MrBeast: If You Want To Be Liked, Don't Help People! I Lost Tens Of Millions On Beast Games... But I'm Worth $1 Billion!

There's a reason no one makes videos like me because no one wants to live the life I live or be in my head. They would be miserable.

Are you happy?

I'm gonna be honest so far more unhappy than happy. Well has it ever crossed your mind to quit YouTube as a whole? Oh yeah, of course.
Really? Yeah. Are you? Oh boy.
Mr. Beast!

Mr. Beast! Mr.
Beast!

He is the biggest YouTuber on the... Oh boy.
Beast Games is gonna shatter some pretty crazy records. And we do nine figures of feastables.
But a lot of that stems from being a very confused child that's not fitting in, that feels like a freak. Plus, I really wanted to take care of my mom because when I was 11, we literally went bankrupt and lost everything.
Luckily it worked out. And it's because I'm really good at obsessing over one thing more than anyone else on the planet.
Like, I lost tens of millions of dollars on Beast Games. But it's about making season one as good as possible.
And I just really love solving complex problems. Like, how many kids do you think are in child labor in West Africa, just on cocoa farms? That's 1.5 million.
And so with Feastables, we're trying to get over a million kids out of child labor. But the ironic part is the more I help people, the more I get.
Like, I've read over 5,000 messages telling me to kill myself. I mean, there's definitely times where I would cry, but if my mental health was a priority, I wouldn't be as successful as I am.
This is the price you have to pay. But when is enough enough? Honestly.
I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button, wherever you're listening to this. I would like to make a deal with you.
if you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button the show gets bigger which means we can expand the production bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to doing this thing we love if you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button wherever you're listening to this this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you.
Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode.
Jimmy, we've really just only met and you are already, to me, a bit of a Rubik's Cube. Okay.
In so many ways. And I've been trying to piece the pieces together to understand the uniqueness of you because you're so unbelievably unique.
We just drove over here in the car and hearing you speak about the way that you view life and speaking to you yesterday on the phone. I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people and I've never ever met someone who has the perspective on life that you have.
You are truly unique unique what do i need to understand about your earliest years to understand who you are oh boy um yeah my earliest years i i'm just stubborn man i just never give up i mean there was there's no world where i ever would have quit i just i i mean we're right into it. It's a great, no intro or anything, just boom.
That's how you hold people. When I was 11, I just said, I'm going to be a YouTuber, I'm going to die trying.
And I meant it. And there was like, even if no one still watches my videos to this day, I would still be going.
And so people hate it, but I'm just the most competitive, stubborn person you'll ever meet. And I just never give up.
And where did that come from? I have no idea, to be honest. Honestly, it feels like it was just in my DNA and my bloodstream.
My mom hated it growing up. We'd always argue, and she has this thing where once Jimmy sets his mind to something, he just never stops, and it would always piss her off because when it was YouTube and she wanted me to be studying or things like that.
But I really don't know. It's just always been how I am.
And I think a lot of people have these weird tendencies and they tend to like try to like unlearn them. And like I had phases in my life where I was like, am I too extreme? Like people are very intimidated by me because I just am so obsessed with work and I'm so all in.
And like, is this like unhealthy? Should I try to be more like a normal human? Especially when I was a teenager. It's a lot easier.
It's funny when you're making lots of money, it's like admirable, it's respectable. It's like, look, those are traits we want.
But when you're not successful, you know, you're a lunatic when you have all these traits. And so back then I'd occasionally be like, man, like, should I try to be more normal? But I just could never do it.
Anytime I tried to, I mean, I've mentioned this before,

but one of the like things that like I have a memory of that like really is

burning my brain is like people one time,

like a high schooler told me when I was in middle school,

like all you do is talk about YouTube.

Like, do you like know how to do anything else?

Like you're just like a freak.

And I tried to like watch South Park, you know,

because that's what a lot of people in my school watched to fit in. And I just couldn't.
I was like, this is such a waste of time. I don't, like, I could be working right now.
And I tried to do all these things to like fit in. And I eventually just like stopped talking because I just didn't relate to anyone.
And people used to call me mute. Like one of my teachers literally asked like, if I was mute, like, because that's how little I spoke because no one in the school I went to was entrepreneurial or wanted to build businesses.
And I just didn't want to do anything else. And yeah, eventually I started to succeed, found other lunatics and now life's great.
But, you know, I like to tell this story when I'm on podcasts, because if you have a younger viewer who's in that same spot, you're not the problem. It's your environment and you just got to put yourself in a better environment.
What about your parents, mom and dad? You talk about your mother a lot. Yeah.
No, I don't. I didn't get it from them.
What influence did they both have on you? Well, I don't really talk about my dad much. That's a long story.
Don't need to get into it. But my mom, honestly, it was, it wasn't, it's great now.
Me and my mom have a phenomenal relationship, but on the come up, it was, it was pretty rough because in 2008, they were over leveraged. So we literally went bankrupt.
And so they, you know, had properties that they used to get other properties. And then when everything collapsed, they lost basically everything.
And so my mom was working two jobs and, you know, barely getting by. And so we like I didn't see her that much because when I was coming home from school, she was doing her second job.
So it was a lot because she was a single mom raising us. She's working all the time.
You know, my I don't talk about a lot of this. You know, I have Crohn's disease, so I was very sick growing up.
My brother also had issues as well. And so, you know, we're not the healthiest kids in our teenage year.
She's just trying to get by and take care of us. And then, you know, she comes home and she just has this brat that's being annoying and like, I want to be a YouTuber.
And she's just begging me. Sometimes she would literally cry and beg me to do homework.
And I mean, i was i was like i didn't i didn't mean it in a mean way but i mean i even one time i literally told her if you want my my homework done so bad why don't you just do it you know like that's that's what i told my mom what am i doing i don't know like i was just like i don't i don't care like i i just want to be successful i want to build businesses and so it was like bless her heart luckily it worked out so now I spoiled her she's great she has her second home anything she could ever want she has and so the first uh thing I did was take you know start paying my mom take care of her once I started making money because she gave everything to like get me where I am and I wouldn't be where I am now but it was like it was like me and her spoke different languages when. You know, she, she didn't want me to end up like them, you know, and, you know, get screwed and not have much money.
And like, the path I was going down was just basically like, oh, I'm gonna be a homeless drug addict. And like, her brain couldn't compute the world I saw.
And my brain couldn't compute the world she saw. And it was constant friction.
Who was looking after you, then? If she was busy working, and you were at home, and your dad's not around, who takes care of you? I just, me and my brother, we were just there. I was just making videos.
You're making videos? Yeah. What age did that start, the videos? I started at 11.
11. Yeah.
So I, I, I'm 26 now. I can't really remember life before YouTube.
Like my earliest memories are basically when I started making videos. You said earlier, you don't talk about your dad much.
Yeah. You don't have to tell me about it, but why don't you talk about your father much? Don't worry about it.
I know your mom has spoken about him before. Yeah.
And it was a bit of a tumultuous relationship. Yeah, exactly.
They didn't have the best relationship. I mean, that's a topic for another day.
Honestly, kind of a sour way to start it off. But yeah, it's my mom is great.
I love my mom. She used to cry asking you to do your homework.
A lot of things. She she would cry because I wouldn't put money away.
When we started making money, she would she thought it was too risky. And I mean, the thing is, nothing she would say was unreasonable.
Looking back at it, she was perfectly reasonable in what she was doing. I'm just a deranged lunatic and was way too obsessed with building the business and way too all in.
It's very cute. One time she, when we had, I don't remember, some month where she made like $100,000.
And I'm like, okay, perfect. Now I can spend 100 grand this next month on videos.
And she took like 5,000 of it and put it away for me and my own bank account without telling me. But in case I ever was over leveraged or went bankrupt like they did.
And I found out about it. And she's like, please don't take this money.
Just let me set aside anything. Stop spending everything on videos.
And I was like, no, this is perfect. Now I can spend more.
Like, this is awesome. Thank you, mom.
And like, but to me, I don't, I don't really feel risk. Like if anything, it like risk excites me.
And like, I have very high threshold for it. So yeah, we just, we literally weren't communicating the same language, but I don't remember what age it was, but eventually after I took enough risks and figured it out, my mom just said to me, you know what? I'm going to trust you.
Like, I have faith. And everything got so much better after that point when, like, she stopped staying up all night worrying about me and worrying whether or not I was making the right decision when she was just like, Jimmy, I trust you.
I know this. You think about this all day.
Like, I'm going to just follow your lead. And our relationship has been, you know, perfect ever since since then if i'd asked 10 year old jimmy how are you doing what would what would he

have said uh 10 i don't know but if you asked me at like 12 or 13 i probably would have been like

fuck like no one watches my videos i just really want to be a youtuber i um i gotta i gotta make

this work why did you want to really be a youtuber? Because kids say that, but the extent to which you said it and the focus that you had on that particular goal of being a YouTuber, because there's many things you could have focused on. You could have been a video game player or whatever, but YouTube is a particularly interesting thing because you're on camera.
People are seeing it. There's a metric which decides how successful you are.
Was there any element of the on-camera part that was helping to solve for like the feeling of isolation that you seemed to have at that time? No. Was there community? Yeah, I think it's more to do with just I found out that when I was at a young age, probably around 11, that there were youtubers that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and I was just like oh that's it like just the money yeah of course because back back then we didn't have money and I really wanted to take care of my mom and and just my family in general so it was like everything it was like this is what I love doing I've never had as much joy doing something as I do this plus I could see a path where I I could actually retire my mom, take care of her, pay her back for, you know, all the nights she worked so long so we could live comfortably and things like that.
So it's just kind of, the thing is, one thing that irks me is when people try to like put someone's motivation into like one little bucket. Like we're very complex creatures.
And like, you know, you have have a girlfriend i i i would never say oh you just like her because she's pretty but you like her because she's pretty but you probably also like her because she's smart you probably also like her because you know she's fun to be around she likes similar shows blah blah you probably if we sat here for 10 hours you could probably give me a thousand reasons why you like your girlfriend so it's like it's very annoying when people try to put why you like doing a certain job or building a certain business into one bucket. Oh, you just do it because of money.
What if I do it because I like money and I enjoy it and it's a way to do this and it's a way to communicate with people and community and these other things, you know what I mean? And I think that's a common flaw we try to do. It's it's not that simple i think it's a lot of people

can't understand someone being so relentlessly focused on something with the level of like

commitment and sustained commitment that you've shown yeah and so and i don't know how i i agree

because it's very weird like how like i have extreme obsession to the point where like i just

think about stuff the same like for me it's much easier to think about something 16 hours a day

for seven days straight than it is like

to like

Thank you. I have extreme obsession to the point where I just think about the same.
For me, it's much easier to think about something 16 hours a day for seven days straight than it is to gear shift constantly. I'm really good at just obsessing over one thing more than anyone else on the planet.
If I were to say, what's my superpower? It's that. I can just obsess endlessly about something, and I can just have the same thoughts over and over and over and over again.
It's very weird. Like it's, it was, it was, it wasn't like it was work for me grinding YouTube for those 10 years or whatever, where no one was really watching it.
It's just like kind of who I am. It would have had to have been a deep obsession, because you were doing it when no one was really watching or paying attention, or really when the platform was...
There was literally a day when I was 19 or 20, where I got I woke up, joined a Skype call with my friends,

and where we like reverse engineering, you know, why certain videos do well or whatever.

