Skip to content
The Joe Rogan ExperienceThe Joe Rogan Experience

Joe Rogan Experience #1788 - Mr. Beast

Jimmy "MrBeast" Donaldson is an internet personality, businessman, and philanthropist. He operates several popular YouTube channels, a delivery based fast food restaurant, MrBeast Burger, and two philanthropic programs: Beast Philanthropy, and Team Trees.

MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson)guestJoe Roganhost
Jun 27, 20242h 32mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:40

    Headphones panic, hearing your own voice, and why the show uses cans

    1. NA

      (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day. (rock music plays)

    2. MD

      Um, I've, I've done quite a few. I've never ... Okay. Here, hold up. Just talk to me for, like, a minute. I-

    3. JR

      Okay.

    4. MD

      This is so freaky to me.

    5. JR

      Is it really?

    6. MD

      Yeah, to hear my own voice.

    7. JR

      Oh, we need to put this on the video.

    8. NA

      I mean, I'm recording it. I just need to turn on the microphone.

    9. JR

      Okay, good. We're recording already.

    10. MD

      You ... Have you ever had a guest, like, freak out about that?

    11. JR

      No, you're the first freak-out because of headphones.

    12. MD

      In tr- ... Not headphones.

    13. JR

      Is it weird?

    14. MD

      No, it's 'cause I hear my own voice. I'm very conscious of, of, of that.

    15. JR

      (laughs)

    16. MD

      So now I'm like, "Fuck, my inflection or whatever-"

    17. JR

      Mm.

    18. MD

      "... isn't, uh, f-"

    19. JR

      Sounds fine.

    20. MD

      Okay. No, I know it sounds fine, it's just ... Fuck. Whatever, I'll suck it up.

    21. JR

      (laughs)

    22. NA

      (laughs)

    23. MD

      You don't have, like, a button you can press to kill it?

    24. JR

      No. No, I-

    25. NA

      (laughs)

    26. MD

      What the fuck?

    27. JR

      So when you're playing video games, you don't hear yourself, right?

    28. MD

      No.

    29. JR

      Yeah, I don't either, but... Yeah, I hear it's different. Sorry.

    30. MD

      Oh, well.

  2. 1:40 – 3:17

    Joe’s first impression of MrBeast and the “my kid is obsessed” introduction

    1. JR

      What's happening? How are you?

    2. MD

      Good.

    3. JR

      First of all, let me just tell you how impressed I am with what you've done. I think what you've done is amazing, because your channel and your ... This ... What you've done on YouTube is completely unique. It's completely you. Like-

    4. MD

      Thank you.

    5. JR

      ... you, the ... What your personality comes through, the way you've, like, crafted these, these things that people have to do, these tasks and these games and this fun shit you do, and it's wildly popular. And I didn't know about it until, I guess, about a year ago. Uh, I told you my 11-year-old is fucking obsessed with your show, obsessed.

    6. MD

      Yeah.

    7. JR

      And she told me, and we were in a, a hotel in Vegas. I was there for the UFC, and she was watching YouTube. I'm like, "What are you watching?" She's like, "Oh my God, it's MrBeast." And she was so into this show, and then I wa- ... I watched it, and I was like, "Wow, this is actually really entertaining."

    8. MD

      Aw.

    9. JR

      It's fun stuff, man.

    10. MD

      Thank you. Yeah, it's, it's, it's been crazy, 'cause I've, I've been doing it since I was 11. And n-

    11. JR

      Really?

    12. MD

      Yeah, so now I'm 23, and so it's just like ... Basically, every year, it just gotten crazier and crazier, and y- ... I used to make a dollar a day back ... Well, I ... The first few years, I wasn't even making money off YouTube, but once I started making money, I was making a dollar a day, and I saved up for a couple months, I bought a microphone, saved up for half a year, I got a computer, and I've just always reinvested it. And so it's like literally just all ... I, I mean, I was like as awkward as they came, uh, no money, no nothing, and I just basically just obsessed over YouTube every day for a decade.

