MrBeast Isn't Cute. Here's His Brutal Business Lessons.
Nine index cards on a table, one guest who's allowed to call them bullshit, and 53 minutes of the operating system behind the biggest channel on earth.
Posted
1 years ago
Duration
Format
Interview
sincere
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573.7K
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57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
Outsized results come from treating every obstacle as a cost to be priced rather than a wall, then obsessively compounding small improvements until the impossible is routine.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A creator under 100 videos who keeps asking for advice before putting in the reps, and wants a concrete standard for when to ask.
A founder who is still the bottleneck on every decision and wants a repeatable way to hand off judgment, not just tasks.
An operator whose team says 'that's not possible' faster than they say 'here's what it would cost'.
Anyone building a consumer product (food, CPG, merch) who wants to see how a creator thinks about retail shelves and supply chains.
Someone who has been told they're too obsessed and wants a frame for whether that's a flaw or a signal about who they're around.
SKIP IF…
You want a tactical YouTube tutorial on titles, thumbnails, or retention. This is a mindset and operations conversation.
You're looking for a critical or investigative take. The hosts are friends and fans, and the tone is admiring throughout.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
The guest's edge is not money or luck but a mindset the hosts break into nine rules and he mostly confirms. Commit fully, with no fallback (he faked attending community college for six months while editing in a Dodge Durango until a $20,000 month let him move out). Make 100 videos, improving one thing each time, before asking anyone for advice. Treat ideas as leverage, since the same seven days of lying down is either a buried-alive mega-hit or a bathtub nobody watches. Clone yourself by having an all-in person on your hip every time you do work, because any task you're doing yourself is a flaw. Never accept 'impossible'; demand the cost and the bottleneck instead. Call whoever already did the hard thing. Reinvest everything, because the goal is the best product, not a bank balance.
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Highlight montage, then the setup: the hosts interviewed his assistant, thumbnail guy and girlfriend, and lay nine rules face-down on the table for him to confirm or call bullshit.
01:48 – 04:40
02 · Burn the boats
Mom lost everything in 2008 and demanded college. He enrolled at free community college, attended a week, then sat in a Dodge Durango editing videos every day. A $20,000 month arrived right before the six-month window closed, and he confessed.
04:40 – 07:58
03 · Obsession and the Walmart detour
He says the drive isn't strategy, it's personality: one thing, every second, for ten years. Then the hosts tell the story of him skipping a connecting flight to drive from DC to North Carolina hitting 25 Walmarts to check chocolate shelves.
07:58 – 13:32
04 · The rule of 100
Make 100 videos, improve one thing each time, then ask questions. The hosts show his early Black Ops 2 thumbnail and the 730-subscriber stat card from video 100. Seinfeld's two hours a day for 45 years reframes 10,000 hours as the start, not mastery.
13:32 – 20:00
05 · You can make anything viral: the $10K test
Buried alive for seven days versus lying in a bathtub for seven days: same work, one gets hundreds of millions of views. Then a live test: random word 'grandmother' becomes 'completing a 100-year-old's bucket list'; 'drawing' becomes ugly street sketches of beautiful couples. His brainstorming circle is five people, a shotgun and a sniper.
20:00 – 25:18
06 · Cloning, not training
Any time he does a task himself is a flaw. Someone all-in follows him on every piece of work until they can run it. Clones know the whole business, so they can make decisions and cut red tape. The Warren Buffett and Ben Graham story: 'your price is too high.' Zero to one took five years; one to three was easy.
25:18 – 33:30
07 · Impossible is possible
His TikTok lead was told to get 10 million followers a month and hit it twice. The rule: never accept 'not possible', demand the cost and the bottleneck. Pyramids of Egypt, Eiffel Tower, Elon driving rockets under power lines, and the plastic-knife table video that cost nothing.
33:30 – 38:06
08 · Consultants are cheat codes
He'd now rewrite it as 'experienced people are cheat codes'. Burying himself alive? Call David Blaine. On walks he picks a random contact and says 'teach me something.' The basketball-camp chair interview: ask the real estate guy how to turn $10M into $100M, not 'teach me real estate'.
38:06 – 39:44
09 · Block out the noise
Everything the hosts praised him for in this episode is what he was bullied for in high school. If you're blocking out a lot of noise, you're around the wrong people. Dragging the wrong crowd is a ten-pound weight shackled to your leg.
39:44 – 43:56
10 · Reinvest everything
The first $10,000 brand deal was withdrawn in cash and handed to a man on the roadside. The Zuckerberg 'I'd just start another one' logic. It isn't about money: he wants to make the best product and settles for less only until the budget grows.
43:56 – 48:46
11 · Why Feastables: ethical chocolate at scale
Seventy percent of cocoa comes from West Africa and roughly 46% of the labor is illegal child labor, rooted in farmers earning a dollar a day. He flew Tony's Chocolonely in, absorbed five ethical brands, and now pays every farmer a living income with third-party remediation audits. Goal: a billion-dollar ethical chocolate company as proof against Big Chocolate.
48:46 – 51:20
12 · Getting jacked
The yearly focus was 'make 26 bangers, sell a lot of chocolate, get jacked'. From 240 to 190 pounds by engineering the environment: surround yourself with jacked people until strangers hand you chicken breast. The lifting is easy, the food is the discipline.
51:20 – 53:35
13 · Buying TikTok and sign-off
A joke tweet about buying TikTok turned into 35 billionaires texting and two serious bid groups asking him in. He'd need a week with the ten best algorithm people before he knew what to do with it. Then they go play basketball.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
Make 100 videos and improve one thing each time before asking anyone for advice; 99% of people never finish, and the 1% who do no longer need the advice.
Ten thousand hours isn't mastery, it's the starting line. Seinfeld has written jokes two hours a day for 45 years, roughly 30,000 hours, and still does it.
The same seven days of lying down is either a buried-alive video with hundreds of millions of views or a bathtub nobody watches. The idea, not the effort, decides the return.
Any time the founder is personally doing a task is a flaw. Have someone on your hip while you do it so they can own it in six months.
Clones beat trainees because a clone knows the whole business, so they understand the ripples a decision causes and can cut through red tape without asking.
Zero to one on handing off a skill took five years. One to three took almost nothing, because the first clone trains the next two.
'It's not possible' is never an acceptable answer. The only acceptable answers are how much it costs and where the bottleneck is.
Physics is the only law. Everything else is a suggestion, which is why the rockets got driven to Florida on back roads with people pushing up power lines.
Need to make the world's largest slice of cake? Call the person who made the previous one. They've already run the tests that would cost you weeks.
The things people flatter you for once you've succeeded are the exact things they bullied you for when you were small. Nothing changed but the results.
If you have to block out a lot of noise, that's a signal you're around the wrong people, not a badge of toughness.
The first $10,000 brand deal went straight to a man on the side of the road. Pocketing it would only have meant filming a different, smaller video.
Reinvesting everything has nothing to do with money. It's about making the best possible product and settling for less of it only as long as you have to.
Roughly 46% of the labor on West African cocoa farms is illegal child labor, and the root cause is farmers earning a dollar a day. Paying a living income is step one.
Getting in shape was an environment problem, not a willpower problem: the metric was how often the people around him handed him chicken breast instead of pizza.
On walks he closes his eyes, scrolls to a random contact, and opens with 'teach me something.' People now answer with 'here's what I've learned' before he says a word.
Takeaway
Price the obstacle, then do the reps anyway.
OPERATING RULES
Every rule on the table reduces to two habits: refuse to accept 'impossible' until you know the cost, and keep improving one thing per attempt long after everyone else has stopped.
02Burn the boats
Removing your fallback changes the math: a six-month window to earn rent produced a $20,000 month that an open-ended plan never would have.
03Obsession and the Walmart detour
Obsession is a personality, not a tactic. Pick one thing you can think about every second for ten years instead of ten things you'll struggle with.
04The rule of 100
Make 100 pieces of work, improving one specific element each time, before asking for advice. The reps teach most of what advice would.
Ten thousand hours is where you start, not where you master. Seinfeld's two hours a day for 45 years is the real benchmark.
05You can make anything viral: the $10K test
The idea decides the return. Seven days buried alive and seven days in a bathtub are the same work, and only one gets hundreds of millions of views.
Constrain the budget and brainstorm from random words. 'Grandmother' plus $10,000 became 'completing a 100-year-old's bucket list' in seconds.
Build a small circle of people who pull ideas out of you: one thumbnail brain, one title brain, one shotgun who says wild things, one sniper who speaks rarely.
06Cloning, not training
Any time you personally do a task, treat it as a flaw and have someone all-in shadow you until they can own it in six months.
