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

- **Show:** The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
- **Published:** 20 Feb 2025
- **Source:** https://pdst.fm/e/pscrb.fm/rss/p/mgln.ai/e/1390/claritaspod.com/measure/p.podderapp.com/2544644999/mgln.ai/e/1651/episode.flightcast.com/m7jekm72wi0nuojft5a7m62o.mp3
- **Transcript:** https://podcasts.opennash.com/shows/diary-of-a-ceo/mrbeast-if-you-want-to-be-liked-dont-help-people-i-lost-tens-of-millions-on-beas-d159c4/
- **Provider:** OpenNash Podcasts (machine-generated)

## In brief

MrBeast argues that his success comes from an unusual capacity to obsess over one hard problem for years, and from a willingness to pay a heavy personal price for it. He says this drives his YouTube channel, the Beast Games show, and the Feastables chocolate company. He also argues that most people would be miserable living his life.

The central tension is between extraordinary output and personal cost. He admits he is more unhappy than happy this year, lost tens of millions on Beast Games, and gets more abuse the more he helps people. Yet he says he would never quit, because solving hard problems, such as child labor in cocoa, is what he enjoys most.

## Key insights

1. **Beast Games lost him tens of millions** MrBeast says episode one's towers cost over $15 million and the episode two city set cost $14 million, and the show cost well over $100 million in total. He says he accepted the loss to prove that YouTube creators can deliver on streaming platforms.
2. **His edge is tolerating misery for a decade** He argues that most successful creators stop once they are rich, but he keeps working through illness, travel and burnout. He calls the ability to push through unhappiness year after year his deepest competitive moat.
3. **Helping people draws more criticism than flaunting wealth** He says he gets less backlash for buying mansions or boats than for giving blind people sight or building wells in Africa. He says he has read over 5,000 messages telling him to kill himself, and he now judges his actions by his own moral line instead of the internet's reaction.
4. **Feastables is built around ending cocoa child labor** He says about half of labor on West African cocoa farms is child labor, because farmers earn under a dollar a day. He wants Feastables to reach $1 billion a year while staying ethical and profitable, so that rivals lose the excuse that it can't be done.
5. **He fixes product flaws by personally checking shelves** After staff dismissed his complaints about broken chocolate bars, he hid GoPros in Walmarts. He also paid people to restock the bars at about $100,000 a week, and he learned that packaging engineers exist. He says a leader must know every detail at the point of sale.

## Questions this episode answers

### Is MrBeast actually a billionaire?

On paper, yes, because his businesses are worth a great deal, but he says he has less than $1 million in his actual bank account. He pays himself roughly what he spends each month and puts the rest back into growing the businesses.

### Did MrBeast really lose money making Beast Games?

Yes. He says the show cost well over $100 million and that he personally lost tens of millions of dollars, because he overspent to make season one as good as possible. He says he did it to prove creators can succeed on streaming platforms.

### Is MrBeast happy with his life?

He says it depends on the day, but that so far this year he has been more unhappy than happy, partly because of the flu and heavy travel. He still says he never intends to stop and sees the hardship as the price of his success.

### Why does MrBeast care so much about how Feastables chocolate is sourced?

He says he learned that nearly half of the labor on West African cocoa farms is child labor, because farmers earn under a dollar a day. He doesn't want to get rich on the back of children, and he wants to show that a big chocolate company can be ethical and still profitable.

### What is Crohn's disease, and how does it affect MrBeast?

MrBeast describes Crohn's as an immune system that attacks the gut, which caused him to lose about 50 pounds at age fifteen. His treatment, Remicade, suppresses his immune system, so he says he gets sick often.

## Facts

- **MrBeast** [0:03:17]: "when I was eleven, I just said, I'm gonna be a YouTuber, I'm gonna die trying, and I meant it."
- **MrBeast** [0:06:03]: "in 2008, they were over leveraged, so we literally went bankrupt."
- **MrBeast** [0:16:23]: "I'm on a pretty extreme medicine called Remicade, where it just basically you nuke your immune system"
- **MrBeast** [0:18:55]: "I've been told, yeah, by a doctor I have ADHD."
- **MrBeast** [0:20:53]: "I wrote that, uh, wi- with some of my employees when I was probably twenty two."
- **MrBeast** [0:35:00]: "we are averaging, like, 200 million views a video, like, you know, like, uh, most of it unique viewers."
- **MrBeast** [0:37:48]: "I've probably in my lifetime read over 5,000 messages or comments or something telling me to kill myself."
- **MrBeast** [0:57:39]: "I had like 700 bug bites up and down my legs, all over my body."
- **MrBeast** [0:59:11]: "the big thing is hanging out with Tia, my fiance, is is so frictionless"
- **MrBeast** [1:02:31]: "we do nine figures in Feastables, I mean, we can say that"
- **MrBeast** [1:02:53]: "on paper, yeah, but I mean, in my actual bank account, I have less than $1 million."
- **MrBeast** [1:05:38]: "used to source our cocoa from Peru cacao, um, which, you know, ethical sourcing's not really an issue there."
- **MrBeast** [1:05:59]: "Holy shit, it's just almost half of labor is child labor."
- **MrBeast** [1:07:34]: "they just pay the farmers so little, like farmers make less than a dollar a day"
- **MrBeast** [1:08:04]: "So what we need to do is we need to, in my head, get to $1 billion a year in revenue as fast as possible, while being ethically sourced and being profitable."
- **MrBeast** [1:10:01]: "I've been offered $1 billion here or crazy amounts of money there"
- **MrBeast** [1:12:45]: "I also didn't know that there's a thing called a a package engineer."
- **MrBeast** [1:14:47]: "It was $100,000 a week just to send people in."
- **MrBeast** [1:16:13]: "I drove home from DC. to North Carolina and visited every Walmart on the East Coast"
- **MrBeast** [1:25:46]: "largest sets in history, most world records in history, largest cash prize in history, most winners in history, most contestants in history, most cameras."
- **MrBeast** [1:28:44]: "I had over 150 people editing that. I mean, we're combing through unfathomable amounts of footage"
- **MrBeast** [1:30:10]: "We spent over $15 million on those towers, building them all like that was the most towers ever built"
- **MrBeast** [1:30:32]: "We have the city, which that was 14 million dollar set build, and that was, um, huge"
- **MrBeast** [1:31:32]: "it was not a good financial decision to make Beast Games. I lost money. I would have more money if I didn't film it."
- **MrBeast** [1:33:17]: "It was the number one unscripted show of all time"

## Transcript

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**[0:00:26] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:00:31] Steven Bartlett:** Are you happy?

**[0:00:33] MrBeast:** Um, I I'm gonna be honest, so far, more unhappy than happy.

**[0:00:40] Steven Bartlett:** Well, has it ever crossed your mind to quit YouTube as a whole?

**[0:00:43] MrBeast:** Oh, yeah, of course.

**[0:00:44] Steven Bartlett:** Really? Are you?

**[0:00:46] MrBeast:** oh boy.

**[0:00:51] Steven Bartlett:** MrBeast? MrBeast He MrBeast?

**[0:00:54] Narrator:** is the biggest YouTuber on the planet, and he's building empires. I mean, is there anything this man can't do?

**[0:00:59] Steven Bartlett:** Your business empire is much bigger than most people realize.

**[0:01:02] MrBeast:** Yeah, I mean, I'm only twenty six and we have the largest YouTube channel in the world and Beast Games is just gonna shatter some pretty crazy records. And we're gonna do nine figures in 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 eleven, he literally went bankrupt and lost everything. Luckily, it worked out.

**[0:01:21] MrBeast:** And it's because I'm really good at obsessing over one thing more than anyone else on the planet, like, I lost tens of millions of dollars on these games. But it was about making season one as good as possible. And I just really love solving complex problems. Like, how many kids do you think are in child labor in West Africa, just on cocoa farms? It's 1.5 million. And so with feastables, we're trying to get over a million kids out of child labor.

**[0:01:39] MrBeast:** But the ironic part is, the more I help people, the more that 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,

**[0:01:52] Steven Bartlett:** But when is enough enough? honestly. I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button. Wherever you're listening to this, I would like to make a deal with you. If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make this show better and better and better and better.

**[0:02:18] Steven Bartlett:** I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see, and continue to doing this thing we love. If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button wherever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me. That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time.

**[0:02:35] Steven Bartlett:** Back to this episode. Jimmy, we've really just only met and you are already, to me, a bit of a Rubik's Cube in so many ways. Uh, and I've been trying to piece the pieces together to understand the 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 I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people, and I've never, ever met someone who has well, the perspective on life that you have.

**[0:03:08] Steven Bartlett:** You are truly unique. What do I need to understand about your earliest years to understand who you are?

**[0:03:17] MrBeast:** oh boy. Um, yeah, my earliest years, I I'm just stubborn, man. I just never give up. I mean, there was there's no world where I ever would have quit. I just I s, I mean, if we're just jumping right into it, this is a great no intro or anything, just boom, this is how you hold people. Um, when I was eleven, I just said, I'm gonna be a YouTuber, I'm gonna die trying, and I meant it.

**[0:03:40] MrBeast:** And there was like, even if no one still watched 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.

**[0:03:50] Steven Bartlett:** And where did that come from?

**[0:03:51] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:04:11] MrBeast:** 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?

**[0:04:32] MrBeast:** 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 burned in my brain is like people.

**[0:04:59] MrBeast:** 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, are you're just like a freak? And I tried to, like, watch South Park, you know, cause that's what a lot of people at 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.

**[0:05:18] MrBeast:** 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, um, 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 wanna do anything else. And, um, yeah, eventually I started to succeed, found other lunatics, and now life's great.

**[0:05:42] MrBeast:** 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 gotta put yourself in a better environment.

**[0:05:52] Steven Bartlett:** What about your parents? Mum and dad, you talk about your mother a lot.

**[0:05:55] MrBeast:** Yeah, um, no, I I don't. I didn't get it from them.

**[0:06:00] Steven Bartlett:** Well, what? What influence did they both have on you?

**[0:06:03] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:06:29] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:06:51] MrBeast:** 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 wanna 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?

**[0:07:19] MrBeast:** You know, like, that's that's what I told my mom, like, 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 wanna build businesses. And so it was like, bless her heart, luckily, it worked out, so now I spoil her. She's great, she has her second home, anything she could ever want, she has. And so the first, uh, thing I did was take, you know, start paying my mom, take care of her once I started making money, cause she gave everything to, like, get me where I am, and I wouldn't be where I am now.

**[0:07:46] MrBeast:** 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, uh, 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.

**[0:08:08] Steven Bartlett:** 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?

**[0:08:13] MrBeast:** uh, I just me and my brother, we were just there. I was just making videos.

**[0:08:18] Steven Bartlett:** You're making videos? At what age did that start? The videos?

**[0:08:21] MrBeast:** I started at eleven.

**[0:08:22] Steven Bartlett:** Eleven?

**[0:08:22] MrBeast:** Yeah, so I I I'm twenty six now. I can't really remember life before YouTube, like my earliest memories are basically when I started making videos.

**[0:08:32] Steven Bartlett:** You said earlier, Um, you don't talk about your dad much, you don't have to talk, tell me about it, but why don't you talk about the your father much?

**[0:08:41] MrBeast:** nah, don't worry about it.

**[0:08:43] Steven Bartlett:** I know your mum has spoken about him before, and it was a bit of a tumultuous relationship.

**[0:08:47] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:08:59] Steven Bartlett:** She used to cry, asking you to do your homework.

**[0:09:02] MrBeast:** A lot of things. She she would cry because I wouldn't put money away. When we started making money, she would, uh, she thought it was too risky. And I mean, the thing is, nothing, she w- uh, 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. Um, e- like, it's it's very cute.

**[0:09:25] MrBeast:** One time she, like, when we had, I don't remember, like, some month where 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 in 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, um, I found out about it, and, uh, she's like, Please don't take this money, just let me set aside anything, stop spending everything on videos.

**[0:09:51] MrBeast:** 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, I if anything, it like, risk excites me, and like, I I have very high threshold for it. Um, so, yeah, we just 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 gonna trust you.

**[0:10:14] MrBeast:** 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 gonna just follow your lead. And our relationship has been, f- you know, perfect ever since then.

**[0:10:31] Steven Bartlett:** If I'd asked ten year old Jimmy, How are you doing? what would what would he have said?

**[0:10:36] MrBeast:** Uh, ten, I don't know, but if you asked me at, like, twelve or thirteen, 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.

**[0:10:50] Steven Bartlett:** Why did you wanna really be a YouTuber? Ah, uh, uh, 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, 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 seemed to have at that time?

