C&S Rewind: The Full Story of MrBeast

26:58It felt like there were so many different departments, so many different teams that we met. And everyone, first of all, is incredibly nice here. Everyone has been so nice to us. Like we feel incredibly taken care of. But outside of that, like everyone is such like you've curated a team of people who are just so hardworking. It's like all about the work. Yeah. There's no fluff. I'm blessed. I agree. We got a lot of great people here. And obviously, you know, like the videos we do where now I'm drawing blank, like selling houses for a dollar or putting a million Orbeez in someone's backyard or whatever the stupid things you're doing.

27:30Or filling a person's house with slime. Like I can't do that on my own. Obviously, I need help. So bless. Yeah. So how did you go from hiring one editor to hiring the next person, the next person, the next person? It's literally just like, it's not like I just woke up one day and I have dozens of employees. Like it was just like I've literally just been hiring like a person a month for the last four years. like you know as the videos it's like because it's also not like you know i gave a homeless guy 10 grand and then you know the next day i'm buying everything in five stores you know and needing a hundred people to fill dozens of u-hauls and stuff like it was just a slow progression up and along the way we just pick up a person and another person another and how do you find people because i think that's something that youtubers have a really hard time with i don't really know i mean i've been doing like i said four years like it's a very very very slow grind hiring all these people.

28:19Honestly, there are way more qualified people for that. If someone knows how to find great talent, please reach out to me. I'll pay you. Yeah. I personally loved the creative meetings. I thought those were the most interesting to be in just the way you guys are thinking and the way like everything has to fit together. And you're thinking obviously very much in, in like terms of retention, but your whole team is also thinking the exact same way. Yeah, and like the problem solving you guys are doing is so specific to YouTube, right? You know what I mean? Like it's not problem solving that if you walked into a movie studio that they're thinking about.

28:54And I think actually that's some of the problem with what's happening in Hollywood is that they're thinking about the fact that something on Netflix is competing with one of your videos. Do you know what I mean? Like when I'm watching an internet video, whether it's Netflix or YouTube, like you're on the same playing field. So you actually have to compete in the same world. Well, I'm sure they shoot for retention as well. We're very, very serious about it, though. I don't like using cinematic shots. You have multiple cam setups here. If I'm talking to this camera and you're not cutting it for too long, that's boring.

29:23You'll lose retention. But if I talk and you cut to that angle while I'm talking and cut back, it helps. And it's not bad to be obsessed. If people aren't clicking off, that means they're entertained. So I'm hyper-obsessed with just making sure people actually like what they're watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the thing is, though, you know, Netflix sure cares about retention, but they're grabbing content from all over from people who aren't basing all of their data and analytics off 10 years of just uploading to Netflix. Right. And that's what's entirely different about creating for YouTube is that you're taking the metrics from one place and have been for the last decade or more.

29:58Which is it just gets OP when you just do it and you just study year after year after year after year and you learn from every mistake and you have other people doing it and you're teaching each other. and like like if you want to be a youtuber if you're watching this right like and you're thinking in the scale of 10 years like if you literally are grinding and you're obsessed and you're just every day studying and and learning you surround yourself with smart people and you just work like hell to be honest for 10 years like there's probably a good chance you'll make it but if you do that over the course of six months or a year i don't know you know um but that's why like i like to think over a span of a decade a lot of people are very short-term sighted but But as long as you're innovating, adapting, reinvesting, I think if you do it intelligently, you have good odds of, I don't know, killing it.

30:45After we hung out yesterday, I went back and watched the FBI video again. And I watched the first 40 seconds. And I was sitting with Colin showing him a lot of what we talked about I was seeing in those first 40 seconds. And I was like, you really do all those things. And those first 40 seconds were so jam-packed. And you introduced so many new things. Like so much new stuff between both the visuals too. I mean, even the concept that you say in the first 40 seconds, first of all, the visuals are already changing, but you also say there's an NFL stadium, there's a private chat, there's a maze. This is why you should watch the video.

31:18Yeah. See these things. Yeah. And like the thing people undervalue the most is literally the first 10 seconds of the video. Like, I can almost, I think I can quote it. I tied up an FBI agent and I have$100 ,000 in this bag. Here's a knife. Good luck. And I just run away. Like it gives you everything you need. Yeah. No wasted words, short, concise, and then tension. How much time do you spend on those openings? I'm a perfectionist. It's so important. That's your first impression for everyone clicking on the video. So the whole time leading up to that, I'm just constantly obsessed with mostly the first minute.

31:51Just making sure if I were to click on this video, I would like the first minute and that it would hook me. You know what I mean? Yeah, you had a video of ours that you said you were interested in the thumbnail. You clicked on it and you were bored after five seconds. I can tell you. It was the one about the Hype House. Yeah. And I showed them on my phone. I was like, I, I, the title and thumbnail made me tap. And the red bar was like so tiny. You could barely see it. Cause I clicked off in eight seconds. I was like, this is me and my house four days ago before you came down. Clearly you just didn't grab me.

32:18Yeah. And that was really eyeopening for us. And we now you recognize, like, I think a lot of times you, you talk about obsessing over the content and really getting into it. And I think sometimes it's hard to understand what that exactly means. And then when you said that, I was like, oh, that's what it means. It literally means that there was a big problem and you predicted that about 40 % of the people left in 10 seconds. It was exactly 40%. I could tell. Yeah. And I told them the remedy for this is they need better friends. 100%. No offense to people that are their friends. I know that they like you, but the fact that no one's like calling you up after you uploading that and just roasting the hell out of it and going like dude this isn't the best you could do like and it's not uh a knock on you guys it's actually them like someone should say like hey you guys are too smart for this like you're better than this you can make a video better than this which is what you should do yeah and i think that that is what i was going to bring up if you have their phone number call them and say that call us right now you watch a video and it's not i don't want to swear too much freaking perfect yeah call them and say hey this is garbage here's why fix it you can also dm us so that's on our friend if you're our friend and you're watching that's on you that's not on us even like my fbi video like and you know my team is working on that for months and i'm whatever we probably spent over half a million dollars between everything and i upload i'm like this is like a perfect video it's so good we're so perfected and then you know i have like two or three people that call me and they just it on it and i'm like oh that kind of hurt my feelings i'm like but he's right you know like this part was a little fake this scene was a little drawn out could have done this a little bit better um and it's like that's what you need no matter you there's no such thing as a perfect video like someone should always call you and it on your video because it could be better like that's because imagine if someone does that every video and you upload hundreds if not a thousand videos over the next 10 years and every single time someone's critiquing you and you're applying what they're critiquing like imagine the compound effect over that time span it's it's invaluable but if you upload 100 videos and very few people are shitting on them, then like you just lost so much compound effect.

34:20Something you told us yesterday is that we need to have a checklist of all the things that need to be checked off. Because I talk to him quite frequently. And every time I give him the same advice and he'll apply some of it and then he'll like revert back. And I'm like, God dang it, put it all on a checklist so I can tell you the things to do. And then going forward, just check them off before you upload a video. Yeah, we talked about that today because one thing that we realized was everyone on your team also is holding you accountable for some of those checklist items and that's when we're like oh we need our team to hold us accountable because sometimes i'm like no that that doesn't actually matter like that would be an extra two hours of work yeah and they're like yeah that would help retention yeah they're like who the are you wait you don't want the perfect video i'm like you're right you're right let's do it that was the thing that i think i was so excited about in those creative meetings was everyone was on the same page like it wasn't just like hey whatever jimmy says exactly and i thought that was really cool because i'm not an omnipotent being like i need pushback.

35:13You need people to like, there are people with better ideas than me. You know, like the one, the OP things about hiring people is like, you know, if you're editing a video, you can probably only devote 20 % of your time to it or whatever, 30%, 40%. If someone else is editing it and that's their job, they can dedicate a hundred percent of their work time to it. Right. So since they have three times the amount of time to edit that video, they should be able to edit it better than you, even if it's only 20 % better. Cause they have more time. Same with like thinking creatively or like building sets or doing anything like you it's you have like as youtubers especially people who build side businesses and have side channels there's like 50 things that need to be done and if you split your time amongst it they're all only getting a few percentage of your time so like someone should be able to do that job better than you because they're giving it a hundred percent of their time and that's like the op part about hiring people which is obvious you know yeah when you first started hiring people it sounds like you hired people for the execution right I filmed a video.

36:07I need it edited so I can move on to the next thing. And then I was like, I don't like moving boxes. Sure. I'd rather be making videos. I need this to move from here to here. Yeah. One of our first people was literally just like, he just did grunt work. He would just move boxes. He was happy as could be. This was just like, pick up a box, move it. Or I need this thing or whatever. When did you then start hiring people to look forward to other videos? So not just stuff that you've shot and needs to get done or production. Very slow progression. Slow. I mean, yeah, because I'm sure like just three years ago, we probably like came up with what we were going to film like the week before.

36:41Got it. Like planning months ahead and like working. Because, you know, like if I'm burying myself alive, I can't do that next week. Right. Or I could now because I've done it. But when we first came up with the idea, like that's something that takes like 100 days. Like you got to build the coffin. You got to bury it for 10 days to make sure it works. You got to, you know, figure out how to get air into it and the medic and all that type of stuff. Then make the area look nice. So it's pretty on film and figure out lighting. So it's just like the videos just slowly got more, more complex. And obviously I just had to bring people on to figure it out.

37:13How far in advance are you planning? Do you know, Tariq? Just how far out is the calendar? Isn't it three months? Yeah, right now it's not too far out, three to four months. So yesterday though, we went to three creative meetings back to back about three videos that are pretty much immediately in production. Yeah. we're gonna spend or I'm gonna spend 100 hours alone on an island it might change I might pussy out but as of right now I'm gonna spend 100 hours alone on an island that one sounds crazy by the way from the creative meeting we were in and then a different video for half a million dollars that I don't wanna spoil and what was the third one we talked about it's the escape room oh yeah and then I'm gonna attempt the world's hardest escape room yeah and that one that's the one specifically where we were like oh because it's the world's hardest escape room each room is part of the story so each room needs to be custom built exactly based on retention because like We scouted all the best escape rooms.

38:02They're pretty terrible. So we just decided to build our own so we can make it epic. And obviously, since I'm building it, I'm not the one doing it. But when you guys see the video, well, you guys know, but it's a pretty cool twist. When it comes to retention, obviously, there's things you can do in the first 30 seconds, the first minute. Are there checklist items you have to get people to 10 minutes, to 15, to 20? Yeah, I mean, it's very hard with a single storyline, if you're doing like a double-digit minute video, to just have that one thing grip their entire attention throughout the whole video and pay off at the end.

