How MrBeast Became World's Biggest YouTuber? — Transcript

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1. 0:00In 2012, a thirteen-year-old boy was unable to speak to others due to his extreme shyness.
2. 0:07So he began talking to his camera instead.
3. 0:11Little did he know that this decision
4. 0:14would ultimately transform him into the world’s most prominent YouTuber.
5. 0:18This is the story of YouTube’s king, MrBeast.
6. 0:22On May 7, 1998, James Stephen Donaldson was born in the United States.
7. 0:28He was affectionately called Jimmy.
8. 0:30His parents served on active duty in the U.S. military.
9. 0:34Jimmy’s childhood was fraught with challenges.
10. 0:36His parents were in an abusive relationship,
11. 0:39which led to their divorce in 2007,
12. 0:42after which his single mother raised him and his younger brother alone.
13. 0:46From an early age, Jimmy exhibited an obsessive personality:
14. 0:49once he became interested in something, he could not let it go.
15. 0:55At the age of ten, that obsession manifested in his passion for baseball.
16. 0:58Despite his love for this team sport,
17. 1:00he remained an extreme introvert.
18. 1:02He felt very uncomfortable among people.
19. 1:05On baseball field, he would pull his cap low over his face.
20. 1:10Jimmy had no friends, and his mother was often on duty.
21. 1:14So he needed something to occupy his time at home.
22. 1:18That was when he discovered a website
23. 1:20where ordinary people like him shared self-made videos.
24. 1:23This webside was YouTube.
25. 1:25On YouTube, he started watching gamers playing Minecraft and Call of Duty,
26. 1:31and in no time, he became as obsessed with YouTube as he had been with baseball.
27. 1:35Around that time, he befriended Chris Tyson,
28. 1:37who also loved YouTube.
29. 1:40For the next two years, whenever they met,
30. 1:41they talked only about YouTube.
31. 1:44At age twelve, Jimmy saw that his favorite gamer, WoodysGamertag,
32. 1:48had quit his job to become a full-time YouTuber.
33. 1:52That day, Jimmy realized that
34. 1:53the platform he was so obsessed with could also be a career.
35. 1:58So he decided to start his own YouTube channel.
36. 2:02When Jimmy first created an account on Xbox,
37. 2:05he received a random username: MrBeast6000.
38. 2:11He named his YouTube channel MrBeast6000,
39. 2:15later dropping the “6000” and becoming simply MrBeast.
40. 2:20At first, MrBeast made gaming videos without showing his face,
41. 2:24then he began making opinion videos
42. 2:27—videos where gameplay ran on screen
43. 2:30while he shared his views on other topics.
44. 2:33Eventually, he made videos analyzing famous YouTubers' strategies and income.
45. 2:39Surprisingly, while MrBeast could not express himself in person,
46. 2:44he easily showed his true self in front of the camera.
47. 2:48By age fifteen, his life went on normally, playing baseball and making YouTube videos
48. 2:53—until one day, everything changed.
49. 2:56He noticed that his weight was dropping rapidly,
50. 3:00and he began suffering severe abdominal pain.
51. 3:03Later, doctors diagnosed him with Crohn’s disease,
52. 3:07a serious condition that left him very weak.
53. 3:10Because of it, he had to give up his beloved game of baseball forever.
54. 3:15MrBeast was heartbroken,
55. 3:17but somehow this illness made him even more determined to work hard on YouTube.
56. 3:22During this time, his mother had no idea he was making YouTube videos.
57. 3:27In fact, when he filmed in his room,
58. 3:28she thought he was chatting with friends on the computer.
59. 3:33MrBeast filmed on his Windows phone at 480p
60. 3:38and edited on his brother’s old laptop.
61. 3:41But he realized that to make better videos,
62. 3:44he needed better equipment.
63. 3:46So over the next year, he saved one dollar at a time
64. 3:49and bought basic equipment like a laptop, microphone, and lights.
