Jon Youshaei: MrBeast Reveals His Biggest Secret (2024)

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This episode is an interview on Jon Youshaei’s Youtube channel, where he interviews Jimmy Donaldson, MrBeast, about the launch of ViewStats Pro, the software tools that MrBeast has used internally for years to create some of Youtube’s most viral videos. It was published on Youtube on May 28, 2024.

Episode link: MrBeast Reveals His Biggest Secret (Interview)

MrBeast: That felt great to say because it's the first time I've ever talked about it publicly.

Jon Y.: For six years, you've been building this internal tool. It's basically been the key to how you decided thumbnails, titles, formats, and ideas. Why are you giving away all your secrets now?

MrBeast: These are really good, and it would be kind of cool if other people could use them.

Jon Y.: What's the biggest brand deal you've said no to? I don't usually talk about this stuff publicly, but... I analyzed your past 50 videos. Can I put you on the hot seat to do a live experiment? Woo!

MrBeast: I'll spend $120 million on content this year, buying private islands or building a city. I just want to be the most subscribed-to channel.

I found your secret Instagram. I have never had anyone ask me that. It's like someone stabbed me, and then I'm just like, take the knife out.

I hate this video. How's your mental health?

SPEAKER_01: You're very good at what you do.

Jon Y.: Jimmy, thanks so much for having me in Greenville, man. I'm so excited to be here.

MrBeast: I know. This is going to be awesome. It's your first time, right?

Jon Y.: This is my first time.

MrBeast: We're in our second studio. After this, I want to take him to my main studio so he can see it. So yeah, the cool stuff hasn't even happened yet.

Jon Y.: Well, dude, I feel like this is the first time you're showing this studio publicly, which is your thumbnail studio. So I had to open up by asking, where the heck are we? And what do you film here?

MrBeast: Yeah, so to be specific, you're in a church. When I first started, there were no warehouses or studios in Greenville, North Carolina. There are a lot of churches though. We're in the Bible Belt. So I bought a church and then we converted it by just taking all the pews out, converting it into a studio. That's where we started filming.

The problem is, it's not that big. Eventually, we had to move as our videos got bigger to a new studio we built. So we converted this into a thumbnail place. This is one of our four thumbnail rooms.

Jon Y.: Yeah, it's insane. I've been spending time with the thumbnail team. And I know when you called me, you have some exciting news to share, which we'll get into in a bit here.

But I have to ask a few more questions because when I was here and they're doing thumbnail shoots, everything was so precise. And I have this visual, which is 40 variations of thumbnails. Are you going to throw it up on the screen? Of course, man.

MrBeast: Well, I mean, one time, Colin, Samir, and I did this, and they didn't throw it up on the screen.

Jon Y.: I was like, "What is he looking at?" I already got my team. We have this as pre-vis. So our editors are already putting it up.

MrBeast: Colin, Samir got one whopped.

Jon Y.: But yeah, tell me, tell me a little bit about how you shoot thumbnails here, because I heard that you come in here for about an hour a month and you get a year's worth of thumbnails.

MrBeast: So if it's like me laying in sand here, we might potentially lay a bunch of sand on the ground and then put up a high camera and film me just laying in the sand.

If I had to actually go to the place to shoot them, I'd be shooting thumbnails for like five hours every single day.

So it's nice to be able to lay on the beach on a desert island without having to go there.

Jon Y.: Yeah, totally. OK, so dude, I know when we were chatting on the phone, you mentioned for six years you've been building this internal tool. And it's basically been the key to how you've decided thumbnails, you've found outlier videos. And it's a lot of data that not even YouTube has in YouTube Studio, which having worked there before just blew my mind that you were able to build this.

And I have a lot of questions about that. Yes. Tell me about the tool, and why are you giving away all your secrets now? Yeah.

MrBeast: As you can tell if you look at our channel, obviously, we're very analytically optimized. And over the years, I've just built a lot of tools. A little while ago, we were looking at all the tools, and I thought, "Man, these are really good." It would be kind of cool if other people could use them, especially smaller creators. And so that's why we started viewstats.com because I felt like all these public websites where you could see YouTubers' data just weren't good enough.

There's no other website where you can see whether someone's views come from longs or shorts. You know, no other websites allow you to track actual video-by-video performance to see what a video is out of 10 on other people's channels. So that's what we were building, like our own version of Social Blade. But then I realized, well, I have all these other tools I've been building for our channel, and maybe others might find them valuable too.

But yeah, it was pretty scary because these things are, you know, as you've used, they're pretty insane. The problem, though, is these things require a lot of data, and we have a giant team to turn them into something on the website that's actually usable, which is why it's on ViewStats Pro. Just to convert our tools into something people could actually use costs over $2 million. And then we have a roadmap with a dozen other tools we want to roll out over time.

So that's why ViewStats is a free site, but what we're talking about is ViewStats Pro. I just want to make sure it makes sense to them because people might be a little confused. But yeah, it's basically, I just tried to, for as cheap as possible, take everything I use on my channel and give it to small creators so they can use it to get an advantage.

Also, that felt great to say because that's the first time I've ever talked about it publicly. Really? Yeah. So that's why I was trying to make sure everyone understands it because they're going to be like, "What's viewstats.com? What does this mean?" because I've literally never talked about it. I've never even tweeted about it.

Jon Y.: And even the free tool is great. We're going to talk about a lot of stuff that will be valuable regardless. But I want to talk about that ideation process. Oh, yes. I thought it was so interesting how you've studied outliers.

And I want to talk about that video, the dollar versus series, and talk about the inspiration. Because I don't think people realize how you came to that. And then I got a ton of follow-ups with that.

MrBeast: Yeah, 100%. So for the $1 versus, the thing is, we've all seen BuzzFeed do it. But also, not only BuzzFeed, but it's just like people across every format on YouTube, beauty channels, gaming channels, everyone was doing videos where they'd compare something cheap to something expensive. And they usually did well.

And what I like to do is if I see something going viral across multiple formats all across YouTube, then it's like, "Okay, that seems to be something people really like." And they’re really interested in that content. Maybe I should just do that in a really beast way on the channel.

So like if a beauty channel does $1 versus $100 makeup palette and that pops off, and then someone does $1 versus $100 sushi and that pops off, and a video gamer does $1 or $100 computer versus this $10,000 computer, then it's like, "Okay, people seem to like this." I'm gonna do a $1 hotel versus a million-dollar hotel and it works, yeah.

Jon Y.: I saw that outlier from BuzzFeed's channel was a plus 50x. Yeah, exactly. So you could see it was a crazy outperformance.

MrBeast: Essentially, when I tried to think of how, because Viewset's probably built it where we can help small creators just do better. When I try to think of one of the most... I can't think of another word than OP. It means overpowered, if you're not a gamer. Sometimes I say that, and people look at me weird.

Tools are to help you brainstorm ideas, because I think that's one of our bread and butters. And one of the best ways to brainstorm tools, I thought, would be to give you access to outliers, which is, like you said, essentially like if videos do. It basically shows you every video on YouTube that performs multiples better than the average on that channel.

So if a person is getting a million views a video, and then they upload a video and it gets 5 million views, why did that video do five times better? And we just give you a collection of videos like that that performed really well so you can brainstorm based off of it. So hopefully, you can also have outliers.

Jon Y.: How many of your videos would you say are outliers? This tool has been internal for six years now.

MrBeast: Uh, based off outliers, because the thing is like, I mean, honestly, one of my earliest ideas was buying a car with pennies. But this is maybe even before we started tracking data. And I just saw someone bought Gucci with pennies. And I was like, oh, that seemed to work. Let me go buy a car with pennies.

Honestly, throughout the last six years, it's been a big just way for me to brainstorm. But it's hard, though, because I don't want people to use, don't like see an outlier and just do the exact video. You always have to take it and ideally put a spin on it, a twist on it, do it your own way. Because if you just recreate what's already there, well, it's already popped off, like it's not going to work.

But if you use it as inspiration, which is what I want to get across, and then you creatively come up with your own version, that's where they work, right? Almost everything we've done has never been done before. But yes, for the ideas, this is just one of many ways to get inspired to come up with the idea.

Jon Y.: I think Outlier Search is going to open the floodgates. And I actually have a little spectrum that I created because I was thinking about it, too. What is the difference between, like, copying and pasting and plagiarism, which is not good, and remixing and elevating?

I think it's the difference between copy with taste versus copy and paste. I think copy with taste, which you do such a good job of, is like elevating the past, giving credit, and then blending from different sources.

Yeah, versus a lot of people copy and paste. It's like they're just... if you watch someone's video and you can't tell the difference between their video and my video besides the budget, then it's like, yeah, you're copy and paste. But yeah, but like...

MrBeast: You know, Ryan and I might sometimes do similar videos. I'm not even saying he's copied. But like, Ryan and I could, like, I'll go visit hotel rooms, $1 versus. Ryan will go visit scary Airbnbs. And it doesn't feel the same, right? And that's the thing. Like, Ryan has his own voice. He's quirky and he's just, you know, let scenes breathe more and blah blah, and that's like Ryan's style.

And then our style is a little bit quicker and just show you cool things and spending more money and making it epic. So yeah, that's not that he's copying us, but in general, that would be like doing it with taste. And then the copy and paste is, yeah, you know, there are tons of other people who, after our hotel video, just went literally sometimes hit the same hotels, same thing, use my same text on screen, speak like me, act like me, use my cuts, use the same timing, pacing.

And it's like, be more like Ryan, invent your own style. We need more people like that. We need fewer people that just look at Ryan, look at me and other big creators and just, you know, literally copy and paste. Like if people wanted to watch my style video, they'll just watch my video. We don't need someone else doing my videos with a lower budget and less effort. It's like, we need people doing their own version of it with their own unique spin and taste, you know?

Jon Y.: I think it's also interesting. Another way to find outliers is from your past work or other channels.

So I was talking with Chucky, who you co-founded ViewStats with, and I thought it was fascinating that actually one of the origins for the ages one through 100 deciding who gets $250,000 came from a gaming video that you made, which had virtually zero budget.

But can you talk about how you look for outliers in your past videos?

MrBeast: 100%. So I was like, we need to do this again. And I didn't like the title and thumbnail on this gaming video, but I loved the content. It was one of my favorite gaming videos.

