MrBeast being a YouTube Genius for 10 minutes straight

I was offered five grand for a video, but this was when I was like 19.. I was like double it, and I'll walk outside I'll give it to homeless person. And they're like, no, you won't. And it's like double it. And it's like pacing around my neighbor for three hours convincing this guy like on the phone. Just double the money, I promise the video will go viral and I'll give it homeless person. I was like ten thousand dollars just looks better in a title.

It'll get more views. I promise you your app will do better. A lot of times people- oh boy, it's like they think their videos are better than they are honestly- and they tell Jimmy, tell it, I mean, they do that.

And they have horrible friend groups because you really are like the type of YouTubers you hang around. It's getting people with the right YouTuber friend group that aren't [ __ ] and will actually tell them when their content is bad and like actually roast it and and help them get better in a nice positive way. Basically, what I did was I've somehow found these other like four lunatics. Three of us were College dropouts, one was a high school dropout and one I don't know. He just like quit his job. We're all super small YouTubers and we basically talked every day for a thousand days in a row and did nothing but just like hyper study, like what makes a good video, what makes a good thumbnail, what what's good pacing, like how to go viral. We would just get on Skype every morning and like some days, like I'd get on Skype at 7am and I'd be in the call until like 10 pm and then I go to bed, I wake up and I do it again. We do things like take a thousand thumbnails and see if, like, there's a correlation to the brightness of the thumbnail to have any views it got. Imagine a world where it's just you working solo and you work 12 hours a day, every day for like a year and you're just grinding.

You make a mistake, you learn from it, you grind, you makes, make, you learn from it, and you do that for like a year. And then imagine a different world where you have four friends who are also equally grinding in something similar. Brand number one makes a mistake on Friday, he teaches the other four people. Friend number two makes a mistake the next week, teaches everyone. And then, like, you're all learning from each other's mistakes. You're all constantly studying 24: 7 and downloading each other. Like after a year you're like two years ahead of the guy who was just solo. Do you frequently go that far out of your way to capture the thumbnail? I mean, of course, everyone should.

If people don't click, they don't watch. So you, you want to give them something to click. Something a lot of people forget is like unsuggested: on phones thumbnails are really [ __ ] small, so like people are editing thumbnails full blown on their computer and when you shrink it down you can't see. We tried it all around the. Above the Rest, anyone can click, babe, but you do actually like deliver on it. We say we put 100 million Orbeez in the backyard. We put 100 million Orbeez in the backyard. Your title and thumbnail set expectations. Like what you're saying is like I like bananas and what you need is bananas are the best goddamn food on the planet. Like that's the type of opinion you need. Like you need something like how to get a hundred million views on YouTube or not even that. That's not strong enough. You need something that makes people go. What the [ __ ]? What the [ __ ] did he say in that video? What the [ __ ]? I need to know at the very beginning of the video to minimize drop-offs, you want to assure them that those expectations are being met. If you're putting a million Orbeez in a pool, don't start the video with you shopping for you know your mom's birthday present. At the beginning of the video, just say: this is is 100 million Orbeez. We're Gonna Fill This pool and this entire backyard with them. Match the expectations and then you want to exceed them. So you want to assure people that what they clicked on is what they're getting and then blow their mind and be like: but you're also getting even more. Anytime you say the word algorithm, just replace it with audience. The algorithm didn't like that video.

No, the audience didn't like that video. If I wasn't retaining a viewer, just would it make sense for you to promote it? Why would you promote a 10 minute video that people watch on average- a minute and a half? I mean every video, even the stupid ones. I learned something, you know- that's something I'd try to make a very big point of- is like, no matter how bad we mess up, like we sometimes have videos that have horrible retention, it's just like, as long as you learn from it, it's not the end of the world. Every YouTuber says it.

It's like no one will ever be able to replicate my style. It's I gotta edit it, but news flash, someone can. It's actually not as difficult as you think. It was good that I got a really strong foundation on how YouTube works and how the style of videos I wanted and everything before I skilled up a team, if that makes any sense.

I just want to make sure that's clear because I've seen people try to build the team without foundation and knowing how to do. Well, I I know that if we film this video it will do well, just because I've spent a decade of my life hyper obsessing over YouTube and I have a good pulse on it. But if you didn't have that, then you wouldn't know. Like you wouldn't be able to spend four million dollars on a squid game because you might lose 2 million bucks and then you can't pay your people. But of course, yeah, if I didn't have these people I couldn't do or half the stuff I do for the last like eight or nine years. Like every dollar I've made, I just spent it the next month in content and I just did that every single month and it just kept getting bigger and bigger. And here we are. Since I was 13, there probably hasn't been a single hour that's gone by that I've been awake or I haven't thought about YouTube. Like I'm just focused on making the best videos possible, period. I don't care about making money, I don't care about time, I don't care about I just want to make the best videos on the planet. Literally all the algorithm does is reflect what the people want- 280- and If you deny that, you just make terrible videos and are trying to find a scapegoat, we do our videos in other languages as well. If you Google it, it's like only whatever less than 10 of the world speaks English, so 90 of the world can't even enjoy your content. And when I realized that I was like: wait a minute, 90 of my- the world can't even watch this stuff.

