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Discover the mindset behind MrBeast's empire. Learn about his relentless drive, ethical business practices (Feastables), and unique approach to problem-solving. Hear about his battle with Crohn's, how he overcame adversity, and his vision for the future.
Published February 20, 2025
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Mr Beast
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SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Well, has it ever crossed your mind to quit YouTube as a whole? SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, of course.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I'm only 26, and we have the largest YouTube channel in the world. And 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.
SPEAKER_02: 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. It's like, how many kids do you think are in child labor in West Africa, just on cocoa farms? It'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.
SPEAKER_00: Jimmy, we've really just only met and you are already, to me, a bit of a Rubik's Cube. 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. What do I need to understand about your earliest years to understand who you are? SPEAKER_02: Oh, boy. Yeah, my earliest years, 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 mean, we're just jumping right into it. It's a great, no intro or anything, just boom. That's how you hold people. Um, 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. Um, and so people hate it, but I'm just the most competitive, stubborn person you'll ever meet. And I just never give up.
SPEAKER_02: And where did that come from? I have no idea, to be honest. I honestly, it feels like it was just in my DNA and my bloodstream. My mom hated it growing up. We'd always argue. And like, you know, she, she has this thing where like, 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, 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, uh, 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, 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, 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, cause 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, cause 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.
SPEAKER_00: What about your parents, mom and dad? You talk about your mother a lot. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. Um, no, I, I don't, I didn't get it from them. SPEAKER_00: Well, what influence did they both have on you? SPEAKER_02: Um, well, I don't really talk about my dad much. That's, you know, 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, 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, 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, um, 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, 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 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 I was younger. 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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? SPEAKER_02: Oh, I just being my brother, we're just there. I was just making videos.
SPEAKER_00: You're making videos? SPEAKER_02: Yeah. SPEAKER_00: What age did that start the videos? SPEAKER_02: I started at 11. SPEAKER_00: 11. SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_00: You said earlier, you don't talk about your dad much. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. SPEAKER_00: You don't have to talk, tell me about it. But why don't you talk about your father much? SPEAKER_02: Ah, don't worry about it.
SPEAKER_00: I know your mom has spoken about him before. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. SPEAKER_00: And it was a bit of a tumultuous relationship. SPEAKER_02: 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. SPEAKER_00: She used to cry asking you to do your homework. SPEAKER_02: 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, right? 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. Like, it's very cute. One time she, like when we had, I don't remember, like some month or made like a hundred grand and I'm like, okay, perfect. Now I can spend a hundred grand this next month on videos. And she like took like 5,000 of it and put it away for me and my own bank account without telling me. But in case, you know, I ever went, you know, 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. Um, 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's 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 that.
SPEAKER_00: If I'd asked 10 year old Jimmy, how are you doing? What would, what would he have said? SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_00: Why did you want to really be a YouTuber? Cause 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, cause 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. Um, was there any element of the on camera part that was helping to solve for like the feeling of isolation that you, you seem to have at that time? SPEAKER_02: No, I, yeah, I think it's more to do with just, I, 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 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 I've never had as much joy doing something as I do this. Plus I could see a path where I could actually retire my mom, take care of her, pay her back for, you know, all the nights she works so long so we could, um, live comfortably and things like that. So it's just kind of, the thing is I've, 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 a girlfriend. I, I, I would never say, Oh, you just like her because she's pretty, but you like her cause she's pretty, but you probably also like her cause she's smart. You probably also like her because you know, she's fun to be around. She likes similar shows, blah, 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 like, it's not that simple.
SPEAKER_00: 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. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. And so, and I don't know how I, I agree. Cause 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 gear shift constantly. I'm like 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 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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, SPEAKER_02: There was literally a day when I was a 19 or 20 where I got, I woke up, joined a Skype call with my friends and where we like, we're 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.
SPEAKER_00: Was there anything else that you showed that level of obsession too? SPEAKER_02: So at that age, no, from, I would say from 11 to, well, 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, 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 build. 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 like obsessed with Feastables and other things. And so, which was very weird. Like when I first started a chocolate company, it was like 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.
SPEAKER_00: Consistent, hard problems. I want to talk about that and also Feastables, but you mentioned Crohn's disease there. Yeah. And 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 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 how it impacts you. But could you give me your perspective on that? SPEAKER_02: Yeah. 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 makes things way more difficult.
SPEAKER_00: And so you still wake up with some days where you don't have energy. SPEAKER_02: Of course.
