MrBeast Isn’t Cute. Here’s His Brutal Business Lessons.

Let's go.

So here we go. I have it here. This is the MrBeast secret.

I don't know if I should be concerned.

I guess you faked going to college.

Oh, that's a juicy one.

On your 100th video, you wrote your stats.

I did do that. I remember that.

It's not like at 100 you were rich and famous.

People say it takes 10,000 hours to master something. I'm like, that's when you start.

But you know, like, nobody does this, right?

I don't understand why.

So we want to do an exercise to see if I can come up with a viral idea, but with a budget of $1,000.

Yeah, exactly.

So we're going to do a random word generator.

They're going to think this is real. All right, so it gave us the word grandmother. So what's a viral idea with a grandmother? I mean, bro, if you actually want like a mega banger.

Jimmy, what's up?

How's it going, boys?

Hey, how you doing?

Let's go.

What I like about you is that your approach to whether it's YouTube, selling chocolate, losing weight, whatever it is.

Yeah.

You have a certain mentality. I think you were wired differently. I think in 20 years I'm going to be able to look back. I'm going to show my kids and be like, yeah, right before Jimmy was president, he came on my podcast. We sat at this little table. So I honestly think you're wired differently and I want to share those with the audience that anybody could use, whether you want to be a swimmer, you want to be a YouTuber, you want to be a business person, whatever. I also called your assistant, called your thumbnail guy. They didn't even tell me that. What?

And so here Here we go.

I have it here. This is the MrBeast Secrets.

And so I don't know if I should be concerned.

We're gonna go through these. These are 9 of what I consider to be your rules. Now you could tell me if, if these are bullshit.

Are you making this a game?

He's laying them out in front of me. Here you go. So we're gonna play this game, and each one of these is to me a rule of MrBeast. It's something we've seen about the way you operate, and I want you to kind of talk about these. So this is number 1.

Okay. Burn the boats. Burn the boats.

So burn the boats. Your mom wanted you to go to college and I guess you faked going to college. You pretended to go. What, what is the story?

Oh, that, that's a juicy one. So, well, first off, we didn't have the kind of money to go to a real college, so it was just like a free community college. Um, but yeah, my mom, because she grew up pretty traditionally, they, you know, military, worked her whole life. But then 2008, she lost everything when the real estate collapsed. And so lost all her savings and stuff. Like we, we went bankrupt and had to file for bankruptcy. Like, so she's like very paranoid. She just wants her, her kid to like go get a job and like not fuck up and not do any— she's very risk averse. And so that was a constant tug and pull because I'm like, I'm going to be a YouTuber or homeless. And she'd be like, but then you could be homeless. I'm like, okay, I mean, it is what it is. I don't care. I'm going to be a YouTuber. And she, it just never clicked in her head. And to her, it's like, if he doesn't get a college degree, he's like, my son's a failure. I just wasted 18 years. Like he's, he's not going to be able to provide. So for for her it was like either college or my life's ruined. 'Cause that's just how her brain's wired. And because she went through so much. And so when I was like, I don't want to go, she was just like, then leave, get outta the house. Like, I can't, I just can't bear the sight of my son just sitting around and, and, you know, just throwing his life away. And I didn't have enough money to move out. So I was like, frick. And luckily the community college is so cheap. It's not like she was wasting money on it. So I was like, okay, I'll go to college. And then I mean, I just flat out lied to her. Like, I was like, I'll, I'll do it. But, but you know, I had no intention of actually doing it. And so I went just to see what it was like. And I was like, well, maybe I'm like being a little dramatic. And I went to class for like a week. Horrible. It was so boring. I mean, I swear, like the teacher was just reading out of the book and I was like, why, why do I have to? I could just read the book. Like, what are we doing? You know? And I said that to some of the people around me and they're like, yeah, that's what education is. Stop complaining. And I'm like, I just was, my head hurt. And so then I was like, it is what it is. Like, I have like a 6-month time clock. I have to make enough money where I can move out because once my mom knows I'm, I'm screwed, she's going to kick me out of the house. Honestly, I would want to leave the house because I know it's going to make her depressed and very sad.

And so you just didn't go after that?

Yeah. So I would go every day, go, and then I would just sit in like this, like I had a really old like Dodge Durango that was super used with a lot of miles. And I would just sit in the Dodge Durango and like edit videos and I film at night.

And I'd come back and be like, school was great.

Yeah. I was just like, yeah, you know, she'd be like, how's college? And I'd be like, you know, and then move on. I just wouldn't tell her that I'd stopped going.

But you burned the boats. You're like, all right, I got 6 months.

Exactly.

I got to either make it or shit gets real.

And then somehow I figured it out. I don't even remember. But we— I had a month where I made $20 grand right before it was time. Like the window was almost up. And then I just told my mom, I was just like, I haven't been going. I'm failing. I found a place down the road. It's $700 a month. Sorry. She's like, all right.

Hey, real quick, I'm trying something special for this episode. Let me know if you like it. We were talking to Jimmy and before these episodes, I do 30, 40 hours of research and prep, and I make detailed notes that for me make it super easy to remember all the key takeaways. Well, for the first time, I'm actually going to give those notes to you so you can get them for free in the description below. It's my notes, the key takeaways from this episode. Go ahead and grab it. It's down in the description below. Is this kind of a strategy for you where you're like, I don't think it's a strategy.

It's more my personality. I'm a very obsessive person. Like, I, if you told me to like do 100 things, I would struggle at it. But if you told me to think on this one thing every second of the day for the next 10 years, like I can do that pretty easily. So I like to just obsess over something. I like to dream about it, wake up, think about it, think about it, think about it, think about it, think about it more, work on it, work on it, work on it, think about it, think about it, dream about it, and just do that every single day. Like that, for, to me, it comes very naturally. So what was your observation?

We just went to Walmart with Jimmy.

We did.

Give me your— we haven't talked about this.

Most of your audience probably doesn't even know. I sell chocolate. We have Feastables. It's a chocolate company. And I'm sure we'll go into that at some point. Yeah.

Feastables. This episode is brought to you by Feastables.

So I took him to a Walmart just because it's my favorite thing to do in my free time. I go walk up and down chocolate aisles in different retailers. And so I brought him along.

He was telling us everything about merchandising, everything, not just about Feastables, but about competitive chocolate companies. He was showing us, like, talking numbers of sales.

Dude, I thought, like, influencers, it's just like you give them a product, they're like, oh, this? Okay guys, hey, buy this. You know the chocolate game inside and out. He was in the aisles like reconfiguring the SKUs, making everything straight.

I like landed in DC for a layover to then fly to North Carolina. And then I got off the plane to go to my connecting flight and I was like, wait a minute. And I just opened up like Google Maps and I searched Walmart. I was like, I can just drive there and hit 25 Walmarts on the way home. And so then I, it was like 10 AM. And then I just skipped my connecting flight, just rented a car, and I drove from DC, visited every Walmart on the way to North Carolina. I didn't get home till like 9 PM.

And I just like, it was like, I wonder if the CEO of Hershey's has done that.

Probably not.

