Everything I Learned From 48 Hours With MrBeast (The +$1B Mindset)
Amongst this group of very successful people, it was very clear that Jimmy is an outlier. He's an outlier because of his mindset, because of his ambition, because of his level of, of obsession, because of his work ethic, because of his absolute disregard for social norms. So let me just tell you some things that stood out. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. Uh, I put my all in it like no days off on the road. What's up, Sam? Uh, I'm back. I'm back from Camp MFM. You know, camp, is it even called Camp MFM if only one of us went? I don't know. We have to debate that, but I'm back. I have so much good stuff to share. I have, this is, it's a crazy event. Honestly, it's kind of a batshit crazy event. I'll give it batshit crazy. It is so interesting what happened here. I have so many notes I'm going to share with you, but first I saw something completely unrelated that I got to tell you about. So.
By the way, before we even get to all of that, we have to explain that you hosted this big event. Now you're going to tell me some amazing thing that you just saw. We do all of this for free, and all we are asking for our dear viewer here, if you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe button for us. That's all we ask for. And people say that all the time, but you want to know what, Sean, what I want to make sure that our listeners, our viewers know, it takes them literally a second, but, but it means so much to us and actually changes our lives if everyone does it. So hopefully people will see the dedication that we have in this content and pay us back by just giving us a subscribe.
So that's all I want to say. Change a life. Just change a life today with one simple tap. Um, all right. So before I tell you all about Camp MFM, I got to tell you about this amazing evil genius affiliate marketing play that I saw, uh, somebody share on Twitter. So I don't know if you saw this, it involves 23andMe. So, okay. So basically this guy points this out. He goes, check this out. This is the most evil genius thing I've ever seen. And he points out this tweet that, um, a user, her name is Stella, posted. And she says, hey, my friend Elizabeth is looking for an unvaxxed sperm donor. Sam, you're halfway there. Um, she said, I'm looking for somebody who's blue-eyed, white, 5'11".
Which half? Like, I'm vaccinated, but I— now you need to convince me to give my sperm, or you're half eligible?
Uh, all right, so blue-eyed, white, 5'11". 11 or taller, blah, blah, blah. So it has this set of requirements. Big go. Yeah, big go. But then, uh, there's, so there's some things in here that are like a little bit interesting. It makes you raise one eyebrow. So the first one, she says follows a healthy meat-focused diet. Specific, but okay. Second, no Jewish or African ancestry. Slightly racist, but okay. Then it says must be natural insemination. She will not do IVF. DM me. Okay, so she doesn't want to do the normal sperm donation process, wants natural insemination.
So a 5'10" white guy who's unvaxxed— so basically anyone who lives in Missouri she wants to have sex with.
Yeah, got it. So, okay, you see that first thing, then she tweets again, says, hey, that last tweet got so many— so much inbound, I just want to add some detail. Um, so she retweets it again. Reiterates the criteria, but then she adds some photos of the girl too. She says, as you could see, she is beautiful, pure-blooded European. Okay. Code word, uh, intelligent, has, has a childbearing body, which I've always dreamed of having myself. And, uh, your offspring will be raised extremely well. And they post a bunch of pictures of her and it's like this kind of hot model looking girl. So this guy points out, he's like, this Tweet got like almost 3 million views. And if you do it, if you DM the person, then they send you a link and they're like, hey, cool, you're interested. Awesome. Um, you know, she would love to have, you know, naturally conceive with you, uh, random 5'11 white guy who's unvaxxed. Um, you just gotta make sure you have the, you satisfy all the criteria. Take this 23andMe and submit your results, and then that'll say that you're eligible. But it's like an affiliate code for 23andMe. It's not this girl's. So probably this, I say this girl, there's probably no girl. What actually is, is this fat guy in his basement is tricking tons of guys who are like, maybe I'll impregnate this, this hot European model. Um, I just got to take this 23andMe. And basically, even if you get paid the normal 23andMe, like referral bonus is $20 per person who does it. So if you just do the math on this funnel, 3 million people see this tweet. Let's say that 1/10 of 1% are going to actually go do this. That's 3,000 people that went and did this at minimum. That's $60K in revenue off this tweet of affiliate revenue. Isn't this crazy?
That next week, 23andMe is sitting down. They're like at their marketing, uh, they're in their marketing meeting and they're like, all right, we have to like, let's do some, let's look at the data and see who our target demographic is. Wow, like, I— apparently this marketing company just told us they did some research. Our new users love jorts. Should we, like, should we have a bunch of white guys named Todd who wear, like, jean shorts in our commercials? Like, like, that's— is that our new target demographic? They just, like, everything's skewed now where they're just, like, got all this one type of person.
Totally, totally. They're like, oh, I guess Twitter's our best channel and, uh, Stella appears to be our best retailer. Who is Stella?
Is this, um, is this evil or is it evil genius? Because it's a fine line between evil and evil genius. I, I think it's evil genius. So let's go on to the next part. Camp MFM. All right. So let's start with the following. Was it good? Was it great? Was it life-changing? I'm going to go with life-changing. I'm going to go with life-changing.
That's how it was. Everyone I spoke with who went, it ranged between the worst was great. The highest was life-changing. So you had a good, that's a good high end.
Yes. So let me just explain what we did. So we basically took 20 people to Greenville, North Carolina, which is middle of nowhere. Um, we basically stayed at MrBeast's house, uh, there. So last year we did this thing once and we realized, oh, this is really cool. If we bring a bunch of interesting people that we know in the business world. And then a few entertainers and some people that MrBeast knows in his world, this can become a very interesting event. We did it again this year. We had 20 people and I got some highlights. I got some lowlights, but where do you want to start? How should I, how should I do this?
What I actually wanted to ask you about was, uh, the evolution of Jimmy, AKA MrBeast, because my perception of him last year. So I went and hung out. I went to the one last year. I couldn't go this year, but last year, how old is he? Was he 24 last year?
Yeah, he's 25 now.
Okay, so he's super young and so here's my perception of him when I met him last year. He had, he clearly had this factor of like, I hadn't met anyone like him, but when we talk about like a Steve Jobs or an Elon Musk, these conquerors, like he had that it factor. It was very clear that this guy was crazy focused and he was insane in mostly all the right ways. But he still had some aspects of a normal 24-year-old. He felt a little impatient about certain things. He felt like he was still trying to, like, he had great conversations, but then there's other times where it's like, oh, you're just a normal 24-year-old where you maybe are, you said something rude or something like that. And then this year I heard from someone who went from the year before, they go, dude, Jimmy has evolved so much. He's still only 25, but which is insane. He's only 25, but he now has like, is morphing into this proper visionary where I believe that he's going to take over the world. Was that true?
