I just get this five minute brain dump of everything they learned, suck it out of them. And then I'm like, here's what I learned. Cause I always, a big part of this, if you wanted to go well, is you have to add as much value, ideally more than what they're giving to you. So I try to help them in any way I can. And then, um, and then you hang up and you go to the next one. Another one that is in the kind of consultants are cheat codes is we do these talks at our event. So at our basketball event, it's kind of like play ball all day till we're like dead tired and then at night it was like we're hanging out and the first year we did it i remember because i i created the events i was kind of the host i was like i don't want to be like forcing like a conference vibe i was like really like tiptoeing around i was like i don't want this to be awkward but it was actually more awkward because nobody knew who anyone else was yeah you did this great thing you like grabbed a chair you put it in the middle of the room you're like hey sit down real quick yeah you go all right uh who are you what's your story and then they would like start to tell like a long-winded story But what I liked was you would have questions.

41:42So like we had a real estate guy and instead of being like, all right, teach me about real estate, which the guy doesn't know how to start. You were like, if I had$10 million, what would be the best way to turn it into a hundred for real estate? Yeah. And then he talked for like five minutes. You're like, cool, God, I should just give it to somebody like you. Makes sense. On to the next. And I was like, I love the power of kind of like the right question, the right person. And honestly, in group settings like that, another thing, too, is just not being afraid to cut people off. because some people are just so not aware that like there's 20 people and even rambling for 30 minutes and i'm like i feel like they got another 15 in them and three of those people are on their phone those two are checked out those five are too nice to say anything i'll be the one who's like hey we get it all right i got the next one block out the noise okay block out you want to do block out the noise sure so here's the quote when you're small people say you're too obsessed you're a weirdo get a life be realistic this is from you people will try to convince you that you're out your mind for wanting to do this then when it works yo your drive your tenacity that was great yep everything you guys have uh been flattering me with throughout this podcast are the exact same things i got low-key bullied for in high school it's like hilarious that now these grown men are like yo this is awesome you're like all in impossible is not possible no doesn't mean no and you just like love this and like and high school that's what a nerd get a life like loser yeah that's why that's why you call it block out the noise right because the same things that people admire when you're successful are the things that people are going to try and tell you to stop if you had listened you wouldn't be mr beast right like we wouldn't be here right everyone else then yeah just normal job but the thing is it's like it's the big takeaway is it's just means you're not around the right people right because like obviously if i was around you guys when you were younger i'm sure you guys wouldn't have been like oh what a weird obsessed nerd you would have been like oh this is sick let's grow together or we would you know maybe when we were 18, we wouldn't have that much emotional intelligence, but we would have like flocked together.

43:36So it's, it's also just finding the right people to be around. And if you're having to block out a lot of noise, then you're just like, you have a serious problem. It's a signal. Yeah. Like you really got to change who you are because that's really, I mean, if you're the smartest person, you're hanging around, make, you know, the, the one with the most ambition and everyone else is just bringing you down. Like you're literally just going through your entrepreneurial life with like a 10 pound weight shackled to your leg. Yeah. Last one. Let's go into reinvest everything. Yes, sir. Can I give you my version of this?

44:03I think people know you reinvest a lot of money to almost a comical extent. Like, we made 100 grand last month. Great, we're investing 101 this next month. It's like, yo, Jimmy, where'd you get the extra? I got the largest unscripted streaming deal in history and somehow lost a ton of money on it. These games? Yeah, yeah. When we were here the first time, somebody was like, you know, what do you think is kind of like his edge? I go, his edge is that he takes all the money he makes and then he reinvests it. He takes all the hours he has and he invests it into the channel then he gets the best people and he like gets them to believe that they should invest it and he doesn't ever want to quit i don't think this guy's gonna like get rich and retire like every other youtuber i was like that's like a kamikaze level of commitment like i don't think that's right you used to call it a kamikaze commitment i was like because how do you what do you do what do you do with somebody who's willing to just like plow it all back in like yeah that's a that's not the person i would want to compete against Yeah.

44:55So that's kind of, I guess that's why to me this is a rule. I mean, you just described it perfectly. I don't even have to say anything. Yeah. I mean, ideally you find the passion that you love and you're all in and it's, you know, you shouldn't have to like force yourself to go get up and write. It should just be what you love to do. What's the CFO telling you as you just at the beginning? Now, now it's kind of known, but at the beginning when you were describing your approach, CFO was like your mom at the beginning, right? Yeah. Well, I mean, at the beginning, it was me and my mom and a couple of friends from high school.

