Is MrBeast still the most creative person on YouTube?

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1:15It's one of my favorite tools on the internet right now for our creativity. And now back to the show. Is Mr. B still actually creative or is he just so rich that it doesn't matter anymore? That's the first question that we answer today on the show. We're also going to get into Ethan Klein's dispute with BBTV. We're going to answer the question, should you buy views or not? And we're going to talk about what skills you should build if you want to work for a creator. Welcome to Creator Support, the show where we answer your questions about the business of being a creator. If you make it to the deep end, let us know.

1:48All right, so we're going to start the episode with the most engaged post in the subreddit. Hot topic. Hot topic. A lot of conversation. The question comes from you slash things elsewhere. And the question is, is Mr. Beast still actually creative or just so rich and famous that it doesn't matter anymore? Interesting question. So this surrounds Jimmy's most recent video, which was$1 versus$500 ,000 plane ticket. And a lot of the conversation is exploring like his past, his history with being innovative and creative on the platform. And if this concept is basically an iteration of stuff that has already existed on YouTube, whether it's Casey Neistat's airplane review or even, you know, the vast amount of content on YouTube, that's $1 versus X dollar.

2:43And I think it's an interesting topic to discuss. I mean, obviously, based on how many people are chatting about it in the subreddit. But I was curious for us to pick this up. The first thing I'll say is that creatively, I think it is okay to look at a concept and say, how could I do this better? So the reviewing a really expensive airline ticket, airline seat, obviously that's been done over and over and over again. With his most recent video, he did it to a degree that no one has ever done before. And yes, money did play a factor. You do need money to be able to review a, what is it, a$500 ,000?

3:22It's completely insane. The last one is$500 ,000 rent an airplane. I went into the video looking at the thumbnail and title and being like, I don't really want to watch this. I feel like I've seen stuff like this. Clicked on it and somehow made it all the way to the end. And I was like, God, Jimmy, you got me. You know, this was actually really, really fun to watch. And I'd never seen anything like it. And I think that's one thing that's very important when you think about this. something that we've talked about before is you can be first to an idea and that's interesting, but you can also be better.

3:56And this is a situation where this concept has been done before, but this was a better version of it because he went further than anyone has gone before. I do think that there's a, there's a bit of a zoom out here on like, how do we define creativity on YouTube? Because I think when we look back at some of the concepts that, that Jimmy was doing back to what I just said about like, you can be first, you can be better. He was first to a lot of concepts. Right. And that I think is where people feel like that's creativity when you're first concepts that no one would have thought the algorithm would prefer or that would result in money.

4:38Yeah. Right. Like from the platform or from brand deals or anything like that, like saying Logan Paul sure a hundred thousand times or whatever it was, that's not a concept. It wasn't back then something you would think, yeah, that'll get viewership. Or what was that one? It's like a big red button in the middle of the thumbnail. It says, press this red button, get$100 ,000. Yeah. Or there's one that's like, it keeps coming up on my home feed, which is the dollar amount updates constantly where it's like, however many views this video has, I'll pay my friend a dollar, you know, and it's like continuously updating.

5:10Like those are all, those were all new and innovative ideas that we'd never seen before. And I think that's where people feel like, oh, that was, that was creativity. Like it was, it was stuff that we had never seen. It was first. And I think the reality is as, as a creator progresses in their career and more and more money comes into the picture, more and more staff comes into the picture, their creativity goes from, you know, just innovating with the constraints that they have and into the ideas to actually pouring the creativity in other ways. parts of the business. And I think that's something that you're going to start to see with more creators and specifically with Jimmy.

5:51Knowing Jimmy and some of the stuff he's doing, like what I know is that he's putting a lot of his creativity into his businesses now, Feastables, Beast Burger, but I think specifically Feastables. There's some firsts there that we're seeing, you know, the style of marketing they're doing, the style of thinking about the concept of this is actually a first of its kind chocolate brand where it has access to hundreds of millions of people on a regular basis. And then how can you play with that? Like you see in the airplane video, almost like more than two of the scenes, they're eating feastables and feastables is integrated into it.

