# The rulebook MrBeast followed to build his $1B creator empire

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gajHCdRsdt0
Duration: 33 min
Language: English
Words: 5757
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/gajHCdRsdt0

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[0:00] so Mr Beast how to succeed in Mr BEAST's production document just leaked and I think it's actually really interesting read think that if you're a Creator you're an entrepreneur you're a Founder you work in a company it's worth the read love him or hate the guy I just think that there's something that you can take from this and I posted it on Twitter it got like a million views 10,000 bookmarks so today let's get through my unfiltered analysis reactions of the newly leaked Mr Beast production [Music] document so I'm not going to read you all of this you guys can read yourself while I'm talking but I think I'm just

[0:54] going to give you my reaction to all 36 pages and what I find most interesting so vers is he doesn't call this a rule book you say this is not a rule book um and it's not just like a bunch of hey you need to follow these things um but I I find the most interesting thing is he's so casual about the whole thing I feel like it's a friend of mine who's writing to me and I'm just reading it it's like almost like he's texting me this uh he even calls out that there's grammar issues um and I think that's really powerful it feels like he just like had

[1:31] a pot of coffee one night I can just like picture it now and he just just started writing and and and then he he like published this so I think that more companies should do this have their Founders um just just write what they're feeling about uh you know how to do XYZ let me take a sip let me gu I'm drinking cocacola Oreo Edition don't ask me why I'm trying it and uh yeah I'm not sponsored obviously but it it kind of slaps okay so that is page two let's go to page three so he he says something here that's really interesting he said I can make a separate book for

[2:17] Creative a separate book for production a separate book for editors but I think that'd be dumb I actually would kill to see what those separate books would look like but I understand his point his point is this is a book for everyone here but I do think I I would I would love to see that and I wonder what you think would be in some of those books too I love how clear the goal is for this whole document he says uh M you know our goal here is to make the best videos possible all companies need this all companies need just a really clear goal in English or whatever language but

[2:55] like sixth grade fifth grade fourth you know seventh grade just really easy easy to understand but this document is so simple that even a child could read it um and probably because some children probably are reading this like and I mean I'm joking obviously not children but young people are reading this he makes it really really simple so page four he says 99% of movies or TV shows would flop on YouTube now that sounds really obvious when he says it um but I never thought of it that way um I guess yes every medium is different what works on mobile you know what works on different social platforms don't

[3:37] necessarily work on each other so um the fact that Jimmy we'll call him Jimmy even though I think there's two people on the on the planet you either call Mr Beast Mr Beast or you call Mr Beast Jimmy uh you know what I'm not calling him Jimmy we're gonna keep it I'm gonna call him Mr Beast because that's that's how you know I don't know him personally that well um although I have dm'd with him a couple times all right Mr Beast he's got that YouTube blueprint right um and I think that def saying that to everyone that you know we are not Hollywood or different um what works

[4:12] there won't work here I think is really really smart he says something at the bottom which I don't know about um he talks about you're either an a player B player or C player there's only room in this company for a players a players are obsessive learn from mistakes coachable intelligent don't make excuses believe in YouTube uh B players are people that need to be trained into a players C players are just average employees if you're a junior a player I don't know could you be on Mr bast's team does you know does he does that not work I don't really understand his his Vibe here and

[4:49] I think that there's some people that just are you know they don't come out of the womb as a players right they need to be groomed and stuff like that so uh I feels like a bit much I get his point but let me know in the comments what you think of that comment page five okay this is interesting so here here he explains how to go viral uh on YouTube in just a few words so that's really cool he just like breaks down like this could be a hundred Pages he breaks it down into basically one page so on one hand I think it's genius um on the other

[5:23] hand I actually don't believe this applies to all video creators um for example me myself I create Niche B2B business content I create content around how to come up with startup ideas and tactics in terms of taking our ideas and shipping them some of my best videos are literally like two hours long and and with like very little preparation just like live cooking I mean this video who knows maybe this video gets a million views but it's literally just me talking about you know reacting to something and it's not like super super optimized at all so um I think for niches I'm going to have to disagree with you Mr Beast um