65. 3:54He also nagged his parents until they got him a second-hand iPhone.
66. 3:58With improved gear, he started making IRL (in real life) videos.
67. 4:03In these, he and Chris performed skits
68. 4:06whose sole purpose was to entertain people.
69. 4:09By then, seven years had passed since MrBeast began YouTube,
70. 4:14but success still eluded him.
71. 4:16The only thing that kept him going was his extreme passion.
72. 4:21He thought that either he would become the world’s biggest YouTuber
73. 4:26or he would keep trying until the end of his life to achieve that.
74. 4:31But that's not how his mother thought.
75. 4:34When he turned seventeen,
76. 4:37he told his mother he wanted to skip college and pursue YouTube full time.
77. 4:42His mother gave him an ultimatum:
78. 4:45go to college if he wanted to stay in her home, or leave.
79. 4:51With no other option,
80. 4:54he pretended to attend college
81. 4:57while secretly making YouTube videos elsewhere.
82. 5:02In 2015, MrBeast began creating unique videos that required enormous effort
83. 5:10—like trying to cut a table with plastic knives,
84. 5:16which made the task extremely difficult and the result very distinctive.
85. 5:19During his first month of college,
86. 5:21those videos performed well,
87. 5:23and his income grew enough that he moved out to live independently.
88. 5:29Like MrBeast, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, and Arvind Srinivas
89. 5:33also had to leave home to succeed,
90. 5:37What's common among these three is that
91. 5:39they completed parts of their higher education at foreign universities.
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109. 6:44Now back to our story.
110. 6:45One day, Chris and MrBeast were watching a show called Naruto,
111. 6:49which had about 700 episodes,
112. 6:51and MrBeast couldn’t stop watching.
113. 6:54So he conceived a video idea he could shoot while binge-watching the series.
114. 7:00He turned on the camera
115. 7:02and began counting from one to one hundred thousand.
116. 7:05It took him forty hours to finish counting,
117. 7:09and when he uploaded the video to YouTube,
118. 7:11something amazing happened.
119. 7:12What he did was so remarkable
120. 7:15that the video garnered five million views in its first five days.
121. 7:19After uploading more than four hundred videos,
122. 7:21finally one of MrBeast’s videos went viral.
123. 7:25It was his lightbulb moment.
124. 7:27He realized that to succeed on YouTube,
125. 7:30he had to do incredibly interesting and unbelievable things.
126. 7:33After that, he made a video counting to two hundred thousand.
127. 7:36In another, he placed a microwave inside another microwave,
128. 7:39turned it on, and even built a castle out of plastic cups.
129. 7:44Thanks to these videos,
130. 7:45by 2017 his subscribers had grown from zero to the magical milestone of one million.
131. 7:52At this stage, he landed his first brand deal
132. 7:55—quidd offered him $5,000.
133. 7:58MrBeast countered, asking for $10,000,
134. 8:02promising that the video would go viral.
135. 8:06Fortunately, the brand agreed.
136. 8:08With that money, MrBeast did something no other YouTuber could even dream of:
137. 8:13he went out and gave every homeless person he met the entire $10,000.
138. 8:20Chris filmed the man's reaction,
139. 8:23and when the video went live, it went viral.
140. 8:27Seeing its success, more brands partnered with MrBeast,
141. 8:32and he continued this donation series with their money.
142. 8:36In one video, he gave multiple Twitch streamers $10,000.
143. 8:41In another, he gave a pizza deliveryman $10000,
144. 8:44and in yet another, he gave his mother $100,000,
145. 8:49enabling her to pay off her home loan.
146. 8:52MrBeast’s strategy was simple:
147. 8:54he donated all the money from one video to the next video’s participants.
148. 8:58Giving away $10k-$20k arbitrarily
149. 9:00was such a unique idea that people could not resist clicking.
150. 9:05Seeing needy people’s reactions and their good fortune
151. 9:09gave viewers a positive feeling,
152. 9:12known in psychology as the warm-glow effect.
