MrBeast Shares His Best Business Advice

MrBeast Shares His Best Business Advice Garry Tan: Let's go. Siqi Chen: So here we go. I have it here. This is the MrBeast secret. Speaker 3: I don't know if I should be concerned. Siqi Chen: And I guess you faked going to college. Speaker 3: Oh, that's a juicy one. Siqi Chen: On your 100th video, you wrote your stats. Speaker 3: I did do that. I remember that. Siqi Chen: It's not like at 100 you were rich and famous. Speaker 3: People say it takes 10,000 hours to master something and I'm like, that's when you start. Siqi Chen: So you know like nobody does this, right? Speaker 3: I don't understand why. Speaker 4: So we want to do an exercise. Speaker 3: To see... If I can come up with a viral idea? Siqi Chen: But with a budget of $1,000. Yeah, exactly. Speaker 4: So we're gonna do a random word generator. Speaker 3: They're gonna think this is great. Alright, 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? Unknown Speaker: I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. Siqi Chen: Jimmy, what's up? Speaker 3: How's it going, boys? Speaker 4: Hey, how you doing? Garry Tan: Let's go. Speaker 3: So it's been two years. Lots to update people on then. Siqi Chen: I think your business has grown like 10x since then. Speaker 3: Probably something like that. Siqi Chen: Yeah. Yeah. It's wild to see. In fact, actually, this is kind of where I want to start because you walk in, we're in your office. This is like Jimmy's actual office. And it's easy to see the size and scale. And now it looks like, of course, you know, like this is all, yeah, this is all happening. Speaker 3: Yeah. Siqi Chen: But I like to see that journey. And I actually want to play a clip for you. Speaker 3: So we're starting off with the origin story, it sounds like. Siqi Chen: You're going to hate this. This is from a video on your YouTube channel called quitting. Speaker 3: Oh God. Siqi Chen: I don't know if you remember this. Speaker 3: Oh God. Speaker 4: Do you know what you're about to hear? Speaker 3: I remember uploading this video. I cannot, I do not remember a single thing I said in this video. You guys make it really hard to quit. Unknown Speaker: It's been a month since I uploaded to YouTube and to be honest, I was pretty sure I was done with YouTube. I kind of want to start uploading. I feel like my YouTube channel has so much potential. I've made over half a thousand dollars of money off of this channel. Speaker 3: I feel like this channel could grow. Money aside, I could become famous, which would be awesome in and of itself. So, I don't know. I might start uploading. Siqi Chen: This is you, dude. Speaker 3: I don't remember saying any of that. Siqi Chen: How wild is that, dude? Speaker 3: Oh my gosh. I was making $500 a month. Garry Tan: Why would I quit? Siqi Chen: And in the thing you're talking about, you're like, you know, I've been busy with sports and I just haven't been as consistent. And then what you said was you were like, the comments have kept me going. You're like, I logged in today. I wasn't planning to upload, but I saw 20 comments. And you know what? I think I might I might keep uploading. Speaker 3: Man, that's crazy. Yeah. That was that was also around the time I got Crohn's disease because I was really into baseball and I wanted to play baseball in college. And so I was all in on baseball and it was constant tug and pull where it's like one day I'd wake up and I'd be like, I want to. I'll be trying to play him in the MLB, which I had zero shot of. I never would have. But, you know, you're delusional when you're a little kid. And the next day I'd be like, no, I want to be a YouTuber and this is more realistic and I can make money. And then I got Crohn's and I went from 200 pounds and I was weightlifting every day down to 139 on the verge of dying. And I lost every ounce of muscle I had. I was like, well, I just made this easier. YouTube. I was probably like 14, 15 at the time. And then, yeah, that's so. Siqi Chen: Sometimes life is working for you. Speaker 3: Yeah, that was probably around that time there, too. Going through Crohn's during that and trying to figure out like, am I doing YouTube? Am I doing baseball? Cause I'm a very all in kind of guy. Garry Tan: Wow. Siqi Chen: And so, I mean, just to hear you be like- $500 a month? That's crazy. No, half a thousand. Speaker 3: Half a thousand. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Siqi Chen: I'd never even heard that. That's amazing. Speaker 3: I was richer than I thought back then. So I mean, nah, that was definitely capping. I was not making $500 a month. Or maybe I had one month where I made $500 and I was like, okay, maybe someone from school might see this and I want to flex. As I was like, When I graduated from high school, I was making nothing. I was not making $6,000 a year back then. Siqi Chen: Dude, you had this great quote. You go, I started making videos when I was 11. No one watched when I was 11. No one watched when I was 12. No one watched when I was 13. 14. Is anyone ever going to watch these things? 16. Nobody's watching. 17. Oh, I'm about to graduate high school. Still, no one is watching my videos. Speaker 3: Yeah. And 18. No one watched. I think it was around 19 where I started to really figure it out. Siqi Chen: And I think, so why are we doing this episode, right? Our audience is not trying to be YouTubers. It's mostly business founders. Garry Tan: I mean, it worked for you. Siqi Chen: Yeah, I'm kind of a YouTuber now. You got me. What I like about you is that your approach to whether it's YouTube, selling chocolate, losing weight, whatever it is, you have a certain mentality. I think you are wired differently. I think in 20 years, I'm going to be able to look, I'm going to show my kids and be like, yeah, before Jimmy was president, you came on my podcast. We sat at this little table. So I honestly think you're wired differently. And I want to share those with the audience that anybody could use, whether you want to be a swimmer, you want to be a YouTuber, you want to be a business person, whatever. I also called your assistant, called your thumbnail guy, called your girlfriend. Speaker 3: They didn't even tell me that. Siqi Chen: What? So here we go. I have it here. This is the MrBeast Secrets. Speaker 3: I don't know if I should be concerned. Siqi Chen: We're going to go through these. These are nine of what I consider to be your rules. Now you could tell me. Speaker 3: Are you making this a game? Siqi Chen: 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 one. Speaker 3: Okay. Burn the boats. Siqi Chen: So burn the boats. Your mom wanted you to go to college and I guess you faked going to college. You pretended to go. What is the story? Speaker 3: Oh, 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's just like a free community college. But yeah, my mom, because she grew up Pretty traditionally, the military worked her whole life, but then in 2008, she lost everything when the real estate collapsed and so lost all her savings and stuff. We went bankrupt and had to file for bankruptcy. So she's very paranoid. She just wants her kid to go get a job and not fuck up and not do 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. It is what it is. I don't care. I'm going to be a YouTuber. And it just never clicked in her head. And to her, it's like, if he doesn't get a college degree, he's like, my son's a failure. I just wasted 18 years. He's not going to be able to provide. So for her, it was like either college or my life's ruined, because that's just how her brain's wired. And because she went through so much. And so when I was like, I don't want to go, she was just like, then leave. Get out of the house. I just can't bear the sight of my son just sitting around and just throwing his life away. And I didn't have enough money to move out. So I was like, frick. And luckily, the community college is so cheap. It's not like she's wasting money on it. So I was like, okay, I'll go to college. And then