MrBeast Reflects on the State of YouTube | Edited Transcript

A professionally copyedited transcript of Colin and Samir’s conversation with Jimmy Donaldson about Beast Games, Feastables, creator-led businesses, streaming distribution, and the changing relationship between YouTube and Hollywood.

CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Introduction and MrBeast’s year in the mainstream spotlight

06:11 How confident Jimmy is in the success of Beast Games

09:03 Reflecting on his reputation as a YouTuber and storyteller

13:55 Spotter Studio sponsor break

15:30 Marketing Beast Games beyond the existing YouTube audience

19:38 Trying to make MrBeast’s companies a net positive for the world

24:38 How Feastables is addressing child labor in cocoa production

34:43 What Jimmy learned while scaling Feastables and the MrBeast brand

42:43 Where YouTube creators and streaming platforms intersect

48:38 Whether Beast Games can deliver a positive return on investment

53:08 Jimmy’s advice for Hollywood studios and creators making deals

58:13 Responding to the early reception of Beast Games

1:00:03 Weekly releases versus the binge model

1:01:28 The possibility of Beast Games season two

1:04:23 How Beast Games editing differs from MrBeast’s YouTube videos

1:07:38 Why and how his productions use CGI

1:11:38 What Jimmy learned from creators and audiences in India

1:16:53 Whether he would have bought Hot Ones and the closing discussion

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A professionally copyedited transcript of Colin and Samir’s conversation with Jimmy Donaldson about Beast Games, Feastables, creator-led businesses, streaming distribution, and the changing relationship between YouTube and Hollywood.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00–01:59]

Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry: This meter is just going up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up. And these episodes are so expensive. How does this fit into the MrBeast business? You know, Hollywood working with creators. In what world would you recommend that we do it? That is something we had a lot to say about. Yeah. It was a mix of, you know, being thrust into the mainstream public eye through controversies as well as thrust into the mainstream public eye because of the most expensive, unscripted reality show of all time with Amazon Prime and Beast Games. I would say even outside of being thrust into the mainstream through the controversy, he also became the center of the YouTube commentary world, like the sheer number of videos that came out about Jimmy. this year. Yeah. For any number of reasons was unlike any other year since we’ve been friends with him and since we’ve been making episodes with him. Now, I mean, we’re friends with Jimmy. We’ve been friends for, for years. We talk quite a bit. And having him on the show in like a long form setting throughout the year. I mean, that was something that we talked about quite a bit.

You know, the way it shook out, Jimmy ended up going on Oompa’s podcast to talk about everything. Talk about all the controversy and everything that had gone on.

[01:59–03:59]

Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry: And then we went out to Toronto and spent, you know, a week with him in the middle of filming. Beast Games are right at the beginning of that and released a long form behind the scenes documentary with him. So it has been a complicated year for even us to be friends with Jimmy and solve, like, navigate how to talk about it on the channel, how to talk about, yeah, how to sit down with him. I mean, there’s no doubt that we saw comments from all of you and from our audience being like, wait, when are you going to talk about MrBeast? When are you going to have Jimmy on the show? And a lot of it was pretty strange because it’s like, we’re talking with Jimmy. We’re friends with him. Yeah. He had yet to speak for a while. And he said that was one of his biggest regrets was that he did not sort of talk about it soon enough. And so it felt really strange to like be speaking with him and know more than like the public knew. Sure. And to then think, okay, we’re going to go make a video and potentially hold back anything because we’ve already spoken with him. Like it was sort of a weird middle ground. And it just left me.

us in a place of, okay, you know what, we’re going to let him speak about his stuff. Yeah. And everything that’s going on before we speak about it. And I also don’t fault anyone in the audience who feels like, or who felt like we weren’t talking about it. We weren’t totally. We cover YouTube. We cover the creator economy. And we’ve talked a lot about MrBeast. Yeah. So I can totally empathize with that. I get it. And the only thing I would say is like, I truly didn’t know. I didn’t know how to approach it. And I think like, Jimmy going on and speaking for himself, I’m glad he did that. I’m glad we went behind the scenes and like Beast Games with our own eyes and got to cover it through behind the scenes. And when it comes to this conversation, you know, this is a very different conversation. This is a conversation that’s very future facing. This is about us honestly being very curious with him as much as we talk. The one thing that we didn’t talk about that much this year is like, where are you going? Where are you going with all of this? What happens next?