So I was like, let's bring back the style, the content, and then just reinvent the title and thumbnail, where hopefully people click on it. And yeah, it worked really well.

So in that case, yeah, we doubled down on the content. Because it's not always clickbait, obviously.

Jon Y.: And I also looked at your MrBeast Reacts channel, which I know you're not making content there, but there's still a ton of people making Reacts content across YouTube.

MrBeast: That's probably where "Outliers" is the best: the inspiration.

Jon Y.: Talk to me about these two videos, because I found the original Outliers, and then I saw how you reacted to them.

And obviously, there's a lot of work that goes into Elevate and Copy With Taste, but how did you think about those?

MrBeast: Well, exactly. I mean, it's essentially that we would just react. We try to react to the most viral stuff because obviously if it went viral, then people like it. You know what I mean? And like in this instance, it might not be as analytical as it seems. I mean, so the video we reacted to is "I strapped a GoPro on a fish." I mean, you don't need data to tell you that's cool. They put a GoPro on a fish, and it's also that, and it's also like we have to make good content so it has to be things me and Chris were interested in.

So, you know, that checks the box Chris and Jimmy would like, make good content reacting to it. It's cool. And then, yeah, it's also an outlier that would perform. Same thing with the watermelon, like the world's fastest cutting of a watermelon. Like, that's just very interesting. So, because I don't want people to get so analytical that they forget about content because it's a yin and a yang.

Because one of the biggest things people forget too is whether or not people click on your video, a huge factor is their experience with your last video. And so, if they've watched five of your videos and they didn't enjoy it, it doesn't matter what your title and thumbnail is. They're going to see a Ryan Trahan or a Mark Rober video in your video. And they'll be like, "The last five times I clicked on your video, eh. The last five times I clicked on Ryan, I enjoyed it. I laughed. I had a good time. It was a vibe." They're going to click on Ryan.

Get messed up. And so, that's where it's like you have to, I would say it's like focus, like in the pendulum, focus more on content than you do clickbait. But don't ever let it swing too far because it still does matter, if that makes sense.

Jon Y.: Check this out: Jimmy signed three of his Time Magazine covers that are going to be given away to you if you subscribe and ring the notification bell. Plus, you're not going to want to miss the other two videos that we filmed with Jimmy while we were here.

The next video is going to be a full breakdown of one of his best videos and why he made certain decisions in the edit and filming. He pointed out things I've never seen him talk about before. Then we're going to take you behind the scenes of his shoots, how he shoots shorts, his main channel videos, and just behind the scenes with his meetings. I cannot believe some of the access that he gave us.

So subscribe, ring the notification bell, and three of you, I'll make sure to ship this out and announce the winner soon. All right, back to the video. I analyzed your past 50 videos, Jimmy, and I noticed that they fall into nine different categories. There are so many things I want to get into. I wanted to share this with you. Okay. So these are your different thumbnails broken down into series.

MrBeast: So over on the left, he has our Protect series where, you know, we did protect $500,000 to keep it. I thought that was a pretty good video. And after we filmed it, I was like, I like this. We should double down on it and do two more. And then as we doubled down on it, I was like, oh, this is kind of repetitive. And people, honestly, I would say that's like the biggest flop of a series we've done in a while. People just didn't really, you know, they're like, it's good, but they didn't care that much. And so that's dead.

And if you look here, you'll see like most of these go more than three. That one, I was like, all right, we're done. We're done. I don't like it. And so, you know, not every time you hit, but speak. So that's probably like the worst format series, whatever you want to call it. We've had. The best is the $1 versus that crushed. I think in like the last 365 days, I think plane ticket is like the most viewed video on all of YouTube. That's not an ad, or something close like that.

And so for the $1 versus, I have the opposite problem. I think we might have stopped at one video too early. We did one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Holy crap. Yeah, we did eight of them. But they were really spread out over a year. People really liked it. And it's something anyone can understand, whether you're 10 or you're 50. Watching us drive a $1 car all the way up to $100 million car is just sick. And that was also a lot of fun.

So yeah, I try to end like, 'cause like if you do a series long enough, it's like exciting, exciting, then it's not really exciting. And then if you keep doing it, it becomes kind of lame and people churn out. I try to kind of stop like here before it loses excitement. So I try to stop series early before people have to tell me to stop them. I like to, you know, because if not, then you just become known for that. So I like to always keep things fresh and keep changing it up.

I think that though is one of the few ones where I kind of wish I did one or two more because that was like, it's crazy. I mean, these are averaging like 250, 300 million views, every single one of them. And the retentions are great. People love them. So whoops. Yeah, the tournament ones, people love those. And we just had our first 40-minute video, which that was a fun test. That video's doing really well.

The beauty of tournament, which one thing I'm really trying to get better at is storytelling. And it's kind of hard to storytell when it's just me and the boys. But with this, we have a lot of characters in the video. And that's one thing I want to really become world-class at over the next five years is building characters throughout the videos. And then do you have water?

Jon Y.: Right here.

MrBeast: Oh, this is water? Yes. Oh, my gosh. You guys are so bougie. Well, we prepped it. We just want to keep it simple.

I'm dying over here for some reason. And so, you know, working on the storytelling, I mean, blah, blah. You kind of get the same thing with survival. Survive 100 days. I mean, that's why people like it.

Yes, the environment we put them in is cool, but also getting to know the contestant. And now that we've gotten better at telling the contestant's story and letting them show emotion, those videos crushed, et cetera, et cetera.

Jon Y.: The character development note is interesting because with unscripted, which is so much of the content on YouTube nowadays, what do you do in pre-production to identify those characters or try to put them in the right situations?

MrBeast: So yeah, you hit it on the head. The thing is, unscripted shows like ours, that's where character development is hard. And people don't understand, because people always... Well, so, like, years ago, I just got awful at it. And, you know, if you ever told me I was bad at storytelling, you were correct. And I'm glad everyone beat me on the head and be like, "Tell better stories."

Now, the past year, we've been really trying. You know, somebody who's, like, ages 1 through 100, we hit it. I mean, if you look at the TikTok clips on it, people loved it. People loved, you know, 42, 58. It was awesome. And then other videos, you know, we're still improving and getting better, like the Protect series. I feel like we didn't dive deep enough into the characters. Do you even know the name of the guy from the newest video? No, not exactly. So we didn't, you know, so that, which is something I'm working on.

The thing is, you know, everything I've ever done is on YouTube, so it's not like I'm some filmmaker with 30 years of experience bringing it over. I'm learning in real time. So like, I want to be a great storyteller, but like, you know, you have to fail a bunch and just... You know, my failures are watched by a lot of people, so I'm learning in real time in front of everyone.

Um, but what did you ask again? Like, how do...

Jon Y.: How do you develop the characters? Because that video specifically.

MrBeast: Yeah, so for these kinds of videos, you can't. You can't script them. And so that video, "Ages 1 to 100," our 40-minute video, had more cameras recording than any other production in history. I think I tweeted that. You can't find a movie or show or anything that's ever had 300 cameras simultaneously recording like that.

And so that's the thing. There's 100 cubes. So we put a main cam in the cube. And then we put one they can talk to, or so a wide shot, and then a shot on them. So that's 200 cameras. And then we had all the wide shots all around the studio and all the cameras we were recording with. And so the answer is you just film everything. But it's brutal. And most people can't do that. Because I think we had petabytes worth of footage. It would have taken a single human five lifetimes to watch all the footage we had.

But for these bigger videos, we'll have 50 or 60 editors ready to chop down the footage. We'll have three or four storytime editors that are just listening to everything and just writing down notes to make the editors' lives easier. And then we, I mean, we just go, the crazy part is though, right? If you, for that video, like I don't usually talk about this stuff publicly, but like you're asking how do we prepare to get a better story? A lot of it's in the tech because to record 300 cameras for days, you need like to even house that much footage, you need a giant server.

So in our other studio, I'll show you when we go over there, we have a multimillion-dollar server rack and everything that our editors can remote into to actually edit the footage. Because if you tried to put all the footage for that video on hard drives and ship it to one editor, it would cost like $70,000. So if I were to try to give 50 editors all the footage on that video to edit it down, I mean, it would literally be millions of dollars in just hard drives just to get it to them. And it would take forever to copy all the footage and everything. I mean, it would be impossible. It would take you a full year to edit that video, whereas we edit and upload in a month or less.

And so for that, we also have to build out a server room that everyone can remote into, edit off of one central place. So then all the footage is there, and I don't have to spend $4 million shipping hard drives out just for one single video. And so it's a lot of that stuff, which other people don't do. So they're not able to actually record that many cameras. And that's where the hard part is. If you don't have that kind of coverage, then you do have to be a little more scripted because a normal person, our production company or someone who doesn't take it as seriously as we do, they would just be like, "All right, 24 this 24-hour period, we're gonna film this one-hour window, we're gonna roll with these 10 cameras, you're gonna say this, you're gonna say that, you're gonna say this, this is your character, and you're gonna do this." And then they'd be like, "Cool, we got all the shots, you know, we'll see you in 23 hours for the next challenge."

Whereas for us, it's just like, "All right, over the next 24 hours, do what you want. We're capturing it all." And so that's kind of the difference. And no one shoots these kinds of shows like we do.

Jon Y.: Wow. Yeah, I've never thought about the coverage. And for people that don't know, coverage being getting all the footage and all the angles in a way that traditional TV and reality doesn't.

MrBeast: That's like half of the most brutal part of what we do is managing the footage and getting it where it's actually a video.

I mean, we're literally sometimes chopping down like, I mean, it's crazy, like hundreds of years' worth of footage down into a 20-minute video.

Jon Y.: Thumbnails. I wanted to talk about that because I think you guys are laying the blueprint on how to use ABC testing for thumbnails. I wanted to pull the - ABC testing. I've always heard it called AB testing. I know, and I've called it that before. But I guess because of three options, it's more accurate.

It is? Yeah, I agree. And I say that for this because I pulled the two tests that you did for your recent "Protect the Yacht" video.

MrBeast: I just wish it was any video besides the Protect the video. I hate this video in hindsight. Yeah, I mean, I would say this is one of our worst thumbnails, to be honest, which it's my fault. It's not the team's fault or anything like that.