And I remember that call being over 18 hours long. And then I hung up, went to bed, woke back

up the next day and instantly got back on the call and picked back like that was the level of

like, hours we were putting in. I mean, I didn't know anything besides just trying to make it happen.
Was there anything else that you showed that level of obsession to? So at that age, no. I would say from 11 to 15, it was a mix of YouTube and baseball.
But when I turned 15, I got Crohn's. And I went from like 190 pounds down to 139.
I lost all the muscle I had. And so I was like, all right, I'm not playing baseball in college anymore.
So then I was like, fuck it. It's just all in on YouTube.
And then up until really Feastables, it was basically just YouTube versus whatever. I never thought I would find like this kind of love for building.
I thought it was specifically video making. But I have found over like the last two or three years, just in general, I just enjoy entrepreneurship.
And I've been really deeply loving getting obsessed with Feastables and other things, which was very weird. When I first started a chocolate company, it was kind of a side thing.
But the more I started to work on it, I got a lot of the same highs I got when I was making videos, just in different ways. And so now I'm like, I know way too much about the chocolate industry.
I'm like, it's pretty crazy. I never imagined I would have put the thousands of hours I've poured into building Feastables.
And so I think just in general, it's just, I just really love solving consistent, complex, hard problems. I think that's like what gets me out of bed.
And like the harder the problems, the more exciting it is. Consistent, hard problems.
I want to talk about that and also Feastables, but you mentioned Crohnhn's disease there yeah a lot of people don't know what that is and the impact it has on someone's life are you aware of it i am because i had a team member that had it so um in order to help support them at certain times when they had to leave and stuff like that i got a little bit more aware of what it means and what how it impacts you but could you give me your perspective on that yeah so cro So Crohn's disease is when your immune system attacks itself. So yeah, when I was 15, I just started going to the bathroom eight, nine, 10 times a day, not digesting any food because my GI tract is like literally just attacking itself.
It's very weird. Your immune system in your gut thinks your gut is a foreign invader.
And so it just starts attacking itself, which if you're just using the bathroom 10 times a day, not digesting food, that's why you drop weight rapidly. And it hurts like crazy because it gets very inflamed.
And it feels like someone's stabbing you in the gut with like a knife constantly when it's really, really bad, which is what I had. So I lost 50 pounds, which is crazy because I was already relatively lanky.
And we were just trying different medicine. And then eventually, I'm on a pretty extreme medicine

called Remicade, where just basically

you nuke your immune system,

which is why my voice sounds a little off right now

because I just got the flu.

I got COVID six times.

I got shingles.

Like I get sick all the time

because for me to have my GI tract stop attacking itself,

we basically have to shut down my immune system.

So I have like a really weak immune system. So I just get sick all the time.
Like, so I have like random rashes and things like that. So it's like, it was pretty, pretty brutal, to be honest.
And then it randomly flares up sometimes and just makes you very sick, very tired. Like I just live life on hard mode, to be honest.
Like if someone like if you wake up and you have energy, like you're already leaps and bounds ahead of me. Like I, you know, it's it's makes things way more difficult.
And so you still wake up with some days where you don't have energy. Of course.
Which is really hard to believe for someone who's so productive for everybody looking on. Yeah, it's you just got to really love what you do.
I mean, and push through it. It's it's pretty brutal because then you compound then you compound that with always being sick.
And I mean, yeah, like I just spent four days in a hospital in South Africa because I got the flu and it just takes me a lot longer to recover from certain things. So, um, it's brutal.
And that's where it's like, if I didn't work so much, I would spend more time researching Crohn's because surely there's a better way to stop it than just destroying my immune system. And ideally I don't do that that deep into my 30s and 40s.
So I see it as a little bit of a bandaid. But, you know, I've met with the top Crohn's doctors in the world.
And so far, they're like, this is just the answer. And you're just lucky your gut isn't attacking yourself.
So, but I don't know. I feel like the medicine they give people with Crohn's is kind of silly.
And there's got to be a better way to treat it. I mean, the ultimate solution is they just cut me open and cut out a large part of my GI tract and then there you go.
But, you know. I observed in the team member that I had that had Crohn's just a bit of a mental rollercoaster as well because there's a certain unpredictability to it.
Exactly. Which makes life...
Oh, it's even worse when you're filming because you got this huge multi-million dollar set and 200 people waiting on you. And, you know, sometimes you don't know if you're going to have a flare, but you just got to go fuck it and just down some caffeine and crank it out.
I got diagnosed with ADHD. You did? Yeah, I got diagnosed with ADHD and it made me think a lot about myself and the way that I am.
It's not, I'm not the type of person to like embody the label or think it really means much. I am just who I am.
Have you, are you in any way neurodivergent? I've been told, yeah, by a doctor I have ADHD. I mean, I'm not surprised because I just sit and obsess over things constantly.
But I think I'm happy with however my brain is wired. I don't really care to change it.
I, like I said, I think one of my greatest superpowers is my obsession. And I think some people would view that as a weakness.
But if you just think about solving problems three times more than everyone else, you're bound to come up with different solutions. That's one of the things you mentioned earlier.
You like solving hard problems consistently. When you think back over the last 10 years of your life and the success you've had solving some of these hard problems, if you were to like break it down into some core components of that you've learned, one of them is obsession that you've said.
Yeah. What are the others? I mean, it's all the typical stuff.
Like you are obviously who you surround yourself with. And luckily, I just got around the right people in my later teenage years because I feed off the energy of the people probably around me it's so obvious like I start to talk like them I become interested in the things they're interested in I mean this is all obvious stuff I'm sure you've heard a bajillion times so but you know just gotta I always have to be protective of the people I'm around because whatever they say is what I started thinking on.
And that's what I started obsessing over. And, you know, one of the best things that happened with Feastables is I just reached out to all the fastest growing chocolate companies, all the fastest growing snack businesses and everything and just became friends with a lot of the founders.
And, you know, that's what would have probably taken me eight, nine years to like solve. You know, after 18 months, you know, it was probably one of the top 10 people in the world when it comes to running a chocolate company and understanding it deeply just because it's just cheat codes.
What about detail? Sweating the small stuff. One of the things that I saw, I was reading that handbook that was linked on the internet, and one of the things I saw throughout that was this real obsession with the 1% and the small stuff.
How do you feel about this, by the way, and all of that stuff? I wrote that with some of my employees when I was probably 22. So there are some things that I'm like, I read, I'm like, oh, wow, I was an idiot.
But for the most part, most of it still stands the test of time. And I do think it's very helpful.
You know, it's funny, a lot of CEOs have actually told me that they make their employees read this. It went around all of our Slack channels.
We all read it. Which is funny because I'm like, damn, I should make an updated version of it.
So everyone. But yeah, the thing is, the core crux of it is like extreme ownership and don't make excuses.
And, you know, people always. Yeah, I mean, I'm getting a lot of deja vu from when i was writing that it was just a different time back then too because i just i had no idea what i was doing when i was 21 22 and i just found that i was constantly telling like teaching the same or teaching people the same things over and over again and it was always just like take extreme ownership take accountability like, I guess it was out of your control,

but it could have been in your control

if you just thought through it more,

if you just really cared.

And that's what I was just trying to convey in it.

And the other thing that comes through in this,

but also all of your work is just this idea,

something that I've learned from you

just from speaking to you on the phone yesterday,

that nothing is impossible.

Yeah, exactly.

And watching Beast Games over the last couple of weeks,

but also speaking to some of your team,

there's clearly this through line with everything that you do of like extreme what appears to me to be extreme ambition and it doesn't appear to be extreme ambition to you in the same way that it appears to be extreme ambition to me yeah i mean it's just i mean is does physics allow it then yes it's possible it just is it do we want to put the time in i mean it's i i feel like people over complicate a lot of things um and is that something you've trained over time or have you always thought that i think i've just oh it's a good question i've never i don't know why but when people tell me i can't do something i i don't know where this came from it makes me just want to do it more to be honest if you tell me i shouldn't do something that's fine but if you tell me i can't then i just it's everything in my body just wants to go fuck you i obviously can i just i don't know if i should but i can and then i i don't know it's like the the thing is like to go viral you have to do something that's never been done before i've told this story before of like you know if you're driving down the road and you see a cow who cares it's a fucking cow but if you're driving down the road and you see a cow, who cares? It's a fucking cow. But if you're driving down the road and you see a purple cow, you're like, you've never seen that before.
And it's something you weren't expecting. You're going to go, holy shit.
And you're going to go tell your friends about it. You're going to remember that.
You'll probably even think about it randomly once every couple of years. Why the fuck was there a purple cow? And it's like, it's the same thing.
Just one was a little purple. And like, you can apply that same like analogy to ideas.
Like when you're scrolling through social media to find a video to watch, there's things that have been done before. You've seen.
It's roughly similar to stuff before. You're just going to scroll past it.
You'll never think about it again. Just like you'll never think about a fucking cow on the side of the road.
And then there are ideas that are like the purple cow idea, which is what I try to do, which are things that make you go, what the fuck? I've never seen that.

Like, I have to click this or I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight because, like, why is this video? No way they did this, right? But those typically are very hard. And usually, to get that purple cow effect, they've never been done before.
And if something's never been done before, there's usually a reason because it's very fucking hard. So you just kind of have to train yourself to like not resent very difficult, complex, hard, original problems and actually run towards them because those are the ones that, you know, tend to have more of the purple cow effect where people have to watch it.
And viewership is very exponential. It's way easier to get 50 million views on one video than it is to get a million views on 50 videos, right? And so, and because it like kind of goes exponentially and it's like, you know, pretty winner take all in the top videos.
Like you just really have to lean into that purple cow effect, if that makes sense. Makes perfect sense.
If you were to distill then, say we were coming up with a new how to succeed in Mr. B's production handbook now, what would be the top five, if I was applying for a job with you, what five characteristics would I need to demonstrate to be successful? You got to be very coachable because whatever I teach you today is going to change, you know, a year or two from now, always learning, always improving coachable.
Um, a big thing for me is you got to see the value in working here. Like you've really, I just, I don't, this isn't like a job.
This is a career. Like if you don't If you don't realistically see a world where you're working for me in 10 years, then it's pretty hard for me to invest into you at the level I want.
I don't like training someone for six months. They work here for a year and then I lose them.
What I like is I train someone for a year and then I get nine years of dividends on the back end where they crush at their job

and I'm constantly paying them more

because they're becoming more valuable with time.