38:34So typically, if you're doing a longer video, you should introduce like a side story and like you should have some plan halfway through like to re-engage them so they don't just get bored. You know what I mean? Like if I just said, like if I hand you a camera and I had a camera, I was like, okay, if he texts me, he gets a hundred grand and then I just run and that's it. It's just me running through the woods and him just running through the woods after me. You can't make a 15 minute video out of it. You know what I mean? but if I do that and then like three minutes in I pull a lever and a bear comes out and starts chasing him and he has to get away from the bear I don't know obviously we wouldn't do this but kill the bear and then he starts chasing me and then six minutes in I jump across the lake and as he goes to jump through I press a button that shoots him to the moon whatever you know what I mean like now all of a sudden it's interesting and you're watching right and that's it right one is just a single story and it's boring the other has side stories that like re-engage people So that like introducing other narratives.

39:25Well, actually, you know how we were talking about Dylan earlier? Yeah. He just said, I'm getting close to 70%. I'm almost a decent YouTuber. And he sent me a graph where his new video had 65 % retention. Oh, wow. Because I told him if he doesn't get 70 % retention on a video, then he didn't do something right. Well, I don't even want to pull up our retention. Yeah. 70%. That's what you need. If it's below that, figure out how to get hired. We're probably at like 40 % right now. So we got some work to do. We were talking earlier, we were saying like, a lot of times in our videos we'll be like, this video is about this, this, this, and that.

39:55And we were like, well, what if we actually held one back and at that four or five or six minute part, we're like, and the one thing we didn't tell you was this. And then all of a sudden it like takes another direction. But I also think the thing you said that I think is important is that it's not always just a bear that you have to bring in as a dual narrative. It also could be, like you mentioned the visuals, right? In a lot of our videos, we have like really fast moving visuals, custom animations. That's what makes it interesting. Exactly. like if you're not a creator who's doing maybe bigger stunts or anything like that and you are explaining things your visuals can be as simple as an ant crawling on your skin and biting yeah like it doesn't have to be right or in the case that we were talking about some of these shorts creators are gaining massive viewership by making subway sandwiches or making ice cream and telling stories shout out to malad and dylan la may they're they're like i mean 82 million views making ice cream and telling a story yeah so it's like there you go that's visual it's interesting and there's another narrative where he's telling a different story about there's yeah i mean you could probably paint a bowling ball and people would find it entertaining like there's an audience for everything you got a good personality you're passionate and like you know you present it in a way where it's entertaining like people will watch it i'll watch anything at this point we're all messed up in the head one great example of uh adding other narratives is your reacts channel i think it's really interesting because you guys are i watched your uh parkour reaction yeah and you and Chris are reacting but at the same time Nolan is losing money when Chris says a word that he can't say and so it's like already I just said something that's multiple narratives that are happening at once that are there's the visuals of the parkour which are already really interesting there's your reaction then there's Nolan losing money exactly and then the payoff at the end where you're like well how much does Nolan make exactly my favorite one is on the react channel we do this thing where it's the video it started the video it's Chris and his grandma and I go every time Chris laughs he lose$500 dollars and then we kick his grandma out of the room and I show him a bunch of tiktoks and then uh you know you watch to see how much his grandma makes is reacts your most profitable channel most profitable well it depends how you quantify that and percentage like expenses uh revenue or by total revenue expenses to revenue expenses then yeah reacts because it doesn't cost much and so anything we make off reacts that put in the main channel which is how we kind of got here because I got to the point where the main channel would make hypothetically a few million dollars and I'd spend a few million dollars a month and I was like well how can I get more money to burn and so then we started gaming and then gaming started making money and I just take that money and the next month throw it on the main channel and I was like oh this is working well and then we started react so now we just take a few hundred grand a month from that we just throw it on the main channel and just like these things exist just to pump money into the main channel so pretty soon when this place is done everyone will be in here and everything will be in here not everything not everything okay even this place like because we're working on many videos on the main shot at the same time we'll be able to cap out at like two or three and so we'll still have to use our other studios once like i told you before we're gonna build an expansion of this out back and have basically two of these then we'll potentially be able to do them because like if we did world's arch six our world's hardest escape room i mean it's probably going to take up all this space behind us and then um you know if we did like a would you rather style video would you rather have a lamborghini in our house you know like and then we built sets that probably take up that side.

43:06And then if the third video after that's like eating the world's largest slice of pizza, well, this place is full, but at least like even just doing that though, is revolutionary for us. Right. But who will be here? It will be now like creative accounting, HR. Yeah, exactly. All the people that helped me pull off these videos. Yeah. It'll be beautiful. What's the, um, I guess, workplace culture that you hope to create when everyone's in the same place? Oh, that's a hard one. I don't even know. I just want to make the best videos possible. culture that helps get that. And, you know, hopefully one day, you know, as we build up other companies and things go well, like make tons of money and everyone who helps me get there, I just want to make them rich as hell, to be honest.

43:46Yeah. Is there going to be a basketball court here? Yeah. Inside? No. Out back? Probably. I mean, there is a hoop. Like half the boys that are here play basketball. It's funny. How did you meet Tariq? Because he grew up here, right? Oh, that's a funny story. Tariq, come on in. Come here. So, here you go. so basically this this is before i had any employees i uh i was like i i need uh i need people to help me with the like just do these videos i just need help and i and i don't know why my like 19 year old peanut brain i was like or maybe i did have like two or three employees but i was like comedians are funny like comedians would probably be like they'd probably be fun to work with they'd probably be very helpful maybe he'll make me funny or he'll rub off on me and so um i went to a comedy show and and tarik was doing comedy and like a bunch of other people were doing comedy there and all the ones that made me laugh i just was like writing down a notepad and then after the comedy show i just walked backstage and they're just and i just walked up to people and i was like yo you're funny you want a job and We were like, a YouTuber?

44:57We're in North Carolina. They're like, okay. And I was like, no, look, look, look. I'm a YouTuber. And then I just somehow managed to drag him to my house. How many subscribers did you have at that time? Like a million? Yeah. Yeah, like one whole million. And so they came over. I filmed a few videos with him and some of the other guys. And then he was like, oh, I'm sorry. I just got a job at the hospital. classic tarik i go a hospital job in a month and i'm like tarik be my cameraman i swear to god i will like this channel will blow up we'll hit 10 million subscribers i'll make you rich and he's yeah and he's like hospital and so then tarik left for a year for him specifically this is his story and then a year later like you know um and this now i have quite a few employees for like six, seven million subscribers.

45:49Tariq, maybe not that high, maybe like three or four. And Tariq's like, yo, I f***ing hate working at the hospital. And he's like, I'm miserable. And I'm like, well, you're in luck. I still want you. Get your butt over here. And then he started like, he'd go to the hospital and then work at night. And I was like, yo, I want all your time. Like, quit. And, you know, his family wasn't the keenest on that. But I was like, ah, you'll be fine. And here you are. Here you are. He was like editing in my attic and stuff like that. The old attic day. That was the yellow floor. Yeah, yeah, at the attic, the yellow floor.

46:23Because the studio was for filming and then there's just an attic. And I was like, all right, we got an editor, man. And we installed AC. So how many years have you been here, Tariq? Coming up on three. Three years. Two and a half years now. Yeah, could have been three and a half. What's your perspective of the difference between when you first started to being in a space like this? oh man like just experience and seeing him grow too like i joined when jimmy i think was 18 or 17 at the time so that was that was cool to just see when i first reached out you i was 19 yeah yeah because three years ago i was 20 so that's when i first started yeah yeah and uh and just seeing him grow and seeing his motivation stay that motivated at least me personally did like pushing so many people when i brought them on back then they're like yeah i was like we're gonna be the biggest YouTube channel ever.

47:10I was like, I don't care. I'll fucking die trying. Like, I'm going to obsess and grind. And they're always like, you know, eventually you'll get burned out. Eventually he's going to slow down. He can't just grow like this forever. I was like, no. And so there were a lot of good people back in the day, but it's hard to like put, you bet your entire life and everything on a 19 year old that honestly is socially awkward. Yeah. On a YouTube and like a yellow floor, stupid warehouse, I was just making shit up every day. But, I mean, the only thing that was consistent is, like, I woke up every day and I grinded and I obsessed.

47:44And I was like, I'm going to die trying. Like, if we don't make it, I'm going to try until the day I fucking die. Just to put this on record, he would tell us we would be, like, the biggest in the world every week. Like, every single week. I would pull him in our little room. And I remember, because, like, even Chris, like, it was hard to get him to quit his job. All these people, they're like, this is just a YouTube channel. What if we're irrelevant in a year? This is years ago when I have like one or two million subscribers. I always have to pull my few employees in a room right on a whiteboard.

48:11I was like, here's what everyone's doing. Here's what we will be doing. Okay. We're going to make this money. I'm going to spend it all. I'm going to work, work, work. And I'd be like, I'm just circle and draw things. And I'd be like, and I'm concluding that we will have 10 million subscribers by the end of the year. And this one where I got two in January and everyone's like, you're dumb. Like even I had friends with like three or 4 million subscribers. They're like, you'd be lucky if you even got close to me by the end of the year. And like now one year we went from 2 million to 10, or actually it was like 12 million subscribers.

48:38And everyone was just like, what? And I like, I was like drawing three year plans. It's like, this will be here. This will be here. This will be here. And like, we killed all of them. But even then, like when I showed it to all the boys back then, they're like, nah, this is stupid. Like you're out of your mind. Like, you know, we're not going from two to 10 to 30 and whatever. And I'm like, nope, this is what we're doing. We're going to obsess, obsess, obsess. No one get a life. Grind, grind, grind. No one get a life. Here's what we're doing. And then it just, it just happened. I got one more question for Tariq.

49:05So you said that you saw him and he was a comedian. You thought that'd be fun to work with a comedian. Now Tariq is the one that helped us set up this entire setup, knows more about cameras than most people I've met. Did you know how to use a camera? Yeah, so I did cameras before I met Jimmy. But then I saw, like I told you the story, I saw a video of him just on the road. And I was like, this is in my town. Like I have to meet this guy. And so, you know, I reached out to him on Twitter. And then, you know, from there he started coming to the comedy shows. and then, you know, all that kind of tied together.

49:34Got it. It was cool. It was really cool. I got lucky that I got a comedian that actually had experience. That just had never seen YouTube before. I mean, I was like so dumb back then. I was just like, yo, that joke was funny about the dog. You want to get a job? You want to help me figure out how to bury myself alive? Because you're funny. It does seem like the thing that, the X factor in your growth, and it feels like the reason why it can continue is because of the ideas. And you, you. Well, it's because I'm obsessed and I'm crazy. Like I will spend every dollar back into the channel forever.