**[0:11:24] Steven Bartlett:** no, I Is that community?

**[0:11:25] MrBeast:** yeah. I think it's more to do with just I. I found out that when I was at a young age, probably around eleven, that there were YouTubers that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. And I was just like, Oh, that's it, like,

**[0:11:36] Steven Bartlett:** It's just the money.

**[0:11:36] MrBeast:** I, yeah, of course, because back back then, we didn't have money. And I really wanted to take care of my mom and and just my family in general. So it was like everything. It was like, this is what I love doing. I've 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 worked so long.

**[0:11:56] MrBeast:** So we could, um, live comfortably and things like that. So it's just kinda 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.

**[0:12:18] MrBeast:** You probably also, um, like her because, you know, she's fun to be around. She likes similar shows, blah, blah, you probably. If we sat here for ten 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 cause of money. What if I do it because I like money and I enjoy it?

**[0:12:40] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:12:49] Steven Bartlett:** 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. And so

**[0:13:00] MrBeast:** and I don't know how

**[0:13:00] Steven Bartlett:** you know what I mean?

**[0:13:01] MrBeast:** I I I agree, cause it's very weird, like how like I have an 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 sixteen 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. I've 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.

**[0:13:28] MrBeast:** It's it's very weird, like it's it was, it was. It wasn't like it was work for me grinding YouTube for those ten years or whatever, where no one was really watching it. It's just like, kinda who I am.

**[0:13:38] Steven Bartlett:** 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.

**[0:13:45] MrBeast:** There was literally a day when I was, uh, nineteen or twenty, uh, where I got. I woke up, joined a Skype call with my friends and where we, like, were reverse engineering, you know, why certain videos do well or whatever. And I remember that call being over eighteen 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.

**[0:14:09] MrBeast:** I mean, I didn't know anything besides just trying to make it happen.

**[0:14:12] Steven Bartlett:** Was there anything else that you shared that level of obs of obsession, too?

**[0:14:16] MrBeast:** So at that age, no. From I would say from eleven to well, eleven to fifteen. It was a mix of YouTube and baseball, but when I turned fifteen, I got Crohn's and I went from like 190 pounds down to one thirty nine. I lost all the muscle I had, and so I was like, Alright, I'm not playing baseball in college anymore. So then I was like, Fuck it, uh, it's just all in on, uh, YouTube and, um, and then up until really feastables, it was basically just YouTube.

**[0:14:42] MrBeast:** For whatever. I never thought I would find, like, this kind of love for building. Like, 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 a side thing. But the more I started working on it, I'll I got a lot of the same highs I got when I was making videos, just in different ways.

**[0:15:07] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:15:27] Steven Bartlett:** Consistent hard problems. I want to talk about that and also feastables, but you mentioned Crohn's disease there, and a lot of people don't know what that is and the impact it has on someone's life.

**[0:15:36] MrBeast:** are you aware of it?

**[0:15:37] Steven Bartlett:** I am because I had a a team member that had it. So, um, in order to help support them at certain times when they had to leave and stuff like that, I got a little bit more aware of what it means and what how it impacts you. But could you give me your perspective on that?

**[0:15:49] MrBeast:** Yeah, so Crohn's disease w- is when your immune system attacks itself. So, uh, yeah, when I was fifteen, I just started going to the bathroom eight, nine, ten times a day, not digesting any food because my GI tract is, like, uh, 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 ten times a day, not digesting food, that's why you drop weight rapidly and it hurts like crazy, cause it gets very inflamed and it feels like someone stabbing you in the gut with, like, a knife constantly when it's really, really bad, which is what I had.

**[0:16:23] MrBeast:** So I lost fifty pounds, which is crazy, cause I was already relatively lanky, um, and we were just trying different medicine. And then eventually I'm on a pretty extreme medicine called Remicade, where it just basically you nuke your immune system, which is why my voice sounds a little off right now, cause I just g- got the flu. I got COVID six times, I got shingles, like I get sick all the time. Because for me to s have my GI tract stop attacking itself, we basically have to shut down my immune system.

**[0:16:50] MrBeast:** So I have, like, uh, 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's 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.

**[0:17:13] MrBeast:** Like, I, you know, it's it's makes things way more difficult.

**[0:17:17] Steven Bartlett:** And so you still wake up with some days where you don't have energy, Of course, which is really hard to believe for someone who's s so productive for everybody looking on.

**[0:17:25] MrBeast:** yeah, it's you just gotta really love what you do, I mean, and push through it. It's, uh, it's pretty brutal because then you compound that with always being sick. And I mean, yeah, I like, I just spent four days in a hospital in South Africa cause I got the flu, and it just takes me a lot longer to recover from certain things. So, um, it's brutal. And that's where, like, if I didn't work so much, I would spend more time researching Crohn's because surely there's a better way to stop it than just destroying my immune system.

**[0:17:50] MrBeast:** And ideally, I don't do that deep into my thirties and forties, so I see it as a little bit of a band-aid. But, um, you know, I've met with the top Crohn's doctors in the world, and so far they're like, This is just the answer, and you're just lucky your, you know, gut isn't attacking yourself. Um, so, but I don't know. I I feel like the medicine they give people with Crohn's is kinda silly, and there's gotta be a better way to treat it.

**[0:18:11] MrBeast:** I mean, the ultimate solution is they just cut me open and cut out a large part of my GI tract, and then there you go. But, you know,

**[0:18:19] Steven Bartlett:** It's a I observed in the the team member that I had that had Crohn's, just a bit of a mental rollercoaster as well, because there's an a certain unpredictability to it, which makes life.

**[0:18:29] MrBeast:** Oh, it's even worse when you're filming cause you got this huge multi million dollar set and 200 people waiting on you. And, you know, sometimes you don't know if you're gonna have a flare, but you just gotta go fuck it and just down some caffeine and crank it out.

**[0:18:40] Steven Bartlett:** I got diagnosed with ADHD.

**[0:18:42] MrBeast:** You did.

**[0:18:43] Steven Bartlett:** Yeah, I got diagnosed with ADHD, and it made me think a lot about myself and the way that I am. It's not I'm not the type of person to, like, embody the label or think it really means much. I am just who I am. Have you, um, are you in any way neurodivergent?

**[0:18:55] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:19:22] Steven Bartlett:** That's one of the things you you mentioned earlier, you you like solving hard problems consistently. When you think back over the last ten years of your life and the 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. What are the others?

**[0:19:42] MrBeast:** 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, eh, 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.

**[0:20:08] MrBeast:** I always have to be protective of the people I'm around. Because whatever they say is what I start thinking on, and then that's what I start 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, I've after eighteen months, you know, it's probably one of the top ten people in the world when it comes to running a chocolate company and understanding it deeply, just because it's just cheat codes.

**[0:20:37] MrBeast:** Um,

**[0:20:38] Steven Bartlett:** What about detail sweating? The small stuff? One of the things that I saw, I was reading the this, the handbook that was oh, yeah, the lived 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, by the way, in all of that stuff?

**[0:20:53] MrBeast:** I wrote that, uh, wi- with some of my employees when I was probably twenty two. 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 what's funny? A lot of CEOs have actually told me that they make their employees read this. Um,

**[0:21:12] Steven Bartlett:** Yeah, we went around all of our Slack channels, we all we all read it.

**[0:21:14] MrBeast:** yeah, which is funny cause 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 did. I had no idea what I was doing when I was twenty one, twenty two.

**[0:21:38] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:21:57] Steven Bartlett:** And the other thing that comes to 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. And watching Beast Games over the last couple of weeks, but also speaking to some of your team, there's clearly this through line with everything that you do of, like, extreme what appears to me to be extreme ambition. And it doesn't appear to be extreme ambition to you in the same way that it appears to be extreme ambition to me.

**[0:22:21] MrBeast:** yeah, I mean, it's just, I mean, w- is does physics allow it? Then, yes, it's possible. It just is it. Do we wanna put the time in? I mean, it's I. I feel like people overcomplicate a lot of things. Um, And is that yeah,

**[0:22:34] Steven Bartlett:** something you've trained over time, or have you always thought that?

**[0:22:37] MrBeast:** I I think I've just, ugh, it's a good question. I've never I don't know why, but when people tell me I can't do something, I and 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.

**[0:22:55] MrBeast:** I just I don't know if I should, but I can. And then, uh, 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.

**[0:23:15] MrBeast:** And it's something you weren't expecting. You're gonna go, Holy shit, and you're gonna go tell your friends about it. You're gonna remember that. You'll probably even think about it randomly once every couple 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, uh, 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.

**[0:23:37] MrBeast:** You've seen, it's, you know, roughly similar to stuff before. You're just gonna 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.

**[0:23:55] MrBeast:** 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 has never been done before, there's usually a reason, cause it's very fucking hard. So you just kinda 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.

**[0:24:20] MrBeast:** If viewership's very exponential, it's way easier to get 50 million views on one video than it is to get a million views on fifty videos, right? And so, um, and because it, like, kinda goes exponentially, and it's like, you know, pretty winner-take-all in the top videos. Like, you just really have to lean into that purple cow effect, if that makes sense.

**[0:24:39] Steven Bartlett:** Makes perfect sense? If you, if you were to distill, then say we were coming up with a new how to succeed in MrBeast production handbook now, what would be the f- the the top five? If I was applying for a job with you, what five fa- characteristics would I need to demonstrate to be successful?

**[0:24:55] MrBeast:** you gotta be very coachable because whatever I teach you today is gonna change, you know, a year or two from now. Always learning, always improving, coachable. Um, a big thing for me is you gotta see the value in working here. Like, you really, I just, I don't. This isn't like a a job. This is a career. Like, if you don't, you know, realistically, see a world where you're working for me in ten years, then, um, it's pretty hard for me to invest into you at the level I want.

**[0:25:19] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:25:40] MrBeast:** 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, uh, Tyler, who writes a lot of my videos and directs them. I've, you know, probably talked to him five, six hours a day, every day, for four, yeah, around four years. And now, because I can't spend, uh, you he spends 100% of his time writing the videos, directing the videos, obsessed over that.

**[0:26:02] MrBeast:** Whereas I could theoretically max spend 5% of my time. So he's gonna 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.

**[0:26:20] MrBeast:** 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 ten 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, s you know, working for you.

**[0:26:43] MrBeast:** 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, cause if I really don't get that vibe, then it's not fair to both of us. Cause I'm not gonna invest in you like I should, because I don't think you're gonna be here in ten years. And then you're gonna feel that, and it creates so, uh, coachable, uh, sees the value, um, obviously obsessed.

**[0:27:06] MrBeast:** I I don't, I just don't like working with mediocre people. I I mean, I really just can't stand it. It's the fastest way to make me depressed. Um, is if I have to work with someone who's just not all in and just loves what they do. Um, 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 the typical traits obsessed, coachable, all in, sees the value.

**[0:27:30] Steven Bartlett:** And what is the single worst trait?

**[0:27:32] MrBeast:** Mediocrity, I mean, it's just like, cause they're not bad enough where you fire them, but not good. The problem is, like, I mean, and you see it in full effect. Great people just love working with great people, they do. And there's something about being around great people that pulls some kind of animal out of you. That just makes you want to do more and push more and believe things are impossible. 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.

**[0:28:02] MrBeast:** 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, 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 wanna work as much and make work not as fun. And so everyone knows, get rid of the C players, right?

**[0:28:21] MrBeast:** 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 kinda 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, um, I mean, not everyone can be these, like, world ending monsters. You know, there are a lot of mundane things, like, you know, I mean, the book controller and accounting, I mean, probably doesn't have to be the best in the world.

**[0:28:46] MrBeast:** 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 gotta be surrounded. Like, that's one of your number one jobs as a leader is just to make sure your great people are working with other great people. Cause that's like, that's like, the number one reason why people leave jobs isn't money. You know what I mean? It's that's like number four on the list.

**[0:29:03] MrBeast:** Don't ask me the list of all. I don't remember. I just know the number one thing is, do they enjoy who they're working with? And people will leave f- their job because they hate working with people way before they'll ever leave because of money.

**[0:29:14] Steven Bartlett:** Have you ever been frustrated that the people you've hired don't match your level of obsession?

**[0:29:20] MrBeast:** No, cause I just find the people that do,

**[0:29:21] Steven Bartlett:** Are there people that do?

**[0:29:23] MrBeast:** oh, yeah, I've. There's so many people in my, uh, business, um, I mean, obviously you have to take care of them, pay them well, like, they're, they're not the kind of people that'll just make the s standard rate. But, um, yeah, like people like Tyler, Klitschner, Russ, and, you know, even people on our editing team, I mean, they're putting in most weeks same hour, same amount of hours as me, and they're all in, see the vision.

**[0:29:42] MrBeast:** It's like, it's hard to find those kinds of people, but, um, you know, when you do, you gotta treasure them and recognize that they're unicorns.