That is like the eighth wonder of the world

is investing heavily in an employee

and then they stick around for a decade.

You know what I mean?

It's like there are some of my top guys

that I spent three or four years

in the trenches with training and working with.

You know, they're like Tyler

who writes a lot of my videos and directs them.

I've probably talked to him five, six hours a day every day for four. Yeah, around four years.
And now because I can't spend, he spends 100% of his time writing the videos, directing the videos, obsessed over that. Whereas I could theoretically max spend 5% of my time.
So he's going to naturally just shit on me on it because he can spend way more time on it. And it's like, so, you know, I have full faith in him, but the dividends that I get off of him after all those years of pouring all that time and effort into him, and now he knows exactly how I think, what I value, that I don't even really have to communicate with him.
Sometimes I can just show up to film and like, I just trust that it's good, you know, and I have a bunch of people across all my businesses like that, that it's like, great. And if, you know, in a world where Tyler's still working here 10 years from now, I mean, the amount of value out of someone like that is unfathomable.
It is quite literally the eighth winner of the world for a business. And it's like, that's what I want.
But you only get those kinds of people, they see the value for, you know, working for you. And so they have to like deeply believe like the more valuable I become to this company, the more I'll be rewarded.
And they like actually want to dedicate their life to the business. So that's very important.
Because if I really don't get that vibe, then it's not fair to both of us because I'm not going to invest in you like I should, because I don't think you're going to be here in 10 years. And then you're going to feel that and it creates.
So coachable sees the value. Obviously obsessed.
I just don't like working with mediocre people. I mean, I really just can't stand it.
It's the fastest way to make me depressed is if I have to work with someone who's just not all in and just loves what they do. It's just a lot of stuff like that that I'm sure if you listen to a Steve Jobs interview or something that he talks about, it's just the typical traits, obsessed, coachable, all in, sees the value.
And what is the single worst trait? Mediocrity. I mean, it's just like, because they're not bad enough where you fire them, but not good.
The problem is like, I mean, and you see it in full effect. 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 you 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 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 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, 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 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 because 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. There's so many people in my business.
I mean, obviously, you have to take care of them and pay them well. They're not the kind of people that'll just make the standard rate but um yeah like people like tyler klitzner russ and you know even people on our editing team i mean they're putting in most weeks same hour 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 um you know 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 the production company were around 300, Feastables around 100, and then probably another 40, 50 scattered amongst everything else.
Most founders that I speak to describe scaling headcounts is the kind of worst part of the job. More people, more problems, right? Yeah, 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, 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 a hundred 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 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, cause 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 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 spoke to says the same.
They're 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 like being like, fuck, I should have known better, but I didn't 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 um we brought in a new c-suite recently um I it's like always a hard balance because I try not to in the past I I've like you know decisions are kind of like pendulums and I have a uh a problem where I like I'll identify something and I'll overcorrect 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 fuck ups, 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 Oseo, I'm on a TV show called Dragonsend 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 do you contend with this? Yeah, I mean, you hit it on the head of, you know, I have four or 500 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 is moral and ethical, like you said, they're going to throw arrows. But, you know, 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 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 of all the jobs that worked in their 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 um it's almost like a pastime for a lot of people just to like trash talk their old jobs or whatever and Has any of that stuff ever got to you? Any criticism? Oh, of course. Yeah.
I mean, all criticism all the time does. But I mean, the thing is, independent of that kind of stuff, it's just like, I mean, we are averaging like 200 million views a video.
Like, you know, like most of it unique viewers. Like we're talking like two plus percent um sometimes three percent of humans alive watched every piece of content i put out you know depending on how well the channel is doing and so like that means like you could i could upload a video and then with uh 365 days later you could grab 33 random humans anywhere on the planet especially because we do doves you know what's even crazier is you know, YouTube's not in China.
So that's like two to three percent of humans alive, excluding China. Or China's mixed in there.
But if you just take people excluding China, it'd be more like three to four percent. But you could just grab 33 random people on the planet.
And one of them on average would have seen that video because the views are so fucking high. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of criticism that's thrown at me.
And the thing is, you know, since our stuff's so global, sometimes, you know, transcends culture and not everyone views everything. And so everyone has different opinions and stuff like that, which is why it will drive you crazy at our scale if you try to make people happy.
Because even if 99% of people are deeply happy, which is an insane hit rate, like if you make a piece of content, 99% 99 percent of people that watch it love it that is wild which that kind of stuff doesn't happen but in our case if just one percent's unhappy that's two million people which is more than anyone else even gets on video views on video so which will feel like an insurmountable amount of criticism and feedback and it's very easy to like trick your mind into thinking, because you just, you know, focus on the 1% instead of 99. So I just came to the point where, you know, I just have to have my own internal guidelines of like, do I think what I'm doing is good? Do what I think, you know, is moral, ethical? Do I believe in what I'm doing? If so, fuck it, like, I'm never going to be able to make everyone happy.
So I and if you you just, you let the whims of the internet kind of decide what is okay and what's acceptable. And, and when you're being bad or good, then you, you, you don't have a spine, you don't have a backbone, you stand for nothing.
And, and it, it will just destroy you mentally. Um, and so, I mean, I don't know what age I was when I kind of got in that mindset, but I just was like, I'm going to decide and I'm not going to let the internet decide, you know, what is okay and what's not.
And then ever since I got to that point, you know, people criticize me for something and I'm like, I don't agree. Then I have like, it's easy for me to just go, oh, well, I don't agree.
Not going to make everyone happy. I believe what I'm doing is right.
And just move on. The brain isn't designed for this though.
No, it's not. This is what I've come to learn so do the podcast it goes well it feels like at the start everyone loves me yeah and then i get further down the line and it feels like everyone fucking hates me yep because they you get attacked from you can never do anything right especially i've probably read mess like comments or tweets or i've probably in my lifetime read over 5 000 messages or comments or something telling me to kill myself.
I mean, you know what I mean? You know, just like, and what would possess someone to tell you to like leave a comment where it's like fucking kill yourself? You know what I mean? So agreed, like you're, we were not meant to receive this kind of feedback from basically anyone anywhere in the world. You know what I mean? Just all, you know, consistently day in and day out for, for my for for my in my case now over a decade has it ever really got to you oh yeah of course I mean it does all the time or it used to all the time I like I said what does that mean in reality if I'm a fly on a wall in one of those moments where you can recall it really getting to you I mean back in the day but I wasn't as confident in my ability to be successful.
And when you're probably 20 and you're hiring all these people, I have high risk tolerance, but I'm reinvesting every dollar I make. I'm hiring my friends from school.
I've hired my mom. These people I really care about are depending on me.
And then I upload a video and it does bad. And then people, I pour, I pour all my time and effort into it.
But, you know, maybe it doesn't come across as well. Like the video and, you know, some people might have interpreted as lazy and you read a comment being like, wow, what a fucking lazy.
Like, I thought you made great videos or this video sucked. And you read that and the video is underperforming and you're like, fuck, maybe I am being too reckless.
And, you know, I where i would cry you know just because i would just be like fuck am i like not doing this right or like they don't understand i put a lot of time into this or or whatever why why you know sometimes you're like fuck does the algorithm hate me am i being suppressed or whatever back in the day um when was the last time that happened that feeling of um yeah there was like a

a month Back in the day. When was the last time that happened? That feeling of...

There was like a month probably last year where I felt a little bit of that

just because, you know,

just sometimes occasionally the rumor

and drama mill gets spun up.

But you just got to snap out of it.

And like I said, just go,

do I believe in what I'm doing?

Do I...

It's like, it's hard because, you know in what I'm doing do I it's like it's

hard because you know anytime I do anything good it's you know people are always like uh they try to we're like conditioned in America now when someone does something good there's always some alternative motive and I've I've always been straightforward and just said a world where I help people is just better than a world where I don't like I don't try to come up with this crazy like story of of how you know someone helped me when i was younger and now i i just want to give

back help people is just better than a world where I don't like I don't try to come up with this crazy like story of of how you know someone helped me when I was younger and now I I just want to give back and cry I'm just like yeah I can make viral videos and I think a world where I do viral videos that help people are better when I don't you know I just kind of that's my answer um but it always does suck when people try to just like I don't know it's funny the more good you do the more people

think you're secretly evil and it's like why can't i just help people because it's fun you know so

occasionally those will get to me and i'll just be like guys you don't even know me like and like

you would think sometimes you'd read like when i build wells in africa or help blind people see or

things like that you you'd read some of these things online you would think i'm hitler i mean

it's crazy like how people portray it and i just i don't know i wish people just understand like

Thank you. help blind people see or things like that you you'd read some of these things online you would think i'm hitler i mean it's crazy like how people portray it and i just i don't know i wish people just understand like in my opinion a world where i help people is just more fun than a world where i don't and it's really not that deep the people around you how does it impact them oh how does the drama and that kind of stuff impact them um to be honest in my case it i don't think it hits them that hard because most things usually fall on me and people want to go after me because I'm the guy that does good, the quote unquote philanthropist.
So usually I'm like the one that gets thrown under the bus quite a bit. It's funny because everyone that knows you knows you.
Yeah. Whether they're really successful people or people that you work with that I've spoken to, everybody that knows you knows who you are.
And it's remarkable to me that someone who has done so much good in the world, I've looked at your philanthropy, I know what you're doing with Feastables and the ethical sourcing of that. When I see someone that's done so much good in the world, still be misunderstood, it almost makes me realize that I should never fight it.
Yeah yeah i mean the ironic part is the more i help people the more shit i get to be honest like it's it's so funny because you know like the same day i'll uh drop a video where i'll uh uh you know uh help a thousand blind people see some other youtuber will drop a video where they just bought a new mansion and it's like everyone's like yes you know get that mansion good job and then they'll be like fuck you for curing blind people jimmy fuck you you're using them and i'm like no i just want to inspire people to do good i mean i can buy a mansion if you really want me to um so it is funny i if you're trying, this is a weird sentence,

but if you're trying to be liked,

I actually don't recommend you help people.