I wonder if he's doing it. And the guy, your friend who was like, have you gone to Walmart with him? They're like, he's like, yeah, I don't know. Jimmy has like a badge. Like if something's out of stock, he just goes in the back and restocks it himself. Do they give you like, do you have some way of like, well, it's a, it's a vendor's license.

So a lot of people have vendor's license, like beverage, like Coca-Cola. They, so they have a dress code. Direct sales network where you can fit like theoretically 10,000 chocolate bars on a pallet. You can only fit 500 Coke cans. So it's like a lot harder to store 10,000 cans of Coke than it is 10,000 chocolate bars. So for that, they have Coke trucks at some Walmarts they go to every single day and they'll just take the product and go put it in the back for the Walmart employees and then they'll go stock the shelves and everything. So Walmart's pretty transparent about that, which I was, when I first got into the CPG game, I was like, no shot. Like they're just going to let us do it. But yeah, if you're, products out of stock on the shelf, you have a vendor's license, you can go in the back, scan it in and put it on the shelf.

Smart.

Yeah. I mean, you could argue it's not a good use of your time and I don't know why I do it. It's kind of therapeutic. I just love going to Walmart and fixing the product. I like just observing it, like what it looks like on the shelf, seeing what the competition's doing, just seeing who's grabbing it and buying it.

It's like those memes, like men won't go to therapy, but they'll do this. This is your thing, right?

Organize a chocolate aisle in Target or Walmart.

So let's do, uh, Rule number 2, this one, uh, go ahead. You can, we can reveal this. I think you know what this one is.

Rule of 100. I know.

I gave it a name. So this is, I'm gonna quote you on this. So this was somebody, you know, I'm sure you could ask this a million times.

Okay.

How do I, you know, what advice do you have for me as a YouTuber? Or how do I be successful on YouTube? And you said this thing that to me was like, every creator should print this and put it on their wall. Oh God.

What did I say?

This applies to everything. You go, look, Your first video's not gonna get views, period.

You're taking— make 100 videos, improve something every time on the 100th one, then ask questions.

To me, that's the rule of 100 is before you come ask for advice, it's like, have you made 100 videos and every time try to make one thing better? And that, that's like also very achievable too. It's not like some insurmountable thing to do. It's like, all right, I'm gonna make my intro better, I'm gonna make my editing better, or whatever it is. And that, and the, the beauty of what you said was, I, I think the way you said it, you were like, If you do that 100 times and I say, come talk to me after you've done the 100, people, 99% of people just don't do it. And then the 1% of people who do, they don't need me after that. Like, you figure it out, which is—

it's more of a metaphorical mindset because that's the thing. It's, uh, most people who like need advice is just go do it and learn through failure. I'm a big fan of just trial by fire. Go do it, fuck up a bunch of times and like get 0.1% better and then do that for a couple of years.

I have a couple other pictures to show you. So this is one. This is one of your thumbnails.

Oh God.

During your rise.

That's still on my channel.

So I went and I looked at your, your, your first 100. I was like, all right, let me see. He said the rule of 100. Let me go look at his first 100. And I saw this and like today you're probably known as like one of the best, smartest thumbnail people in the world, right?

Black Ops 2 shotgun gameplay with commentary, PS4 or Xbox.

Just, I suck at making thumbnails, which is honestly dope because most people, if they feel like they're bad at something, they just don't do it. They shy away.

Yeah.

And then you have this other one, which is like your 100th video. On your 100th video, you wrote your stats.

You go, oh my God, subscribers. I did do that. I remember that.

730 subscribers. So on your rule of 100, it's not like at 100 you were rich and famous. Yeah, right.

And honestly, yeah, probably 150 of them are me asking people on Xbox Live to subscribe. Like when I'd be playing Call of Duty and like a game chat, I'd be like, yo, subscribe to my channel.

So what do you see people get wrong about the rule of 100?

Most people just aren't as obsessed with improving things. They get like pigeonholed in the box and they're like, oh, I just need to improve. I mean, this applies to everything, but I guess specifically content, they'll be like, oh, I just need to write better jokes or I need to have better camera or this. And then it's, it's not, it's just a mindset. Like every single, every single thing can be improved. There's no such thing as a perfect video, you know, from, I mean, you can go as low as you want to like the coloring to what you're wearing to you know, how you speak to how long the video is to— I mean, there's nothing that you can't improve. And so like just having that mindset where you're always trying to get better and like applying that to everything across the board, not just narrowing in on this one little thing. But also with this, honestly, a lot of people are mentors, they just don't listen. And so they'll ask me for advice and like the ones who will listen, they'll take their revenue from like $30K to $400K a month or their goal subs or whatever it is. I can show them how to hit it. but a lot of times people ask for advice, I'll say it and they'll, it'll be like in one ear and out the other. And like, so those are the worst.

I use this because I was studying, um, Seinfeld recently.

Uh-huh.

And I don't know if you know, Seinfeld has this daily thing. Seinfeld's now like 70 years old. He's still like in the standup comedy game. He's the only standup billionaire like ever. So he's the only comedian who's a billionaire. It's pretty crazy. And so I was like, all right, what can I learn from Seinfeld? And one of the things he did was he was like, every day for like the last 45 years, I wake up and my first 2 hours of the day I write. He's like, I write jokes. He's like, guess what? If you want to get good at jokes, you write jokes every day. And he's like, every day I just try to make it one better than the other. They talk about writer's block. He's like, that's nonsense. He goes, my rule is I sit down, I don't have to write, I just can't do anything else. And he's like, and then that makes me write. And I've been doing that. And he has this yellow legal pad of all the pages he ever did. And he literally laid them out on a road and he like paved the whole road. It became like a yellow brick road, basically. It's incredible.

Do you know how many hours that is? 2 hours a day for 45 years? 30,000 hours, right?

Yeah.

That's, you know, that's the thing. People say it takes 10,000 hours to master something. I'm like, 10,000 hours, that's when you start. Like, that's the mindset you need with like the Rule of 100. It's not because 10,000 hours, what is that? It's only like 8 hours a day for 4 years.

Yeah, exactly.

It's not that, that crazy. But to a lot of people, you know, that's the saying, 10,000 hours and you're a master. I think it should be 100,000 hours, to be honest. I think 10 is too easy.

So if Seinfeld is like locking himself in a room and saying, I can't do anything but write jokes, do you ever have to do that? Or is it just—

No, this is just what I live for.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I just, I wake up, I walk in the studio, and normally this whiteboard over here, we erased it. I guess that wouldn't be leaked, but it'd have all the businesses, all the piles, all the bottlenecks, anything I could do to push things forward. And it's all listed out and there'd be probably 300 or 400 things. And then we'd go through at the start of each week and we just pick what needs to be done to what should we prioritize, et cetera, et cetera. So it'd be like Feastables. It's like, you know, ethical sourcing. Here's 3 things that need to be done. Here's all the major bottlenecks that if you stepped in, you could push it forward. Content, toys, Lunchly, whatever. Um, so that's more how I structure my days is like, because we just have a lot going on and it's just like making sure what I'm working on is the most efficient thing. Because if there's like 10 people sitting around waiting on me to make a decision to go work, that shouldn't be a Friday thing. That should be a fucking Monday at 9:01 AM thing. You know what I mean? So it's very even, just figure out what I need to accomplish in a week. And then even the order of what we do is very important.