50:04I don't care. I just want to be the biggest. But it seems like you have like a unlimited source of ideas somehow. Like every time you put out a new video, even if it's a something similar to your other video, it's something new. Yeah. How do you keep new ideas coming? Like how is, how are ideas? I feel like the ideas have always been great. Even when I was like 17 and I like the videos like high me in five years. Like, have you ever seen someone make a time caps on YouTube? Even to this day, no one's done one. Like, I don't know. Like back then I was, I feel like they're pretty creative counting to a hundred thousand.

50:33I don't know, but it's still different. And obviously now I have a lot more help, you know, coming with ideas and stuff, but it's just, I like when I was younger, uh, I'm not as hardcore cause we've got hundreds of ideas now, you know, but when I was younger, like I would train myself like to lose the dream. So like, when I was dreaming, like you do this thing where you like stare at your hand like 30 times in a day and you do something. And then like in your dream, if you saw your hand, you'd realize you're dreaming you can control what you dream about and i like tried to like strategically brainstorm ideas while i would sleep and like i'd wake up in the middle of night and write down ideas were you successfully able to lucid dream uh okay i haven't done that stuff in years i'm not as hard for when it comes to that stuff um but yeah there were some points where i would like i would wake up and i'd have ideas and it was it took so long to think yeah that's hard to do yeah you have to like actually work on i think part of the problem or not problem but part of the advantage for me is like all I did was obsess over it during the day.

51:25And typically what you think about is what you dream about. So even if I wasn't loose and dreaming, I was just dreaming about videos and filming. And then I'd be like, oh, this is cool. And just wake up and write it down. I had a problem, man. I would like only watch things that like inspired me. So I would like try to watch a different show or different things or different genres for inspiration. And I like, I had what I would call like an info diet. And I would always like try to add new things. So I was so obsessed with how to, because really like, like if I tell you to come up with an idea, you're just going to, whatever, you're going to be like Gatorade or water, whatever.

51:57Right. No one knows what. Take the labels off. I thought it was the weirdest thing if I roasted him for it. But, but if we like, I've told you guys this story a million times, but if I've opened a dictionary here and we just, you know, flip to a random page and we pick a word and the words flowers, right. Then we'll be like, okay. Uh, I bought a flower. I, I gave my girlfriend a flower. I gave my girlfriend 100 ,000 flowers. I gave my girlfriend 100 ,000 flowers on Valentine's Day, right? You just go like that. I gave Tariq 100 ,000 flowers. I put 100 ,000 flowers on the moon. You do that for a few minutes, and then you just flip to a new page, and you're like, what's this word?

52:33And you just like, so that's like the slowest form of doing it and the worst way to do it, but that's in taking inspiration, getting inspired, and seeing what comes out. And it's really just doing that, and the more effectively you can take in inspiration and see what happens in your brain, the better ideas. I think what's interesting though is like obviously you call yourself obsessed. Yeah. Other people you said when you were younger called you obsessed. Imagine spending 10 years of your life only thinking about one thing every waking hour of the day. You mentioned earlier that people were like you don't have a life.

53:02Right. But we've been here and we spent all day with you yesterday. It's almost like behind the scenes I feel like you do have a life. Like your life is YouTube. Yeah. But you do have a life of like friends who were hanging out playing basketball yesterday. Exactly. Like there's like a lot more happening that people probably don't understand because all they see is what happens within the box. Exactly. Well, and that was one of the slower days. You know, like typically, it's a lot more extreme than yesterday. Maybe that was an anomaly. Yeah, exactly. Well, Jimmy's cleared the schedule because we were in town.

53:31Yeah, Colin and Samir come to town. Exactly. We make sure we play basketball. But yeah, it's, the thing is like, you're an idiot until you're successful. Then you're smart, whatever. You know what I mean? So it's just, at some point you cross that tipping point and people go from judging you and being like, you're too obsessed with your freak, blah, blah, blah, to like, oh, like, whoa, congrats. Look at you. You hire people and provide jobs. Like, you're cool. Good job. You know what I mean? And it's like kind of blurry where that line changes. Yeah, that is really interesting. Did you like engage in your typical high school life, I guess, like prom and I don't know, other stuff like that?

54:06None of that stuff. I was so obsessed. I'm telling you, it is unhealthy. There's not a single person on the planet that's been more obsessed that same time span as me because it's physically impossible. Almost every hour of the day, that's what I was doing. In math class, in English class, in any class, any time of the day, I was thinking about YouTube. Non-stop the last 10 years. One of our first videos about you was during your sub to PewDiePie campaign. And we were like, oh, Mr. Beast is kind of like the new PewDiePie. And we were talking about it this morning, and we were like, that actually couldn't be further from the truth.

54:39Yeah, the title is Mr. Beast is the next PewDiePie. And we were like, actually, they are completely different. Wait, you guys did a video title? Yeah. It wasn't exactly about how you were like PewDiePie. I was just saying you are the next person to reach that. Interesting. I remember the Mr. Beast, the first YouTube billionaire. No, there was one before it. One before it. We didn't interview for you. Oh, interesting. We just made a video. I don't think I ever saw that one. Of the videos we've done with you, it has the least number of views. Dang it. It didn't get the number one spot. I think it was the number one spot at that time.

55:09Oh, really? So we got number one on that. Then number one with the billionaire. Then number one with the loser. And then number one with this. Yo, we're on a streak. On a streak. So yeah, we did that video, but then we were thinking like, wait, that is really far from the truth because like PewDiePie is a completely different type of creator. He's, I mean, I think he still creates in a really similar way to when he first started out, right? Yeah. And you keep evolving and changing the way that you're creating. You know, just different people, different aspirations. At the end of the day, like with him, what's admirable is like 90 % of creators, like if they had that number one spot in that long, they would have been such egotistical pricks they like would have changed and you know he never wears designer clothes or flexes on people or looks down on people a lot of his friends or the people he has in his videos aren't like super clouded out you know i mean like that is that's the thing that i would take away with him like it's really respectable that like he really didn't change much you know yeah obviously you know more about youtube than anyone and you've been following it for a really long time yeah when boxing came about was that unexpected for you well the thing with boxing is it's literally two people putting everything on the line right you cannot tell your meme you know what i mean like you're risking your reputation um your dignity all that so like it kind of is the perfect thing to like be a big spectacle and cause the world to stop because if you get two titans or two big you know names that a lot of people know of and they're both like hey we're willing to risk it all one of us is walking away with a fat l on our face you know like of course like it's the perfect formula to be a big spectacle are you as captivated as everyone else by i love it it's fun to watch i mean like you know i don't put a ton of thought into it but when they happen invite the boys over get some popcorn enjoy some dudes getting punched i feel like it's fun i've bought every fight i find it to be so entertaining yeah you know i know you started when you came up with ideas you'd look at a dictionary and find a word yep uh you have people just throw things at you and then you try and come up with new ideas exactly when boxing obviously was taking place on YouTube.

57:04Did it throw a wrench in your head at all of like, oh, well maybe since that's the ultimate spectacle, maybe if I combine it with something else and do this or. Yeah, the only problem with those is it's like. so much time. I got so much going on. So many employees, so much that depends on the channel. Like I just can't spend six months just, you know, training three times a day or two times a day. So, I mean, tons of ideas popped in my head. But are they ever going to happen? No, because obviously I've got too many people that depend on me. I've had people ask me to box. I'm like, bro, if I just spend the next six months training, like people lose their job.

57:37Like I don't care to do that. Do you think there's another sport that has that much tension in it that YouTubers could do? Yeah, I mean, every sport. Sidemen did with the soccer. Well, minus baseball. I think baseball, there's too much delay between action. That will never pop. But basketball would be phenomenal. Soccer. Boxing, I think, will always be at the top. Because it's just like, it's two people putting everything on the line. I don't think it gets much better than that, to be honest. Yeah, it really doesn't. And I just feel like the tension that when you put two unexpected people together, I thought that the Social Gloves event was the most interesting out of all of them.

58:11Yeah, but you know what's fascinating is I talk to other people who aren't as into social media as we are, and they're just like, who are these people? I don't care. Yeah, I guess that's true. You have to care about the people. You have to know who the people are. Exactly. We're just so entertained by TikTok and YouTube that we know all these smaller people. I don't know all of them, but you've kind of heard of them. And you're just like, wait, what's going to happen? Okay, so let's go to Logan Floyd. It's just like, what the hell is going to happen? This guy is bigger than that guy, but that guy is more experienced than this guy.

58:36That's a good one. The questions are just so... But all the boxes on the undercard. You weren't glued to the screen. No, I didn't care. Exactly. And exactly how you felt on those is how everyone felt on the social club one that aren't like super into social media. If you don't know and you've never heard of them, it's like, why do I care? Yeah, that's true. Why not just watch professional boxers, you know? Do you do that a lot where I feel like you do it sometimes in your videos where you build some of the backstory of the person before they win? A little bit. That's one of the critiques I get that I could do better.

59:06It's so hard to like get people attached to someone while also like keeping retention and keeping the tension and stuff like that. That's one thing I got to learn a lot on. It's like how to let someone tell their backstory in a way where I don't lose viewers. I do feel like that's something that TV does really well. They tell backstory. But that also, to me, 90 % of the time is boring. Right. But if there's a way to do it in a condensed fashion where then the viewer all of a sudden cares about this person and if they win or lose, then it creates a whole different, you know? Yeah, even then, like, take any TV show that does that, upload it to YouTube, let's see the retention graph.

59:38I bet it's piss poor. Right. Just to be honest. There was one video you uploaded. It was a game video where people were winning money, but no one was winning money. And I was like, Jimmy, is someone going to win money? Oh, yeah. You're talking about the trick shot one. I think it was a trick shot one. Yeah. The prize went up 10 grand each time. So I wanted someone to win because I could have lost like a million bucks. So what entertains Mr. Beast? Like what else are you entertained by? Oh, boy. That's definitely changed over the years. I mean, I watch a ton of anime. I love anime. It's like, it's so creative and different.

1:00:09And I feel like that inspires me. So number one is anime. And then number two is like, I just try to watch a bunch of different stuff. So I'm just always learning because, um, you know, you can never learn enough. And like, there could be just one simple thing you learn through watching like an educational video that just like changes how you think and like allows you to just make better decisions for the rest of your life. Right. What was the first video you filmed in here? Uh, that I don't know. I don't know when you're going to upload this. When does that one come out? probably a while because there was i'll tell you this there's 50 cameras to use and there's 100 people we'll put it there when you see that video you'll know you'll know and could that video have been shot in one of your other spaces or no no this uh this place has like eight different ac units because it gets like so hot and so this is the only building we can keep cool and it rained three different times while we're filming and here we got like padded roofs and specially designed to cancel out the rain noise but all our other places you just hear like the whole time and you can't film during that.