I just flat out lied to her. Like I was like, I'll do it. But you know, I had no intention of actually doing it. And so I went just to see what it was like. And I was like, well, maybe I'm like being a little dramatic. And I went to class for like a week. It was 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 six 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. Siqi Chen: And so you just didn't go. Oh, after that. Speaker 3: Yeah. So I would go every day, go and then I would just sit in like this, like at a really old, like Dodge Durango that was super used a lot of miles. And I would just sit in the Dodge Durango and like edit videos. And I film at night. Siqi Chen: And would you come back and be like, school was great. Speaker 3: I was just like, yeah, you know, she'd make Hell's College. And I was like, you know, and then and I just wouldn't tell her that I'd stop going. Siqi Chen: But you burned the boat. You're like, all right, I got six months. Speaker 3: Exactly. Siqi Chen: I got to either make it or somehow I figured it out. Speaker 3: I don't even remember. But 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 like, I haven't been going. I'm failing. I found a place down the road. It's 700 bucks a month. Sorry. She's like. Speaker 4: All right. Siqi Chen: 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. But 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? Speaker 3: 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 a hundred 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, to me, it comes very naturally. So. Siqi Chen: What was your observation? We just went to Walmart with Jimmy. We haven't talked about this. Speaker 3: Most of your audience probably doesn't even know. I sell chocolate. We have a Feastables. It's a chocolate company and I'm sure we'll go into that at some point. Garry Tan: Feastables. Siqi Chen: This episode is brought to you by Feastables. Speaker 3: 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. Speaker 4: 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. Siqi Chen: 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. Speaker 3: 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 Connecticut flight. And I was like, wait a minute. And I just opened up like Google Maps. I searched Walmart sounds like. I can just drive there and hit 25 Walmarts on the way home. And so then I, it was like 10 a.m. And then I just skipped my connecting flight, just rented a car. And I drove from DC, visited every Walmart on the way to North Carolina. I didn't get home till like 9 p.m. And I just like, it was like, that was the best thing ever. Siqi Chen: I wonder if the CEO of Hershey's has done that. Probably not. I wonder if he's doing it. And the guy... Speaker 3: It's a problem. Siqi Chen: 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... Speaker 3: Well, it's a it's a vendor's license. So a lot of people have vendors license like beverage, like Coca-Cola. So they have a direct sales network where you can fit like theoretically 10,000 chocolate bars in a pallet. You can only fit 500 Coke cans. So it's like a lot harder to store 10,000 cans of Coke than is 10,000 chocolate bars. So for that, they have Coke trucks 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 your 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. 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 Walmarts and fixing the product. I like just. Observing it, like what it looks like on the shelf, seeing what the competition is doing, just seeing who's grabbing it and buying it. Siqi Chen: It's like those memes, like men won't go to therapy, but they'll do this. This is your thing, right? Speaker 3: Organize a chocolate aisle in Target or Walmart. Siqi Chen: So let's do rule number two. This one. Go ahead. We can reveal this. I think you know what this one is? Speaker 3: Rule of 100. I gave it a name. Siqi Chen: I'm going to quote you on this. I'm sure you could ask this a million times. What advice do you have for me as a YouTuber? How do I be successful on YouTube? You said this thing that to me was like, every creator should print this and put it on their wall. Speaker 3: This applies to everything. Siqi Chen: Look, your first video's not going to get views, period. Speaker 3: Make a hundred videos, improve something every time on the hundredth one, then ask questions. Siqi Chen: To me, that's the rule of a hundred. It's before you come ask for advice. It's like, have you made a hundred videos and every time try to make one thing better? And that's like also very achievable too. It's not like some insurmountable thing to do. It's like, all right, I'm going to make my intro better. I'm going to make my editing better or whatever it is. And the beauty of what you said was, I think the way you said it, you were like, If you do that a hundred times and I say, come talk to me after you've done the hundred, people, 99% of people just don't do it. And then the 1% of people who do, they don't need me after that. You figure it out, which is really cool. Speaker 3: It's more of a metaphorical mindset because that's the thing. It's most people who 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 get 0.1% better and then do that for a couple of years. Siqi Chen: I have a couple other pictures to show you. So this is one. This is one of your thumbnails. Speaker 3: Oh God. Siqi Chen: During your rise. Speaker 3: That's still on my channel? Siqi Chen: So I went and I looked at your You're your first hundred. He said the rule of a hundred. Let me go look at his first hundred. And I saw this and like today you're probably known as like one of the best, smartest thumbnail people in the world. Speaker 3: Black Ops 2 shotgun gameplay with commentary on PS4 or Xbox. Siqi Chen: I suck at making thumbnails, which is honestly dope because Most people, if they feel like they're bad at something, they just don't do it. They shy away. And then you have this other one, which is like your 100th video. On your 100th video, you wrote your stats. Speaker 3: You go, subscribers. I did do that. I remember that. Siqi Chen: 730 subscribers. So on your rule of 100, it's not like at 100 you were rich and famous. Speaker 3: Yeah. Siqi Chen: Right. Speaker 3: And honestly, Yeah, probably 150 of them are me asking people on Xbox Live to subscribe. Like, when I'd be playing Call of Duty in, like, a game chat, I'd be like, yo, subscribe to my channel! 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. I'd be like, oh, I just need to write better jokes or I need to have a better camera or this. And then 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 how you speak, to how long the video is. 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. So they'll ask me for advice. And like the ones who listen, they'll take their revenue from like 30K to 400K a month or their goals, subs or whatever it is. I can show them how to hit it. But a lot of times people ask for advice. I'll say it'll be like in one ear and out the other. And like, so those are the worst. Siqi Chen: I use this because I was studying Seinfeld recently 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 stand-up comedy game. He's the only stand-up billionaire. Like, ever. So he's the only comedian who's a billionaire. It's pretty crazy. And so I was like, all right, what can I learn from Seinfeld? And one of the things he did was he was like, every day for like the last 45 years, I wake up and my first two hours of the day, I write. He's like, I write jokes. He's like, guess what? If you want to get good at jokes, you write jokes every day. And he's like, every day I just try to make it one better than the other. They talk about writer's block. He's like, that's nonsense. He goes, my rule is I sit down. I don't have to write. I just can't do anything else. And he's like, and then that makes me right. And I've been doing that. And he has this yellow legal pad of all the pages he ever did. And he literally laid them out on a road. And he like paved the