You wanna do this third one?

Yeah, you wanna split it, Jimmy? Let's do this bad boy. You can make anything viral.

So in your, can we talk about your leaked?

Yeah, of course. The document. Yeah, you did a podcast on it.

So we wanna do an exercise.

Exercise is a challenge.

A challenge.

A challenge.

To see, uh, if I can come up with a viral idea.

Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

The problem here, I'm down for this. The only, the ironic thing is The only one here who will actually know if it's viral or not is me.

You're grading yourself here.

I know.

It's that meme where Obama's putting the medal on himself. Exactly.

Because you guys could be like, I don't think that'll get 100 million views. And I'll just go, no.

But here's the stipulation. Take a normal thing.

Yeah.

Make it an interesting viral idea, but with a budget of $1,000. Because it's easy to say, oh, MrBeast would just put a million dollars on the line. Okay, $10 grand. $10 grand.

Okay.

And you said you used to use random word generators.

I did all the time.

So we gave you a random word generator. If you hit, uh, I don't know what it is. Generate random words.

You could pick, you can flip through a few until you find a word.

That's an actual thing.

Like, I know. So to give a little context to your viewers, the thing is like, you could spend 7 days. This is something I've said on other podcasts. I think this drives it home. I spent 7 days buried alive, right? That got hundreds of millions of views. Me laying in a coffin. It's like, holy shit. Put a coffin 10 feet underground, cover with 20,000 pounds of dirt. I'm literally in a coffin for a week. That's, that's cool. That's viral. That was 7 days of me laying down. I theoretically could have, instead of doing that, laid in just a bathtub for 7 days. No one would've gave a fuck. Like that video would never, but in theory it's the same amount of time, at least from a filming perspective, logistically maybe not. But in theory, both are me just laying down for 7 days, but one is super fucking viral, the other no one cares about. And so that's like the power of ideas. Like, oh, an idea with the right idea, you can do the exact same amount of work as a different idea, but get 50x the return. So that's, that's why I'm so adamant about generating good ideas. All right, so I just hit random, create random words. Chocolate. They're gonna think this is really— it's in chocolate. This is a random word generator, bro. They're not gonna— they're gonna think this whole thing's fake. Uh, grandmother. All right, so they gave us the word grandmother. So what's a viral idea with a grandmother, um, that could be done for $10,000? I mean, bro, if you actually want like a mega banger, I would do, um, I, uh, Completing a 100-year-old's bucket list.

Oh, so you meet a grandma.

Yeah, I'd find a grandma. I mean, if you really wanted to, I wouldn't say I would do this, but if you wanted like a viral, viral video, I'd find a grandmother who's like terminally ill and I'd take her and her grandkids and come, you know, do everything on their bucket list for them. Like, bro, that's a cool idea. Like, don't do this title, but she will die in 30 days, so I fulfilled all her wishes. That, you click that.

That's so good. Hold on, we gotta do another one. That's, that's okay. You passed. You passed the test. I just—

I like— this is a lifestyle. I can make things.

I like the magic tricks.

Drawing. You want to do that one? Yeah.

Drawing.

Okay. The next one here was drawing. I mean, well, so you want it for 10 grand because the first thing I thought of is for drawing is drawing the world's largest picture. But that would be more than 10 grand. Actually, weirdly enough, a lot of videos go viral on YouTube where people are just like customizing phones or things like that. I depends if I'm like a really good artist, I would do like TikToks go super viral where they like find two, like a guy, a couple on a street and they like sketch them.

Stop them.

But, but, but they, they sketch them like really ugly, but they like stop really beautiful people and then they turn their artwork around. They're like, what the fuck? And those, those do really well. Like it'll be like a very handsome guy, but they'll do their face like really round and like with buck teeth. And it's always those do really well on TikTok. I've seen some get 100 million views. So that would be one way you could do drawing. I mean, even it's just, if you're a good enough artist, like, and if you're not, just get good and study and be good. I would like, you could design like a hospital floor or something for like Make-A-Wish kids and like do like cool artwork or something. If there's like some film you could put up over, draw it and like do a design that they just peel off a couple days later, like that wouldn't be that expensive. And that'd be cool. Like I surprise Make-A-Wish kids with, you know, their favorite characters or something. Yeah. I mean, the— how many do you want?

When you're brainstorming, are you usually just kind of by yourself? Are you like, what's your creative— like if I said, Jim, you gotta come up with something, what would you do to set yourself up to come up with great ideas?

Yeah. 'Cause in transparency, I have teams now and so I don't, I'm not as like, I used to do this all myself. Now I pay a lot of people to do it. Uh, and I just like work with them on the back 10%. But I mean, yeah. Uh, the, the, if you really wanna come up with like great ideas, you need to surround yourself with other very creative people. I mean, I, I'm not going to say their names, but I have at least 5 people that I would, if I really needed to solve something, I would call, I'd fly them down. It would be boom, boom, boom, boom, me in the middle. And we could solve anything, like creatively in terms of virality or anything like that. They're just like really, really good. Like one's good with thumbnails, one's like the smartest guy I've ever met when it comes to titles. Another, he's just a fucking freak and he says the craziest stuff, but it's very like inspirational. And so you need like that, like shotgun that's constantly shooting out stuff and then like another guy, we would describe him more as like a sniper. Like he's not gonna say much, but when he says it, you're like, dang, that's good. Um, so yeah, I just have like my go-to people who are like very creative and like, yeah, they just pull the best out of me. It's very important you have that. Like, I think, didn't Steve Jobs call it in like Creative Inc, like, uh, his think tank? Did he?

Yeah. And they had a thing where they were like at Pixar, they have a book called Creativity Inc.

I think. Oh, Creativity Inc. Yeah.

And he said, it's not, people think, oh, we just come up with the best ideas right away. He goes, no, it's, he goes, the creative process is taking something that sucks. And removing suck. And so he is like, yeah, we sit there, we watch the first version and it sucks. And then we, we trust each other enough to be like, yeah, that kind of sucks, but here's what sucks about it. Go back, try again, try again, try again. He said by the end, by the 10th thing, we've just removed all the suck and all that's left is the good bits.

Uh, yeah, I was just at—

do you buy that? Is that—

yeah, I was just at Pixar, is at the Steve Jobs Building and I was just with some of the employees while they're working and just seeing how they go about it. And like they're doing daily reviews over there, which is like, like, you know, every day, like what they work on, they're showing to like the director and stuff and getting like real-time feedback. And they're very like egoless. And it was very cool to like see their culture and how they go about it. Like, cause they, I mean, in terms of animated films, they're second to none.

Right.

I remember a couple of years ago when we talked to you, you said that coming up with ideas was still the thing that you felt like you had the most trouble handing off to anyone else. It was like the thing that you still just like excelled most at and couldn't get any else?

Oh, I've trained so many great people at that now. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I, I have enough ideas for the next 5 years, so that's not a bottleneck at all. Like I have too many, like, uh, I, I would just start listing 'em off, but then the problem is everyone would steal 'em. So, yeah.

Yeah. Okay, great. Let's go to the next one.

All right.

