The Startup Ideas Podcast
My reaction to MrBeast's LEAKED 36 page production document
Fri, 20 Sep 2024
My notes on mr beast's LEAKED 36 page leaked "how to succeed in mr. beast production" documentTimestamps:00:00 Intro01:12 Initial Thoughts02:38 Clarity of the Goal03:27 YouTube is eating all media:04:27 A, B, C player framework05:15 How to go viral08:21 Why isn’t MrBeast building the Y-Combinator of Creators? 09:12 He defines his own language. ie: lull, reengagement 11:26 Startup Idea 1: Audience and Engagement Insights Software for YT 12:32 Obsession is a prerequisite 13:13 Bias for Action14:01 Grounds Himself15:54 Constraint Fuels Creativity17:39 Always have a Backup Day18:54 Communication is key19:37 Leverage Experts21:55 "No does not mean no" can get toxic22:43 Meritocracy 23:27 His numbers are HUGE28:02 Keep things simple27:15 Work Life Balance Debate 28:20 What is the goal of our “content”29:37 Ads as Content30:18 Does his culture scale 31:12 His incentive structur 32:28 Final thoughts1) YouTube is eating all media:• 99% of TV shows would flop on YouTube• Platform-specific content is crucial• MrBeast: "We are not Hollywood"2) A-player mentality:• Only hire obsessive, coachable people• B-players can be trained, C-players must go• "There's only room for A-players here"3) Re-engagement strategy:• Hook viewers at 3-minute mark• Use spectacles that only MrBeast can do• Example: Carl watching Josh in prison video4) Data-driven content:• Creators are data scientists, not just entertainers• 60M views = same as presidential debate• Obsess over audience retention graphs5) Constraints fuel creativity:• Don't rely on big budgets• Example: Year's supply of Doritos is more engaging than $20k cash• "Creativity is the answer, not money"6) Communication is key:• Define when to use in-person, email, or text• No excuses, move on mentality• "Late" isn't in MrBeast's dictionary7) Consultants are cheat codes:• Leverage expert knowledge• Example: Call previous world record holder• "Consultants are a gift from God"8) Brand deal integration:• Make ads part of the content• Avoid boring, scripted brand mentions• Goal: No viewer realizes it's an adWant more free ideas? I collect the best ideas from the pod and give them to you for free in a database. Most of them cost $0 to start (my fav)Get access: https://www.gregisenberg.com/30startupideas 🎯 To build your own portfolio businesses powered by community you might enjoy my membership.You'll get my full course with all my secrets on building businesses, peer-groups to keep you accountable, business ideas every single month and more!Spots are limited.https://www.communityempire.co/📬 Join my free newsletter to get weekly startup insights for free:https://www.gregisenberg.com/70,000+ people are already subscribed.To improve your rankings your business on Google and using AI for SEO, sign up tohttp://boringmarketing.com/FIND ME ON SOCIALX/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenbergInstagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/
So Mr. Beast's How to Succeed in Mr. Beast's Production document just leaked. And I think it's actually a really interesting read. I 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 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 going to give you my reactions to all 36 pages and what i find most interesting so first is he doesn't call this a rule book you see 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 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 almost like he's texting me this. He even calls out that there's grammar issues. And I think that's really powerful. It feels like he just had a pot of coffee one night. I can just picture it now. And he just started writing.
And then he published this. So I think that more companies should do this, have their founders just write what they're feeling about how to do X, Y, Z. Let me take a sip. And yes, I'm drinking Coca-Cola Oreo edition. Don't ask me why, I'm trying it. And yeah, I'm not sponsored, obviously, but it kind of slaps. Okay, so that is page two. Let's go to page three.
So he says something here that's really interesting. He said, I could make a separate book for 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 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, 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 like sixth grade fifth grade fourth you know seventh grade just really easy to understand but this document is so simple that even a child could read it 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, but I never thought of it that way. I guess, yes, every medium is different. What works on mobile, what works on different social platforms don't necessarily work on each other. So the fact that Jimmy, we'll call him Jimmy, even though I think there's two people on the planet.
You either call Mr. Beast, Mr. Beast, or you call Mr. Beast, Jimmy. You know what? I'm not calling him Jimmy. We're going to keep it. I'm going to call him Mr. Beast because that's how, you know, I don't know him personally that well. Although I have DM'd with him a couple of times. All right. Mr. Beast, he's got that YouTube blueprint, right?
And I think that saying that to everyone that, you know, we are not Hollywood or different what works there won't work here, I think is really, really smart. He says something at the bottom which I don't know about. 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. 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. B's team? Does that not work? I don't really understand his vibe here.
And I think that there's some people that just are, they don't come out of the womb as A players, right? They need to be groomed and stuff like that. So it 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 he explains how to go viral online. on YouTube in just a few words. So that's really cool.
He just breaks down, this could be 100 pages, he breaks it down into basically one page. So on one hand, I think it's genius. On the other hand, I actually don't believe this applies to all video creators. 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 those ideas and chipping them.