1:01:06And, um, just everything about this place was perfect for like a long 10 day shoot. So you started investing into like, you know, you got that space with the yellow floor and then you got, well, I started with an office, the bigger office, then yellow floor space. Yeah. So was the first space was the office building we saw with your mom? Oh, smaller than that. It was the one she said that was two buildings over. Oh, right. Okay. So, so you had office building in that studio and the next studio, the next studio, the next studio. And now, you know, you have all these different studios, like what, um, this investment is really significant.

1:01:35Yeah. I think I walked into a spider web walking in here and I don't think I got it. Sorry. You're like, this investment's big. I'm like, I got a spider web. It's a good moment for retention. Right. Yeah. That is good. This is a really significant investment. And then additionally, the, you know, when we sat with your mom and looked at your financials, every video is a really significant investment. I don't think I said this to you when we got out of there. I was like, I don't think there's no way there's someone else spending that kind of money on YouTube videos, right? No, no. There can't be.

1:02:07No, I would be best friends with them. Yo, teach me. I think the, the, from, you know, you spending the most to the, even the next person, it's probably a pretty serious gap. Well, and on top of that, with how frequently we're uploading too. I mean, yeah, most videos are over probably like half a million dollars at this point. so does your mom have the same because she kind of looks over that part of the business like does she have the same relationship to uh money that you have of like hey let's just reinvest everything she's just gotten to the point where she like just accepts it like i mean we've ran out of money many times and had to get a loan to keep going or whatever but she just knows i'm not going to stop so years ago she just gave that up she just gave it he's yeah well and obviously now that we're this big like there's not as much to worry about but yeah i mean like i would make 50 grand a month and then I'd film a$50 ,000 video that would end up costing$60 ,000 and oh, we're$10 ,000 negative.

1:02:58And then she'll be like, okay, once we make this back and we're in green, like let's put some money aside. I'm like, nah, let's keep going. We made$60 ,000 this month. It's on an uptrend and just keep going. One thing that was really interesting is we talked about that video. She literally printed out the financial statements for certain videos. And one of the videos was where you were giving away houses and that obviously cost, you know. Yeah, we spent just shy of a million dollars. Just shy of a million dollars. And you told us how much that video made on AdSense. How much did that video make on AdSense?

1:03:28Not a million dollars. Less than half a million dollars, I'll tell you that. Yeah, so less than half a million dollars on something that cost a million dollars. And then there was a brand deal on it. But even then, yeah, after everything's said and done, because that's not including the cost of the people to produce it and stuff like that. So it was closer to like$1.3 million to do the video. We're definitely not going to make over a million dollars on that video. How does this place, how does this investment of 10 million plus dollars, how does it become profitable? I don't know. I just want to make the best videos possible.

1:03:58I'm not a businessman. I'm a creator. I want to make the best videos possible. This helps. And I believe as long as we're doing everything in our power to make the best videos possible, people will watch them. And I don't know. I'm a lunatic. I think it will work out. It's a lot of faith in YouTube. A ton of faith. But I've been doing it for 10 years now. I'm not losing faith now. I think YouTube's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. It comes installed on every Android device, which is like 85 % of all operating systems and 90 % of searches in the West are on Google, which YouTube pops up on.

1:04:31I think, you know, like I've told you guys multiple times, gaming viewership in the last two years has doubled. Like you can throw up the tweet, the reports, like that's factual in the last two years. And two years ago, gaming was freaking huge and it's doubled. I think YouTube in 10 years is going to be bigger than we all imagined. I have no freaking down in my mind. So you're expanding digitally now across the world. You're also expanding physically with Mr. Beast Burger. Oh, dude, it's so funny because we got so much stuff going on. I'm like, oh, that's kind of everything. And they're like, oh, yeah, that's right.

1:05:00We have Mr. Beast Burger. I was sitting here earlier before we started recording, and I got a notification on my watch that was like, hey, here's a promo for Beast Burger. Was it at 4 p.m.? Yes. Oh, perfect. Yeah, that's when we sent out the notification today because that's the perfect time where if you're ordering lunch around like five or six. Like it's a reminder. But I was just like, our dinner, sorry. Did you say ordering? Oh, okay. I was about to say, you say ordering. I was like, what time do you eat lunch? Yeah, yeah. So like the conversion's best. Yeah. And it's also like if I tweet about it or do a post, like at the start, I'm an idiot.

1:05:29I don't know. I never ran a restaurant. Like sometimes I would do like a swipe up at like 10 p.m. for Beastburg. Right, right. Most of the restaurants are closed. And then one day I was like, man, these swipe ups aren't really doing much. And then I realized I'm doing it

1:05:44oh, I'm an idiot. Beast Burger. Obviously that's everywhere in the U S. Yep. Over a thousand locations. Over a thousand locations. The fries are amazing. Every time I talk to him, he's like, did you know your fries are amazing? I'm like, yes. The fries are really good. I get it. The fries are really good. Talk to me about when does Beast Burger become a physical place I can walk into? Well, that's what we were talking about before the podcast. We're working on breaking ground in our first place, our first physical restaurant. I won't spoil where, but we got the first one in progress, and eventually I want to scale up and do other ones.

1:06:18I got some fun... I don't know if it's possible. I'm going to say stuff. It might not be doable, so if this isn't what ends up happening, it's not on me. I'm going to push the boundaries, but I would love to... Well, it's also different because it's the COVID world, but you know how McDonald's used to always have the slides behind me? I want those back. I want to put those at B-Sprer locations. I want to, and now the other stuff I'm not going to say, because if I don't do it, then people are going to be like, you should do this. But I have a bunch of ideas to like modernize the restaurant. But maybe there's a reason restaurants don't do it.

1:06:47So we'll see as we're designing the first one currently. Have you thought about how you keep customers coming back? Like, is there a retention strategy? At the restaurant? Well, hopefully it's just the food's amazing. You know what I mean? And I mean, everything. Obviously, at the end of the day, I'm waking up, and I'm obsessing over how to make the best YouTube videos possible. So as we build out the Beast Burger team, like whoever it is, like, yeah, I don't want people to have to wait in a line at a fast food. I don't want to like whatever other people are doing. I don't care. I want to be a modern restaurant that just on everyone somehow.

1:07:19I don't know how. I don't care. I don't care if it makes money. Just I want the best experience possible. Yeah, that's going to be really cool. Because do you think about those as like sets for your? No, I mean, I think it's just an independent business. Like it's I mean, Beast Burger has kind of a good ring to it. Like five guys. like yeah yeah five guys didn't exist i was like hey i'm gonna go start a company named five guys you'd be like i mean it's not that crazy of a name like i like the name beast burger i think the the menu is phenomenal like i think it has a chance like independent of me just to grow you know i mean like if five guys can be successful like why can't beast burger you know especially for obsessed innovating and adapting and just reinvesting everything just literally what i did on youtube i want to do at the restaurant like it makes money it's profitable and i'm just like yeah just keep it like grow grow like don't give me the money you know so keep growing eventually take the money put it into the main channel uh with that one i just wanted to keep just reinvesting and just growing and growing and oh go build another restaurant go do whatever you know which business outside of uh the main channel and and youtube are you most excited about that you're involved in no i mean at the end i would give it all up for the main channel i just want to be the biggest youtuber i can possibly be and make the best videos possible You got to have laser-like focus.

1:08:32If you lose focus and you get too scatterbrained, then that's how you just fall off. We see a lot of creators, they start doing too many things, and then their content fades and what got them where they was isn't there anymore. And when the channel dies, so do all those businesses and stuff like that. Laser-like focus, I just want to be the best YouTuber I can. Why do you want to be the best YouTuber? I don't fucking know. Ever since I was 13, I just made the decision I was going to be a YouTuber, I was going to die trying. sounds different hearing me say now but i had that type of like devotion when i was younger like even when people would tell me it's crazy when ever no odds in my favor with no equipment no nothing no social skills no editing no camera no one to teach me no one to help me i just like i don't care i'm gonna figure it out i'm gonna die trying and i like even in high school like you know when i'm 17 and not making any money well i'm making money off youtube like 100 bucks a month but nothing crazy and i have horrible grades and like you know people are like okay what are you gonna do after high school and i'm like i'm gonna be a youtuber and they'd be like how and i'd be like i don't know but i'm gonna make it happen it's like i just it's just i feel like it was programmed in me that sounds weird but i just feel like i just have dna that just like you're gonna be a youtuber like not in a sense i was destined to make it but that like that's just how my brain has been like i'm gonna be a youtuber or i'm gonna be 80 with a thousand subscribers like there's no world where i wasn't a youtuber in my future like that was it people thought it was crazy.

1:09:54It didn't make sense. It didn't make sense to me either. I was just like, I'm going to be a YouTuber. And people would be like, I don't know. I'm going to be one. I'm just going to figure it out. I don't care. Like if I never made it, you know, and I only had 5 ,000 subscribers, I would probably be working at McDonald's still just grinding YouTube every hour. I'm not working and like just going hard as fuck until I became a YouTuber. Do you ever entertain the possibility that one day you won't care about being the biggest YouTuber? I guess that's not my main focus, but the main goal as it should be is to make the best videos possible.

1:10:22Cause if you're making the best videos possible, you'll get all the things you want. Like if I want to go beast burger, we'll make the best videos possible. If I want to be the biggest YouTuber, make the best videos possible. So that is what I, I guess I might've misspoke earlier. That is what the laser focus should be making the best video possible. And 99 % of what a creator wants will happen if you do that. Um, and I mean, I'm going on 10 years and I love him more than anything. You took my channel away from me. I like, I, I don't know what I would do. Yeah. One thing I think I've learned about you just spending time with you here is that you love strategy i do you love strategy like first of all we went into jimmy's kitchen and there's so many versions of katan yeah i like katan more than monopoly because monopoly which i was telling you guys is like very dice and luck based but katan is so strategic and like data and stuff like that also if you ever play poker with jimmy he's got a lot of strategy i love it yeah he's got a lot of strategy and i And his facial expressions.