So we have, that's 3 of the rules. Number 4, I'll flip this one.

Cloning. Yes.

All right. So the, the backstory of this one is last year when we were doing our camper event, basically a room full of business people, billionaires, all whatever. And you started describing how you run your company and you, you were 25 years old at the time. You're not, now you're 26.

With these people double my age and 20 times the experience of me.

Correct.

And so they're, we're listening and we're like, so who is this guy? Why this guy's been following you around all day? Who is this? And how do you run this? How do you train people? And you were like, you described this process of cloning and I swear I saw like 5 billionaires make a note to themselves. So can you describe what is your cloning principle?

What does that mean?

Yeah.

Well, the thing is like as a founder, 'cause I assume a lot of your viewers run businesses.

Founders and investors.

Yeah. Like you're constantly having to put out fires. You're constantly having to do things. And that's a flaw. You're always going to be putting, like having to work on stuff, but you should view anytime you have to work on things as a flaw. And it's like, how do you, what's the fastest way to stop working on something? Every time you work on it, have someone on your hip and have them learn how to do it, essentially clone you to do that task. And so anytime I've, I don't ever work alone anymore because anytime I'm doing something, that's a problem. And like, someone should be doing this in 6 months. And so that's, that's just like the cheat code to doing it.

And it's cloning, not training.

Why? Well, we would call it now that I have hundreds of employees now, I think we're probably closing in on 500. So it's a lot more training. But clones are more like the all-in people who are going to like run your company one day and make high— like and have the upside to like live with you. And, you know, because like someone who's making $40,000 a year, they're not going to live with you and follow you around 15 hours a day.

And, you know, early on you had that, you had people—

literally, I still have people like that, but it's like that's, that's just a small subset of it. So yeah, of the, on the core team. Yeah, 100%. It's just like, the thing is, the more you know about everything going on, the better, because a lot of what you do in one part of one vertical of business in finance or in this or that affects other parts. And so the more you understand the whole business, the more you understand the ripples you create across things, the better efficiently and better you can do these kinds of things. And so just having a clone who knows everything about the whole business as opposed to just one section just makes it where they can just make decisions so much faster. And they can cut through red tape and it just makes it so much easier for you to just like, because like when you're in hypergrowth scale, you don't know like what the next fire is going to be or the next things is to fix. And so you just have a couple versions of yourself. It's just so nice because it's like, oh, this thing over here in editing is falling apart. All right, clone that. You followed me around for the last 3 years. You know what I would do? Just go fix it. You know what I mean? So I don't have to go fix it.

Every part of a company is not like, it's not like you look at a thing, you're like editing, editing is its own thing. No, editing is people editing, right? Everything is people. And so what I liked about the way you were doing it was I think on the outside people hear this, they're like, follow you around all the time, live with you. That's crazy. I would, you know, that's, that's harsh. I met the people doing it and they were like, this is the greatest opportunity.

Exactly.

I came here for this. I wanted to, I wanna be great. He's given me the opportunity to be great. Not everybody wants this.

You can either, I really want this. You can either go to college for like, not even 4 years, go to college for 3 years, or you can follow Sean around for 3 years. And like just all day, every day. And the version of you that follows Sean around for 3 years will make way more money. You'll be way more experienced, way more valuable to him. Or you could just go to any one of his competitors and you'll make 10 times more than if you guys—

Have you ever heard the Warren Buffett cloning story?

No.

So Warren Buffett, when he was young, he wanted to learn investing, right? So he goes to the guy who wrote the book on investing, Benjamin Graham, and he's like, uh, Mr. Graham, I want to— I'm Warren Buffett. I'm a big fan of your work. I want to work for you. I will work harder than anyone you know. And you know what? I'm willing to work for you for free because this matters so much. I want to learn from you. And Ben Graham goes, son, your price is too high. And he was— Warren was like surprised. And then later he's like, he was so right. I got so much more out of working every day at Ben Graham's hip than him getting my free labor.

Yeah.

Actually, the value exchange was like completely— he was correct.

Yeah.

And I, that always stuck with me because it's so true. Like, dude, How do you, if you want to learn, that's the best way you could possibly learn. And as a founder, you know, ultimately you, you want judgment to scale. So it's like if people in your company can think, what would Jimmy do? And get the right answer, now you got two Jimmys, right? Yeah. You know, like for the most part they can make decisions. When it's wrong.

And then other times it should be like, what would Jimmy do? Okay, Jimmy's not always right. In this instance, he's an idiot. Let's go call him out on it.

What will he say when I tell him what I'm actually gonna do?

Yeah. And then, they think even one step further, which is like my, like, long-term clones are great. They'll be like, okay, well, Jimmy's gonna want data backed. He's not gonna care about an opinion. So I'm gonna just go do all the research and grab the data. And then they'll, they'll ask me something and I'll say blah, blah. And they'll be like, I knew you were gonna say that. And they'll hand me things. I'll be like, well, what about this? And they'll be like, I knew you were gonna say that. And I'll be like, oh, great.

And by the way, it's not just you. Even other per— like, there was like a guy who, he was also cloning people. He's like, yeah, I'm the, I'm the main guy for this part of the business. So I need to be training people. So this is how I'm doing it.

Zero to one is so difficult, but then one to three, you know, like is, is so much easier. So that's like the hard part is like Training that for like downloading, I'll pick a random thing like writing the videos, right? Like obviously I used to write all the videos myself, taking all that and getting where someone else could do it without, while keeping the essence of like what makes it viral and what makes it good and not feeling too corporate and scripted because we're not scripted, et cetera. Like going from 0 to 1, that took like 5 years. But then, you know, him training the next 2 people is great because I don't have to do it and he trains those 2 and those 2 train the next. And so it's just like that first clone is so imperative and then they can do the rest.

That's great. You want to do the next one?

All right, sure.

Possible is possible. Fuck yeah.

Impossible is possible. All right, so this is— I asked your— I'm friends with Rohan, the guy who runs your TikTok.

Yeah.

I go, tell me the thing where you realize this guy's built different. This guy thinks differently than a normal person would. And I was like, that's the story I want. And he goes, I don't know how to explain it. This is the quote. Jimmy will give you an impossible mission, but he'll say it in a way that makes it seem totally possible. And then he leaves the room and you're like, goddamn, this is impossible. He goes, for example, Jimmy came to me and said, I need 10 million TikTok followers a month, Rohan. He goes, and every month I told Jimmy it's impossible like 100 times. And he told me do it 500 times. He told me to do it 500 times.

I think we had 2 months where you're getting 10 million.

That's what he told me. He goes, he goes, he goes, I didn't do it most months, but I did do it like, you know, 2 months. And we got way further than we ever would have got had he not laid down like kind of this impossible gauntlet. So that's one story. I'm sure there's like a thousand of these, but like, do you live by this? I guess, how would you, how would you talk about that?