Some of my best videos are literally like two hours long 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 I think for niches, I'm going to have to disagree with you, Mr. Beast. Um,
But for maybe if you want to be for everything, if you want to be a top 10 video creator, I do think he's right. 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 entrepreneurs who've built $100 million plus businesses. I've compiled them into 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 sheet. The Idea Bank is your 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 key moment for audience retention. And really the big thing that stuck out to me was that 60 million people clicked on his video. 60 million people. We just had the debate in the US here. Donald Trump. Kamala Harris. And that's 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 that's crazy scale. It was also a big reminder to me that I used to think of YouTube creators as entertainers, but they're actually more like data scientists than they are entertainers. So when you look at the top 100 YouTube creators, they are obsessing over the data.
And I think that was quite an interesting takeaway from this one. Page seven. Here, I'm calling out Mr. Beast. Why isn't Mr. Beast building the Y Combinator of creators? As you're reading this, you'll see. If he understands how to make people go viral and distribution is more important than product now, it's easier to build product.
You can use like AI tools 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 he 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 reaction I have to this is the idea of re-engagement makes so much sense, but I had never thought about it. When he writes in here, when he talks about re-engagement, I just think that concept, it's smart. And he's a smart guy. He gets it. 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-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 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 click off.
These re-engagements are usually spectacles and sometimes needs lots of time and money to perfect. Which, by the way, is a bit of his moat. Not a bit of his moat. It's his moat. So it's interesting that he calls this out. A good example of a re-engagement is when Carl was put in charge watching Josh in the 10,000 Every Day 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 lull, etc. This is really a hallmark of someone who is exceptional, a founder who's exceptional. And I actually had an opportunity when I was about 21 or 22
to be in a room with a founder of a billion-dollar e-commerce startup. He was the one who told me that I was in this brainstorm, and I was the young person there, giving advice on social media at the time. And I just wanted to get right into it. And he was 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 so we can get to uh we can 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 mean viewers are losing interest over time.
All videos on YouTube generally taper off during the playback period. Spikes appear when more viewers are watching, re-watching, or sharing those 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 says you should do the following things.
And maybe that's ViewStats, which is Mr. B's software creator analytics company. Maybe that's where he's going with it, but I think that opportunity is a billion dollar opportunity. There's no question about it. Page 10. So he keeps talking about this. He keeps talking about being obsessed with YouTube, basically no matter what department you're in, is a prerequisite 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. It gets me thinking of my own companies. 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 doc. Keeping it casual, my guy. Keeping it casual. Page 12. We're about a third of the way through. We're almost through. When I read something like this, this is a man of excellence. The word late is not in his dictionary. And this whole page really is about don't be late. And it's your fault. And
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. And you can't blame people. And he just has zero tolerance for it, which makes me just believe it. I'm not surprised how he's able to pull off what he's able to pull off.
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. I like that he said he wasn't perfect here. You know, we see some humanity here. You know, 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 great that he said that he's not perfect. He 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 you're reading this and you're like, okay, I kind of get this guy.
Here I am working three, he says, here I am basically doing three full-time jobs all by myself. Little things like sending videos to people for birthdays, attending events, networking, all, et cetera, all add up because I'm the face of the channel. On top of that, I'm
On top of being the main talent, I have to work with each channel to make 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, Feastables. Now he has his Lunchables thing.
And I still have to set the vision and be the lead and creative. So he's got all these things. It's a lot going on and it's tough. I get it. I'm sure there's people listening to this that are like, boo-hoo, Mr. Beast, what a tough life you live. But I mean, listen, he's in the Olympics, right? He's doing it. And 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. This whole page 15, I would have titled it Constraints Fuel Creativity. He basically just talks about how don't go over budget. 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. 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 Venn 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. That's a tough client. So. Sorry, employees. People always assume money is the answer, and if we just spend more money, we can give what Jimmy wants, which is wrong. 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's supply of Doritos. To me, Doritos is much funnier. So, Contrain feels creativity. He wants people to come up with great ideas. Totally get it. That's my little edit to this slide. That's what I would have said. And I agree with him.
I mean, if I'm trying to create creative ideas, I want the most creative ideas. Page 16. Backup day. No one will ever have 100% success rate when it comes to filming our videos on time and on budget. It's impossible. You can still do certain things that increase the probability of success.
And one of those is having a backup day, which is something I had never heard of, but it makes a lot of sense. Basically, the idea is have some buffer room. If you need to deliver on a Tuesday, You want to make sure that you can extend to a Wednesday if something were to go wrong and you can make up for it. So where is the idea of backup Dave in my whole life? Love it. Smart move.
When you're reading this, you know that Mr. Beast 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 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. And basically, he talks about how to communicate with other people. And most people don't understand 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 breaks it down. When to do in-person communication.