[6:06] but uh for maybe if you want to be for everything if you want to be a top 10 video creator uh I do think he's right shh don't tell anyone but I've got 30 plus startup ideas that could make you millions and I'm giving them away for free these aren't just random guesses they're validated Concepts from on entrepreneurs who built hundred million plus businesses I've compiled them into a one simple database compiled from hundreds of conversations I've had on my podcast but the main thing is most of these ideas don't need a single investor some cost nothing to start I'm pretty much handing you a cheat cheet the idea bank is your

[6:56] startup shortcut just click below to get access your next cash flowing business is waiting for you page six I looked at this this is a a key moments for audian retention and really the big thing that stuck out to me was that 60 million people clicked on his video uh 60 million people uh we just had the debate uh in the US here uh you know Donald Trump C Camala har Harris and that's like about the same amount of people who watch that debate who watch this Mr Beast video there's more people who watch this video than live in Canada the second biggest country on the planet so

[7:42] that's crazy scale um was also a big reminder to me that uh you know I used to think of YouTube creators as entertainers but they're actually more like data scientists uh than they are entertainers so uh when I'm talk when you look at the top hundred YouTube creators they are obsessing over the data um and uh I think uh that was quite quite an interesting takeaway from this one uh page seven here I just I'm calling out Mr Beast like why isn't Mr Beast building the Y combinator of creators like you know as you're reading this you you'll see it's if he understands how to make people go viral

[8:26] and distribution is more important than product now it's just from uh it's just easy you know it's hard it's easier to build product you can use like AI tools and and other software to go and create those products um but it's harder to get distribution so I just don't really like why is he selling a Lunchables competitor right now with KSI and Logan Paul which you got tons of backlash for um when he could be building the Y combinator of creators Building Products software um and owning piece of them um the other the other reaction I have to this is the idea of re-engagement makes so much sense but I had never thought

[9:06] about it when he writes the you know in here when he talks about re-engagement um I just think that that concept it's smart and he's a smart guy he gets it um and he defines it over here we also want to do something around the three minute Mark called a three minute re-engagement a re-engage re-engagement can be described as content that is highly interested that fits the story and makes people genuinely impressed another way to look at this is if it's if it's a segment that only Mr Beast can do this it's important to re-engage the viewer around this time because they could get bored of the story and clicked off these

[9:47] re-engagement are usually spectacles and sometimes needs lots of time and money to perfect which by the way is a bit of his moat uh not a bit of his own it's his moat so it's it's interesting that he calls us out a good example of a re-engagement is when Carl was put in charge watching Josh in the 10,000 everyday you survive prison video page eight you know I'm reading this and especially now that I'm eight pages deep I'm like I love that this guy Mr Beast defines his own language you've got re-engagement you've got LOL Etc uh this is really a Hallmark of someone who is exceptional a Founder who's

[10:25] exceptional and I actually had an opportunity when I was about 20 one or two to be in a room with uh a founder of a billion doll e-commerce startup he was the one who told me that I was in this brainstorm and I was like the young person there um you know supposed to you know giving advice on social media at the time and uh we we W I just wanted to get right into it and he was like like kid stop stop because we need to Define what you know so we're all on the same page these five or six different words we can get to uh we can

[11:02] get we can get to our goal and so here you are Mr Beast doing the same thing um and I do really like it so in your life too by the way Define these things number nine page nine so look at this this is literally like the product requirements for a software product so I'll read a little bit the shape of the audience retention graph can tell you which part of your video are most and least engaging to viewers when the line is flat it means viewers are watching that part of your video from start to finish gradual declines me viewers uh viewers are losing interest

[11:40] over time all videos on YouTube generally taper off during the playback period spikes appear when more viewers are watching rewatching or sharing those uh parts of your videos and dips when viewers are abandoning or skipping point is someone should build software that looks at data like this and gives you insights and and says you should do the following things um and maybe that's view stats which is Mr B's software creator analytics company um maybe that's where he's going with it but I think that opportunity is it's a billion dollar opportunity there's no question about it page 10 so he he keeps talking about this he keeps talking about being obsessed with

[12:27] YouTube basically no matter what apartment you're in is a prequisite uh to work here and I don't think he's wrong I just want to put that out there I don't think he's wrong at all I think it's really interesting gets me thinking of my own companies how do you know what what do what does someone need to be obsessed with what is the one thing that they need to be obsessed with in order for us to be exceptional at our work that's my reaction to this page I also have big points for him using haha in the dock keeping it casual my guy keeping it casual page 12 we're about a third of