I actually think helping people will make the internet like you less

than if you just buy nice cars

and do the typical influencer path.

It's because we're just so conditioned in America

to see it as a shield

and no one actually does good because they just find it fun apparently um but i mean i don't care i like i said it's just more fun than if i didn't so i mean people can shit on me for helping people i don't i don't doesn't bother me anymore um but i wouldn't recommend you get into it if you want to be liked because i think it's negatively correlated now interesting it is so fascinating it is i swear to god man like people it's it's it's negatively correlated now. Interesting.
It is so fascinating. I swear to God, man.
I could just, I don't know, do these $1 versus videos where I compare a $1 boat to a billion-dollar boat and all these other things and not help people, and I would just get way less shit. It's so funny because no one bats an eye when I post that, but when I give hundreds of thousands of people in Africa clean drinking water, it's like all hell breaks loose.
And I'm like, guys, I'm just trying to bring attention to a cause. I don't really.
But the thing is, I'm just going to keep doing it. And I mean, I think in my case, most people have realized I'm not going to stop.
So they're just kind of over, you know, getting mad at me. And they're just like, all right, Jimmy's just being Jimmy.
I think when the wind blows as well, what it does is it helps you to really understand why you're doing what you're doing and understand yourself. And so when I've been attacked for like the people I interview or whatever it might be, it's actually made me refocus on what my principles are.
Yeah. Because you have to be really anchored to them.
It's like I said, you have to know where your line is. And as long as you're on the right side of your line, then it is what it is.
People on Twitter can say whatever they want and i i think like that's the only way to really survive at this scale without going crazy is you you have to determine where the line is not let the internet workaholism yes can you give me a window into the last seven days of your life just give me paint me a picture oh yes uh let me uh drink some water because my flu.

Well, I don't know about the last seven days, but in general, we so we're filming a video where we're doing the I'm visiting the five most deadliest places on Earth. So one of the places was a safari in South Africa.

So I flew to South Africa to spend time in a cage surrounded by lions.

Sick content. It was really good, which that was a bitch to get to.
And then I got the flu and so spent a couple days in the hospital there. And then we were going to go to Snake Island to spend time there.
Then the world's deadliest road and then we have a couple other places, but that got postponed. So instead, got out of the hospital, went to Florida, filmed with Aaron Judge.
Then I went to, or no, went went to North Carolina we have this guy where I built a gym and I told him if he loses 100 pounds before he leaves the gym it has a big red circle around it I'll give him a bunch of money so I filmed with him then worked on the coming up videos um that it's a lot and then flew to Florida filmed with Aaron Judge flew here just, filmed with the reunion that you were at with the contestants for Beast Games.

We're doing this podcast.

What time is it?

Like 1 a.m.?

Just off to 1 a.m.

Yeah, 1 a.m.

The latest podcast he's ever done.

Lightweight.

I always do my podcasts at 1 a.m.

My last podcast before this was like 4 a.m.

Like a couple weeks ago.

And then we're flying to San Fran to film with Steph.

Steph Curry.

