CEO Diaries: The Mistake That Nearly Derailed MrBeast’s Entire Empire

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Today's moment episode is with Mr.

Beast, and he has one of the most incredible teams in the world.

But I guess the question is, how?

The reality of running a small business is that switching off is never really an option.

Even when you try, the ideas, the excitement, and all the responsibility is always there.

And because you're always switched on, it's only fair that your hiring partner should be too.

LinkedIn Jobs, who are the sponsor of this moment's episode, has been that hiring partner for me and for years, because it's always working away in the background.

My team can post our jobs for free, share them with our networks and reach top talent all in the same place.

So let's get into today's conversation.

Great people just love working with great people.

They do.

And there's something about being around great people that pulls some kind of animal out of you that just makes you want to do more and push more and believe things aren't possible.

And I don't know, when you put me around a bunch of other successful entrepreneurs, I just turn into a different human than if you put me around, I don't know, a bunch of people who are just running small businesses and don't really care and don't really have much ambition.

i'm like two completely different humans and you see that same thing in full effect you put a bunch of a players around more a players they just build off of each other but you've like put two or three c players amongst a bunch of great people and they'll start pulling them down they'll start making them not want to work as much and make work not as fun and so everyone knows get rid of the c players right obviously get rid of people who aren't all in blah blah blah it's the ones that are like they're not an a player but they're not a c player so it's kind of hard because you still feed off the energy and if you get enough of them it just drags the overall culture down.

So those are like the worst.

I mean, not everyone can be these like world-ending monsters.

You know, there are a lot of mundane things like, you know, I mean, the book controller and accounting, I mean, probably doesn't have to be the best in the world.

But, you know, when it comes to like the mission critical things like making videos and things like that.

You like, just the great people got to be surrounded.

Like, that's one of your number one jobs as leaders, just to make sure your great people are working with other great people.

Cause that's like, that's like the number one reason why people leave jobs isn't money.

You know what I mean?

It's, that's like number four on the list don't ask me to list them all i don't remember i just know the number one thing is do they enjoy who they're working with and people will leave their job because they hate working with people way before they'll ever leave because of money have you ever been frustrated that the people you've hired don't match your level of obsession no because i just find the people that do are there people that do oh yeah i've there's so many people at my uh business um i mean obviously you have to take care of them pay them well like they're they're not the kind of people that'll just make the standard rate But

yeah, like people like Tyler, Klitzner, Russ, and even people on our editing team, I mean, they're putting in most of the weeks,

same amount of hours as me, and they're all in, see the vision.

It's like, it's hard to find those kinds of people, but

when you do, you got to treasure them and recognize that they're unicorns.

And you have almost 500, roughly 500 people?

Probably, I think in the production company, we're around 300, feastables around 100, and then probably another 40, 50 scatter amongst everything else.

Most founders that I speak to describe scaling headcounts as the kind of worst part of the job.

More people, more problems, right?

Yep, that's an understatement.

Especially as someone like you who's a creative at heart and who is very focused and obsessed on, I guess, the show and producing, as you say often,

I want to produce the best videos we possibly can.

Of course.

And then all this other shit comes with it, which is like HR,

which every founder I speak to hates.

I mean, yeah,

the worst part is I just have this very once in a,

I just very rare opportunity where I have so much attention and so many people watch my content.

And I wish I had, I just wish I had more experience building businesses.

You know, I'm only 26 and this is my first real business of every employee milestone we hit, it's my first time hitting that, right?

Like when I hit 100 employees, that was my first time getting there.

And this was my first time going from 100 to 200, 200, 300.

And like, with what I know now, I could have done it so much faster, obviously.

And it's just, you know, it's a little brutal because like

like scaling feastables from you know zero to 100 was way easier than doing my production company because i had been through the ringer before and i learned a bunch and i get better with time and i it's just the most honestly the most annoying part is just ignorance right like because a lot of things mistakes i make i look back and i'm like oh yeah i probably should have brought in people with more experience working at a larger company earlier here i waited a little too long here i probably should have and it's just like brutal because if i had known these things i'd be way further along but i mean that's just how you learn you just got to make 10 000 mistakes every founder says the same, every founder I've spoken to says the same.

The unknown unknowns, exactly.

And it's just like, so that's where, I mean, my big thing recently has just been trying to find people who have successfully skilled businesses and like bring them into my organization and learn from them.

Because I'm just so tired of being like, fuck, I should have known better, but I didn't because I've never done this before.

And so I'm trying to find a lot of great people who have been through it so they can like kind of mentor me along the way.

So I make less mistakes, which has been really good.

We brought in a new C-suite recently.

It's like always a hard balance because I try not to, in the past,

I've like, you know, decisions are kind of like pendulums.

And I have a

problem where I like, I'll identify something and I'll over correct the pendulum one way.

And I'm like, oh, no, I should have just stopped in the middle.

And like my overcorrection in the past was like.

Corporate people try to build too many systems and they kill innovation.

And so I was very anti-like people with too much corporate experience because they're going to just destroy all the creativity.

But, you know, that's why we're making so many organizational fuckups fuck because we don't have anyone who's actually built the business at this size.

And so, you know, the pendulum was on the right, and I swung it all the way to the left of no corporate.

And now I think we're in the healthy medium where, you know, obviously the people in our C-suite and the leaders should have lots of experience managing people at this size and scale.

But it's just finding the right people who can do it and build systems in a way where it doesn't crush creativity and they actually value the product over ease.

The diary of a CEO, I'm on a TV show called Dragonstone in the UK, and

my stuff is significantly smaller.

It's like a percentage of your viewership.

But even I am slightly terrified with hiring people because it's quite clear to me that there's a huge incentive for anyone that I work with to say that I did something bad.

And in the early days of my first business, what happens is the journalists go to everyone that works there and they ask them, what was he like?

You have the same problem.

You have the same conundrum where anyone has an incentive that works for you.

When they leave, so many different incentives to throw an arrow at you on the way out the door how how do you contend with this yeah i mean you hit it on the head of uh you know i have four or five hundred people right now but we've also worked with thousands of people in the past and so i think it's just what comes with it but at the end of the day you know as long as what we're doing it's moral and ethical like like you said they're gonna throw arrows but you know i i'm just a problem solver it's like whenever i see the metaphorical arrow i just go

you know, what's the problem?

And if we did something wrong, how do we fix it?

Or if it's not an actual problem, it's just rumors.

I mean, it is what it is.

And so, yeah, I think it just comes with part of it.

I mean, it sucks and it's unfortunate.

But you also think like most people don't like their jobs too.

And so it's not like this is even specific to our industry.

Like, you know, just go ask 100 random Americans of all the jobs that worked in our life, how many did they deeply enjoy?

And would they have nothing negative to say?

So I think it's just part of it.

You know, it's almost like a pastime for a lot of people just to like trash talk their old jobs or whatever.

I hope you found today's conversation helpful and insightful.

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