153. 9:15That’s why these videos performed so well.
154. 9:17With each video’s success,
155. 9:19MrBeast earned more from YouTube ad revenue and brand deals,
156. 9:24allowing him to produce even better videos in the future.
157. 9:28Essentially, MrBeast had cracked a never-ending cycle.
158. 9:33In 2018, MrBeast took his stunt videos to the next level.
159. 9:37Where a year earlier he had cut a table or counted to one hundred thousand,
160. 9:43now he invested thousands of dollars into next-level stunts
161. 9:48—like constructing a massive mansion out of cardboard boxes,
162. 9:53becoming a rideshare driver who operates a tank,
163. 9:56and staying underwater for twenty-four hours.
164. 9:59He also launched a new video format: challenges.
165. 10:04In these videos, participants were given intriguing tasks,
166. 10:07and the winner received a huge prize,
167. 10:10like earning ownership of a Lamborghini by keeping a hand on it the longest.
168. 10:16Similarly, in this video, he offered a private jet to the winner.
169. 10:20The best part was that several of MrBeast’s friends
170. 10:25—like Chandler, Karl, and Nolan—joined in these videos.
171. 10:27As these characters gained popularity, returning viewers increased.
172. 10:31By 2018, he had reached three million subscribers.
173. 10:35Yet MrBeast knew his thumbnails needed much work
174. 10:40—they were raw and lacked strategic design.
175. 10:46So he began using powerful psychological strategies in his thumbnails.
176. 10:51For instance, in this video, he spends 24 hours in solitary confinement.
177. 10:55In the video's thumbnail, he uses a "no clutter" format,
178. 11:00a clean format that automatically draws the viewer’s attention to the main character.
179. 11:07In this thumbnail, he uses the “small and big” strategy.
180. 11:11Here, one element is quite small, while another is very large.
181. 11:15In this video, he was building the world's largest LEGO tower.
182. 11:18That's why he placed this tower in the background
183. 11:20and positioned himself in the foreground.
184. 11:22The human mind has an accurate image of the size of an average human being.
185. 11:26That's why our mind is instantly shocked to see that
186. 11:29this tower is many times bigger than a human,
187. 11:33causing people to click on the thumbnail.
188. 11:35Finally, he used color theory to make the elements on his thumbnails stand out.
189. 11:40For instance, in this thumbnail, he made the background wall black
190. 11:43so that he himself would stand out in orange clothing.
191. 11:46While in the videos, these walls were actually white in color.
192. 11:49These strategies significantly increased the click-through rate of his videos.
193. 11:53But MrBeast knew that to be successful on YouTube,
194. 11:56simply getting people to click on thumbnails was not enough.
195. 12:00If people did not watch the video till the end after clicking,
196. 12:03the video would flop.
197. 12:05So, he created a genius minute-by-minute strategy
198. 12:09to keep viewers watching his videos till the end.
199. 12:11This strategy is clearly mentioned in his leaked internal document.
200. 12:16He calculated that at that time,
201. 12:18the average length of his videos was around 13 and a half minutes.
202. 12:21He knew that generally, on YouTube,
203. 12:2330 to 50% of the audience leaves the video within the first minute.
204. 12:28That's why at the very beginning of the video,
205. 12:30he showed the thing he promised in the thumbnail and title right
206. 12:35For example, according to this thumbnail and title,
207. 12:37he was going to help 1,000 deaf people to hear for the first time in this video.
208. 12:42The viewer finds the topic of the video quite interesting and clicks on it.
209. 12:46The video starts, and within the first 10 seconds,
210. 12:49the first person is fitted with a hearing aid.
211. 12:51This makes the viewer feel satisfied and continue watching the video.
212. 12:57After this, between 1 to 3 minutes, he uses a strategy called crazy progression.
213. 13:02Basically, in this part, the story progresses very quickly
214. 13:06so that the viewer becomes involved in the story
215. 13:08and feels excited to see the final outcome.