Yeah, Steph Curry. Then I think I'm going to Snake Island then the deadliest road um and then I I won't I'll basically I don't think I'll be home for another 16 days so I'm just traveling around filming for the next 16 days and then um yeah I guess then I'll get home and then they'll make me film at home how does everything else in your life fit into that in terms of like the gym? I know you've been working out.
It's been brutal. It's gone to shit the last couple of months.
It's really killing me, to be honest. It was like so much easier when you're, bro, if you don't travel constantly, life is so easy when you just wake up in your own bed and like waking up in your own bed and working 15 hours in your office or whatever.
So easy compared to like all this fucking bullshit where I'm like, I don't know the time zone I'm in. I don't know what place I'm in.
I don't know where I'm going in two days. It's like, I mean, some days I'm going to bed at 10 a.m.
Other days I'm going to bed at 5 p.m. And it's like, it's a mess.
It's really, and I used to put up with it and and it just like and figure out how to do the training but it's just i don't i don't know i need to truthfully whatever's a priority you'll get done i just need to make it a priority again because i really do miss it it's just this the hard part is putting putting beast games in the mix because i was already like basically working you know whatever every hour my eyes were awake but then beast games is such a monster of a project and I have to maintain the same YouTube upload schedule and then I do a lot on festivals now and then I have a couple other businesses so I just honestly something had to give and sadly it was working out but it's fucking stupid so I need to like reprioritize my life where I can get I mean it just only needs to be 45 minutes five days a week doesn't need to be hard. But the bigger problem is I'm just not sleeping like I used to because we got so much going on.
And so when I hit it hard in the gym and then I don't get enough sleep, then that causes pretty extreme fatigue the next day. So it's like I got to fix the sleep first before that.
But yeah, it's got a lot going on, to be honest. I'm dying.
How are you feeling? Right now, honestly, fine fine i'm jacked up on all that caffeine but i mean just in this feast you know the flu's not helping it's it's making everything like 30 harder so you know it's like life's like a roller coaster there are going to be moments where like right now i'm going to answer this negatively but i don't want someone to think that's indicative of like oh every and every time you ask me this it's going to be up but because of the flu and the lack of sleep i mean i'm struggling at the moment just a lot of grinding um a little happy because we just dropped the ending of beast game so it's like a little bit of emotional high but after this i'm probably going to go crash be tired as fuck in the morning tomorrow which i hate um but yeah i would say i'm on like the lower end i i could use a couple good days bring the energy back up. Quick one.
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That's V-A-N-T-A dot com slash steven for $1,000 off. do you think about mental health I've heard you speak about your mental health before and I've yeah I don't well the thing is here's the problem like it's uh if my mental health was a priority I wouldn't be as successful as I am I mean and that's just like a sad fact um like I obviously never would have buried myself alive for seven days seven days of solitary seven, seven days on a desert island, seven days, blah, blah, blah.
It's like, you know, being consistently uncomfortable and like being able to consistently suffer over long periods is like arguably one of the deepest modes. Like there's a reason no one makes videos like me, like not even close because no one wants to live the life I live.
I mean, there are there are months where I'm, you know, I think there was one year I was flying like 200 days. Like I was on a plane.
I mean, it was, it was a fuck fest, but you know, to get these videos done and, and I do everything. And it's like, you know, when I, when I wake up tomorrow and I'm going to be pretty fucking tired and feel like shit, I'm going to go, you know, I, something I always tell myself is how you feel right now is why no one else does what you want to do or does what you do.
And if you push through this, that's just even, you know, more of a reason why no one will ever be who you are. And so it's like, I think being able to push through unhappiness and do things you don't want to do consistently year after year over the course of a decade is like the ultimate advantage.
Like, I mean, I think we'll hit a billion subscribers and I don't think anyone will be anywhere near close because like once you make a couple million dollars, why would you live the life I live? Like, why? Why would you not take weekends off? Why would you not just film locally, even if it means less views so you can be on the right time schedule? Why would you not, you know, prioritize your sanity and that kind of stuff? It makes no sense, but that's why no one else does it. You spoke to Colin and Samir, two guys that I two guys i met recently um yeah they're great great great guys um you said to them i'm miserable a lot of times i have mental breakdowns every other week yeah i think those have gotten a little better mental breakdown sounds extreme it's more i'm like fuck why am i doing this this is so fucking hard um because it's just a lot're just going constantly.
It's like, because what's funny is, I think I said that years ago, but that was back when all I was really was doing YouTube. Now I run this chocolate company and we have the show and we have a couple other stuff.
So I think the hardest part really is gear shifting. And so I try to bucket these things correct.
Like if I'm on set and I have a 15-hour film day, ideally the things I'm doing in between filming are related to main channel because I'm in the frame of mind of that. And that's one thing that's really helped me not feel like my head's going to explode.
Like if I'm in Chicago at the Feastables office and we're going through Feastables marketing, and then you come in and you go, what do you think about this bit for this coming up main channel video? Then I have to like shift my frame of mind. And then like that constant gear shifting, it's like, it'll make my fucking head hurt if I'm like bouncing around too much.
And it's also just very not core to who I am. I love obsessing over certain things.
And I find, you know, obsessing over things within a business isn't like switching back and forth between marketing and product. In a same business, easy.
There's a long way of saying like one thing that's helped with that is like just really organizing my schedule in a way where it allows my natural state of mind to like obsess over a certain business, finish that, then move on to the next one. Whereas before it used to be like 30 gear switches a day.
And that's just miserable. It's just not even to be honest i heard um elon musk who i know someone you you spoke about quite often also someone that i speak about quite often i heard him say when he was on joe rogan that you wouldn't want to be in my head and i think joe rogan asked him if he was happy or something and he doesn't even like consider the question to be important yeah so two questions there do you think the average person would like to be in your head and secondly are you happy uh well no the average person does not want to live the life i live or be in my head they would be miserable because you're just working all the time and they they would probably just ask themselves why am i working all the time why don't i why don't i do literally anything else i mean because they're i mean obviously i'm not a robot there are times where i'm like fuck i really want to play this strategy board game I want to do this thing and I'm I look at the schedule and I'm like oh maybe I could do that in four days and you you know and the the hard thing is it's you really have to like be delicate with the framing of your mind because it's very easy in moments like that to go fuck I'm like a zoo animal like I don't I don't have free will I'm like a little robot to my businesses and like um and so you have to like be very careful and sometimes those emotions take over and especially because I'm a very defiant kind of guy and I'm like but I really want to do this thing but I can't because I got to go film this video and I got to do this and I got to speak at this conference and I got to do this networking thing and blah blah and so yeah, I think most people, when that feeling comes up of like, am I just a fucking animal? Like, do I have any free will? They would probably get very depressed.
But I've been able to like work through those and just, I always try to, you know, your brain, you just got to control your thoughts and be like, well, this is the life I chose. This is, you want success.
You want to change the world. You want to do this and this and this this is the price you have to pay you should actually see this as a good thing because this is why which is why i'm very uh diligent about how i frame things in my mind like this is why no one else will do what you will do and this is a good thing this is what you are feeling right now is your moat it's you're lucky it's hard push through it and you'll be happy you did you know and so that's kind of how I try to view it.
But no, I don't think most people would be happy living my life. They would be like, oh, let's just grab a couple million dollars and be happy.
Are you happy? It depends what day you ask me. Right now, I'm having a good time.
Other, you know, when I had the flu in Africa, sitting in a cage of lions, fuck no. What's your baseline? How would you describe your baseline? Probably this year, probably so far, more unhappy than happy.
And it's just, there are just things you got to do that just aren't fun, you know? But I think, I really deeply enjoy working on festivals and I'm trying to spend more of my time building it. The problem is it's just, it's just opportunity cost because I'm the only one who can be in front of the camera and film.
And that's what's brutal, especially with Beast Games, is I'm just filming so much. It added so much shit to my yearly filming, like doing this giant show on top of already having the largest YouTube channel in the world.
And I was already filming some months, 25 days a month. So I'm just like, that's just the rough part is because it's like, it just all rests on my shoulders.
And if I don't film, there is no content. Like the channel just literally ceases.
Like if I stopped filming. And so, you know, I have found more and more that I'm finding more joy in entrepreneurial things and building businesses.
And I do think I'd be happy if I could spend more time doing that. But it's just like weird because I could literally hire anyone in the world to do that.
Whereas I can't hire anyone to replace me on camera. I always wonder, someone who is doing so well on a platform like YouTube where the algorithm is always changing.
So many YouTubers I speak to say that they get burnout eventually. They get like creative burnout and they just like delete their channel.
You've seen a lot of it recently over the last couple of years where YouTube has hit 10 million and they just stop. Yep.
Has that ever crossed your mind to stop? Oh, of course. I mean, all the time.
Seriously. Yeah.
But I, I mean, I think I've just, I feel like that's what half this podcast has been about, about how I don't want to do things, but I push through and do it. I think they're just reasonable humans.
Like they, you know, a lot of them are chasing a goal of like, oh, I just want this money so I can take care of these things. You know, it could be noble things like retire my mom or just not have to worry about money.
And then they go, well, why would I suffer now? I'm good. When was the closest you came to quitting? Oh, I mean, probably countless times.
I mean, when I was in solitary confinement for seven days, I mean, that was fucking miserable. I mean, I did quit a video.
I've quit a lot of videos. No, I mean, as a creator.
I mean, I guess I never truly would have quit. I mean, my biggest thing would be I just would have quit for like a week and been like, fuck, let me sleep nine hours a night.
But like I spent the first, we did a video where we spent seven days on a dessert island. First time we filmed it, on day two, I woke up on the beach and I i had literally i didn't know sand fleas were a thing i had like 700 bug bites up and down my legs all over my body i was sunburned i was like a little bit of me was like damn am i gonna die like this is crazy how much like bug bites are everywhere and my skin was so red and i was like couldn't see straight and so i ended up quitting on day two um which is brutal because you spend all this time and money and you have the crew out there and you flew out there and it's opportunity cost.
It's like, that's a seven day window. We could have got a video and uploaded it and now we don't.
Canceling a video like that is literally the worst thing that could happen from an opportunity cost perspective. And that was like, you know, and you have moments like those and it's like, fuck, this isn't even't even fun.
Fuck this shit. You know, but.
But what about YouTube as a whole? Because I feel like YouTube is like throwing coal into a train and you just have to keep throwing it in there once you've started. You just can never stop throwing it in.
No, you're running on a treadmill cranked up to the max, especially if you want to be a top tier creator like me. And it's just like, who can stay on the treadmill the longest? Because it never slows down.
If anything, you're making it faster. But no, I mean, I don't think there's ever unironically a time where I actually would have quit.
It just breaks probably would have been nice. And when you think forward at that treadmill, can you see yourself doing it for the next two, three, four decades? Oh yeah, of course.
I don't have any intention of ever stopping. Okay.
Love, something that came into my life a couple of years you announced i think over christmas time that you had proposed i think it was like boxing day or new year's eve yeah it was on christmas day oh christmas day because her family was in town so i proposed okay how does that fit into this craziness she's literally i you could probably count on your hands the amount of people on the planet that actually would make a good partner for me. And she's just one of them.
She really understands that work is what I live for, what keeps me going. And she supports me and she understands how important it is.
The big thing is hanging out with Tia, my fiance, is so frictionless. We play the same video games.
We watch the same shows. We're very interested in the same things.
She loves learning like I do. So it's exciting to see what lectures she listened to online that day or whatever weird book she's reading.
Everything about being around her is very frictionless, which is great because obviously I don't have much time at the house. And like the last thing that i need is to come home from work and there be friction and so we don't we don't fight it's i you know i sometimes i'm like wow this is like my best friend this is and she's hot this is great you know um and so it's like it it feels weird sometimes people i mean anyone in a listening now that's in a relationship i guess the question they'd be thinking is like when do you spend time together mostly at nights um and that but the beauty is she gears her schedule around mine so like she's she'll work when um i'm working and then she'll just travel with me and so honestly a lot of it is on planes a lot of it's in car rides or, an hour before bed or in the morning, that kind of stuff.
But it's like, because there are pockets of breaks on set and things like that. So it's just, you know, having, it's really hard to find someone who is intelligent, actually has their own hobbies, things going for them, independent, that's also willing to mold their life around mine and not see it as a demeaning thing.
Because like, yeah, if she was just like, well, I have this thing going on and I have to prioritize my life, I would never see her. But because she's willing to, you know, mold her life around mine and my work schedule, that, you know, that's everything.
And it's rare that someone's willing to do that while, you know, being as, in my opinion, at least from from what I've seen as intelligent and independent as she is. Parents always message me and say, Steve, wait till you have kids.
Oh yeah. That's I'm in.
That's the thing. Like my lifestyle right now is would not work for kids.
So I want to wait. I want kids, but I want to wait as long as possible because if I'm going to have kids, I got to be a great dad.
Like I really, I really, really enjoy mentoring people. I love mentoring, you know, younger entrepreneurs and like help, like I've told this, I think I told the story on Joe Rogan.
I helped one of my friends go from like 40 K a month in revenue to 400 K on YouTube. And I do kind of stuff like that all the time.
I just like one of my other friends has a, um, snack CPG brand and I helped them grow to eight figures in revenue just for fun. I would just call him a couple of times a month.
And it's like, there's something so satisfying about helping other people succeed. And so I would love to have a couple of kids and just like really mentor them into like, you know, being badasses.
But yeah, not anytime soon. Like I would be so absent if we had kids.
So just got to like find that right time in the Venn diagram where I could actually be present in their life. And your business empire, I think, is much bigger than most people realize.
I imagine the majority of people probably don't really understand the context of business, so they don't really get it. They might see you as a YouTuber or a creator.
But from the research that I've done, you run a very, very large business. Yeah, I mean, we do nine figures of Feastables.
I mean, we can say that, yeah. Nine figures in Feastables.
So the business must be worth several billions of dollars. Overall, I mean, you could do something like that, yeah.
I'm not going to get you to try and hazard a guess. I'm sure you know, but I'm not going to ask you to predict that.
The business would be worth a lot of money. Are you a billionaire? On paper, yeah.
But I mean, in my actual bank account, I have less than a million dollars. So do you pay yourself at all? A little bit.
But I also like I have some assistance and things like that. So it's like I try to just pay myself what I spend, you know, personally a month just to like stay even.
How do you how do you think about money in all of this? Because most most people in their lives are pursuing money so that they can chill out and retire, but you seem to be pursuing it purely for the sake of reinvesting it back into the system. Of course, money is fuel to grow a business.
And then you make money from the business and then... To keep growing, yeah.
And then you find a business that you enjoy that, you know, is better for Mother Nature or Earth or people. And there you go, you have a fulfilled life.
That's my theory. I just don't, when I'm 70, I don't want to look back and have regrets, you know? When is enough enough? Such a cliche question that I'm asked.
Enough, like building the business? Never. I mean, I just want to keep, like building a business is like a video game.
It's just fun, you know? Like with Feastables right now, you know, we're the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in America. And like, it's just fun to like look at something that's been done the same way for 100 years and go, how do we just flip this on its head and fuck up this industry? And, you know, how can we pay our farmers a living income, you know, not use child labor, et cetera, et cetera.
And so it's like, you know, I think if I was just doing mundane things like everyone else, probably I probably would be bored as fuck if I would just sold chocolate like everyone else, made the same repetitive YouTube videos like everyone else, I probably would be like, all right, give me out of this. I want to retire.
But it's not what we're doing. Like we're changing industries.
We're impacting the world. Like this, this is the point of life, in my opinion.
You could do so much with the gazillion people that listen and watch your videos. You could like start almost any business and it'd be successful.
You could have almost any social impact and it'd be profound and save a gazillion people's lives. Do you struggle with focus? No, I mean, I do wonder, you know, sometimes should we be doing more, but I've really found a good groove with Feastables.
I keep looking over there because there's Feastables sitting over there. I do feel like I've hit a good groove with that

and the ethical sourcing on it.

No, I mean, yeah, obviously I get a bajillion opportunities,

but just, you know, right now, like I think I said earlier,

this is one of the few things in life that it's scratched the same itch

as YouTube where building Feastables is equally as fun as making videos for me. It is so delicious.
Thank you. It is so delicious.
I'd really love to just spend a moment talking about the ethical sourcing piece, because I don't think that's something I didn't understand until I did some research on you. Yeah.
Why? Why does that matter so much? When you say ethical sourcing, what's the difference between what you do and what normal chocolate companies do? Yeah, big chocolate in America. Well, the big thing is when I got into chocolate, I didn't know any of these things.
We used to source our cocoa from Peru, cacao, which ethical sourcing is not really an issue there. But the problem is majority of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa.
And so as we got bigger, everyone's like, hey, you need to switch your supply chain to West Africa. I'm like, cool.
And so then I started studying and reading up about it. And I and I noticed that 46% of labor in West Africa on cocoa farms, it's child labor.
And I was like, that's not that can't be accurate. And then I started digging deeper and deeper.
And I was like, holy shit, it's just almost half a labor labor is child labor and so i started talking to all the big chocolate companies or not all of them but as many as i could get a hold of and i was like so what do you guys do about this whole child labor thing and they they're constantly just telling me like it just is what it is that's how chocolate always has been i was like whoa you guys make like a billion dollars a year in profit you don't you don't see an issue with that

being on the back of little kids and they're like no you and then i you know i i have this crazy

clip on can i have a documentary guy i think you saw him jeff who follows me around crazy clip

where i'm meeting with like a big um i gotta be as vague as possible because they're gonna murder

me but like a big supplier we'll just leave it big like that and i asked him i was like so do you have

Thank you. I got to be as vague as possible because they're going to murder me.
But like a big supplier will just leave it vague like that. And I asked them, I was like, so do you have any way I can pay extra to not use child labor or anything like that or any options? And they're just like, no.
And I was and I my little documentary guys is like filming and I'm in like this big boardroom and I look at the camera. I'm like, holy shit, they just said that on camera.
And so I did all this research and it was just like, yeah, no. And especially in America, like there, there's some European chocolate brands that, you know, try, but in America, like really, no one really cared.
I mean, there's plenty of options and plenty of time to fix it, plenty of money to fix it. So that just kind of honestly pissed me off.
And like that. So then I just was like, how do we solve this? So then it sent me down the rabbit hole.

