Sam Parr breaks down how MrBeast turns sponsorships into viral stunts, like a $50K Quidd deal that becomes a giveaway video. The model works until it doesn't: creators like Casey Neistat and Logan Paul burned out chasing weekly content that keeps getting bigger. Success opens doors but also traps you in a cycle where you have to outdo yourself every time.
He'll take 4 friends, he'll buy a Lambo and be like, put your hand on this Lambo. First person— last person to have their hand on this Lambo keeps the Lambo. He'll take 4 friends, he'll buy a Lambo and be like, put your hand on this Lambo. First person— last person to have their hand on this Lambo keeps the Lambo. Have you seen this guy, MrBeast? Do you know who that is?
Love MrBeast.
So if you don't know who MrBeast is, He's this YouTuber who's grown like crazy in the last like 18 months, really.
He's new.
He's, he's like a new guy, but he's blown past, I, I don't know how many subscribers, but in the maybe tens of millions of subscribers now. And, uh, his whole thing is he's just like, he just gives away, um, money to people. Well, like he does challenges, but like he specifically, he'll give away cars.
So for example, he goes to a used car dealership and he buys 10 cars, which each car is probably $5,000 or $10,000. Right. So Maybe he's in $40,000 or $50,000 on this thing, and people come to buy the car, and he acts like the salesman, and the lady will be like, "All right, this car looks good," and he goes, "Okay, here," and he gives her the keys. He goes, "No, it's yours." Right. And they film it.
And they film it, and this is the reaction. It's kind of like that, like, it has a feel-good element to it, 'cause you see people who are like, "No way." But it's funny. He'll go to a restaurant and leave a $2,000 tip on a $10 bill, and they're like, people break down crying, and then sometimes it's funny where he'll be like, He'll take 4 friends, he'll buy a Lambo and be like, put your hand on this Lambo. First person, uh, last person to have their hand on this Lambo keeps the Lambo. And they just, for 2 days straight, they just have their hand on this thing. They're passing out. And they, you know, he may, he turns that into YouTube content and he's brilliant because he gets brands to pay for the whole thing. So this one brand, Quip or Quid or Quip, I think it's, it's not the toothbrush. It's like this like stickers trading cards thing on online. I think it's Quid. Quidd has given this guy, you know, they'll just put up the $50K, he does the challenge, he shouts out Quidd, and they're happy for it because their videos are getting like millions of views. And so it's way better branded content than usual. And so he basically took brand money and parlayed it into being like huge, which is pretty crazy.
Yeah, and he even did a thing where he raised $100 million— $20 million for trees.
Trees. Trent planted trees.
And the founder of Shopify gave $100— sorry, a million. Elon gave him a million.
Yeah.
And he raised $20 million in 2 weeks. Or—
yeah. And I have a friend who talked to him on the phone the other day, uh, to do a campaign. And he was like—
what friend?
Uh, Jason. Uh, so Jason Hitchcock. Shout out to Jason. So he was like, you know, talking to him. And, uh, he— when he got off the phone, he's like, yeah, I talked to MrBeast. Really cool. Like, talked to his agent or whatever. Uh, and he described— he's like, you know, one weird thing happens, which is didn't plan for this, you know, sort of success. You get the success, but the YouTube game is such that you kind of need to top yourself every time.
He's probably getting exhausted.
And so he's like, dude, the stress of like, okay, we gave away a Lambo through this like crazy thing. Next week, what do I do? Like, okay. And it's just this constant bar raising, which is really tough.
So when we first launched our company, I get a phone call from Elizabeth Murdoch. You know who Elizabeth Murdoch is?
Rupert Murdoch's Daughter?
Yeah.
Okay.
Which is a big shot. And she was like, hey, you guys wanna do these videos? I'm launching this new thing and I need video content. And, uh, I was like, no, that's not what we're trying to do, but let's stay friends and shoot the shit. And she goes, okay, well I'll find someone else. So she finds someone else to do it and they start a YouTube channel and that YouTube channel's now called Yes Theory. Have you heard of Yes Theory?
I've heard of it.
Yeah. They got 5 or 6 million subscribers and, uh, I've become friends with them over the years. And they have a— I mean, they're like famous. They're like legit famous. I have no idea if it's a good business, but I bet you they make— they could each pay themselves $1 million a year. So pretty good for young people. Pretty good for anyone. And each week they're having to do crazier and crazy shit. And they've had to do this for 3 years now. Every video is like, I went to the most remote island in the world by myself. And it's 3 guys now and they're like taking turns over doing crazy shit. Like it's The crazy stuff was like, I asked my Uber driver if she wants to go to Paris, and we went straight to Paris and went there. And now they're like doing variations of that. It's like, oh my God, that shit's exhausting.
It's like if Jackass, if Steve-O and the Jackass crew had YouTube, and like they would have to do this every week. Like we were just lucky that they were lucky that the cadence was like, you know, seasons of TV or a movie, because when it's weekly, it's just insane, which is why Casey Neistat, And Logan Paul, Jake Paul, all these guys, eventually they, you know, they do this daily grind for so long, but they burn out. Like, the content burnout is crazy for sure. It's not going to happen to us though.
Well, it's not going to happen to us. We just sit and do nothing. Imagine though, like, having to get on a plane and like— or like Logan Paul, you got to like yell at someone or like go break up with a girlfriend every week.
You got to go box someone.