whole road. It became like a yellow brick road, basically. It's incredible. Speaker 3: Do you know how many hours that is? Unknown Speaker: Two hours a day for 45 years? Speaker 3: 30,000 hours, right? Yeah. That's, you know, that's the thing. People say it takes 10,000 hours to master or something. And I'm like, 10,000 hours, that's when you start. That's the mindset you need with the rule of 100. Because 10,000 hours, what is that? It's only like eight hours a day for four years. It's not that, they got crazy. But to a lot of people, 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's too easy. Speaker 4: 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? Speaker 3: No, that's just what I live for. Garry Tan: Yeah. Speaker 3: So, I mean, I just, I wake up, I walk into the studio and normally this whiteboard over here, we erased it. I guess it wouldn't be leaked, but it'd have all the businesses, all the piles, all the bottlenecks, anything I could do to push things forward. And it's all listed out and there'd be probably three or 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 three things that need to be done. Here's all the major bottlenecks that if you stepped in, you could push it forward. Content, toys, Lunchly, whatever. So that's more how I structure my days 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 or 1 a.m. thing. You know what I mean? So it's very even just just figure out what I need to accomplish in a week. And then even the order of what we do is very important. Siqi Chen: You want to do the third one? Speaker 4: Yeah, you want to play it, Jimmy? Speaker 3: Let's see this bad boy. You can make anything viral. Speaker 4: So in your... Can we talk about your leaked... Garry Tan: Yeah, of course. Speaker 3: The document? Yeah, you did a podcast on it. Speaker 4: So we want to do an exercise. Speaker 3: Exercise? Siqi Chen: This is a challenge. Speaker 3: A challenge. Speaker 4: To see... Speaker 3: If I can come up with a viral idea? Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. Speaker 3: 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. Siqi Chen: You're grading yourself here. Garry Tan: I know. Siqi Chen: It's that meme where Obama's putting the medal on himself. Speaker 3: You guys could be like, I don't think I'll get 100 million views and I'll just go no. Siqi Chen: But here's the stipulation. Take a normal thing, make it an interesting viral idea, but with a budget of $1,000. Because it's easy to say, oh, MrBeast would just put a million dollars on the line. Okay, 10 grand, 10 grand. And you said you used to use random word generators. Speaker 3: Oh, I did all the time. Siqi Chen: So we gave you a random word generator. If you hit, I don't know what it is. Speaker 3: Generate random words. Siqi Chen: You can flip through a few until you find a word you want. Speaker 4: Find the actual thing. Speaker 3: So to give a little context to your viewers, the thing is like, you could spend seven days, this is something I've said on other podcasts, I think this drives it home. I spent seven days buried alive. That got hundreds of millions of views, me laying in a coffin. It's like, holy shit, put a coffin 10 feet underground, cover it with 20,000 pounds of dirt. I'm literally in a coffin for a week. That's cool. That's viral. That was seven days of me laying down. I theoretically could have, instead of doing that, laid in just a bathtub for seven days. No one would have gave a fuck. That video wouldn't have... In theory, it's the same amount of time, at least from a filming perspective. Logistically, maybe not. But in theory, both for me just laying down for seven days. But one is super fucking viral. The other, no one cares about. And so that's like the power of ideas. 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 why I'm so adamant about generating good ideas. All right, so I just hit random, create random words. Chocolate. Siqi Chen: There you go. Unknown Speaker: Chocolate's easy. They're gonna think this is great. Speaker 4: No, no, no, keep going, keep going. Speaker 3: It said chocolate. Unknown Speaker: This is a random word generator. Speaker 3: They're not gonna, they're gonna think this whole thing's staged. Uh, grandmother. They gave us the word grandmother. So what's a viral idea with a grandmother that can be done for $10,000? I mean, bro, if you actually want like a mega banger, I would do completing a hundred-year-old's bucket list. Siqi Chen: Oh, so you'd meet a grandma. Speaker 3: 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, you know, do everything in the bucket list for them. That's a cool idea. Don't do this title, but she will die in 30 days. So I fulfilled all her wishes. Siqi Chen: That's so good. Hold on. We got to do another one. Okay. You passed. You passed the test. Speaker 3: This is a lifestyle. I can make things. Siqi Chen: I like the magic trick. Garry Tan: Drawing. Speaker 3: You want to do that one? Siqi Chen: Yeah, drawing. Speaker 3: Okay. The next one he hit was drawing. I mean, well, so you want it for 10 grand? Because the first thing I thought of is for drawing is drawing the world's largest picture, but that would be more than 10 grand. Actually, weirdly enough, a lot of videos go viral on YouTube where people are just like customizing phones or things like that. 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. Siqi Chen: Stop them. Speaker 3: But 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 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 a hundred million views. So that would be one way you could do drawing. I mean even it's just if you're a good enough artist like and if you're not just get good and study and be good. 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. Siqi Chen: Yeah I mean the. Speaker 3: How many do you want? Siqi Chen: When you're brainstorming, are you usually just kind of by yourself? If I said, you've got to come up with something, what would you do to set yourself up to come up with great ideas? Speaker 3: Yeah, because in transparency, I have teams now and so I'm not as like, I used to do this all myself. Now I pay a lot of people to do it and I just like work with them on the back 10%. I mean, yeah, if you really want to come up with great ideas, you need to surround yourself with other very creative people. I mean, I'm not going to say their names, but I have at least five people that if I really needed to solve something, I would call, I'd fly them down. It would be boom, boom, boom, boom, me in the middle. And we could solve anything creatively in terms of virality or anything like that. 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 going to say much, but when he says it, you're like, dang, that's good. 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 his think tank? Siqi Chen: Yeah, and they had a thing where they were like, at Pixar, they have a book called Creativity Inc. Speaker 3: Or Creativity Inc., yeah. Siqi Chen: And he said, people think, oh, we just come up with the best ideas right away. He goes, no. He goes, the creative process is taking something that sucks, And we're moving suck. And so he's like, yeah, we sit there, we watch the first version and it sucks. And then we we trust each other enough to be like, yeah, that kind of sucks. But here's what sucks about it. Go back. Try again. Speaker 3: Try again. Garry Tan: Try again. Siqi Chen: By the end, by the 10th thing. We've just removed all the suck and all that's left is the good bits. Do you buy that? Speaker 3: Yeah, I was just at Pixar at the Steve Jobs building and I was just with some of the employees while they're working and just seeing how they go about it. And they're doing daily reviews over there, which is like, you know, every day like what they work on, they're showing to like the director and stuff and getting like real-time feedback and they're very like ego-less and it was very cool to like see their culture and how they go about it. Like because they, I mean, in terms of animated films, they're