Everything points back to the reason chocolate in America is so cheap

is because they just don't, not the reason,

but one of the reasons they just pay the farmer so little.

Farmers make less than a dollar a day.

So because of that, they're forced to use child labor

because they literally just don't even have money to pay someone

who's not a child.

How many kids do you think are in child labor in West Africa, just on cocoa farms? You might have saw it in that. 5,000? No, it's 1.5 million.
You're choking. Yeah, it's over a million.
It's crazy. So what we need to do is we need to, in my head, get to a billion dollars a year in revenue as fast as possible while being ethically sourced and being profitable.
A big part of it is we have to be profitable while doing it because then I can point and go, look, we achieve scale ethically and we're making money. It's not that

you can't do it. You just don't want to.
And maybe we give them the benefit of the doubt.

Maybe they just truly don't know how to do it at scale and maybe it'll open their eyes and

they'll be like, oh, I guess it is possible and they'll start to change the ways. More than likely

they won't. But over time, I hope we can just shine a light on it using my platform and

Thank you. their eyes and they'll be like, oh, I guess it is possible.
And they'll start to change the ways more than likely they won't. And I, but over time, I hope we can just shine a light on it using my platform and, you know, um, just show the model works.
And then I don't know, something I would love to do in the long run is like, you know, how there's like the fair trade logo. Maybe I make my own version of it and I help other chocolate companies source their, uh, cacao ethically and, uh, or something.
And, you know, and I just educate people on like like if it doesn't have the symbol it's probably using child labor and something I there's some way where I could play my cards over the next 10 years where we get over a million kids out of child labor on cocoa farms and so I just gotta connect the dots and figure out the correct way to do it this might sound like a really obvious question but it won't be to everybody why don't you care so much bro I just like I've been on these farms i don't want to get rich on the back of little kids i mean it's just kind of i i feel like it's kind of obvious you know i maybe to other people in chocolate they don't care but i the first thing when i heard about it i was like why why is this a thing it reminds me of somewhat of again of elon musk and what his mission was with tesla he kind of knew that if he was able to prove that you can have fast, nice electric cars, then the rest of the industry could give up their excuses that it's not possible. Exactly.
What if someone comes along, though, and they say, OK, Jimmy, we'll give you $5 billion for Feastable. Hell no.
I ain't selling that shit. You're never selling it? No, because the first thing they would do to up the margins is they just drop the ethical sourcing.
Have people come along and offered to buy your YouTube channel? I mean, yeah, I've been offered a billion dollars here, crazy amounts of money there. But I mean, you know, what's funny is Zuck got that famous billion dollar offer for Facebook.
And he said, what was it? He was like, why would I sell the social media platform? I would just take the money and start a new one.

And I kind of like the one I have.

So why don't I just keep it?

And every time I get, which I haven't in a while,

but back in the day, I used to jokingly poke around

just to see what people would offer me.

And I would get those offers.

And then I would always just be like, yeah.

I mean, I would just do the same thing I'm doing now.

So I might as well just keep doing what I'm doing now.

The money wouldn't really change anything. Well done.
And I't think you you've yet to get the credit you deserve for the the lengths you've gone to with feastables but i think it's really important i know you're not doing it for credit at all i know that you're doing it to get the message out there so that the industry changes but i think someone like you with a platform that you have that's able to produce chocolate that is fucking delicious they sent sent me a box of it about six months ago. Thank you.
I hate so much. I'm thinking of updating.
Yeah, I mean, if you hand them to me, like, hand me a couple bars. There's a lot of stuff that the problem is, like, if you look at this and this, you know, from a distance, you can't tell really the difference between the flavors.
Like, this is dark sea salt. This is just dark chocolate.
So I'm about to update the wrappers where we're going to put colored tips here so you can tell the flavors from far away. I think that's very important.
Another thing too that I... There's just a...
You made a mistake. You put these in front of me.
The other thing I want to... I've been experimenting and the newer renders are looking good, with putting, like, right here, every bite helps get kids out of child labor, putting that on the front.
And then we're messing around with different machinery. I feel like the images of the chocolate on the front could be a little higher quality.
The back is pretty ass. I want to put some more messaging on the back of it.
There's a lot that needs to be to be like the white tips here. It just makes it so obvious from far away what this flavor is, whereas all these blend in.
And so, yeah, brutal. Got to fix it.
You talked about your friends calling you and asking you for business advice and you helping them drive their businesses up. But just watching you there pick apart your own business made me think that there's a lot of entrepreneurs that watch our show that are early in their own businesses.
And many of them will be. You're going to fail.
You're going to fail a ton. I mean, when I first started chocolate, I mean, it was it was hilarious how bad I fucked up.
Our original bars were like very thin. There's a reason why like chocolate bars have these like break points here where they like break easily.
I didn't know that and so mine was just one solid sheet of chocolate but that's almost like a piece of glass whereas if you drop it it just shatters into like a bunch of little pieces and um and i also didn't know that there's a thing called a package engineer and can you hand me a box of feastables uh my original chocolate box when you pop these open and put it on a shelf, this obviously, the problem's fixed. But if this was sitting on a shelf, when you grab this one, these would all slide forward and then they would fall out of the box.
Or the box would fall off the shelf because of the weight because there wasn't right balance at the bottom. And the lips here, this didn't used to be a thing.
So these were open and there's just a bottom lip here. And so they would fall out like that um and then the bars because we didn't have the natural break points would shatter like glass who noticed that oh well me and the thing is i i this is an old team in peacefuls i would tell them like there's too many broken bars when i go into walmart i'm seeing too many that are broken they told me like ah you're worrying about this too much it's not that big of an issue it happens to everyone and i got to the point where it was just fucking pissing me off because i hated like grabbing a bar off the ground or seeing on the shelf all these like shattered chocolate bars that i i put like uh i paid people to put gopros in like a like a bag of lace chips pointed at because i couldn't get i tried to get walmart to give me the security camera footage and they wouldn't so i put hidden GoPros and a bunch of random Walmarts just to point it at the feastable bars just to see why are they fucking breaking so much there's so many shots of like you know like a mom grabbing a bar and then she'd be looking at it literally like this and then you just see the boxes go and she could and they just fall off the shelf and then they just put it up and you know some of the bars would be broken and it would just happen over and over and over again because we didn't engineer the boxes correctly they didn't do anything wrong do you know how atypical that is what you've just said that you put gopros yeah people told me i was crazy the amount of people who tried to tell me that was illegal i was like bro i don't fucking care i just need to know why my bars are breaking like don't delete the footage um and so i that and uh you know i did a bunch of just data and i actually so there's a company called acosta where you can pay people to go into walmart so then i i started paying where every week i would send someone into every single walmart in america to buy all the broken bars fix up the boxes it's pretty expensive i think um you know it's like a hundred thousand dollars just to send someone into every single walmart to clean them up 28 a pop times 5 000 Walmarts.
And yeah, so I was sending people into Walmart to clean up the broken bars. But I was paying so much money.
It was $100,000 a week just to send people in. And then I was buying all these broken bars because I just really didn't want people to go into Walmart and to buy a broken feasible bar.
Like that is literally the worst, you know, consumer experience you can have. And yeah, and then I've learned what a package engineer is.
And I was like, holy shit, this is your full-time job to make it where my boxes don't fucking fall over? Where have you been? But on the point that I was saying, your obsession with the detail of a product is completely atypical. If I was to compare this to a normal YouTuber and their e-commerce brand.
Oh, they wouldn't give a fuck, yeah. I was giving a fuck.
I've probably spent thousands of hours obsessing over this product. I mean, I know it doesn't feel like it because it's just chocolate.
But yeah, I mean, it's a problem. From the ethical sourcing to every little thing about it.
Like, I don't do anything half-assed. And didn't you drive to a ton of Walmarts, don't you? Oh, all the time.
That's what I do every day. Oh, fuck.
We should go hit a Walmart. We didn't even go.
Ah, he's got a plane he's got to catch. Yeah, it's my favorite thing to do is like, sometimes I'll spend all night on Walmart just scanning products and looking at the daily velocities and sales.
It's like, I had a layover in DC. I live in North Carolina.
Then I was like, wait a minute, I could just rent a car and hit like 30 Walmarts on the way home and just drive home. And so then I drove home from DC to North.
to North Carolina and visited every Walmart on the East Coast in the middle of America just to go look at the chocolate aisle and see all the statistics and things like that. I asked you earlier on if you struggled.
Fuck, I wish we could go visit a Walmart. You know how fun that would be? It's like, I would love to educate you on the chocolate aisle.
Are Walmart still open now? No. They're not, okay.
We can do it another time. Usually what I do is I just bang on the door and they let me in.
Of course. But what you just said there, I feel like I'm getting at something here because 99.99999% of entrepreneurs that I know that just have one thing to do just to run their business don't give that many fucks about the detail.
And you have a gazillion things to do. An Amazon show, which is like the of whatever of all time or whatever and you have this massive channel you have your philanthropy you have all of this stuff 100 million followers on tiktok 100 gazillion followers here a gazillion followers the numbers are just unfathomable and you're still driving to 31 walmarts to check if your chocolate is breaking yeah well and i go in the back when i'm there if it's not on the shelf and I'll go scan it in and help the employees.
And is that the difference? Well, you just got to know everything going on. I mean, it's just first principles.
I hate when someone in my business tells me something that I don't agree with, but I'm too ignorant to be able to challenge them because then it's like, well well, who am I to, you know, I guess I got to just take them on the word. But most people tend to pick the easiest route or conform to the status quo.
And I want to, if I want to lead real innovation and like change the industry, then I got to know every little facet of everything. And so, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, the shelf is where people buy it.
So I got to intricately know everything going on at the touch point of the consumer and how it gets there, how it's being stored at the distribution centers and then the retailer and then on the shelf and what does it look like? What's the experience and everything? Because all these little things add up. Do you not feel like you spend your whole life fighting people to raise their standards to your standards? Because you don't exist in a world of Mr.
Beasts. Well, that's the thing I used to think, which I've said a couple of times, it was just content, but I realized it's just everything I do.
Like, I just want to be the best at it. And that's, it's weird, man, because you just look at this chocolate bar and you wouldn't, you'd be like, who the fuck cares? But that's the thing.
It's what I've really enjoyed the last two years is I've gone as in depth on this as I have YouTube. And it's been every bit as fun.
I mean, it's very, very fucking difficult and hard, especially the ethical sourcing. And like I recently spent a week in West Africa and I went from the bean all the way to the bar and like you worked on the farm and follow the entire QC supply chain and everything.
And it's not it's like it's equally as hard as my YouTube channel, but it's also equally as fun. And that was just, that was a big eye-opener for me because I never thought I would enjoy something as much as my YouTube channel.
And that's what I was saying earlier. I've come to realize I deeply enjoy building businesses and solving hard, complex problems, even though I know this is just chocolate, but I get the complex thing from the ethical sourcing side just on a daily basis.
Like that's fun. With Beast Games, with this, with all the other things going on, your main channel, which is, I guess, you probably still see as your baby to some degree.
It's like the mothership, right? Because it's the source of it. It's what allows us to do everything.
Most people buying this aren't buying it because of Beast Games. Do you ever get paranoia when the views go down? They haven't gone down yet.
They haven't gone up every year for 14 years. But do you still get that that do you still watch the video go live and look at the back end no no you don't no i mean because it's like we uh i don't know i just upload a video and then and the next day i look at the retention and the ctr and if we fucked up i just you know well what we do is we call them after action reports so i I get all the smartest people in my company.
Like, well, like we actually just did one.