[03:59–05:29]

Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry: How does Beast Games fit into everything you’re doing? What are you doing with chocolate? What is happening with the MrBeast business? I mean, honestly, like, you know, we talk as friends, we talk about a lot of personal stuff, but then, you know, the business side, we really haven’t had an opportunity to talk to him about it. And so we took that opportunity when he came by LA for the premiere of Beast Games and sat down with him and wanted to talk about where the MrBeast business is going. relaxed. Maybe then he’s ever been. And it maybe it has to do with being in this space for the first time. But too, we really get into advice for the more advanced creator. You know, like the first time we sat down with Jimmy, it was very much like titles, thumbnails, retention. And this is much more for the advanced creator or the creator who’s just building a business for the entrepreneur because that is such a passion of his. and all of the season talking to him about his perspective on how the world of Hollywood should engage with the world of creators. And that’s been a major subject we’ve been talking about.

It’s very interesting to hear his vantage point and his advice to creators as we potentially move into this world where streamers are going to be engaging creators. I think I’ll say in our continued coverage of of Jimmy, one of the interesting things is to watch the maturation of the creator economy through his experiences.

[05:29–07:29]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: He’s he gets the opportunities he goes through the things that he goes through that it’s very singular for him. But it does represent where we are as an industry and across these five interviews, it has been really interesting to see where we’ve come. How he’s gone from like 19 people at a company to 400. How he’s gone from, you know, YouTube videos to now working with reality TV producers and making a show. Like it is a really interesting marker of time every time we get to sit down with him. massive CPG brands that sell all over the world. Yeah. So I think you will all really enjoy this episode. All right. Now for the fifth time on the Colin and Samir show. Here’s our conversation with MrBeast. All right, dude. Jimmy. Welcome. Thanks. The first time we’re doing this here. I know in LA. I feel like you’re like CGI. Yeah. We were times before we turn the cameras on how weird it is to be in their place. I mean, it’s crazy. LA home turf for you guys. How you doing, man? I’m doing great. I assume this is going to go after these games. right now, Beast Games comes out in two days. I am like, I’m struggling to sleep at night. I’m so excited and filled with so much energy.

Like I dream of it. I think of it. I live it. I just, it’s really messing with me. Like I need Beast Games to drop so I can like get a good night’s sleep. That’s like exactly what you said almost last time we sat down with you. You were like, I’m just not sleeping at all. Oh, really? Yeah. This is just a recurring theme. It’s like a year ago. Last time we sat down when we talked about Beast Games. Obviously, it’s just a concept at that time. I’m in it. It had sold, but you hadn’t made it. yet. One of the things you said, you said, if this flops and nobody likes it, then everyone will just think I’m a YouTuber. Yep. And I’m curious to talk about now that you filmed it. How confident are you in the inverse of that in the success of it? Yes. Very confident. I think like, sorry, don’t mean to kick your table. I think it’s going to do really well. I just, I mean, you guys have seen an episode or two. I sent the show early to Casey.

[07:29–09:29]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Casey Neistat. And I, you know, because he’s like super critical occasion. I’ll send him like a beast philanthropy video. Yeah. Because he likes helping with those. And he just rips into them every single time and tells me how to make a better. And it’s great. But the show is different. Like I’ve been working on this for a year. And I was really nervous to send it to Casey. Cause I was like, if he just destroys this, I’m going to lose a little confidence. And so he sat down with his like kids. And watched it. And he told me that after he watched episode one, that like his kids were. like, why did he do that? Why did that person take that money? Why, why did he screw her over? And he’s like, and even the next morning, they were talking about what they would have done. And then he’s like, I think this is going to like do really well just based on like, you know, the people I’m showing it to. They’re all they talk about is what they would have done. And it’s like, you never really have that kind of moment. So it’s interesting. I’ve done that feedback quite a bit.