second to none. Siqi Chen: Right. Speaker 4: I remember a couple of years ago when we talked to you, you said that coming up with ideas was still the thing that you felt like you had the most trouble handing off to anyone else. It was like the thing that you still just like excelled most at and couldn't get anyone else to just be you. Speaker 3: I've trained so many great people at that now. Speaker 4: Okay. Garry Tan: Yeah. Speaker 3: I mean, I have enough ideas for the next five years. So that's not a bottleneck at all. I have too many. I would just start listing them off, but then the problem is everyone would steal them. Yeah, yeah. Garry Tan: My friends, if you like MFM, then you're going to like the following podcast. It's called a Billion Dollar Moves. And of course, it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the number one audio destination for business professionals. Billion Dollar Moves. It's hosted by Sarah Chen Spelling. Sarah is a venture capitalist and strategist. And with Billion Dollar Moves, she wants to look at unicorn founders and funders, and she looks for what she calls the unexpected leader. Many of them were underestimated long before they became huge and successful and iconic. She does it with unfiltered conversations about success, failure, fear, courage, and all that great stuff. So again, if you like My First Million, check out Billion Dollar Moves. It's brought to you by the Hubspot Podcast Network. Again, Billion dollar moves. All right, back to the episode. Siqi Chen: Okay, great. Let's go to the next one. All right, so we have that's three of the rules. Number four, I'll flip this one. Cloning. Speaker 3: Yes. Siqi Chen: All right. So the backstory of this one is last year when we were doing our camper event, it's basically a room full of business people, billionaires, all whatever. And you started describing how you run your company. And you were 25 years old at the time. Speaker 3: You're not now you're 26. With these people double my age and 20 times the experience of me. Garry Tan: Correct. Siqi Chen: And so there we're listening and we're like, so who is this guy? This guy's been following you around all day. Who is this? And how do you run this? How do you train people? And you were like, you described this process of cloning and I swear I saw like five billionaires make a note to themselves. So can you describe what is your cloning principle and what does that mean? Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the thing is, like, as a founder, because I assume a lot of your viewers run founders. Yeah, like, you're constantly having to put out fires, you're constantly having to do things. And that's a flaw. You're always going to be putting, like having to work on stuff, but you should view any time you have to work on things as a flaw. And it's like, how do you, what's the fastest way to stop working on something? Every time you work on it, have someone on your hip and have them learn how to do it, essentially clone you to do that task. And so anytime I'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 six months. And so that's, that's just like the cheat code to doing it. Siqi Chen: And it's cloning, not training. Why? Speaker 3: Well, 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 run your company one day and have the upside to live with you. Because someone who's making $40,000 a year, they're not going to live with you and follow you around 15 hours a day. Siqi Chen: But early on, you had that. You had people literally like... Speaker 3: Yeah, I still have people like that, but it's like, that's just a small subset of it. So yeah, on the core team, yeah, 100%. It's just like, the thing is, the more you know about everything going on, the better. Because a lot of what you do in one part of one vertical business in finance or in this or that affects other parts. And so the more you understand the whole business, the more you understand the ripples you create across things, the better efficiently and better You can do these kinds of things. And so just having a clone who knows everything about the whole business as opposed to just one section just makes it where they can just make decisions so much faster and they can cut through red tape and it just makes it so much easier for you to just like. Cause like when you're in hyper growth scale, you don't know like what the next fire is going to be or the next things is to fix. And so you just have a couple of versions of yourself, which is so nice. Cause it's like, oh, this thing over here in editing is falling apart. All right, clone that you followed me around for the last three years. You know what I would do? Just go fix it. You know what I mean? So I don't have to go fix it. Siqi Chen: Every part of a company is not like, it's not like you look at a thing, you're like editing, editing is its own thing. No, editing is people editing, right? Everything is people. And so what I liked about the way you were doing it was, I think on the outside, people hear this like, follow you around all the time, live with you, that's crazy. That's harsh. I met the people doing it and they were like, this is the greatest opportunity. I came here for this. I want to be great. He's giving me the opportunity to be great. Not everybody wants this, but I really want this. Speaker 3: You can either go to college, like the night before you, go to college for three years, or you can follow Shaan around for three years, and like just all day, every day. And the version of you that follows Shaan around for three years will make way more money. You'll be way more experienced, way more valuable to him, or you could just go to any one of his competitors and you'll make 10 times more than if you guys were there. Siqi Chen: Have you ever heard the Warren Buffett cloning story? Speaker 3: No. Siqi Chen: So Warren Buffett, when he was young, he wanted to learn investing, right? So he goes to the guy who wrote the book on investing, Benjamin Graham. And he's like, Mr. Graham, I'm Warren Buffett. I'm a big fan of your work. I want to work for you. I will work harder than anyone you know. And you know what? I'm willing to work for you for free because this matters so much. I want to learn from you. And Ben Graham goes, son, your price is too high. And he was born was like surprising. 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. Speaker 3: Yeah. Siqi Chen: 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, Ultimately, you want judgment to scale. So it's like, if people in your company can think, what would Jimmy do and get the right answer, now you've got two Jimmys. For the most part, they can make decisions. Speaker 3: 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. Siqi Chen: What will he say when I tell him what I'm actually going to do? Speaker 3: Yeah. And then they think even one step further, which is like my long-term clones are great. They'll be like, OK, well, Jimmy's going to want data back. He's not going to care about an opinion. So I'm going to just go do all the research and grab the data. And then they'll ask me something and I'll say blah, blah. And they'll be like, I knew you were going to say that. And they'll hand me things. I'll be like, well, what about this and that? I knew you were going to say that. I'll be like, oh, great. Siqi Chen: And by the way, it's not just you. Even other people, there was like a guy, he was also cloning people. He's like, yeah, 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. Speaker 3: Zero to one is so difficult, but then one to three, you know, like is so much easier. So that's like the hard part is like training that for like downloading. I'll pick a random thing like writing the videos, right? Like obviously I used to write all the videos myself, taking all that and getting where someone else could do it without keeping the essence of like what makes it viral and what makes it good. Not feeling too corporate and scripted because we're not scripted, etc. Like going from zero to one, that took like five years. But then, you know, him training the next two people is great because I don't have to do it. And he trains those two and those two train the next. And so it's just like that first clone is so imperative and then they can do the rest. Siqi Chen: That's great. You want to do the next one? Speaker 3: All right. Speaker 4: Sure. Speaker 3: Impossible is possible. Fuck yeah. Siqi Chen: Impossible is possible. All right. So this is, I asked your, I'm friends with Rohan, the guy who runs your TikTok. I go, tell me the thing where you realize like this guy's built different. This guy thinks differently than a normal person would. 