45:21So she was 10 jobs. I was 20 jobs. I mean, now they just are, I mean, people kind of normalize to your weird craziness. So they're more. But that's now. What at the beginning? What was that like? I mean, everyone thought I was deranged. You know, like, oh, why do you? Like, because I mean, everyone, you know, a big budget YouTube video used to be 10 grand. I was the first one to ever spend a million dollars on a video and 2 million. This is probably the best example, right? Yeah. I got a brand deal for$10 ,000. I've grown. You keep saying CFO. Like I had a CFO back then. You know what this was?

45:51This was me and like paying a guy I went to high school with like$10 an hour to help me. And me going, Mom, what are taxes? I didn't make money. Do I pay taxes? And she's like, yes. I'm like, fuck. But yeah, I got a brand deal for$10 ,000. And then I just went outside. I used to live like two minutes. Like the$700 a month apartment I was telling you about or duplex was like literally two minutes down the road from this. And so I just got the$10 ,000. I was like, why are we the money? They wired it, withdrew it, and gave it to this homeless guy on the side of the street. Were you not tempted to like have money for the first time?

46:27Pocket five, give away five. Sorry, pocket five spent on a different video? What else do you do with the money? It's like, there's a story of Zuck when he got offered a billion dollars for Facebook early on. And they were like, Mark, we should talk about this. And he's like, oh, if I got this money, I would just start a new social media platform. And I like the one I have. I like the one I have. This is like legendary. And it's the same thing here. It's like I could pocket it, but I just make different videos and I just want to film this one. I mean, it's literally the same thing. It reminds me a lot, reading about Walt Disney.

46:59This is what he was famous for because his brother Roy was like. I loved your podcast on it. Thank you. It was like the business manager. This is almost done. Makes you watch it out there. How to take over the world. Yeah. And Roy would like pull his hair out of like, Walt, can we please just like save some money? And he had like a compulsion almost to take all the money. He like felt bad keeping any money. He's like, no, it has to go into making better shows. Yeah. Do you feel that? No, it has nothing to do with wanting to keep money. It really has nothing to do with money itself. It's just I want to make the best product possible.

47:25And so it's like, here's the product I want to make. And I'm always having to settle because we can't spend$10 billion on a YouTube video. You know what I mean? Because I would love to go buy everything in every single store in this entire city and donate it all to charity. That would be$200 million. So I can. So it's just like, it's more, you know, like this is what I want to make, but I have to dial it back. And it's like, well, now we have a little bit more money. So I just dial it back less. I don't really care. You know what I mean? By the way, you just came up with that number. Yeah, I was like, he's done the math of this before.

47:54You look at this. Well, I know. It costs$15 million to buy everything at Walmart. $15 million? Mm-hmm. Have you done that? Is that one of the things you're doing? We're going to, yeah. Oh, nice. I think that's a fucking banger. And we're going to donate it all to charity, so it's cool. What's your ambition, right? So it's like Ben in 40 years is doing the pod on you. Don't ask me 40. Ask like 10, 40's too far. You're going to give me anxiety. Okay, what's like the... but it's like what's the dream dream right now i can't do 40 because but but for the like next five the big thing i'm focusing on which i was telling you guys about in the car is just feastables by people listening what can you explain about your business empire can you yeah yeah well specifically like chocolate might seem so random why is the largest youtube in the world selling chocolate well right now 70 of the world's cocoa comes from west africa kotovar and ghana and majority of the uh people who work on those farms are actually kids or like child labor so So it's like 46 % of labor.

48:46So I guess it's not majority. So I should correct this statement. 46 % of labor is illegal child labor. Yeah, you two are a feast. I'll eat this while you talk. Yeah. So when I got into selling chocolate, I just learned about that. And I talked to like exact big chocolate companies. I was like, so what? I hear like this child labor thing. Like, is this just like, we're just cool with this? And they're like, well, it's just how it's always been. And there's not really anything you can do about it. I'm like. That's the way things have always been. I literally, I said to one, I think, I don't remember the exact, I'm a butcher, sure but i was like elon's put it like gonna put people on mars and you're telling me we can't not have little kids farming or chocolate we can't just find people over the age of 18 or whatever and they're like well it's not that simple i'm like what the fuck so that kind of like pissed me off and sent me yeah sent me down i'm like yeah what you mean to say is that would hurt the billions of dollars in free cash flow you're spitting off in your margins but anyways um so i was like i went down that path like two years ago i was like okay well i don't actually went to West Africa.