I wish I had it on me.

But like, well, we I have I pay this guy to just do a very in-depth breakdown of like, here's the retention chart.

Here's every time someone clicked away.

Here's where it was the flattest.

Here's where it's the worst.

You know, we'll take like so if I upload a video that's 20 minutes, we'll take our last 10, 20 minute videos and we'll go, you know, the median retention on the last 10, 20 minute videos was 10 minutes and six or 55 seconds is the median. So if the retention on this new video is 11 minutes or above, we did a good job.
If it's below that, then we did below average and blah, blah, blah. And he just does like a giant presentation.
And so usually I have two weeks after we upload, we'll look at that with all my top people. And then we'll just be like what we fuck up what we do well cool move on and has there ever been a moment in recent times where you go I think I need to spend more time on it again and get back in there and because all the time you know but a lot of that stems from insecurity I mean because the thing is of course we we had a video recently every minute someone is eliminated and it didn't performed the best um you know and they're like our intro was a little repetitive it was a little dark and um it we had we brought back like losers from beast games to compete in a main channel video but the problem is some people thought it was beast games they're like oh i've already seen this but it's just a lot of rookie mistakes there and it's very easy for me to like you know get insecure and and like be like fuck this is why i need to be in the weeds but at the end of the day it's like it's not like when i was calling all the shots i was perfect either so as long as it's like as long as when people make mistakes they learn from them i have a saying like that i tell people all the time like like whenever our new creatives fuck up i'll look at tyler i'll go tyler's literally cost me tens of millions of dollars in bad decisions like this isn't going to be the first time you fuck us out of a million dollars.
As long as you learn from it, it's fine. And so as long as like, that's where these after action reports are important.
Because as long as we, when we mess up, we articulate why and it doesn't happen again, then it's just part of it. But yeah, I mean, if the same thing was happening over and over and over again, then I'd be like, fuck, I need to get step in.
But my guys are just good. Like, they don't make the same mistake twice.
Tell me about experimentation and testing because people look to you as the real king of like testing and experimentation. How central is this to the success of everything that you do? Very much.
And that's the thing, like that every minute video, like it flopped, you know, and that was your highest chance of flopping is when you do something new, like really, really new. One of our bigger flops before that too too is we did this video where it was like 10 minutes this room will explode we built this giant tower had a guy start at the top he had to make it it was a real-time shoot down press a button yeah it was just didn't perform that well people didn't really like it um it was kind of complicated blah blah and it's like you have to be careful because you know um i want i want a culture where people feel comfortable experimenting and trying and feel fine failing.
And so, you know, when that video failed or when, you know, the every minute someone's eliminated, like, you know, I don't go and yell at people or call them idiots or anything like that. I just am like, what did we do wrong? All right, here's all the facts.
Just make sure it doesn't happen again. Not going to be the first time you cost me a bunch of money.
It's all good all good you know i see this as investing in you guys and let's just learn from it i was gonna say because um or else if if there was a culture of that then people would just make the same videos again and a lot of youtube is just trying out the same format i'm okay with my people failing i'm okay with the video being 10 out of 10 like as long as we actually took an honest good um try at it you know and and as long as we failed because we made the wrong shot call, not because we were lazy, not because we didn't put the effort in, etc. As long as it's just like we made an educated decision to test something or try something and it just didn't work.
I'm cool with that. We can do that all day.
And like they know that. And I don't yell at people, you know, or get mad at them when they accidentally mess up like that.
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And there is a bunch of reasons, but I think it really comes down to the most overlooked yet crucial feature. It's non-invasive nature.
When everything in life seems to be competing for my attention, I turn to Whoop because it doesn't have a screen. And Will Ahmed, the CEO who came on this podcast, told me the reason that there's no screen, because screens equal distraction.
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If you've been thinking about joining Whoop, you can head to join.whoop.com slash CEO and try Whoop for 30 days, risk-free and zero commitment. That's join.whoop.com slash CEOo let me know how you get on you've just concluded today the biggest competition show i think of all time well it is of all time i think you've got 50 guinness largest sets in history most world records in history largest cash prize in history most winners in history most contestants in history most cameras yeah and what 50 guinness world records yeah that we's probably way more, but yeah.
You said something on stage, which I found quite interesting. You said, I kind of feel a bit sad.
Yeah, I know. Because every Thursday, I got to look forward to like seeing the internet's reaction to Beast Games.
And now I'm going to wake up next Thursday and I don't get to see what people think. It's over.
They describe this in the Olympics as gold medal depression.

Really?

Yeah, they say, I think it's, I might butcher these numbers,

but 70% of people after the Olympics,

even if they won a gold medal,

experience depression afterwards

because they've lost their North Star

that was giving them meaning.

Yeah.

No, I mean, I'm not.

I mean, I guess I'm playfully sad, but I don't, it's fine.

I have so much shit going on.

I don't even really get to think about that kind of stuff.

And you're on to the next one?

Yeah.

So we'll just i gotta i have so much shit going on i don't even really get to think about that kind of stuff and you're on to the next one uh yeah so we'll well amazon let's get season two in the books already come on let's sign a contract i can't really talk about it is the most me and jack were talking about earlier on it is the most incredible thing that i think i've seen on tv and i just think i just i think i said to you on the phone the other day i watch it knowing that unless you do another one i will never see something on this magnitude and scale no one wants to do something like that because it's fucking hard man at those sets and the the thing is the reason why a lot of reality tv doesn't feel that way uh and we could have obviously done much better storytelling and we will when we do future iterations but the But at its crux, what people don't see is to have 1,000 cameras recording, the amount of infrastructure, like we broke a world record for most camera cables ran, like the most miles of camera cables. And the millions of dollars we had to spend on storage and millions of dollars in the control room and the millions upon millions of dollars of hardware to edit it and like having to bring in adobe to custom change the adobe software where you could actually have that many multi-camps it's like it is the the actual infrastructure to actually be able to do that is incredibly incredibly difficult and um that's why usually what they'll do is they'll be like all right here's a one hour like if you're filming a reality show here's a one hour window you know they'll'll send out story producers.
They'll put a camera on you. They'll be like, yo, can you say this line? You're kind of our villain.
This is what we're looking for. They'll kind of tell you what to say.
And then they'll write the notes down and they'll catalog it for the editors. Whereas we're just like, fuck it.
We're going to be filming, you know, 24 seven, all these cameras, you guys be yourselves. We'll just capture it because you don't know when someone's going to do something weird.
don't know when someone's going to whisper to someone and form an alliance you don't know so you literally have to just be rolling and you need these to be acceptable angles so you need multiple an a cam and a b cam and all this coverage which creates a monumental fuckload of footage but that's what allowed us that was i mean of amongst many things that's one of the biggest uh competitive advantages we had when filming Beast Games is we put in the effort to set up all this infrastructure where we could actually capture it and just tell the story how it is instead of having to use story producers to put words in people's mouths. But it's a fucking nightmare, man.
Like, I had over 150 people editing that. I mean, we were combing through unfathomable amounts of footage and everything.
And I mean, even things things from the computer network and our local IT constantly crashing because there's just so much footage there. And if I were to send all the Beast Games footage to just one editor, it would probably be like $300,000 in hard drives.
And if you have 150 editors, it's just impossible. So you spend millions of dollars and you build a central server room.
And so we have our own server racks and everything. And then you have them remote in there.
But even then, just due to the sheer volume of footage, Adobe and everything was just constantly crashing. And it's like, it was a nightmare on the back end.
But it's great because that's why we were able to tell what actually happened, why it feels different, because we were recording nonstop, 24-7. I was wondering as I was watching it, if Amazon are aware of the fact that you're just going to give away the money like this, like when you flip the coin and it adds another $5 million.
But that didn't affect them. I lost a ton of money filming the show.
So that came out of my pocket. Really? Yeah, we spent way too much money on it.
I lost tens of millions of dollars on that show. Really? Yeah, I'm an idiot.
Because the headlines came out as like, Amazon give Mr. Beast 100 million to do show.
So I'm thinking, okay, I'm doing the math. I'm thinking, okay, so he spent 20 odd million on the prizes.
Yeah, we gave away. So there must be 80 million left or something.
I mean, so episode one, we spent over $15 million on those towers building them all. Like that was the most towers ever built, the most hydraulic press or whatever used.
I mean, that set was fucking crazy, man. We had to build 1,000 towers that were 10 feet tall, safety test them all, get it where they actually work.
We had to literally hardwire them all and build our own software where we could drop people. We had to put up all the screens.
I mean, that's arguably one of the largest sets ever built in history. That was just episode one.
And that's just like the construction of the set. That's not including, like you said, we gave away over $20 million.
I think over $2 million was in episode one. And then episode two, we have the city, which that was a $14 million set build.
And that was huge. I mean, because that was a real city that they were living in, you know.
And then I could, yeah, but just between the 20, whatever, 2 million we gave away, plus those two sets, I mean, already right there, you're probably, you're at over $50 million. How much did the whole thing cost? That I have been advised not to say because people would hear big number and be like, oh, well, I could have made a good show if I had that kind of money.
But the thing is, they couldn't because money isn't everything. Like building and managing it is infinitely harder.
Is it more than 100 million? Yeah, of course. Of course.
Well, I just told you how we spent 50 million and we're only two episodes in. So how out of pocket are you? Tens of millions.
Yeah, it was not a good financial decision to make Beast Games. I lost money.
I would have more money if I didn't film it. Any regrets? No, no, it was great.
I mean, for me yeah it was not a good financial decision to make beast games i lost money i would have more money if i didn't film it any regrets no no it's great i mean but for for me i was it was about making season one as good as possible you know i can't let the youtube community down because that you know creators don't have a good rep when it comes to doing stuff on streaming platforms and you know i'm getting 200 million views of video on average over the course of the first year and i'm going to talk to these streaming platforms and they're like yeah we've been burned by creators before i'm like bro i'm not a tiktoker that dances i have a production company and i routinely make spectacles and even me these streaming platforms they weren't taking serious so i was like fuck like if i fail it's over like no one's ever no stream flower is ever going to touch a youtuber ever my big thing was just making sure this crushed and, you know, now the doors are opening up. I mean, I'm getting calls from creators left and right and they're like, oh, yeah, streaming platforms, they wouldn't talk to me before.
Now they're coming. Like I would try to get a meeting with them and they were like, no.
Now they're like begging to like have meetings with them. And I already know of two creators that have signed deals just on the back end success of Beast Games.