A lot of that is true. Uh, you could definitely see the evolution, which is kind of crazy. So he, um, so for people who don't know, Jimmy is basically one of the most famous people on planet Earth. It's kind of like bizarre when you look at the numbers, like he is the biggest creator on the biggest app in the world. He's the number one most followed creator on YouTube. He's almost the number one channel on YouTube. There's only like one channel that's bigger, which is like this Indian music channel. Um, he's the fastest growing. He's the biggest. He's the biggest on YouTube. He's the biggest on TikTok. So the two biggest entertainment apps in the world, YouTube and TikTok, He's the, basically the number one creator on both.
Weren't the stats like 1 out of 5? What was it? Was it, uh, maybe like 1 out of 10 people on earth see his videos once a month or something like some stupid stat like that?
Dude, you can look at this 100 ways and it's insane. It's like more people watch his content than watch the Super Bowl every month. It's like, okay, well, what are we doing here? What is this? How, what does this even mean?
I think like his average video gets 80 million views, unique views.
It's hard to even. Like fathom that. And then you go outside with them and, you know, wherever you are, it's like a Michael Jackson level of fame, right?
So was it really? I mean, we didn't go anywhere last year, but you guys like, we basically didn't go anywhere this year, but you can still see it.
It still happens. Uh, so, so kind of insane. So that's the first thing is just hard to even wrap your head around that level of, of fame and success at this age. He's running a billion dollar company. So he's, his company is worth well over a billion dollars, which is the combination of His channel.
Is he running it?
Yeah, it's him. It's his, the whole ship is him, right?
Like, but does he have a CEO or is he also the CEO?
He has like a CEO, but like the CEO reports to him. He's the owner.
Wow.
Right. So like the owner is number one. Okay. So he's got basically what changed from last year. Let's start with that. First, the guy lost 30 pounds. So after last year's camp, he watched the video of himself playing basketball. It was like, oh my God, I'm so slow and out of shape. F this. And you could see that like, you know, the type of person who can become the number one creator on YouTube, you know, by obsessing and focusing for 10 years, guess what? That guy can transform his body in a year too, right? So he's like on an extreme like bodybuilder workout program. He's got like his bodybuilder meals. He's got his trainer who follows him around and they built a gym right outside of his studio that we went and hung out in. It's like, This is where he works out of. He's big. He's like, I only have 3 goals this year. Grow the channel, get big, and sell chocolate. Those are the 3 things he's doing. And like, that's another interesting thing. Last year when we talked to him, I don't know, you didn't go to his studio last year, but we did. And, um, he had like 10 things he was doing. It was like, oh, I want to, you know, do this mobile gaming thing. And then I'm doing this over here. I'm doing this, this. And, uh, because why not? He could do any of those things, right? Like you and me find it hard to say no to opportunities.
I texted Ben 100 times more.
Ben was, so every night, me and Ben, so Ben Levy, he is my business partner. He helped organize the whole event. But during the event, we're basically not talking because we're just working different parts of the room. And, you know, me and Ben talk 24/7 anyway, so we don't need to talk at this event. But at the end of the night, he would text me like, yo, like, all right, brain dump. Like we would just text random words. We don't even explain them to each other. It's like, we'll talk about this later. Here's some takeaways. Here's some insights. Here's some learnings. Here's some ways we could help somebody in this room, like whatever. And one of the things I text him, I go, it's embarrassing, man. Jimmy has one, literally at least 1,000 times more opportunities than us. Like this podcast creates a lot of opportunities and, you know, where we are in the tech world creates some opportunities, but he literally has at least 1,000x more opportunities. And he does less. He says yes to less stuff than we did. We have. Like we're doing 4 things, he's doing 2. And like, that's insane. Like that's, that just shows like how poorly we are staying focused and committed to what actually matters and being smart about saying yes and no to things. I said, if this guy could say no to literally 1,000 or maybe 10,000 better opportunities than what we're saying no to, like we, that's something to learn from. So, okay. What changed? He lost a bunch of weight. His channel has basically like doubled in the last year that we've talked to him. He's like added like, I don't know, 100 million more subscribers. His chocolate business has taken off. So I really underestimated this chocolate business, Feastables, when I had a chance to invest in this thing, like at the earlier rounds. And I was like, chocolate company? Like that's, I don't know why, why chocolate? Like, I get it. Your audience is young, but like, Chocolate's kind of like low priced. It's like, uh, you know, yeah, I mean, how often do people, how often do people rebuy this thing? Like, shouldn't he be building like, you know, a mobile game or something like that? That's kind of what I was thinking.
And last year when we were with him, I think the results were like, it's okay, or it's, it might, it might be okay.
Like, it was kind of like number 3. He was like, oh, I got Beast Burger. It's a burger chain, virtual restaurant. That's doing, I think it was doing like $100 million gross or something at the time. They've since shut that down. Um, and then, or he like doesn't work on that anymore. They had like a couple of things in the pipe. They had this like translation service thing for like YouTubers, whatever. They had all this stuff. Chocolate was like number 3, maybe last year. And now it's like, every day I wake up and think, how do I sell more chocolate? Right? It's like that level of like hyper obsession and, you know, going to do hundreds of millions in chocolate sales this year. With a clear path to how this could become, like, he's like, basically he's like, there's 5 chocolate companies that matter. They're valued in the billions up to, you know, $30 billion. We are eating share like crazy. You know, these guys can't touch us when it comes to marketing. And so, you know, we are just blowing through the, like, retail doors basically. It's like, yeah, like, get into Walmart. Walmart is the main thing. And Guess what? I can drive more people to Walmart than these guys can. And so he has just like really blown that business up, which is pretty impressive. You know, now it's pretty obvious that that's going to be a billion dollar plus business. I would bet that he's going to sell that chocolate brand for $6 billion. That's my guess. I think that's what's going to— I think if we fast forward the news 3 years from now, uh, you know, MrBeast sells the majority stake or in the chocolate business for at a $6 billion valuation.