1:11:18Yeah. Then I think Jimmy was like, you really need to be having strategy. You shouldn't have done what you just did. I was like three times in a row. Like every time like the flop would happen and he'd just fold. I'd be like, at least act like you have a good job. He was like helping me have a better game against him. Yeah. So what, like, what does Mr. Beast do for fun? I don't. If you're not making videos. I mean, in a perfect world, I'd love to go hang out with Elon Musk or stuff like that. But obviously that's not possible. um it's like there's levels like if i had like the perfect friend group i'd go hang out with other entrepreneurs i'd go hang out with people and just like if right next door there's another youtuber i just walk over there and be like yo teach me something that at the end is what i love the most but whatever anime or stuff i try to just work as much as i can because i don't know i just enjoy it you know yeah is your dream that more um creators come here uh yeah i mean even just being friends with them like i call you like at least once a week pretty religiously mom you know i have a rotation of that but i just i'd love to like revamp the list of people i call every week like i always just call people to people listening and just like be like yo teach me something that's how you stay on on on your a game and you're always learning and i don't know i feel like it's just run dry like you know i i don't i haven't i haven't met like a new youtuber in like months that i'm like wow like this guy's a genius and i'm not saying there's not one i'm just i I haven't found that person.

1:12:41Like I'm actively like right now, like I would hire someone to just give like, I'm pay serious money for someone. Just give me a list of like up and coming YouTubers that I could like talk to on a weekly basis and just learn from, you know what I mean? Yeah. And I, I don't know. It used to be so abundant before, but you know, I've talked to probably 500 YouTubers at this point. So I've like squeezed the list dry, you know what I mean? But yeah, that I would, I'd love more than anything just to talk to other smart YouTubers and learn from them. Do you have any theories as to why that is that it's run dry?

1:13:10I don't know. I mean, YouTube's bigger than ever. More creators are coming up than ever, so I don't know why. I mean, like, you know, obviously you got A-Rack and Tyler Oliveira, and they come up, and I'm sure there are tons of other people. I don't know why I'm struggling to find them. I mean, there's probably so many people that went from, like, whatever, 100 ,000 subscribers to over a million in the last year, probably 10 ,000 plus, you know what I mean? But I don't know. Where's the master list? You know what I mean? Someone give it to me. you know? Oh, but the hard thing is probably like 90 % of them do it as a hobby, which there's nothing wrong with that, but they're not like laser focused and tense.

1:13:44You know what I mean? Not like probably 99 % of them, you know what I mean? Like I need a list of that hundred that are like living and breathing it and obsessed, you know? What do you think that like the archetype is of someone who comes and either works with you or works for you here? Like what type of person are you looking for? Um, I mean the biggest thing is you gotta be interested in the YouTube space. Like even if you're like the best logistics person in the world, like if you don't love YouTube, you're not, you know, you're not interested in learning about it. You're probably not going to have too much success because everything we do is from the standpoint of making the videos as good as possible.

1:14:17So if you're not obsessed about that, it doesn't matter if you can figure out how to get a truck on Mars. You know what I mean? If you get it there and it's not positioned the right way or doesn't have certain things inside of it that makes good content or whatever is best for content, then it doesn't really do much for us. You know what I mean? And if someone wants to, like, let's say someone doesn't want to be a YouTuber, but they'd love to work for a YouTuber. Like, how do you learn to do that? How do you study that? That's a hard thing. That, I mean, for people we're interested in, I mean, we just bring them down and just have them shadow us, follow our people, and we just dump our brain in them.

1:14:49But for people that don't have that opportunity, I mean, just study. Just study YouTube, watch a ton of YouTube. I mean, like, people trash on internships, and I don't, we don't really do them. But if I wanted to learn how to be a YouTuber, I would just find an internship with a smart YouTuber and just be like, yo, you don't have to pay me. I'll work my butt off. Just let me learn. You know what I mean? Just let me do this until I feel like I've learned enough. And, like, you would learn so much from people doing that. I actually think, though, that one thing that you can do, because like you said, everything relates back to the video.

1:15:21A lot of what you're talking about relates back to retention, actually, and, like, how to make someone engaged. What's the point of making a video if people don't watch it? Exactly. Exactly. So I feel like one strategy of studying when you say study YouTube is taking a YouTube video, whether it's yours or another really popular video, right? We were talking about Vox yesterday because that's the closest thing to what we're trying to do, right? Is Vox. And so I think one strategy is to take that video and actually take a notepad out and just write what's happening in the video. Exactly. Literally write down like the first 30 seconds, what is happening?

1:15:49And that's what I did with your FBI video. Cause I was like, okay, let me just understand what was Jimmy talking about? What's happening in this video. And then when you write it down you're like wait a second 40 seconds has gone by this many scene changes have happened how many was it like a dozen it was at over 12 yeah yeah it was over 12 scene changes there was introduction of new information at each maybe yep you know six seconds and you had added in a twist by 40 seconds where the telephone telephone and the entire time there's tension of him chasing exactly so and the scene changes actually the first scene change where it's like a drone shot of you sprinting out happens in like probably four seconds.

1:16:27Right. And so then I was like, wait a second. Okay. So we now, we, we aren't going to do that exact thing. We don't make videos like that, but we have to, in that amount of time have that much happen. Exactly. So how do we do that? And that, I think just, again, you've, you've called me for a year. Everyone knows this. You call me once a week for a year, but coming here every time dumpster on his videos, which as weird as it sounds, that's usually what it takes. Like I coached the guy from like, like i mean the guy who's been doing youtube for like six or seven years and like he was like making like whatever like twenty thousand dollars a month and i coached him up to the point where he's making like 250 grand a month yeah and like but it was like a similar story to you like a constant year of me just beating his head and be like no you dingus do this yeah and he'd be like no like here's why i do this this is this he'd be like that's wrong but whatever there comes a point where you can't like you can't force someone to do it so you just back up and and then eventually usually people like come around to it and they try it and then they try a few things also easy to convince yourself that like you're not you don't make the type of content that could get that many views yeah right but you guys should be getting in a perfect world like four or five million views a video like you should right like there's you guys are smart enough like if it's not then it just wasn't a good enough video in my opinion right i mean even the videos we did that are your most few videos could be way better right what do you think gets us to a million subscribers well subscribers is an arbitrary okay so a million million views of no you You should ask me what helps us make the best videos possible.

1:17:53That's the only question you should ask me. Subscribers don't matter. Views don't matter. I mean, they do. But all that comes. Everything you f***ing want as a creator comes from making the best videos possible. And thumbnails. But it's easier to, you know, make thumbnails. The video part is the hard part. And that's the thing that you're known for. No one's known for having. No one's like the biggest YouTuber in the world because they have the best thumbnails. Right. It's also because they have great, phenomenal content. You know what I mean? Like that's the hard part that very few people do well.

1:18:20And that's what people remember. You know what I mean? Like you're not going to have some random dude when you're walking down the street of Paris go like, yo, that's the guy with the great thumbnails. You know, they're going to be like, no, that's the guy with the phenomenal videos that whatever, you know, held his breath for 40 minutes underwater or things like that. So that's a tip for you guys, but also you guys watching. Ask, how can I make my videos better? Do that every single day for years. And then you'll probably get views. I feel a lot like if we put out a video and we're frantically changing thumbnails afterwards we're already way too far gone like not that it doesn't help to change your packaging but I know when we have a really good video exactly like I know it's really good and the title and the thumbnail it matters if you upload a video and you're not like you're not like this is a banger this is going to bang no doubt in my mind even though you're going to be wrong 9 % of the time then it's not a good enough video you still have to have that feeling even if you should have spent more time thinking on it audience tell you you're wrong don't put it out when you already know you're wrong exactly yeah yeah 100 how do you know when you're wrong how do you know because you have some videos you haven't well if it's 10 out of 10 yeah and it did worse than your other nine videos and it's like okay but you have videos you you don't even upload sometimes exactly i mean you just the thing is like it's it's a lot harder for us because like what we're doing our big productions of the span of months things get distorted i visualize a giant amount of money and this and someone's scooping it up in a tractor and then you do it and it's not as epic you're like oh this is kind of lame you know what i mean like um so it's just i just watch it honestly and i just like if there's ever a moment where i'm even slightly bored i'm like cut it and if there's something where i'm not just like wow you know like the whole time then it's like don't upload it it's it's not good and does it weigh on you at all that you're like man but i've probably invested over 100 videos of my life like completely filmed i've spent probably i don't even want to pull a number out of my butt but ungodly amounts of money on videos of my life that don't get uploaded.

1:20:12I don't give a f***. Best video possible or get it out of my face. I don't care. What's the last video you didn't upload? Well, this one is kind of on the fence. We're re-editing it. But if you never see it, then we did a video where we built like 10 sets and I built like 10 replicas of banks. And it was, rob this bank, I'll give you$100 ,000. And then so like bank vault number one, the boys had to break into the bank and whoever broke into the bank first got what was inside and the vault's empty. And I'm like, so this vault's empty and some of the other vaults are empty, but one of these vaults, when you open it, will get$100 ,000.

1:20:46And so they had to break into a bunch of banks and all of them were empty. And then after like nine ones, the 10th one, which they're like, none of these banks have the money in. They finally break in. I think, I don't want to spell it, but one of the boys broke in. And then they open it and there's$100 ,000 in cash. It's like, congratulations, you robbed the correct bank. And it's cool, but the sets were a little bland and the bits weren't as funny. And, you know, I just, I didn't think it was as good as it could be. But hopefully, we're like on our 12th edit. Hopefully this one maybe fixes some of the problems I'm having.

1:21:16What's the hardest video you've ever made, whether it came out on the channel or not? Oh boy.

1:21:24Well, let's see. Oh God, Tariq, you have any inspiration to throw at me? Yeah, I mean, Team Trees was, I mean, I enjoyed it, but that was, that was a ton, man. I mean, me and Mark were overworked on that for like eight months leading up to it. I don't want to overreact. Maybe it was seven or six. And I was like, it started with me wanting to plant a million trees. And I was reaching out to all these YouTubers that, you know, do environmental stuff. And the gist was just like, you're crazy. You're like, this just is impossible. You just can't plant a million trees. They're like, it takes like hours to plant like a hundred.

1:21:59And they're like, what are you thinking? And then I'm like, yo, Mark, can you build me something to plant trees? and like so me and Mark are like scheming how to plant a million trees and then I was closing in on 20 million subscribers and I like I did like this thing where I gave my 3 million subscriber pennies 4 million subscriber like popcorn 5 million blah blah and someone on reddit was like you should give your 20 million subscriber or for 20 million subscribers you should plant 20 million trees I was like Mark I know a million is impossible but get this let's plant 20 million trees to celebrate me hitting 20 million subscribers and he's like you're a f***ing idiot and i was like let's do it and then we're like you know as we ran down the rabbit hole we're like there's no world where we're doing this and then we're like well what if we gather all our fans and we do like different events and plant them and then we're like nope that would still only plant like a hundred thousand like that that won't work and then we're like okay well what if we pay people to do it and then or what if we do seed drives what what if we uh have our fans buy seeds we sell seeds at cost they buy they plant in their yard and then we do research for a month and we're like, it could be an invasive species.

