MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) — The world's biggest YouTuber, age 26, with the largest YouTube channel on the planet. He also runs Feastables (an ethically sourced chocolate company) and created Beast Games, Amazon's biggest unscripted show.
The gist
Steven Bartlett interviews MrBeast about the psychology and cost behind his success. They cover his obsessive, all-in personality, his rough upbringing after his family went bankrupt in 2008, and living with Crohn's disease on immune-suppressing medication. MrBeast is candid that he is currently more unhappy than happy, has read thousands of messages telling him to kill himself, and that helping people ironically draws more hate. A large portion focuses on Feastables and his crusade against child labor in West African cocoa, plus the staggering scale and financial loss of producing Beast Games.
Big reveals
- Admits he is so far more unhappy than happy and has considered quitting YouTube.
- Says he has read over 5,000 messages telling him to kill himself.
- Contrarian claim: if you want to be liked, don't help people, because helping is negatively correlated with being liked online.
- Reveals he quit a desert-island video on day two after getting ~700 sand-flea bites.
- Paid people to plant hidden GoPros in Walmarts and spent $100K/week buying up broken Feastables bars.
- Reveals he personally lost tens of millions of dollars filming Beast Games, calling it a bad financial decision.
- Says Beast Games cost over $100 million, with a $15M tower set and a $14M city set.
- Recounts a chocolate supplier telling him on camera there was no way to pay extra to avoid child labor.
Things worth remembering
- Feastables does nine figures in revenue and the overall business is worth several billion dollars.
- Lost 50 pounds (from 190 to 139) at age 15 when Crohn's disease hit, ending his baseball ambitions.
- On Remicade, which suppresses his immune system; he's had COVID six times, shingles, and the flu repeatedly.
- Roughly 2-3% of all humans alive watch each video; videos average ~200 million views.
- Says 1.5 million children work in child labor on West African cocoa farms; 46% of the labor there is child labor.
- His main channel views have gone up every year for 14 straight years.
- Beast Games broke ~50 Guinness World Records, including most camera cables ever run.
- Beast Games was Amazon's number one unscripted show of all time, gaining ~700,000 new unique viewers daily.
- He helped a friend grow YouTube revenue from $40K to $400K a month, and another to eight figures, just for fun.
- His mother made about $40,000 a year as a single mom; his first big brand deal paid that much for one video.
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Feastables
MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson)
“with fbl right now we're the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in America and it's just fun to like flip this on a head” — MrBeast 01:02:43Find it on Amazon
Beast Games
MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson)
“we gave away over $20 million I think over two million was in episode one and then episode two we have the city which that was a 14 million dollar set build” — MrBeast 01:29:36Find it on Amazon