    13. JR

      A- Are your first episodes available, the 11 ... when you were 11 years old?

    14. MD

      Uh, no, because I, I had a friend when I was 13 that found my channel, and so I deleted like all the videos. I got really self-conscious, but-

    15. JR

      Oh, no.

    16. MD

      ... kind of. But so everything from 13 and up is there, and yeah, they're fucking terrible.

    17. JR

      Well, that's s- ... That's still cool.

    18. MD

      Yeah.

  3. 3:17 – 9:42

    From age 11 uploads to dropping out: slow growth, reinvestment, and betting everything

    1. JR

      So what did you do when you first started? Like, what was the first idea?

    2. MD

      Uh, the very first video, um, weirdly enough, I, I played this stupid game and some hacker, like, killed my base when I was 11, and so I uploaded it, and my first video got 20,000 views, like instantly, 'cause it was ... Like, all the people that played the game was like, "Oh, shit, you can hack in this game." It's a game called Battle Pirates, I guarantee you no one listens to these-

    3. JR

      What is it called?

    4. MD

      Battle Pirates. No one here has ever heard of it.

    5. JR

      Battle Card?

    6. MD

      Battle Pirates. It was-

    7. JR

      Bat- Battle Pirates.

    8. MD

      Yeah, it was a really small game, but I uploaded that, and I got 20,000 views, and that was probably the best thing that could've ever happened to me, 'cause then I was, I was hooked from day one. Literally, like, most people, it takes hundreds of videos before you get like one view, and somehow, the very first video I uploaded at 11 got like 20,000 views, and then I was just like, "Oh." I, I fell in love, and I've been hooked ever since.

    9. JR

      Wow, so it was kind of almost by accident.

    10. MD

      Uh, essentially, yeah. It was that, and then ... 'Cause this was way before YouTube was even a thing. Like-

    11. JR

      Right.

    12. MD

      ... you know, no one was really a YouTuber. Hardly anyone made money.

    13. JR

      When did YouTube first get ... When did it launch?

    14. NA

      Uh ...

    15. MD

      Like 2006 or whatever.

    16. JR

      2006, '07.

    17. MD

      YouTube was a thing, but like the partner program wasn't really a thing.

    18. JR

      Right.

    19. MD

      No one was making money.

    20. JR

      Right.

    21. MD

      Uh, and it was definitely back before it was cool. Like, when I was doing YouTube when I was 14 and 15, like, it ... Now, you know, it's cool if you want to be a YouTuber in high school or middle school.

    22. JR

      Yeah.

    23. MD

      Back then, like, no one gave a fuck, you know what I mean? It was like you were just worried they would try to play your videos in class or, or make fun of you or stuff like that for it.

    24. JR

      So but it ... How did it evolve to what it is now? Was it a, a vision? Was it a slow, sort of a gradual increase in numbers and-

    25. MD

      Yeah, I mean, it was about as slow as it gets. Uh, I mean, I can ... So like when I was a young teenager, I was getting no views, had no money, had no equipment, and so for the most part, it was just like I was just trying to scrounge money so I could buy equipment, 'cause I was using my brother's old laptop. And so like my first couple hundred videos, I didn't have a microphone. Like imagine just like crackly, terrible voice, um, and so once I got monetized, I saved up for a few months, like I told you, I bought a microphone. I can just give you a mile-high history, and I saved up for like six months, and me- ... I was just doing video game videos, uh, and they were terrible, but I saved up. I got a real computer, and so now I could actually record the video game in high quality. I have a microphone, I'm like 15, and I just kept going and going. Um-... trying to figure out, like, what are some of, like, the- the hotspots. Like, essentially, up until 18 and a- I had been doing YouTube pretty religiously, but I was making no money. Like, this is... Kind of the turning point was when I graduated from high school, and my whole life I was like, "I wanna be making enough money by the time I graduate to do this full-time." And I wasn't, I was still only making a couple hundred bucks a month. So, I graduated high school, and my mom was like, "Either move out or go to a community college." And I didn't have enough money to move out, but I really just, I hated school with a passion, but she forced me to go to community college. And that was, that was the worst thing ever. Like, that- that made me hate life. Like, borderline suicidal, I just can't stand, like, having to just sit there and listen to this dumb stuff and listen to some teacher read out a book. So, what I did was, I would act like I was going to community college, but th- I would just work on videos in my car and edit and stuff like that.