Like we just started doing this like six months ago and it's crazy like how viral some of these videos are- 51 million in Spanish. The guy who does my dubs is the same guy who dubs Spider-Man. We managed to convince him. So a lot of those comments are like: why does he sound like Spider-Man, or is Mr V Spider-Man? To me, what's important is Click through eight, getting people click on your video and then average iteration, average view percentage or just relative retention, and you know, having to watch it.

A lot of creators think click-through rate is just like the title and thumbnail and did they click it? But a lot of it too is: did they enjoy your last video? Because if someone watches a video of yours and they loved it, you can bet the next time you're recommended, their chance of clicking is a lot higher. You know, sometimes we're filming for three or four days, like 10 hours a day. You know 30, 40 hours of filming plus months of setup, whereas multiple creators probably filmed for a couple hours and set up for a day. Outside of just filming. I mean we brainstorm video ideas. I mean relentlessly hours every day. Am I always doing all those things? It just distinctively sets it so far apart part that it's basically in my head. It's like why would you not watch it? Viewers aren't stupid. They can tell when you, you know half ass- I don't know if I'm allowed to curse a video or if you like, really put an effort and like if they can tell you're putting in a lot of effort, they're going to be more likely to click on future videos and that type, that snowballs.

And because once you build that trust, they get to a point where it doesn't matter what you upload, they just know it's high effort and they just know it's great and they're just conditioned just to watch because you have a good track record. And so with filming, it's just like trying to make sure we're doing everything we can, no matter how expensive it is, no matter how much time it takes to make the best video possible. A lot of people, if they give away 100 Grand, they would make a huge deal about it. But we're, you know, sometimes we're just like, yeah, here's 100 Grand, like thanks for watching, bye. Doing it that way makes it more fun and just more interesting. So I like to keep a little bit of it mysterious because I think that's what people enjoy. A lot of people aren't willing to put in 10 hours, days because they don't like what they're doing. So it's finding what they enjoy, because it is like a long grind, like you're doing this for years, not months. So if you don't enjoy it, then you're gonna burn out. I just said the blessing of finding what I loved at a young age. So, like because to get to this level it takes, you know, a decade. Most people don't find what they love until they're young- 20s- so they'd be where I'm at in their 30s. I just walked out and found it when I was really young, living your life chasing like a nicer, nicer car in a bigger and bigger box to live. It's kind of like a dumb way to go about life. I actually, funny enough, I lived in like a super below average home and I kind of learned why famous people don't live in below average homes: because someone broke in, stole everything out, so I had to. I had to get a little nicer house for security reasons, but before I was robbed I'd be like my place is like a little duplex, 700 a month. You get a roommate's 360 split. People think just because you go for views means you can't have fun. But you can pool views and you can have fun, which is what we purposely try to do. If you're not doing something that's just inherently fun to you, you're just quit. Just give up like you gotta at least semi enjoy what you're doing or you're gonna quit long before it gets to the point where it brings them money or whatever else could be driving you.

So find what you love and then I would just hyper obsess, make sure no one doing what you're doing is doing it better. Make sure the videos are as good as possible. You can be motivated by more than one thing. I'm motivated because I want to support my mom and my family. I'm motivated because I want to employ my friends and help them. I motivated because I want to help other people. I'm motivated because I want to be a YouTuber. I want to be. I mean, I feel like that's another misconception. You can have lots of things that drive you. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. So. I mean like there's just tons of stuff that drive me and everything drives me to wanting to be a YouTuber.

So it kind of obsess over it. For the people that are willing to be coachable, I would say: like just education, like there is a lot of misinformation out there, that like people like live and Breathe by, like the weirdest stuff I gotta upload at midnight on Wednesdays, or my videos don't do well, it's like just dumb stuff like that, that just they don't realize how badly they're like handicapping themselves. Some minor tips I could give is like somehow you could have a payoff at the end. Then more people are going to watch the end just to see what happened. Whichever, one of these 456 people, survives the longest, wins 456 Grand. Cut out all dull moments. Try not to over explain and things. My camera just sits on me and I'm just talking for 20 seconds.

It doesn't hold retention as well as you know- maybe me talking and other footage popping up. It's much easier to get 5 million views on one video than 50 000 views on 100 videos. It takes way less effort to get 5 million views in one video. Back then, which I think small YouTubers should do is I would reply to every single comment, and so I think a few people caught on that they would. I would always reply, and so some people would just be like I wonder how long it'll take for him to reply. So that was a lot of my comments when I was smaller, but at least it kept him coming back. In your analytics- and most you probably know this audience retention- you can see where people click off. Just literally go through your last 50 videos, write down where everyone clicked off and then just don't do those things again. But wait a minute, Mr Beast. What if I don't know how to actually improve my everyday duration? How do I know where to start? What if I'm just a noob? Well, in order to better retain your viewers, it's first helpful to have a really deep understanding of how they experience YouTube. To put yourself in their shoes, and in this video I explain five simple steps that will help you do just that. Check it out.