Well, I don't try to just give people KPIs that I think are impossible just to torture them. I just like, I think most people, they're, when you ask them to do something like very incredibly difficult, like when I first said I want to bury myself alive for a week, like people's first inclination is just, that's not possible. And like technically almost anything is possible. It's so, it's just like, so my first thing is just like, why do you say that? Like, let's go through the gambit. And then they'll always be like, well, it's just not possible. And then you just have to be like, go do the fucking research. And then they'll come back and it's like, is it too expensive? Because we can figure out ways. Is it too unsafe? Well, we can navigate safety or whatever it is. And so it's like, I hate when people tell me something can't be done. Just tell me the cost and like what the problem is. Where the bottleneck is. Yeah. And then if like, then let's look at those and objectively if it's too expensive or something that's not worth investing the time into or what, then that's fine. Then I'll kill it. But just tell me something. Because like half the stuff I did, if I just listened to people and they told me it wasn't possible, like I wanted the Eiffel Tower for a video. Not possible. Why? Why is that not possible? Go get the fucking Eiffel Tower. Like until the head of the president of France tells you no, it's possible. Like I don't know what you want.

And when he says no, ask his kids. See if they have some sway over him.

Well, ask the given while you're on the phone. Like we just filmed a video where we had the three pyramids of Egypt and we were like, you know, spending like we were there for 100 hours. This crazy video. We explored the pyramids. It's like my favorite video ever. Same thing. Like, you can't just have the three pyramids. I'm like, did Egypt tell you that? Like, what do you mean? Go make some phone calls. You know what I mean? And it's just constantly, even today when I'm not with my core group that I've trained very well, it's just always like, you can't do that or no. Or they'll go make a phone call or okay, fine, Jimmy. We'll go try to get the pyramids. They'll go away. They'll come back a day later. You can't have the pyramids. I'm like, who'd you call? This tourist guy who like works at the pyramids. I'm like, okay, call the head of tourism. Like, how do you get their number? Okay, well, that's different. You didn't ask me how to get the head of tourism's number. You asked me, you just told me it was not possible. Like, so now, like, please don't do that again. Like, we gotta figure out what the problems are. Let's figure it out. And then we make calls and you figure it out. And next thing you know, it's, and so it's just like, that's a big thing that you have to like, if you really, in my opinion, want to innovate and do things that are, you know, have never been done before and push boundaries, you have to like have a mindset amongst your people that it's not, nothing is impossible. It's just how much does it cost? How do you do it? And then you just make an objective decision.

It seems to me like when you solve these impossible problems, you have to think on like a lower level rather than a higher level. Have you heard the story of Elon getting his rockets from Texas to Florida where they launch them?

No.

So The normal way everyone gets their rockets to Florida is on a barge, right? But it takes like 3 months and costs a bunch of money.

Didn't he fly it there?

He drove it there. He's like, no, we're going to drive it instead. And they're like, well, it's way too big.

Well, first answer was—

It's impossible.

Just can't do it.

Yeah, yeah.

And he said, let's go. And he has a great line, which is physics are the only laws. Everything else is a suggestion. And he's like, is it physically impossible to get it to Florida? No. Okay, we agree on that. Great. Now let's continue to figure out where the bottleneck is.

And it's like, oh, the boat.

Too long, too expensive, whatever.

And so, you know, oh, well, it's impossible to get it through overpasses. And so they— he's like, well, what would be the shortest way to get there without encountering a single overpass? So they go, they do this like extremely circuitous route all on back roads. And they're like, but even if we do that, there's still a problem with power lines and telephone wires. And so they have like some of the smartest people on Earth driving in a van in front of these rockets. With big poles and they just push up the telephone wires so we can go under and then they go to the next telephone wires.

Yes.

And it's just like, you just have to like approach it like a caveman almost to like beat the impossible. Do you find that's the case a lot?

Yeah, quite a bit. And a lot of it is just a willingness to, it's just people who have love what they do and, and people who really love problem solving will, will, you know, figure these things out. And so it's just having the right person in the right seat at the right time who like actually wants to go deep and like, people, there are certain people where you give them something that seems impossible and they will be giddy and they'll be like, fuck yeah, I can't wait. Like I have people like that where I could call and be like, what's something—

They don't wake up until it's hard.

Well, it's like, I guess if I wanted a different world wonder, if I was like, I want the Taj Mahal for a week, right? And there are like people in my company who I called and said that, like, I promise you they would smile and be like, okay. Like they didn't see that as a challenge. They'd go to war to figure it out. And then not in my company, but just there are other people that you would say that and they'd be like, Oh my God. You know, and so you just got to get the right people who just deeply enjoy solving problems and like see it as a challenge. And like, like there, there are people built that way and those are the people that really succeed in that environment.

And even a different example, that's not getting the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower. One of my favorite videos of yours where I, the first time I was like, all right, respect. It was before I met you. Okay. I was like, okay, respect. Was Ben was telling me about you and he goes, he made a video, said, I'm going to cut through this table with a plastic knife.

Oh my gosh. I remember this weirdly very well. I was sitting in high school and I just like I had a— I don't know, after lunch I just had a— I put the plastic knife in my pocket for some reason. I don't remember why. And then I just put my hand in my pocket. I was like, oh, plastic knife. And then I just started like scraping against the desk and I was like, oh, well, I'm like kind of like I could cut this desk in half. Like just like your stupid little high school desk. I just did this for like 5 minutes till like the teacher was like, what the fuck are you doing? Stop. And then I just was like looking at the little indention. I was doing the calculation in my head. I was like, it'd take me like 10 hours to cut through this according to my math. I was like, fuck it. I think that would be like a video where people would be interested. So I went to the store on the way home and I bought like, uh, 1,000 plastic, like the cheapest plastic knives I could find. And then I just got this like $20 fold-out table and I just went in my room, hit record on the camera, and I just went to town because the plastic knives would get dull after like a minute. And I was just cutting through it. And I think that, I think that took 12 hours to cut through the table with plastic knives or something.

But that's what I'm saying. It was no money. It was no money. It wasn't the Taj Mahal. It was like creativity or, well, first boredom. Boredom is the key. It was like how Einstein discovered relativity.

But that really hits so well. And it's like so dumb. It's just like, like the, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? How many plastic knives does it take to cut a table in half? It was just like, people were like, what a fucking idiot.

Did you do it with one, by the way?

Or did you go through like 50? No, no, probably thousands. Okay, gotcha.

That's insane. By the way, that's a spoiler. I think that one we kind of copied number 8, which is no, no doesn't mean no way. And there's a big difference between no and no way.

Impossible is possible and no doesn't mean no. Exact same thing. Yeah.

And I like the clarification you had, which was like, you're not just like the asshole boss that's like, I need this impossible thing done, you know, whatever. It's more like, hey, I want to do this impossible thing or I want to do this great thing.

No.

Okay, let's get curious before we just like make a decision here.

Yeah.

Why? Well, and let's try to understand it. And if it truly is no, which it rarely is, fine. But it's usually not. And then the cool thing is if you do that in the company, do it once, people are like, oh wow, that was interesting. Do it twice. By the third time you do it, people are like, all right, like that's the way, right?

It's contagious, right? By the 50th time.

Yeah.

It's like a religion. People start to believe when they, when they see it, right?

Yeah, I think you're in place. For me, it tends to take a couple dozen times for it to stick.

Well, I'll keep pointing at it. I'm like, guys, remember what we said and then what happened? Let's like, let's again, let's take that and rally. That's a rally cry for us now. Like we could do all these things, right? Let's immortalize that.