Clones learn the whole business, not one department, so they can make founder-level decisions and cut through red tape without a meeting.
The first handoff is the hard one. Zero to one on writing videos took five years; one to three took almost nothing because the first clone trains the next.
07Impossible is possible
Ban 'that's not possible' from your team. The only acceptable answers are what it costs and where the bottleneck is, then decide objectively.
The best breakthroughs are low-level and crude: driving rockets on back roads with people pushing up power lines, or 12 hours cutting a table with plastic knives.
08Consultants are cheat codes
Before starting anything hard, call the person who already did it. They have run the tests that would cost you weeks.
Ask narrow, high-leverage questions of experts: 'how would you turn $10M into $100M' gets five useful minutes; 'teach me real estate' gets nothing.
09Block out the noise
The traits people admire once you've won are the traits they mocked before. If you're blocking out a lot of noise, change who you're around.
10Reinvest everything
Reinvesting is about the product, not the money. Pocketing cash only means filming a smaller version of the video you wanted to make.
11Why Feastables: ethical chocolate at scale
Nearly half the labor on West African cocoa farms is child labor, and the root cause is a dollar a day. Paying a living income is step one, audits are step two.
12Getting jacked
To get in shape he changed the room, not his willpower. Surround yourself with people who already live the way you want to.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Burn the boats
Deliberately removing your fallback option so the only path left is the one you've committed to. Named for the story of a commander who burned his ships after landing so his army couldn't retreat.
Rule of 100
Produce 100 pieces of work, making one deliberate improvement each time, before asking anyone for advice. The reps themselves teach most of what advice would.
Cloning
Training a fully committed person by having them shadow you every time you do a piece of work, until they can make the same decisions you would and run that part of the business without you.
Vendor's license
Retail permission that lets a brand's own staff walk into a store's back room, scan in stock and restock their product on the shelf, the way beverage companies do with their delivery trucks.
CPG
Consumer packaged goods: everyday products sold through retail shelves, such as snacks, drinks and chocolate.
Living income reference price
A benchmark price for a crop, set by looking at local costs of food, housing and inflation, that a farmer needs to receive to live decently. Paying it is used as a lever against child labor.
Child labor remediation system
A third-party audit program that interviews farmers and children, checks school attendance, identifies cases of child labor on cocoa farms and follows up to get the children out.
Resources
Things they pointed at.
18:32bookCreativity, Inc. (Ed Catmull)
42:30channelHow to Take Over the World (podcast, Walt Disney episode)
“Make a hundred videos, improve something every time, on the hundredth one, then ask questions.”
The whole rule in one sentence, no setup needed.→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
12:03
“People say it takes 10,000 hours to master something. I'm like, 10,000 hours, that's when you start.”
Contrarian flip on a cliche everyone knows.→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
14:40
“I theoretically could have, instead of doing that, laid in just a bathtub for seven days. No one would have gave a fuck.”
Buried-alive versus bathtub makes the power-of-ideas point visceral.→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
21:04
“You should view any time you have to work on things as a flaw.”
One line that reframes founder busyness as failure.→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
23:28
“Son, your price is too high.”
The Ben Graham punchline to Buffett offering to work for free. Short story, big payoff.→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
27:45
“I hate when people tell me something can't be done. Just tell me the cost and what the problem is.”
The impossible-is-possible rule compressed to a management instruction.→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
28:59
“Until the president of France tells you no, it's possible.”
Funny, specific, and it lands the whole philosophy.→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
29:13
“Physics are the only laws. Everything else is a suggestion.”
Quotable aphorism from the rocket-on-back-roads story.→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
38:18
“Everything you guys have been flattering me with throughout this podcast are the exact same things I got low-key bullied for in high school.”
Emotional turn, instantly relatable to anyone who's been called too obsessed.→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
39:05
“If you're having to block out a lot of noise, then you have a serious problem. It's a signal.”
Flips the motivational cliche into a diagnosis about your circle.→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
41:45
“I got a brand deal for $10,000. They wired it, I withdrew it and gave it to this homeless guy on the side of the street.”
Reinvest-everything told as a single surprising action.→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
45:00
“Elon's going to put people on Mars, and you're telling me we can't not have little kids farming our chocolate?”
The Feastables origin in one angry sentence.→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
49:44
“My metric of success was how frequently random people were just handing me chicken breasts.”
Funny and a real framework: measure the environment, not the willpower.→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
Topic Map
Where the conversation goes.
00:00 – 07:58denseCommitment, obsession and origin story
07:58 – 13:32denseReps before advice: rule of 100 and 10,000 hours
13:32 – 20:00denseIdea leverage and live viral brainstorming
20:00 – 25:18denseScaling judgment: cloning
25:18 – 33:30denseBeating 'impossible' and cost-based decisions
33:30 – 38:06steadyLearning from experienced people
38:06 – 43:56steadyNoise, environment and reinvestment
43:56 – 48:46denseFeastables and ethical cocoa sourcing
48:46 – 53:35sparseFitness, TikTok acquisition rumor, close
The Script
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Let's go. So here we go. I have it here.
This is the Mr. Beast secret. I don't know if I should be concerned.
I guess you faked going to college. Oh, that's a juicy one. On your 100th video, you wrote your stats.
I did do that. I remember that. It's not like at 100 you were rich and famous.
People say it takes 10 ,000 hours to master something. I'm like, that's when you start. So you know nobody does this, right?
I don't understand why. So we want to do an exercise. To see if I can come up with a viral idea.
But with a budget of $1 ,000. Yeah, exactly. So we're going to do a random word generator.
They're gonna think this is me. All right, so it gave us the word grandmother. So what's a viral idea with a grandmother?
I mean, bro, if you actually want like a mega banger.
Jimmy, what's up? How's it going, boys? Hey, how you doing?
Let's go. What I like about you is that your approach to, whether it's YouTube, selling chocolate, losing weight, whatever it is, you have a certain mentality. I think you were wired differently.
I think in 20 years, I'm going to be able to look, I'm going to show my kids and be like, yeah, wait before Jimmy was president, you came on my podcast. We sat at this little table. So I honestly think you're wired differently.
And I want to share those with the audience that anybody could use, whether you want to be a swimmer, you want to be a YouTuber, you want to be a business person, whatever. I also called your assistant, called your thumbnail guy, talked to your girlfriend. They didn't even tell me that.
What? So here we go. I have it here.
This is the Mr. Beast secrets. I don't know if I should be concerned.
We're going to go through these. These are nine of what I consider to be your rules. Now, you could tell me if these are bullshit.
Are you making this a game? He's laying them out in front of me. Here you go.
So we're going to play this game. And each one of these is, to me, a rule of Mr. Beast.
It's something we've seen about the way you operate. And I want you to kind of talk about these. So this is number one.
Okay. Burn the boats. So burn the boats.
Your mom wanted you to go to college and I guess you faked going to college. You pretended to go. What is the story?
Oh, that that's a juicy one. So, well, first off, we didn't have the kind of money to go to a real college. So it was just like a free community college.
Um, but yeah, my mom, because she grew up. Pretty traditionally, the military worked her whole life. But then in 2008, she lost everything when the real estate collapsed.
And so lost all her savings and stuff. We went bankrupt and had to file for bankruptcy. So she's very paranoid.
She just wants her kid to go get a job and not fuck up and not do anything. She's very risk averse. And so that was a constant tug and pull because I'm like, I'm going to be a YouTuber or homeless.
And she'd be like, I think you could be homeless. I'm like, OK, I mean, it is what it is. I don't care.
I'm going to be a YouTuber. And it just never clicked in her head. And to her, it's like, if he doesn't get a college degree, he's like, my son's a failure.
I just wasted 18 years. Like he's, he's not gonna be able to provide. So for her, it was like either college or my life's ruined.
Cause that's just how her brain's wired. And because she went through so much. And so when I was like, I don't want to go, she was just like, then leave, get out of the house.
Like, I can't, I just can't bear the sight of my son just sitting around and, you know, just throwing his life away. And I didn't have enough money to move out. So I was like, frick.
And luckily, the community college is so cheap. It's not like she's wasting money on it. So I was like, OK, I'll go to college.
And then I just flat out lied to her. Like I was like, I'll do it. But, you know, I had no intention of actually doing it.
And so I went just to see what it was like. And I was like, well, maybe I'm like being a little dramatic. And I went to class for like a week.
Horrible. It was so boring. I mean.
I swear, like the teacher was just reading out of the book. And I was like, why, why do I have to, I could just read the book. Like, what are we doing?
You know? And I said that to some of the people around me and they're like, yeah, that's what education is. Stop complaining.