**[0:29:50] Steven Bartlett:** And you have almost 500, roughly 500 people.

**[0:29:52] MrBeast:** Uh, probably, uh, I think the production company, we're around 300, Feastables around a hundred, and then probably another forty fifty scattered amongst everything else.

**[0:30:00] Steven Bartlett:** Most founders that I speak to describe scaling headcounts as the the kinda worst past part of the job. More people, more problems, right?

**[0:30:07] MrBeast:** Yep, that's, uh, that's an understatement. Yep,

**[0:30:09] Steven Bartlett:** Especially as someone like you who's a creative at heart and who, ha- is very focused and obsessed on, I guess, the show and producing, as you say often, the um, I I wanna produce the best videos we possibly can.

**[0:30:20] MrBeast:** of course.

**[0:30:21] Steven Bartlett:** And then all this other shit comes with it.

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**[0:30:49] Steven Bartlett:** Which is like, hate Shaw, which every founder I speak to hates.

**[0:30:52] MrBeast:** I mean, yeah, I d the the worst part is I just have this very once in a, um, I've just very rare opportunity, where I have so much attention and so many people watch my content. And and I wish I had. I just wish I had more experience building businesses. You know, I'm only twenty six, and this is my first real business of every every employee milestone we hit, it's my first time hitting that, right. Like, when I hit a hundred employees, that was my first time getting there.

**[0:31:17] MrBeast:** And this that this was my first time going from a hundred to 200, 200 to 300. And, like, with what I know now, I could have done it so much faster, obviously. And it's just, you know, it's a little brutal because, like, y- like, scaling Feastables from, you know, zero to a hundred was way easier than doing my production company, cause I had been through the ringer before and I learned a bunch. And I get better with time.

**[0:31:36] MrBeast:** And I, it's just the mo- honestly, the most annoying part is just ignorance, right? Like, cause a lot of things, mistakes I make, I look back and I'm like, Oh yeah, I probably should have brought in people with more experience working at a larger company earlier. Here, I waited a little too long here, I probably should have. And it's just like brutal, because if I had known these things, I'd be way further along. But I mean, that's just how you learn.

**[0:31:55] MrBeast:** You just gotta make 10,000 mistakes.

**[0:31:57] Steven Bartlett:** Every founder says the same. Every founder I've spoke to says the same that unknown unknowns, I don't even know what you're gonna and it's just do.

**[0:32:03] MrBeast:** like, so that's where I mean, my big thing recently has just been trying to find people who have successfully scaled businesses and, like, bring them into my organization to learn from them. Because I'm just so tired of, like, being like, fuck, I should have known better, but I didn't because I've never done this before. And so I'm trying to find a lot of great people who have been through it so they can, like, kinda mentor me along the way, so I make less mistakes, which has been really good.

**[0:32:25] MrBeast:** Um, we brought in a new C suite recently. Um, I, it's like always a hard balance because I try not to. In the past, I've I've like, you know, decisions are kinda like pendulums, and I have a, uh, a problem where I like, I'll identify something and I'll overcorrect the pendulum one way, and then I'm like, Oh, no, I should have just stopped in the middle. And, like, my overcorrection in the past was like, corporate people try to build too many systems and they kill innovation.

**[0:32:48] MrBeast:** And so I was very anti, like, people with too much corporate experience, cause they're gonna just destroy all the creativity. But, you know, that's why we're making so many organizational fuck ups, because we don't have anyone who's actually built a business at this size. And so, you know, the pendulum was on the right, and I swung it all the way to the left of no corporate. And now I think we're in the healthy medium where, you know, obviously the people on our C suite and the leaders should have lots of experience managing people at this size and scale.

**[0:33:13] MrBeast:** But it's just finding the right people who can do it and build systems in a way where it doesn't crush creativity and they actually value the product over ease.

**[0:33:21] Steven Bartlett:** The The Diary of a CEO and my I'm on the T a TV show called Dragons' Den in the UK, and, um, my stuff is significantly smaller. It's like a percentage of your of your viewership. But even I am slightly terrified with hiring people because it's quite clear to me that there's a huge incentive for anyone that I work with to say that I did something bad. And in the early days of my first business, um, what happens is the journalists go to everyone that works there and they ask them, What was he like?

**[0:33:48] Steven Bartlett:** You, you have the same problem, you have the same conundrum where anyone has an incentive that works for you. When they leave, so many different incentives to throw an an arrow at you on the way out the door. How how do you contend with this?

**[0:34:02] MrBeast:** yeah, I mean, you hit it on the head of, uh, you know, I have four or 500 people right now, but we've also worked with thousands of people in the past. And so I think it's just what comes with it. But at the end of the day, you know, as long as what we're doing is moral and ethical, like, like you said, they're gonna throw arrows. But, you know, I, I'm just a problem solver. It's like, whenever I see the, eh, metaphorical arrow, I just go, you know, what's the problem?

**[0:34:24] MrBeast:** And if we did something wrong, how do we fix it? Or if it's not an actual problem, it's just rumors. I mean, it is what it is. And so, yeah, I think it just comes with part of it. Um, I mean, it sucks, and it's unfortunate, but you also have to think, like most people don't like their jobs too. And so it's not like this is even specific to our industry. Like, you know, just go ask a hundred random Americans of of all the jobs they've worked in their life, how many did they deeply enjoy?

**[0:34:46] MrBeast:** And do would they have nothing negative to say? So I think it's just part of it, you know? Um, it's almost like a pastime for a lot of people just to, like, trash talk their old jobs or whatever.

**[0:34:55] Steven Bartlett:** Um, has any of that stuff ever got to you? Any criticism Oh, of course, or any

**[0:35:00] MrBeast:** yeah, I mean, uh, all s criticism all the time does, but I mean, the thing is independent of that kind of stuff. It's just like, I mean, I for we are averaging, like, 200 million views a video, like, you know, like, uh, most of it unique viewers. Like, we're talking, like, two plus percent, um, sometimes 3% of humans alive watch every piece of content I put out. G- you know, depending on how well the channel's doing.

**[0:35:24] MrBeast:** And so, like, I mean, it's like, you could, I could upload a video, and then with, uh, 365 days later, you could grab thirty three random humans anywhere on the planet, especially cause we do dubs. You know what's even crazier is our, you know, YouTube's not in China, so that's like two to 3% of humans alive, excluding China, um, eh, or China's mixed in there. But if you just take people excluding China, it'd be more like three to 4%.

**[0:35:47] MrBeast:** Um, but you could just grab thirty three random people on the planet, and one of them, on average, would have seen that video because the views are so fucking high. So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of criticism that's thrown at me. And the thing is, you know, since our stuff's so global, sometimes, you know, transcends culture and not everyone views everything. And so everyone has different opinions and stuff like that, which is why it would drive you crazy at our scale.

**[0:36:08] MrBeast:** If you try to make people happy. Cause 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%'s 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.

**[0:36:33] MrBeast:** 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 the ninety nine. So I just c- 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 do I believe in what I'm doing? If so, fuck it, like, I'm never gonna be able to make everyone happy.

**[0:36:54] MrBeast:** So I and if you just you let the whims of the internet kinda decide what is okay and what's acceptable, and and when you're being bad or good, then you, you, you don't have a spine, you don't have a backbone, you stand for nothing, and and it it will just destroy you mentally. Um, and so, I mean, I don't know what age I was when I kinda got in that mindset, but I just was like, I'm gonna decide, and I'm not gonna let the internet decide, you know, what is okay and what's not.

**[0:37:18] MrBeast:** And then ever since I got to that point, you know, if people criticize me for something and I'm like, I don't agree, then I have, like, it's easy for me to just go, Oh, well, I don't agree. Not gonna make everyone happy. I believe what I'm doing is right, and, um, just move on.

**[0:37:32] Steven Bartlett:** the brain isn't isn't designed for for this, though.

**[0:37:36] MrBeast:** No, it's not.

**[0:37:36] Steven Bartlett:** This is what I've come to learn. So do the podcast, it goes well, I'm on, uh, yeah, it feels like at the start, everyone loves me, and then I get further down the line and it feels like everyone fucking hates me. Because they do you get attacked from you can never do anything right, especially

**[0:37:48] MrBeast:** I mean, I've probably read mess like comments or tweets, or I've probably in my lifetime read over 5,000 messages or comments or something telling me to kill myself. I mean, you know what I mean, you know, just like, and what would possess someone to tell you to, like, leave a comment where it's like, fucking kill yourself, you know what I mean? So agreed, like, you're we were not meant to receive this kind of feedback from basically anyone anywhere in the world.

**[0:38:12] MrBeast:** You know what I mean? Just all con- you know, consistently, day in and day out, for for my, in my case, now over a decade.

**[0:38:19] Steven Bartlett:** has it ever really got to you?

**[0:38:21] MrBeast:** Oh, yeah, of course. I mean, it, it does all the time, or it used to all the time. I like, I said,

**[0:38:25] Steven Bartlett:** What does that mean in reality? If I'm a fly on a wall in one of those moments where you can recall it really getting to you?

**[0:38:32] MrBeast:** 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 twenty, and you're hiring all these people, you're, you know, I, I have high risk tolerance, but I'm reinvesting every dollar I make. I I'm, you know, I'm hiring my friends from school. I've hired my mom, like, uh, these people I really care about are depending on me. And then, you know, I upload a video and it does bad, and then people, you know, I pour all my time and effort into it.

**[0:38:58] MrBeast:** But, you know, maybe it doesn't come across as well like the vi- 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 and you read that and the video's underperforming, and you're like, Fuck, maybe I am being too reckless. And, you know, there, 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?

**[0:39:23] MrBeast:** Or like, they don't understand. I put a lot of time into this, or or whatever. Why? Why? You sometimes you're like, Fuck, does the algorithm hate me? Am I being suppressed? Or whatever? Back in the day, um,

**[0:39:33] Steven Bartlett:** When was the last time that happened? That feeling of

**[0:39:37] MrBeast:** um, yeah, prob- there was like a a month, probably last year, where I I felt a little bit of that. Just because, um, you know, just sometimes occasionally the rumor and drama mill gets spun up. But you just gotta 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, uh, they try to.

**[0:40:04] MrBeast:** We're we're, like, conditioned in America now. When someone does something good, there's always some ulterior 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 wanna 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 kinda that's my answer.

**[0:40:30] MrBeast:** Um, but it always does suck when people try to just like, I don't know the the. 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, y- you would think sometimes you'd read like, when I build wells in Africa or help blind people see, or things like that.

**[0:40:53] MrBeast:** You'd you'd read some of these things online, you would think I'm Hitler. I mean, it's crazy, like how people portray it, and I just, I don't know. I wish people just understand, like, in my opinion, a world where I help people is just more fun than a world where I don't. And it's really not that deep.

**[0:41:06] Steven Bartlett:** the people around you, how does it impact them?

**[0:41:08] MrBeast:** Oh, how does, uh, the drama and that kinda 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 wanna 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.

**[0:41:27] Steven Bartlett:** It's funny, cause I s everyone that knows you, knows you, 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 re. 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 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.

**[0:41:57] MrBeast:** 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.

**[0:42:26] MrBeast:** And I'm like, No, I just wanted 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.

**[0:42:51] MrBeast:** It's cause they we're 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 mean, I don't care. I like, I said, it's just more fun than if I didn't. So, I mean, people can shit on me for helping people. I don't, I don't, it doesn't bother me anymore. Um, but I wouldn't recommend you get into it if you wanna be liked, cause I I think it's negatively correlated.

**[0:43:13] MrBeast:** Now it is so fascinating, it is, I swear to God, man, like, peop- it's, it's, it's, uh, they're. I could just, uh, I don't know. Do these like, uh, one dollar versus videos where I compare, like a one dollar boat to a billion dollar boat and all these other things and not help people. And I would just get way less shit. And it's it's so funny cause 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.

**[0:43:38] MrBeast:** 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 gonna keep doing it. And I mean, I think in my case, most people have realized I'm not gonna stop, so they're just kinda over, you know, getting mad at me, and they're just like, Alright, Jimmy's just being Jimmy.

**[0:43:53] Steven Bartlett:** 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 I interview, or whatever it might be, it's actually made me refocus on what my principles are. Because you have to be really anchored to them.

**[0:44:09] MrBeast:** it's like 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 I think, like, that's the only way to really survive at this scale without going crazy, is you, you have to determine where the line is, not let the internet Workaholism. yes.

**[0:44:27] Steven Bartlett:** Can can you give me a window into the last seven days of your life? Just give me, paint me a picture.

**[0:44:31] MrBeast:** Oh, yes, uh, let me, uh, drink some water cause my flu. Hm, well, the I don't know about the last seven days, but in general, we, uh, 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, um, to spend time in a cage surrounded by lions. Sick content. It was really good, um, which that was a bitch to get to.