[13:04] the way through we're almost through when I read something like this this is a man of Excellence late is the word late is not in his dictionary um and this whole page really is about you know don't be late and it's your fault and uh you know it's important to have bias for Action meaning it's important to actually go and do things that you said you were going to do um and you can't blame people um and and he he just has zero tolerance for it um which makes me just believe I'm not surprised how he's able to pull off what he's able to pull off

[13:43] um and you can tell how seriously just by reading this you can really tell how seriously he takes this page 13 I mean this is a massive block of text seems stressful but I get it uh I like that he said he wasn't perfect here you know we see some Humanity here you know he he says he's not perfect I think that's an important thing to say and I think I'm sure some people work for him and probably most people who work for him they look at Mr Beast as almost like a god you know and it's it's it's great that he he said that he's not perfect he

[14:17] gets stressed and I think that when he lays it out like this it's just going to make his company run so much smoother because they're just going to you know you're reading this and you're like okay I kind of get this guy you know here I am working three you know he says here I am basically three doing three full-time jobs all by myself little things like sending videos to people for birthdays attending events networking all Etc all add up because I'm the face of the channel on top of that I'm you know on top of being the main talent I have to work with each channel to make

[14:51] sure the creatives are basically evolving and not getting stale and in general be a Visionary for them basically running four channels at a high level better than anyone else in the world can run one we also have Beast Burger febles now he has his Lunchables thing and I still have to set the vision and be the lead in Creative so he's got all these things you know it's a lot going on and uh it's tough I get it I'm sure there's people listening to this that are like boohoo uh Mr Beast um what a tough life you live but uh I mean listen he's playing the he's in the

[15:27] Olympics right he's he's uh he's doing it and uh it's important that Founders communicate what's going through their mind and here he is doing that so I do commend him for that uh this whole page 15 I would have titled it creativity uh constraints fuel creativity um he basically just talks about how you know don't don't go over budget you know here I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll talk I I'll say a little bit of it I don't think it comes to a surprise when I say we don't have unlimited money here actually by the way I think some people think that there is unlimited money so it's good that he said that uh

[16:13] we can't have every video constantly going over budget because the money has to come from somewhere but you're in a tough spot because I constantly want better and better videos by the way this is kind of like there's like a vend diagram which is like the worst client which is I want things like cheap fast and good good cheap and fast he wants Jimmy Mr Beast wants things good cheap and fast well that's tough um that's a tough client so sorry um miss you know employees um people always assume money is the answer and we just spend more money we can give what Jimmy wants which is wrong

[16:52] creativity is the answer here is an example I use all the time about our gaming team basically they love to give away money every video but which sounds cooler to you as a prize for a gaming video $20,000 or a year supply of Doritos to me dor Doritos is much funnier so constraint fuels creativity he wants people to come up with great ideas totally get it um that's my little edit to this slide that's what I would have said um and uh I agree with him I mean if I'm trying to create creative ideas I I want the most creative ideas page 16 backup day no one will ever have 100%

[17:32] success rate when when it comes to filming our videos on time and on budget it's impossible you can still do certain things that increase your probability of success uh and one of those is having a backup day uh just something I had never heard of but makes a lot of sense basic no basically the idea is uh have some buffer room you know if uh you need to deliver on a t on a on a Tuesday uh uh you want to make sure that you can extend to a Wednesday um if something were to go wrong uh and you can make up for it so where is the idea of backup da

[18:11] in my whole life love it smart move um this just when you're reading this you you know that Mr Beast has has gone into some tight situations where things got crazy he probably spent a million dollars on a set and all these people and they weren't able to finish it and the owner of the Chateau says sorry you got to be out at 8:00 a.m. tomorrow so um he's talking from experience I think that was a good slide this could be one of the more interesting pages of the entire document um and basically he talks about how to communicate with other people um and most people don't understand

