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My First Million

Her Viral Formula Breaks 100 Million Views On YouTube Shorts (ft. Jenny Hoyos)

Episode 580: Shaan Puri talks to Jenny Hoyos, the 18-year-old who has mastered the recipe of viral shorts. They break down her step-by-step process for creating content that pulls in over a 100M views.

Shaan PurihostJenny Hoyosguest

May 3, 202444mWatch on YouTube

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CHAPTERS

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Chapter summaries

Meet Jenny Hoyos, the Anti-MrBeast
Shaan Puri introduces Jenny Hoyos, an 18-year-old creator whose shorts regularly reach millions of views, including one with 100 million. Jenny describes her channel about the life of a cheapskate and the nickname "Mr. Least."
- •Jenny started posting seriously about two years ago and now averages around 10 million views per video
- •She makes videos around the life of a cheapskate
- •People call her the anti-MrBeast, or "Mr. Least"
- •Shaan frames the episode as a chance to learn her tactics for ideas, hooks, scripting and filming
Building Charisma Through Deliberate Practice
Shaan asks how Jenny gets into the right state before recording, citing Miss Excel's energy-transmission approach. Jenny, an introvert, explains how she built charisma by recording stand-up to herself and filming her days, and Shaan discusses why unglamorous skills are a good thing to practice.
- •Jenny used to pump up her energy before filming but now tries to keep it high all day
- •She did a month of improvised stand-up comedy to the camera to stop fearing bad jokes
- •She watched the Charisma on Command channel and filmed videos nobody would see
- •Shaan looks for valuable skills that others find too cringe to practice openly
The Four Criteria of a Great Idea
Jenny explains knowledge gaps and uncertainty as elements of a strong idea, and the discussion turns to curiosity gaps and unresolved questions. They look at her Starbucks and dollar menu videos as examples of titles built around an open question.
- •Knowledge gaps tell the viewer you know something they don't
- •Uncertainty means doing something with an unknown outcome, like selling everything her family owns
- •Ideas should raise questions that get answered at the end of the video
- •Titles like "What Does $1 Get You at Starbucks?" pose an unresolved question
Making It Personal: Stories and Low Stakes
Shaan asks about weaving in personal stories rather than doing generic stunts. Jenny uses her garden video, which reached 20 million views against a 20,000 average for garden videos, to show how a personal why adds relatability, and they discuss how low stakes can feel high to numbed viewers.
- •Many people can make the same idea, but a personal story is what makes it go viral
- •Her garden video was framed around ratatouille being her favorite food, with her mom and grandma helping
- •The why doesn't need to be life or death
- •Viewers are numb to huge dollar figures, so low stakes can feel high
Live Brainstorm: Turning Dinner into Dinnerables
Shaan offers a dull idea, making dinner, and Jenny shows how to improve it with angles like budget, juxtaposition and a personal story. They land on turning a Lunchable into a "Dinnerable" for his mom, and Jenny warns that complexity should add layers without confusing viewers.
- •Angles include a health condition, a budget, a beginner going gourmet, or leftovers turned gourmet
- •The personal story can be cooking for his mom for the first time
- •The Lunchables-to-Dinnerables concept is simple enough to picture visually
- •Complexity should add reasons to watch without confusing the viewer
15:20 – 18:04
Mastering the Hook
Jenny says the hook is the most important part of delivering a video, sometimes even changing the idea itself. She lays out hook principles: start with power words, progress the story, and foreshadow the ending in one sentence.
- •Start with power words like "free" or "zero dollars" rather than "This is"
- •The hook should progress the video by stating an action
- •A strong hook sets up the conflict and hints at the resolution
- •Example: "Movie theaters are overpriced" followed by building a $5 home theater
Metrics: Swipe-Away Rate and Retention
Shaan asks which short-form metrics map to idea and hook quality. Jenny explains view-versus-swipe-away percentage and overall retention, and shares benchmarks.
- •View versus swipe-away is the idea and hook metric
- •Average is around 70%, 80%+ is good, and 85%+ is excellent
- •Her channel averages 80-85%, and she's heard MrBeast's is around 75%
- •Her team aims for 95%+ retention, versus at least 90% generally
Designing the First Frame
Jenny describes her philosophy for the opening visual, which mirrors thumbnail psychology: simple, bright and saturated. Her team uses VFX and cleaned-up backgrounds, like artificial fire on a restaurant and a spotless McDonald's image.