    26. JR

      (laughs)

    27. MD

      I had straight zeros. And so now the clock had started-

    28. JR

      Oh, no.

    29. MD

      ... 'cause, like, once my mom found out, I was screwed. Um-

    30. JR

      Were you aware of that? Like-

  4. 9:42 – 12:15

    “Daily Masterminds”: hyper-analyzing virality like a science

    1. MD

      Most of my growth came actually after, uh, I graduated high school. Basically what I did was I f- somehow found these other, like, four lunatics. We were, 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 all were super small YouTubers, and we basically talked every day for 1,000 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. And we- we'd just call it, like, Daily Masterminds. We would just get on Skype every morning. And, like, some days, like, I'd get on Skype at 7:00 AM and I'd be in the call until, like, 10:00 PM. And then I'd go to bed, I'd wake up, and I'd do it again. And, oh, you know, we'd do things like take 1,000 thumbnails and see if, like, there's a correlation to the brightness of the thumbnail to how many views it got. Or, like, you know, like, videos that get over 10 million views, it's like, how often do they cut the camera angles or, like, things like that. Um-

    2. JR

      Really? So you- you micro-analyzed other-

    3. MD

      Everything.

    4. JR

      ... really?

    5. MD

      Yeah. Just, I mean, for... Like, we were very religious about it. And so, that's- that's where most of my knowledge came from, is I just surrounded myself with these lunatics. And just every day, like, we didn't do anything. We had no life. Um-

    6. JR

      But everybody had sort of a similar vision?

    7. MD

      Yeah, exactly. And so we all had, like, 10, 20,000 subscribers when we met. And by the time we stopped talking, we all had millions of subscribers. And we were... we all hit a million subscribers, like, within a month. It's crazy, 'cause it's like, if you envision a world where you're trying to be great at something and it's just, like, you learning and fucking up and then learning from your mistakes. Also, my mom told me not to curse. Sorry Mom. If someone could just, like, edit out the swear words and give it to me.

    8. JR

      Sorry, Mom.

    9. MD

      Yeah, so I can give it to my mom to listen to. That would be great. Um, but like, you know, you mess up, you learn from your mistake, you mess up, you learn from your mistake. You, in two years, you know, might have learned from 20 mistakes. Where if you have, like, four other people who are also messing up, and when they've, uh, learned from their mistake, they teach you what they learned, stuff like that. Hypothetically, you, two years down the road, have learned, like, five times more the amount of stuff. So it just, like, helps you...... grow exponentially way quicker, if that makes any sense.

    10. JR

      It does, it does.

    11. MD

      Yeah, so-

    12. JR

      But, but it's interesting that you thought about it that way in sort of a systematic approach, like you-

    13. MD

      Exactly.

    14. JR

      This is not d- dumb luck.

    15. MD

      Uh, no. I mean, it was like, uh, like they say, "10,000 hours to master something." We probably-

    16. JR

      Yeah.

    17. MD

      ... put in like 40,000, 50,000 hours done. (laughs) I mean-

    18. JR

      Wow.

    19. MD

      ... we're talking like every day, all day, like literally nothing. We had no friends outside of the group. That was your life. And like-

    20. JR

      I'm actually rereading that book right now, that Malcolm Gladwell book, Outliers, that talks about that 10,000 hours principle.

    21. MD

      Uh-huh.

    22. JR

      It totally applies to what you did, 100%. I mean, like-

    23. MD

      Yeah.