[18:57] communication and most companies are pretty bad at communication they don't Define what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it so I love how he bre breaks it down when to do inperson communication when to do email how to think about text no excuses move on simple I love it I think that you know every every company needs something like this um and it felt very human and you know reading it so I thought this was really cool this was surprising this is probably one of the more surprising uh pages in the entire document he talks about Consultants uh Consultants are literally cheat codes need to make the

[19:37] world's largest slice of cake start off by calling the person who made the previous world's large largest slice of the cake lol love how he puts LOL there he's already done countless tests and can save you weeks of work I really want to drill this point home because I'm a massive believer in Consultants because I spent a decade of my life hyper obsessing over YouTube I can now I can show a brand new Creator on how to go from 100 subscribers to 10,000 in a month on their own it would take them years to do it but Consultants are gift from God said no one ever I don't think

[20:09] uh please take advantage of them and every single freaking task assigned to you always always ask yourself if you can find a consultant to help you thought this was interesting um I also tend to use you know I don't I don't call them really Consultants um they're they're experts right you you of course you're trying to accelerate whatever it is you're doing as fast as possible uh get the person that's done the thing that you're trying to do um I don't think what he means here is hire McKenzie or hire BCG uh I think what he means is higher experts um and I think uh I think he's

[20:49] right quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in Google that's

[21:26] why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com page 19 so this was uh this is a weird one this a weird page so no does not mean no so what he's saying here is basically you have to do everything you can to do the best possible thing for the experience uh for the business uh and just push through things so if you get a no let's say you know you can't film

[22:10] here you have to keep going and you have to say of course you know what can I do to film here you know don't take no for an answer is basically what he's saying um I agree with him like you you want that startup mentality at the same time you don't want to hurt other people of course um so so I would say I agree with the spirit of it and I just think I would have put a little asteris um it could get a bit hairy there and and and make people feel uncomfortable so I wonder if you you know let me know if you agree with me there page 20 this

[22:44] this this a short page but the takeaway he leads his company in a very Merit meritocratic way uh if you get him a one on 10 uh on YouTube Studio which means you know your your video is really outperforming he'll love you so uh he just he wants the best and he's data driven so if you're number one and you're helping uh this is a guy who who's going to go up to bat for you it's my my lesson learned there page 21 so I this is his it's cool actually that you can see this so these are uh his top 10 videos in the first 45 days

[23:26] the fact that like 44 days the fact that he's getting like 198 million on his first one and 39 million on 10 is really interesting to see um the variety and like the the lesson here is that and and I've actually been learning this myself as as I'm spending more time on YouTube is you know it's very YouTube is like a hits driven social app um so you can see here this is like the squid game in real life outperforming so much you know we're talking five times basically that's a big deal it's a big deal so I you know for him this is like the difference

[24:05] between making a lot of money and probably losing money um and then like when I look at my own like these are my recent videos I know I'm a small small YouTuber subscribe if uh want to make you know if you're enjoying stuff like this but you want more of it um it's it's it's interesting I have like a similar um hit driven model like I got a few at the top and then these are you know underperforming so uh it's interesting that the reason why I bring this up is you're if you're a small YouTube Creator you have this this is relevant this whole document is relevant

[24:42] because he's having the same problems that we are all having and he's got big numbers man I just you know what what what clicked for me after after reading this starting you know this page and the last page is the difference between a title and a thumbnail is is difference between millions of views and so he talked about like titling something ketchup before um and just these little changes in in title make a really big difference and these little changes on um thumbnail make a big difference and it just makes sense that he's just he's like an AB testing go God that's what he does I also when when I when I

[25:25] saw this together all these together it was interesting because they're like basically all the same thumbnail it's like all the same thumbnail with like a different image here related to the video so this is kind of interesting if you're creating thumbnails like maybe I think most of my thumbnails have like right I'm on the right side like they're not on the left side like maybe you should copy Mr Beast because this is probably working okay 23 random things that you should know there was one thing that bothered me about this page I think could be worded in a better way so he says I'd rather you be honest

[26:04] with each other than nice to each other and he's talking about people on set I think you can be honest and nice and I think that you could create a more productive working environment and a happier world if you do that so I think it's I like Mr Beast I like that you want people to be direct you want people to be clear you want people to be honest at the same time I think the the way you know you want do that in a pleasant positive way um or else that's not a fun work environment and that yeah it just kind of sucks so uh I'm I'm gonna assume