1:23:01It could do more harm than good. I don't know if I trust 14-year-old Billy to understand whether or not they can plant that next to a pine tree. So then we're like, and we're going on for months on months. We're just figuring out how the hell do we plant 20 million trees? Every week we're having calls. And then we, I don't remember how, but we got connected with the Arbidae Foundation. They've planted, like, I don't know the exact number, but I know it's over 100 million trees. They're experts. Like, this is what they do. and they're just like, yeah, we can plant a tree. They told us their cost, da, da, da.

1:23:32And we were like, can you get it down to a dollar? And they're like, I mean, yeah, at scale, we could plant a tree for a dollar. And I was like, boom, there you go. And me and Mark, we were like, okay, all we need is$20 million and they can plant the 20 million trees for my 20 million subscribers. I'm already past 20 million subscribers at this point, but I'm like, fuck it. We're in too deep. And then now it's like, okay, how do we get$20 million so we can plant 20 million trees? And then we just started figuring out slogans. Like there's so much stuff that never even made the internet like trick shot for trees.

1:24:01We were going to try to make a viral TikTok trend and get it where like you did a trick shot. If you missed, you had to donate$10 to plant 10 trees. And then you had to challenge someone else like ripping off ALS ice bucket challenge. And so we're developing this for like a month. And then we're like literally like testing it. And then like I'm shooting a trick shot, donating trees. I'm challenging people like in these fake videos. and we're like roasting and we're like, no, this, this isn't going to go viral. Like no, no one cares. Right. Um, and then we're just workshopping all this. And then I don't know how we landed on it, but then we're just like, no, we're just going to get our audience to donate and we're just going to get every YouTuber we know to make videos on it.

1:24:38And we're going to just magically pray. We don't only raise$500 ,000 and look like the biggest idiots on the planet. And so we somehow got a list. Uh, it wasn't from YouTube. It was like some company that does a lot of YouTube data they sell to like media companies and they just gave us a list of like all the biggest YouTubers like on an Excel sheet and me and Mark just like it took forever man we're just going down the list and I'd be like do they follow you on Twitter no do they follow me on Twitter no and we check our Instagram we'd find some way to reach out to that creator or someone who follows us that follows them we'd be like hey get us in contact and we'd be like hey doing this thing make a video about trees tell your fans every dollar they donate boom and we went down this list DM'd over a thousand of the biggest creators got hundreds of them to make videos on it they all launched at the same time as our videos and like and yeah in the first day we raised millions of dollars and we crushed our 20 million dollar goal the quote of the night is all we needed was 20 million dollars but that campaign that wasn't the problem it's wild man there's so many like literally it was six months of me just being in mark mark more so than me i'm i'm of the kind of like okay let's do it nature but mark's like every other day we'd have mental breakdowns we're like we're not going to raise 20 million dollars what are we crazy like we should we should do two million dollars and i'd just be like nah let's do 20 million dollars i hit 20 million subscribers mark it's a funny story and then i would convince them i'd be like uh and also it's 20 million dollars by 2020 see it's a good slogan and he's like oh well if you put it that way i guess we'll just keep the unrealistic going i mean that was a big success though that was that was huge that was a huge success it is the biggest thing i've ever done yeah i mean literally not all 20 million have been planted.

1:26:13I think like 13, 12, 13, somewhere in there has been planted. I think all of them, all 20 million will be planted by the end of next year. I think that's a really good example of like you make the best videos possible and then you can do anything. You can do such interesting things. If you want to plant 20 million trees, you can do that if you're making good videos. And the thing is like 99 % of people, even if you had that idea, like, I mean, that was so much time, man. So much times and so many, like it started with a million and it's like a half of year of just nonstop obsession and grinding and reaching out and learning and learning and learning and trick shot for trees and this and that all just culminating to that final end point and like 99 % of people would have gave up like they would have gone I want to plant a million trees and someone would have gone you can only plant 100 and they would have been like oh well guess I could do it do you do you think uh do you think attention is the most valuable currency in the world well of course I mean if you could post something and everyone in the world would watch it you'd be the most powerful man on earth.

1:27:11So of course. Simple question. Yeah. It's just curious if you had that opinion. I do. Yeah. I have the same opinion. That's where that conversation ends. So what you did with Mark was really successful. Do you have plans to do something different with him? So this year, it's a few days after the two year anniversary of Team Trees or launching Team Seas. I don't want to give away too many spoilers. You know, $1 might get something out of the ocean. We'll reveal it then. But if you are a creator, which I know you guys have a lot of careers, so watch you. Hit me up or Mark Rober. Team Seas is happening this year.

1:27:43We're going to try to raise more than$20 million, which is terrifying. I need your help. I'm sick to my stomach thinking about it. We're going to raise$1 for every grain of sand on the beach. Yes. Yeah, sure, sure, yeah. Team Trees was definitely the biggest reaction that I remember. Yeah, for sure. Just global headlines everywhere. Elon Musk donated a million dollars. So we had this leaderboard. The more you donated, the higher up you got. So it would get an ego match for people. So someone donated$100 ,000 and be number one. And someone donated$101 ,000 and someone donated$200 ,000. Elon Musk donated$1 million to be number one, which I thought was cool.

1:28:21And then Toby from Shopify, which I love. Shout out to you. You're super cool. Donated$1 ,000 ,001. So he took the spot from Elon and just sat up there. I thought that was funny. That's so good. Yo, Toby, if you're watching this, when TPC happens, DM me. It'll be fun. we expect over a million dollars. We expect one million and two. No, I'm kidding. Even if you don't donate, it'd just be cool to get your thoughts on it. But over a million and two would be nice. Oh, is that what we're doing? Just peer pressuring billionaires? Every billionaire. We write if you don't donate. I'm curious just if you, in terms of YouTube, like I'm really curious your perspective on the vlogging format, like creators like Emma Chamberlain.

1:29:02Okay. Like how do you think that plays into the concept of, like she I mean her viewership is really significant and sometimes she's just like at her house making coffee and making a peanut butter jelly sandwich sure like how do you think she captures that much attention well I mean it is entertaining she's a naturally funny person and like that is a skill being um like I couldn't do that uh or if I did like it wouldn't be so off the cuff like she she's just a naturally witty and funny person like Chris in my videos one of the wittiest people I've ever met in my life like you could just drop this Gatorade bottle and he'd say something that would just make you laugh like crazy.

1:29:36And it's like, where did that come from? But at the same time, you're limited by your personality. She's doing well. She's top 1 % of creators. But how many views a month? Like 40 or something? It's great. It's phenomenal. But it's like she's tied down to her personality. If you don't like Emma, then you're not going to watch her videos. You know what I mean? And so there's only so big that can take you. And even if you do get super big, it's literally just all on your shoulders. It's a lot of weight and a lot of pressure. So that is a lot of pressure because the product of the video is your personality.

1:30:08Well, yeah, because if you're depressed or you're going through stuff, you know, it's harder to make videos. You know what I mean? But yeah, but at the same time, like, you know, a lot of people just enjoy making that type of content. So, yeah, that's true. Yeah. I asked you yesterday, do you need to be in a good mood to film a video? And you kind of said, you said, like, I don't really have a choice because if I don't, then I just burned half a million dollars. Yeah, on some videos. But also your format lends itself that you don't always have to be in a good mood because like it's the story work that went in beforehand that ensures the reaction.

1:30:41Whereas like for Emma, she probably does need to be in a good mood. Exactly. Like she does have to be in a good place for her personality. It's like two drastically different creators. Yeah. It's almost like do you try and take out a lot of those variables when you're planning a video? I don't know. I just do whatever I think will make the best video possible. I mean, I hate to always fall back on it, but that's the driver. It's just whatever I think will make the best video possible. Like, if I thought telling people more about myself or being more personal would make the video better, I would do it.

1:31:09But I think most people, like, for the most part, like, they want to see me run from an FBI agent. They don't want Nikki or me go, oh, also, guys, tomorrow's my mom's birthday. You know what I mean? Like, they're there to see me run from an FBI agent. You know what I mean? But we did tweet about the Call Her Daddy podcast. Yeah. You replied to that tweet, and you said, I'm starting a podcast. and there was a lot of people who were excited about that. People took it as a real headline. Yeah. There were some people - There were press outlets that said, Mr. Beast is starting - Announces podcast. I mean, the only reason I would do a podcast is to make money to be able to do bigger YouTube videos.

1:31:43So if I thought that I could make enough or make a difference, I'd be able to elevate my content. 100 % I'd do it. It's just like, study big YouTubers. It happens time and time and time again. They get big, they start side projects, they lose focus, their channel falls off, and then all that stuff fades away with it. You know what I mean? You just, you gotta be focused. At the end of the day, that's what matters. Main channel, Mr. Beast, and all this other stuff supports it. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Right now, when you download the YouTube app, your picture is on there. Yeah, on the Google Play Store.

1:32:15I don't know about Apple Store. Yeah, so on the Google Play Store, when you download YouTube, your picture is on there. How much do you interact with YouTube? Do you give them advice on YouTube? Not really. Not really. No. Do they reach out to you at all? I mean, at the end of the day, like what am I going to tell the army of a hundred people or a thousand people that work on this part of the thing that like, yeah, my five second thought of opinions better than their analysis. You know what I mean? Um, no, I, I think they do a good job. I think they, they take responsibility. Um, and I just, it's crazy that you, if you have a hundred subscribers, you have five subscribers, if you upload a good enough video, it will get views.

1:32:50Like if you're not, you're just, I don't want to make such a definitive thing. Take this to the grand side. So I don't, majority of the time, you're just not making a good enough video if it's not getting views. You know what I mean? If that's your goal to get views, obviously if your goal is not to get views, then who cares? You know what I mean? But you can get a million views on a video even if you have a hundred subscribers, if the video is good enough. You can, promise. I've seen it happen a bunch. So next to YouTube, right under it, is there a platform that you like the most next to YouTube?

1:33:19No, I mean, I like them, but it's YouTube. YouTube is what I live and breathe. Take them all away. I don't care. I just want YouTube. YouTube's the future, in my opinion. Of television, it's the biggest. It's not going anywhere. It's the most dominant. And I just, I love YouTube more than anything. Why do you think it's so dominant? Like what makes YouTube? I told you, like Android. You know, it comes on Android phones, Google. And it's just, it has such a deep catalog. And there's so many people on it. Has the best monetization program. Like, you know, YouTube's paid creators more than any other platform in history.