I'd say the A option you're looking at, like, I'm not in it. I'm in every thumbnail. What was that? Obviously, it didn't win. So we tested those three at the top. The middle B one is the one that won. Which clearly, I mean, the C one just doesn't really make any sense. Even the B one, I'm not the biggest fan of.

We sketched it out before we filmed the video. And I was like, this is good. But sometimes, which I've learned, when you sketch a thumbnail, and then you actually bring it to life, and it just doesn't look real. And that's one of the ones that looked good in a sketch. And I was like, yes. And then when we actually made it, I was like, no, frick. And we couldn't figure out another option. So yeah.

I mean, yeah, we obviously AB tested three formats. And we found the one that worked. And then we tested a couple of different boats. But I hate that video.

Jon Y.: But still, I think that's interesting that it's like big variations are the first test. And when you have a winner, take that variation and make small detail tweaks.

MrBeast: Exactly. And test, test, and test, and then wait a month, and test a couple more, and that kind of stuff.

Jon Y.: I pulled up maybe a more relatable example from Ryan. He's been killing it with these. So he's done big changes with scenery. And then the last two are text changes.

MrBeast: That one's good. Agreed. I've noticed these as well. I was actually, um, with my girlfriend when we watched this video, and then it was on our homepage the next day. She was like, she literally said, "Is that what it said before the thumbnail?" 'Cause it popped in the top left. It said, "Continue watching." So people have noticed, uh, I agree.

I think this is a realistic way of doing it. Three options: test some text, and then just leave it be. Don't overwhelm yourself. Don't overthink it because there's a lot of diminishing returns. There's a point where it makes sense to just start working on your next video if you don't have the resources and a bunch of people helping you.

And you do have to question, "Okay, well, if I just started putting my brain and effort into the next video, would I get more upside than just this kind of stuff?" But yeah, he did good there. Okay, I'm on the hot seat.

Jon Y.: Okay, yeah. If we could get the laptop, I want to see you do this live. And one of the features that really blew my mind when you gave me access to Vue Stats Pro is searching for thumbnails with text, and then going down the rabbit hole of inspiration.

I know, it's freaking insane. It took a long time to build. Jimmy, I'm going to give you a prompt that I want you to type in. And then I want to go down a rabbit hole and just hear your thoughts.

Go for it. Are you ready? Yeah, let's do it. All right, so basketball with holes in it.

MrBeast: Basketball with holes in it.

Jon Y.: Yeah, there's this new airless basketball that's going around. Everyone's talking about it.

MrBeast: I've seen it. And so before I hit Enter, this is on ViewStats Pro. This is our thumbnail search tool. You can type anything you want in, and it'll give you thumbnails to get inspired off of. It's really sick.

So he just said, basketball with holes in it. So I'm going to hit Enter. Give it a second. Look how quick that loaded. This thing is fast. And so now we can scroll through this, and we can see all these thumbnails on YouTube that have basketballs with holes in it.

And this is exactly what you're talking about, the whatever. The airless basketball, yeah. And so are we trying to brainstorm, like, what's the title of the video we're trying to brainstorm?

Jon Y.: Let's say that the NBA just sent us this basketball to try out. We're a channel that's reviewing sports gear. Okay.

MrBeast: Yeah, I mean, so then in the basketball they sent has holes in it. So then you would just look at all these. And the cool part is we didn't just stop here.

So you can obviously see all the thumbnails, inspiration. But you can also search by thumbnail. And it'll give you even more specific thumbnails on the thumbnails you like, which you just kind of got to use this. I know this might seem insane, but it works really well.

And so, I don't know. You want to pick this lamella one? Let's, yeah, maybe this one. The Steph Curry one?

Jon Y.: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

MrBeast: All right. So we want to get inspired by more thumbnails. And boom. So now it's giving you specifically the thumbnails that look similar. As you can see, all the other ones that had the white balls in it pop up here.

And then we can, oh, let's get inspired off this. It'll probably be pretty similar results. And then if you scroll down, maybe we're like, oh, actually, this looks crazy. There's slime on his hand. Or basketball hitting a car.

You just flip through it, get tons of inspiration, and then keep doubling down.

Jon Y.: Let's go through something totally different. Go to maybe the basketball hitting the car.

MrBeast: Basketball hitting, the one from Jester?

Jon Y.: Yeah, no, no, no. Yeah, the one from Jester, yeah. Yeah, right here.

MrBeast: Let's see what that. Funniest basketball hitting cars. So now, see, it's going to give you crazy ones. So like this world's largest basketball over the car, because obviously it picked up that you're not, you know, expecting it to be slamming a car. It's just trying to give you cool inspiration.

We can hit this, do this one with the dart in it, and you just keep flipping through here. Look, now here's a bunch of different versions of the dart, and you just keep tapping search by thumbnail. Search by thumbnail, and you can just go and go and go and just get inspired.

What's another prompt you have? Um, let's just try, uh, slime. Slime, okay. So let's try slime. What thumbnails are we getting?

Jon Y.: Look at that. And then? And then, let's combine what we were talking about before. Filter this thumbnail search by outliers. Oh, let's have some fun.

MrBeast: So, in this video, and then obviously, over time, we're going to build it out where you can set it where only videos above 100,000 views, like we do on our outlier tool. We'll bring it over here.

So this video right here did 100x the average. How to make one-minute glossy slime. Let me scroll down. Minecraft item slime. That one's cool.

So this would be, if you're looking at it and you're like, oh, I want to see more Minecraft thumbnails. I bet if we hit search by thumbnail, it'd pull up a bunch of Minecraft ones, which is cool because it allows you to go down the rabbit hole. Because especially if you're making a video on slime, you might want to get inspired by Minecraft slime or whatever.

And then obviously you can just go back. So these are the number one outliers with Minecraft slime in it.

Jon Y.: Man, what is one of your upcoming videos? Uh, one of my coming-out videos? Yeah, I just went to Toronto to interview the Hacksmith, and he showed me the world's first working lightsaber. So, maybe he also showed me the world's first. Yeah, he might use it for one of his videos.

Is it the same one he's working on? He's working on a new one. He's actually spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a clean room to develop one without a cord. And just the title I'm thinking about because he's like a real-life Iron Man. We're thinking about calling it "24 Hours with YouTube's Iron Man."

A $5.5 million dollar. Is the thumbnail going to be an Iron Man too? It's going to be him. He actually had an Iron Man mask, and we had him take photos with it. And then he had a Thor hammer. So, it's going to be a lot of those visuals, at least.

Yeah, so then you can type in Iron Man, get inspiration from videos that did well. I kind of.

MrBeast: I mean, honestly, if you had him flying kind of like this, that'd be cool. I mean, could the suit fly?

Could you have him put it on and jump on a trampoline in the video and then have him fly? Or maybe this scene.

I mean, if I'm thinking about it, this right here would get the most views. If it was him flying in an Iron Man suit, that would pop off.

Jon Y.: And maybe the campus right below.

MrBeast: Because I don't know for your channel, but for my channel, that's what I would do.

I'm pretty sure we've had that idea, and we have a thumbnail mock somewhere where it's like, you know, getting a working Ironman suit, and it's just someone flying, and I'm just like, "Whoa."

Jon Y.: Um, but it's so cool to get inspiration that way. I want to give you another prompt because you could search with words, but you could also search with an image. Yep. Maybe you find it from another thumbnail.

Or here's what I want you to do. We downloaded an image from Google. It's on your desktop right now of a golden car. So I'm going to upload this golden car.

MrBeast: And then, with nothing else, it'll pull up a bunch of other golden cars, which is pretty crazy. Because then you can also sort it by outliers. You can sort it by default view count new.

So we can click on this golden car. And then we can be like, "Ooh, like that one." You can see Supercar Blondie did a thumbnail with the golden car in it, etc. And you can just get inspired. Yeah, that's awesome.

Any other? While we have it, any other? You want an outlier demo or alerts?

Jon Y.: Yeah, why not?

MrBeast: While we have view stats up, I'll show you guys. So at the launch, we have five tools. That was Thumbnail Search. We've kind of loosely talked about the other ones. AB Test, I think all of you will find pretty interesting. You can see all the AB Thumbnail Tests anyone is doing, and you can see which one won. So you can see all the AB Thumbnail Tests currently running on YouTube. Here, let me search our boy Ryan. By channel. So you can hit by channel. And like, you know, we were talking about Ryan's thumbnail earlier. We have these little tabs too. So, you know, it recommends whatever you're typing in, which is sick. We went all out on this.

So now you can pull up Ryan Tran's channel and you can see every AB thumbnail test he's ever run. Wow. And you can see which thumbnail won. Isn't that crazy? It's crazy. The other one I think you guys would love to hear about right now is Outliers, which is something we've been doing for years. But it's like we talked about before. You can find basically any video that goes viral on any channel. And you can just set it where we can set it, where show us a video on channels that have over a hundred thousand subscribers that got 50X on a view, 50X their normal views on a video, and you can browse through it and you can see it all.

I don't want to show you guys too much. If you want to use it, just go to View Stats Pro. Take this laptop. They're going to get too much out of this, but you get it. Basically, anything you could want to increase your views, our goal is to put it on there. We currently have those five epic tools. We've got a roadmap with another dozen. We're going to try to roll out one every two months or even more frequent, but I don't want to commit to anything crazy. I mean, a year or two from now, I just hope that's basically what creators use as their studio dashboard to actually do stuff.

Jon Y.: I think this is a breakthrough moment to see those tools now being put in the hands of so many people.

MrBeast: It's awesome.

Jon Y.: I also pulled some of your old thumbnails because I went back to like 2020 and 2019, and I saw you're still updating them. I just want to embarrass you by showing these.

Oh, boy.

Take me through how often you update the back catalog.

MrBeast: That break-in one. You know, that left thumbnail in June 2020, I made myself. I literally Photoshopped and made it. That was such a horrible thumbnail.

So a lot of the ones we're updating are just the ones I made because I'm not great with Photoshop, and now I have people who are actually good. And so we're just kind of going through and making them make sense because they just don't make sense.

Like that one in the bottom left with all the people, you can't even see their faces. 65 million subscribers. I have four times that. Like that was like, oh, it's like a selfie. Yeah, but it's like 65 million subscribers combined between all the people in this video. And it's like that doesn't mean anything.