SPEAKER_00: 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 necessarily, 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, um, are you in any way neurodivergent? SPEAKER_02: Uh, I've been told, yeah, by a doctor I have ADHD. I mean, I'm not surprised cause I just sit and obsess over things constantly, but I think, um, I'm, I'm happy with however my brain is wired. I don't really care to change it. Um, I, 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 I just like, if you just think about solving problems three times more than everyone else, like you're bound to come up with different solutions.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things you mentioned earlier. You, you like solving hard problems consistently. When you think back over the last 10 years of your life and that the success you've had solving some of these hard problems, if you were to like break it down into some core components of, um, that you've learned, one of them is obsession that you've said. Yeah. What are the others? SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's all the typical stuff. Like you are obviously who you surround yourself with. And, um, luckily I just got around the right people, uh, in my later teenage years, because I, 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 then that's what I started obsessing over. And, you know, um, 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, 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.
SPEAKER_00: What about detail? Sweating the small stuff. One of the things that I saw, I was reading the, that handbook that was linked on the internet. And one of the things I saw throughout that was this real obsession with the one percents and the small stuff. How do you feel about this? SPEAKER_02: By the way, and all of that stuff? I wrote that, uh, with, 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. Um, and I, 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.
SPEAKER_00: Went around all of our Slack channels. We all read it. Yeah. Which is funny because I'm like, damn, I should make an updated version of it. So everyone, uh, but yeah, the thing is, it's the, the core crux of it is like extreme ownership and don't make excuses. And, you know, um, people always, yeah, I mean the damn, 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, sure. 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. 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 be 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 feel like people overcomplicate a lot of things.
SPEAKER_00: And is that something you've trained over time or have you always thought that? SPEAKER_02: 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, 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 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 it 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, you know, have been done before you've seen it's, you know, 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, I have to click this, or I'm not gonna 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 the more of the purple cow effect where people have to watch it. If your ship's 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 on the top videos, like, you just really have to lean into that purple cow effect, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00: Makes perfect sense. If you 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? SPEAKER_02: 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. A big thing for me is you got to see the value in working here. Like you really, I just I don't, this isn't like a job. This is a career. Like if you don't, you know, 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. Like, I'm not, 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 like 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, you know, probably talk 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 wonder 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 gonna be here in 10 years, and then you're gonna feel that and it creates. So coachable sees the value. Obviously obsessed, I, I don't, 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, you know, stuff like that, that I'm sure if you listen to like a Steve Jobs interview or something that he talks about. It's just the typical traits, obsessed, coachable, all in, sees the value.
SPEAKER_02: And what is the single worst traits? Mediocrity. I mean, it's just like, because they're not bad enough when 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've like put two or three C players amongst a bunch of great people, and they'll start pulling them down, they'll start making them not want to work as much and make work not as fun. And so everyone knows, get rid of the C players, right? Obviously, get rid of people who aren't all in, blah, blah, blah. It's the ones that are like, they're not an A player, but they're not a C player. So it's kind of hard, because you still feed off the energy. And if you get enough of them, it just drags the overall culture down. So those are like the worst. I mean, not everyone can be these like world ending monsters that 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 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 like number four on the list. Don't ask me the list tomorrow. 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.
SPEAKER_00: Has any of that stuff ever got to you? Any criticism? SPEAKER_02: 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, for we are averaging like 200 million views of video, like, you know, like, most of it unique viewers, like we're talking like two plus percent, sometimes 3% of humans alive watched every piece of content I put out, you know, depending on how well the channel is doing. And so like, I mean, it's like, you could, I could upload a video. And then with 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 there, you know, YouTube's not in China. So that's like two to 3% 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 4%. 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 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% of people that watch it, love it. That is wild, which that kind of stuff doesn't happen. But in our case, if just 1% is unhappy, that's 2 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, damn, everyone hates me, 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 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 don't have a spine, you don't have a backbone, you stand for nothing. And, and it will just destroy you mentally. 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, 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, I don't agree, not going to make everyone happy. I believe what I'm doing is right. And just move on.
SPEAKER_00: The brain isn't isn't designed for for this, though. No, it's 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 are you get attacked from you can never do anything right. SPEAKER_02: 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, I mean, you know, just like, in what would possess someone to tell you to like, leave a comment where it's like, fucking kill yourself. You know, 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 in my case, now over a decade.
SPEAKER_00: Has it ever really got to you? SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, it does all the time, or it used to all the time. I'd like I said, what does that mean? In reality, SPEAKER_00: if I'm a fly on a wall in one of those moments where you can recall it really getting to you? SPEAKER_02: I mean, back in the day, but I wasn't as confident in my ability to to be successful. And, you know, when you're probably 20, and you're hiring all these people, you're, you know, I have high risk tolerance, but I'm reinvesting every dollar I make. I'm, you know, I'm hiring my friends from school, I hired my mom, like these people I really care about are depending on me. And then, you know, I upload a video that does bad. And then people, you know, 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 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 mean, there's definitely times 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 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? SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, probably 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, anytime I do anything good, it's, you know, people are always like, 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 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? Cause 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 would 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.