6:29So you can kind of see that, like he's shifting some of his creativity into the products and a new canvas. But in the confines of the videos, Do you think money makes creativity less relatable? And then it is no longer seen necessarily as creativity. Yeah, maybe. Like it's easy to relate to the DIY nature of like vlogging. Sure. Right. And see something creative and think, oh, I could do that. Or see him, you know, again, like saying someone's name a hundred thousand times in his bedroom. That doesn't look that nice. And go, wow, like I really want to root for this person's creativity. for this person's quest.

7:10Yeah. And then once they have money, you start to question, is it creativity or is it a desire for more money, more viewership? And I'm not saying one is the reality, but that the perception is easier to come across as a viewer. This idea that like he was perhaps underrated and seen as incredibly creative. Yeah. And then once he hits a degree of subscribers and success, he is now rated. Right. You know, and it's harder to appreciate creativity. What he did with Squid Game, reenacting it was unbelievable. It was truly like an art piece the way that he did that to that degree. But when it takes a lot of money, do people just go, oh, it's kind of like a movie.

7:49Yeah, that's really interesting. You're just using people to do that. I do think as a consumer, I do really appreciate constraints. And I like when I watch someone do something that feels like they have to put it together just out of their brain power. you know like they didn't have a lot of support to put it together they had a small amount of things that I have access to as well but they were able to create something that I couldn't create and that the incentive maybe wasn't necessarily money it was making that idea happen the thing yeah yeah I totally see that and I think what's interesting is two things are happening in concert one is like a lot of things that Jimmy is doing are being seen now as are being rated right like Like he gave away a car recently in a, in a TikTok where he tipped a waitress with a car.

8:39The car was wrapped with the feastables and people were upset. And he came out and said, he was like, yeah, she didn't want it to be wrapped. So we, we took it off, you know, like, but part of the video, it was wrapped in the feastables thing. And then we took it off. What I was saying, two things are happening in concert. One is like, people are really upset. And the second is that his videos are performing and reaching a size and scope of people and audience that he's never really hit before. I remember a couple of years ago chatting with him and I thought it was completely insane that he was like, his goal was 30 million views on each video.

9:12And I was like, that's completely insane. And he would track how many days it would take to get to 30 million views. I looked at his channel recently and I was like, I don't think there's a video really under a hundred million views recently. And in a like three week period. Yeah. That's completely insane, the size and scale. So like both things are happening in concert where people are kind of like, you know there's there's some voices I think of people who maybe watched him early on who feel a sense of ownership of like that underdog story that underrated guy who kind of was coming up and then also him reaching this like mainstream critical mass of so many people watching and I think that plays into it as well of not feeling like he's this underground guy who comes from YouTube anymore he's just so widely talked about in the world that it's not like the cool band that you see, you know, in a small theater, it's now like the band that plays on the radio.

10:04He also has been so copied and emulated to an extent where the majority of the platform on any given day can kind of look like one of his videos. And I think that also plays to his disadvantage at this point now that he is seen as less creative or less unique simply because of how many people are trying to emulate what he's done. Yeah. So the question of like, is Mr. B still actually creative? Um, I would argue that he is. Jimmy is definitely a creative person and he's putting his creativity in different places. And, and I also think all of that changes when your size and scope gets this big, when you have hundreds of employees and we're watching it in real time, we're watching it change in real time.

10:49This happens to a lot of entrepreneurs and, creators. And I think probably he's also maturing and growing up and wanting to put his creativity in different places. Like, I think he's connecting more to the entrepreneurial side of all of this, you know, rather than the kid in his bedroom, figuring out how to get, you know, how to make it on YouTube. He's now like a major player in the world of business trying to figure out how to innovate in that space. Yeah. I would say, I think he's still creative. I agree with you. He's perhaps shifted where he's focusing his time for me i i still think of him as that creator who made a video and set it to publish five years from right the day like hi me in five years yeah that to me is so incredibly unique and creative and uh he's one of these people that will always continue to kind of play with the platform yeah in my mind right and uh i i still think of him like that how many more of those do you think we have the like i don't know you think there's i'm sure he's gotta be more, right?