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, God damn, this is impossible. He goes, for example, Jimmy came to me and said, I need 10 million TikTok followers a month, Ron. He goes, and every month I told Jimmy, it's impossible like a hundred times. And he told me, do it 500 times. He told me to do it 500 times. Speaker 3: I think we had two months where we were getting 10 million. Siqi Chen: That's what he told me. He goes, I didn't do it most months, but I did do it like, you know, two months and we got way further. Then we ever would have got had he not laid down like kind of this impossible gauntlet. So yeah, 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? Speaker 3: Oh, well, I don't try to just give people KPIs that I think are impossible just to torture them I just like I think most people there when you ask them to do something like very Incredibly difficult like what I first did I want to bury myself alive for a week like people's first inclination is just that's not possible And like, technically, almost anything is possible. 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 unstable? 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. Siqi Chen: Where the bottleneck is. Speaker 3: 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 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 is that not possible? Garry Tan: Go get the fucking Eiffel Tower. Speaker 3: Until the head of the president of France tells you no, it's possible. Siqi Chen: I know what he says now. Ask his kids. Let's see if they have some sway over him. Speaker 3: We'll have to give him while you're on the phone. We just filmed a video where we had the three pyramids of Egypt. We were there for 100 hours. It was a crazy video. We explored the pyramids. It's my favorite video ever. Same thing. You can't just have the three pyramids. 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. Okay, fine, Jimmy, we'll go try to get the pyramids. They'll go away. They'll come back a day later. You can't have the pyramids. I'm like, who'd you call? This tourist guy who like works at the pyramids. I'm like, okay. Call the head of tourism. Like, how do you get their number? Okay, well, that's different. You didn't ask me how to get the head of tourism's number. You asked me. You just told me it was not possible. Like, so now, like, please don't do that again. Like, we got to figure out what the problems are. Let's figure it out. And then we make calls and you figure it out. 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. Speaker 4: It seems to me like when you solve these impossible problems, You have to think on like a lower level rather than a higher level. Have you heard the story of Elon getting his rockets from Texas to Florida where they launched them? Speaker 3: No. Speaker 4: So the normal way everyone gets their rockets to Florida is on a barge, right? But it takes like three months and costs a bunch of money. Speaker 3: Didn't he fly it there? Speaker 4: He drove it there. He's like, no, we're gonna drive it instead. And they're like, well, it's way too big. Siqi Chen: Well, first answer was. Speaker 4: It's impossible. Siqi Chen: Can't do it. Speaker 3: Yeah. Siqi Chen: 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. Speaker 4: Okay. Siqi Chen: 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. Speaker 4: And so, you know, oh, well, it's impossible to get it through overpasses. And so he's like, well, what would be the shortest way to get there without encountering a single overpass? So they go, they do this like extremely circuitous route, all on back roads. And they're like, but even if we do that, there's still a problem with power lines and telephone wires. And so they have like some of the smartest people on earth driving in a van in front of these rockets with big poles. And they just push up the telephone wires. And then they go to the next telephone wire. And it's just like, You just have to approach it like a caveman almost to beat the impossible. Do you find that's the case a lot? Speaker 3: Yeah, quite a bit. And a lot of it is just a willingness. It's just people who love what they do and people who really love problem solving will figure these things out. And so it's just having the right person in the right seat at the right time who actually wants to go deep. There are certain people where you give them something that seems impossible and they will be giddy and they'll be like, fuck yeah, I can't wait. I have people like that where I could call and be like, What's something... Siqi Chen: They don't wake up until it's hard. Speaker 3: 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 they're like, people in my company, if I called and said that, like, I promise you, they would smile. They'd be like, okay. Like, they'd 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. So you just got to get the right people who just deeply enjoy solving problems and see it as a challenge. There are people built that way and those are the people that really succeed in that environment. Siqi Chen: Even a different example that's not getting the Taj Mahal or the Eiffel Tower. One of my favorite videos of yours where the first time I was like, all right, respect. It was before I met you. I was like, okay, respect. Ben was telling me about you and he made a video and said, I'm going to cut through this table with a plastic knife. Garry Tan: Oh my gosh. Speaker 3: 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, a plastic knife. And then I just started like scraping against the desk. And I was like, oh, well, I'm like, kind of like I can cut this desk in half, like just like your stupid little high school desk. I just did this for like five minutes till like the teacher was like, what the fuck are you doing? Garry Tan: Stop. Speaker 3: And then I just was like looking at the little indention. I was doing the calculation in my head. I was like, it'd take me like 10 hours to cut through this, according to my math. I was like, Fuck it. I think that would be like a video where people would be interested. So I went to the store on the way home and I bought like a thousand plastic, like the cheapest plastic knives I could find. And then I just got this like $20 fold out table. And I just went in my room, hit record on the camera and I just went to town because the plastic knives would get dull after like a minute. And I was just cutting through it. And I think that I think that took 12 hours to cut through the table of plastic knives. Siqi Chen: But that's what I'm saying. It was no money. It was no money. It wasn't Taj Mahal. It was like creativity or boredom. Boredom is the key. This is like how Einstein discovered relativity. Speaker 3: But that video did so well and it's like so dumb. It's just like, how many leaks does it take to get to the center of a tinsel pot? How many plastic knives does it take to cut a table in half? It's just like people are like, what a fucking idiot. Siqi Chen: Did you do it with one, by the way? Speaker 3: Or would you go through like a video? It's probably thousands. Okay, gotcha. Siqi Chen: That's insane. By the way, that's a spoiler. I think that one we kind of copied number eight, which is, no doesn't mean no way. And there's a big difference between no and no way. Speaker 3: Impossible is possible and no doesn't mean no, exact same thing, yeah. Siqi Chen: 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. Why? And let's try to understand it. And if it truly is, no, which it rarely is, fine. But it's usually not. And then the cool thing is if you do that in the company, do it once. People are like, oh, wow, that was interesting. Do it twice. By the third time you do it, people are like, all right, that's the way, right? It's contagious. Speaker 3: By the 50th time. Siqi Chen: It's like a religion. People start to believe when they see it, right? Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you're in place. For me, it tends to take a couple of dozen times for it to stick. Siqi Chen: Well, I'll keep pointing at it. I'm like, guys, remember what we said and then what happened? Let's take that and that's a rally cry for us now. We could do all these things, right? Let's immortalize that. Garry Tan: So I'm obsessed with being transparent about money, particularly with ultra high net worth people. The reason being is that there's not a lot of information on this demographic. And so because I own Hampton, which is a community for founders, I have access to thousands of young and incredibly high net worth people. We have people worth hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars inside of Hampton. And so every year we do this thing called the Hampton Wealth Report where we survey over a thousand entrepreneurs and we ask them all types of information about their personal We ask them about how they're investing their money, what their portfolio looks like. We ask them about their monthly spend habits. We ask them how they've set up their estate, how much money they're going to leave to charity, how much money they keep in cash, how much money they're paying themselves from their businesses. Basically, every question that you want to ask a rich person, we went and we do it for you and we do it with hundreds and hundreds of people. So, if you wanna check out the report, it's called the Hampton Wealth Report. Just go to joinhampton.com, click our menu, and you're gonna see a section called Reports, and you're gonna see it all right there. It's very easy. So, again, it's called the Hampton Wealth Report. Go to joinhampton.com, click the menu, and then click the Report button, and let me know what you think. Speaker 3: All right, we got three more to go. Speaker 4: Consultants are a cheat code. Speaker 3: Yeah. And honestly, because I wrote this, they're referencing my thing I wrote a couple of years ago. I would update that to just say, like, experienced people are cheat codes, the right ones. Because it doesn't, because like my handbook, I guess that's what you would call it, leaked on Twitter. And like. Siqi Chen: There you go. Those are your handbooks. Speaker 3: Yeah, my production bible. So many people were like, consultants, and even consultants are like putting this on their website, like even MrBeast. Siqi Chen: Endorsed on LinkedIn. Yeah, I know. Speaker 3: And they're like, so many consultant tweets are like, yes, he validated our industry. And I'm like, well, I wasn't specifically talking about McKinsey, you know. It's just more like, You know, especially with us because we do so many random weird things. I mean, dude, what did I say in here? Speaker 4: Consultants are literally cheat codes. Need to make the world's largest slice of cake? Start off by calling the person who has made the previous world's largest slice of cake. LOL. He's already done countless tests and can save you weeks worth of work. I really want to drill this point home because I'm a massive believer in consultants because I've spent almost a decade of my life hyper obsessing over YouTube. I can show a brand new creator how to go from 100 subscribers to 10,000 in a month. On their own, it would take them years to do it. Consults are a gift from God. Please take advantage of them in every single freaking task assigned to you. Always, always, always ask yourself first if you can find a consultant to help you. Speaker 3: 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? Siqi Chen: How's that phone call go? Speaker 3: Great. They're usually like, well, we don't have David Blaine's phone number. And I'm like, OK, I'll DM him on Instagram. And I'm like, here's his phone number. Call him. Figure out how he didn't die. Siqi Chen: You know, you do these things like one night I was just hanging out my house. Speaker 3: I got a call. Siqi Chen: North Carolina number, pick up. Speaker 3: Oh yeah. It's usually, I go on walks and then I just like, I literally just close my eyes and like flip through my contacts and I'll like stop and you know, when it's on S you'll be there and I'll just be like, hmm, I just have a random name and I'll be like, teach me something. Sometimes it calls in one minute, other times they're 20. And yeah, it's like, you gotta always be learning. Siqi Chen: 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... Speaker 3: I don't understand why that's... Siqi Chen: I kind of started to steal it because I was like, why not? I'm also like, I'm obsessed with learning. Speaker 3: Yeah. Siqi Chen: Oh, something like maybe the mechanics of it. I was confused. Like, so I call these people, then I just say like, hey. Speaker 3: Teach me something. What's funny is the more you do it, the more people will come to expect it too. So like I'll call someone, they won't answer. And then they'll be like, let me guess, you're on a walk. Sorry, I'm busy. And then I'm like, I don't even have to respond to just get it. 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 born on a walk, I was born on a walk. Now everyone just gets it. It's a protocol. Yeah. So it's like so funny that I've become known for that and like people will answer and like sometimes I won't even say anything they'll be like... All right, here's what I've learned. It's like, great, 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 I just get this five minute brain dump of everything they learn, suck it out of them. And then I'm like, here's what I learned, because I always a big part of this, if you want to go well, 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. And then you hang up and you go to the next one. Siqi Chen: Another one that is in the kind of consultants are cheat codes is we do these talks at our event. So at our basketball event, it's kind of like play ball all day till we're like dead tired. And then at night, it's like we're hanging out. And the first year we did it, I remember because I created the events. I was kind of the host. I was like, I don't want to be like forcing like a conference vibe. I was like, yeah, 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 do 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. Speaker 3: Yeah, you go. Siqi Chen: 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 ten million dollars, what would be the best way to turn it into a hundred through real estate? Speaker 3: Yeah. Siqi Chen: And then you talk for like five minutes, you're like, cool, got it. I should just give it to somebody like you. Makes sense. On to the next. And I was like... I love the power of kind of like the right question, the right person. Speaker 3: 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 even rambling for 30 minutes. And I'm like, I feel like they got another 15 in them. Three of those people are on their phone. Those two are checked out. Those five are too nice to say anything. I'll be the one who's like, hey, we get it. Siqi Chen: All right. I got the next one. Block out the noise. Okay. Garry Tan: Block out. Siqi Chen: You want to do block out the noise? Speaker 3: Sure. Speaker 4: So here's the quote. When you're small, people say you're too obsessed. You're a weirdo. Get a life. Be realistic. This is from you. People will try to convince you that you're out of your mind for wanting to do this. Then when it works, yo, your drive, your tenacity. That was great. Speaker 3: Everything you guys have. The things that you've been flattering me with