And I'm like, I just was, my head hurt. And so then I was like, it is what it is. I have, like, a six -month time clock where I have to make enough money where I can move out because once my mom knows, I'm screwed.
She's going to kick me out of the house. Honestly, I would want to leave the house because I know it's going to make her depressed and very sad. So you just didn't go after that?
Yeah, so I would go every day, go, and then I would just sit in, like, this, like, I had a really old, like, Dodge Durango that was super used a lot of miles, and I would just sit in the Dodge Durango and, like, edit videos, and I'd film at night, and I'd come home. And would you come back and be like, school was great? Yeah, I was just like, yeah, you know, she'd make house college, and I'd be like, like you know and then and i just wouldn't tell her that i'd stop going but you burned the boats you're like all right i got six months exactly i gotta either make it or somehow i figured it out i don't even remember um but we i had a month where i made 20 grand um right before it was time like the the window was almost up and then i just told my mom i was like i haven't been going i'm failing i found a place down the road it's 700 bucks a month sorry she's like all right Hey, real quick, I'm trying something special for this episode.
Let me know if you like it. We were talking to Jimmy and before these episodes, I do 30, 40 hours of research and prep and I make detailed notes that for me make it super easy to remember all the key takeaways. Well, for the first time, I'm actually going to give those notes to you so you can get them for free in the description below.
It's my notes, the key takeaways from this episode. Go ahead and grab it. It's down in the description below.
Is this kind of a strategy for you where you're like? I don't think it's a strategy. It's more my personality.
I'm a very obsessive person. If you told me to do 100 things, I would struggle at it. But if you told me to think on this one thing every second of the day for the next 10 years, I can do that pretty easily.
So I like to just obsess over something. I like to dream about it, wake up, think about it, think about it, think about it, think about it, think about it, more work on it, work on it, work on it, think about it, think about it, dream about it, and just do that every single day. To me, it comes very naturally.
What was your observation? We just went to Walmart with Jimmy. We did.
Give me your, we haven't talked about this. Most of your audience probably doesn't even know. I sell chocolate.
We have a Feastables. It's a chocolate company. And I'm sure we'll go into that at some point.
Yeah. Feastables. This episode is brought to you by Feastables.
So I took him to a Walmart just because it's my favorite thing to do. In my free time, I go walk up and down chocolate aisles in different retailers. And so I brought him along.
He was telling us everything about merchandising, everything, not just about Feastables, but about competitive chocolate companies. He was showing us like talking numbers of sales. Dude, I thought like.
influencers it's just like you give them a product they're like oh this okay guys hey buy this you know the chocolate game inside and out he was in the aisles like reconfiguring the skews making everything straight i like landed in dc for a layover to then fly to north carolina and then i got off the plane to go to my connective flight and i was like wait a minute and i just opened up like google maps and i searched walmart and i was like i could just drive there and hit 25 walmarts on the way home and so then i it was like 10 a .m And then I just skipped my connecting flight, just rented a car.
And I drove from DC, visited every Walmart on the way to North Carolina. I didn't get home till like 9 p .m. And I just like, it was like, that was the best day ever.
I wonder if the CEO of Hershey's has done that. Probably not. I wonder if he's doing it.
And the guy. It's a problem. Your friend who was like, have you gone to Walmart with him?
They're like, he's like, yeah, I don't know. Jimmy has like a badge. Like if something's out of stock, he just goes in the back and restocks it himself.
Yeah. Do they give you like, do you have some way of like. Well, it's a, it's a vendor's license.
So a lot of people have vendor's license, like beverage, like Coca -Cola. They, so they have a direct sales network where you can fit like theoretically 10 ,000 chocolate bars in a pallet. You can only fit 500 Coke cans.
So it's like a lot harder to store 10 ,000 cans of Coke than is 10 ,000 chocolate bars. So for that, they have Coke trucks that some. Walmart's they go to every single day and they'll just take the product and go put it in the back for the Walmart employees and then they'll go stock the shelves and everything.
So Walmart's pretty transparent about that, which I was, when I first got into the CPG game, I was like, no shot. Like they're just going to let us do it. But yeah, if your product's out of stock on the shelf, you have a vendor's license, you can go in the back, scan it in and put it on the shelf.
Smart. Yeah. I mean, you could argue it's not a good use of your time and I don't know why I do it.
It's kind of therapeutic. I just love going to Walmart's and fixing the product. I like just.
observing it like what it looks like on the shelf seeing what the competition's doing just seeing who's grabbing it and buying it it's like those memes like men won't go to therapy but they'll do this this is your thing organize a chocolate island target or walmart so let's do uh rule number two this one uh go ahead you can we can reveal this i think you know what this one is rule of a hundred I gave it a name.
So this is, I'm going to quote you on this. So this was somebody, you know, I'm sure you could ask this a million times. Okay.
How do I, what advice do you have for me as a YouTuber or how do I be successful on YouTube? And you said this thing that to me was like, every creator should print this and put it on their wall. Oh God, what did I say?
This applies to everything. You go, look, your first videos, not going to get views, period. Make a hundred videos, improve something every time on the hundredth one, then ask questions.
To me, that's the rule of a hundred is before you. come ask for advice. It's like, have you made a hundred videos and every time try to make one thing better.
And that's like also very achievable too. It's not like some insurmountable thing to do. It's like, all right, I'm going to make my intro better.
I'm going to make my editing better or whatever it is. And that, and the beauty of what you said was, I think the way you said it, you were like, if you do that a hundred times and I say, come talk to me after you've done the hundred people, 99 % of people just don't do it. And then the 1 % of people who do, they don't need me after that.
Like you figure it out, which is, it's more of a metaphorical mindset because that's the thing. It's, uh, most people who like need advice is just go do it and learn through failure. I'm a big fan of just trial by fire, go do it, fuck up a bunch of times and like get 0 .1 % better.
And then do that for a couple of years. I have a couple other pictures to show you. So this is one, this is one of your thumbnails.
Oh God. During your ride. That's still on my channel.
So I went and I looked at your, your, your first hundred. I was like, all right, let me see. He said the rule of 100.
Let me go look at this first 100. And I saw this and like today you're probably known as like one of the best, smartest thumbnail people in the world. Black Ops 2 shotgun gameplay with commentary PS4 or Xbox.
Just I suck at making thumbnails, which is honestly dope because. Most people, if they feel like they're bad at something, they just don't do it. They shy away.
And then you have this other one, which is like your 100th video. On your 100th video, you wrote your stats. You go, subscribers.
I did do that. I remember that. 730 subscribers.
So on your rule of 100, it's not like at 100 you were rich and famous. Yeah. Right?
And honestly. Yeah, probably 150 of them are me asking people on Xbox Live to subscribe. Like when I'd be playing Call of Duty in like a game chat, I'd be like, yo, subscribe to my channel.
What do you see people get wrong about the rule of 100? Most people just aren't as obsessed with improving things. They get like pigeonholed in the box and they're like, oh, I just need to improve.
I mean, this applies to everything, but I guess specifically content. They'll be like, oh, I just need to... write better jokes or i need to have better camera or this and then it's it's not it's just a mindset like every single every single thing can be improved there's no such thing as a perfect video you know from i mean you can go as low as you want to like the coloring to what you're wearing to you how you speak to how long the video is to i mean there's nothing that you can't improve and so like just having that mindset where you're always trying to get better um then like applying that to everything across the board not just narrowing in on this one little thing Um, but also with this, honestly, a lot of people are mentors.
They just don't listen. And so they'll ask me for advice and like the ones who will listen, they'll take their revenue from like 30 K to 400 K a month or their goals, subs or whatever it is. I can show them how to hit it.
But a lot of times people ask for advice. I'll say it and they'll, it'll be like in one ear and out the other. And like, so those are the worst.
I use this because I was studying, um, Seinfeld recently. And I don't know if you know, Seinfeld has this daily thing. Seinfeld is now like 70 years old.
He's still like in the standup comedy game. He's the only standup. billionaire, like ever.
So he's the only comedian who's a billionaire. It's pretty crazy. And so I was like, all right, what can I learn from Seinfeld?
And one of the things he did was he was like, every day for like the last 45 years, I wake up and my first two hours of the day, I write. He's like, I write jokes. He's like, guess what?
If you want to get good at jokes, you write jokes every day. And he's like, every day, I just try to make it one better than the other. They talk about writer's block.
He's like, that's nonsense. He goes, my rule is I sit down. I don't have to write.
I just can't do anything else. And he's like, and then that makes me right. And I've been doing that.
And he has this yellow legal pad of all the pages he ever did. And he literally laid them out on a road and he like paved the whole road. It became like a yellow brick road, basically.