11:46Yeah. I'm sure there's more coming. Like there's probably one that he made at that era of like high me in 30 years. He plans to do this forever. So I'm sure. Yeah. We'll see. It's a really, that's a really cool idea. That would be really fun to do. Like to have a video just come out. You think that would be fun to do? What? Like ourselves? Yeah. That would freak me out. What? High me in 10 years? Yeah. I think it would have been cool 10 years ago. Like imagine when we started on YouTube, had we made one of those time capsules and we were sitting here in this office, like watching that, that would have been unbelievable.

12:16I guess I feel like we already made those. Because there's videos on the internet of us. Because there are so many videos of us from 10 years ago. But I think what's hard to latch onto as creators and makers and people who commit to this career for such a long time is like, what would have been so crazy to me as a 21 year old uploading to YouTube? Like, and the answer is this, right? the fact that we're actually sitting here doing this as a career with a team and a studio, this would have been really crazy. And I think that there's a level of like appreciation that sometimes gets lost in the day-to-day stress of, of being a creator or the business of it, where you're like, wait a second, that was, that was the whole thing, you know, when I was 10 years ago.

12:57And I think that's, what's beautiful about watching those videos from Jimmy is like the appreciation of, Oh my God, like, look how far this is. look at this. Like this is what I, I couldn't even fathom this, you know, and now it's here. So I think that would be cool. Everyone should do that. There should be like a time capsule button on YouTube, you know, put this in a time capsule. But then it wouldn't be unique anymore. Send it to me as a VHS tape with a VHS player because I won't have one of those. That's cool. You know, or send it to me in like a tangible form in 25 years. I had an idea for a doc.

13:28Okay. You collect a bunch of VHS tapes from garage sales and from the internet and just see what's on him and start following the stories. You think people are selling their personal family VHS tapes? I think you can find them all over the place. Or you think you want to watch old movies? Look, I just came up with this idea. I think it's interesting. Is Colin Rosenblum still creative or has he lost his mind? That's the next question we're answering. I think he's still creative. Okay. This episode is brought to you by LifeLock. When you visit the doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID, and contact details.

14:02It's just one of the many places that has your personal info. And if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. LifeLock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40 % your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. So just wanted to bring up some of the discussions. Last week, we talked a lot at length about AI. And there were some comments on that episode that I wanted to bring up. One in particular from Learn English with Bob the Canadian. That sounds like a great channel.

14:41If you think about video games as a similar situation, many people prefer to play a video game against people rather than against AI. It's true that some people do enjoy playing against AI, but esports will probably always be people versus people because it's just more interesting. I think YouTube will be the same. maybe the script will be written by AI, but the actual person in the video and their ability to deliver the lines is what you'll connect with. The personal touch will remain core to a successful channel, in my opinion. I thought that was a really good point to bring up. Do you remember playing video games against the computer when you were younger?

15:12It's like kind of fun. But kind of strange. But kind of strange. It's not that fun. You don't feel any sort of way when you beat the computer. Yeah, and I think that is such an interesting comparison to the rest of the world of AI of like, yeah it'll be interesting but some people might like it but a lot of people will want that that engagement with another human yeah I agree I was watching a video of Donald Glover break down some of his most iconic like TV shows and music videos from GQ and he said something really interesting he said that in his This Is America music video he tried to make it seem like one shot because he said he wanted people to feel like they were there in the moment for the entirety of that moment.

15:55And he said, the internet robs you of moments. Interesting. And I think because things are probably so jump cut, so edited, so manicured. And I think that will be something that we'll see too, is like creators who are filming themselves without jump cuts, long form. So you can feel like you were truly there with a human, especially with the rise of AI when things can be so manicured and robotic. Yeah. It's like, prove to me that I was really there. Give me dead air. Yeah. If that's what actually happened. You know, what's interesting is there's areas where you want that. But last night I was telling you that I was playing around with chat GPT because I'm trying to plan a vacation for me and Katie.