That's insane. And what about his mindset? So you said he focused more. What else changed?
Well, so Joe Rogan has this thing he says about David Goggins where he goes, he's uncommon amongst uncommon men. So this room was really interesting because I don't know the average network, you know, even take out Joe, who's like, you know, worth like $7 to $10 billion or something, you know, when we were doing the intros, I was like, you know, between me and Joe, we're worth almost $10 billion. It's just all Joe. So basically, even if you take him out of it, you know, this is a room of very, very successful people. Average was probably like, I don't know, $100 million net worth or something like that. Amongst this group of very successful people, it was very clear that Jimmy is an outlier. He's an outlier because of his mindset, because of his ambition, because of his level of obsession, because of his work ethic. Because of his absolute disregard for social norms. So let me just tell you some things that stood out. So basically he's, he was very humble. He was like, you know, he's like, I, he's like, I've made every mistake you can make trying to run this business. He's like, I've hired and fired like 6 CEOs. I thought we hired the Disney guy. Surely he'll know things. No, he doesn't know shit about YouTube. That's not going to work. Uh, we hire this person over here and then they build the whole thing out and I realized, oh my God, they built this wrong. We got to get rid of all that. He's like, so I've made all these mistakes. He's like, so I want to learn from you guys because I've, I'm only 25. I've only been doing this for a couple of years now. You guys might've been doing this for 20 more years than me, right? Like there's people in the room who are 50 years old, right? So it's like, it's a different, um, different, like level of experience. He's like, he's like, I'm just making things up. I'm sitting here in North Carolina, just making things up. I don't even have access to people like you on most days to even ask questions. So he'd be like, so I'll tell you some examples. So he's like, uh, We were like, so what worked for you? How have you scaled this thing up? He goes, oh, I just create clones. And we're like, what? He's like, yeah, I just wanted to clone myself because I was like, God, I know I could do this, but I don't have the time. So I need to clone somebody. He's like, we're like, what do you mean? What do you do? He's like, so I literally have somebody essentially move in with me and I just duct tape them to my hip. He's like, you're going to follow me everywhere to everything. And for this first 6 months, All you're going to do is just shadow me and just learn exactly how I think and what I want and what I do and why I do it. And then in 6 months, you start getting your, you start doing those things. And he's like, I basically now cloned myself several times. And now I have, and then they clone themselves. He's like, that's what we do. And we're like, so you literally have the guy live with you? He's like, yeah. What that it would be better than if he didn't, right? And we're like, yeah, but like, what about his like family and stuff? He's like, Yeah, I mean, I just, do you want to do this or not? And so like, like one of the guys, one of the guys who's like his right-hand man now, last year when we went, he was a guy just like, uh, you know, he does these challenges like live in this circle for 100 days and you get like half a million dollars. This was the guy living in the circle. He was just like a random contestant, but he had a background in video production and he had some experience. And so they actually recruited him after that experiment to work with him. And now he's like his right-hand man that does everything with him. He's with him 24/7. I was like, dude, you got like kids. This is like a Saturday. Are you supposed to be working? He's like, yeah, I work every day. I work all day, every day. And he's like, I made a deal with my family. I was like, look, I'm coming out here. It's a once in a lifetime experience. You're not going to see me for like the next 9 months. Hopefully after 9 months, I will have like set up a system where I'll be back, you know, home a little bit more, but like This is an adventure and I want to go on it. This is like the pinnacle of my career. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with this guy on this type of stuff. So I'm going to go all in. And this all in mentality was just so pervasive. I'll give you another simple example. The guy who's currently his assistant, we were like, how'd you get the job as assistant? And he's like, oh, um, we're like, did you interview for this? How did he like pick you? He's like, no, I didn't interview. He's like, they really wanted to play this board game, but Amazon Prime was going to take 2 days. And so one of his guys hit me up because he knew I had the game and he's like, fly here right now. And we want this game now. We want to play now. We don't want to wait 2 days for Amazon Prime. We want to play this game tonight. He's like, so I just got on a flight and I came and I handed them the board game. And they were like, cool. If you're willing to do that, you can like, you can make it here. Do you want, do you want a job? You're extreme enough. And he's like, he's described, so I was asking this guy, I was like, how do you filter for this? Because they were, they were trying to pick up like, how do we keep this culture as we scale of people who are just all in? And he's like, uh, he's like, now when I interview people, we do like these psychographic, like tests to figure out your personality profile. But he's like, then I'm going to talk to you. He's like, I'm going to spend an hour convincing you how hard this is going to be and how much you're going to have to sacrifice to be here. And I can just see in that, do they flinch? Do they start asking me about vacation policies, or do they get excited about like kind of like going on this mission, like this mission to Mars in our, their version of the mission to Mars. I thought that was fascinating that he's basically breeding this insane work culture. The team has leveled up so much. The quality of people he has around him from last year to this year has leveled up so much. And he just breaks all the social norms, like just being like, yeah, uh, he's like one guy, he's like, uh, I talked to his main, like one of his like main content guys is like editor thumbnail guy. Like this guy's job title is like master of thumbnails. Basically, he just does thumbnails. And I was like, how did this work? He's like, well, I had my own channel that was doing well. I was like, how do you convince you to do this? He's like, well, his channel was taking off. He's like, we were always talking about like strategies and ideas every day and like our little mastermind. And we would just sit in Discord all day and talk about what, like what's working, what's not studying the platform. And he's like, I just knew this guy's like hyper obsessed. He's going to make it. And he offered me the, he's like, first I started helping him. And he wasn't paying me or whatever. I was just helping him out whenever I could. He's like, then he told me like, hey, I need, uh, you know, I need a thumbnail for this like tonight. He's like, oh dude, sorry, I'm at a wedding. And like, by the way, I don't work for you. So, you know, it's not going to work. He's like, so he wired me 10 grand and he's like, uh, he's like, can you make this thumbnail please? So I told my girlfriend, he's like, I left the wedding and I made the thumbnail and I've never looked back since. And since my role has grown and, you know, he's made it all worth my while to be here to shut down my own channel to go all in. And I just thought it was fascinating, the level of like disregard for like convention, partly because he doesn't know it. And partly because he's like, well, we need this. So what's the best way? Like, can't we just theoretically, couldn't we just find a guy with the game and tell him to book a flight and he'll be here in a few hours? Cool. We're not limited by Amazon's shipping. Like 99 people out of 100 would not try to bypass Amazon's fastest shipping as like the way to get something.