When to do email. How to think about text. No excuses. Move on. Simple. I love it. I think that every company needs something like this. And it felt very human reading it. So I thought this was really cool. This was surprising. This is probably one of the more surprising pages in the entire document. He talks about consultants. Consultants are literally cheat codes.
You need to make the world's largest slice of cake. Start off by calling the person who made the previous world's 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 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 a gift from God, said no one ever, I don't think. 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. You. I thought this was interesting.
I also tend to use... I don't call them really consultants. They're experts, right? Of course, you're trying to accelerate whatever it is you're doing as fast as possible. Get the person that's done the thing that you're trying to do. I don't think what he means here is hire McKinsey or hire BCG. I think what he means is hire experts. And I think... I think he's right. Quick ad break.
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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 boringmarketing.com. Page 19. So this was a weird one. It's 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
to do the best possible thing for the experience, for the business, and just push through things. So if you get a no, let's say you can't film here, you have to keep going. And you have to say, of course, what can I do to film here? Don't take no for an answer, is basically what he's saying. I agree with him. You want that startup mentality.
At the same time, you don't want to hurt other people, of course. So I would say I agree with the spirit of it and I just think I would have put a little asterisk. It could get a bit hairy there and make people feel uncomfortable. Let me know if you agree with me there. Page 20. This is a short page, but the takeaway, he leads his company in a very meritocratic way. Do you get him a one on 10?
on YouTube Studio, which means your video is really outperforming, he'll love you. So he wants the best and he's data-driven. So if you're number one and you're helping, this is a guy who's going to go up to bat for you. It's my lesson learned there. Page 21 says, So this is his, it's cool actually that you can see this. So these are his top 10 videos in the first 45 days.
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 the variety. And like the lesson here is that, and I've actually been learning this myself as I'm spending more time on YouTube is, YouTube is like a hits-driven social app. So you can see here, this is the Squid Game in real life outperforming so much.
We're talking five times, basically. That's a big deal. For him, this is the difference between making a lot of money and probably losing money. And then when I look at my own, These are my recent videos. I'm a small YouTuber. Subscribe if you're enjoying stuff like this but want more of it. It's interesting. I have a similar hits-driven model.
I got a few at the top and then these are underperforming. It's interesting that the reason why I bring this up is... If you're a small YouTube creator, this is relevant. This whole document is relevant because he's having the same problems that we are all having. And he's got big numbers, man.
What clicked for me after reading this page and the last page is the difference between a title and a thumbnail is the difference between millions of views. And so he talked about like titling something catch up before. And just these little changes in title make a really big difference. And these little changes on thumbnail make a big difference.
And it just makes sense that he's just, he's like an AB testing God. That's what he does. I also, when I, when I 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.
23.
Random things that you should know. There was one thing that bothered me about this page that I think could be worded in a better way. So he says, I'd rather you be honest 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.
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 you want to do that in a pleasant, positive way. Or else it's not a fun work environment and it just kind of sucks. I'm going to assume that you mean that on this one. Because I do think that people can be honest and nice.
I do think that I, you know, I really like here. He says me like simple, the simpler, the better, the better apply with a grain of salt in caps, but he keeps driving this point around simplicity home. 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,
But yeah, the biggest takeaway for me is when I'm reading something like this is what would be the difference in the quality of Mr. B's videos if people worked 40 to 60 hours a week? 60 hours a week is still working really hard instead of 100 hours. I'm not an all-nighter guy. I work hard, but I do not believe in all-nighters. I started and sold three companies before the age of 30.
And I don't think I've worked more than 40 to 50 hours a week. I just don't believe in it. I think that I need reset time in order to be creative. So I don't know. 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 he says, what is the goal of our content? 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 talk about like, there's all these people and we want to make them happy and people love our content. I did not expect for him to just talk about himself on page 25. So page 27 says, He's talking about one video has 120 million views, the other has 45 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. 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 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 views. Yes, I look at subscribers. But the first thing I honestly look at is to see who's commenting. What are they saying? Are they enjoying it? And I don't know. I didn't get any of that from... So what am I missing? This was really interesting. so he, on page 32 adds his content.
He basically, he 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 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. This is where I guess a bit unhinged. So HR definitely did not review this doc.
And 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, assuming they know all the risks and aren't missing context on why it's not safe, help them be idiots. I don't know. 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, the people who work for him. And he basically says that he's going to make you rich.
If you do well and you're exceptional at what you do, you will be rich if you work for Mr. Beast, basically is what he's saying. 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 the 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 going to own 0.1% or 0.1, you know, 1, 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'd be foolish. But it definitely got me thinking about how to build on YouTube, how to build a content-driven business, how to think about getting your employees, your team on the same page. Yeah. And it got me thinking I want to create a, I know it's not a rule book, a not rule book rule book, a culture document. for my team.
So I hope you got something out of this. Hope that got your creative juices flowing. And if it did and you've retained and you've made it here, avid few durations long, hit us up with a like and a comment and a subscribe and I'll see you next time. It's been real.