throughout this podcast are the exact same things I got low-key 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 possible. No doesn't mean no. And you just like love this shit. And in high school, that's what a fucking nerd. Get a life, like loser. Yeah. Speaker 4: That's why you call it block out the noise, right? Because the same things that people admire when you're successful are the things that people are going to try and tell you to stop. Siqi Chen: You wouldn't be MrBeast, right? Speaker 4: We wouldn't be here right now. Speaker 3: Everyone else, yeah, just a normal job. But the thing is, it's like, the big takeaway is it just means you're not around the right people, right? Because, like, obviously, if I was around you guys when you were younger, I'm sure you guys would have been like, oh, what a weird, obsessed nerd. You would have been like, oh, this is sick. Let's grow together. Or, you know, maybe when we were 18, we wouldn't have that much emotional intelligence, but we would have, like, flocked together. So it's also just finding the right people to be around. And if you're having to block out a lot of noise, then you're just, like, you have a serious problem. Siqi Chen: Signal. Speaker 3: Yeah. Like, you really got to change who you are because that's really it. I mean, if you're the smartest person, you're hanging around, make, you know, the 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. Siqi Chen: Yeah. Speaker 4: Last one. Let's go into. Reinvest everything. Speaker 3: Yes, sir. Siqi Chen: 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, yeah, Jimmy, where'd you get the extra? Speaker 3: I got the largest unscripted streaming deal in history and somehow lost a ton of money on it. Siqi Chen: When we were here the first time, somebody was like, you know, what do you think is kind of like his edge? I go, his edge is that he takes all the money he makes and then he reinvests it. It 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. Speaker 3: That's why you used to call it a kamikaze commitment. Siqi Chen: What do you do? What do you do with somebody who's willing to just like plow it all back in? That's not the person I would want to compete against. So that's kind of, I guess that's why to me this is a win. Speaker 3: 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. Siqi Chen: 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? Speaker 3: Uh, yeah. Well, I mean, at the beginning it was me and my mom and a couple of friends from high school. So she was 10 jobs. I was 20 jobs. Um, I mean, now they just, they're, I mean, people kind of normalize to your weird craziness. So they're more. Siqi Chen: But that's now. What at the beginning, what was that like? Speaker 3: I mean, everyone thought I was deranged. You know, like, oh, why? Why do you like? Because, I mean, I was everyone, you know, a big budget YouTube video used to be ten grand. I was the first one to ever spend a million dollars on a video and two million. Siqi Chen: This is probably the best example, right? Speaker 3: Like, yeah, I got a brand deal for ten thousand dollars. 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 ten bucks an hour to help me. And me going, mom, water taxes, help. I didn't make money. Do I pay taxes? And she's like, yes. I'm like, fuck. But yeah, I got a brand deal for $10,000 and then I just went outside like this. I used to live like two minutes, like the $700 a month apartment I was telling you about, or duplex, was like literally two minutes down the road from this. And so I just got the 10 grand. I was like, wire me the money. They wired it, withdrew it and gave it to this homeless guy on the side of the street. Siqi Chen: Were you not tempted to like, Have money for the first time. Speaker 3: Pocket five. Siqi Chen: Giveaway five. Speaker 3: Sorry, pocket five. Spend on a different video. What else do you do with the money? Siqi Chen: It's like there's a story of Zuck when he got offered a billion dollars for Facebook early on and they were like, Mark, we should talk about this. Speaker 3: 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. Siqi Chen: I like the one I have. This is like legendary. Speaker 3: 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. Speaker 4: It reminds me a lot, reading about Walt Disney. This is what he was famous for because his brother Roy. Speaker 3: I love your podcast on it. Thank you. Speaker 4: It was like the business man. Speaker 3: This is the one that Don makes you watch out for. Speaker 4: How to take over the world. Roy would like pull his hair out of like, Walt, can we please just like save some money? And he had like a compulsion almost to take all the money. He like felt bad keeping any money. He's like, no, it has to go into We're making better shows. Do you feel that? Speaker 3: No, it has nothing to do with 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? Because I would love to go buy everything in every single store in this entire city and donate it all to charity. That'd be $200 million. So I can't. 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. I don't really care. You know what I mean? Speaker 4: By the way, you just came up with that number. Siqi Chen: Yeah, I was like, he's done the math. Speaker 3: Well, you look at this. I know, it costs $15 million to buy everything at Walmart. Siqi Chen: $15 million? Have you done that? Is that one of the things you're doing? Garry Tan: We're going to, yeah. Siqi Chen: Nice. Speaker 3: I think that's a fucking banger. And we're donating it all to charity, so it's cool. Siqi Chen: What's your ambition, right? So it's like Ben, in 40 years, is doing the pod on you. Speaker 3: Don't ask me 40. Ask like 10. 40's too far. You're going to give me anxiety. Siqi Chen: What's the dream dream? Speaker 3: Right now, I can't do 40. But for the next five, the big thing I'm focused on, which I was telling you guys about in the car, is. Siqi Chen: What can you explain about your business empire? Speaker 3: Can you break it down? Specifically, like chocolate. It might seem so random. Why is the largest YouTube in the world selling chocolate? Well, right now, 70% of the world's cocoa comes from West Africa, Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana. And majority of the people who work on those farms are actually kids or child laborers. 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. Siqi Chen: I'll eat this while you talk. Speaker 3: So 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. Siqi Chen: I'm like, that's the way things have always been. Speaker 3: I said to one, I think I don't remember the exact, I'm going to butcher it, but I was like, Elon's going to put people on Mars and you're telling me we can't. Not have little kids farming or chocolate. We can't just find people over the age of 18 or whatever. And they're like, well, it's not that simple. And I'm like, what the fuck? So that kind of like pissed me off and sent me down. I'm like, yeah, what you mean to say is that would hurt the billions of dollars in free cash while you're spitting off in your margins. But anyways, so I was like, I went down that path like two years ago. I was like, OK, well, you actually went to West Africa. Oh, yeah. But before even that, it's just like so then I was We're going to start referencing our piece of paper here. So then consultants are cheat codes. 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 Chocoloni? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So they're they're great. It's a European brand, but they're like a reporter used to call out big chocolate and be like, there's a lot of child labor. You guys aren't ethical. And like they would just ignore them. And so then he's like, fuck it. Siqi Chen: He started a. Speaker 3: Yeah, and he started a chocolate company. And that's Tony Schiavone, because he's like the lonely... Siqi Chen: And it became like a $200 million business. Speaker 3: Yeah, it's doing pretty well. And so I was like, let me get in contact with these people. And I just started talking to them. I flew them here to Greenville, like the next week. And we were just like, I was like, teach me everything about child labor, how we can remediate it, what should we be doing on our farms, etc. And like, I just had like phone calls with them every single day, studied. And then the next five companies that are also doing ethical things, I just absorbed everything they're all doing into my brain. I was like, cool. All right, I know what we need to do. Step one, the main reason why there's child labor is just poverty. Most of these farmers are making a dollar or less a day. So 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 step one is 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 gonna keep this mile high, because I know not everyone is as passionate about the childhood industry as me, but this is where I live and breathe. So what is a living income, right? Because obviously a living income in America is completely different than in West Africa. So there's a living income reference price where they look at the cost of like bread and living and inflation and it's like, you know, if a farmer sells you like a metric tons of cocoa, they need to make this for them to be able to live roughly and be able to. So we pay 100% of our farmers living income reference price. So there could be an instance where you're a farmer, you give us a shipping container of cocoa and you're like, you know, we want $1,100. I'm like, no. You want $1,300. Here's $1,300. Now make sure there's no kids on your farms. You know what I mean? Or kids in illegal child labor. I'm oversimplifying everything. This is a very complex thing. We're talking about tens of thousands of farms. There's millions of farms there. None of this is as simple as I'm portraying it, but I'm just doing my best to generalize it all. You pay your farmers a living income. All our beans are Fairtrade certified. Then we work with CLRMRS, which is the Child Labor and Remediation System. They routinely audit the farms, interview the parents, interview the kids, see if the kids are going to school, working on the farm. I'm a They'll help them get more yield and like educate them on things they could be doing to grow more for trees or have more trees or will, you know, occasionally give them wheelbarrows or things like that so they can just, I mean, a little something as simple as a wheelbarrow. I mean, it's a big difference between carrying 10 cacao pods, theoretically, again, generalizing everything or, you know, to carry 40 in a wheelbarrow, like that's technically makes you four times more efficient. It's not, again, making up numbers. Yeah. So like goal is just to make Feastables the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in the world. And, you know, if we can do a billion dollars a year in chocolate sales ethically while being profitable, then I can use it 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. Siqi Chen: 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. Speaker 3: 26 videos. Siqi Chen: Make 26 bangers. Sell a lot of chocolate, get jacked. And he said it like that fast. Speaker 3: Every day, all three. Siqi Chen: And you got in great shape from the last time. Speaker 3: Can you? Yeah, I, was it, was I still fat last year or was that the first year? Siqi Chen: No, it was first, first year was, I mean, I wasn't quite fat, but like, you know. Speaker 3: I was a fucking walrus. I was 240 pounds. Yeah, I'm right now I'm 190. So I probably. Siqi Chen: But you had started lifting at the last one we did. And in this year, you're like. Yeah. Speaker 3: So year one, I was 240 pounds. Year two, I was probably 215, 220 pounds. And now I'm 190. So yeah, I'm like probably 25 pounds lighter. I can't wait to vault. Siqi Chen: How did you, what'd you do? Like, what was your approach to getting jacked? Or like, how did you approach it? Speaker 3: I, 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 jack people around me. And then like my, 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, My old friend group, all the time they'd be like, oh, we just ordered pizza or this or that. And it just makes accomplishing my goals so much harder. And it's like the ratio of people ordering pizza to the ratio of people ordering protein was just way off. I mean, this is just how I analyze my life because I'm so all in on business. I don't think about this kind of stuff. So I need an environment that just makes being jacked very natural. Weightlifting is pretty easy. You just go to the gym, 45 minutes, five days a week. But it's the, yes, the food, 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. Siqi Chen: I was living in Australia and I literally bought a plane ticket with no plan one way to San Francisco because I was at this Tony Robbins event and he said proximity is power. Speaker 3: Dang. Love it. Speaker 4: Did you like hire anyone to to help you? Do you have like a trainer around or a coach? Speaker 3: Yeah, he follows me around all day. He's a jack dude sitting downstairs. You'll notice. He's the one who looks like he could be on a bodybuilding stage. Garry Tan: Yeah. Speaker 3: Usually in a tank top. Siqi Chen: Somebody just sent me this. You posted TikTok an hour ago. Speaker 3: I just got out of a meeting with a bunch of billionaires. TikTok, we mean business. Garry Tan: This is my lawyer right here. Speaker 3: 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. Siqi Chen: Are you going to buy TikTok? Speaker 3: 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. Siqi Chen: I'll predict it right now. I think this is going to happen because I think it should happen. It'd be smart, right? Any ownership group that's doing this would be smart to have you involved. Speaker 3: As long as TikTok's willing to sell. Garry Tan: Yeah. Speaker 3: Everyone interested in buying it once they get us involved. Siqi Chen: Yeah. I don't know the political side, like how that's all going to be forced to divest. But if they are, that's going to be crazy. Speaker 3: It's going to be banned if they don't. It's just a question of, is TikTok going to sell or not? Siqi Chen: Yeah. What would you do? Speaker 3: Oh, God, bro. We're riding the podcast zone. Are you really about to start another five-hour talk? Truthfully, I would have to surround myself with the 10 greatest algorithmic people in the world and I'd have to spend a week with them and just absorb. I have no idea what I would do right now. Siqi Chen: Jimmy, this has been a pleasure. Thanks for doing it, man. I'm excited to hoop. Speaker 3: So, basketball camp five. We'll do another one every two years? Siqi Chen: Or like the Olympic cycles every two years? Speaker 3: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg are in the other room. You got to crank out this podcast. I'm going to ball with them. All right, boys. We did it. Garry Tan: All right. Speaker 3: Great. Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks, boys. Unknown Speaker: I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. Siqi Chen: Hey, Shaan here. I want to take a minute to tell you a David Ogilvie story, one of the great ad men. He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron. She's your wife. You wouldn't lie to your own wife, so don't lie to mine. And I love that. You guys, you're my family. You're like my wife, and I won't lie to you either. So I'll tell you the truth. For every company I own right now, six companies, I use Mercury for all of them. So I'm proud to partner with Mercury because I use it for all of my banking needs across my personal account, my business accounts, And anytime I start a new company, this is my first move, I go open up a Mercury account. I'm very confident in recommending it because I actually use it. I've used it for years. It is the best product on the market. So, if you wanna be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, go to mercury.com and apply in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC. All right, back to the episode.