16:36And I just described us to chat GPT and said, give me five destinations. And it gave me five destinations that were great. And then I asked it to go deeper. I was like, okay, cool. What can I do in these places? Okay, cool. What hotels can I stay at? And then I looked up the hotels and I was like, these are totally hotels I would want to stay at. And then how do I get to the hotel? And they gave me transportation of like, how do you get there? And then what are the flights? And that I didn't really want the dead air of talking to like a travel agent or the other incentives of talking to a travel agent or someone else, or even searching it on Google with the sponsored ads.

17:10Like I, it, I don't know if it's pure, but it felt pure. It was like, this is a very rapid conversation I'm having that I think is void of other incentives outside of just telling me the answer. And that was really nice. You know, like that was a very nice, uh, exchange between me and Mr. GPT. Yeah. I've been calling it Mr. GPT to just try and you're deep in AI. Yeah. I mean, I get deep in this stuff, you know, like I'm so fascinated by it. I do think it's interesting to see where humans will want to trust AI and where, where they will want to trust humans. Yeah. And I do think advice may actually end up with AI and entertainment on the side of humans.

17:58Yeah. Whoa. That's interesting. Yeah. I think that's probably right. Right. Yeah. It feels, it feels currently for some reason, I trust AI more. Because when you're asking chat GPT, it's not just giving you one option. it's giving you 10 and you still get to choose so your perception is that chat gpt is giving you the right answer well i think another thing is giving you nine of the wrong answer yeah i think one thing that's really great is that ai gives me sometimes things that i know are the wrong answer which then i can rule things out right like process of elimination is a really great process as human beings so you want a ton of options that you're like definitely not that but that just actually helped me get closer.

18:38And that's been helping us with YouTube titles quite a bit. I, like you said last week, I don't know that there's going to be a YouTube title that you see from us that hasn't run through AI. That's pretty crazy, but it gives us stuff that we know we definitely don't like. And then options that we do like. So it's, it's a fascinating thing, man. But I love that video game thing. I thought that was really cool. Did you see what was happening between Ethan Klein and BBTV? I actually have not. I heard a little bit about it. So let me explain it to you because I found it to be a pretty interesting situation and also a situation where I don't know that I've ever been on Ethan Klein's side.

19:12I just don't typically watch any of his stuff or engage with him. But in this scenario, I can understand it. So it's between him and BBTV. BBTV is. They've sent us a million emails. They send every creator a million emails. I'm sure if you're a creator, you've gotten an email from BBTV. They are an MCN, which is a multi-channel network. This is one of the first ways that business was conducted in the creator economy was through multi-channel networks. And that was essentially, or still is to this day, this process of saying, Hey, you have a YouTube channel and you're making content. Now I can, I would like to sign your YouTube channel and help you optimize your content, which was a very nebulous thing that all MCNs used to say.

19:59They would help you make sure it was getting discovered through optimizing the title or the tags or the descriptions and giving you access to a music library, different, you know, things to help you. And then there would be some level of revenue share between you and I. So I would collect all of your Google AdSense and then pay you a large percentage of it, but I would keep some of it as the MCN. And that grew into MCN's also brokering brand deals, you know, eventually helping with collaborations. For reference to it, we should acknowledge that the LaCrosse network was a multi-channel network.

20:32Yeah, that's right. Our first channel was a multi-channel network. Totally. There were 60 plus channels all about LaCrosse that we represented and helped. There was a varying level of deals, right? And with the bigger channels, how the deal worked was always typically 100-0, which meant if you're a really large channel that I want in my network, I'll actually give you 100 % of the AdSense. I'll still collect it, but you're going to take 100%. and then I have the right to sell brand deals or any specialty type of deals and then we'll take a percentage of that. So it's building a relationship with a creator.

21:06It's like a different type of management company. So normally I think, let's just say Google does a lot of the ad sales for the ads that show up before YouTube videos. But there are scenarios where other sales teams can sell in hopes of selling at a premium to make more money than maybe Google would have sold. And that's what's happening with MCN. Totally, because they can batch. Again, we were part of a sports MCN, so you can batch sports channels together and then sell that at a higher CPM because it's specific sports channels. And that's not sold by Google. That's sold by the MCN. So now Ethan Klein signs with BBTV, which kind of surprised me.