It's incredible. Do you know how many hours that is? Two hours a day for 45 years?
30 ,000 hours, right? Yeah. That's, you know, that's the thing.
People say it takes 10 ,000 hours to master something. And I'm like, 10 ,000 hours, that's when you start. Like that's the mindset you need with like the rule of 100.
It's not. Um, because 10 ,000 hours, what is that? It's only like eight hours a day for four years.
Yeah, exactly. It's not that they got crazy, but to a lot of people, 10, you know, that's the saying 10 ,000 hours in your master. I think it should be a hundred thousand hours to be honest.
I think 10 is too easy. So if Seinfeld is like locking himself in a room. and saying I can't do anything but write jokes do you ever have to do that or is it no this is what I live for yeah so I mean I just I wake up I walk in the studio and normally this whiteboard over here we erased it I guess it wouldn't be leaked but it'd have all the businesses all the piles all the bottlenecks anything I could do to push things forward and it's all listed out and there'd be probably three or four hundred things and then we'd go through at the start of each week and we just pick what needs to be done to what should we prioritize etc etc so it'd be like feastables it's like you know, ethical sourcing.
Here's three things that need to be done. Here's all the major bottlenecks that if you stepped in, you could push it forward. Content, toys, lunchly, whatever.
So that's more how I structure my days. It's like, because we just have a lot going on and it's just like making sure what I'm working on is the most efficient thing. Because if there's like 10 people sitting around waiting on me to make a decision to go work, that shouldn't be a Friday thing.
That should be a... fucking monday at 9 0 1 a .m thing you know what i mean so it's very even just just figure out what i need to accomplish in a week and then even the order of what we do is very important you want to do the third one yeah you want to quit it jimmy let's see this bad boy you can make anything viral so in your can we talk about your leaked yeah of course the document yeah you did a podcast on it so we want to do an exercise exercise is it a challenge to see If I can come up with a viral idea?
Yeah, exactly. The problem here, I'm down for this. The ironic thing is, the only one here who will actually know if it's viral or not is me.
You're grading yourself here. I know. It's that meme where Obama's putting the metal on himself.
Exactly. Because you guys could be like, I don't think they'll get 100 million views, and I'll just go, no. But here's the stipulation.
Take a normal thing. Make it an interesting viral idea, but with a budget of $1 ,000. Because it's easy to say, oh, Mr.
Beast would just put a million dollars on the line. Okay, 10 grand, 10 grand. And you said you used to use random word generators.
Oh, I did all the time. So we gave you a random word generator. If you hit, I don't know.
Generate random words. You can flip through a few until you find a word you want. Find the actual thing.
So to give a little context to your viewers, the thing is like, you could spend seven days. This is something I've said on other podcasts. I think this drives it home.
I spent seven days buried alive. That got hundreds of millions of views. Me laying in a coffin, it's like, holy shit.
Put a coffin 10 feet underground, cover it with 20 ,000 pounds of dirt. I'm literally in a coffin for a week. That's cool.
That's viral. That was seven days of me laying down. I theoretically could have, instead of doing that, laid in just a bathtub for seven days.
No one would have gave a fuck. Like that video would never, but in theory, it's the same amount of time, at least from a filming perspective, logistically, maybe not. But in theory, both are me just laying down for seven days, but one is super fucking viral.
The other, no one cares about. And so that's like the power of ideas. Like an idea with the right idea, you can do the exact same amount of work as a different idea, but get 50 X to return.
So that's, that's why I'm so adamant about generating good ideas. All right. So I just hit random, create random words.
chocolate they're gonna think this is chocolate this is a random word generator bro they're not gonna they're gonna think this whole thing's not chocolate uh grandmother they gave us the word grandmother so what's a viral idea with a grandmother um that could be done for ten thousand dollars i mean bro if you actually want like a mega banger i would do um i uh completing a hundred year old's bucket list Oh, so you meet a grandma.
Yeah, I'd find a grandma. I mean, if you really wanted to, I wouldn't say I would do this, but if you wanted like a viral, viral video, I'd find a grandmother who's like terminally ill and I'd take her and her grandkids and come, you know, do everything in the bucket list for them. Like, bro, that's a cool idea.
Like, don't do this title, but she will die in 30 days. So I fulfilled all her wishes. Now you've clicked that.
That's so good. Hold on. We got to do another one.
Okay. You passed. You passed the test.
Bro, this is a lifestyle. I can make things. I like the magic trick.
Drawing? Do you want to do that one? Yeah, drawing.
Okay, the next one he hit was drawing. I mean, well, so you want it for 10 grand. Because the first thing I thought of is for drawing is drawing the world's largest picture, but that would be more than 10 grand.
Actually, weirdly enough, a lot of videos go viral on YouTube where people are just like customizing phones or things like that. It depends. If I'm like a really good artist, I would do...
Like TikToks go super viral where they like find two, like a guy, a couple on a street and they like sketch them, but, but, but they, they sketch them like really ugly, but they like stop really beautiful people. And then they're, they turn their work around. They're like, what the fuck?
And those, those do really well. Like, it'll be like a very handsome guy, but they'll do their face like really round and like with buck teeth. And it's always, those do really well on TikTok.
Like I've seen some get a hundred million views. So that would be one way you could do drawing. I mean, even it's just, if you're a good enough artist, like, and if you're not just get good and study and be good.
Um, I would like, you could design like a hospital floor or something for like make a wish kids and like do like cool artwork or something. Um, if there's like some film you could put up over, draw it and like do a design that they just peel off a couple of days later, like that wouldn't be that expensive. And that'd be cool.
Like I surprised make a wish kids with, uh, you know, their favorite characters or something. Um, yeah, I mean the, How many do you want?
When you're brainstorming, are you usually just kind of by yourself? Are you like, what's your career? Like if I said, Jimmy, you got to come up with something.
What would you do to set yourself up to come up with great ideas? Yeah, because in transparency, I have teams now. And so I don't, I'm not as like, I used to do this all myself.
Now I pay a lot of people to do it. And I just like work with them on the back 10%. But I mean, yeah, if you really want to come up with like great ideas, you need to surround yourself with other very creative people.
I mean, I. I'm not going to say their names, but I have at least five people that if I really needed to solve something, I would call, I'd fly them down. It would be boom, boom, boom, boom, me in the middle.
And we could solve anything like creatively in terms of virality or anything like that. They're just like. really really good like one's good with thumbnails one's like the smartest guy I've ever met when it comes to titles another he's just a fucking freak and he says the craziest stuff but it's very like inspirational and so you need like that like shotgun that's constantly shooting out stuff and then like another guy we would describe him more as like a sniper like he's not gonna say much but when he says it you're like dang that's good um so yeah I just have like my go -to people who are like very creative and like yeah they just pull the best out of me it's very important you have that like I think didn't steam jobs call it in like creative ink like uh his think tank yeah and they had a thing where they were like at pixar they have a book called creativity ink or creativity yeah and he said it's not people think oh we just come up with the best ideas right away he goes no it goes the creative process is taking something that sucks and removing suck and so he's like yeah we sit there we watch the first version and it sucks and then we we trust each other enough to be like yeah that kind of sucks but here's what sucks about it go back try again try again try again he's like by the end by the 10th thing
We just removed all the suck and all that's left is the good bit. Do you buy that? Yeah, I was just at Pixar at the Steve Jobs building.
And I was just with some of the employees while they're working and just seeing how they go about it. And they're doing daily reviews over there, which is like, you know, every day, like what they work on, they're showing to like the director and stuff and getting like real time feedback. And they're very like egoless.
And it was very cool to like see their culture and how they go about it. Like, cause they, I mean, in terms of animated films, they're second to none. Right.
I remember a couple of years ago when we talked to you, you said that coming up with ideas was still the thing that you felt like you had the most trouble handing off to anyone else. It was like the thing that you still just like excelled most at and couldn't get anyone else.
I've trained so many great people at that now. Okay. Yeah.
I mean, I have enough ideas for the next five years. So that's not a bottleneck at all. I have too many.
I would just start listing them off, but then the problem is everyone would steal them. Yeah, yeah. Okay, great.
Let's go to the next one. All right. So we have, that's three of the rules.
Number four, I'll flip this one. Cloning. Yes.
All right. So the backstory of this one is last year when we were doing our camper event, it's basically a room full of business people, billionaires, all whatever. And you started describing how you run your company.
And you were 25 years old at the time. You're not, now you're 26. With these people double my age and 20 times the experience of me.
Correct. And so there we're listening and we're like, so who is this guy? This guy's been following you around all day.
Who is this? And how do you run this? How do you train people?
And you were like, you described this process of cloning. And I swear, I saw like five billionaires make a note to themselves. So can you describe what is your cloning principle?