All right, we got 3 more to go. All right, here we go.

Consultants are cheat code.

Yeah. And honestly, 'cause I wrote this, they're referencing my thing I wrote a couple years ago. I would update that to just say like experienced people are cheat codes, the right ones. Like, 'cause it doesn't, because like my handbook, I guess that's what you would call it, leaked on Twitter.

And like, there you go. There's your handbook.

Production Bible. So many people were like, consultants and even consultants are like putting this on their website.

Like even MrBeast endorsed on LinkedIn. Yeah, I know.

They're like, so many consultant tweets are like, yes, you validated our industry. And I'm like, well, I wasn't specifically talking about McKinsey, you know, it's just more like You know, especially with us, because we do so many random weird things. I mean, dude, what did I say in here?

Consultants are literally cheat codes. Need to make the world's largest slice of cake? Start off by calling the person who has made the previous world's largest slice of cake.

Exactly. LOL.

He's already done countless tests and can save you weeks worth of work. I really want to drill this point home because I'm a massive believer in consultants because I've spent almost a decade of my life hyper-obsessing over YouTube. I can show a brand new creator how to go from 100 subscribers to 10,000 in a month. On their own, it would take them years to do it. Consults are a gift from God. Please take advantage of them in every single freaking task assigned to you.

Always, always, always ask yourself first if you can find a consultant to help you. Exactly. Because we do so many weird different things like, oh, we're going to bury me alive. Call David Blaine. He buried himself alive, you know what I mean? Like, because that's—

How's that phone call go?

Great. They're usually like, well, we don't have David Blaine's phone number. And then I'm like, okay, I'll DM him on Instagram and I'm like, here's his phone number. Call him, figure out how he didn't die. You know?

But you do these things like one night I was just Hanging out at my house, get a call, North Carolina number, pick up.

Oh yeah. It's usually, I go on walks and then I just like, I will literally just close my eyes and like flip through my contacts and I'll like stop and you know, when it's on S, you'll be there and I'll just be like, hmm, I'll just tap a random name and I'll be like, teach me something. Sometimes the calls are 1 minute, other times they're 20. And, um, yeah, it's like, you gotta always be learning.

I feel like you're saying that almost like it's a normal thing. You know, like nobody does this, right? Like that's like a— I don't understand why that's I kind of started to steal it because I was like, why not? I'm also like, I'm obsessed with learning.

Yeah.

And something like maybe the mechanics of it, I was confused. I was like, so I call these people, then I just say like, hey, teach me something. Well, yeah, yeah, teach me something.

What's, what's something funny is the more you do it, the more people come to expect it too. So like, I'll call someone, they won't answer, and then they'll be like, let me guess, you're on a walk. Sorry, I'm busy. And then I'm like, I don't even have to respond to just get it, you know, because at the start you'll, you know, you'll go on a walk and you'll call 20 people and you'll have conversations with 10 because, you know, these high-caliber people are always busy and the other 10 will call you throughout the next 24 hours. And it's like a nuisance because you have to be like, I was just going on a walk. I was just going on a walk. So, but now they, everyone just gets it. It's protocol.

Yeah.

Yeah. They're just like, yeah. So it's like so funny that I've become known for that and like people will answer and like sometimes I won't even say anything. They'll be like, ah, all right, here's what I've learned. It's like, great. Because then I just like, These are people who are, you know, some of them running companies are doing billions of dollars a year in revenue and they're learning tons of things. They're always experimenting. And then I just get this 5-minute brain dump of everything they learned, suck it out of them. And then I'm like, here's what I learned. 'Cause I always, a big part of this, if you want it to go well, is you have to add as much value, ideally more than what they're giving to you. So I try to help them in any way I can. And then, um, and then you hang up and you go to the next one.

Another one that is in the kind of Consultants R Cheat Codes is we do these talks at our event. So at our basketball event, It's kind of like play ball all day till we're like dead tired. And then at night it was like, we're hanging out. And the first year we did it, I remember because I created the events, I was kind of the host. I was like, I don't want to be like forcing like a conference vibe. I was like, really like tiptoeing around. I was like, I don't want this to be awkward. But it was actually more awkward because nobody knew who anyone else was.

Yeah.

You did this great thing. You like grab the chair, you put it in the middle of the room. You're like, hey, sit down real quick.

Yeah.

You go, all right, who are you? What's your story? And then they would like start to tell like a long-winded story. But what I liked was you would have questions. So like we had a real estate guy and instead of being like, all right, teach me about real estate, which the guy doesn't know how to start. You were like, if I had $10 million, what would be the best way to turn it into $100 million through real estate?

Yeah.

And then he talked for like 5 minutes. You're like, cool, got it. I should just give it to somebody like you. Makes sense. Onto the next. And I was like, I love the power of kind of like the right question, the right person.

Jared, and honestly, in group settings like that, another thing too is just not being afraid to cut people off because some people are just so, not aware that like there's 20 people and you've been rambling for 30 minutes. And I'm like, I feel like they got another 15 in 'em. And 3 of those people are on their phone. Those 2 are checked out. Those 5 are too nice to say anything. I'll be the one who's like, hey, we get it. All right.

I got the next one. Block out the noise. Okay.

Block out.

You wanna do block out the noise?

Sure.

So here, here's the quote. When you're small, people say you're too obsessed. You're a weirdo.

Get a life.

Be realistic. This is from you. People will try to convince you that you're out of your mind for wanting to do this. Then when it works, yo, your drive, your tenacity, that was great.

Yep.

Yeah.

Everything you guys have been flattering me with throughout this podcast are the exact same things I got lowkey bullied for in high school. It's like hilarious that now these grown men are like, yo, this is fucking awesome. You're like all in. Impossible is not impossible. No doesn't mean no. And you just like love this shit. And like in high school, that's what a fucking nerd. Get a life. Like loser.

Yeah, that's why, that's why you call it block out the noise, right? Because the same things that people admire when you're successful are the things that people are trying to tell you to stop.

If you had listened, you wouldn't be MrBeast, right? Like, you wouldn't be here right now.

Everyone else, then yeah, just normal job. But the thing is, it's like, it's the big takeaway is it just means you're not around the right people, right? Because like, obviously, if I was around you guys when you were younger, I'm sure you guys wouldn't have been like, oh, what a weird, obsessed nerd. You would be like, yo, this is sick. Let's grow together. Or we would have you know, maybe when we were 18, we wouldn't have that much emotional intelligence, but we would've like flocked together. So it's, it's also just finding the right people to be around. And if you're having to block out a lot of noise, then you're just like, you have a serious problem.

It's a signal.

Yeah. Like you really gotta change who you are because that's, it's really, I mean, if you're the smartest person you're hanging around, make, you know, the, the one with the most ambition and everyone else is just bringing you down. Like you're literally just going through your entrepreneurial life with like a 10-pound weight shackled to your leg.

Yeah. Last one.

Let's go into reinvest everything.

Yes, sir.

Can I give you my version of this? I think people know you reinvest a lot of money to almost a comical extent. It's like we made $100 grand last month. Great. We're investing $101 this next month. It's like, yo, Jimmy, where'd you get the extra thousand?