1:33:51You know, probably more than the other platforms combined. You know what I mean? and it's just I love it I love it so much I don't know I think the algorithm also promotes better storytelling like the barrier to entry of the title and the thumbnail if you actually back up that title and thumbnail it requires that you told a compelling story agree and then like when it comes down to retention if you actually keep someone from zero to 15 minutes you've done a good job of telling a story my my problem when I load up YouTube on my TV is that there's too many videos I want to watch. It's gotten too good at recommending me videos that I see like four on the top row and like the top, you know, top half of like another four.

1:34:29And I'm just like, I want to watch all these. What do I do? What type of videos are those? Like, what do you watch? It'll probably be like how a U.S. aircraft carrier gets food and delivers mail, you know, air flight patterns of planes. And then this one will be like, how this random guy on Reddit turned$1 ,000 into a million and stuff Stuff like that, you know, and then there's like the random like what aristocracy will top people in 10 ,000 years, whatever ago, stuff like that. But yeah, it's always like they're always so interesting. And I know like that, like I'm going to watch most of these videos because I've watched thousands of videos on my account.

1:35:05So it's like it knows what I'm going to watch. And it's just like it's so hard at this point for me. I don't know if other people have this problem. Like the algorithm is getting so good that I think they need to serve less videos because I don't it stresses me out. I'm like, which one do I pick? I want to watch them all. Is there an analytic that you wish you had? I would love to be able to see a bunch. Which one do I say? That's a hard one. I would love to be able to do A-B testing thumbnails. I think we all agree. That one I don't even want to be. Second, I'd love to see if someone watches Selling Houses for a Dollar.

1:35:43They watch this video. They watch all the way to the end. and I would love to be able to see like if they went and watched another video and another one right or a better example would be like like it did last sleep circle for 10 grand right I'd love to be able to see okay well every a lot of people who watch this when then went and watched like last leaf slime and then actually you can see that I just wish I don't know like I wish there's just an easier way to show it like follow viewers around you mean well you can click on a video suggest and see which video suggests it I guess yeah I guess I'm just too lazy to dig through that it'd just be cool to be able to see the viewing patterns but the more I'm speaking it the more I'm realizing there'd probably be privacy concerns if you could follow a user so now I'm going to start back but you mean like in aggregate but it does kind of show you that people from this video are coming to your channel I'm an idiot and disregard everything I just said there the more I think about it the dumber that was so there was a couple things on your financial statements that I found really interesting We're back to that.

1:36:43He loved the financial statements. I loved it. That was my favorite part of the trip. They're fun to talk about because no one's ever seen them before. Yeah. So one of the parts of your financial statement was also merchandise. And I feel like it's not something we hear about that often with you unless it's like you're writing everyone's name on a wall and giving away a Tesla. Yeah. How do you interact with that? Are you like, does it interest you? I saw that it's like available in retailers. Yeah, we're in Zoomies and that's going well. I don't know. I don't, I, I just like, I'm so obsessed with like making the best videos possible that I just, yeah, I hate promoting merch and videos because it drives people off the site, which hurts retention and, and you get promoted less.

1:37:21And then if someone was going to watch that video on the next video, well, they watch this video, you send them to buy merch. They don't watch that next video all around. So it's like, I could make, I mean, ungodly amounts of money if I promoted merch every video, but I just don't want it. I just want to make the best videos possible, you know? So, So yeah, it's not what it could be, basically. Fraction of what it could be. Most videos, I don't even mention merch. Imagine if I promoted merch every single video. You know what I mean? I would sell a bunch, but I don't know. I just want to make the best videos possible.

1:37:52And I don't think promoting merch makes a video better. But let me backpedal a little bit. Sometimes I do need to promote it because some videos cost over a million dollars. And I don't do a million dollars per video in ad revenue. So, you know. Yeah. All right. So we did a YouTube money calculator to see how much money your channel has made in total. And it's lifetime. Okay. Lifetime. Lifetime. Okay. The main channel. Okay. So that's off at 12 billion views. 12 billion views. Okay. So the number it gave us was$28 million. So it's assuming like a$2.3 RPM. Interesting. I mean obviously I've spent tens of millions of dollars on my videos so the money has to come from somewhere I won't leave it at that you know what I mean because you've spent more than that of course yeah I mean tens of millions of dollars have gone into my YouTube videos because I've taken all the money from the gaming channel the reaction channel all the other stuff I'm doing all my merch all the brand deals everything gone right back into it I don't know there's probably going to be a day where I'll spend over a billion dollars on just YouTube videos in the future.

1:39:02That's so crazy. Obviously, I'm nowhere near that, but I'm talking like, you know, two decades from now or a decade. Yeah. But in a year, you're spending. Lots. More than I just said. Yeah. Way more money than I said. I mean, like some months we're spending like four or five million dollars on videos. Yeah. Yeah. So crazy. I saw it in the financial statements. Yeah. That's so bad stuff. Try lighting a soccer field or something, right? Try renting an NFL stadium. Yeah, or any of that type of stuff. It's expensive. But best videos. As team goes. I don't even want to get into that, man. How many people work here?

1:39:39I don't know the exact number. You know, because some people hire and we have a lot of... But I mean, it's a lot. Obviously, dozens upon dozens of people. I'll leave it open for interpretation. You guys speculate. Do you ever feel... You talked about like people always suggested that maybe you would get burnt out on YouTube. Do you ever feel burnt out? Like, are there times where you feel, like, tired? I think my definition might be different than others. You know, like, some people are like, I'm burnt out, screw this, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done, you know, like, never, never at that point. But, yeah, like, if I'm going, like, you know, I go from the time I get up to the time I go to bed, like, three days in a row, I'll be like, okay, like, kind of want to, like, take half a day off and, like, chill, or, like, I'll feel it coming and stuff like that.

1:40:21But this is what I'm doing to the day I die. I don't care. Like I love this more than anything. Nothing's ever brought me a fraction of the joy. What are the in-between moments like for you when you're like buried alive for 50 hours? Like, cause we don't see all of it. Well, you do. In between each thing, we show time lapses so you could see I was in there the whole time. But I mean, yeah, still, you don't see my reaction. Like I don't see if you're enjoying it in the middle of it. I don't know if the point is to enjoy it. Here, let me just put this out there. I did not enjoy being buried alive.

1:40:52So we're all on the same page. my back hurt from laying on a wooden board for 50 hours uh that the thing is like um you know sometimes i got a little claustrophobic and i'd be like oh god like i can't stand up if i wanted to and but i'd just be like you know we did our research we we tested it we buried the box for like you know what was it do you know i don't care like five ten days beforehand like we did extensive research so every time i'd be like oh god i can't move there's thousands of pounds of dirt on me I could die I'm like nope did the research trust math I'm not gonna die you know I mean I had to just remind myself multiple times like nope you're good because like it's it's it was a see-through coffin so it's different than just a normal one every time I look up I just see dirt and it's like just the only thing stopping that dirt from just suffocating me and collapsing on me it's just this glass like this thick you know and that's the only thing stand between me and whatever, like eight feet of dirt.

1:41:50So we were in one of your meetings yesterday and it's for one of your upcoming videos. And they brought up that there are boa constrictors and that boa constrictors were a real threat to this production to you. And that, you know, while they're not poisonous, they can crush your body in a matter of minutes. Yeah, exactly. So we'll keep the medic within a minute. The discussion was around where the medic should be, how many medics we should have. Yeah, we're putting two medics stations. They're close enough that they can stop me from getting killed by a boa constrictor. So have you developed an appetite for pain, for managing fear and discomfort?

1:42:30Well, I mean, we just, it's strategic. Like we don't ever do anything where I could die. Like buried alive, there was a 0 % chance anything would happen to me. Like we did our research. We've hired consultants. We spent over a quarter million dollars spending that company. Like there was no risk. I was probably safer down there than I was up above the ground. And like genuinely, I mean that I was safer in that box than driving the car home afterwards. If you really think about it, just like when they say you're safer in a plane than you are driving a car. And so, you know, it's like we don't leave anything up to chance.

1:42:58We're very tactical and we account for all that stuff. But like opportunity to die is one thing, but like just discomfort, like feeling. Oh, discomfort. Feeling claustrophobic, getting really, really sunburned. It's weird. like I like when I counted 100 ,000 or but even before that cut a table in half with plastic knives which took god knows like days of just sawing um because I was in uh math class when I was in high school and I just like I had plastic knife in my pocket from uh lunch I don't know why I put it there and I just like saw it a little bit I was like oh well you can cut a table in half like on my desk you can cut a table half a plastic knife and then I just threw it away and later that day I was like wait a minute and then I just like I ran to the store late at night and my mom's like what the f*** are you doing just buying knives she didn't know I was a YouTuber doing videos back then and I had no money or anything but I just bought like five dollars worth of plastic knives and I just grabbed one of our tables and just started cutting it and I hit record and I was like hey guys I'm going to cut this table in half of plastic knives and then it's just like I thought it would take like four hours but it's like a dozen go by and I'm not even halfway done and I'm just like cutting a table in half of plastic knives I don't know why it was so dumb I think if I was your mom and I was watching a video of you watching paint dry, I'd be like, what does Jimmy do?

1:44:11I know. What does Jimmy do? That came on the back end of counting to 100 ,000. Right. Right after I dropped out of college and had to move out. Good times. Yeah. He thought I was going crazy. Wait, so you dropped out of college and then you moved out of your... Well, have we talked about college? I don't think we've talked about that. No. Let's talk about college. Yeah, so I didn't want to go to college. I don't care. Sure, you should. I'm not saying it's bad, blah, blah, blah. But for me, I hate school. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I just want to make YouTube videos. It's all I ever wanted to do.

1:44:41That's all I ever wanted to do. But I didn't have the best grades in school. Didn't really have a job. I wasn't making enough after I graduated high school. So my mom was just like, either you go to college or you move out. Like, you're not going to live here and not go to college. Whatever. She wants what's best for me. It's not her being mean. It's like, obviously, she didn't think this magical YouTube thing would work out. So she's like, you got to have some type of future. You can't just bet it all on the internet forever until you die. and um yeah so i just i want i need to say the story in a way where it doesn't make my mom sound mean because like she she did it because she loves me but um so i go to college it's community college it's not that expensive whatever and i just couldn't stand it man it made me just so depressed i just i hate it i hate stuff i just want to be a youtuber that's it and so after two weeks literally just two weeks i just stopped going but i didn't have enough money to move out I wasn't making anything.