What does that mean? Yeah, well, the thing is, like as a founder, because I assume a lot of your viewers run. Founders and investors.
Yeah, like you're constantly having to put out fires. You're constantly having to do things. And that's a flaw.
You're always going to be putting, like having to work on stuff. But you should view any time you have to work on things as a flaw. And it's like, how do you, what's the fastest way to stop working on something?
Every time you work on it, have someone on your hip and have them learn how to do it, essentially clone you to do that task. And so anytime I don't ever work alone anymore because anytime I'm doing something, that's a problem. And like someone should be doing this in six months.
And so that's that's just like the cheat code to doing it. And it's cloning, not training. Why?
Well, we would call now that I have hundreds of employees now, I think we're probably closing on 500. So it's a lot more training, but. Clones are more like the all -in people who are going to run your company one day and have the upside to live with you.
Because someone who's making $40 ,000 a year, they're not going to live with you and follow you around 15 hours a day. But early on, you had that. Yeah, I still have people like that, but that's just a small subset of it.
So yeah, on the core team, yeah, 100%. It's just like... The thing is, the more you know about everything going on, the better, because a lot of what you do in one part of one vertical business in finance or in this or that affects other parts.
And so the more you understand the whole business, the more you understand the ripples you create across things, the better efficiently and better you can do these kinds of things. And so just having a clone who knows everything about the whole business, as opposed to just one section, just makes it where they can just make decisions so much faster and they can cut through red tape.
And it just makes it so much easier for you to just like. Because like when you're in hyper growth scale, you don't know like what the next fire is going to be or the next things is to fix. And so you just have a couple versions of yourself.
It's just so nice because it's like, oh, this thing over here in editing is falling apart. All right, clone that you followed me around for the last three years. You know what I would do.
Just go fix it. You know what I mean? So I don't have to go fix it.
Every part of a company is not like it's not like you look at a thing. You're like editing. Editing is its own thing.
No, editing is people editing, right? Everything is people. And so what I liked about the way you were doing it was I think on the outside, people hear this like.
follow you around all the time, live with you. That's crazy. I wouldn't, you know, that's, that's harsh.
I met the people doing it and they were like, this is the greatest opportunity. Exactly. I came here for this.
I wanted to, I want to be great. He's given me the opportunity to be great. Not everybody wants this, but I really want this.
You can either go to college for like, not even four years, go to college for three years, or you can follow Sean around for three years and. like just all day, every day. And the version of you that follows Sean around for three years will make way more money.
You'll be way more experienced, way more valuable to him. Or you could just go to any one of his competitors and you'll make 10 times more than if you got - Have you ever heard the Warren Buffett cloning story? No.
So Warren Buffett, when he was young, he wanted to learn investing, right? So he goes to the guy who wrote the book on investing, Benjamin Graham. And he's like, Mr.
Graham, I'm Warren Buffett. I'm a big fan of your work. I want to work for you.
I will work harder than anyone you know. And you know what? I'm willing to work for you for free because this matters so much.
I want to learn from you. And Ben Graham goes, son, your price is too high. And he was, Warren was like surprised.
And then later he's like, he was so right. I got so much more out of working every day at Ben Graham's hip than him getting my free labor. Actually, the value exchange was like completely, he was correct.
And that always stuck with me because it's so true. Like, dude, how do you, if you want to learn, that's the best way you could possibly learn. And as a founder.
you know, ultimately you want judgment to scale. So it's like, if people in your company can think, what would Jimmy do and get the right answer? Now you've got two Jimmys, right?
You know, like for the most part, they can make decisions. And then other times it should be like, what would Jimmy do? Okay.
Jimmy's not always right. In this instance, he's an idiot. Let's go call him out on it.
What will he say when I tell him what I'm actually going to do? Yeah. And then.
They think even one step further, which is like my like long -term clones are great. They'll be like, okay, well, Jimmy's going to want data back. He's not going to care about an opinion.
So I'm going to just go do all the research and grab the data. And then they'll, they'll ask me something and they'll say, blah, blah. And they'll be like, I knew you were going to say that.
And they'll hand me things. I'll be like, well, what about this over there? I knew you were going to say that.
And I'll be like, oh, great. And by the way, it's not just you, even other, there was like a guy, he was also cloning people. He was like, yeah, I'm the, I'm the main guy for this part of the business.
So I need to be training people. So this is how I'm doing. Zero to one is so difficult, but then one to three, you know, like is, is so much easier.
So that's like, the hard part is like training that for like downloading, I'll pick a random thing, like writing the videos, right? Like, obviously I used to write all the videos myself. taking all that and getting where someone else could do it without keeping the essence of like what makes it viral and what makes it good and not feeling too corporate and scripted because we're not scripted, et cetera.
Like going from zero to one, that took like five years. But then, you know, him training the next two people is great because I don't have to do it. And he trains those two and those two train the next.
And so it's just like that first clone is so imperative and then they can do the rest. That's great. You want to do the next one?
All right, sure.
Possible is possible. Fuck yeah. Impossible is possible.
All right, so this is, I asked your, I'm friends with Rohan, the guy who runs your TikTok. Yeah. I go, tell me the thing where you realize like this guy's built different.
This guy thinks differently than a normal person would. And I was like, that's the story I want. And he goes, he goes, I don't know how to explain it.
This is the quote. Jimmy will give you an impossible mission, but he'll say it in a way that makes it seem totally possible. And then he leaves the room and you're like, God damn, this is impossible.
He goes. For example, Jimmy came to me and said, I need 10 million TikTok followers a month, Ron. He goes, and every month I told Jimmy it's impossible like 100 times.
And he told me, do it 500 times. He told me to do it 500 times. I think we had two months.
That's what he told me. He goes, I didn't do it most months, but I did do it like two months. And we got way further than we ever would have got had he not laid down like kind of this impossible gauntlet.
So that's one story. I'm sure there's like a thousand of these. But like, do you live by this?
I guess, how would you talk about that? Well, I don't try to just give people KPIs that I think are impossible just to torture them. I just like, I think most people there, when you ask them to do something like very incredibly difficult, like what I first did, I want to bury myself alive for a week.
Like people's first inclination is just, that's not possible. And like, technically almost anything is possible. And so it's just like, so my first thing is just like, why do you say that?
Like, let's go through the gambit. And then they'll always be like, well, it's just not possible. And then you just have to be like, go do the fucking research.
And then they'll come back and it's like, is it too expensive? Because we can figure out ways. Is it too unsafe?
Well, we can navigate safety or whatever it is. And so it's like, I hate when people tell me something can't be done. Just tell me the cost and like what the problem is.
Where the bottleneck is. Yeah. And then if like, then let's look at those.
And objectively, if it's too expensive or something that's not worth investing the time into or what, then that's fine. And then I'll kill it. But just tell me something.
Because like half the stuff I did, if I just listened to people and they told me it wasn't possible, like. I wanted the Eiffel Tower for a video. Not possible.
Why? Why is that not possible? Go get the fucking Eiffel Tower.
Like, until the head of the president of France tells you no, it's possible. Like, I don't... And then when he says no, ask his kids.
See if they have some sway over him. Well, that's a given while you're on the phone. Like, we just filmed a video where we had the three pyramids of Egypt and we were like, you know, spending, like, we were there for 100 hours.
It's a crazy video. We explored the pyramids. It's like my favorite video ever.
Same thing. Like, you can't just... have the three pyramids i'm like did egypt tell you that like what do you mean go make some phone calls you know what i mean and it's just constantly even today when i'm not with my core group that i've trained very well it's just always like you can't do that or no or they'll go make a phone call or okay fine jimmy we'll go try to get the pyramids they'll go away they'll come back a day later you can't have the pyramids i'm like who'd you call this tourist guy who like works at the pyramids i'm like okay call the head of tourism like how do you get their number okay well that's different you didn't ask me how to get the head of tourism's number you asked me You just told me it was not possible.
Like, so now, like, please don't do that again. Like, we got to figure out what the problems are. Let's figure it out.
And then we make calls and you figure it out. And next thing you know, it's, and so it's just like, that's a big thing that you have to like, if you really, in my opinion, want to innovate and do things that are, you know, I've never been done before and push boundaries. You have to like have a mindset amongst your people that it's not, nothing is impossible.
It's just how much does it cost? How do you do it? And then you just make an objective decision.
It seems to me like when you solve these impossible problems. You have to think on like a lower level rather than a higher level. Have you heard the story of Elon getting his rockets from Texas to Florida where they launched them?
No. So the normal way everyone gets their rockets to Florida is on a barge, right? But it takes like three months and costs a bunch of money.