    24. JR

      … it, it sounds like you were just all day, every day, and which makes sense. And what do you have now, 90 million subscribers?

    25. MD

      Uh, well, we, uh, across everything, we're closing in on 200 million subscribers.

    26. JR

      Jesus!

    27. MD

      Yeah, 'cause, uh-

    28. JR

      Ah!

  5. 12:15 – 15:22

    Global scale via dubbing: building multilingual MrBeast channels

    1. MD

      Have you seen our, our dub channels? (hand slamming)

    2. JR

      No.

    3. MD

      Uh, can you pull that up? Just search MrBeast, uh, in Español. So we actually ... which I'm kinda curious why you don't do this. We do our videos in other languages as well.

    4. JR

      Really?

    5. MD

      Yeah.

    6. JR

      Wow.

    7. MD

      And so ... And what's ... I, I can't wait to get ... show you this, 'cause I actually have s- ... a really cool story.

    8. NA

      (Vick mosta de marido.)

    9. MD

      Here, just go, go to the channel, so you can try this out.

    10. JR

      Who, uh, who does this?

    11. MD

      Uh, we do it.

    12. NA

      ¡No te pases!

    13. JR

      So you hire someone?

    14. MD

      It's like this, yeah, we have voice actors and everything.

    15. JR

      Wow.

    16. MD

      So these are the exact same videos on my main channel, but we, we pay voice actors to dub over them. We translate the text and the video, everything.

    17. JR

      MrBeast in Español. Wow.

    18. MD

      Yeah, that was actually one of the fastest-growing channels last year, is just our videos dubbed.

    19. JR

      That's so smart.

    20. MD

      Okay, now click on, uh, a video, so we can kinda hear it.

    21. NA

      Hoy, mis amigos y yo volveremos a la primaria.

    22. MD

      Yeah.

    23. NA

      Al final de la clase, haremos un examen de diez preguntas.

    24. JR

      Oh.

    25. MD

      And so scroll down, so we can see the comments. Uh, it's-

    26. NA

      ... pruebas, las primeras-

    27. MD

      It's all in, uh, Spanish, like ...

    28. JR

      That's dope.

    29. MD

      Yeah. So that's ... Uh, now just ... Well, I, I won't pull 'em all up, but I'll just search-

    30. JR

      In the other countries?

  6. 15:22 – 19:00

    Reinvesting everything: living modestly, occasional loans, and cash-flow realities

    1. JR

      It's that, but it's also your vision. The, the fact ... One of the things that I was really impressed by ... when I started looking into you after my daughter introduced me, is that you invest so much money into the show.

    2. MD

      All, all of the money I make. I don't, I don't, I don't ... Why do I need money?

    3. JR

      So you don't like go crazy? You don't have a Ferrari or anything nuts?

    4. MD

      No. I, I think living your life chasing like a nicer and nicer car and a bigger and bigger box to live in is kinda like a dumb way to, to go about life.

    5. JR

      Yeah.

    6. MD

      Yeah, so I, I actually (laughs) ... funny enough, I lived in like a super below average home, and I kinda learned why famous people don't live in, uh, below average homes, 'cause someone broke in, stole everything I own. So I had to, I had to get a little nicer house for security reasons, but before I was robbed, I mean like my place was like a little duplex, 700 a month. You, you get a roommate, it's 360 split. (laughs)

    7. JR

      Right.

    8. MD

      Yeah, it's ... And, uh, just drive a normal car. Well, now I drive a Tesla just 'cause of the, you know, getting off with gas and stuff like that.

    9. JR

      Right.

    10. MD

      But, yeah.

    11. JR

      So, you don't go crazy at all with cash?

    12. MD

      No.

    13. JR

      You don't know-

    14. MD

      I, I really try not to. I, I think that's like just a-

    15. JR

      (clears throat)

    16. MD

      ... a bad way to go about life. Also, it is a little hypocritical, because I, I run a, a nonprofit and, you know, we ... Uh, have you seen our Beast Philanthropy channel?