SPEAKER_01: Yeah.

MrBeast: Isn't that crazy that at the time I thought that was a flex in the bottom left of a thumbnail? I wrote 65 million subscribers like, "Guys, you won't believe how many YouTubers I got in this video." And then now here we are. What are we at? Like 240 or something to 50.

Yeah, so it's mostly the ones I did, just making them not horrible, to be honest. Do you see a huge change by going back?

Jon Y.: Or is it more of a branding play?

MrBeast: So it depends on which ones. I see you have the plane ticket one. That one was a huge change. These, yeah, it's kind of branding and just making it where it makes sense. And sometimes the views go up.

This right here, yeah, this bad boy, we did a bunch of AB thumbnail tests. And the one with me sitting in just a normal seat won. Um, I don't remember how far after we uploaded, maybe like a month or two, or uh, we were like, wait a minute, we could probably do a better thumbnail and then we swapped it out for this split-screen thumbnail, which we had never done before, but I do occasionally see on view stats other channels doing really good with the split-screen thumbnail.

It's like, screw it, let's try it, and then we put one on the plane ticket and yeah, I mean, that thing went off. I think it got an extra like, what was it, like 30 or 40 million views because we swapped the thumbnail. So yeah, it can have big effects sometimes. And that one, that was probably our best AB thumbnail. That was probably our best swap months later that we've ever had. It was pretty crazy.

Jon Y.: So I know thumbnails get a lot of love in the YouTube community when it comes to packaging, but titles are just as important. I wanted to break down the title of "Hydraulic Press versus Lamborghini." And obviously, titles and the idea and all that go hand in hand.

Can you explain this term, "interest market cap"? Did Chuckie say that to you? In terms of how you determined, "OK, let's make this video about hydraulic press versus Lamborghini, not versus Ferrari."

MrBeast: So it's probably a tool we'll roll out into View Stats Pro later in the future, but we essentially just look at all the viewership on keywords across all of YouTube. And if theoretically there's 100 billion views on videos with Lamborghini and there's 500 million views on videos with Ferrari, I'm just making up numbers, then clearly people are just more interested in Lamborghinis than Ferraris. It's just kind of objective.

So that's what Chuckie gets pretty crazy with his terms, interest market cap. But it's essentially just looking at all the views, titles, what that word has. And then if it's kind of the same, if it was like $100 billion Lamborghini, $80 billion Ferrari, who cares? It's nominal. But if one's like 20, 30 times better, it's usually a good indicator that that is something people are more interested in.

And yeah, there's a big discrepancy between Lamborghini and Ferrari.

Jon Y.: Is there any other decisions you made about ideas like that, where you're like, you know what? Maybe we should do hotel rooms first, not yachts, for the $1 versus series?

MrBeast: No, I mean, a lot of times, though, again, this is where it's hard. Because we like data, but it's also a lot of intuition. And you've got to know your audience. And so the data could say, do hotel rooms first. But you could also be a beauty YouTuber, and it'd just make more sense to do a makeup palette.

Yeah, it might not have the most views. Your audience doesn't care about hotels. So it's a blend of all that. So you have to really understand, you have to look at it from a lens of like, what is my audience? What would my audience want? And then like, yes, if there's no difference to your audience, there's no difference between a hotel room or a vacation. Hotels probably are simpler and would perform better.

But you know, if you're a family channel, they probably care more about vacations because they want to, you know, think of vacations they could take their kids on or that kind of stuff. Or maybe you're a family channel that kids just watch, right? And then maybe vacations don't matter as much because kids can't afford it. I don't know, you know, so you got to run through those scenarios.

But yeah, net net equal, it's like I said, even then if the market cap is kind of the same on the viewership or even like this, it doesn't matter. But if it's like this, then it's like, all right, now this is when you should go with this one more people clearly care. Yeah, a lot of nuances.

Jon Y.: What else, besides views and performance, goes into deciding which series or videos to make?

MrBeast: Oh, yeah. I mean, views and performance matter, but ultimately, we're just trying to make the audience happy. And I want to give them videos that they like because at the end of the day, you can get views on a video, but people can feel unsatisfied and then not click the next one and eventually churn them out.

The reason why 100 million people keep coming back every video is because we constantly try to prioritize what they want and what makes them happy. This is where it's hard. This is the thing that I show the most with training people on, which is why I do it. It's just like, you kind of have to be really in the trenches with your community. You have to read a lot about what they say online and just talk to a lot of them. And you can kind of just tell.

Protect, even if they weren't underperforming, even if they were kind of - The Protect series. Yeah, the Protect series. Even if that was like a five out of 10, I still wouldn't do them because I can just kind of tell people aren't super enthusiastic about it. And I'd be like, yeah, they're not feeling it, if that makes sense.

Jon Y.: But they cost time. Those things don't factor in.

MrBeast: If you ask me, no. If you ask my team, yes. But it's a lot of like, I'll be like, I want to do this. And they'll be like, it's too expensive.

And I'll be like, is it too expensive? Or have you not looked into the numbers yet? And they're like, well, I'm like, all right, we'll get the exact numbers. Come on.

And then, yeah, a lot of times I'm usually like, well, is it a problem if we're a million dollars over budget? They kind of want it.

Jon Y.: What was the last video where you had that conversation?

MrBeast: Oh, almost every video. Yeah, I mean, it's, yeah. Thankfully, Feastables is doing well. Because, yeah, we're still struggling on quite a few of these. I mean, if you watch them, like, ages 1 through 100, I mean, that was a monster of a video.

Or even the yacht video, our last video. I mean, if you saw all the 100 cannons and all the people shooting at it and the million fireworks and giving the guy a yacht and the explosions and all that kind of stuff and the construction crew, like, I don't know. That video, actually, that one might have been on budget.

What was the video we uploaded before that? Ages 1 to 100? Yeah, no shot Ages 1 to 100 was on budget. That was probably a million dollars over budget.

Do you know the video before Ages 1 to 100? Room Explodes. Yeah, and then before that was Room Explodes. That video, wow. Did you see the tower? Did they show you it? No, not yet. I need to show you it. We've been in here prepping for days. I have a tower, an actual tower.

SPEAKER_01: I saw the video.

MrBeast: Yeah, but it's still up over there in a field, a real big tower. Once you see that, you're like, holy crap. That one, weirdly enough, I think might have been closed on budget. I don't know how.

But then we have ones like built 100 wells. Obviously, that one was very expensive. We usually don't do brand deals on those kinds of videos because it feels a little weird. I might start to in the future so I could do more. But it's just like, you know, it's kind of weird to, "Hey, here's well number 50." Anyways, let me tell you about blank.

But if I did a brand deal, then I could build 200 wells. So it's like, that's a hard little distinction. I'm probably going to start doing brand deals on those. Anyways, yeah, you get the point.

Jon Y.: The 10-minute video was so interesting because it was all real-time. How did you think about it? That was terrifying.

SPEAKER_01: This video is completely real-time. You'll know this is exactly 10 minutes long. There are no cuts. You see everything.

And if Darcy does not escape his jacket and get through all five floors of this tower and press that button before the timer hits zero, his money explodes.

MrBeast: That was very terrifying. How do we come up with the idea? It's just honestly a lot because we don't upload that much. We're uploading, whatever, two videos a month. This year maybe we'll do 30 videos. So I have countless ideas I'm sitting on. And that's one of the ideas I've just been wanting to do for a very long time.

What usually happens is I say I want to film something, and then we're like, we don't know how to do that. And then two years later, we end up doing it. That's kind of where we're at now. And "Protect" was something I wanted to do for a very, very long time.

Even like Antarctica, which I think we went to like a year ago. It was a running joke. For three years before we filmed that, I wanted to go to Antarctica. And we just couldn't get there. We couldn't figure it out. It was too expensive. And then eventually, we got to a place where it was like, if this is how much we can spend on a video, this is what it costs. After like three years, we got to the point where we could actually afford it. And then we went to Antarctica. And that was sick.

Jon Y.: What are you spending right now for, short?

MrBeast: Oh, gosh. I mean, some of the ones we have coming up, I mean, I just, I know we're giving away a hundred K in them. So I know at least off the rip, it's a hundred K. Um, I would say the average is probably, I don't know, maybe like 30, 40 grand. It's just like, they don't make money. Like I'm not making that kind of money per short, but it's kind of like, I just want to make good content. So I'm not really focused on making money off of them.

I mean, some of our shorts could like three years ago could have been a long-form video. I know it's crazy. And that's what I want. And like we're ramping them up. They're going to get much better over time. I'm working on getting some people in to help me. And we've really been brainstorming, like, what is Mr. Beast on shorts? I don't think we fully cracked the code yet, but I agree like, uh, like the spot the hidden person one like we're building huge sets for those, the prizes like, like not we have a similar building like this or you know down the road and it's like this whole building we'll put on a giant set just for someone to like spot five hidden people. It's a lot of work, yeah.

And I heard that you're about to take it up a notch because obviously the Amazon show is coming up. Um, is it true that you're gonna film even more main channel videos in advance?

Jon Y.: Like now, so that you can just focus on the Amazon show later. And how do you plan to do that? Okay, one of my favorite parts of the interview is coming up, and that's when Jimmy gives advice to creators who want to launch their own merch and products like he did. He gives some unconventional advice, but if I could add one thing before we get there, it's that no matter what product you sell, the domain name you use matters a lot.

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MrBeast: Yeah, that Amazon show is, I mean, obviously our YouTube channel is a lot, you know, the big videos, the spectacles, the multimillion-dollar budget. Sometimes we're having hundreds of people breaking world records with cameras. I mean, these are, it's tough. Just doing the main channel is brutal.

But yeah, this year, you know, I wanted to take it up a notch and, you know, do our first streaming show on Amazon. And yeah, that's, so basically it's probably gonna be two months worth of Amazon shooting, from the time my eyes open to the time they close, that's all I'm gonna do. If we want this show to be as good as I want it to be and just absolutely crush every, well, I don't wanna say anything that will set me up for something in case I don't hit it, but if I want this to be just a world-class streaming show, I gotta represent the YouTube community.