21:41But it was a very unique situation. He had a Israeli bank account and couldn't set up an AdSense account, so needed a partner to basically receive the AdSense money and send it to him. Okay. So he signed with BBTV for that purpose. It was a hundred zero split. Now, what ended up happening over the past couple of years is they rolled out YouTube channel memberships for the H3 podcast. And with YouTube channel memberships, they started making a lot of money. And from their understanding, the contract said that any revenue that was Google revenue was a hundred zero split, which said in the contract that it's between AdSense and could be memberships too.

22:23Okay. or subscriptions, as it says. And I think that term subscriptions is, you know, as BBTV ends up saying, is kind of up for debate. But basically Ethan went and audited his membership revenue against how much BBTV had paid them and recognized BBTV has been keeping 30 % of the membership revenue for the past couple of years to the tune of$620 ,000. Wow. And so he sent an email saying, hey, maybe this was a mistake because we have a hundred zero deal. And BVTV came back and said, well, memberships is not a part of that deal. So that falls into our revenue share. Now, obviously no communication over the past couple of years, like no, you know, amendment, no, you know, clarification of like, hey, you guys just launched memberships.

23:12Here's how that's going to work. So now he's, you know, going all out. And what's happened is other creators are now, it's prompted other creators to look at their membership revenue and all of these creators are noticing that BBTV has been taking their membership revenue, although they didn't know that and they assumed that it wasn't that. So in that case, is that 30 % off the top from YouTube and then 30 % from the MCN? Yeah. So that's really substantial. It's a lot of revenue. So the creator only makes 40 % of their channel membership revenue. Yeah. That's pretty brutal. I think it's kind of illuminating that MCNs are still around because it's kind of, you know, an old model in our world.

23:54But as I watched it, I was like, okay, this is a, this is between the business and, you know, Ethan and the rest of the creators. Like I can't really speak to what exactly the, I don't have the contract in front of me. I don't know what was discussed, but I do think that we're at a point that I want to caution all creators that whatever agreements you get into right now, our industry is moving at a really fast pace. You signed, you know, he signed that agreement in 2017. it's 2023 things have changed and if you're not clarifying amending or like looking at what's going on having a really good lawyer make sure that as you're updating your business things are still you know ironclad and tight that's something that i think is so important right now the internet's moving at a rapid pace things are changing we can make an agreement today that can feel completely different in one year from now because youtube has changed right like it can completely disrupt what you're doing if you don't pay attention to these things.

24:56I would also caution that even if it's just a brand deal agreement, there can be a lot more in that agreement than just you're going to integrate the brand into the video. There can be like name, image, and likeness rights in perpetuity. They can use clips of it that could show up on any platform at any time. They could run it on TV. There's a lot of different things in there that you need to be aware of because it's most likely not just, you know, integrating the talking points into that singular video. I think it's, I think it's incredibly, uh, I think what, what, why I wanted to amplify this was to raise awareness for like looking at your partnerships as a creator and being really, really tight about the types of agreements you enter into and recognizing that the industry is changing really fast and that you might need to sign shorter term agreements right now.

25:43you might have to say hey it's not going to be a three-year agreement you know or a agreement that auto renews we're going to look at it after a year yeah and clearly in this scenario it's like accountant needs to be really dialed because ethan shouldn't have had to audit that himself and lawyer needs to be really dialed yeah right so those two things like they need to be really really tight right now um as the industry is moving at such a rapid pace but it's an interesting scenario i'm curious to see how it nets out another thing that happened was bbtv just delayed the payments. So it looks like something's going on with them.

26:14Like they are not paying any creators right now. Wow. So I would be really cautious if you're in that, you know, BBTV world or, or with, with any other MCN, like just take a hard look at, at, at what you're doing. Um, and what that agreement is like. Interesting. Is he suing them? You'd have to assume. Okay. Yeah. I mean, he says, okay, yeah, it'll probably happen, you know, and we'll probably continue to follow that story. But yeah, I think what's, what's positive about it is that it's, it's illuminating something here. did you see that lo-fi girl's missing? no I did not I had no idea it's actually really smart yeah so on the lo-fi girl channel there's like a big question mark on the video and where'd she go?