    17. JR

      No.

    18. MD

      Uh, can you pull that up as well? We do a lot of stuff for helping people. And so also if I lived in a $10 million mansion while I'm feeding people and trying to help people, also- ... in my eyes, it's also a little hypocritical as well. So, in every area, I just ... I feel like it's just better if I just live below my means.

    19. JR

      That's uh- is you- you're just very wise for a young man, 'cause a lot of 23-year-olds would be-... ballin' out of their fucking mind right now.

    20. MD

      Zoom out. Well, yeah, I- I also have some stories about that too, but-

    21. JR

      You do?

    22. MD

      Um, yeah. 'Cause I did have a phase where I did ball out a little bit and- and then I just, I realized like, "Yeah, this doesn't make me happy."

    23. JR

      What did you do during the balling out phase?

    24. MD

      Uh, I bought an i8 and I also bought some designer clothes, like some $1,000 shirts and stuff like that. Um, ironically, all of which was stolen when my house was bro- broken into.

    25. JR

      (laughs)

    26. MD

      So, it's kind of perfect because I was like, "I don't know if I really care about this stuff anymore," and then someone just stole all my expensive shit and I was like, "Perfect." Reshoot.

    27. JR

      Did you set aside a bunch of fuck you money at least so that you never have to worry about money again?

    28. MD

      I've always reinvested back in the channel. Sometimes I run out of money and I have to take out a loan.

    29. JR

      Really?

    30. MD

      Yeah. But- so-

  7. 19:00 – 20:44

    Building spectacle: islands, Squid Game, warehouses, and logistics bottlenecks

    1. MD

      Well, if you think even younger, 'cause I started getting money when I was 19, 20. And so there's- there's so many things I want to say on that because I agree and I- I feel like I have some good advice to add for people in those positions. But, uh, there's a couple of things. First, first off the, to be like this successful as a YouTuber, you kind of have to understand like, there's like three different pillars that make like, uh, like get us where we are. Like you have to have the business sense, reinvest, hire, scale up. I mean, the things we're doing are huge logistical nightmares. Have you ever tried to buy a private island and, uh, you know, then you buy a private island and there's no beach and so you have to terraform a beach and build a pier and stuff like that for when you-

    2. JR

      Is that what you did?

    3. MD

      Yeah, I mean there's so many crazy-

    4. JR

      You guys bought an island?

    5. MD

      Yeah, 'cause we, uh, did a video where Last to Leave Island Keeps It, and then so we buy an island and it looks better on the internet and then you go see it and there's no beach. Well, fuck, now you gotta import 5,000 pounds of sand and stuff like that.

    6. JR

      So, where's the island?

    7. MD

      Uh, somewhere in the Bahamas. Uh, some- someone won it, so the person who left-

    8. JR

      Someone won a fucking island?

    9. MD

      Yeah. We're actually about to do something similar again coming up. Um, I mean-

    10. JR

      How much does an island cost?

    11. MD

      That one was like 800 grand and then we put like 100 grand into like renovating it. Um, and then-

    12. JR

      Wow. How big is the island?

    13. MD

      Uh, it was huge, like three football fields or something like that. It took quite a while to walk to the other side.

    14. JR

      This is it?

    15. MD

      Yeah. Yeah, that one.

    16. JR

      I bought this entire island?

    17. MD

      (laughs)

    18. JR

      You can get an island for 800 grand?

    19. MD

      Yeah, in the Bahamas.

    20. JR

      That's kind of a shock. How many islands are in the Bahamas?

    21. MD

      Um, I'm gonna be honest, I have no idea. But like that beach you see there, we had to build that beach. It was-

    22. JR

      Really?

    23. MD

      Yeah. So that sand wasn't there, we had to import it.

    24. JR

      So it was just like rocky coastline?

    25. MD

      Exactly, and- and we needed a beach to film on so we basically had to build a south part.