A lot of people are gonna watch our show on Amazon. And it's going to kind of be indicative of creators. And so if it's not good, they're going to be like, see, YouTubers can't make streaming content. That's why they stick on YouTube. They're not the same as us. There's a lot of elitist mentality over there, even in the people we're talking with to help with the show. I see it still occasionally. I'm like, oh. Why can't we just make great content? Why does it have to be like, can't we just all be creators? So I really want this show to crush so it reflects well on the YouTube community.

And so yeah, we're going all out for that. But the problem is, I usually film almost every day. So for me to spend 60 days, or almost every day from the main channel, so for me to spend 45, 60 days on the Amazon show, yeah, I basically just have to jam my schedule up to the max before and after so I don't skip a beat on YouTube. Because YouTube's my number one priority. I don't want the YouTube channel to miss anything for this Amazon show.

Which is also why we brought in, I think we're up to over 70 people now, just to help with the Amazon show, independent of the main channel. Because that show is huge, man. I haven't talked about it too much. I have to think really hard of what I say because I don't want to spoil anything, especially for the contestants. But like I mean, we're buying private islands. We're buying, I mean, we're building a city. We're doing things that don't make sense. Like I it's like picture my biggest YouTube video ever. Like this is it. And this is like a normal episode on that show. I mean, cause I have a way bigger budget. I mean way, way, way more money than I normally have. And we're just going all out. Like we're not holding back everything. Like, like one of the Amazon episodes is probably like five times more expensive than my most expensive YouTube video.

Jon Y.: $15 million per episode.

MrBeast: Not per every episode. Just one of the episodes we're spinning. So all these ideas I've had sitting in my head for a very long time, I can do. I want to just give away an island in an episode for this cool little thing. We can do it. We want to build a city so we can blow it up. You want to do this? It's awesome because it's like, really money is not a constraint. It's just what is, you know, phenomenal content.

And then that's why the ages one through a hundred, we've been practicing the storytelling because I really, I don't want it just to be big-budget spectacle, but I also want it to be like, you get attached to the characters and you feel the story and you're rooting for them. And so that's why I'm really trying to practice a lot on YouTube. So when we filmed this in a couple of months, it's like, you know, if you combine the spectacle, our filmmaking, the authenticity, the budget, and we really nailed down the storytelling. I mean, that thing's going to be world-class. I'm so excited.

But yeah, so it's basically leading up to it, I'm filming every single day. And then afterwards, every single day. So it's going to be like six months of just filming every minute of the day, essentially.

Jon Y.: To zoom into one day, what is a shoot day? Or what does a day look like for you? Are you waking up? How many videos are you filming?

MrBeast: Well, here's the problem. It's so random because we just filmed a different video that we needed it to be dark. So we would start filming at 9 p.m. and we'd finish filming at 6 a.m. So in that case, it's just different. So I'm getting up at 1 p.m. and then I'm going to check on the people in the... Well, no, I'd probably get up at 2 p.m. I like to get at least eight hours of sleep. Anything less than eight hours, I'm screwed. I need Red Bull, and I hate it. I don't like being a zombie. So if we finished at 6, I'd get home at 7.

So yeah, I'd get up around 2, and then it would usually be we'd wake up, we'd go film with the bunker people, or I have a different 100-day video I can't mention going on. I'd go film with them, or I'd go film with the people in the wilderness. Boom. And then that would take me up to like... six or seven. And then I just do a little bit of festivals, all the business stuff, and then have everything done by nine.

And then it's just like, all right, the sun's down. This is a video we just finished filming. It was like five or six days of this. And then, you know, I'll show you, we have like a wipeout course. We were lifting like a literally giant wipeout course, a hundred, 200 feet in the sky and filming on them. And so now it's dark and it looks pitch black in the background. And, you know, it's sort of lifting these cranes up, um, and everything. And then, you know, going all night.

And so that's one day. And then a different day is like, um, Chandler, what brings you here?

Jon Y.: What's up, Chandler? How are you doing, man?

MrBeast: Are you popping in? What's the video we filmed before this obstacle course?

Jon Y.: Come in, man. Come in. What's up? How you doing? What's up, man? Good to see you, man.

MrBeast: Wait, why are you here?

Jon Y.: We actually got a camera right there that's, yeah.

MrBeast: No, you're good. I'm just not used to seeing you in the thumbnail studio.

Jon Y.: See you later. That's crazy! Your schedule is jam-packed. Of course.

MrBeast: Because it's like, there is an opportunity cost every day I'm not filming. That is like, you know, there is no such thing as a perfect video; it can always be better. So every day I don't film is a day I could have filmed and made these videos better.

So it's like, yeah, you almost don't. It's hard. You know, I wouldn't recommend you put yourself in a position like me because it's a lot. Like normal companies go up like this. The CEO, this one's flip. Everything funnels down like I am technically the product. I'm the thing that keeps it spinning.

Like, you know, the hundreds of people we employ, you know, it all falls apart if I don't show up. So it's a lot of pressure for people, which I don't recommend. Most people don't do videos like me because it requires you to have a lot of team, a lot of money. That's a lot of stuff just resting on your shoulders.

But yeah, it's like essentially every day off is kind of an L for the content. It just means the videos are worse.

Jon Y.: Do you plan to keep that for the future forever?

MrBeast: I don't see any world where I'm stopping. I mean, what else would I do?

I mean, maybe just maybe I'll take Sundays off consistently and play Call of Duty or something. But I'm not at that point yet.

I probably have at least another 10 years before I need a break or anything like that.

Jon Y.: When a video gets a 10 out of 10, what's your mood like? I know, to me, it almost ruins my day.

MrBeast: I mean, my new video was a 10 out of 10. So protect the yacht. No, I mean, years ago, yeah, I mean, it would absolutely destroy me. I mean, this was my entire personality, everything that mattered to me. And so, I mean, I would cry. But now, I mean, it hurts. It's like someone stabbed me and then I'm just like... take the knife out. What did I do wrong? I go observe it. And then I just don't open my phone.

And if you, if you just don't look at creator studio, you're like, "Oh, maybe it's a five out of 10." I just won't check. And then you just kind of ignore it. So that's kind of where I'm at. I absorbed the pain. I let like my, I feel the emotions and I'm like, damn, I'm depressed. And then I just funneled that energy into what did I do wrong? And in this case, I was like, never doing a protect series again. Screw that. People don't like it. That thumbnail is horrible. And then, okay. We got that. Move on.

Which is hard. But then you just start working on the next video. And eventually, you just get so in the sauce on the next video, you don't even remember. I mean, to hear you say that, how's your mental health these days? Oh. I mean, I just work so much. I don't have time to think about it. Oh, wow. I mean, just. That's always been my strat. If you think about, oh, what happens after you die? Do you just see darkness forever? Are you thinking of all these other stuff? And it's like, I'll just keep working. Then you don't even have to worry about it.

Jon Y.: What's the most surprising thing in terms of how efficient you are with your schedule? I've seen people prepare the thumbnails before you walk in. Are there any other examples of how you're able to maximize your day?

MrBeast: I mean, the thing is, I don't view it as maximizing our efficiency. It's just kind of like my life at this point. 'Cause like I said, every second I'm not filming, there are things that need to be filmed. There's so many things there. There's probably 20 shorts I need to film, some like 10 TikToks I need to film. I have 300-day videos going on, and you know, we're always filming main channel videos.

So, no, I just kind of like it's just, just kind of my life. It's not if I'm just sitting down doing nothing, I kind of feel weird. I'm like, "Oh, I'm doing something wrong. Like, someone's going to yell at me. I shouldn't be doing this." So, if that kind of answers the question, it's just how things have always been, you know?

But it's not like you just end up, you don't snap your fingers and end up here. This is like a slow progression over many, many years. Like, I decided a long time ago that, yeah, I just want to spend as much time as possible filming and all the other stuff. I want to train people up to be able to do it. I just want to be involved in creative and filming. And ideally, that's where most of my time goes.

So, it's a cognitive decision of training up other people to take everything else off and then pushing people to push me. It's not like I'm telling people, "Push me and make me a better person and help me make better content." Like, you know, let's make this the priority, that kind of stuff. But it takes a long time to ramp up to that point.

Jon Y.: Yeah, and I was talking to the team. They spend sometimes like 30 hours prepping for one shoot.

I wanted to ask you, what are these grid lines that we're standing on right now? Like, what happens here in terms of setting up the lights and the people?

Well, yeah, because you know, if we need to shoot 20 or 30 images, we don't want them to have to reset for 15-20 minutes in between each. That would take an entire day.

MrBeast: So, these grid lines allow them to put little marks so they can practice images before, like the lighting and that kind of stuff, so we can kind of just flow from one image to the next.

And they don't have to think about all the lighting. They can just have all the lighting marks pre-marked down.

Jon Y.: I pulled this because last time we did an interview, he shared storyboards. He has all the data. This time, I was here for a thumbnail shoot, and they were getting everybody there to take an overhead shot.

Can you talk about that process to get everything ready before you walk in? Because I've never seen anything like it before.

MrBeast: The problem we have here is the only real linear constraint for the company or for the channel is me. Some of our videos, we're filming seven to 10 days. Some months, I'm literally on set 28 days out of 30, some months. A typical month might be closer to 20. And so it's just hard because it's like, if you envision it, if we film three videos in a month and like the first is a one dollar versus right, we'll say one dollar versus a million dollar hotel. I have to fly to seven different hotels all around the world. One of them's in India, right? That's three days off the rip right there. So like that's a ten-day filming slot, if not 11 days. And that's if we're really extreme and cutthroat with the time.

And then I have to go film another video. But that's, you know, seven days of filming, but it's also a day of travel to get there and a day of travel to get back right now. That's nine days. That's 20 days. That's only two. And then you tack on a third video there. Or if we have like a long 100-day video, like right now we have people living in a bunker, survive 100 days in a bunker, win half a million dollars. And like, you know, that's something I have to check in on them. I have to check in on we have some people in the wilderness. And then I have to, so that would take you up to 22 days.