- •Keep few focus points, high brightness and high saturation
- •Her team adds VFX such as fake fire on the Hell's Kitchen restaurant
- •They enlarged the hole in the secret room video in post
- •Environments are cleaned up, as with the McDonald's image with no cars or trees
Foreshadowing the Payoff
Jenny explains foreshadowing as giving viewers the expectation of an end reward, like an Amazon gift card at the end. Implied foreshadowing works, but a visible mechanism, such as a shrinking budget, is stronger because it shows progress.
- •Foreshadowing sets the expectation of what's at the end of the video
- •Most of her foreshadowing is implied in the hook, as in "who has the best dollar menu?"
- •A mechanism like a visible budget ticking down is stronger
- •Viewers leave if they can't sense where the end is
Storytelling Is Change: Progression and Rewatchability
Jenny defines storytelling as progression and character change, using her 100-million-view secret room short in which her mom ends up claiming the room. She ranks hook, retention and rewatchability as her top priorities and lists ways to earn rewatches.
- •Change means viewers are constantly learning, laughing or building toward something
- •In the secret room short, her mom goes from yelling at her to pretending the room is hers
- •Her priorities are hook, then retention, then rewatchability
- •Rewatch drivers include Easter eggs, tutorials and listicles, and twists
The But-Therefore Rule
Jenny explains the but-therefore method, which she took from the South Park creators, for adding conflict instead of an "and then" sequence. Shaan adds the South Park whiteboard story about crossing out all the "ands" and calls it one of the highest-leverage storytelling techniques.
- •"And then this, and then that" makes a boring story
- •Replace "and then" with "but" and "so" to create constant conflict
- •Her walk-in-the-rain example shows conflict escalating step by step
- •Shaan says it can make any story more interesting
27:56 – 31:18
Building the Stakes
They discuss how stakes, essentially a why, should escalate over time. Jenny uses her secret room and sell-everything videos as examples, and Shaan illustrates escalating stakes with Breaking Bad.
- •Jenny equates stakes with including a why and defaults to real stakes from her life
- •In the secret room video, stakes rise once she takes a sledgehammer to the wall
- •In her sell-everything video, she sells bigger items until her family notices
- •Shaan says Breaking Bad is great because its stakes keep escalating
Crafting the Close: Payoff and Peak-End Theory
After a recap of the perfect short, Shaan asks about endings. Jenny says she keeps endings short but always delivers a payoff for viewer satisfaction, citing peak-end theory and her use of twists.
- •Skipping the payoff can boost retention but leaves viewers unsatisfied
- •She accepts some retention drop to give a proper payoff so viewers trust her next video
- •Peak-end theory says the ending shapes how people remember an experience
- •She ends on strong wholesomeness, the funniest moment, or a twist for rewatchability
Stealing Like an Artist
Jenny and Shaan discuss stealing like an artist rather than like a thief: taking inspiration from topics and techniques and adding your own twist. Jenny's example is doing what MrBeast does but on a budget.
- •Steal from topics and techniques rather than copying actual ideas
- •Stealing like a thief means copying word for word, frame for frame
- •Shaan says to find inspiration in adjacent spaces and add your own remix
- •Jenny's example is doing MrBeast-style generosity with her own budget twist
Data Tools and Studying Outliers
Jenny explains how her team built tools to understand viewer psychology and manually labeled videos to find what drives subscriber conversions. She also describes finding outliers by watching trending Shorts daily and keeping a swipe file.
- •Labeling videos showed that family and wholesome content doubled subscriber conversion
- •That content got 10X fewer views, so malicious prank content produces about 5X more subscribers
- •Outliers are judged relative to a channel's own average views
- •She watches every trending Short each morning and night and keeps a swipe file
Audience, Future Trends and Jenny's Goals
Jenny explains she now targets multiple audiences, aiming for kid-friendly content mature enough for adults. She predicts the extremes of very short and very long content will win, and shares her goal of inspiring people to value money while becoming the female MrBeast.
- •She moved from a younger-self avatar to catering to multiple audiences, like Pixar
- •Her mom in videos gives viewers multiple reasons to watch
- •She predicts short-form and 20-minute-plus content will grow while the middle fades
- •She wants to inspire people to enjoy life on a low budget while also aiming for 100 million subscribers

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