**[0:44:57] MrBeast:** And then I got the flu and so spent a couple days in the hospital there, um, and then we were going to go to Snake Island to spend time there, then the world deadliest road, and then we have a couple other places. But, uh, 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 a hundred pounds before he leaves the gym, it has a big red circle around it.

**[0:45:25] MrBeast:** I'll give him a bunch of money. So I filmed with him, then worked on the coming up videos, um, that it's a lot. And then flew to Florida, filmed with Aaron Judge, flew here, just 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, one am?

**[0:45:40] Steven Bartlett:** It's just after one am.

**[0:45:42] MrBeast:** Yeah, one am. The latest podcast he's ever done. Lightweight. I always do my podcast at one am. Um, my last podcast before this was like four am. Um, like, like, a couple weeks ago. And then, uh, we're flying to San Fran to film with Steph, then we're

**[0:45:56] Steven Bartlett:** Steph Curry.

**[0:45:56] MrBeast:** Yeah, Steph Curry. Then I think I'm going to Snake Island, then the deadliest road. Um, and then I, I won't. I'll basically, I don't think I'll be home for another sixteen days, so I'm just traveling around filming for the next sixteen days. And then, um, yeah, I guess then I'll get home and then they'll make me film at home.

**[0:46:15] Steven Bartlett:** How does everything else in your life fit into that? In terms of, like, the gym, I know you've been working out a lot.

**[0:46:19] MrBeast:** It's been brutal, it's gone to shit the last couple 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, l- life is so easy when you just wake up in your own bed and like w- waking up in your own bed and working fifteen 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.

**[0:46:48] MrBeast:** It's like, like, I mean, some days I'm going to bed at ten am, other days I'm going to bed at five pm. And it's like, it's a mess, it's really. And I I used to put up with it and and it just, like, and figure out how to do the training, but it's just I don't, I don't, I don't know. I need to, uh, truthfully, whatever's a priority, you'll get done. I just need to make it a priority again, cause it I really do miss it.

**[0:47:10] MrBeast:** It's just this. The hard part is putting putting Beast Games in the mix, cause 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 I just honestly, something had to give, and sadly it was working out, but it's fucking stupid.

**[0:47:31] MrBeast:** So I need to, like, reprioritize my life where I can get. I mean, it just only needs to be forty five minutes, five days a week. It does doesn't need to be hard, but the bigger problem is I'm just not sleeping like I used to because we're 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.

**[0:47:47] MrBeast:** So it's like, I gotta fix sleep first before that. But yeah, it's, uh, got a lot going on, to be honest. I'm dying.

**[0:47:55] Steven Bartlett:** How are you feeling?

**[0:47:56] MrBeast:** Uh, right now, honestly, fine. I'm jacked up on a lot of caffeine.

**[0:47:59] Steven Bartlett:** But I mean, just in in this feast, you know,

**[0:48:02] MrBeast:** The flu's not helping, it's it's making everything like 30% harder. So, you know, it's like life's like a rollercoaster. There are gonna be moments where, like, right now, I'm gonna answer this negatively, but I don't want someone to think that's indicative of, like, oh, every an every time you ask me this, it's gonna be a. But because of the flu and the lack of sleep, I mean, I'm struggling at the moment, just a lot of grinding.

**[0:48:22] MrBeast:** Um, a little happy cause we just dropped the ending of Beast Games, so it's like a little bit of emotional high. But after this, I'm probably gonna go crash, be tired as fuck in the morning tomorrow, which I hate. Um, but yeah, I would say I'm on, like, the lower end. I I could use a couple good days to bring the energy back up.

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**[0:49:37] Steven Bartlett:** How do you think about mental health? I've heard you speak about your mental health before, and I've I

**[0:49:41] MrBeast:** Yeah, I don't. Well, the thing is, here's the problem, like, it's, uh, if my mental health was a priority, I wouldn't be as successful as I am. I mean, and that's just like a sad fact. Um, like, I obviously never would have buried myself alive for seven days, seven days of solitary, seven days on a deserted island, seven days, blah, blah, blah. Um, it's like, you know, being consistently uncomfortable and, like, s cons, being able to consistently suffer over long periods is like, arguably one of the deepest moats.

**[0:50:09] MrBeast:** Like, there's a reason no one makes videos like me, like, not even close, because no one wants to live the life I live. I mean, there are there are months where I'm, you know, I'm. I think there was one year where 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 gonna be pretty fucking tired and feel like shit.

**[0:50:29] MrBeast:** I'm gonna go, you know, I? Something I always tell myself is how you feel right now is why no one else does what you wanna 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 wanna do consistently, year after year, over the course of a decade, is like the ultimate advantage.

**[0:50:53] MrBeast:** 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 $1 million, 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?

**[0:51:12] MrBeast:** It makes no sense, but that's why no one else does it.

**[0:51:15] Steven Bartlett:** you spoke to Colin and Samir, two guys that I met recently, um, Yeah, they're great, and I think they're great, great guys. Um, you said to them, I'm miserable a lot of times, I have mental breakdowns every other week.

**[0:51:25] MrBeast:** yeah, I mean, it's 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, uh, what's funny is I think I said that years ago, but that was back when all I was really was doing YouTube. Now I run this chocolate company and we have this show and we have a couple other stuff, so y- I think the the hardest part really is gear shifting, like, and so I try to bucket these things correctly, like, if if I'm on set, you know, and I have a fifteen hour film day.

**[0:51:57] MrBeast:** 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 gonna 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.

**[0:52:26] MrBeast:** I and it, it's also just very not core to who I am. I love obsessing over certain things, and I find, you know, obsessing over things within a business isn't like switching back and forth between marketing and product in a same business is pretty easy. This is 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.

**[0:52:49] MrBeast:** Finish that, then move on to the next one. Whereas before, it used to be like thirty gear switches a day, and that that's just miserable. It's just not even fun, to be honest.

**[0:52:57] Steven Bartlett:** I heard, um, Elon Musk, who I know s someone you s 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 wanna 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. So two questions there. Do you think the average person would like to be in your head?

**[0:53:16] Steven Bartlett:** And secondly, are you happy?

**[0:53:20] MrBeast:** uh, well, no, the average person does not wanna live the life I live or be in my head. They would 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 they're, I mean, obviously I'm not a robot. There are times where I'm like, fuck, I really wanna play this strategy board game or I wanna do this thing, and I'm I look at the schedule and I'm like, Oh, maybe I could do that in four days.

**[0:53:43] MrBeast:** And you, you know, and it the the hard thing is, it's r- 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.

**[0:54:06] MrBeast:** And I'm like, but I really wanna do this thing, but I can't cause I gotta go film this video and I gotta do this and I gotta speak at this conference and I gotta 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 gotta control your thoughts and be like, Well, this is the life I chose.

**[0:54:33] MrBeast:** 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 mo.

**[0:54:52] MrBeast:** It's you're lucky. It's hard. Push through it and you'll be happy you did, you know? And so that's kinda 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 $1 million and be happy.

**[0:55:07] Steven Bartlett:** Are you happy?

**[0:55:08] MrBeast:** 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 lions, fuck no, so

**[0:55:16] Steven Bartlett:** What's your baseline? How would you describe your baseline?

**[0:55:18] MrBeast:** probably, uh, this year, probably so far, more unhappy than happy. And it's just they're just things you gotta do that just aren't fun, you know? But I I think I I really deeply enjoy working on Feastables and I'm trying to spend more of my time building it. The problem is it's just I, uh, it's just opportunity costs. 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.

**[0:55:45] MrBeast:** 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 stop filming. And so, you know, I, I have found more and more that I'm finding more joy in entrepreneurial things and building businesses.

**[0:56:11] MrBeast:** And I, I. I do think I'd be happier 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.

**[0:56:22] Steven Bartlett:** I always wonder, as someone who, um, is doing so well on a platform like YouTube, where the algorithm's 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 of the last couple of years, where YouTubers hit 10 million and they just stop. Has that ever crossed your mind to stop

**[0:56:41] MrBeast:** oh, of course, I mean,

**[0:56:42] Steven Bartlett:** really? all the time, but Seriously?

**[0:56:44] MrBeast:** yeah, but I I mean, I like, I've this. I feel like that's what half this podcast has been about, about how I don't wanna 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.

**[0:57:02] MrBeast:** And then they go, Well, why would I suffer? Now I'm good.

**[0:57:05] Steven Bartlett:** When was the closest you came to quitting?

**[0:57:08] MrBeast:** Oh, I've had probably countless times. I mean, all when I was in solitary confinement for seven days, I mean, that was fucking miserable. I mean, I did quit a video. Well, I've quit a lot of videos, like,

**[0:57:17] Steven Bartlett:** No, I mean, as a as a creator.

**[0:57:19] MrBeast:** Um, I mean, I guess I never truly would have quit. I mean, my biggest thing would be I just would have quit for like a week and been like, fuck, let me sleep 9 hours a night and like, Um, but like, I spent the FIR- we we did a video, we spent seven days on a deserted island. 1st time we filmed it. On day two, I woke up on the beach and I had literally, I didn't know sand fleas were a thing.

**[0:57:39] MrBeast:** I had like 700 bug bites up and down my legs, all over my body. I was sunburned. I was like a little bit of me was like, Damn, am I gonna die? Like, this is crazy, how much like bug bites are everywhere. And my skin was so red and I w- I couldn't see straight, and so I ended up quitting on day two. Um, which is brutal, cause you spend all this time and money and you have the crew out there and you flew out there.

**[0:58:01] MrBeast:** And you know, it's it's opportunity cost. It's like, that's a seven day window. We could have got a video and uploaded it, and now we don't like it's. You know, canceling a video like that is literally the worst thing that could happen from an opportunity cost perspective. And that was like, you know, and you have moments like those, and it's like, fuck, like, this isn't even fun, fuck this shit, you know? But

**[0:58:17] Steven Bartlett:** But what about Y YouTube as a whole? Cause, uh, I feel like YouTube is like throwing coal into a train. Then you just have to keep throwing it in there. Once you've started, you just can never stop throwing it no. You're in.

**[0:58:26] MrBeast:** running on a treadmill cranked up to the max, especially if you wanna be a top tier creator like me. And it's just like, who who can stay on the treadmill the longest? Cause it never slows down, if anything, you're making it faster. Um, but no, I mean, I don't think there's ever unironically a time where I actually would have quit. It just breaks. Probably would have been nice.

**[0:58:43] Steven Bartlett:** and when you think forward at that treadmill, can you see yourself doing it for the next two, three, four decades? Or

**[0:58:49] MrBeast:** Oh, yeah, of course, I don't have any intention of ever stopping.

**[0:58:52] Steven Bartlett:** okay, um, love something that came into my life a couple years ago. You announced, I think over Christmas time, that you had proposed. I think it was like Boxing Day or or New Year's Eve.

**[0:59:03] MrBeast:** yeah, it it was on Christmas Day, yeah,

**[0:59:05] Steven Bartlett:** Oh, Christmas Day.

**[0:59:05] MrBeast:** cause her cause her family was in town, so I proposed, Yeah,

**[0:59:08] Steven Bartlett:** How does that fit into this craziness?

**[0:59:11] MrBeast:** she's literally I. You could probably count on your hands the amount of, uh, people on the planet that actually would make a good partner for me. And she's just she's just one of them. She really understands that work is what, you know, is what I live for, what keeps me going, and she supports me and she understands how important it is. And it's the big thing is hanging out with Tia, my fiance, is is so frictionless.

**[0:59:35] MrBeast:** We play the same video games, we watch the same shows, we're very interested in the same things. She loves learning like I do. So, um, you know, it's exciting to see what, you know, um, lecture, she listened to online that day, or, like, whatever weird book she's reading. And she just like everything about being around her is very frictionless, which is great. Because, like, obvious, I don't have much time at the house. And so, like, the last thing that I need is to come home from work and there be friction.

**[1:00:00] MrBeast:** And so we don't, we don't fight. It's I, you know, I sometimes I'm like, Wow, this is like my best friend, this is, and she's hot, this is great, you know? Um, and so it's like it, it feels weird sometimes,

**[1:00:13] Steven Bartlett:** people, uh, I mean, anyone in a listening now that's in a relationship, I guess the question they'd be thinking is like, when do you spend time together?

**[1:00:21] MrBeast:** mostly at nights, um, and uh, that. But the beauty is, she gears her schedule around mine, so like, she's, she'll work when, um, I'm working, and then she'll just travel with me. And so honestly, a lot of it is on planes, a lot of it's in car rides, or, you know, an hour before bed or in the morning, that kind of stuff. But it's like, cause there are pockets of breaks on set and things like that, so it's just, you know, having s.