I remember, um, years ago, 10+ years ago, my wife worked at Facebook and she was, um, telling her father about working at Facebook. And I think my wife worked there starting when there was 6,000 or 9,000 people, I forget. And, uh, my father-in-law was like, why do you need 9,000 people to run a website? Like, why do you need 9,000 people for like a webpage? What do you, what all those people do? And that's what I, someone had said that Jimmy has, uh, MrBeast has, um, uh, hundreds of employees working for him. And at first I was like, how do you need hundreds of employees? And then I had to re— I had to rethink it. I'm like, well, no, he's actually, he's a movie studio. It just, instead of theaters, it's on, it's on your phone or on your TV. I was like, this guy is, he has just built like the new, the new Paramount or whatever the studios are, the Warner Brothers. And that's exactly what he's doing. And it's crazy fascinating because, you know, I did this a little bit with newsletters, but not with nearly that intensity where it was like, let's just take a small thing or something people think is small and try to blow it up. And at the time it was email. People thought it was just like something you disregard. I'm like, no, we can get like 5 million subscribers and turn it into a business. And of course it was only a fraction of what he did, but that's basically what he has done with YouTube, but with a much better result. Where he's like, what's this one, this one small thing that people are dismissing? And he's built a whole studio around it. It's pretty amazing.
And the other thing, you know, if you talk to him, he's like, uh, he's like, it's impossible to do what I'm doing better than me. He's like, because I'm going to spend, you know, 10 times more than anyone. I use every waking hour of my day to think about this. I hire all the best people in the world. I reinvest all of my profits back into this and I'm going to do this. I think in decades, not years. So how could you beat that? And if you just abstract this away, like forget about the fact that he's doing that for YouTube channels, like there's something to be inspired by and learn from that, from that, right? Like if you are willing to work and think in decades, not years, work every hour, every, every thought in your brain is consumed by how do I do this better? You reinvest all your money and say, I will spend as much as I can to make the best product possible to get this into as many people's hands as possible. Like, can you lose? Like, what is there to fear? What, how could you possibly lose with that equation? And I think that that is just a very fascinating mindset to see in practice. A lot of people could say that shit. Very few people can actually do it.
And I know that he says he invests everything and we had Reid on the pod and he had kind of insinuated that. Sometimes what they do is it's a mess, like, because they move so fast. So like, we just miss some stuff, but that's okay. Do you think that Jimmy is cash poor then? Like, is he just like, everything is tied up into his business?
I don't know. I don't want to speculate too much on that, but I think, you know, the reality is he raised, he, he's a, he is a venture-backed startup. He raised venture capital and he is doing what, you know, what an Airbnb did or what a Facebook did, which is like, I'm going to lose a ton of money now every year. But building up all of this market share so that then I can make back, you know, I could become a $10 billion or $100 billion company. That's literally what he's doing. He raised like $50 million plus and invests all of that into content to build this enormous following of being the most followed creator on TikTok and YouTube and hundreds of millions of fans. And then he used that to launch a chocolate business that's going to be worth billions of dollars plus. His back catalog is worth a lot of money, plus his sponsorships and ad revenue will make a lot of money, plus any other business he launches will make a lot of money, right? So he, he just did the, he, he is a movie, movie production studio in terms of his operations, but he's like a venture, he's more like a venture-backed startup than he is like a creator.
Can you talk, so when I hear about the way that he lives, part, I'm definitely inspired, but I'm only inspired because I'm not going to change the way I do things so much like him because that's just not my personality. And I don't think that's what I enjoy is to be that all in of like, you know, I'm more well-balanced, which means I'm going to be less successful and I'm okay with that. But there are, um, you had other guys there. So Joe Gebbia, I don't know what his intensity level is like. I've only spent 3 minutes with them and I've read about them. That's about it. But then you also had Syed. So Syed's 32. Syed has businesses. He was on our podcast. He's got businesses that no one will talk about because it's not really that popular, but I imagine he's in the realm of being a billionaire. And then you had Joe Gebbia, who is multi-billionaire, and his company is one of the biggest and best in the world. How did, did you learn different perspectives on how to crush it based off of being around like those three examples, Jimmy, Syed, and, uh, Joe?
Yeah, 100%. I'll give you a couple of quick observations. So one observation is, uh, by the way, there was probably like two or three more people that were like, you know, billionaires at this event. So you get to see like a range of like, oh, how do people act? How do people think? How do people operate? And it's like, yeah, Saeed's like small team, simple business, unsexy, not going to be famous. Don't want to be famous. Don't want people knowing my name. I want to be able to walk around. He travels the world with his son, um, you know, for 2 weeks out of every month. That's what he wants in his lifestyle. You talk to MrBeast about kids and he's like, It's a shame people have kids, man. They go soft, right? He's just like, he's just like, he's like, damn, he literally like, I don't, I wouldn't put words in his mouth, but the, the general feeling is like, it sucks that people start off really ambitious trying to do big, cool, awesome shit. And then like, just get tired or they either get tired or worn out or disillusioned or they just shift their focus to family. And like, he's just like, that's not going to be me. And so you have totally different perspectives on these things. And no judgment. There's many ways to win. Each person should choose the game they want to play. But I will share a couple of observations. Number one, this is probably just a good observation for me in general in life. The smartest and most successful people in that room were the quietest. They were the ones doing the most listening, the least bragging, the least kind of like word vomit of storytelling or trying to interject themselves. You did that. I did something similar too. Let me tell you about me, me, me, me. And it was the people who were the least successful and the least sharp in terms of like had the most wisdom or intelligence on a topic that were talking the most. And I'm guilty of that. I'm in the talk the most camp. So I was like, damn, that's a real takeaway for me from this was watch how those people operate. You want to be them, you have to watch how they operate. And they definitely do that. The sort of the ratio of two ears for every one mouth, right? Like double the amount of listening as talking, if not more. And that was just so obvious to me at this event. They had the least, and it was also the people who were actually the most successful had the least kind of like, I would say the whole group was pretty good about like not trying to brag or one-upsmanship, you know, or try to like assert themselves. But the people who were the most successful had that in the least quantity, which I thought was very, very interesting. The second thing I thought that was interesting was just back in— there was like always these, the people who were very, very successful in one area, more often than not, if I asked them about some random side quest hobby, they were also like world-class at that thing. Like we were talking about, you know, Joe was super successful at Airbnb. He's also like, you know, extremely fit, not just like kind of fit. He's extremely fit. Jimmy, MrBeast, you know, the day after our event, he's like, oh, I'm, what are you doing tomorrow? He's like, oh, I flew, I'm flying in all of, he's like, I play this one board game that's super niche called Dune. He's like, and I, there's no tournament for Dune. So I created it and I'm flying in the French champion, the British champion, the German champion, like the best players in the world to come compete with me at this game. He's like, I did this last year and I won. He's like, I play, you know, these guys play 10,000 hours a year or whatever, 100,000 hours a year or something crazy. Like, I don't have that time, but I like, you know, when I do play, I binge this thing. You know, that's my way of unwinding is to become world-class at this random niche strategy board game. And like, we've heard these stories about how, you know, Peter Thiel is also a grandmaster chess champion.