    26. JR

      And so did you put a house up there or like is it just an island?

    27. MD

      No. The person who won it just sold it.

    28. JR

      Oh, did they really?

    29. MD

      Yeah.

    30. JR

      Right away?

  8. 20:44 – 46:44

    Casting, authenticity, and why “random people” can look fake on camera

    1. JR

      (laughs) And so these people, how do you find them?

    2. MD

      Uh, this one-

    3. JR

      The contestants.

    4. MD

      Uh, it's different for every video. This one, I- I'd have to see them all in particular. Like this one was a mix of random people and my boys. Um, the- the hard thing is like sometimes I- I love pulling random people but, ugh, if you grab random people, sometimes people just don't know how to act on camera. They freeze up and they- they're really not good for content. And so like in an ideal world, everyone in my videos are just purely random, which is what I'm trying to get towards 'cause I'm trying to get better at like filtering out the random people that just freeze up and aren't good on camera. Um, that one's a little older so some of those are like people I knew because I knew they'd make good content. 'Cause I- I would bring someone in a video and they'd win something and they'd just freeze up and they'd do nothing. They'd just be like, "Oh, thanks." And then all the comments are like, "No one just says, 'Oh, thanks,' when you win 100 grand. This is fake. MrBeast is fake. All this is fake." And I'm like, "No, it's real." The fact that he's acting like that shows it's real, but like the masses don't understand that. So I have to be like very like strategic on how I pick people or everyone's just like, "Oh, this is fake." They didn't- they didn't react.

    5. JR

      So how do you pick people? Do you have an audition? Do you have a conversation with them? Do you meet them?

    6. MD

      I literally just hired a casting director and usually we just like get large amounts of people, they filter through, and we're just looking for like people, A, do they need it? Like do they actually need this help? Would it benefit their life? You know, obviously they- they can't be super rich. And then also, it's literally just like put a camera in front of them and do they freeze up? That's it. I just can't have people like freezing up because then it just like, it, I don't know, it's just not content and it's, I can't just pause the show and like explain like, "Oh, they're not talking right now because they," you know.

    7. JR

      So when they meet you, is it for the first time or...

    8. MD

      Yeah, when- when we film it's usually for the first time.

    9. JR

      So the casting person sets everything up and they get these applicants from...

    10. MD

      It really just depends on the video 'cause like some videos like Squid Game, there's 456 people. Um, that one, we dropped like a shirt, we grabbed 100 random people that bought the shirt and then the other 356 we just got from a local college. We literally just went there, put out flyers and the first 356 people that called, we just brought them in. Um-

    11. JR

      You brought them in but did you vet them or?

    12. MD

      No that, 'cause there's so many people.

    13. JR

      Is that what you mean?

    14. MD

      That's what I'm saying, it's like different videos.

    15. JR

      Right.

    16. MD

      Where's that, did you see that Squid Game video?

    17. JR

      I saw part of it, yeah.

    18. MD

      Yeah, that was wild. That- that was the most expensive thing we've ever done.

    19. JR

      How much did it cost?

    20. MD

      A little over $4 million.

    21. JR

      Jesus Christ.

    22. MD

      Yeah, 'cause we had CG, we recreated all the sets. It's like, and the thing is like there's not really room for error, you know what I mean?

    23. JR

      Right.

    24. MD

      Like this- this shit has to work, you know? Um, and so like, you know, engineering, like the glass bridge, we legit had to build the glass bridge for them to drop them-

    25. JR

      Wow.

    26. MD

      ... and safety and all that stuff.Yeah.

    27. JR

      And when you're doing this, are you bringing in stunt people? Like, how are you coordinating all this?

    28. MD

      For?

    29. JR

      For like, to, to set up challenges? Like, like, if you're doing something where you drop people off a gl- how do you make sure that they don't die?

    30. MD

      (laughs) Well, there's, there's foam below it and obviously, it's safe. Uh, everything, you know, we do, we safety test beyond belief. That video, we had over 100 different people working on it, so...