Then I have to film shorts and TikToks and all that other stuff which isn't crazy hard but that's still a couple more days. And then I have to work on festivals. The next thing you know, like I'm from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed basically booked for like 28 days straight. And it's like, well, we still have to do thumbnails but, uh, yeah. And this one, um, to me, I'm not as in the weeds on these when they collect people but we have just a lot of people locally that we usually end up using. And I think we have an app where we just put out a ping, like, hey, you want to help us with Blang? Here's what it'll look like, blah, blah. And people just sign up for it. So they probably did that, got all these people, and then, yeah, got the shot.

Jon Y.: Yeah, and I thought it was also interesting. Everybody's wearing a neutral color. So that way, they can edit in and post, put a jumpsuit on them, and just.

MrBeast: Yeah, I mean, the guys we have now, or the team we have, they're just phenomenal. Like, you know, three years ago or whatever, I was making these thumbnails in Photoshop. And I mean, I couldn't do half the stuff they do.

Like, sometimes I'll just throw out something. I'll be like, you know, it'd be cool if there was a building in the background. But I know that's not possible. And they'll be like, why? We just put it there. I'm like, what do you mean? And then they'll come back two hours later. I'm like, oh, all right. Well, that looks real. Cool.

Jon Y.: I saw that you have stand-ins.

MrBeast: And this is something you tweeted out. So we have this one person every time before we shoot a thumbnail, or before I go in to shoot a thumbnail, he does the thumbnail. So I can kind of look at it and make sure I like it.

And so we have a lot of images. Like, for every one I take, there's probably 100 of him. And then they'll take it. Let me see what it looks like. And I'll be like, that looks good. And then they'll set it up. And I'll come in and crank it out.

It's so impressive, man. This is awesome. He just is handing me paper. This is really well-prepared. I like it.

Jon Y.: Thank you, man. I mean, last time we did our interview, I had 24 hours to prep for that VidSummit. And this time when you called me, I was like, "All right, I got more time. I'm going to just do everything I can." Love it. We got a ton more where that came from.

But I think what's crazy is that you're not only shooting videos. I've heard stories of you reshooting videos, like the seven days stranded. Oh, gosh. Is it true that you spent two days on the island, and then what happened that you had to reshoot the video?

MrBeast: Oh, that's right. I was going to throw it up on Mr. Beast 2, the two days. I forgot I never did that. Someone remind me to do that. Yeah, we went to spend seven days on a deserted island. The three things that really make me miserable, like I can bury myself alive. I can not eat food for weeks. I can do extreme things. I can count 100,000, but there are three things that just make me want to die and I really struggle with, and it's heat, it's the sun, and it's bugs.

Those are like, if it's an extreme challenge and it doesn't have those three variables, I got it. If you introduce one of those, it's like, woo, I don't know. And so, yeah, we did seven days on a deserted island and it was very hot. There's a lot of sun because I get very paranoid. I don't want to get sunburn and skin damage. And there's a lot of bugs. And I mean, I was getting just destroyed by bugs. And yeah, on day two, I woke up and my leg just had like a hundred bug bites on it. Both of them. I was sunburned. It was like so hot. Like it wasn't supposed to be that hot. It was supposed to be whatever, like 80 degrees. For some reason, it's like 90 degrees. It was miserable.

And I was like, I can't do five more days of that. And which is. That's something I've learned about myself. So now I'm not, I don't put myself in those kinds of positions anymore. Cause I don't mind like pushing. I actually enjoy pushing myself. Like when I counted to a hundred thousand, obviously I was miserable the last 50 hours, but weirdly I get enjoyment out of like going to the point of misery and then pushing through it and finishing is like something I, for whatever reason kind of enjoy.

But when you, it's just those three things I've noticed anytime it's one of those three variables, it turns from enjoyable misery misery that when I complete I'm happy to like this I just want to die like I can't do this like and I'll finish it I'll be like that was the worst day of my life for a week of my life I I can't so yeah so anyways we after day two we scrapped it shot the flare and then um but I but then I'm like on the boat right back I'm like I lost and now I'm like it's messing with my head I can't I can't I can't so then we came back we filmed at a different point and did the seven days.

Jon Y.: For the island, are you sending somebody to scout it out ahead of time? Or if you buy an island or are stranded on an island, what's that process?

MrBeast: Well, if we buy an island, that's different than if we spend seven days on it. So if we buy it, yeah, we'll send someone to scout it. The seven days stranded, I think we send someone out there.

Well, usually we'll just call someone local, tell them to go out there and be like, "Hey, tell us what you see or whatever." Or we'll send someone out there just to make sure there's not a trillion snakes everywhere.

So yeah, they'll scout it out and be like, "Yeah, Jimmy won't die." And they'll be like, "Cool, I'm coming out."

Jon Y.: I know you're not only pushing the boundaries; your attention to detail is next level. I saw this tweet that you put out where you were going and spending 15 hours at Walmart and Targets. And I'll just read it off.

You're seeing if they had inventory of Feastables in the back and helping them put it out. And then you said the store was doing zero sales when I visited and zero product on the shelf. I found these in the back room, and you had to scan them and place them on the shelf.

And then the store started selling a bar an hour. Most products don't have velocities like ours, so you have to stock the shelf. You're at the top of the game, but you're doing things at the bottom of the ladder, like stocking the shelves. I mean, yeah.

MrBeast: Every single day, I try to visit at least a Walmart and Target and just look at how the product is displayed. Because at the end of the day, if you're selling a CPG (consumer packaged good), you're just putting something on a shelf. And you want to have the same experience as people buying it and make sure it's a good experience. So yeah, in that instance, I would go to a lot of stores.

Which also, just to be clear, it wasn't the Walmart or Target employees' fault. It was ours. We didn't have enough bars. Send bars, they would sell out and then sales would go to zero and then we'd send more. But like, you can't expect it right when it hits for them to go put it out. So I would go there right when the delivery would hit and then put it out, which obviously they would have done it. It just, you know, which we've, you know, kind of solved because we were ramping up production of more and more bars. So hopefully that's not a thing anymore.

But yeah, I mean, I feel like that's just 101 you should just go see your product out in the wild. I think a lot of execs, when I tweeted that, everyone freaked out but that wasn't what I was trying to get. I was just trying to say that people were like, "Whoa, you go to the stores?" and I wasn't trying to be like, "Oh, look at me." I was just, it's just an interesting thing.

Yeah, I, um, but yeah, I mean, I probably in the last month visited like 60 or 70 Walmarts. Like, and sometimes instead of flying somewhere, I'll drive there so I can hit like 20 Walmarts along the way and look at the displays in the chocolate aisle. We did that. We had a layover from DC to North Carolina. And I was like, "Screw it. I just didn't go to it." And the person I was flying with was like, "Where did Jimmy go?" And I texted him. I was like, "I'm just going to rent a car and drive home so I can visit 30 Walmarts." And I was like, "You should board the flight, though." And then I just drove and hit every Walmart from DC down to North Carolina.

Are you getting stopped at the Walmarts? I imagine it's hard for you to go to public. I'm going to tell you, I have a couple of strategies to not take photos. Yeah, if I don't do anything and I just like, you know, because especially because I'm kind of tall, like, you know, my head is usually above other people. So what I usually do is. I'll tell you the second best strategy, because I don't want people to know my number one one, is if I throw a beanie on in glasses, no one recognizes me. Because I never have worn a beanie in a video. If I get it where it covers up my bangs, so it's like here, and then I throw on shades, the amount of photos go down 99%, or maybe like 95%. And then there's another, I can take it one step further if I really don't want to take a photo and yeah, no one will notice me. Cause like if I cover up my facial hair too, then yeah. If you can't see my bangs, my facial hair, then it's just like some tall white guy. So no one recognizes me, which is what I usually do.

Jon Y.: I think the reason people are probably surprised to see that tweet is because you right now have over 200 employees, right? You're worth millions, about to be the biggest YouTube channel.

What's another example of you rolling up your sleeves or doing the "dirty work" that you think would surprise people?

MrBeast: I mean, I just went to... This is something we'll talk about later in the year, but I just visit a lot of my farms in Africa, and with something special we've been working on for festivals. But I don't want to dive deep into that. Give me a couple months to talk more about it.

I mean, everything. I'm involved in every part of everything we do. I mean, obviously, sometimes I'll help with the thumbnails. Sometimes I'll help with the video creative. Sometimes I'll, you know, any job in Feastables, if it's designing the packaging, if it's the artwork, I mean, calling a retailer.

I mean, there's nothing I won't do because these are my companies, you know what I mean? So if someone's struggling and needs help, I'll help them. I mean, if someone needs help figuring out how to clean this floor, I really don't care.

Jon Y.: You know what I mean? Jimmy, what's the rough pie chart of how you make money right now between AdSense, sponsorships, and Feastables?

MrBeast: Let me think about it. Yeah, pie chart, so just percentage. Let's see, for this year, think on it. I haven't done this math. So we're talking revenue, obviously, not profit. Because I don't even know if we'll make money this year. Just because we're in Feastables, we're making so much product content, we don't ever make money. Maybe one day.

And ViewStats. I mean, right now we have no revenue. We just, you know, we've put millions of dollars into building tools and we don't even have ads on the site. So that's kind of the status of a lot of things but for revenue. Oh, over half of it will be Feastables, a lot of it. I mean, because obviously that's just blowing up and people are really liking now that we updated the formula. It's crushing and then.

Outside of that, there's just a lot. Because I don't bucket it as YouTube. I have it as ad revenue, brand deals, theoretically merch, this, this. And so there's so many line items. And last time I looked, but yeah, I mean, obviously, we're going to spend over $120 million this year on content. So you can deduce we're probably going to do close to that much in content revenue and that kind of stuff.

Jon Y.: How do you decide whether a video is going to be a sponsored video and get money from an external brand, or devote it to raising awareness for Feastables?

MrBeast: Well, I have to do brand deals in almost every video. So the only ones I don't are usually the really hardcore philanthropy ones, where I'm like, "Ooh, this might feel weird." I'm okay with just taking a couple million dollar L. But the Wells and maybe one others. But outside of that, every video has a brand deal on it because that's the only way I can keep the lights on.

Because that $3 million isn't factoring in the warehouses or the studios or a lot of other expenses I have. That's just kind of like the cost of the video and the people working on it. Um, so like if I don't do a brand deal, right, you know, and I spent 3 million, but I have theoretically another million dollars in G&A or and stuff like that. So it's like the total cost of everything, like $4 million to get that video out the door and I don't put a brand deal on it. I'm not making $4 million in ad revenue.