Or Travis Kalanick was ranked number 3 in Wii Tennis.
Wii Tennis globally, right? And it's like, yeah. Yeah, Jimmy literally won the competition against the other best champions in the world at this board game. And they were so bad, they're like, we got to run this back. He's like, great, let's run it back. Let's do it again this year. And like, you know, he put up a $20 grand prize, but there's like no prize pool for this thing because it's like such a niche game. And I thought that's also kind of interesting, which is once you develop kind of this laser beam that can come out of your eyes and you hone that laser beam on your main thing, if you ever shift your focus to something else, You're like Homelander and you just can just burn a laser through whatever that next thing is because you have practiced the art of, you know, obsession, focus, excellence, you know, breaking something down into its core parts and building it back up again. That was the other thing where I was like, dude, how do you describe yourself? Are you like, do you just, are you an entertainer? Are you like a chocolate guy now? Are you a business? Are you a businessman? Cause you're in a room with business people. Like, how do you, are you a YouTuber? What do you call yourself? You know what he said? Take a guess what he said.
I don't know, a business builder?
He's like, I'm a data junkie.
No way.
He's like, yeah, I basically just studied the algorithm. I studied the platform and I figured out what's going to work. And I decided I'm going to study this more than anyone studies anything. And he's like, then I basically figured out what type of content's going to work. And then through my experimentation, I figured out what's going to work. Like when they, you know, when we put up a thumbnail for our YouTube channel, We put up one thumbnail and sometimes we're like, you know what? I don't know if that's a good one. And then we're like, screw it. We'll A/B test.
Our YouTube team is going to hear this. I'm going to be freaking out. I think they put up a lot more than that.
No, no, they don't. They A/B test. There's A and B. That's it. You know what he does? He'll put up like, they will test like hundreds of thumbnails, like rap in rapid succession during the, when they first release a video. They will cycle through hundreds of thumbnails programmatically to try to find the winning one during that. And then they're also like, well, our loyal fans, our hardcore viewers come first. They're going to want to see Jimmy's face. But after that, after, you know, basically the 24-hour period, it's going to be more fans that are from the platform, just people browsing YouTube. They don't know Jimmy. They don't want to see his face. So let's just put this, uh, you know, this bathtub full of snakes or whatever the challenge is. Let's make that the thumbnail.
Jack told me about that and I go, Jack, is he doing that because he's so big or is he so big because he did that? And he said the second one.
He's so big because he did that.
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm like, he's successful because of that. He doesn't do that now because he's successful.
Another random nerdy takeaway I had. Um, but actually I'll just leave it as this last one. So the random nerdy takeaway. Um, he is making the, the biggest, he has, he is attacking the biggest TAM on YouTube. So like TAM is this idea of total addressable market. And I could think of a viral idea, maybe an idea that's, that's kind of juicy, but like his ideas are, uh, like, you know, an 8-year-old in the Philippines or a 25-year-old in the United States or a 40-year-old woman in the UK. Would all be interested in his video. Why? Because his video is a, like, it's a video you don't even need words to explain. You could literally just with the thumbnail or like a hieroglyphic explain this. It's like man trapped in room 100 days. All right. I'm interested. What is that? Right. Or like, you know, um, you know, two people, uh, you know, first to leave the circle loses. It's like, okay, I get it. And a million dollars, first to leave the circle loses. Or he'll do a video that's like, um, million dollars if this, if this like, you know, FBI agent can catch me, right? It's just like very, very simple premises that appeal to a really, really broad amount of people. And I just, that was something I hadn't really appreciated before. I thought he was making kind of like viral clickbaity type of stuff. What I didn't factor in was he will only pick ideas that can literally appeal to like 1 billion people. And that's just different than what most people do on the platform. Most people don't like our channel, for example, the stuff we talk about, it's not meant to do that. It's meant to appeal to a narrow niche of people in a deep way. He plays a different game, appeal to the entire world in a small way.
What did you think of hanging out with like guys like Jack Smith and Val? That was the first. So we had Val or I had one day you weren't here. So I had Val on the pod. Val's a guy who has like 4 different companies with like 3 or 2 of them in the $100 million a year range. What did you think of hanging out with a guy like Val? He's cool, right?
Everybody had interesting things to share. Can I tell you the lowlights? Because I don't want to just say all the good things. Can I tell you the bad things?
Yeah.
For, uh, the big, the worst thing was not getting to invite everyone. So we only invited 20 people this year. We invited less people than last year because last year was kind of a lot to manage. Like we had like 30 people last year. This year we targeted 15, so we tried to cut it in half. It ended up being 20 at the end, but that was the worst part because it's really, really hard to say no to people or not invite people who you're friends with. You just didn't want, you know, you're trying to create an event where there's new people there. And so therefore you just can't do it. So that was shitty. Also another thing, I hate hosting these things. I know it's good. Meaning there's so much value in hosting this. People feel so—
it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work. And it's honestly, I'm okay with work. It's just socially, like, I feel drained. You know, sometimes you say this about the podcast. You're like, dude, I feel drained after these. And I'm like, dude, I could go all day. At the end of the night, every one of these, I'm like, I am so over-socialed out. I am, I'm, I'm, I'm an introvert.
Actually, it turns out you're performing as well.