**[1:00:44] MrBeast:** It's. It's really hard to find someone who is intelligent, actually has their own hobbies, things going for them, independent. That's also willing to mold their life around mine and not see it as a demeaning thing. Because, like, yeah, if she was just like, Well, I have this thing going on and I have to prioritize my life, I would never see her. But because she's willing to, you know, mold her life around mine, uh, and my work schedule, that that, you know, is, that's everything.

**[1:01:11] MrBeast:** Um, and it's rare that someone's willing to do that while, you know, being as, in my opinion, at least from what I've seen, as intelligent and independent as she is.

**[1:01:19] Steven Bartlett:** Parents always message me and say, Steve, wait till you have kids.

**[1:01:22] MrBeast:** Oh, yeah, that's I'm, and that's the thing, like, my lifestyle right now is would not work for kids. So I wanna wait, I want kids, but I wanna wait as long as possible, because if I'm gonna have kids, I gotta be a great dad. Like, I really, I really, really enjoy mentoring people, I love mentoring, you know, younger entrepreneurs and like, help, like, I've told this, I think I told the story on Joe Rogan. I helped one of my friends go from like 40k a month in revenue to 400k on YouTube, and I do kind of stuff like that all the time.

**[1:01:47] MrBeast:** I just like one of my other friends has a um, snack CPG brand, and I helped him grow it to eight figures in revenue. Just for fun, I would just call him a couple times a month. And it's like, there's something so satisfying about helping other people succeed. And so I would love to have a couple kids and just like, really mentor them into, like, you know, being badasses. But yeah, not anytime soon. Like I would be so absent if we had kids, so just gotta, like, find that right time in the Venn diagram where I could actually be present in their life.

**[1:02:14] Steven Bartlett:** And your business empire, I think, is much bigger than most people realize. I imagine Probably, the the majority of people probably don't really understand the context of business, so they don't really get it. They might see you as a YouTuber or a creator, but from the research that I've done, you run a very, very large business.

**[1:02:31] MrBeast:** yeah, I mean, well, we do nine figures in Feastables, I mean, we can say that, yeah,

**[1:02:34] Steven Bartlett:** Nine figures in Fes- Feastables, so the business must be worth several billions of dollars.

**[1:02:41] MrBeast:** uh, overall, I mean, you could to do something like that. Yeah,

**[1:02:43] Steven Bartlett:** I'm not gonna get you to to try and hazard a guess. I'm sure of course, you know, but I'm not gonna get, uh, ask you to predict. But but are the business are

**[1:02:51] MrBeast:** would be worth a lot of money. Yeah,

**[1:02:52] Steven Bartlett:** are you a billionaire?

**[1:02:53] MrBeast:** uh, on paper, yeah, but I mean, in my actual bank account, I have less than $1 million. So

**[1:02:59] Steven Bartlett:** Do you pay yourself at all?

**[1:03:00] MrBeast:** a little bit. But I also, like, I have some assistance and things like that, so it's like, I try to just pay myself what I spend, uh, you know, personally, a month, just to, like, stay even.

**[1:03:10] Steven Bartlett:** How how do you? How do you think about money in all of this? Cause most most people in their lives are pursuing money so that they can chill out and retire. But you seem to be pursuing it purely for the sake of reinvesting it back Of course, into the system.

**[1:03:23] MrBeast:** money is fuel to grow a business

**[1:03:25] Steven Bartlett:** And then you make money from the business and then

**[1:03:27] MrBeast:** to keep growing. Yeah, and then you you find a business that you enjoy that you know is better for mother nature or Earth or people, and there you go, you have a fulfilled life. That's my theory. I just don't. When I'm 70, I don't wanna look back and have regrets, you know,

**[1:03:40] Steven Bartlett:** when is enough enough? Such a cliche question that I'm asked a lot.

**[1:03:44] MrBeast:** enough, like building the business, never. I mean, I just wanna keep like building a business is like a video game. It's it's just fun, you know? Like with Feastables right now, um, you know, we're the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in America. And like, it's just fun to, like, look at something that's been done the same way for 100 years and go, how do we just flip this on its head and fuck up this industry? And you know, how can we pay our farmers a living income?

**[1:04:07] MrBeast:** You know, not use child labor, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's like, you know, I think if I was just doing mundane things like everyone else, probably, I probably would be bored as fuck. If I would just sold chocolate like everyone else, made the same repetitive YouTube videos like everyone else. I probably would be like, all right, get me out of this, I wanna retire. But it's not what we're doing, like, we're changing industries, we're impacting the world like this.

**[1:04:27] MrBeast:** This is the point of life, in my opinion.

**[1:04:29] Steven Bartlett:** You could do so much with the gazillion people that list listen and watch your videos. You could, like, start almost any business and it'd be successful, you could have almost any social impact and it be profound and save a gazillion people's lives. Do you do you struggle with focus?

**[1:04:44] MrBeast:** uh, hm, no. I mean, I do wonder, you know, sometimes, should we be doing more? But I I've really found a good groove with Feastables. I'm very I keep looking over there cause there's Feastables sitting over there. Um, um, I do feel like, uh, I've hit a good groove with that, um, and uh, the ethical sourcing on it, and uh, no, I mean, yeah, obviously I get a bajillion opportunities, but just, you know, right now, this, like, I I think I said earlier, this is one of the few things in life that I've I've.

**[1:05:14] MrBeast:** It's scratched the same itch as YouTube, where building Feastables is equally as fun as making videos. For me, It is so delicious, thank you.

**[1:05:22] Steven Bartlett:** it is so delicious. I'd really love to s just spend a moment talking about the ethical sourcing piece, cause I don't think that's something I didn't understand until I did some research on you. Um, why? why does that matter so much? And what? When you say ethical sourcing, what's the difference between what you do and what normal ch- chocolate yeah, big companies do?

**[1:05:38] MrBeast:** chocolate in America. Uh, well, the big thing is when I got into chocolate, I didn't, I didn't know any of these things. Um, we we used to source our cocoa from Peru cacao, um, which, you know, ethical sourcing's not really an issue there. But the problem is majority of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa. And so as we got bigger, uh, you know, everyone's like, Hey, you need to switch your supply chain to West Africa.

**[1:05:59] MrBeast:** I'm like, cool, um. And so then I started studying and reading up about it, and I, um, and I noticed that 46 of labor in West Africa on cocoa farms, it's child labor. And I was like, that's not, that can't be accurate. And then I started digging deeper and deeper, and I was like, Holy shit, it's just almost half of labor is child labor. And so I started talking to all the big chocolate companies, or not all of them, but as many as I could get ahold of.

**[1:06:23] MrBeast:** And I was like, So what, what, what do you guys do about this whole child labor thing? And they, they were constantly just telling me like, it just is what it is. That's how chocolate always has been. And I was like, Whoa, you guys make like $1 billion a year in profit. You don't, you don't see an issue with that, being on the back of little kids? And they're like, No, you s. And then I, you know, I I have this crazy clip on cause I have a documentary guy, I think you saw him, Jeff, who follows me around.

**[1:06:46] MrBeast:** Crazy clip where I'm meeting with, like, a big um, I gotta be as vague as possible, cause they're gonna murder me if I talk about exactly. But like a big supplier, we'll just leave it vague like that. And I asked him, I was like, So do you have any way I can pay extra to not use child labor or anything like that, or any options? And they were just like, Nope, and I was, and I and my literal documentary guy is just like filming, and I'm in like this big boardroom.

**[1:07:13] MrBeast:** And I look at the camera, I'm like, Holy shit, they just said that on camera. And uh, and so I did all this research and it was just like, Yeah, no. And especially in America, like there there's some European chocolate brands that, you know, try, but, uh, in America, like, really, no one really cared. I mean, there's plenty of options and plenty of time to fix it, plenty of money to fix it. So that just kinda, honestly, pissed me off and like that.

**[1:07:34] MrBeast:** So then I just was like, how do we solve this? And so then it sent me down the rabbit hole. The everything points back to, like, you know, to. The reason chocolate in America is so cheap is cause they just don't, you know, not the reason. One of the reasons is they just pay the farmers so little, like farmers make less than a dollar a day. Um, so, like, because of that, they're forced to use child labor, cause, I mean, they literally just don't even have money to pay someone who's not a child.

**[1:07:55] MrBeast:** How many kids do you think are in child labor in West Africa, just on cocoa farms? uh, five You might have saw it in that, too. thousand, No, it's one 5 million.

**[1:08:03] Steven Bartlett:** you're joking.

**[1:08:04] MrBeast:** Yeah, it's over a million, it's crazy. So what we need to do is we need to, in my head, get to $1 billion a year in revenue as fast as possible, while being ethically sourced and being profitable. A big part of it is we have to be profitable while doing it. Because then I can point and go, look, we achieve scale ethically and we're making money. It's not that you can't do it, you just don't want to.

**[1:08:24] MrBeast:** And then, um, and maybe maybe we give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they just truly don't know how to do it at scale, and maybe it'll open their eyes and they'll be like, Oh, I guess it is possible, and they'll start to change the ways. More than likely, they won't, and I. But over time, I hope we can just shine a light on it using my platform. And, you know, um, just show the model works.

**[1:08:43] MrBeast:** And then, I don't know. Something I would love to do in the long run is like, you know how, there's like, the Fair Trade logo. Maybe I make my own version of it, and I help other chocolate companies source their, uh, cacao ethically and, uh, or something. And, you know, and I just educate people on, like, if it doesn't have the symbol, it's probably using child labor and something. I. There's some way I where I could play my cards over the next ten years, where we get over a million kids out of child labor, uh, on cocoa farms.

**[1:09:07] MrBeast:** And so I just gotta connect the dots and figure out the correct way to do it.

**[1:09:11] Steven Bartlett:** This might sound like a really obvious question, but it's it won't be to everybody. Why did you care so much?

**[1:09:16] MrBeast:** Bro, I just like, I've been on these farms. I don't wanna get rich on the back of little kids. I mean, it's just kinda I. I feel like it's kinda obvious, you know, like, I maybe to other people in chocolate, they don't care. But I the 1st thing when I heard about it, I was like, why? why is this a thing?

**[1:09:32] Steven Bartlett:** It reminds me somewhat of, again, of Elon Musk and what his mission was with Tesla. He kinda knew that if he was able to prove that you can have fast, um, nice electric cars, then the rest of the industry could give up their excuses that it's not possible. Um, what if someone comes along, though, and they say, Okay, M Jimmy, we'll give you 5 billion for Feastables.

**[1:09:51] MrBeast:** Hell, no, I ain't selling that shit.

**[1:09:52] Steven Bartlett:** You're never selling it.

**[1:09:53] MrBeast:** No, because the 1st thing they would do to up the margins is they just drop ethical sourcing.

**[1:09:57] Steven Bartlett:** You have people come along and o- offered to buy your YouTube channel.

**[1:10:01] MrBeast:** Uh, I mean, yeah, I've been offered $1 billion here or crazy amounts of money there, but I mean, it's, you know, what's funny is, I is. Zach got that famous billion dollar offer for Facebook, and he said, What was it? He was like, Why would I sell this social media platform? If I would just take the money and start a new one, and I kinda like the one I have, so why don't I just keep it?

**[1:10:21] MrBeast:** And I, I, every time I get, which I haven't in a while. But, you know, back in the day, I used to, like, jokingly, poke around just to see what people would offer me. Um, and I would get those offers, and then I would always just be like, Yeah, I mean, I would just do the same thing I'm doing now, so I might as well just keep doing what I'm doing now. You know, the money wouldn't really change anything.

**[1:10:38] Steven Bartlett:** Well done, and I don't think you you've yet to get the credit you deserve for the e- the lengths you've gone to

**[1:10:43] MrBeast:** It's fine.

**[1:10:44] Steven Bartlett:** with Feastables. No, but I think it's really important. Yeah, I know you're not doing it for credit at all. I know that, uh, you're doing it to get the message out there so that the industry changes. But I think someone like you, with a platform that you have, that's able to produce chocolate that is fucking delicious. They sent me a box of it about six months ago and I

**[1:10:57] MrBeast:** Thank you.

**[1:10:59] Steven Bartlett:** I ate so much of the fucking I I'm thinking thing.

**[1:11:00] MrBeast:** of updating, Yeah, I I mean, if you hand them to me, like, hand me a couple bars, the there's, uh, a lot of stuff that, uh, the problem is like, if you look at this and this, you know, from a distance, you can't tell really the difference between the flavors. Like this is dark sea salt, this is just dark chocolate. So, uh, I'm about to update the wrappers where we're gonna put like colored tips here so you can tell the flavors from far away.