216. 13:11Then, at the 3-minute mark, MrBeast introduces re-engagement.
217. 13:16Basically, he does something so interesting that it surprises the viewer.
218. 13:20For instance, in one video, he dropped a house from a crane,
219. 13:23or in several challenges, he introduces an unexpected twist.
220. 13:27If a viewer was getting bored,
221. 13:29this re-engagement hooks them back in.
222. 13:33From minute 3 to 6, there is fast and exciting content
223. 13:36that builds an emotional connection with the story and the character.
224. 13:39At the 6-minute mark, another re-engagement is introduced.
225. 13:43Then the story continues until the end,
226. 13:45and a resolution is provided at the end.
227. 13:47The goal of this resolution is to give viewers maximum satisfaction.
228. 13:50As soon as the resolution occurs, the videos are abruptly ended
229. 13:54to avoid losing even a second of retention.
230. 13:57These strategies of MrBeast were incredible,
231. 14:00and because of them, in 2019, he achieved 20 million subscribers.
232. 14:05In the next few years,
233. 14:06he launched his better-for-you chocolate brand called Feastables.
234. 14:10He launched a YouTube analytics tool called View Stats
235. 14:13and crossed the 300 million subscribers mark in 2024,
236. 14:18becoming the world's biggest YouTuber.
237. 14:20In short, MrBeast reached the peak of his success.
238. 14:24But then a huge twist occurred in the story.
239. 14:27In mid-2024, a former employee of MrBeast named Dawson French
240. 14:32exposed him by making two shocking videos.
241. 14:35In these videos, several allegations were made against MrBeast.
242. 14:39Like MrBeast fakes his videos by using computer-generated graphics.
243. 14:44The second allegation was that on MrBeast's philanthropy channel,
244. 14:47many donations and charities are also fake.
245. 14:49It was also alleged that the prize money in his challenge and competition videos
246. 14:54is never actually given to the winners.
247. 14:57These two videos received over 10 million views
248. 14:59and caused a massive uproar in the entire YouTube community.
249. 15:02Millions of dislikes started appearing on MrBeast's videos.
250. 15:05Brands canceled deals worth crores,
251. 15:08and the hashtag #BoycottMrBeast began trending on X.
252. 15:11Everyone thought that MrBeast's downfall had begun.
253. 15:15But the story wasn't over yet.
254. 15:17In such a situation, any other creator might have panicked.
255. 15:20But MrBeast showed maturity
256. 15:22and did not immediately react to these allegations.
257. 15:25Some time later, a YouTube channel named Soggy Cereal
258. 15:28made a detailed video debunking most of Dawson's allegations.
259. 15:34For example, Dawson claimed that
260. 15:36MrBeast used a computer-generated shredder in this video.
261. 15:40But the shredder was actually real.
262. 15:42Similarly, many other allegations were proven false in this video.
263. 15:45A few weeks later, MrBeast also did a two-hour podcast
264. 15:49and responded to each allegation one by one without any filter.
265. 15:53For instance, he explained that his Beast Philanthropy channel
266. 15:56is a registered non-profit company,
267. 15:58and all its audited accounts are publicly available.
268. 16:01Basically, anyone in the world could check that
269. 16:04the charity done in these videos was real.
270. 16:06After these videos came out, Dawson disappeared entirely from the internet,
271. 16:10and eventually, MrBeast won back the trust of his fans
272. 16:14and successfully overcame the biggest crisis of his career.
273. 16:19Today, MrBeast's net worth is over $1 billion.
274. 16:22He has already created a $100 million show with Amazon Prime.
275. 16:26And he is unarguably on his way
276. 16:27to becoming the most legendary entertainer of our generation.
277. 16:30But the most inspiring part is that all of this started
278. 16:33with a boy who used to be afraid of speaking even two words in public.
279. 16:38This was the story of MrBeast.
280. 16:42If you liked this video, I recommend you watch this next video.