And I want everybody to have a good time. And it's like, dude, you can't control if people are having a good time. Yeah. You're working basically. And so it was, socially, I felt so exhausted. Socially exhausted is the right word. The last one, or so a couple of the ones, basketball, kind of mediocre. It was pretty sloppy because the overlap of people who are super successful and interesting that also are good pickup basketball players, surprisingly low. Also, people lie. We're like, yo, do you play? They're like, yeah. Love to. They show up. I'm like, you don't play.
Next year, do fighting. Do fight camp.
So we agreed to do a fight camp.
I talked to Michael Bisping before. Michael Bisping, a UFC guy and YouTuber. He would be interesting because if he would, everyone would want to meet Jimmy or Joe Gabbia. Michael Bisping would be cool. I bet. I mean, you know, some UFC guys have listened to us and DM'd us. That would be fun.
I want to, this is what I want to do. I want to take any of like the kind of the hobbies, uh, and then mix Basically integrate them. So, right, rather than like work-life balance where it's like, there's the things I like to do and then there's work and then they're separate, they're always trading off time against each other. No, no, integrate them. And so take something I love to do, which would be like, you know, like boxing or sparring in some way or basketball and integrate it with like, you know, a networking event basically, which is what we did.
And you lost 10, you lost. So last year, last year was crazy because this is when I saw that Jimmy was insane. We were all just hanging out in this basketball court and he like didn't even make an ordeal of it. He just goes, hey Sean, if you can make this half court shot, I'll give you $10,000. And he didn't even say like, if you don't make it, I get this, or you only have 3 shots to make it. Like there was no, I was like, what the fuck, Jimmy? Why would you make this bet? And he was just insane and he did it and you did it in like number 5 or 3 or something and he gave you 10 grand. And I heard this year you lost 10 grand doing the same thing at someone.
Another low light. I lost the half-court shot this year. I lost $10,000 to Joe. And it's one thing to lose $10,000, it's another thing to lose $10,000 to a multi-billionaire. Because I was like, goddamn, this is, uh, this is a— it has a little extra kick to it.
So yeah, you paid for 15 minutes, 15 minutes fly time on his jet.
Exactly, exactly. Um, and actually we because we lost the game, we had to go and do the like ice plunge in the like freezing cold lake thing. So that was also, you know, part of the penalty of losing the final championship game. So that kind of sucked. Yeah, so those are some of the, some of the lowlights.
Someone who went mentioned to me, they didn't say that you guys discussed this, but I assumed because he kept bringing it up about Prime. And apparently, so this is pretty mind-boggling. So the MrBeast stuff is mind-boggling that he has a chocolate company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars. I looked up Prime. So Prime was started by Logan Paul and KSI. Publicly, they said that the business in the second year of business did $1.2 billion in revenue. And I imagine that Prime must have come up in your conversations. And I, someone said that the two guys who founded it alongside Logan and KSI were like young kids, almost like they implied like they are nobodies, like they had no business in getting into this industry and it has just crushed it. And I guess My mind is like a billion dollars in sales. That's worth your Prime. That's worth like a really high multiple because of how fast it's growing. That's worth billions of dollars. So you basically have created billions and billions of dollars in value off of a creator. It's mind-boggling. Did you learn anything interesting about Prime?
Yeah. So I think some of that's accurate and some of it's not. So they did do over a billion dollars by 1.3, 1.5 billion. And what's kind of like its first full year, you know, it launched in 2022. So the 2023 numbers are the first full year of, you know, full calendar year of business. So that's, that's bonkers, right? Obviously that's bonkers. No, what, what business does over a billion dollars in revenue in its first year? That's pretty crazy. Um, they're not kids. So I think they're in their 20s, but they're not kids. They are also not like never done this before. Remember we talked about those like status signals of like, uh, the, the green flags of when you're young, right? Video game. Player, hacker of popular thing. Another one, you know, running your own Minecraft servers. That's another one. One other one is sneaker flipper. So these guys were sneaker flippers. That's how they kind of like, that was their road into business was selling, you know, sneakers. Then they created this kind of like, they did a couple of things, but then they ended up creating something called Alani Nu, which I don't know if you heard about this, but it's like kind of this like posh drink that like, It was started with this Instagram creator. She's not anywhere near the level of like a Logan Paul or whatever. But they started this thing. They've done partnerships with Kim Kardashian and others. Like they made Kim Aid, like the Kim Kardashian flavor thing. Alani Nu, they did before Prime.
It's like an energy drink and a pre-workout supplement, right?
Yeah, but it's like for women and it's like high-end. It's like the Equinox or whatever. Got it. And it's, uh, Alani Nu does over $100 million of profit. Per year. So it's a, that itself is a almost billion dollar revenue, revenue generating things. That's, that is, that itself is probably a multi-billion dollar company that they built before Prime per year. So these guys did that. They have this, this holdco called Congo Brands. They don't want people to know about them. You go to LinkedIn, great picture. You go to Congo Brands, not much story. If anybody asks who owns Prime, they say Logan Paul and KSI. In reality, these guys own 60% of that company, right? Logan and KSI own, you know, the sort of like 30 to 40% of that company. And so, um, that brand Prime is going to be, my guess is that that, that ends up being like a $20 billion brand.
It's crazy.
Uh, and you know, that is going to make Logan Paul a multi-billionaire off of, off of, uh, Prime. So, you know, Celsius, you know, that energy drink. Celsius just sold 8% to Pepsi for $550 million. So Celsius is valued at $6 billion. Prime is bigger than Celsius. It's going to be bigger than Celsius or it already is bigger than Celsius. And so what an insane story. And that guy Trey, you know, MrBeast, Jimmy, he was like, I call him like, he's like, I call the guy every day. He's like, that guy is so helpful to me with Feastables. He's like, I'm calling that guy all the time. He is so smart. He's like, he is so smart, so much smarter than everybody else in this space. It's insane. And he's like, I am just getting so much learning from that guy. And he's like, that's why I like to meet people that I can learn from because I've seen how much fat, you know, he's like, same thing for me. He's like, if I wanted to, if you took my channel away, I could rebuild right back to where I am in 3 years. He's like, that's how Trey is with CPG. And he's like, I'm just trying to find who that person is for all the different fields. He's like, I want to meet them.
There's no interviews. I, I try, I've tried hard to find, you know, some of him on YouTube or an interview with him.