SPEAKER_00: The people around you, how does it impact them? SPEAKER_02: Oh, how does the drama and that kind of stuff impact them? Um, to be honest, in my case, it, 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.
SPEAKER_00: It's funny. Cause I, 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, it's remarkable to me that, um, 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, it almost makes me realize that I should never fight it. SPEAKER_02: 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 like help people. Like I actually think helping people will make the internet like you less than if you just like buy nice cars and do like the, the typical influencer path. It's cause they were just so conditioned in America to see it as like a shield and like no one actually does good cause they just find it fun apparently. Um, but 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. Cause 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, uh, there, I could just, uh, I don't know, do these like, uh, $1 versus videos where I compare like 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, 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.
SPEAKER_00: 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 SPEAKER_02: I said, you, 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 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.
SPEAKER_00: Yes. Can you give me a window into the last seven days of your life? Just give me paint me a picture. SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes. Let me drink some water because my flu. Well, the 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 of 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 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 and then worked on the coming up videos that it's a lot. And then flew to Florida, filmed with Aaron Judge, flew here, just landed, 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. Yeah. Lightweight. I always do my podcast 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. Then we're...
SPEAKER_00: Steph Curry. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Steph Curry. Then I think I'm going to Snake Island, then the deadliest road. And then 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, yeah, I guess then I'll get home and then they'll make me go my home. SPEAKER_00: How does everything else in your life fit into that in terms of like the gym? I know you've been working out... SPEAKER_02: It's been brutal. It's gone to shit the last couple of months. It's just... It's really killing me, to be honest. It's... 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, you know, 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... 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 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 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 Feastables 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. It 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 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. I'm jacked up on all that caffeine. But I mean, just in this... The flu's not helping. 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 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. 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. But yeah, I would say I'm on like the lower end. I could use a couple of good days to bring the energy back up.
SPEAKER_00: How do you think about mental health? I've heard you speak about your mental health before. SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I don't. Well, the thing is, here's the problem. Like it's 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. Like I obviously never would have buried myself alive for seven days, seven days of solitary, 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 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, I think we'll hit a billion subscribers and, uh, 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.
SPEAKER_00: You spoke to Colin and Samir, two guys I met recently. Um, great, great, great guys. Um, you said to them, I'm miserable. A lot of times I have mental breakdowns every other week. SPEAKER_02: Yeah. I think as I've 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, cause it's just a lot, man. You're just going constantly. It's like, cause what's funny is I think I said that years ago, but that was back when all I was really, it was doing YouTube. Now I run the chocolate company and we have the show and we have a couple other stuff. So I think the, the hardest part really is gear shifting. Like, and so I try to bucket these things correct. Like if, if I'm on set, you know, and I have a 15 hour film day, like ideally the things I'm doing in between filming are like 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, like, 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. Yeah. I, it like, it'll make my fucking head hurt if I'm like bouncing around too much. I, and it's also just very not core to who I am. I love obsessing over certain things that 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 is pretty easy. There's a long way of saying like one thing that's helped with that is like just really, um, 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, that's just miserable. It's just not even fun to be honest.
SPEAKER_00: 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. Two questions there. Do you think the average person would like to be in your head? And secondly, are you happy? SPEAKER_02: 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, cause there, I mean, obviously I'm not a robot. There are times where I'm like, fuck, I really want to play the 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 cause I'm a very defiant kind of guy and I'm like, but I really want to do this thing, but I can't cause 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, blah. And so, um, 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 and, but I've been able to like work through those and, and just, I always try to, you know, your brain, you just, it's, 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, 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. Um, 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? Uh, it depends what day you ask me right now. I'm having a good time. Um, other, you know, when I was had the flu in Africa sitting in a cage of lines, SPEAKER_00: fuck no. So what's your baseline? How would you describe your base? SPEAKER_02: Probably, uh, this year, probably so far more unhappy than happy. And it's just, they're just things you got to do that just aren't fun, you know? But I, 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, I, uh, 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 like 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, I have found more and more that I'm finding more joy in entrepreneurial things and building businesses. And I, I, 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.
SPEAKER_00: I always wonder if 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, and they just like delete their channel. You've seen a lot of it recently over the last couple of years where YouTubers hit 10 million and they just stop. Yep. Has that ever crossed your mind to stop? SPEAKER_02: Oh, of course. 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,
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