1:45:33So I just didn't tell my mom. I would act like I was going to college. And then I would like just sit in my car in the college campus and just work on videos or edit or just work on a script or something. And then I'd come home and I'd be like, hey, mom, college is great. And then I'd keep working. That can't last for that long. No. Thankfully, I don't remember what happened. I remember sitting on the stairs in front of one of the college classrooms. I was like talking to James, one of the people you met. And I was like, yo, I don't know what the fuck's going on, but like I've just been grinding, grinding every hour of the day.

1:46:03And I just paid like 20 grand a month. I was like, I'm ready to like tell mom that I'm failing every class and move out tomorrow. He's like, okay. And I just, I picture that because it's like 11 p.m. and I'm just pacing. And then I'm like, yeah, mom, I have zeros and everything. I haven't been going. And I was like, I'll move out tomorrow. And then I moved out the next day and she was so mad. But I was starting to finally make money. And so I could afford to move out. and there you go how much longer after it was uh that your mom started working with you probably then a year after that yeah and then i quickly got to the point where i was making her whole salary every month and it was like why are you working and people thought i was dumb the first thing i did was retire my mom um and people were like why would you do that you should save money for yourself and i was like i i love my mom she's great i'm factually the best mom on the planet like your mom's second whoever's watching this um but yeah i put her through a lot with poor grades poor everything and like i mean in a world where like you know i fail college and nothing comes out of this youtube thing it's just funny i think what i could tell from meeting your mom was that your mom loves like the story of you yeah becoming who you are today she loves it so much you go around all the other studios and offices and there's really like there's no photos of you on the wall for the most part there's no like pictures from videos screenshots There's a lot of play buttons.

1:47:25There's a lot of play buttons. I'm sure they're playing a clip of them. There's a lot of play buttons. But it wasn't until we went to the office where your mom works where we walk in and it's like a Mr. Beast museum. And I was like, okay, so she's the one who's nostalgic about this entire journey. Yeah, because before I did that thing, like two weeks into college, I was like trying to negotiate with my mom. I was like, all right, here's the deal. I'll go to college if you do all my homework. You do all the homework. She's like, no, I was like, I can't do this. I was like, I have to make videos.

1:47:59Like this is, this makes me sad. This makes me happy. And she's like, this doesn't make money. This will make money. And I'm like, but this makes me happy. And she's like, no. And that's, I forgot that part. That's when I stopped going. My mom wouldn't agree to do all my homework for me. Another funny story is, and I don't know why so early in the semester we had this, but we had to pair up with random people to do a project. And I had a partner and I just never came back. and like I've completely forgot about it but we were supposed to be working on something and like three months later he messaged me all right no three months sorry I jumped like I'm like two weeks later he was like yo um we still doing this and I was like I'm never coming back to college and he's like so do I tell the professor and uh and then he messaged me like two months later he's like oh yeah they ended up going easy on me because my partner left and he like called me and told me about it and like it was like the running bit in the class because We got a project together assigned, and then I just never came back.

1:48:55And he just left with the whole thing, and everyone else had a partner. You may have gotten him a better grade through sympathy. Exactly. That's what he said. And so I'm glad it worked out for him. But it was funny. I felt so bad. It's funny. Your mom told us that story, too, about how when you started making more than her paycheck every month, that's when she was like, oh, wow. Which was a big deal for us. That's a huge deal. Because we didn't have any money. Again, I don't want to over-dramatize it, but we really didn't have much. And so like the second I could, like she didn't have to work twice on Wednesdays and maybe could take a little bit of time off and she could like actually breathe for the first time in her life and stuff like that.

1:49:29How did she like see that? Like where was that money coming from? From AdSense or from brand deals or from everything? I know at this point. I mean, I wasn't selling merch. Yeah. I mean, I was probably doing brand deals. No, I didn't even do my first brand deal until I moved out because the 10K brand deal is my first one. And that was when I was living at my new house. So that was after I dropped out. So yeah, I was probably doing like 20, 30 grand a month in ad revenue. So whoever gave you that first 10K brand deal got a lot of bang for their buck. Adam from Gwit. Got it. He works at Current now and he's really smart.

1:50:00Oh, that's cool. He's cool. We still work together to this day. It's funny because he just does marketing for other companies. That's crazy. Yeah. You've had a lot of long-term relationships with these brands. Because I'm not going anywhere. I'm going to be here in 10 years. Yeah. That's interesting. Like with Honey and with Current. like those are like now it sounds like it's even longer term with Adam that's cool exactly I mean hiring Adam is cheat codes for your company because he just knows so many creators and like if he was just at some company that's doing like a million dollars a year in revenue or whatever I'd still probably work with him just because I like the dude you know what I mean it's kind of funny so this space now this is now the official like biggest single investment you've made oh of course by 20 billion folds you know what I mean and as we like you guys are only seeing the inside of this space but there's also a lot of space around it.

1:50:49I don't even want to go too in-depth, but more acres than you could ever need. We're going to build 20 ,000 square feet of office. We're going to build a replica of this. The problem is, like I talked about before, we have multiple warehouses, but since the videos take months to do, and I want to upload, and I do a world for a month, and if videos take 90 days to do, you know what I mean? That's 12 videos in the next 90 days you've got to do, and if you're not working on them now, then they won't happen in 90 days. And so it's the bottleneck space. You know what I mean? Like I've told you guys this a million times, but this is for, for you guys.

1:51:23Like if, if, uh, you know, one video is taking up all of our studio, well, we have 11 other videos to work on and they can't happen until that. And so, um, we just need tons of space to be able to work on videos months in advance because if we don't, they don't happen. You know what I mean? What do you think, uh, would be like a dream collaboration or a dream video to do out of here? Do you have something like that? Oh, dream collaboration or dream video. Not dream, but meaning, yeah. No, dream would be my dream collab. There you go. Yeah, I mean, if he did a face reveal, there's no way he would let me get the call for that.

1:51:59But if he did, like, in one of our videos, he just pulled off his mask, that would be epic. Yeah. Just all of them. I mean, if I can pick whatever I want, then I'll craft the ultra viral video. it'd be like corpse and dream and all these people lined up and it's just like one after another just take the mask up guaranteed 200 million views i know i when we were playing basketball last night and uh sap nap was like yeah i live with dream i was like oh wow so so you've seen the base hey you want to sketch it out for us like ask you or do i do i not ask you or what do i uh what do i do What color is his eyes?

1:52:37Yeah, that was funny. Yeah, that would be a very viral video. That would be wild. Of course, but obviously that wouldn't happen. You just don't need all this space for that. That's true. True. Or maybe you do. Maybe you do it in a way where you do need some space. My dream is uploading consistently, which that is a bigger thing. Some months I don't even upload videos. Some months we upload four videos. Some months we upload one. It's just like. What does consistently mean for you? Is that once a week or is that, or are you just saying any type of consistency? Right now I just want to upload once a week.

1:53:04But long term in the future, like three plus years from now, I'd love to get to the point where we're doing two original giant spectacles. Never more seen better than everyone else. Fucking huge, ginormous, best video in the goddamn world videos twice a week. Do you think that any of your other videos, or sorry, do you think any of the other channels will pass your main channel ever? No. You don't think so? Even like foreign language, even like India. Like could India, the Hindi one, could that pass the main one? audience wise more people could watch it but i doubt it would pass the main just because you know it's dubbed it will get up there though a large percentage like the espanol channel and i'm sure you're you're showing it as we're doing this like it's getting two plus million views per video and you know i mean it's the same video it's dubbed you know what i mean yeah so which that already is wild for dubbed content totally but it's like this it's actually a classic strategy in every other yeah every disney film or whatever or i'm a huge fan of anime and like i i saw this one video of Naruto where they like compare a really emotional scene in like 10 different languages and it's just funny.

1:54:02I mean, when I used to go to India when I was a kid, I would watch Friends in Hindi. Really? And I'd sit there, yeah. Do you speak Hindi? I understand it fluently. I don't speak it. Can I just hear a sentence in Hindi? Sure, yeah. Come on. Yeah. Namaste apke sehum. Interesting. Okay. That means, hi, how are you doing? Tariq, you want to talk in Arabic? Let's do it all. What's that word you always say? Habibi? Habibi. Habibi is like for a friend or salam alaikum alaikum alaikum alaikum. It's like peace be upon you. It's calming just to hear people talk about it. It is. I don't know why. They're watching to learn more about YouTube.

1:54:38They're taking notes and I'm just like, hey, talk in Arabic. And they're like, okay, cameraman talks in Arabic. Comedian cameraman speaks Arabic. It's interesting, if you don't know what someone else is saying and it's a different language, you can sort of like surrender the fact that you need to understand. Exactly. or that you need to pay attention to comprehend. You're just listening as if it's like. I kind of get that. You know? Yeah. Where you're just like, I don't have to. I just get to enjoy that. Yeah, just sit there and la la la. Yeah. But that's why visual storytelling is so important.

1:55:09That's true. Stuff that doesn't need language. That's like the stuff that, at least I've seen, goes the most. And I know we've been going on for a while, but now it is the time to hit us with the most important question because you're re-hooking the viewers. You're telling them this video is not over. What's the big question to keep them watching? Last time you were on our channel, you told everyone that if they subscribed, you would pick one of them and give away$1 ,000. Or actually. No, you guys did. You told them that we would give away$1 ,000. Did you do it? Yeah, we did it. I was about to say, because I don't do it.

1:55:38No, no, we did it and we filmed it too. My question now for you is, if people are watching this video and they subscribe, how much money do they get? If either we give it or you give it? Okay, how about this? If you subscribe, not you, but one random person that does, I'll give you this Gatorade bottle. I'm going to give it to you. Okay. And they'll give you$500. Okay. Deal. Yeah, you can get this unopened. Actually, no. Unopened. Here, let me make it less valuable for you. Here, we'll just drink a sip. Clip this. Sell this on eBay with this clip. Someone pay$500 for this. There you go. We are literally going to take this, and it will be this exact one.

1:56:18So if you subscribe to the channel, you can win this, and you can win$500. There you go. We'll pick one random person. And last time we picked someone, we gave them a thousand bucks and they were really excited. Oh my God. Wow. Phenomenal. And that could be you and this could be yours. All you got to do is hit that subscribe button. We're closing in on a million subscribers. The second they just start getting 70 % retention on a video. We're closing in the second they do the things I tell them to. Yeah. All right. I can't wait to find out who gets this. Whoever gets it, don't drink it. Watch this gets like NFT'd.

1:56:51That's going to get NFT'd.

1:56:55I'm happy with that that was awesome that means we should abruptly end it for good retention