So if there is no brand deal, you know, um, like let's say theoretically, a brand pays me $2.5 million. And if we don't put a brand deal on it, that's an extra $2.5 million negative on that video. So yeah, I have to do them or we're screwed.

Oh, I've said no to a lot of big ones. I mean, the obvious easy ones are like, I've had a lot of those crypto casinos. But even outside of those, there are some that I won't say them because I don't want them to feel weird, but some that just didn't feel like a right fit. And yeah, I've had people offer tens of millions of dollars. And I'm like, "Huh, I don't know.”

Jon Y.: For one video?

MrBeast: No, no, no, for multiple. "And I'm like, do you know what my audience is?"

Jon Y.: For your sanity, I'm going to say no. Also, that would be weird. What's an average brand deal now for the main channel?

MrBeast: I don't want to say it because the problem is it always goes up. And then the people who hear this will be like, "Oh, well, Jimmy's overcharging us. We're getting screwed." But not enough. I need more to be able to afford my videos because my video costs keep going up.

And they go up. My video costs go up like this, and my brand deals go up like that, just not at the same rate. But I mean, it's obviously more than I ever would have imagined. If you asked me five years ago, whatever number I said, it's that times three. I'm like, "Whoa, this is crazy."

Jon Y.: Would you sponsor other creators on YouTube with Feastables?

MrBeast: After this, I'll explain my roadmap for the back half of this year.

Right now, we're pouring all our money into setting up certain things that we'll be talking about later this year with Feastables and just working on the ethical sourcing and that kind of stuff.

And I'm pouring everything I have into it. Once that's up and running, which I'll explain off-camera, then yeah, we're going to be going crazy.

Jon Y.: Do you have advice for creators who are launching products? More people are doing that now than ever before. And I thought it was so smart. Like, when you launched Feastables, you gave so many of us a time box, you know, like that ticker, like the lock safe and open. It was like you created a moment out of your product launch.

And I was talking to a lot of creators before this to prep questions. Jordan Mander wanted to know, how do you launch this? How do you launch a product if you're a creator with an audience or trying to build towards that?

MrBeast: Yeah, I think a lot of creators are launching products. And for some, it makes sense. But I think for a lot, it's just building a real business is hard. Building up festivals. I'm in the weeds. I mean, this thing is taking an unfathomable amount of my time and an unfathomable amount of money. Success isn't guaranteed. And even if you have the influence, getting people to repeat purchase, come back, innovating the products, you can't just get by on your name. I mean, you can for a first buy, but if you want people routinely buying, you know, your product over five, 10 years, you know, and so I think it's, if you want to launch a product, do it. Like, don't listen to me. I mean, who cares? Do whatever you want and what excites you.

And, you know, I could be wrong, but for a lot of people, I think it's just premature and honestly, I think they can make way more money doing brand deals than launching a product. And it's like, I don't even think it's something they're passionate about. And I don't think they realize just how difficult it is. And yeah, I think, I mean, you're kind of seeing it like a lot of launching, but a lot are already, you know, being closed. And so I'm saying it because I'm already seeing a ton of influencers shut down their CPG products and their food and beverage brands that they're doing. And I think way too many are doing it and they don't understand this stuff's hard.

You don't just hire two people and they just magically make blank and then put it out there. You need a team and you need to do it as you're competing with brands that have been around for a hundred years. And so anyways, my answer is, I think for most people, they would benefit from just doing brand deals as opposed to starting their own business because it's just a lot more work than I think they realize. And I think the opportunity cost of starting a business for two years, a brand if you're an influencer, and then promoting and promoting and promoting it, because you have no experience in CPG or any of this stuff, it just kind of flopping, never really making any money. It kind of flatlines and then slowly kind of dies.

That's two years where you could have theoretically been doing, if you're a decent-sized creator, like 200K brand deal here, 150K brand deal there, 200K brand deal there. You could have made millions of dollars in brand deals. But instead, and you could have put all that time into your content because not everyone even has their content fully figured out. So building that CPG business will come at a cost of their content and they'll get even fewer views. So you have to factor all that in.

And so it's like, you know, there's one world where millions of dollars in brand deals is what I see a lot of creators keep growing your socials and you keep pouring all your energy into it or you start this CPG brand that you're not even that passionate about it pulls you away from your socials and stuff and it starts to drop a little bit and you don't end up making your money because it's actually freaking hard to run a profitable uh company with competitive cost or if you're overcharging then you know people are going to try it once and not buy it and then you know you come out the other in two years with none of that money and you know a business that's not even good yeah So that's kind of my viewpoint.

Jon Y.: Yeah, I think more creators need to hear that. Is your goal to sell Feastables ultimately?

Oh, no. No, you're in for the long haul. You're trying to build it. And how do you think about where you promote Feastables in your videos? You're wearing the jumpsuits. How much of that planning happens in pre-production in terms of?

MrBeast: No, I mean, it's kind of just whenever. I mean, a lot of times, it's just like, "Oh, I want a snack." It can't be a Feasables bar. Because sometimes, we're filming for 15 hours. And so I'm just eating, and I'm like, "Hey, buy Feastables." I'm also very excited about it because I poured a ton of time and effort into the product. So we have contestants. Usually, at some point, I'm just like, "Yo, try this and let me know what you think." "Oh hey, you should just film it, you know?" And then it's not as strategic as it might seem. It's usually just us eating chocolate.

Um, and then you asked about the jumpsuits, like the stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's one thing I've started to experiment with, I guess because the Amazon show we're starting, we put a lot of thought into figuring out what we wear throughout it so it doesn't feel as amateur as a YouTube video. Because there should be a little bit more of a consistent theme. And um, when I started studying that more, I was like, I wonder, what would happen if we started doing that in our videos? So ages 1 through 100, I wore a suit throughout the whole thing. And I actually feel like it elevated the tone of the video, and it felt right. It didn't feel corporate. It didn't feel non-YouTube. It still felt YouTubey. And I feel like I made the video better, weirdly enough, because I just fit the vibe.

And so that's something we've been experimenting with is like me wearing clothes that kind of match the vibe of the video, which weirdly enough works. It's like, this is like, this is the hard thing is not hard. This is the interesting thing is like, if you would have brought that up to me three years ago, I'd be like, who the actual f*ck cares? Like who cares what I wear in a video? But now I'm like, actually, it can really make it feel more like a universe when people watch the videos and like I'm, you know, um, and not break the immersion. And I'm like, this is cool, but I never would have said that three years ago. And that's what I love about content creation is you're always learning and improving if you have an open mind. You can always get better.

Yeah, are there other things that you look back at three years ago and like Everything. I mean, if I watch a video from three months ago, I'd sh*t on it and be like, this is terrible. Honestly, if I watched my newest video, I would complain a bunch. What are some of the more recent complaints you've had about videos you recently put out? We just have to watch it. I mean, it's just because we're always getting better. Every video, we try to improve a bunch of stuff. And so every video we go... From a video, I'm going to have exponentially more complaints because we're always improving things. So if we just went five videos back, there's at least probably 20 things we've tested and learned since then. And then when I watch it, all I'm going to be able to think about are those 20 things. And I'll be like, "Oh my gosh." And if we go far enough back, then it's just like screaming Jimmy with no story. And I can't even watch it. I'm like, get that out of my face. I hate that.

I mean, at the time, I thought it was good content. But it's just like I didn't have a mentor. I don't have a filmmaking degree or people who were teaching me. So I started making content when I was 11 because I just liked making videos. But no one ever taught me anything about storytelling or anything like that. So as I'm growing up, I'm making these videos. And I'm doing my best with what I know. And obviously, that was one of the biggest complaints back in the day is that it was just screaming or it was a little too fast-paced. I didn't know any better. I would slow the scenes down. I'd be like, what do I put in? I don't know how to do this. So it took me a long time just because I didn't really have anyone teaching me to figure out, here's how I can slow scenes down where it's not boring and actually let things breathe and that kind of stuff.

Now, it's obvious, because I just turned 26, and I've studied filmmaking quite a bit. And I've talked with a lot of really smart people. But back when I was 21, I had no idea. And I was just like, "Oh, fast-paced is entertaining." How have you slowed it down without making it boring? A lot of it is you get them connected to people, so they're interested in that person. If I just threw a random person on the screen and they talked for 12 seconds, you're not going to care. I mean, the retention will just nosedive. But 42, when we were filming that video, we noticed he was very outgoing, and he was very cool. He had a deep voice, and he talked a lot.

Jon Y.: Age 42. Yeah, age 42.

MrBeast: Yeah, in the ages 1 through 100 video, he talked a lot. And so we made sure to always have a camera on him because he was really engaging. And so we built him up throughout the video because we had a lot of footage.

So I think there's one scene that we didn't really cut for 12 seconds. But because you were invested in age 42 at that point, you're invested in the person age 42 was talking, it worked. Retention was flat because you're like, oh, I care about this dialogue. But if that was the first time you saw him, you wouldn't care.

So it's just kind of stuff like that.

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Alright, back to the interview. I mean, the other number that stood out to me is the fact you're working with 50 editors. Most creators have a hard time working with one editor and sharing their style and making sure things are consistent. But your videos, I feel like, still have that same style and that beast brand.

MrBeast: I mean, I've been very involved in the editing for many, many years, working alongside these people. But yeah, we have some amazing people. And honestly, the beauty now is we've gotten to the point where we've got people now who show me new things. And like you said, it's my style and my voice. But a lot of what we're doing now, I'm learning how to be a better storyteller from my editors. I'm learning new tricks and new things.

And some of the graphics we do in transitions, I don't know how to do any of that. I'm just like, "Yo, give me a cool transition." And they whip it off. I'm like, "Whoa, I didn't even know that was possible." So it's like, yeah, I used to be in that boat too, like them where it's like, you know, I'm teaching the editors, but I'm so far past that. My team is teaching me stuff, you know?

So it's kind of like just working alongside them, which, you know, everyone knows this, you just got to work alongside your editor or editors for years; eventually, they'll pick up your style and the things that you care about, and then you should just let them free and be like, "All right, now you guys keep developing and run with it," you know? Or you're just gonna be stagnated because, you know, unless you are studying and constantly trying to improve it, but if you're like me and you can't just sit there and spend five hours a day trying to figure out how to one-up it, you need to let them do it and you just kind of make sure it's on brand and authentic.