**[1:11:22] MrBeast:** Uh, I think that's very important. Um, another thing too, that, uh, I there's just a, uh, you made a mistake, you put these in front of me. Now I'm obsessed with them. The other thing I wanna, um, I wanna, I was. I've been experimenting and the newer renders are looking good with putting like right here. Every bite helps, uh, get kids out of child labor. Putting that on the front, and then I, I'm, you know, we're messing around with different machinery.

**[1:11:47] MrBeast:** I feel like the images of the chocolate on the front could be a little higher quality. The back is pretty ass. Um, I wanna, you know, put some more messaging on the back of it. There's a lot that needs to be like the the white tips here. It just makes it so obvious from far away what this flavor is, whereas all these blend in. And so, yeah, brutal, gotta fix it.

**[1:12:06] Steven Bartlett:** you, you talked about your friends calling you and asking you for business advice and you helping them drive their businesses up. But just watching you there pick apart your own business made me think that. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that watch our show that are early in their own businesses, and many of them will be

**[1:12:21] MrBeast:** You're gonna fail, you're gonna fail a ton. I mean, when I 1st started chocolate, I mean, it was, it was hilarious how bad I fucked up. Our original bars were, like, very thin. There's a reason why, like, chocolate bars have these like break points here, where they like, break easily. I didn't know that, um, and so mine was just one solid sheet of chocolate. But that's almost like a piece of glass, whereas if you drop it, it just shatters into like a bunch of little pieces.

**[1:12:45] MrBeast:** And um, and I also didn't know that there's a thing called a a package engineer. And can you hand me a box of feastables? Uh, my original chocolate box. When you pop these open and put it on a shelf, this obviously the problem's fixed. But if if this was sitting on a shelf, when you grab this one, these would all slide forward and then they would fall out of the box. And or the box would fall off the shelf because of the weight, cause there wasn't right balance at the bottom.

**[1:13:11] MrBeast:** And the lips here, this this didn't used to be a thing, so these were open and there was just the bottom lip here, and so they would fall out like that. Um, and then the bars, because we didn't have the natural break points, would shatter like glass.

**[1:13:21] Steven Bartlett:** who noticed that?

**[1:13:22] MrBeast:** Um, well, me, and the thing is, I, I, this is a old team in feastables. I would tell them like, there's too many broken bars. When I go into Walmart and I'm seeing too many that are broken, they told me like, Ah, you're worrying about this too much. It's not that big of an issue, it happens to everyone. And I got to the point where it was just fucking pissing me off because I hated, like grabbing a bar off the ground or seeing on the shelf all these like shattered chocolate bars.

**[1:13:45] MrBeast:** That I I put like, uh, I paid people to put GoPros in, like a a b- like a bag of lace chips pointed at cause I couldn't get. I tried to get Walmart to give me the security camera footage, and they wouldn't. So I put hidden GoPros in a bunch of random Walmarts, just to point it at the Feastables bars, just to see why are they fucking breaking so much. There's so many shots of, like, you know, like a mom grabbing a bar.

**[1:14:05] MrBeast:** And then she'd be looking at it literally like this, and then you would just see the box just go, and she'd go, and they would just fall off the shelf. And then they just put it up and you'd, you know, some of the bars would be broken. And it would just happen over and over and over again, because we didn't engineer the boxes correctly, they didn't do anything wrong.

**[1:14:19] Steven Bartlett:** Do you know how, uh, atypical that is? What you've just said that you put GoPros in

**[1:14:23] MrBeast:** people told me I was crazy, the amount of people who tried to tell me that was illegal. I was like, Bro, I don't fucking care. I just need to know why my bars are breaking, like, I'll delete the footage. Um, and so I that, and, uh, you know, I did a bunch of just data, and I actually so there's a company called Acosta, where you can pay people to go into Walmart. So then I I started paying where ev- every week I would send someone into every single Walmart in America to buy all the broken bars, fix up the boxes.

**[1:14:47] MrBeast:** It's pretty expensive, I think, um, you know, it's it's like $100,000 just to send someone into every single Walmart to clean them up, $28 a pop, times 5,000, um, uh, Walmarts, and, um, yeah. So I was sending people into Walmart to clean up the broken bars and the but I was paying so much money. It was $100,000 a week just to send people in. And then I was buying all these broken bars, cause I just really didn't want people to go into Walmart and to buy a broken feastable bar.

**[1:15:11] MrBeast:** Like that is literally the worst, you know, consumer experience you can have. Um, and yeah, and then I've learned what a package engineer is, and I was like, Holy shit, this is your full-time job to make it where my boxes don't fucking fall over. Where have you been?

**[1:15:23] Steven Bartlett:** but on the point that I was saying, your obsession with the detail of a product is a completely atypical. Uh, if I was to compare this to a normal YouTuber and their e-commerce brand,

**[1:15:34] MrBeast:** oh, they wouldn't give a fuck. Yeah, I was, I've probably spent thousands of hours obsessing over this product. I mean, I know it doesn't feel like it, cause it's just chocolate, but yeah, I mean, it's it's a problem. From the ethical sourcing to every little thing about it, like, I don't, I don't do anything half-assed.

**[1:15:47] Steven Bartlett:** and didn't you drive to a ton of Walmarts, don't you?

**[1:15:50] MrBeast:** Oh, all the time, that's what I do every day. Oh, fuck, we should go hit a Walmart. We didn't even go. Ah, he's got a plane, he's got to catch. Yeah, it's my favorite thing to do is like, sometimes I'll spend all night in Walmart, just, uh, scanning products and looking at the daily velocities and sales. It's it's like, uh, I had a layover in DC. I live in North Carolina. Then I was like, wait a minute, I could just rent a car and hit like 30 Walmarts on the way home and just drive home.

**[1:16:13] MrBeast:** And so then I drove home from DC. to North Carolina and visited every Walmart on the East Coast. In, like, the middle of America, just to, like, go look at the chocolate aisle and see all the statistics and things like that.

**[1:16:24] Steven Bartlett:** I asked you earlier on if you struggled to

**[1:16:26] MrBeast:** Fuck, I wish we could go visit a Walmart. You know how fun that would be? It's like I would love to educate you on the chocolate.

**[1:16:33] Steven Bartlett:** are Walmarts still open now? They're not okay. but, uh, We can do it another time. what, I I appreciate usually what it,

**[1:16:37] MrBeast:** I do is I just bang on the door and they let me in. of course. But Yeah,

**[1:16:40] Steven Bartlett:** what you've just said there, I'm I feel like I'm getting at something here. Because 99.9, nine, nine, nine, 9% of entrepreneurs that I know that just have one thing to do, just to run their business, don't give that many fucks about the detail. And you have a gazillion things to do. An Amazon show, which is like the highest future of whatever of all time or whatever. And you have this massive channel, you have your philanthropy, you have all of this stuff going

**[1:17:03] MrBeast:** 100 million followers on TikTok, hundred gazillion followers here, yeah,

**[1:17:06] Steven Bartlett:** a gazillion followers. The numbers are just unfathomable. And you're still driving to thirty one Walmarts to check if your chocolate is breaking.

**[1:17:13] MrBeast:** yeah, well. And I go in the back when I'm there, if it's not on the shelf, and I'll go scan it in and help the employees. And

**[1:17:19] Steven Bartlett:** And is that is that the difference?

**[1:17:21] MrBeast:** well, you just gotta know everything going on. It's, I mean, it's just 1st principles. Every if if, like, I I hate when someone in my business is like, tells me something that I don't agree with. But I'm too ignorant to be able to challenge them. Because then it's like, Well, who am I to to, you know? I guess I gotta just take them on their word. But most people tend to pick e- the easiest route or conform to the status quo.

**[1:17:43] MrBeast:** And I wanna if I wanna lead real innovation and like, change the industry, then I gotta know every little facet of everything. And so, I mean, at the end of the day, you know, the shelf is where people buy it. So I gotta intricately know everything going on at the touch point of the consumer. And, uh, you know how it gets there, how it's being stored at the de- distribution centers, and then the retailer, and then on the shelf.

**[1:18:04] MrBeast:** And what, what does it look like, what's the experience and everything? Because all these little things add up.

**[1:18:08] Steven Bartlett:** Do you not f- feel like you spend spend your whole life fighting people to raise their standards to your standards? Because you don't exist in a world of Mr. Beasts

**[1:18:18] MrBeast:** Well, that, uh, that's the thing I used to think, which I I've said a couple times, it was just content, but I've realized it's just everything I do. Like, I just wanna be the best at it, and that's it's weird, man, cause you just look at this chocolate bar and you wouldn't, you'd be like, who the fuck cares? But that's the thing. It's it's what I I've really enjoyed the last two years is I've gone as in depth on this as I have YouTube, and it's been every bit as fun.

**[1:18:39] MrBeast:** I mean, it's very, very fucking difficult and and hard, especially the ethical sourcing. And like I recently spent a week in West Africa, and I I went from the bean all the way to the bar. And like, you worked on the farm and followed the entire QC supply chain and everything. And it it's not. It's like it's equally as hard as my YouTube channel, but it's also equally as fun. And I that was just that was a big eye-opener for me, cause I never thought I would enjoy something as much as, uh, my YouTube channel.

**[1:19:05] MrBeast:** And that's what I was saying earlier. I've come to realize I deeply enjoy building businesses and solving hard, complex problems, even though I know this is just chocolate. But I get the complex thing from the ethical sourcing side just on a daily basis. Like that, that's fun.

**[1:19:18] Steven Bartlett:** with beast, beast games, with this, with all the other things going on. Um, your main channel, which is, I guess you probably still see as your baby to some degree, it's still like the mothership, right? Cause it's the source of

**[1:19:27] MrBeast:** it's what allows us to do everything. Like most people buying this aren't buying it cause of Beast Games. Yeah,

**[1:19:31] Steven Bartlett:** Do you ever get paranoia when the views go down?

**[1:19:34] MrBeast:** they haven't gone down yet, they haven't gone up every year for 14 years.

**[1:19:37] Steven Bartlett:** But do you still get that? That? Do you still watch the video, go live and look at the back end? No, no, I mean, You don't?

**[1:19:42] MrBeast:** no, I mean, cause it's like, we, uh, I don't know. I just upload a video and then and the next day I look at the retention and the CTR. And if we fucked up, I just, you know, well, what we do is we call them after action reports. So I get all the smartest people in my company, like, uh, well, like, we actually just did one. I wish I had my had it on me, but like, well, we I have.

**[1:20:02] MrBeast:** I pay this guy to just do a very in-depth breakdown of like, here's the retention chart, here's every time someone clicked away, here's where it was the flattest, here's where it was the worst. You know, we'll take, like, so if I upload a video that's 20 minutes, we'll take our last 10 20-minute videos and we'll go, you know, uh, the median retention on the last 10 20-minute videos was 10 minutes and six or 55 seconds is the median.

**[1:20:22] MrBeast:** So if the retention on this new video is 11 minutes or above, we did a good job. If it's below that, then we did below average. And blah, blah, blah. And and he just does, like a a giant like presentation. And so usually, a two weeks after we upload, we'll, we'll look at that with all my top people. And then we'll just be like, what'd we fuck up, what'd we do well, cool, move on,

**[1:20:40] Steven Bartlett:** And has there ever been a a moment in real recent times where you go? I I think I need to spend more time on it again and get back in there. And because

**[1:20:47] MrBeast:** uh, all the time, you know, but a lot of that stems from insecurity. I mean, cause the thing is, of course, we. We had a video recently, every minute someone is eliminated and didn't perform the best. Um, you know, and they're like, our intro was a little repetitive, it was a little dark. It, um, it we had. We brought back, like losers from Beast Games to compete in a main channel video. But the problem is some people thought it was Beast Games.

**[1:21:10] MrBeast:** They're like, Oh, I've already seen this. There was just a lot of rookie mistakes there, and it's very easy for me to, like, you know, get insecure and and like, be like, fuck, this is why I need to be in the weeds. But at the end of the day, it's like, it's not like when I was calling all the shots, I was perfect either. So as long as it's like, as long as when people make mistakes, they learn from them.

**[1:21:25] MrBeast:** I have a a saying like that I tell people all the time, like, like, whenever our new creatives fuck up, I, I'll look at Tyler, I will go. Tyler's literally cost me tens of millions of dollars in bad decisions. Like this isn't gonna be the 1st time you fuck us out of $1 million. As long as you learn from it, it's fine. Um, and so as long as, like, that's where these after action reports are are important.

**[1:21:43] MrBeast:** Because as long as we, when we mess up, we articulate why and it doesn't happen again, then it's just part of it. But yeah, I mean, if the same thing was happening over and over and over again, then I'd be like, fuck, I need to get step in. But my my guys are just good, like they don't make the same mistake twice.

**[1:21:56] Steven Bartlett:** tell me about experimentation and testing, cause people look to you as the the real king of like testing and experimentation. How central is this to the success of everything that you do?