49:39Oh yeah. Worked on the farm. But before even that, it's just like so then I was, we're going to start referencing our piece of paper here. So then consultants are cheat codes. So I was like, what is the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world? Who's the ones doing it right? Have you heard of Tony's Chocoloni? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they're great. It's a European brand, but they're, like a reporter used to call out Big Chocolate and be like, there's a lot of child labor. You guys aren't ethical. And like, they would just ignore them. And so then he's like, fuck it. He started it, right?

50:05Yeah, and he started a chocolate company. And that's Tony Chocolaty because he's like the lonely. And it became like a$200 million. Yeah, it's doing pretty well. And so I was like, let me get in contact with these people. And I just started talking to them. I flew them here to Greenville like the next week. And we were just like, I was like, teach me everything about child labor, how we can remediate it, what should we be doing on our forums, etc. And like, I just had like phone calls with them every single day studied. And then the next five companies that are also doing ethical things, I just absorbed everything they're all doing into my brain.

50:33I was like, cool. All right. I know what we need to do. Step one, like the main reason why there's child labor is just poverty. Like most of these farmers are making a dollar or less a day. So like if you're getting paid a dollar, how can you hire someone that's over the age of 18 to work on your farm? So you end up just using kids because they're cheap or free. So step one is you just have to pay them a living income. So 100 % of our farmers are paid a living income. So I can go super deep. I'm going to keep this mile high because I know not everyone is as passionate about the childhood industry as me, but this is what I live and breathe.

51:04So what is a living income? right because obviously a living income in america is completely different than west africa so there's a living income reference price where they look at the cost of like bread and living and inflation and it's like you know if a farmer sells you like a metric tons of cocoa they need to make this for them to be able to live roughly and be able to so we pay 100 of our farmers living income reference price so there could be an instance where you're a farmer you give us a shipping container of cocoa and you're like you know we want eleven hundred dollars i'm like no you want $1 ,300.

51:32It was$1 ,300. Now make sure there's no kids on your farms. You know what I mean? Or kids in illegal child labor. And so that's, I mean, I'm oversimplifying everything. None of this is a very complex thing. And we're talking about tens of thousands of farms. There's millions of farms there. And none of this is as simple as I'm portraying it, but I'm just doing my best to generalize it all. So you pay your farmers a living income. All our beans are fair trade certified. And then we work with CLRMRS, which is the Child Labor and Reimediation System. And then they routinely audit the farms, interview the parents, interview the kids, see if the kids are going to school, working on the farm, et cetera.

52:05And then if, you know, they identify cases of child labor, following up and getting the kid out of the child labor and stuff like that, which all the, and then we also just little things because it's, since it's all a root of poverty, the more money you help them make, the easier it is for them to, you know, stop using a little child labor on the farm. So we have coaches that will like represent 200 farms and they'll help them get more yield and like educate them on things they could be doing to grow more for trees or have more trees or will, you know, occasionally give them wheelbarrows or things like that so they can just, I mean, a little, something as simple as a wheelbarrow.

52:33I mean, it's a big difference between carrying 10 cacao pods, theoretically, again, generalizing everything or being able to carry 40 in a wheelbarrow. Like, that technically makes you four times more efficient. It's not, again, making up numbers. Yeah, so my goal is just to make Feastables the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world and, you know, if we can do a billion dollars a year in chocolate sales ethically while being profitable, then I can use that as a model to, you know, on my videos talk about big chocolate and all the unethical things they're doing and just be like, look, it's possible to be profitable, to not do it at scale.

53:04There's no excuse besides they just don't care. And then, you know, we'll see what happens when I get to that point. Last year when I was here, I asked, I think your right-hand guy at that time, I was like, what's y 'all's focus for the year? And most people don't have an answer at the tip of your tongue. His was like, instantaneously he goes, I think you had a number of the number of YouTube videos, 22 or something. 26 videos. Make 26 banyards, sell a lot of chocolate, get jacked. Yep. And he said it like that fast. Every day, all three. And you got in great shape from the last time. Can you?