I got the largest unscripted streaming deal in history and somehow lost a ton of money on it.

These games, you're talking about? Yeah.

Yeah.

When we were here the first time, somebody was like, you know, what do he thinks his kind of like his edge? I go, his edge is that He takes all the money he makes and then he reinvests it. He takes all the hours he has and he invests it into the channel. Then he gets the best people and he like gets them to believe that they should invest it. And he doesn't ever want to quit. I don't think this guy's going to like get rich and retire like every other YouTuber. I was like, that's like a kamikaze level of commitment. Like, I don't think that's right.

You used to call it a kamikaze commitment.

I was like, because how do you, what do you do? What do you do with somebody who's willing to just like plow it all back in?

Like, yeah.

That's a, that's not the person I would want to compete against. Yeah. So that's kind of, I guess that's why to me this is—

I mean, you just described it perfectly. I don't even have to say anything. Like, yeah, I mean, ideally you find the passion that you love and you're all in and it's, you know, you shouldn't have to like force yourself to go get up and write. It should just be what you love to do.

You know? What's the CFO telling you as you, at the beginning now, now it's kind of known, but at the beginning when you were describing your approach, CFO was like your mom at the beginning, right?

Uh, yeah. Well, I mean, at the beginning it was me and my mom and a couple friends from high school. So she was 10 jobs. I was 20 jobs. Um, I mean, now they just are, I mean, people kind of normalize to your weird craziness. So they're more.

But that's now. What at the beginning, what was that like?

I mean, everyone thought I was deranged, you know, like, oh, why, why do you like, cause I mean, I was everyone, you know, a big budget YouTube video used to be $10 grand. I was the first one to ever spend $1 million on a video and $2 million.

This is, uh, this is probably the best example, right?

Like, yeah. I got a brand deal for $10,000. I've broke. You keep saying CFO like I had a CFO back then. You know what this was? This was me and like paying a guy I went to high school with like $10 an hour to help me. And me going, Mom, what are taxes?

Help.

I didn't make money. Do I pay taxes? And she's like, yes. I'm like, fuck. But yeah, we— I got a brand deal for $10,000 and then I just went outside like this. I used to live like 2 minutes the, like the $700 a month apartment I was telling you about, or duplex, was like literally 2 minutes down the road from this. And so I just got the $10,000. I was like, wire me the money. They wired it, withdrew it, and gave it to this homeless guy on the side of the street.

Were you not tempted to like have money for the first time? Pocket 5, give away 5?

So I pocket 5 to spend on a different video. What else do you do with the money?

It's like, uh, there's a story of Zuck when he got offered $1 billion for Facebook early on. And they were like, Mark, we should talk about this.

And he's like, oh, if I got this money, I would just start a new social media platform. And I like the one I have.

I like the one I have. This is like legendary.

Yeah. And it's the same thing here. It's like I could pocket it, but I just make different videos and I just want to film this one. I mean, it's literally the same thing.

It reminds me a lot reading about Walt Disney. This is what he was famous for because his brother Roy was like—

I love your podcast on it.

Thank you. It was like the business—

This is almost done.

How to Take Over the World.

Oh yeah.

Roy would like pull his hair out of like, Walt, can we please just like save some money? And he had like a compulsion almost to take all the money. He like felt bad keeping any money. He's like, no, it has to go into making better shows.

Yeah.

Do you feel that? Like, does it?

No, it has nothing to do with like wanting to keep money. It really has nothing to do with money itself. It's just I want to make the best product possible. And so it's like, here's the product I want to make. And I'm always having to settle because we can't spend $10 billion on a YouTube video, you know what I mean? Like, because there I would love to go buy everything in every single store in this entire city and donate it all to charity. You know, that'd be $200 million. So I can't. But so it's just like, it's more, you know, like this is what I want to make, but I have to dial it back. And it's like, well, now we have a little bit more money, so I just dial it back less. There's nothing. I don't really care. You know what I mean?

Like, so by the way, you just came up with that number.

Yeah.

I was like, he's done the math of this.

You look at this. Why? Oh, it costs $15 million to buy everything in a Walmart.

But yeah, $15 million. Have you done that? Is that one of the things?

We're going to. Yeah. Nice. I think that's a fucking banger. And then we're going to donate it all to charity, so it's cool.

What's your, like, ambition, right? So it's like Ben in 40 years is doing the pod on you.

Don't ask me 40. Ask like 10. 40 is too far. You're going to give me anxiety.

Okay. What's like the— what's the dream dream?

Right now I can't do 40 because like, but for the next 5, the big thing I'm focused on, which I was telling you guys about in the car, is Just Feastables, why people listen to me.

What can you explain about your business empire?

Can you break it down? Specifically, like chocolate might seem so random. Why is the largest YouTuber in the world selling chocolate? Well, right now, 70% of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana. And majority of the people who work on those farms are actually kids, or like child labor. So it's like 46% of labor. So I guess it's not majority, so I should correct this statement. 46% of labor is illegal child labor. Yeah, eat your Feastables.

I'll eat this while you talk about it.

Yeah, so. Um, when I got into selling chocolate, I just learned about that. And I talked to like execs at big chocolate companies. I was like, so what I hear, like this child labor thing, like, is this just like, we're just cool with this? And they're like, well, it's just how it's always been. And there's not really anything you can do about it.

I'm like, that's the way things have always been.

I literally, I said to one, I think, I don't remember the exact, I'm going to butcher it, but I was like, Elon's put it, like going to put people on Mars. And you're telling me we can't not have little kids farming our chocolate. We can't just find people over the age of 18 or whatever. And They're like, well, it's not that simple. And I'm like, what the fuck? So that kind of like pissed me off and sent me—

rule number 8.

Yeah, sent me down. I'm like, yeah, what you mean to say is that would hurt the billions of dollars in free cash flow you're spinning off in your margins. But anyways, so I was like, I went down that path like 2 years ago. I was like, okay, well, I don't—

you actually went to West Africa.

Oh yeah.

Worked on the farm.

Before even that, it's just like, so then I was— we're going to start referencing our piece of paper here. So then consultants are cheat codes. So I was like, what is the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world? Who's the ones doing it right? So have you heard of Tony's Chocolonely? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're, they're great. It's, it's a European brand, but they're like— a reporter used to call out Big Chocolate and be like, there's a lot of child labor. You guys aren't ethical. And like, they would just ignore him. And so then he's like, fuck it.

He started it, right?

Yeah. And he started a chocolate company. And that's Tony's Chocolonely because it's like the lonely—

and it became like a $200 million business.

It's doing pretty well. And so I was like, let me get in contact with these people. And I just started talking to them. I flew them here to Greenville. Like the next week. And we were just like, I was like, teach me everything about child labor, how we can remediate it, what should we be doing on our farms, etc. And like, I just had like phone calls with them every single day, studied. And then the next 5 companies that are also doing ethical things, I just absorbed everything they're all doing into my brain. And I was like, cool.

All right.