**[1:22:06] MrBeast:** Very much, and that's the thing like that every minute video, like it flopped, you know, and that was, uh, your your highest chance of flopping is when you do something new, like really, really new. Uh, one of our bigger flops before that, too, is we did this video where it was like 10 minutes, this room will explode. We built this giant tower, had a guy start at the top, he had to make it. It was a real-time shoot down, press a button.

**[1:22:25] MrBeast:** Yeah, it was just didn't perform that well, people didn't really like it. Um, it was kind of complicated, blah, blah. And it's like, you have to be careful, because, you know, um, I want, I want a culture where people feel comfortable experimenting and trying and feel fine failing. And so, you know, when that video failed, or when, you know, the every minute there's someone's eliminated, like, you know, I don't go and yell at people or call them idiots or anything like that.

**[1:22:48] MrBeast:** I just am like, what did we do wrong? All right, here's all the facts. Just make sure it doesn't happen again. Not gonna be the 1st time you cost me a bunch of money, it's all good. Uh, you know, I see this as investing in you guys and let's just learn from it.

**[1:23:01] Steven Bartlett:** I was gonna say, cause, um, or else, if if there was a culture of that, then people would just make the same videos again. And a lot of YouTubers just churn out the same format.

**[1:23:07] MrBeast:** I'm okay with my people failing, I'm okay with the video being ten out of ten. Like, as long as we actually took an honest, good, um, try at it, you know, and and as long as we failed. Because we made the wrong shot call, not because we were lazy, not because we didn't put the effort in, etcetera. As long as i if, as long as it's just like we made an educated decision to test something or try something, and it just didn't work.

**[1:23:30] MrBeast:** I'm cool with that. We can do that all day. And like, they know that, and I've, I don't yell at people, um, you know, or get mad at them when they, um, accidentally mess up like that.

**[1:23:39] Steven Bartlett:** I've invested more than a million pounds into this company, Perfect Ted, and they're also a sponsor of this podcast. I switched over to using Matcha as my dominant energy source, and that's where Perfect Ted comes in. They have the matcha powders, they have the matcha drinks, they have the pods, and all of this keeps me focused throughout a very, very long recording day, no matter what's going on. And their team is obsessed with quality, which is why they source their ceremonial grade matcha from Japan.

**[1:24:03] Steven Bartlett:** So when people say to me that they don't like the taste of matcha, I'm guessing that they haven't tried Perfect Ted. Unlike low quality matcha that has a bitter, grassy taste, Perfect Ted is smooth and naturally sweet, and without knowing it, you're probably a Perfect Ted customer already. If you're getting your matcha at places like Blank Street or Joe in the Juice. But now you can make it yourself at home, so give it a try and we'll see if you still don't like matcha.

**[1:24:26] Steven Bartlett:** So here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give you 40% off our matcha if you try it today. Head to perfectted dot com and use code diary forty at checkout. Or if you're in a supermarket, you can get it at Tesco's or Holland and Barrett, or in the Netherlands at Albert Heijn, and those of you in the US, you can get it on Amazon. As you guys know, Whoop is one of my show sponsors. It's also a company that I have invested in, and it's one that you guys ask me about a lot.

**[1:24:49] Steven Bartlett:** The biggest question I get asked is why I use Whoop over other wearable technology options. And there is a bunch of reasons, but I think it really comes down to the most overlooked yet crucial feature its non invasive nature. When everything in life seems to be competing for my attention, I turn to Whoop because it doesn't have a screen. And Will Ahmed, the CEO who came on this podcast, told me the reason that there's no screen, because screens equal distraction.

**[1:25:14] Steven Bartlett:** So when I'm in meetings or I'm at the gym, my Whoop doesn't demand my attention. It's there in the background, constantly pulling data and insights from my body that are ready for when I need them. If you've been thinking about joining Whoop, you can head to join dot whoop dot com slash CEO and try Whoop for 30 days risk free and zero commitment. That's join dot whoop dot com slash CEO. Let me know how you get on.

**[1:25:39] Steven Bartlett:** You've just concluded today the biggest competition show I think of all time. Well, it is of all time, but I think you've got 50 Guinness

**[1:25:46] MrBeast:** well, you know, largest sets in history, most world records in history, largest cash prize in history, most winners in history, most contestants in history, most cameras. Yeah,

**[1:25:54] Steven Bartlett:** and what 50 Guinness world records?

**[1:25:55] MrBeast:** yeah, that we know of. There's probably way more, but yeah,

**[1:25:59] Steven Bartlett:** You said something on stage, which I found quite interesting, you said. I kind of feel a bit sad.

**[1:26:02] MrBeast:** yeah, I know, cause every Thursday I gotta look forward to, like seeing the internet's reaction to Beast Games. And now I'm gonna wake up next Thursday and I don't. I don't get to see what people think it's over.

**[1:26:14] Steven Bartlett:** They they describe them this in the Olympics as gold medal depression. Really. Yeah, they say, I think it's the I might butcher these numbers, but 70% of people after the Olympics, even if they won a gold medal, experience depression afterwards. Because they've lost their North Star that was I think we're giving them just getting meaning and direction.

**[1:26:29] MrBeast:** engaged. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm not. I I mean, I, I guess I'm playfully sad, but I don't. It's fine. We'll just I gotta. I have so much shit going on, I don't even really get to think about that kind of stuff.

**[1:26:39] Steven Bartlett:** And you're onto the next one.

**[1:26:40] MrBeast:** Uh, yeah, so we'll s well, Amazon, let's get season two in the books. Already, come on, let's sign a contract. I can't really talk about

**[1:26:48] Steven Bartlett:** It is the most, uh, me and Jack were talking about it earlier on. It is the most incredible thing that I think I've seen on TV. And I just think f- I just, I think I said to you on the phone the other day. I watch it knowing that unless you do another one, I will never see something on this magnitude in scale ever again.

**[1:27:02] MrBeast:** one wants to do something like that, I mean, cause it's fucking hard, man. And those sets and the the thing is the reason why a lot of reality TV doesn't feel that way. Um, and we could have obviously done much better storytelling, and we will when we do future iterations. But the the at its crux, like what people don't see, is like to have a thousand cameras recording, the amount of infrastru- like we broke a world record for most camera cables ran, like the like the most miles of camera cables.

**[1:27:28] MrBeast:** And like, and the millions of dollars we had to spend on storage, and millions of dollars in the control room, and the millions upon millions of dollars of hardware to edit it. And like having to bring in Adobe to custom change the Adobe software where you could actually have that many multicams, it's like it is the the actual infrastructure to actually be able to do that is incredibly, incredibly difficult. And um, that's why usually what they'll do is they'll be like, all right, here's a one hour, like, if you're filming a reality show, here's a one hour window.

**[1:27:56] MrBeast:** You know, they'll send out story producers, they'll put a camera on you, they'll be like, Yo, can you say this line? You're kind of our villain. This is what we're looking for. They'll kinda tell you what to say, and then they'll write the notes down and they'll catalog it for the editors. Whereas we're just like, fuck it, we're gonna be filming, you know, twenty four, seven, all these cameras, you guys be yourselves, we'll just capture it.

**[1:28:15] MrBeast:** Because you don't know when someone's gonna do something weird, you don't know when someone's gonna whisper to someone and form an alliance, you don't know. So you literally have to just be rolling, and you need these to be acceptable angles, so you need multiple, an A cam and a B cam, and all this coverage, which creates a monumental fuckload of footage. But that's what allowed us, that was, I mean, of amongst many things. That's one of the biggest, uh, competitive advantages we had when filming Beast Games is we put in the effort to to set up all this infrastructure where we could actually capture it and just tell the story how it is.

**[1:28:44] MrBeast:** Instead of having to use story producers to put words in people's mouths, but it's a fucking nightmare, man. Like, I had over 150 people editing that. I mean, we're combing through unfathomable amounts of footage and and everything. And I mean, e- even things from like the s uh, computer network and our local IT constantly crashing. Because there's just so much footage there. And like, if I were to send all the Beast Games footage to just one editor, it would probably be like $300,000 in hard drives.

**[1:29:09] MrBeast:** And, you know, and if you have 150 editors, it's just impossible. So you you spend millions of dollars and you build a central s uh server room, and so we have our own server racks and everything. And then you have them remote in there. But even then, just due to the sheer volume of footage, Adobe and everything was just constantly crashing. And it's like it was, it was a nightmare on the back end, but it's great because that's why we were able to tell what actually happened, why it feels different, because we were recording nonstop 24/7.

**[1:29:35] Steven Bartlett:** I was wondering, as I was watching it, if Amazon are aware of the f- the fact that you're just gonna give away the money like this. Like when you, like, flipped the coin and it adds another 5 million

**[1:29:44] MrBeast:** But that didn't affect them. I lost a ton of money filming the show, so that that came out of my pocket, cause, really, yeah, we were w- we spent way too much money on it. I lost tens of millions of dollars on that show.

**[1:29:53] Steven Bartlett:** really?

**[1:29:54] MrBeast:** Yeah, I'm an idiot.

**[1:29:56] Steven Bartlett:** Because the headlines came out as, like, Amazon give Mr. Beast 100 million to do show. So I'm thinking, okay, I'm doing the math, I'm thinking, okay. So he spent 20 odd million on the prizes.

**[1:30:07] MrBeast:** hm, yeah, we gave away

**[1:30:08] Steven Bartlett:** So there must be 80 million left or something.

**[1:30:10] MrBeast:** I mean, so episode one. We spent over $15 million on those towers, building them all like that was the most towers ever built, the most hydraulic press or whatever used. I mean, that that set was fucking crazy, man. We had to build a thousand towers that were 10 feet tall, safety test them all, put like, get it where they actually work. We had to literally hardwire them all and build like our own software where we could drop people.

**[1:30:32] MrBeast:** We had to put up all the screens. I mean, that was that, that was. That's like arguably one of the largest sets ever built in history. That was just episode one, and that's just like the construction of the set. That's not including, like you said, we we gave away over $20 million. I think over 2 million was in episode one, and then episode two. We have the city, which that was 14 million dollar set build, and that was, um, huge, I mean, cause that was a real city that they were living in, you know?

**[1:30:56] MrBeast:** Um, and then I could, Yeah, go, but just between the 20, whatever 2 million we gave away, plus those two sets, I mean, already right there, you're prob- you're at over $50 million.

**[1:31:06] Steven Bartlett:** How much did the whole thing cost?

**[1:31:08] MrBeast:** That I have been advised not to say because because people will hear big number and be like, Oh, well, I could have made a good show if I had that kind of money. But the thing is, they couldn't, because it's it. Money isn't everything, like building and managing it is is, you know, infinitely harder. But

**[1:31:24] Steven Bartlett:** Is it more than 100 million?

**[1:31:25] MrBeast:** yeah, of course, yeah. And Of course, I mean, well, I just told you how we spent 50 million, and, uh, that we're only two episodes in

**[1:31:30] Steven Bartlett:** so how out of pocket are you?

**[1:31:32] MrBeast:** tens of millions. Yeah, it was not a good financial decision to make Beast Games. I lost money. I would have more money if I didn't film it.

**[1:31:37] Steven Bartlett:** Any regrets?

**[1:31:38] MrBeast:** No, no, it's great, I mean, but for for me, I was, it was about making season one as good as possible. You know, I can't let the YouTube community down because that, you know, creators don't have a good rep when it comes to doing stuff on streaming platforms. And, uh, you know, I'm getting 200 million views, a video on average over the course of the 1st year. And I'm going to talk to these streaming platforms and they're like, Eh, we've been burned by creators before.

**[1:32:00] MrBeast:** I'm like, Bro, I, I'm not a TikToker that dances. I have a production company and I routinely make spectacles. And even me, these streaming platforms, they weren't taking serious. So I was like, fuck, like, if I fail, it's over, like no one's ever, no streaming platform's ever gonna touch a YouTuber ever again. So my big thing was just making sure this crushed. And, you know, now the doors are opening up. I mean, I'm getting calls from creators left and right, and they're like, Oh, yeah, streaming platforms, they wouldn't talk to me before, now they're coming.

**[1:32:26] MrBeast:** Like, I would try to get a meeting with them and they were like, No, now they're like, begging to, like, have meetings with them. And I already know of two creators that have signed deals, uh, just on the back end success of Beast Games. And probably, I mean, hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars is gonna flow into creators pockets just because of Beast Games in the next year.

**[1:32:43] Steven Bartlett:** Well, the on Rotten Tomatoes, which is not an an easy, an an easy critic to please. God, yeah, No, you you got you. It was like ninety approval from fans, which is pretty unheard of on Rotten Tomatoes.