Didn't he fly it there? He drove it there. I was like, no, we're going to drive it instead.
And they're like, well, it's way too big. Like, well, first answer was it's impossible. Can't do it.
Yeah. He said, let's go. And he has a great line, which is, uh, physics are the only laws.
Everything else is a suggestion. And he's like, is it physically impossible to get it to Florida? No.
Okay, we agree on that. Great. Now let's continue to figure out where the bottleneck is.
And it's like, oh, the boat, too long, too expensive, whatever. And so, you know, oh, well, it's impossible to get it through overpasses. And so he's like, well, what would be the shortest way to get there without encountering a single overpass?
So they go, they do this like extremely circuitous route all on back roads. And they're like, but even if we do that, there's still a problem with power lines and telephone wires. And so they have like some of the smartest people on earth driving in a van in front of these rockets with big poles.
And they just push up the telephone wires so we can go under. And then they go to the next telephone wires. And it's just like.
You just have to approach it like a caveman almost to beat the impossible. Do you find that's the case a lot? Yeah, quite a bit.
And a lot of it is just a willingness. It's just people who love what they do. And people who really love problem solving will figure these things out.
And so it's just having the right person in the right seat at the right time who actually wants to go deep. And there are certain people where you give them something that seems impossible and they will be giddy. And they'll be like, fuck yeah, I can't wait.
I have people like that where I could call and be like... what's something they don't wake up until it's until it's hard uh well it's like uh i guess if i wanted a different world wonder if i was like i want the taj mahal for a week right and they're like people are coming if i called and said that like i promised you they would smile be like okay like they didn't see that as a challenge they'd go to war to figure it out and then not in my company but just there are other people that you would say that oh my god you know and so you just got to get the right people who just deeply enjoy solving problems and like see it as a challenge and like And like there, there are people built that way.
And those are the people that really succeed in that environment. And even a different example, that's not getting the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel tower. One of my favorite videos of yours where I, the first time I was like, all right, respect.
It was before I met you. I was like, okay, respect was, uh, Ben was telling me about you. And he goes, he, he made a video said, I'm going to cut through this table with a plastic knife.
Oh my gosh. I remember this weirdly very well. I was sitting in a high school and I just like, I had a, I don't know, after lunch, I just.
I put the plastic knife in my pocket for some reason. I don't remember why. And then I just put my hand in my pocket.
I was like, oh, plastic knife. And then I just started like scraping against the desk. And I was like, oh, well, I'm like kind of like I can cut this desk in half.
Like just like your stupid little high school desk. I just did this for like five minutes until like the teacher was like, what the fuck are you doing? Stop.
And then I just was like looking at the little indention. I was doing the calculation in my head. I was like, it'd take me like 10 hours to cut through this according to my math.
I was like. Fuck it. I think that would be like a video where people would be interested.
So I went to the store on the way home and I bought like a thousand plastic, like the cheapest plastic knives I could find. And then I just got this like $20 fold out table and I just went in my room, hit record on the camera and I just went to town because the plastic knives would get dull after like a minute and I was just cutting through it.
And I think that, I think that took 12 hours to cut through the table of plastic knives. But that's what I'm saying. It was no money.
It was no money. It wasn't Taj Mahal. It was like creativity or first boredom.
Boredom is the key. This is like how Einstein discovered relativity. But that video did so well, and it's like so dumb.
It's just like, how many leaks does it take to get to a center of intensity? How many plastic knives does it take to cut a table down? People were like, what a fucking idiot.
Did you do it with one, by the way? No, no, no. Probably thousands.
Okay, gotcha. That's insane. By the way, that's a spoiler.
I think that one we kind of copied number eight, which is no doesn't mean no way. And there's a big difference between no and no way. And possible is possible, and no doesn't mean no.
Exact same thing, yeah. And I like the clarification you had, which was like, you're not just like, the asshole boss that's like, I need this impossible thing done.
You know, whatever. It's more like, hey, I want to do this impossible thing or I want to do this great thing. No.
Okay. Let's get curious before we just like make a decision here. Yeah.
Why? And let's try to understand it. And if it truly is, no, which it rarely is, fine.
But it's usually not. And then the cool thing is if you do that in the company, do it once, people are like, oh, wow, that was interesting. Do it twice.
By the third time you do it, people are like, all right. Like, that's the way, right? It's contagious, right?
By the 50th time, yeah. It's like a religion. People start to believe when they see it, right?
Yeah, I need your employees. For me, it tends to take a couple dozen times for it to stick. Well, I'll keep pointing at it.
I'm like, guys, remember what we said and then what happened? Let's like, let's take that and wrap. That's a rally cry for us now.
Like, we could do all these things, right? Let's immortalize that. All right, we got three more to go.
All right, here we go. Consultants. our cheat code yeah and honestly because i wrote this they're referencing my thing i wrote a couple years ago i would update that to just say like experienced people are chico it's the right ones like because it doesn't because like my uh handbook i guess that's what you would call it leaked on twitter and like Yeah, my production Bible.
So many people were like consultants and even consultants are like putting this on their website. Endorsed on LinkedIn. So many consultant tweets are like, yes, he validated our industry.
And I'm like, well, I wasn't specifically talking about McKinsey. You know, it's just more like. You know, especially with us because we do so many random weird things.
I mean, what did I say in here? Consultants are literally cheat codes. Need to make the world's largest slice of cake?
Start off by calling the person who has made the previous world's largest slice of cake. LOL. He's already done countless tests and can save you weeks worth of work.
I really want to drill this point home because I'm a massive believer in consultants because I've spent almost a decade of my life hyper obsessing over YouTube. I can show a brand new creator how to go from 100 subscribers to 10 ,000 in a month. On their own, it would take them years to do it.
Consults are a gift from God. Please take advantage of them in every single freaking task assigned to you. Always, always, always ask yourself first if you can find a consultant to help you.
Exactly. Because we do so many weird, different things. Like, oh, we're going to bury me alive?
Call David Blaine. He buried himself alive. You know what I mean?
How's that phone call go? Great. They're usually like, well, we don't have David Blaine's phone number.
And I'm like, okay, I'll DM him on Instagram. And I'm like, here's his phone number. Call him.
Figure out how he didn't die. But you do these things like one night I was just hanging out at my house. Get a call.
North Carolina number, pick up. Oh yeah. It's usually, I go on walks and then I just like, I literally just close my eyes and like flip through my contacts and I'll like stop.
And you know, when it's on S, you'll be there and I'll just be like, hmm, I'll just have a random name and I'll be like, teach me something. Sometimes the calls are one minute, other times they're 20. And yeah, it's like, you gotta always be learning.
I feel like you're saying that almost like it's a normal thing. You know, like nobody does this, right? Like that's like a - I don't understand why that's - I kind of started to steal it because I was like, why not?
I'm also like, I'm obsessed with learning. Yeah. And - oh there's something like maybe the mechanics of it i was confused like so i call these people then i just say like hey teach me something well yeah yeah teach me something what's what's funny is the more you do it the more people will come to expect it too so like i'll call someone they won't answer and then they'll be like let me guess you're on a walk sorry i'm busy and then i'm like i don't even have to respond to just get it like you know because at the start You'll, you know, you'll go on a walk and you'll call 20 people and you'll have conversations with 10.
Cause you know, these high caliber people are always busy. And the other 10 will call you throughout the next 24 hours. And it's like a nuisance.
Cause you gotta be like, oh, I was just born on a walk. I was just born on a walk. So, but now they, everyone just gets it.
It's a protocol. Yeah. Yeah.
So it's like so funny that I've become known for that. And like people will answer and like, sometimes I won't even say anything. They'll be like, all right, here's what I've learned.
It's like, great. Cause then I just like, these are people who are, you know, some of them running. Companies are doing billions of dollars a year in revenue and they're learning tons of things.
They're always experimenting. And I just get this five minute brain dump of everything they learn, suck it out of them. And then I'm like, here's what I learned.
Because I always, a big part of this, if you want it to go well, is you have to add as much value, ideally more than what they're giving to you. So I try to help them in any way I can. And then you hang up and you go to the next one.
Another one that is in the kind of consultants are cheat codes is we do these talks at our event. So at our basketball event, it's kind of like play ball all day till we're like dead tired. And then at night.
It's like we're hanging out. And the first year we did it, I remember because I created the events. I was kind of the host.
I was like, I don't want to be like forcing like a conference vibe. I was like really like tiptoeing around. I was like, I don't want this to be awkward.
But it was actually more awkward because nobody knew who anyone else was. You did this great thing. You like grabbed a chair.
You put it in the middle of the room. You're like, hey, sit down real quick. You go, all right, who are you?