[26:39] that you you mean that um on this one because I I do think that people can be honest and nice um I do think that I you know I really like here uh he says me like simple the simpler the better the better apply with the grain of salt in caps but he keeps driving this point around simplic home um and I really really like that page 24 when he does when he goes in bold he he's basically like writing out things like almost like tweetable things and and just like bangers like um yeah you know the biggest like takeaway for me is when I'm reading something

[27:19] like this is what would be the difference in the quality of Mr be's videos if people worked 40 to 60 hours a week just you know 60 hours a week is still working like really hard instead of 100 hours you know I'm not an all nighter guy I work hard but I do not believe in all nighters my uh I started and sold three companies before the age of 30 and I don't think I've worked more than uh you know 40 to 50 hours a week I just don't believe in it I think that um I'm not even talking about you know I just yeah I don't I think that I need

[27:56] like reset time in order to be creative so so um I don't know I think uh I think great work can be done in a standard work week if you work hard and if not something is broken so biggest takeaway for page 25 is is he says what is the goal of our content he and Mr Beast responds to excite me the goal of our content is to excite me I just didn't expect him to say that I thought he would be talk about like there's all these people and we want to make them happy and people people love our content I did not expect for him to just talk

[28:32] about himself on page 25 so page 27 um you know he's talking about one video has 120 million views the other has 45 Mill million views look at these retention numbers and see if you can pick which one got triple the views the point is he's back to data um and I love it I love that he's so data driven that was a huge surprise for me but I was wondering why there's no top you know there's no talk around a metric around comments and positivity around the comments I know for myself when I create a piece of content yes I look at retention yes I look at you know views

[29:10] yes I look at subscribers but the first thing I honestly look at is to see who's commenting what are they saying um are they enjoying it um and I don't know I didn't get any of that from so what am I missing this was really interesting um so he on page 32 adds his content he basically says if you watch a lot of YouTube you'll probably notice that when someone does a brand deal it's boring and sounds like they're reading a script we take a different approach to Brand deals um we like to integrate them and then he shows what happens uh where the brain with the with the brand deal so I

[29:48] just think that um this you know we all know that people skip advertisements um but if you can make it really exciting and make it a part of the content and just have no Creator that's when you're winning so that's what everyone should be focused on so we got a few more pages um this is where I gets a bit unhinged so HR definitely did not review this doc um and you know I'll give you an example if Talent wants to draw a dick on the whiteboard in the video or do something stupid let them assume they know all the risk and aren't missing contexts on why

[30:31] it's not safe uh help them be idiots I don't know um being stupid and having fun definitely I get that part of the shtick but I can imagine that could offend people or go the wrong way understand his point and why it's important to the content but I don't think it lays out a culture that most people would want so I don't know if this scales and this seems like this can go bad that's just my gut reaction and then the last page your career last but not least he talks about people you know the people that who work for him um and uh he basically says that

[31:11] he's going to make you rich uh if you do well um and you create you know you're exceptional at what you do um you will be rich if you work for Mr Beast basically is what he's saying um and and you'll make more money than you could ever dream of making at any other company so he puts that in words he puts that in writing and uh my reaction to that is I hear like the sentiment I get I think sentiment I get is just I don't know when I hear people saying stuff like that I'm kind of like okay what does that mean for me does that mean I'm

[31:50] G to own 0.1% or 0.1 you know one 2% but I mean he can fire me at any time like I don't know what it really means but the sentiment around this is a big opportunity if you do your job well uh you know this is going to be big I totally get and and he isn't he isn't wrong on that you know if you stay there and I'm sure if you do a good job you probably you probably will be able to to crush it for him and and that's the document and I enjoyed reading it of course I didn't agree with everything that' be

[32:23] foolish um but it definitely got me thinking about how to build a how to build a how to build build on YouTube how to build a Content driven business how to think about in you know uh getting your employees your team on the same page um and got me thinking I want to create a a a I know it's not a rule book a not rule book rule book um a culture document for for my team so um I hope you got something out of this hope that got your creative juices flowing um and if it did and you've retained and you've made it here average few durations long

[33:04] uh hit hit us up uh with a like and a comment and a subscribe and uh I'll see you next time it's been real [Music]

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