MrBeast’s secret sauce

How did MrBeast become the most successful YouTube channel? Someone leaked a PDF where Jimmy—the founder—reveals everything he has learned over the 12 years he’s been on the platform. I read the whole thing, and here are my notes.

Core principles

Have a clear purpose. For MrBeast, it’s making the best YouTube video—not the prettiest or the funniest video—the best video for YouTube. The core objective specifies what’s important and drives all decisions. Most companies have a mission statement for this exact reason.

You can only optimize what you measure. That’s why Key Performance Indicators are crucial. For MrBeast, YouTube supplies the indicators: Click Thru Rate (CTR), Average View Duration (AVD), and Average View Percentage (AVP). If you run a company you’ll have to define your own metrics, regularly review, and optimize them.

Know what your priorities are at any given time. It’s easy to get distracted by the side quests, but it’s the main quest that really matters. As a leader, restate the priorities frequently: every week, every meeting, every day. You can’t overdo it; make it clear what’s immediately important.

Projects and deadlines

In theory, hitting a deadline is simple: X amount of work is required in Y amount of time. The problem is that work isn’t linear; some things take longer than expected, and a delay can cascade into bigger problems because it blocks everybody else. Identify the bottlenecks ahead of time, tell the people working on it that they are a bottleneck, tell them why the work is important and what you expect, then check in with them every day.

Derisk the project’s critical components, don’t leave anything to chance, have a backup plan.

Work on multiple projects in parallel. This doesn’t mean multitasking; this means having multiple things cooking in the background. This increases the throughput and ensures there’s constant progress.

People and learning

Only keep the people that learn and get better over time. Stagnant people will slow you down over time. A high-performance team is honest, not nice.

Use consultants and external experts when attempting something new. Use other people’s knowledge instead of learning these lessons yourself; this will save you time and money. Talking to folks who have already done it speeds up learning dramatically.

Communication and trust

Don’t take anything at face value. Deception is a fact of human nature: we misrepresent the truth to look good or to avoid offending. People usually hide something; dig and try to find what was left out.

Record everything. When someone visits a new location for a shoot, they should record a video. Human memory is unreliable; having a video of the location will prevent nasty surprises once you get on site.

When talking to people higher up in the hierarchy, give them as much context as possible. Managers and executives typically know very little about what their subordinates do. That’s why they need to have as much relevant information as possible: tell them what, why, how, when, and where. Include all relevant details, even if they already know it. This empowers them to make better decisions, and they’ll trust your leadership.

When there’s an important decision to discuss, communicate in the most effective way possible. Ideally, it’s a face-to-face discussion; a video or voice call is the next best thing. Don’t assume people read your messages unless they explicitly acknowledge it.

Hold the attention

On YouTube, the first minute of a video determines its success. You must grab the viewer’s attention and hold onto it for dear life. If the audience loses interest for a single second, you lose them.

To keep the viewer engaged until the end: gradually increase the intensity. Blow up one thing, then two, then ten, then a hundred, and finish with a million explosions. Suspense is also a potent tool to keep people watching: if they aren’t certain of how it ends, they will watch until the end.

Final thoughts

The document goes into much more detail. If you are thinking of getting into the YouTube business, I highly recommend you read the whole paper: it’s 36 pages of pure gold for wannabe YouTubers.

PS: This was inspired by Simon Willison post.