And I didn’t, I don’t think I realized that when filming the show that that would be the thing people would kind of latch on to and really like. Because I was, you know, I’m focused on getting a little bit of that. and you to like the contestants and this and that. I was even thinking like, Oh, the normal viewers just kind of be like, what would I do in that situation? What I screwed my friend over for 100 grand, what I do blank. But yeah, I mean, a lot of people will probably expect, oh, Jimmy just threw a bunch of money at sets and gave away a bunch of money. But I think they’re not going to expect is that we also like, I think this is one of the best, like, contestant competition show stories like that has ever been put out there. And I think all that together. It’s just like a blend of things you can’t find anywhere else. I think people are just, I think it’s going to do really well.

[09:29–11:25]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: I’m cool with being just a YouTuber. I guess I, and I probably should have elaborated more and I said that it’s just a YouTuber that knows how to manipulate an algorithm because I think that’s what a lot of people. That’s a good, that’s a good. Yeah. A lot of people. I, I’m cool just being a YouTuber. You know, you guys how much I love this. I’ll dive. Yeah. Yeah. This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. But when people are like, oh, Jimmy’s not a good storyteller, he just knows how to manipulate the YouTuber algorithm. It’s like, come on. Like, watch our, I mean, yes, in the years past, like, if you watch a video from three years ago of mine. Or even probably two years ago, it’s horrible. There is no story. But if you watch our videos in the last year, and you, you know, and you’d say like, Oh, there’s no story here. These are just, you know, manipulating the algorithm. I just disagree. I think sure. We’ve, we’ve gotten so much better at getting you to know contestants like 100 days trapped together with Bailey and Susie. Yeah. I think that’s a great video. And so, but yeah, it’s a, but also now, I don’t know. I’m a little competitive.

And it’s like, you know, a lot of these people in like on the traditional side will be like, okay, well, you can do that on you. But you couldn’t do that in our world. And that’s where that, like, slowly over, I, if you would ask me this one, we first did our first podcast. I would have been like, I don’t care. Yeah, that’s what you did. Oh, okay. We could like play a clip of that. Not even one percent care. But it’s like, as we’ve, especially the last 18 months, gone this path down this path of like storytelling and studying all this stuff and like getting people connected to characters, I’ve just learned so much that it’s like, I want the, the hard part about a YouTube video is it’s just like 30 minutes. And you have 30 minutes to build someone off. And then you have to wrap it off. And it’s hard to do like multiple arcs and all this stuff when it’s just like one video that has to start and finish there. And it’s like, as I’ve been studying and learning all these things, I want to like apply this like creative stuff I’m learning, but at a grand or scale. And it’s just, I don’t know, right now, YouTube serialized content just isn’t it.

I really think the biggest difference is appointment viewing, meaning like when we watch the Super Bowl, the next week, we all talk about what we just saw.

[11:25–13:25]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Yeah. And I think with a YouTube video, even though your scale is that of a Super Bowl or more, people are watching them at different times. Yep. Does that make sense? Like when you put out beat Ronaldo, like that’s a great video. I loved that video where you have, you know, different pro athletes going up against average people. But when it’s beast games and it’s coming out on a weekly cadence, there’s a different relationship to us discussing those decisions that we just saw that week. It’s also like you just sit down on a streaming platform to like watch a long show, right? Like when I open YouTube, I’m not going into YouTube to sit down and watch a five hour show. Like so if I sit on my couch and I have an hour, I’m opening YouTube if I sit on my couch and I’m like, I don’t want to do anything today. I’m opening, you know, a streaming platform. I think it matters if everyone is watching a show at the same time.