I know what we need to do. Step 1, like the main reason why there's child labor is just poverty. Like, like most of these farmers are making a dollar or less a day. So like, if you're getting paid a dollar, how can you hire someone? That's over the age of 18 to work on your farm. So you end up just using kids because they're cheap or free. So, uh, step one is you, you just have to pay them a living income. So 100% of our farmers are paid a living income. So I can go super deep. I'm going to keep this mile high because I know not everyone is as passionate about the chocolate industry as me, but this is what I live and breathe. But, uh, to— so what is a living income, right? Because obviously a living income in America is completely different than West Africa. So there's a living income reference price where they look at the cost of like bread and living and inflation. And it's like, you know, if a farmer sells you like a metric tons of cocoa, they need to make this for them to be able to live roughly and be able to. So we pay 100% of our farmers living income reference price. So there could be an instance where you're a farmer, you give us a shipping container of cocoa and you're like, you know, we want $1,100. I'm like, no, you want $1,300. It's $1,300. Now make sure there's no kids on your farms. You know what I mean? Like, uh, or kids in illegal child labor. And so that's, I mean, I'm oversimplifying everything. None of this is a very complex thing. And there's these, we're talking about tens of thousands of farms. There's millions of farms there. And this is not, none of this is as simple as I'm portraying it, but I'm just doing my best to generalize it all. So you pay your farmers a living income. All our beans are Fairtrade certified. And then we work with CLRS, which is the Child Labor Remediation System. And then they routinely audit the farms, interview the parents, interview the kids, see if the kids are going to school, working on the farm. Et cetera. And then if, you know, they identify cases of child labor, following up and getting the kid out of the child labor and stuff like that, which all the, and then we also just little things because it's, since it's all a root of poverty, the more money you help them make, the easier it is for them to, you know, stop using illegal child labor on the farm. So we have coaches that will like represent 200 farms and they'll help them get more yield and like educate them on things they could be doing to grow more for trees or have more trees or, well, you know, occasionally give them wheelbarrows or things like that so they can just, I mean, a little something as simple as a wheelbarrow. I mean, it's a big difference between carrying 10 cacao pods theoretically, again, generalizing everything, or being able to carry 40 in a wheelbarrow. Like, that statically makes you 4 times more efficient. Um, it's not, again, making up numbers. Yeah. So my goal is just to make Feastables the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world. And, you know, if we can do $1 billion a year in chocolate sales ethically while being profitable, then I can use that as a model to, you know, on my videos, talk about Big Chocolate and all the unethical things they're doing and just be like, look, It's possible to be profitable, to not do it at scale. There's no excuse besides they just don't care. And then, you know, we'll see what happens when I get to that point.

Last year when I was here, I asked, I think your right-hand guy at that time, I was like, what's, what's y'all's focus for the year? And most people don't have an answer at the tip of your tongue. His was like instantaneous. He goes, I think you had a number of the number of YouTube videos, 22 or something.

26 videos.

Make 26 bangers. Sell a lot of chocolate, get jacked.

Yeah. And he said it like that fast every day.

And you got in great shape from the last time.

Can you— uh, yeah, I, I was— it was— I still fat last year or was that the first year?

No, it was first.

First year was— I mean, I won't say fat, but like, you know, you're a fucking walrus.

I was 240 pounds. Yeah, I'm right now I'm 190. So I probably—

you had started lifting at the last one we did, and in this year you're like, like, yeah.

So year one I was 240 pounds, year two I was probably 215, 220 pounds, and now I'm 190. So yeah, I'm like probably 35 pounds lighter. I can't wait to ball.

How did you— what'd you do? Like, what was your approach to getting jacked? Or like, how did you approach it?

I'm very heavily influenced by the people around me. Like, if I spent too much time with you, I'll start speaking like you, acting like you, thinking like you. So I'm very cautious of that. So I just put a lot of jacked people around me. And then like, my metric of success was like, how frequently are random people just handing me chicken breasts or like, you know, something high in protein? Like, you know, cause like, they're, you know, all the time, like my old friend group, you know, all the time they'd be like, oh, we just ordered pizza or this or that. And it's like, it just makes accomplishing my goals so much harder. And it's like the ratio of people ordering pizza to the ratio of people ordering protein was just way off. I mean, this is just how I analyze my life because I, I like, I'm so all in on business. Like, I don't think about this kind of stuff. So I need an environment that just makes being jacked very natural. Like, the weightlifting is pretty easy, right? You just go to the gym 45 minutes, 5 days a week. But it's the— yes, the food that, that is a that's not a thing you turn on and off. That's a thing that you have to be consistent on for a very long period if you want to achieve results. And like, I just, I can't think about like that every single day. And I just, and it's like, there are just times where I'm at low points and it's just a lot harder to be disciplined. And I just know if like, you know, I always have people who are just eating healthy. It's just, it takes something that feels hard and kind of makes it fun. Like when you're doing it together and like, you know, it's just so, just surround myself with other people trying to accomplish the same thing. Just like anything in life.

This is what I was living in Australia and I literally, Bought a plane ticket with no plan one way to San Francisco because I was at this Tony Robbins event. He said proximity is power.

Dang, love it.

Did you like hire anyone to, to help you? Do you have like a trainer around or a coach?

Yeah, he follows me around all day, every day. He's the jacked dude sitting downstairs. You'll notice he's the one who looks like he could be on a bodybuilding stage. Yeah, usually in a tank top.

You know, somebody just sent me this. You posted TikTok. An hour ago.

Yeah, I just got out of a meeting with a bunch of billionaires. TikTok, we mean business. This is my lawyer right here. We have an offer ready for you. We want to buy the platform. America deserves TikTok. Give me a seat at the table. Let me save this platform. TikTok. Yes.

Are you going to buy TikTok?

I tweeted out yesterday that I was thinking about buying TikTok and honestly, kind of as a joke. And then I had even a lot of people coming to this event. So many billionaires text me. I mean, I'm probably up to like 35 who have like unironically reached out and like, I want to put money in, I want to do it. And then like two separate groups that have like very serious bids together for it also are like, yo, get involved in this. And I'm like, my phone just blew up ever since that tweet. So then I made that TikTok because it's like, yeah, I was joking, but now it's like, oh, okay, if I predict it right now, this—

I think this is going to happen because I think it should happen. It'd be smart, right? Any ownership group that's doing this, would be smart to have you involved.

As long as TikTok's willing to sell. Yeah, everyone interested in buying it wants to get us involved.

Yeah, I don't know the political side, like how, what's, how that's all gonna play out. To be forced to divest, but if they are, that's gonna be—

Well, it's gonna be banned if they don't. It's just a question of like, is TikTok gonna sell or not?

Yeah. What would you do?

Oh God, bro, we just, we're winding the podcast down. Are you really about to start another 5-hour talk? Truthfully, I would have to surround myself with like the 10 greatest algorithmic people in the world and I'd have to spend like a week with them and just like absorb, like, I have no idea what I would do right now.

Jimmy, this has been a pleasure.

It's been fun.

Thanks for doing it, man. Excited to hoop.

So, basketball camp 5. We'll do another one every 2 years.

Yeah, we're like the Olympic cycles. Like every 2 years.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are in the other room. We gotta, we gotta crank out this podcast. Don't go ball with them.

All right, boys, we did it.

All right, we're out of here.

Let's play.

Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks, boys.