And probably, I mean, hundreds of millions of dollars is going to flow into creators' pockets just because of Beast Games in the next year.

Well, on Rotten Tomatoes, which is not an easy critic to please.

No, it was like 90% approval from fans, which is pretty unheard of on Rotten Tomatoes.

I know.

But also, I hear through the grapevine that it is on track to become one of Amazon's biggest shows of all time. Yeah.
The problem is I have to wait for them to do a press release. Okay.
Yeah. Well, I'm just talking.
I got you. I told him I'd be a good boy and not leak things.
So, but for a YouTuber, quote unquote YouTuber. Yeah.
Well, they did released it was their number one unscripted show of all time and then yeah i mean the it's i i don't think they'd mind me saying it's very the show's very evergreen like usually these shows get a lot of attention and kind of like teeter off but ours is like like over 700 000 new unique viewers are watching it every single day like which is pretty crazy because if we maintain that yeah, it's going to shatter some pretty crazy records. And what's the upside for you to continue promoting it now that it's done? Because I put all this effort in.
I want people to see it. Yeah, I don't get paid to like all the promotion I'm doing now, I'm not getting paid for.
Really? But I mean, but I mean, I guess the upside would be the better season one does, you know, the more money I get for season two, three, four, five, et cetera. If I sit here with you in 10 years time, Jimmy.
Yep. Oh boy.
And everything went to plan. You're 36 at that age.
I already know what you're going to ask. Yeah, I mean, I hate that kind of stuff because if you asked me, the problem is if you asked me this like five years ago, I never would have said anything about Feastables or a lot of the stuff I'm doing now.
And so the honest answer is I don't know. I mean, I think in what I'm doing, you know, hopefully by then I have 2 billion subscribers on YouTube.
You know, Beast Games is bigger than we ever imagined. Hopefully Feastables has gotten over a million kids out of child labor by then.
And, you know, I probably will have two or three other businesses that I'm very passionate about that are hopefully crushing and yeah I just I don't know and personally maybe I'll have a kid by then I don't know I mean only time will tell it's it won't be until I feel like I could actually have enough time to be a good dad but I don't even know man I don't think about my personal life I I just think about winning and got to build. Some photos I found that I loved.

Oh, okay.

Holy shit.

Is this me or my brother?

This one as well.

Where'd you get these?

Internet.

These are on the internet?

These are like the really iconic photos that I,

from some really interesting.

I don't think I've ever seen this one.

Really?

Yeah, I don't.

Do you recognize anything in that photo? No, I don't just thinking like what house am i even in i might be at a military base potentially because when we were younger my both my parents were in the military so they were traveling a lot so this might just be like some random house interesting i do recognize this like this photo in the background i'm sure you're thought up on screen i think that that that was yeah that's on the hallway beside her bathroom i haven't been to my mom's house in so long um interesting you you do so much for children but if you could whisper in that child's ear something about buy bitcoin what was it like two pennies back then no um i know because i wouldn't want i wouldn't say anything if you gave me a microphone to talk to him because the problem is i'd be i'd be worried that it would change you know the outcome of of how i became and like i'm very even though i know earlier on i was probably sounded a little depressed because shit's hard but you know i'm i am happy with the position i am in and i would be worried that you know like this is definitely a very confused child that's

not fitting in that feels like a fucking freak not this young one i don't know what the fuck

he's thinking but this one right here probably is around the age where i was like fuck i'm just a

fucking weirdo i don't fit in with anyone why does no one want to build businesses and succeed

but i think going through that journey was was important and it's uh yeah it just gives me a lot

can be fuck, I'm just a fucking weirdo. I don't fit in with anyone.
Why does no one want to build businesses and succeed? But I think going through that journey was important. And it's, yeah, it just gives me a lot of conviction with things.
So I probably, if I wasn't allowed to say buy Bitcoin, I just wouldn't say anything. What about to her? Yeah, to my mom, I would, I mean, this was, what's funny is these are two different photos of my mom.
You have, like, like this version of my mom i don't think there's anything i could say that would i mean because she's she's in the military and they just beat like systems and order into your head and she this is probably right around the time where we lost everything and so this you know and she's at a very low point in her life and so i don't think there's anything i could say that ever would have like convinced her that her lunatic son is heading down the right path and um you know but you know you can see the difference here where it's it's almost indicative where she's smiling in this photo this is when i gave her 100 grand this is after we made it this is after we had the whole conversation where she finally was like okay i'll trust you you know there's a the whatever 12 13 years between these two photos was a very hard journey um especially when i stopped going to college and i got straight zeros and i mean she thought oh his life's fucking over i just wasted 18 years of my life you know um so same thing i don't i don't i don't think there's anything i could say that would have changed anything um if anything it would have just gave her a heart attack does she do you tell her now what she means to you oh yeah of course yeah you get it right yeah and she's she's very happy and like yeah we're we're in a really good spot now i love my mom i mean because obviously i wouldn't be here without her you know i mean if she didn't work multiple jobs and do all the things she did to put me where i am i mean even little things like you know she uh would give me like some months like you know 20 30 dollars and then I would take that money and use that to like buy stuff to like help make videos or or whatever um and even just the fact that we had internet you know what I mean and things like that which you know I mean pretty basic now it wasn't as common back then you used to get a phone call and you're like house internet i don't know if you would go out yeah and so like you know um it wasn't the best position but she gave me all the tools i needed to succeed not you know on purpose but she must be so shocked well she's used to it now but yeah i mean on the come up i mean it was yeah i mean imagine being her you know i mean she used to when i turned 16 like she couldn't afford to buy me a car she couldn't she couldn't afford like the minivan

we had like it was fucking piece of shit like needed a repair she couldn't afford it like smoke

was coming out the front of it but she was a an absolute mess and then she comes home and i'm just

like i'm making youtube videos fuck math homework mom and you know and I'm just like, I'm making YouTube videos. Fuck math homework, mom.
And, you know, and she's just like, I think she was making $40,000 a year. Because we didn't talk about finance as much when we were younger.
But I remember I got a $40,000 brand deal. And then she told me that's how much I make in a year.
And I was like, holy shit. I didn't.
At the time, I was like, I thought you made way more than 40 grand a year. And then I was like, why the fuck are you working? Like I'm getting paid this per video now on brand deals.
And so, yeah. What an incredible woman.
I know, she's great. From everything she went through to now, she just needs to be happy.
I try not to stress her out. She's been through enough stress.
Like job is, I've been making her, I mean, she wants to do it, but exercise routinely, do all the system, body health scans, and get on the vitamin grind and everything. Because I'm not having kids anytime soon, but obviously, when I do have kids, I really want her to be involved, and she needs to be able to play with them and things like that.
So I'm like, stress is going to kill you.'re not allowed to be stressed you need to do all these health protocols you need to be like because you know you might be in your 70s when i have kids like you need to be able to move around which means you might potentially be 80 when they're like 14 or 15 like come on like what you do now is indicative will represent how active you'll be able to be in my kids lives so like and we do have these conversations in a playful in a playful way. So she's taking her health very serious for the future.
You're not a man that seems to have many fears, but that appears to be one of them, a fear that we both share. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, she'll just never die. My mom's going to live forever.
We'll be fine. Brian Johnson.
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest

not knowing who they're leaving it for.

Okay.

Do I get hit with the question first or?

You get hit with the question first.

Okay.

Would you rather die with a sound body or a sound mind?

Sound body or sound mind?

Ooh.

I assume if I chose body,

then that would be like dementia or something on the mind. That's hard.
I sound body or sound mind. I mean, what are you if you don't have your mind? I would say mine, to be honest.
Amen. Yeah.
Jimmy, thank you. Do I get to write my question now? You do.
I want to say something to you, though. I have to give you a lot of credit because so many people like us, like our teams, we have stolen so much from you.
We've stolen your principles, your mentality, and it's made us be better creators, which has allowed us to live the lives that we get to live and do these things that we love the most. And there's always a cost, I think, to being different and to being weird.
There's an upside, but there's also a really, really, really big cost. And you pay that cost most when you're younger and you have to fit into the system and you don't get to choose who you hang around with and stuff.
But then as an adult, as you said, we all then clap for the unique ones, the weird ones, and we steal from them and we aspire to be them and we learn from them. And you have, in the very short amount of time that I've been speaking to you for like a week or something, have blown my mind open.

I got to see the behind the scenes of Beast Games.

And my entire mind as I sat there on the sofa, I like remember where I was sat when I saw the behind the scenes just exploded.

And you made me in that moment realize how much I'd limited myself.

As someone that considers themselves to be really ambitious, I'd limited myself.

And so I wanted to say thank you because you're not just doing that for me. You're doing that for tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people all at the same time.
And you're giving them the roadmap, but also a blueprint and the mentality and the belief that they too don't have to live the life that school or the system has told them they have. Hit in the box.
Agreed. Exactly.
So thank you so much, honestly, because we need more people like you

and I'm your biggest fan.

Thank you.

I really, really appreciate you.

Thank you.

All right, let's see if we can break into a Walmart.

You're so funny.

Some of the most successful,

fascinating and insightful people in the world

have sat across from me at this table.

And at the end of every conversation,

I asked them to leave a question behind

in the famous diary of a CEO.

And it's a question designed to spark the kind of conversations that matter most, the kind of conversations that can change your life. We then take those questions and we put them on these cards.
On every single card, you can see the person who left the question, the question they asked. And on the other side, if you scan that barcode, you can see who answered it next.
Something I know a lot of you have wanted to know

and the only way to find out

is by getting yourself some conversation cards,

which you can play at home with friends and family,

at work with colleagues

and also with total strangers on holiday.

I'll put a link to the conversation cards

in the description below