Nothing. That's insane. Um, last question. All right. So you did this thing, you know what we call that?
Lasagna. I know it. Tell them why, tell them why we call this lasagna, Sam.
What is it? You move in silence.
Real Gs move in silence like lasagna.
Um, all right. So you did this thing. At worst, it was fun. At best, it was life-changing. If it is life-changing, how are you going to change?
Laser focus, my friend.
Uh, in fact, during the thing, uh, you should have just listened to me 4 years ago.
Should have listened to you then. But the thing is you don't really have the same level of inspiration and motivation that MrBeast has. This is true.
And I'm not nearly as successful as them. If I had a few, if I had a few zeros behind, uh, my bank account or my Instagram account, maybe you would have listened, but it just sucks you couldn't have listened then.
It's laser-focused on content specifically because, you know, one realization, you got to know who you are and you got to know what you're into. For me, I think I'm probably like a B+ entrepreneur, but I think I could be A+ in the content game. I think it would be impossible really for me to be A+ as an entrepreneur. I don't think I'm it's not where I'm naturally as talented. Plus I don't enjoy it enough to go that hard, as hard as you would want to, to be at that top tier. But I do feel that way about making content. And so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to build the largest content brand or audience around entrepreneurship. So around people who are into the same shit we're into, right? MFM has been awesome. And it's like the, it's kind of shown that that can be true. But, It's never been something I'm laser focused on. And I also don't think podcast is the right vehicle to do that. So I'm going to do it off of podcasting because podcasting is not viral, which is like what you, what you want is to be able to spread your gospel to as many people as possible. The problem with podcasting is podcasting is like bottom of funnel. It's like, it's like where people, you know, form a deep relationship. It's not where they meet you.
Do you get envy? So like when I thought about I've thought about that as well. I'm not into content creation as much as you are, so that's not going to be the path for me, but I have used it as, you know, like a miniature Logan Paul Prime thing. Very, very much, very miniature compared to them. Do you think that, so for entrepreneurship, that sort of means that you're going to be a B2B, like, you know, Sean to, you're going to sell something that businesses might buy. Or something that like, we'll call it like the prosumer. So like, not like a drink, but maybe someone who buys something for their job. Do you think that there's as many opportunities in that space as there is creating a drink or a makeup kit or whatever other consumer rules?
And also, I'm not even worried about that. Like, that will exist and it'll be what it'll be. It doesn't really matter. But yeah, it does. Like, you know, I don't think Tim Ferriss, when he started, you know, 4-Hour Workweek or even his podcast would've been like, yeah, and then what I'm going to do is invest in Uber and make $100 million. Like that's what happened, but it's not what you would've predicted. But of course, how does he get into that deal? Because he's Tim Ferriss, because that's what, who people want to rope into things. And so, you know, getting into Shopify and Uber early on is how he made all the money. Um, you couldn't really connect those dots at the beginning, right? It's only something that later after the fact, you could see how that all connected together.
And are you prepared to be a 38-year-old YouTuber hanging out with a bunch of 22-year-olds all the time while you're wearing—
First of all, my good friend Noah Kagan, he, uh, you know, he runs a really successful business that's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. So he's successful, but He has like a YouTube channel and I always make fun of him. Like, dude, you're a 42-year-old YouTuber, you fucking dork. Like you're hanging out with all the 22-year-olds who are like yo-yo still. Like, what are you like, grow up Peter Pan. And so that's what I'll be making fun of you about. So you can go and like do all those. Dude, we had, you and I had to do a photo shoot recently because MFM, they wanted to upload the title or the picture. In that photo shoot, we had to stand there and do like 10 emotions. They're like, all right, act like, yeah, thumbnail faces, act like you're, someone just said something stupid and you think they're full of it. And like inevitably every picture is just this, like you're, you're shocked. And like we had to do these things. First of all, I hated that. I hated that. It was horrible, dude. There was one where you had your hand like this, like you're going to smack someone.
Yeah. They were like, you're angry. And then I did a bitch slap, uh, hand thing. And I was like, was that good? I was like, what did you do?
Yeah. And then they had to like, I just had to hold up 5, 4, 3 so they could like use my hands for different numbers. I hated that. I hated doing that. Um, so we're going to be seeing that, but I can't like, that's just not my DNA, but that, um, that's going to be you now. Congratulations.
It's hard for me to be a little bitch, but I hope you enjoy it.
Yeah. No, it was just like, oh, you know, like you know, a lot of the YouTubers, and this is a good thing, they're actors, they're performers, they're entertainers. We sort of started this just like hanging out.
When we go to places and people are like, oh my gosh, I need your autograph. Oh, can I take a picture? I'll be like, this is Sam. And then I'll introduce you too, okay? So don't worry.
Well, it was just great. Well, you have a little bit more of that acting DNA, but they, like, you like performing a little bit. But they, um, these guys are like hard, they're, they're YouTube. I mean, YouTubers are actors. And so it's, it's hard.
I know you didn't say that, but I'm still going to make fun of you for doing that. Don't let reality get in the way of what I'm going to mock you for.
Uh, can I tell you? Okay. So one of the things we did at this camp, by the way, is I'm not going to tell you what was in it, but I'll tell you what we did. So last year I was too afraid to like structure it. Meaning last year I was like, yeah, we're just going to hang. It's going to be cool. It's going to be casual. It's going to be great. It's going to be awesome. Just hanging. No problem. Just super cool. Because I was like, I don't want to be the second grade teacher, be like, all right, everybody sit down, give me your bunny ears and let's—
Dude, in reality, you need that. You need that.
And we needed that. And we needed that. And one of the best things last year was when somebody finally impromptu was like, hey, so do you guys want to do some intros or an icebreaker? Who are you guys and what do you do? Can we learn something from each other? So this year I arranged it where I was like, all right, we're going to do these things called tiny talks that I was like, at night, we're going to have people do kind of like a flash, you know, 5 to 10 minute talk on their thing. Because everybody in this room is world-class at something. Otherwise you wouldn't be in this room. So tell us what you're world-class at and how you do it so that we can kind of learn from it. So it was like, you know, MrBeast does his YouTube masterclass. He's like, here's my channel. Here's the analytics. He's like, you know, just logs in. He's screen sharing. He's like, so here's how we think about this. Here's what I did. Here's what it worked. Here's what didn't work. Here's this trick we do on our thumbnails that makes this work better. I mean, like you couldn't pay for this, right? So he did that. Joe Gebbia did one on his first startup before Airbnb and kind of like the lessons he learned there.