What's your story? And then they would like start to tell like a long winded story. But what I liked was you would have questions.
So like we had a real estate guy. And instead of being like, all right, teach me about real estate, which the guy doesn't know how to start. You were like, if I had $10 million, what would be the best way to turn it into a hundred for real estate?
Yeah. And then he talked for like five minutes. You're like, cool.
God, I should just give it to somebody like you. Makes sense. Onto the next.
And I was like, I love the power of kind of like the right question, the right person. And honestly, in group settings like that, another thing too, is just not being afraid to cut people off because some people are just so. not aware that like there's 20 people and you've been rambling for 30 minutes and I'm like I feel like they got another 15 in them and three of those people are on their phone those two are checked out those five are too nice to say anything I'll be the one who's like hey we get it all right I got the next one block out the noise okay block out you want to do block out the noise sure so here's the quote when you're small people say you're too obsessed you're a weirdo get a life be realistic this is from you People will try to convince you that you're out of your mind for wanting to do this.
Then when it works, yo, your drive, your tenacity, that was great. Everything you guys have been flattering me with throughout this podcast are the exact same things I got low -key bullied for in high school. It's hilarious that now these grown men are like, yo, this is fucking awesome.
You're all in. Impossible is not possible. No doesn't mean no.
You just love this shit. In high school, that's what a fucking nerd. Get a life, loser.
Yeah. That's why you call it block out the noise, right? Because the same things that people admire when you're successful are the things that people are going to try and tell you to stop.
If you had listened, you wouldn't be Mr. Beast, right? We wouldn't be here right now.
Everyone else, yeah, just a normal job. But the thing is, it's like... The big takeaway is it just means you're not around the right people, right?
Because, like, obviously, if I was around you guys when you were younger, I'm sure you guys wouldn't have been like, oh, what a weird, obsessed nerd. You would have been like, oh, this is sick. Let's grow together.
Or, you know, maybe when we were 18, we wouldn't have had that much emotional intelligence, but we would have, like, flocked together. So it's also just finding the right people to be around. And if you're having to block out a lot of noise, then you're just, like, you have a serious problem.
It's a signal. Yeah, like, you really got to change who you are because that's really it. I mean, if you're...
the smartest person you're hanging around make you know the the one with the most ambition and everyone else is just bringing you down like you're literally just going through your entrepreneurial life with like a 10 pound weight shackled to your leg yeah last one let's go into reinvest everything yes sir can i give you my my version of this i think people know you reinvest a lot of money to almost a comical extent like we made 100 grand last month great we're investing 101 this next month it's like yeah Jimmy, where'd you get the extra?
I got the largest unscripted streaming deal in history and somehow lost a ton of money on it. These games? Yeah, yeah.
When we were here the first time, somebody was like, you know, what do you think is kind of like his edge? I go, his edge is that he takes all the money he makes and then he reinvests it. He takes all the hours he has and he invests it into the channel.
Then he gets the best people and he like gets them to believe that they should invest it. And he doesn't ever want to quit. I don't think this guy's going to like get rich and retire like every other YouTuber.
I was like, that's like a kamikaze level of commitment. Like, I don't think that's right. You used to call it a kamikaze.
I was like, because how do you what do you do? What do you do with somebody who's willing to just like plow it all back in? Like, yeah, that's a that's not the person I would want to compete against.
Yeah. So that's kind of, I guess that's why to me, this is, I mean, you just described it perfectly. I don't even have to say anything.
Like, yeah. I mean, ideally you find the passion that you love and you're all in and it's, um, you know, you shouldn't have to like force yourself to go get up and write. It should just be what you love to do.
You know, what's the CFO telling you as you just at the beginning now, now it's kind of known, but at the beginning when you were describing your approach, CFO was like your mom at the beginning, right? Uh, yeah. Well, I mean, at the beginning it was me and my mom and a couple of friends were high school.
So she was 10 jobs. I was 20 jobs. Um, I mean, now they just are...
I mean, people kind of normalize to your weird craziness, so they're more... But that's now. What at the beginning, what was that like?
I mean, everyone thought I was deranged. You know, like, oh, why do you... Like, because, I mean, I was...
Everyone, you know, a big budget YouTube video used to be 10 grand. I was the first one to ever spend a million dollars on a video and 2 million. This is probably the best example, right?
Yeah. I got a brand deal for $10 ,000. You keep saying CFO.
Like I had a CFO back then. You know what this was? This was me and like paying a guy I went to high school with like 10 bucks an hour to help me.
And me going, mom, what are taxes? I didn't make money. Do I pay taxes?
And she's like, yes. And I'm like, fuck.
Yeah, we, I got a brand deal for $10 ,000 and then I just went outside like this. I used to live like two minutes, like the $700 a month apartment I was telling you about or duplex was like literally two minutes down the road from this. And so I just got the 10 grand.
I was like, why are we the money? They wired it, withdrew it and gave it to this homeless guy on the side of the street. Were you not tempted to like have money for the first time?
Pocket five, give away five. So I pocket five, spend on a different video? What else do you do with the money?
It's like there's a story of Zuck when he got offered a billion dollars for Facebook early on. And they were like, Mark, we should talk about this. And he's like, oh, if I got this money, I would just start a new social media platform.
And I like the one I have. I like the one I have. This is like legendary.
Yeah. And it's the same thing here. It's like I could pocket it, but I just make.
different videos and I just want to film this one. I mean, it's literally the same thing. It reminds me a lot reading about Walt Disney.
This is what he was famous for because his brother Roy was like... I loved your podcast on it. Thank you.
It was like the business manager. How to take over the world. Roy would like pull his hair out of like, Walt, can we please just like save some money?
And he had like a compulsion almost to take all the money. He like felt bad keeping any money. He's like, no, it has to go into making better shows.
Do you feel that? No, it has nothing to do with like wanting to keep money. It really has nothing to do with money itself.
It's just, I want to make the best product possible. And so it's like, here's the product that I want to make. And I'm always having to settle because we can't spend $10 billion on a YouTube video.
You know what I mean? Like, cause I would love to go buy everything in every single store in this entire city and donate it all to charity. You know what I mean?
That'd be $200 million. So I can, but, so it's just like, it's more, you know, like this is what I want to make, but I have to dial it back. And it's like, well, now we have a little bit more money.
So I just dial it back less. There's nothing, I don't really care. You know what I mean?
Like, so. By the way, you just came up with that number. Yeah, I was like, he's done the math of this before.
You look at this. Well, I know it costs $15 million to buy everything at a Walmart, but yeah. $15 million?
Mm -hmm. Have you done that? Is that one of the things you're doing?
We're going to, yeah. Nice. I think that's a fucking banger.
And we're going to donate it all to charity, so it's cool. What's your, like, ambition, right? So, like, Ben, in 40 years, is doing the pod on you.
Don't ask me 40. Ask, like, 10. 40's too far.
You're going to give me anxiety. Okay, what's, like, the... What's the dream dream?
Right now, I can't do flirting. But for the next five, the big thing I'm focused on, which I was telling you guys about in the car, is just feastables. What can you explain about your business empire?
Specifically, chocolate. It might seem so random. Why is the largest YouTube in the world selling chocolate?
Well, right now, 70 % of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa, Cote d 'Ivoire, and Ghana. And the majority of the... People who work on those farms are actually kids or child labor.
So it's like 46 % of labor. So I guess it's not majority. So I should correct this statement.
46 % of labor is illegal child labor. Yeah. I'll eat this while you talk.
Yeah. So when I got into selling chocolate, I just learned about that. And I talked to like exact a big chocolate company as I was like, so what I hear like this child labor thing, like, is this just like, we're just cool with this?
And they're like, well, it's just how it's always been. And there's not really anything you can do about it. I'm like, that's the way things have always been.
I'm like, I literally, I said to one. I think, I don't remember the exact, I'm going to butcher it, but I was like, Elon's going to put people on Mars. And you're telling me we can't not have little kids farming our chocolate.
We can't just find people over the age of 18 or whatever. And they're like, well, it's not that simple. And I'm like, what the fuck?
So that kind of like pissed me off and sent me down. I'm like, yeah, what you mean to say is that would hurt the billions of dollars in free cash flow you're spitting off in your margins. But anyways, so I was like.
I went down that path like two years ago. I was like, okay, well, I don't - You actually went to West Africa. Oh yeah.
Worked on the farm. But before even that, it's just like, so then I was, we're going to start referencing our piece of paper here. So then consultants are cheat codes.
So I was like, what is the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world? Who's the ones doing it right? So have you heard of Tony's Chocolony?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so they're great. It's a European brand, but they're like a reporter used to call out big chocolate and be like, there's a lot of child labor.