  9. 46:44 – 1:11:01

    Leveraging the audience into businesses: Beast Burger, snacks, and dub services

    1. JR

      What, first of all, where is MrBeast Burger? How many of them do you have?

    2. MD

      Uh, so right now we don't have any physical. We have 1,600 virtual restaurants.

    3. JR

      Oh, so you-

    4. MD

      Yeah.

    5. JR

      ... order it online and then they deliver it?

    6. MD

      Yeah, so, like, uh, let's say you own a mom and pop restaurant. You, you literally just sign up, um, go through the course so you learn how to make all the stuff on our menu, and you just order our ingredients and our packaging, and then you just flick it on on Uber Eats, DoorDash, Grubhub, and you can start taking orders.... and we'll let you keep a majority of the revenue. So, it's basically like-

    7. JR

      Oh.

    8. MD

      ... it's a win-win for restaurants, especially when COVID first hit, it was, like, huge for a lot of restaurants, because I was pushing it really hard back then. And like, some restaurants were literally laying off people, and then they started, uh, serving Beast Burger, and some of them are doing like $10,000 a week. Uh, not ... Like, in total revenue, so whatever, their cut was lower. But it allowed them to not have to like wa- lay off part of their workforce or- or keep their employees and stuff like that. Um, and- and so yeah.

    9. JR

      And this idea came out of what?

    10. MD

      Uh, we were approached by some company and, uh, and the more I thought about it, the more I just realized it was just a great idea. So, we have a partner, a guy, basically a guy who's been doing restaurants his whole life. He ... So, actually that's how we started, because he owned 300 restaurants, so we launched with three, his 300 restaurants. And then like that first day, they all sold out. They- they were having to like run to local stores to buy ingredients to keep up with orders. Like, the Uber Eats like delivery lines were like out the door. It was- it was pretty bad, so we had to like quickly expand up, um, and we've just been adding like 50 restaurants a week ever since.

    11. JR

      Wow!

    12. MD

      Yeah.

    13. JR

      That's amazing.

    14. MD

      And so now we're about to start doing our first physical restaurants as well and that should be fun.

    15. JR

      Your mom must be so baffled. A kid she thought wasn't doing jack shit in school-

    16. MD

      (laughs) Yeah.

    17. JR

      ... now he's creating virtual restaurants?

    18. MD

      Yeah.

    19. JR

      It's- it's incredible, man. That's-

    20. MD

      Yeah. It's- it's actually insane, when ... And so we've been doing it for like, probably like 15 months now, and we're about to cross, uh, $100 million in top line revenue across the restaurants.

    21. JR

      Wow!

    22. MD

      Yeah.

    23. JR

      So, that's one side business.

    24. MD

      Yeah.

    25. JR

      What other side businesses do you have?

    26. MD

      So, we just launched our- our snack brand, um, which is ... Our- our first thing is a chocolate bar. It's a ... Just basically like only four ingredients, just a slightly healthier version of a chocolate bar. The problem is if you make things too healthy, which is what I've found with my restaurant, is that I would love to wean people off like super unhealthy stuff, but if you ... Like, we did a lettuce wrap, like where you just replace the bun with lettuce. No one orders it. If you go like too extreme on the healthy side, just no one cares. Um, so it's like I've found like the best spot is just to make things like 20% healthier and then people still order it. If not, then it's just useless. Um, so I wanted to do a snack brand and I'm experimenting with that, so it's just basically this slightly better for you chocolate bar, just higher quality ingredients, a little bit less ingredients.

    27. JR

      And what do you put in it?

    28. MD

      Um, well, you can just pull it up.

    29. JR

      There it is, MrBeast Bar.

    30. MD

      I mean, like I said, it's not crazy healthy, but, um, and we didn't-

Episode duration: 2:32:33

Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript

Transcript of episode cLRLEnPaJLM

Get more out of YouTube videos.

High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.

iOSAndroidClaudeChrome