**[1:32:52] MrBeast:** I know.

**[1:32:53] Steven Bartlett:** Um, but also I hear through the tr- the grapevine that it is on track to become one of Amazon's biggest shows of all time.

**[1:33:02] MrBeast:** Yeah, see, the problem is I have to wait for them to do a press release, so

**[1:33:06] Steven Bartlett:** Okay, yeah, well, I am, I'm Amazon, just talking to I got you. I So

**[1:33:10] MrBeast:** told him I'd be a good boy and not leak things.

**[1:33:13] Steven Bartlett:** so, but for a a a YouTuber, quote unquote YouTuber, Yeah, well, so then you'd be they they did responsible.

**[1:33:17] MrBeast:** release it. It was the number one unscripted show of all time. And then, yeah, I mean, the it's I. I don't think they'd mind me saying it's very the show's very evergreen. Like usually these shows get a lot of attention and then kinda like, teeter off. But ours is like, like over 700 new unique viewers are watching it every single day. Like, which is pretty crazy, cause if we maintain that, like, yeah, it's gonna shatter some pretty crazy records.

**[1:33:39] Steven Bartlett:** And what's the upside for you to continue promoting it now that it's done?

**[1:33:43] MrBeast:** Cause I put all this effort in, I want

**[1:33:44] Steven Bartlett:** Is that an issue?

**[1:33:44] MrBeast:** people to see it. Yeah, I don't get paid to like all the promotion I'm doing now, I'm not getting paid for.

**[1:33:48] Steven Bartlett:** Really?

**[1:33:49] MrBeast:** But I mean, but I mean, I guess the upside would be the better season one does, you know, the more money I get for season two, three, four, five, et cetera.

**[1:33:56] Steven Bartlett:** If I sit here with you in ten years time, Jimmy Yep, oh boy, and and everything went to plan. You're thirty six at that age.

**[1:34:07] MrBeast:** I already know what you're gonna ask. Yeah, I mean, I hate that kind of stuff, because if you ask me, the problem is, if you asked me this, like five years ago, I never would have said anything about Feastables or a lot of the stuff I'm doing now. And so the honest answer is, I don't know. I mean, I think in what I'm doing, you know, hopefully by then I have 2 billion subscribers on YouTube. You know, Beast Games is bigger than we ever imagined, hopefully, Feastables has gotten over a million kids out of child labor by then.

**[1:34:31] MrBeast:** Um, and, you know, and I probably will have two or three other businesses that I'm very passionate about that are hopefully crushing. And yeah, just I don't know, And personally, maybe I'll have a kid by then, I don't know. I mean, only time will tell. It's, uh, it won't be until I feel like I could actually have enough time to be a good dad. But I, I don't even know, man, I don't think about my personal life, I just think about winning and gotta build.

**[1:34:56] Steven Bartlett:** some photos I found that I loved Oh, okay, holy this one,

**[1:35:01] MrBeast:** shit, is this me or my brother? I mean,

**[1:35:04] Steven Bartlett:** this one as well.

**[1:35:05] MrBeast:** where'd you get these? Um, internet, These are on the internet?

**[1:35:09] Steven Bartlett:** these are like the really iconic photos that I from seem really interesting I, I, to me.

**[1:35:13] MrBeast:** I don't think I've ever seen this one. Really, Yeah, I don't.

**[1:35:17] Steven Bartlett:** do you recognize anything in that photo other than your mom?

**[1:35:19] MrBeast:** I don't. I was just thinking, like, what house am I even in? I might be at a military base, potentially, cause when we were younger, my both my parents were in the military, so they were traveling a lot. So this might just be like some random house. Interesting, I do recognize this, that cause this photo in the background, I'm sure it's blown up on screen. I think that that that was, yeah, that's on the hallway beside our bathroom.

**[1:35:40] MrBeast:** I haven't been to my mom's house in so long. Um, interesting.

**[1:35:45] Steven Bartlett:** You, you do so much for children, but if you could whisper in that child's ear something about

**[1:35:49] MrBeast:** Buy Bitcoin, you, what was it like two pennies back then? No, um, I know, cause the I wouldn't want, I wouldn't say anything if you gave me a microphone to talk to him. Cause the problem is I'd be. I'd be worried that it would change, you know, the outcome of of how I became. And like, I'm very, even though I know earlier on, I was probably sounded a little depressed, uh, cause shit's hard, but you know, I, I, I'm.

**[1:36:16] MrBeast:** I am happy with the position I am in, and I would be worried that, you know, like, this is definitely a very confused child that's not fitting in, that feels like a fucking freak. Not this young one, I don't know what the fuck he's thinking, but this one right here probably is around the age where I was like, Fuck, I'm just a fucking weirdo. I don't fit in with anyone. Why does no one wanna build businesses and succeed?

**[1:36:36] MrBeast:** But I think going through that journey was was important, and it's, uh, yeah, just gives me a lot of conviction with things. So I probably, if I wasn't allowed to say buy Bitcoin, I just wouldn't say anything.

**[1:36:47] Steven Bartlett:** what about Tahoe?

**[1:36:48] MrBeast:** Yeah, to my mom, I would, I mean, this was what's funny is these are. These are two different photos of my mom. You ha- like this version of my mom. I don't think there's anything I could say that would, I mean, cause she's she was in the military and they just beat like systems and order into your head. And she this is probably right around the time where we lost everything. And so this, you know, and she's at a very low point in her life.

**[1:37:14] MrBeast:** And so I don't think there's anything I could say that ever would have, like, convinced her that her lunatic son is heading down the right path. And, um, you know, but you know, you can see the difference here where she it's, it's almost indicative, where she's smiling in this photo. This is when I gave her a hundred grand. This is after we made it, this is after we had the whole conversation where she finally is like, Okay, I'll trust you, you know, there's a the the whatever.

**[1:37:36] MrBeast:** Twelve, thirteen years between these two photos was a very hard journey. Um, especially when I stopped going to college and I got straight zeros. And I mean, she thought, Oh, his life's fucking over, I just wasted 18 years of my life, you know? Um, so same thing, I don't, I don't. I don't think there's anything I could say that would have changed anything. Um, if anything, I would have just gave her a heart attack.

**[1:37:56] Steven Bartlett:** Does she do you tell her now what she means to you and how you appreciate of course. Yeah, her? we were, we You give it

**[1:37:59] MrBeast:** were great. back. Yeah, and she's she's very happy and like, Yeah, we're we're in a really good spot now. I I love my mom, I mean, cause obviously I wouldn't be here without her, you know what I mean, if she didn't work multiple jobs and do all the things she did to put me where I am. I mean, even little things like, you know, she, uh, would give me like some months, like, you know, twenty thirty dollars.

**[1:38:21] MrBeast:** And then I would take that money and use that to, like, buy stuff to like, help make videos or or whatever. Um, and e- even just the fact that we had internet, you know what I mean, and things like that, which, you know, I mean, pretty basic now. It wasn't as common back then. You you used to get a phone call and you're like, house internet, I don't know if you would go out. Yeah, and so, like, you know, um, it wasn't the best position, but she gave me all the tools I needed to succeed.

**[1:38:45] MrBeast:** Not, you know, on purpose, but she must be so

**[1:38:48] Steven Bartlett:** so shocked.

**[1:38:49] MrBeast:** well, she's used to it now. But yeah, I mean, when they come up, I mean, it was, yeah, I mean, imagine being her, you know what I mean? She used to when I turned 16. Like, she couldn't afford to buy me a car, she couldn't, she couldn't afford, like, uh, the minivan we had, like, it was fucking piece of shit, like, needed a repair, she couldn't afford it. Like smoke was coming out the front of it.

**[1:39:11] MrBeast:** I mean, she was a an absolute mess. And then she comes home and I'm just like, I'm making YouTube videos, fuck math, homework, mom. And, you know, and she's just like, she, I think she was making 40,000 a year, cause I, uh, we didn't talk about finances much when we were younger. But I remember I got 40,000 dollar brand deal, and then she told me, That's how much I make in a year, and I was like, Holy shit, I didn't.

**[1:39:34] MrBeast:** At the time, I was like, I thought you made way more than forty grand a year. Um, and then I was like, Why the fuck are you working? Like, I'm getting paid this per video now on brand deals. And so, um, yeah,

**[1:39:47] Steven Bartlett:** What an incredible woman. I know she's What an incredible woman.

**[1:39:49] MrBeast:** great from everything she went through to know she sh- she just needs to be happy. I try not to stress her out, she's been through enough stress like her. Her job is I've, I've been making her not make, I mean, she wants to do it. But like exercise routinely, do all the like system, like body health scans, and, you know, get on the vitamin grind and everything. Cause, like, I'm not having kids anytime soon, but obviously when I do have kids, I really want her to be involved and she needs to be able to play with them and things like that.

**[1:40:14] MrBeast:** So I'm like, you know, stress is gonna kill you, you're not allowed to be stressed. You need to do all these health protocols, you need to be like, cause, you know, you might be in your 70s when I have kids. Like, you need to be able to move around, which means you might potentially be 80 when they're like 14 or 15. Like, come on, like, what you do now is indicative will represent how active you'll be able to be in my kids lives.

**[1:40:33] MrBeast:** So, like, oh, and we do the have these conversations in a playful way, so she's taking her health very serious for the future.

**[1:40:39] Steven Bartlett:** You're, um, not a man that seems to have many fears, but that appears to be one of them, a fear that we both share.

**[1:40:44] MrBeast:** Yeah, exactly, I mean, hope she'll just never die. My mom's gonna live forever, we'll be fine. Brian Johnson

**[1:40:54] Steven Bartlett:** We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for.

**[1:40:58] MrBeast:** Okay, do do I get hit with the question 1st? or

**[1:41:01] Steven Bartlett:** You get hit with the question 1st. Would you rather die with a sound body or a sound mind?

**[1:41:09] MrBeast:** sound body or sound mind? Ooh, I assume if I chose body, then, like, that would be like dementia or something on the mind. Um, that's hard. Die sound body or sound mind. I mean, what are you? If you don't have your mind, I would say mine, to be honest. Amen, Yeah, Jimmy, thank you, I doubt you to write my question now.

**[1:41:31] Steven Bartlett:** you do. I wanna say something to you, though. Um, I have to give you a lot of credit because so many people like us, like our teams, we have stolen so much from you. We've stolen your principles, your mentality, and it's made us be better creators, which has allowed us to live the lives that we get to live and do these things that we we love the most. And, um, there's always a cost, I think, to being different and to being w-

**[1:41:52] MrBeast:** hm, amen. weird. There's an upside, Yeah,

**[1:41:54] Steven Bartlett:** but there's also a really, really, really big cost. And it you you pay that cost most when you're younger. And you you have to fit into the the system and you don't get to choose who you hang around with and stuff. Um, but then as an adult, as you said, we all then clap for the s, the unique ones, the weird ones, and we steal from them and we aspire to be them and we learn from them.

**[1:42:11] Steven Bartlett:** And you have, in the very short amount of time that I've been speaking to you for, like a week or something, have blown my mind open. I got to see the behind the scenes of Beast Games, and my entire mind, as I sat there on the sofa, I like, remember where I was sat when I saw the behind the scenes just exploded. And you made me, um, in that moment, realize how much I'd limited myself. As someone that I considers themselves to be really ambitious, I'd limited myself.

**[1:42:34] Steven Bartlett:** And so I wanted to say thank you, because you're not just doing that for me, you're doing that for tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people, all at the same time. And you're giving them the the roadmap, but also a blueprint and the mentality and the belief that they too don't have to live the life that school or so the system has told them they

**[1:42:52] MrBeast:** hidden the box.

**[1:42:53] Steven Bartlett:** have. Exactly. Agreed. Thank So thank you for the kind you so much, words. honestly, cause we need more people like you, and I'm I'm your biggest fan.

**[1:42:59] MrBeast:** Thank you.

**[1:42:59] Steven Bartlett:** I really, really appreciate you, thank you.

**[1:43:01] MrBeast:** All right, let's see if we can break into it one more.

**[1:43:02] Steven Bartlett:** You're so funny. Some of the most successful, fascinating and insightful people in the world have sat across from me at this table. And at the end of every conversation, I ask them to leave a question behind in the famous diary of a CEO. And it's a question designed to spark the kind of conversations that matter most, the kind of conversations that can change your life. We then take those questions and we put them on these cards.

**[1:43:25] Steven Bartlett:** On every single card, you can see the person who left the question, the question they asked, and on the other side, if you scan that barcode, you can see who answered it next. Something I know a lot of you have wanted to know, and the only way to find out is by getting yourself some conversation cards, which you can play at home with friends and family, at work with colleagues, and also with total strangers on holiday.

**[1:43:47] Steven Bartlett:** I'll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below, and you can get yours at the diary dot com.