Jon Y.: Yeah, I found your secret Instagram where you're casting. Oh, yeah. Well, it's not even a secret.

MrBeast: I need more people to find this Instagram. I need help.

Jon Y.: We need more people. It seems like it's just being kept on the side. But how do you cast people to be in the videos or even the Amazon show? Because that's a huge opportunity.

MrBeast: Well, I mean, for ages 1 to 100, we're just looking through the database of all the people, which that one's really hard. People don't even understand.

You know how hard it is to find 100 people in 100 different ages in one spot all at the same time? Especially in Greenville.

It's not like this is LA. Oh, you're not flying them in.

Jon Y.: It's all local.

MrBeast: We try to find local people, especially because we have them quarantined beforehand. We don't want them to fly in so they can quarantine. And then they come in, and we keep them separate and that kind of stuff. But yeah, for that video, it's like sometimes you'll find all the 70s, but 75. There's just no 75-year-old. And you find one, and he's like, "I don't want to be in a video." And it's like, "Oh." And then we have to hunt and hunt and hunt. And then you find another one, and they're like, "No." And then eventually, and you have to do that for all ages.

But for other videos, it's just like, because there's a lot of people in the database we have, but not a lot of people can have the ability to take off work for a week. Info video needs to be a week. So it's like, can you realistically film this video for a week? We'll pay you, but still, you have a job, and I don't want you to get fired. So it's all these little parameters. And so, yeah, we need more people in the database, because usually we don't have enough people to fit it, even though we have thousands of people in our data set.

How much is somebody getting paid if they don't win the prize money? It just kind of depends. If they're just there for five minutes, I don't know, maybe we give them $100. But if they're there for a couple of days, we'll usually give them a little bit more money. And a lot of people who go deeper in the challenges, like ages 1 through 100, the four people that didn't win, we gave them $10,000. Because it would feel weird for them to have gone that long and then get nothing.

Jon Y.: Do you also ask them to do a video test or anything? Because having just the age is one part of it. But you want to make sure that you at least have characters on set.

MrBeast: I think that's what we're doing for the Amazon show. I don't know if we do that for everyone who just applies for casting. But yeah, for the Amazon show, which, since this is going up in the short term, when this first goes up, you can just throw it in the description.

If you want to be in our Amazon show, just apply. We're going to need you for a long time. Especially if you go the distance, we're going to need, like, two months.

But yeah, if you want to compete in our show for $5 million and hang out with us for a couple of months, it's down there.

Jon Y.: Will they compete against celebrities? Because I heard you're also going to have them as contestants. I can't say anything.

MrBeast: Because I need all of them walking in knowing nothing. These are huge. People could Google image some of the sets we're building in Intel or things like that. I mean, it's disgusting how big this stuff is.

Jon Y.: How much are you using AI in your content creation process and becoming more efficient?

MrBeast: Yeah, we found some pretty interesting ways to implement it. Not as obvious as you think, but one interesting thing is like, because we have so much footage for these videos, there's a, I don't even know the name of the tool, but there's this one AI tool where I can type something in, and it'll tell me any time that word's said, right? So if I'm like, oh, we didn't mention Feastables in this video. You can type in Feastables. It'll tell you any time it was said in that 1,000 hours of content. It'll pull up the clips for you. So then we can be like, cool.

Or 42, hey, we want another shot of 42 talking to build his character. We can just look at 42's cam, type in something, and it'll pull up those scenes. So that was pretty helpful. Obviously, everything we're doing in ViewStats, the thumbnail search, that kind of stuff is very helpful, which is why we're rolling it out. See, those are the biggest ones and then you know like everyone, I just occasionally type things in the chat for inspiration.

Um, but I right now these are good but I mean everything's rapidly improving so much that like, yeah, 10 years or not even 10, like three to five years from now, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if people are using AI voices in the video. You're just like you added a scene and then you're like, "Here, yeah, just give me 10 different ways this scene could be better," and like all this other stuff.

Jon Y.: Do you ever think there'll be a day where you don't show up on set and you can?

MrBeast: I mean, I think there'll be a point, kind of like with animation. I had that same thought because people always bring it up to me. But then I go look at animation, and people thought the same thing. Like, "Oh, animation or CG, why do we need real-life superheroes when we have these animated superheroes and that kind of stuff?"

But look, we still watch them. I think it'll be the same case here. Even if it is relatively indistinguishable, there is something cool about it being authentic that people still like.

Jon Y.: Or, you need motion capture suits. Like Avatar, they're still performing it, and they put the CG on top of it.

So, to bring things home, I wanted to rewind back to 2018 when PewDiePie was the most subscribed-to channel, around 70 million subscribers. T-Series was gaining on them. And you ran this entire campaign to protect.

Wow, that was 2018?

MrBeast: Six years ago?

Jon Y.: Whoa. That's wild. You know, you ran that campaign, like, keeping PewDiePie at the top spot. T-Series eventually surpassed them. Here we are, full circle.

I know. You're about to surpass T-Series. First of all, do you have a message for T-Series, if they're watching right now?

Do I have a message for them?

MrBeast: Oh, boy. You know, it's a little ironic, isn't it? Six years later, here we are back again. No, I mean, one thing I want to make very clear is, like, you know, before I think it kind of got a little like, you know, this country versus that country, and not I don't think Felix took it there, but some people took it even got a little racist with the subway before, so I'm very cognizant of it, which is why I'm not leaning into it too hard.

Like, I'll probably do a short and talk about here and there, but it's like this isn't to me. I have a huge fan base in India, so this isn't India versus America. Yeah, it's not. It's just I just want to be the most subscribed to channel, and I do think it is a little. Yes, I have a lot of people helping me, but at the end of the day, I started this channel. I've been doing it for 14 years. I live and breathe this. I am the face in it, and I am a creator. YouTube runs in my freaking blood, you know what I mean?

And so I do think there's a little bit of symbolism that it's nice that a creator, a home-born YouTube creator, is the most subscribed to channel, even though I know some people might not see it that way. I think that's cool. I'm not knocking on them, but obviously they are a corporation with probably a thousand times more employees than me or something crazy.

But yeah, we got to draw the lines in the sand. I need to make it clear. I love India. I have fans in India. You guys are awesome. It has nothing to do with that. People will make it that. A lot of idiots will just start tweeting, "India sucks. Go crush them, Jimmy." And I'm like, "Okay." Just so you know, that's where a lot of my audience is, but okay.

Jon Y.: If you had to record a high me in 10 years, I know you've done that a lot before.

MrBeast: The high me in 10 years goes up in 15 months. 10 years, yeah. I should. I should have. I had that thought like a year ago.

I kind of regret it. I should have done more. I should have been at 100 million subscribers.

I should have done high me in 10 years. That was a gino.

Jon Y.: You should do one when you pass T-Series. I mean, that'd be cool. That's a landmark.

I mean, right now, I know you got to do it. I got to do it on camera. Yeah, that would be cool.

Or maybe a teaser if you were going to say something like, "hire me in 10 years."

MrBeast: But see, now, the beauty of "hire me in 10 years" was the innocence, right? Because it's like, I had 8,000 subscribers or less. And I'm like, yeah, I hope I make it. I really hope.

But now, if I did "hire me in 10 years," I'd be like, I hope I have a billion subscribers. And it's like, well, that's not, you know, no one would be crazy shocked if that ended up happening. But back then, it made no sense.

And yeah, "Jaime in 10 years" goes up in 15 years. I think in that video I said, I hope I have a million subscribers. If I think back to when I filmed it.

Jon Y.: Oh, the video that's been going for 15 months? Yeah, eight and a half years ago.

MrBeast: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, I don't remember. I haven't watched it in a long time, but I think when I filmed it, I was like, "I really hope in 10 years I have a million subscribers."

That's wild. That video is going to go off.

Jon Y.: Do you hope that you'll have a family in 10 years?

MrBeast: From now? Well, I have a girlfriend, and I have a dog. So I kind of have a little one. Yeah, of course. At some point. It's kind of funny. One of the interesting things about doing podcasts as you grow up is you say a lot of stupid things. Someone asked me that a couple of years ago, and my answer was very weird. I was in a weird grind mindset, I was like, well, Elon and all these other people have kids, so I'll have kids. And people clip that, and they just roast the heck out of it.

And that's one of the negatives of everything. Everything from 11 to 26 is on the internet. And obviously, if you ask someone something at 19, and you ask them that same question at 26, or you ask them at 20 or 26, the 26 questions are going to be, your answer is going to be way better. And they're almost always going to look back at the 20-year-old answer and be like, oh, that was dumb because you're just learning and growing. So like, you know, you just gave me deja vu because that's why I'm so adverse to that question.

But no, but no, it's like, yeah, I think the thought of having a kid one day would be fun, like raising a little mini-me and trying to teach them business and all that kind of stuff would be awesome because I didn't have anyone mentoring me. So like, if I could turn a mini-me into just a business mogul at the age of 15, that would be sick. And so that's exciting and sounds about 90 times soon because, of course, I mean, I don't even, I mean, you just had a kid.

I mean, you tell me about it. I mean, it seems like a lot of it's a lot, but it's the most amazing experience. But like, how many times, how many hours a day would you say that you're just not even with the kid, but that you've had brainpower or whatever you're having to devote towards the child?

Jon Y.: I think it's 24/7.

MrBeast: Yeah, exactly.

Jon Y.: I think about it all the time.

MrBeast: That's why I'm not at that point. Because right now, that's where, you know, because you're always thinking about whether you're with the kid or not.

That's how I am with YouTube. And so, like, if you introduce a kid in my life anytime soon, like, I'd be screwed.

Jon Y.: I don't know. The way you've empowered so many people and now creating, like, these tools and just sharing so much and inviting me out, man, I'm just so grateful.

MrBeast: Thank you.

Jon Y.: What a nice guy! You guys should subscribe to him.

Thanks, Jimmy. Thank you for Chucky, the team, everyone. This has been incredible.

And thank you guys for subscribing to his channel. Do it right now. I have urgency, so you're more likely to convert.