You guys aren't ethical. And like, they would just ignore him. And so then he's like, fuck it.
He started it, right? Yeah, and he started a chocolate company. And that's Tony's Chocolaty because it's like the lonely.
And it became like a $200 million business. Yeah, it's doing pretty well. And so I was like, let me get in contact with these people.
And I just started talking to them. I flew them here to Greenville like the next week. And we were just like, I was like, teach me everything about child labor, how we can remediate it, what should we be doing on our farms, et cetera.
And like, I just had like phone calls with them every single day, studied. And then the next five companies that are also doing ethical things, I just absorbed everything they're all doing into my brain. And I was like, cool.
All right. I know what we need to do. Step one, like the main reason why there's child labor is just poverty.
Like most of these farmers are making a dollar or less a day. So like if you're getting paid a dollar, how can you hire someone that's over the age of 18 to work in your farm? So you end up just using kids because they're cheap or free.
So step one is you just have to pay them a living income. So 100 % of our farmers are paid a living income. I can go super deep.
I'm going to keep this mile high because I know not everyone is as passionate about the chocolate industry as me, but this is what I live and breathe. But so what is a living income, right? Because obviously a living income in America is completely different than in West Africa.
So there's a living income reference price where they look at the cost of like bread and living and inflation. And it's like, you know, if a farmer sells you like a metric tons of cocoa, they need to make this. for them to be able to live roughly and be able to.
So we pay 100 % of our farmers living income reference price. So there could be an instance where you're a farmer, you give us a shipping container of cocoa and you're like, you know, we want $1 ,100. I'm like, no, you want $1 ,300.
It's $1 ,300. Now make sure there's no kids on your farms. You know what I mean?
Like, or kids in illegal child labor. And so that's, I mean, I'm oversimplifying everything. None of this, this is a very complex thing.
And there's, we're talking about. tens of thousands of farms there's millions of farms there and this is not none of this is as simple as i'm portraying it but i'm just doing my best to generalize it all so you pay your farmers a living income all our beans are fair trade certified and then we work with clr mrs which is the child labor remediation system and then they routinely audit the farms interview the parents interview the kids see if the kids are going to school working on the farm etc and then if you know they identify cases of child labor following up and getting the kid out of the child labor and stuff like that which all the and then we also just little things because it's, since it's all a root of poverty, the more money you help them make, the easier it is for them to, you know, stop using a little child labor on the farm.
So we have coaches that will like represent 200 farms and they'll help them get more yield and like educate them on things they could be doing to grow more for trees or have more trees or will, you know, occasionally give them wheelbarrows or things like that. So they can just, I mean, a little, something as simple as a wheelbarrow.
I mean, it's a big difference between carrying 10 cacao pods, theoretically, again, generalizing everything or being able to carry 40 in a wheelbarrow. Like that's technically makes you four times more efficient. Again, making up numbers.
Yeah, so my goal is just to make Feastables the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world. And if we can do a billion dollars a year in chocolate sales ethically while being profitable, then I can use that as a model to, on my videos, talk about Big Chocolate and all the unethical things they're doing and just be like, look, it's possible to be profitable, to not do it at scale.
There's no excuse besides they just don't care. And then we'll see what happens when I get to that point. Last year when I was here, I asked, I think your right -hand guy at that time, I was like, what's y 'all's focus for the year?
And most people don't have an answer at the tip of your tongue. His was like instantaneous. He goes, I think you had a number of the number of YouTube videos, 22 or something.
26 videos. Make 26 bangers, sell a lot of chocolate, get jacked. And he said it like that fast.
Every day, all three. And you got in great shape from the last time. Yeah, I, what's it?
Was I still fat last year or was that the first year? No, it was first. First year was, I mean, I wasn't fat, but like, you know.
I was a fucking walrus. I was 240 pounds. Yeah, I'm right now I'm 190.
So I probably went. But you had started lifting at the last one we did. And in this year, you're like.
So year one, I was 240 pounds. Year two, I was probably 215, 220 pounds. And now I'm 190.
So yeah, I'm like probably 25 pounds lighter. I can't wait to ball. How did you, what'd you do?
Like, what was your approach to getting jacked? Or like, how did you approach it? I'm very heavily influenced by the people around me.
Like if I spent too much time with you, I'll start speaking like you, acting like you, thinking like you. So I'm very cautious of that. So I just put a lot of jacked people around me.
And then like my metric of success was like how frequently are random people just handing me chicken breasts or like, you know, something high in protein. Like, you know, cause like they're, you know, all the time, like my old friend group, you know, all the time they'd be like, oh, we just ordered pizza or this or that.
And it's like. it just makes accomplishing my goals so much harder. And it's like the ratio of people ordering pizza to the ratio of people ordering protein was just way off.
I mean, this is just how I analyze my life because I'm so all in on business. Like I don't think about this kind of stuff. So I need an environment that just makes being jacked very natural.
Like the weightlifting is pretty easy. You just go to the gym 45 minutes, five days a week. But it's the, yes, the food, that's not a thing you turn on and off.
That's a thing that you have to be consistent on for a very long period if you want to achieve results. And like, I just, I can't think about, like that every single day and i just and it's like there are just times where i'm at low points and it's just a lot harder to be disciplined and i just know if like you know i always have people who are just eating healthy it's just it takes something that feels hard and kind of makes it fun like when you're doing it together and like you know and it's just so just surround myself with other people trying to accomplish the same thing just like anything in life this is what i was living in australia and i literally bought a plane ticket with no plan one way to san francisco because I was at this Tony Robbins event, and he said, proximity is power.
Dang. Love it. Did you, like, hire anyone, too, to help you?
Do you have, like, a trainer around or a coach or someone? Yeah, he follows me around all day every day. He's the jack dude sitting downstairs.
You'll notice. He's the one who looks like he could be on a bodybuilding stage. Yeah.
Usually in a tank top, you know. Somebody just sent me this. You posted TikTok an hour ago.
I just got out of a meeting with a bunch of billionaires. TikTok, we mean business. This is my lawyer right here.
We have an offer ready for you. We want to buy the platform. America deserves TikTok.
Give me a seat at the table. Let me save this platform, TikTok. Are you going to buy TikTok?
I tweeted out yesterday that I was thinking about buying TikTok. And honestly, kind of as a joke. And then I had even a lot of people coming to this event.
So many billionaires text me. I mean, I'm probably up to like 35 who have like unironically reached out and like, I want to put money in, I want to do it. And then like two separate groups that have like very serious bids together for it also are like, yo, get involved in this.
And I'm like, my phone just blew up ever since that tweet. So then I made that TikTok because it's like, yeah, I was joking, but now it's like, oh, okay. I'll predict it right now.
I think this is going to happen because I think it should happen. It'd be smart, right? Any ownership group that's doing this would be smart to have you involved.
As long as TikTok's willing to sell. Yeah, everyone interested in buying it wants to get us involved. Yeah, I don't know the political side, like how that's all going to play out to be forced to divest.
But if they are, that's going to be crazy. Well, it's going to be banned if they don't. It's just a question of is TikTok going to sell or not?
Yeah. What would you do? Oh, God, bro.
We're winding the podcast down. Are you really about to start another five -hour talk? truthfully, I would have to surround myself with, like, the 10 greatest algorithmic people in the world, and I'd have to spend, like, a week with them and just, like, absorb.
Like, I have no idea what I would do right now. Jimmy, this has been a pleasure. It's been fun.
Thanks for doing it, man. I'm excited to hoop. I hope you play tonight.
So, basketball camp five. We'll do another one every two years when we do it. Or, like, the Olympic cycles, like, every two years.
We'll be like, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are in the other room. We got to crank out this podcast. I'm going to ball with them.
All right, boys. We did it. All right.
We're out of here. Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks, boys.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The cold open stacks the episode's best moments in forty seconds: the faked college attendance, the stat sheet on video number 100, the claim that 10,000 hours is where you start, and a live test where the guest has to invent a viral idea from the random word 'grandmother'. Then the cards come out.
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A 24-year-old fan in an Austin restaurant asks two founders how you actually follow your passion. Forty minutes later the answer is blisters, loops, and a hospice nurse's list.
Sam Parr and Shaan Puri turn the last 100 days of the year into a working system, then wander through jelly bean jars, voices in your head, and a hundred year old newspaper dynasty.
A 90-minute deep dive into the venture studio, real estate compounding, and time-optimization system that turned a millionaire skateboarder into a near-billionaire operator.
Sam Altman's executive coach spends 86 minutes with the My First Million hosts turning founder anxiety, conflict-avoidance, and self-talk into experiments you run on yourself.
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