Read the title and only give a one-sentence summary of the takeaway that you had.
How I Went from $0 to $1.3 Billion in Real Estate in 10 Years. The one-sentence summary is This guy has an unfair advantage that lets him play the game differently, and I should just give him my money to invest. And that's what I'm doing. Okay. So like, yeah, unfair advantages do exist. And when you have them, just parlay, you know, press, push your bet, push your chips into the tape. All right. Next one. Why I bought 23 gas stations and was it a good idea? So last year at the camp, somebody shared about why the, how they owned a couple, you know, 10 gas stations or something. So one of the guys went and bought 23 gas stations after that. And funny story, and actually it probably was a good idea for him because he had sold his business and he needed something that would give him a lot of depreciation in year 1, a lot of bonus depreciation and gas stations do that. So in that sense, it was a smart move, but now he holds all these assets that like he's going to have to figure out if they were the right thing in the long term. I think there's different things. Another guy did a presentation on why venture capital mostly sucks and why people play the game totally wrong. And he is a VC. So I thought that was a great talk. At the end of it, he did this thing called the Mount Rushmore of Death that I thought was interesting. He's like, we were like, dude, how did you even think of investing in this one company that took off? It sold for like $3 billion. And he goes, well, he's like, I first was taking like 1,000 meetings a year. Like most VCs do. And they're just like so inundated with data that they actually like lose the way to think. So then I stepped back and I was like, okay, I'm not going to do just like constant inbound meetings, just worried about missing the next big thing. Instead, I'm going to figure out where would the next big thing live and I'm going to go find it. So he did this thing called the Mount Rushmore of death, which is like these 4 things cause death more than anything else combined, right? Like these make up 80% of all the reasons for death. Uh, Peter Attia calls these the 4 horsemen, but he did, this guy did Mount Rushmore and it's like, Heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. And yeah, like dementia, Alzheimer's, so like neurocognitive degeneration. And he's like, so then I just went and looked for what's the best company in biotech that attacks one of those four in a way that I think is plausible to work. And then he ended up finding a big winner in that space. I thought that was kind of interesting. Another guy, he goes, my talk's about the 3 Ds. Of buying businesses. Death, divorce, and distressed. He's like, you know, the best opportunities come if you can buy a business from somebody who died and the kids don't want to inherit the business, from somebody who's going through a divorce and they have to, you know, sell their business, or distressed, you know, somebody took on too much risk and you can basically go buy it for less than the intrinsic value of the business. And so one guy there, he had bought a business. He was looking at buying this business. He would have had to pay like, you know, $15, $20 million for it. On top of the inventory that they had. And instead he ended up owning, now he owns the business for the cost of the inventory that they own. He's like, literally, like, I just paid for the inventory and I now own the whole business. And he's like, you know, and that was one of my suppliers. So it cut my COGS in half. So it's just like these great, you know, what does a great deal look like? And you really start to learn what does a great deal look like? So those talks I thought were Badass.
All right, let's wrap up and let me make one suggestion. Don't turn this into a business. This is perfect as it is.
Don't fuck this up. Turn what into a business?
Camp MFM. This is awesome.
Oh yeah, of course not.
This is perfect. Don't fuck this up. Number 2, do it again. And number 3, keep it at whatever size, 20. I, I would be bad at picking because I would want everyone to come. That is so stressful. But hopefully you don't ruin this because this is definitely a gem.
Um, I'm so excited. When we made the list of people we would want to come, the list was 142. So you had to go from 142 to inviting 15.
It, uh, was terrible. I was, I had, I'm, I don't regret my decision. I, you know, I, I had to put family time in, but I had immense amount of fun.
Bro, after all of that, you didn't regret your decision?
Nope. I don't regret it. I don't regret it. But I have massive FOMO. I wish I was in a position that it would've been that I could've made it, but I had huge amount of FOMOs because Ramon and Jack were giving me updates and Val and Ben and Nick, and I would just text people like, how's it going? Is it fun? And they would send me pictures. So I sort of got like 1% of ongoing updates. It sounded awesome.
Everybody at the thing was just They were just calling it Sean's bachelor party. They're like, I'm so happy to be at Sean's bachelor party, which is hilarious because I didn't have a bachelor party, but if I did, this is exactly what I would've wanted to do. It's basically a group of guys who are all a lot of fun, tons of jokes, play basketball, play poker, talk business. That's like the ideal bachelor party. So I think maybe we should just rebrand it to that, my annual bachelor party.
Well, no, keep it Camp MFM. So I, by default, always get an invite.
No dude, you blew us off this year.
Hey, you know how it is. You would've done the same thing. Um, and if it's in Austin, people were like, where's Sam?
And I was like, oh, you know, he just had a baby. They're like, wasn't that like 3 months ago? And I was like, yeah. And they're like, it was 2 and a half months ago.
It was 2 and a half months ago. And I made the commitment that the first 3, I'm, I'm at home. Um, I gotta do what I gotta do.
Laser focus on that baby. I like it. I appreciate that.
We, you know, I was, I actually got a, I was getting, um, I was laying with her and I was like shirtless and she was just in her diaper and I was changing her diaper and she shit all over me somehow as I was getting a text from like Ramon being like, yeah dude, now we're lifting weights and doing all this stuff. And I was like, oh cool. Like, let me wipe this poop off of me real quick. Cause she just, the poop just ran down my belly.
Any tips how to get diarrhea out of a poop? Yeah, dude, is there a tiny talk about that?
She literally puked on my face this week cause I was like holding her up at my shoulder and she threw up and I got puke all over my face and I was like, reading these texts and like seeing Nick Huber do like a DEXA scan and Joe Gabbia jump in a lake and I'm like, oh, that's cool.
Oh yeah, we had a, he has a DEXA in his gym and we put Nick on it and then we played a game where everybody had to guess his body fat percentage. And then I was like, yeah, this would get everybody canceled nowadays. This is like, you know, fat shaming. I'm pretty sure this is the definition of fat shaming. But, but he loved it. It was great.
Yeah, that's, that's baller. I definitely wish I could have been there. All right. That was a good episode. That was a good recap.
All right. That's the pod. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back.