53:35Yeah. Was I still fat last year or was that the first year? No, it was first. First year was, I mean, I won't be fat, but like, you know. I was a fucking walrus. I was 240 pounds. Yeah. I'm right now I'm 190. So I probably. But you had started lifting at the last one we did. And in this year, you're like. Yeah. So year one, I was 240 pounds. year two, I was probably 215, 220 pounds. And now I'm 190. So yeah, I'm like probably 25 pounds lighter. I can't wait to ball. How did you, what'd you do? Like, what was your approach to getting jacked or like, how did you approach it? I'm very heavily influenced by the people around me.

54:06Like if I spent too much time with you, I'll start speaking like you, acting like you, thinking like you. So I'm very cautious of that. So I just put a lot of jacked people around me. And then like my, my metric of success was like how frequently are random people just handing me chicken breasts or like, you know, something high in protein. Like, you know, cause like they're, you know, all the time like my old friend group you know all the time they'd be like oh we just ordered pizza or this or that and it's like it just makes accomplishing my goals so much harder and it's like the ratio of people ordering pizza to the ratio of people ordering protein was just way off i mean this is just how i analyze my life because i i like i'm so all in on business like i don't think about this kind of stuff so i need an environment that just makes being jacked very natural like the weightlifting is pretty easy right you just go to the gym 45 minutes five days a week but it's the yes the food that that is a that's not a thing you turn on and off that's the thing that you have to be consistent on for a very long period if you want to achieve results and like i just i can't think about like that every single day and i just and it's like there are just times where i'm at low points and it's just a lot harder to be disciplined and i just know if like you know i always have people who are just eating healthy it's just it takes something that feels hard and kind of makes it fun like when you're doing it together and like you know and it's just so just surround myself with other people trying to accomplish the same thing just like anything in life this is what i was living in australia and i literally bought a plane ticket with no plan one way to san francisco because i was at this tony robbins event he said proximity is power dang love it did you like hire anyone too to help you do you have like a trainer around or a coach he follows me around all day every day he's a jack dude sitting downstairs you'll notice he's the one who looks like he could be on a bodybuilding stage yeah usually in a tank top you know Somebody just sent me this.

55:45You posted TikTok an hour ago. Yeah. I just got out of a meeting with a bunch of billionaires. TikTok, we mean business. This is my lawyer right here. We have an offer ready for you. We want to buy the platform. America deserves TikTok. Give me a seat at the table. Let me save this platform, TikTok. Are you going to buy TikTok? I tweeted out yesterday that I was thinking about buying TikTok. And honestly, kind of as a joke. And then I had even a lot of people coming to this event. so many billionaires text me. I mean, I'm probably up to like 35 who have like unironically reached out and like, I want to put money in, I want to do it.

56:20And then like two separate groups that have like very serious bids together for it also are like, yo, get involved in this. And I'm like, my phone just blew up ever since that tweet. So then I made that TikTok because it's like, yeah, I was joking, but now it's like, oh, okay. I'll predict it right now. I think this is going to happen because I think it should happen. It'd be smart, right? Any ownership group that's doing this would be smart to have you involved. As long as TikTok's willing to sell. Yeah, everyone interested in buying it wants to get us involved. Yeah, I don't know the political side, like how that's all going to apply.

56:48To be forced to divest, but if they are, that's going to be crazy. Well, it's going to be banned if they don't. It's just a question of, is TikTok going to sell or not? Yeah. What would you do? Oh, God, bro. We're winding the podcast down. Are you really about to start another five-hour talk? Truthfully, I would have to surround myself with the 10 greatest algorithmic people in the world, and I'd have to spend a week with them and just absorb. I have no idea what I would do right now. Jimmy, this has been a pleasure. Thanks for doing it, man. I'm excited to hoop. So, basketball camp five. We'll do another one every two years.

57:20We like the Olympic cycles every two years. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are in the other room. You got to crank out this podcast. I'm going to ball with them. All right, boys. We did it. All right. Get out of here. Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks, boys. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I can be what I want to. I put my all in it like no day's off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.

57:49Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter, they shape us. And, you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

58:19If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column 8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.