Yeah, I think it’s a mix of everything we’re saying that a little bit with just expectations coming into it with all these other things combined together is what I mean, you would think it’s fundamentally the same thing, but it just, you know, it’s not though because like somebody could be coming across squid game in real life today and watching that and not a part of the conversation that happened when it came out, right? Well, I mean, it’s even developed on that more like our own all the video in the first seven days, I think got a hundred million views, right, but that video will go on to probably get 400 million views. Exactly. The three three three like three times the amount of people I watch in the first seven days watching the next two years. So, yeah, right. And so when I want to show when it’s eventized and it’s coming out week to week, it creates collective conversation, which is a very different human experience. Yeah, and I think that’s why just back to the original point of like, why YouTube versus a streaming, which you could do, you could do weekly drops of a big show on YouTube, but it’s just not the same because like what if it recommends episode five.

Yeah, it’s recommendations. Yeah. And streaming platforms have the auto play. It’s just set up for better. And then the big thing is it’s the expectation of viewers come into it like a viewer’s not coming onto YouTube to watch a 10 episode series, but they are on a streaming platform.

[13:25–15:25]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: And that mindset means everything. Like, and it’s just, yeah, in the recommendation algorithm, like if you click off halfway through season two or sorry through episode two of a 10 episode thing, you know, YouTube might interpret that as like, oh, I found this kind of boring, let’s stop recommending it, but, you know, you just watched episode one and you’re like an hour deep in this and you’re just wanting to pick it up later, whereas like obviously streaming platform, you know, has all this data and can happen to other shows and tell like, no, he likes this show. We’re going to keep serving it to them. It’s blah, blah, blah. This episode is sponsored by Spotter Studio, a software platform for researching ideas and growing a channel. The link in the video description includes a 60-day free trial.

[15:25–17:27]

Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry: That’s also another major difference here is marketing the show. Cause like on YouTube, you could solve marketing through a title and thumbnail, right? Meaning like that is our marketing. It’s like let’s make a great thumbnail. But in this context, you actually have to eventize this in a different way. And you have to carry it. I think I saw, and I could be wrong here or not allowed to put this in. But I think I saw the last episode goes live on February 13th. Yeah, yeah, it’s a, well, we dropped episode one into on December 19th, and there’s just weekly drops. So eight weeks after that, yeah. So for eight weeks, you’re carrying an audience on one story. Yeah. It’s a very different marketing problem than a YouTube video, right? Like have you thought about that of, like are you just thinking, okay, as long as I get enough people in the door in episode one, I’ll carry them through it. So 10 or do you think about week to week from now? Yeah, we have lots of marketing. Oh, I have between now and the end of it. But at the end of the day, like, doesn’t matter how good your marketing is if the show sucks.

So it’s like, it’s around episode three, which I think the more I see data, I think when I do season two, I’ll want to drop with episode one, two and three and not just one and two. And people watch the first three episodes of a show and like really enjoy it. They have like a 70% chance of finishing it. It’s like a pretty high completion rate. So it’s like that’s kind of the golden numbers. First three, enjoy it. And then they’re hooked and they’re gonna, they’re gonna want to know what happens. Unless an episode two is insane though. Yeah, it’s definitely that should hook people in that. I know, as the end of episode two might be the, it’s totally nice. The greatest cliffhanger of all time. Like, which begs the question. So we’re putting this out when it’s already been put out. And at the end of episode two, this meter of money is just going up and up and up. And it like crosses over a million dollars. And if these team leaders choose to press the button, they get that money and that’s it. But you don’t know if they stay in the game. And they stay in the game. But you don’t know at the end of episode two if they hit the button. It sounds like they do. You don’t know.

You’ll see you in episode three. But also just begs the question of like, this meter is just going up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up.

[17:27–19:28]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: And these episodes are so expensive. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And like we know you had a massive budget for this, but we also know you spent a shit ton of money. I went over budget. I lost tens of millions of dollars. So like, how does this fit into the MrBeast business? Oh. Like, I know how YouTube fits into the business very well. Yeah. Yeah, you can take a loss. You can take a loss on YouTube because of all your promoting Feastables. Yeah. There’s so many reasons why on YouTube you can do that. But why in this car? Yeah, do you look at it as like a startup where it’s like, oh, MrBeast on streaming is a startup and we may lose some money at the beginning. Yeah. Well, let me think on it. Because I think for me, I guess for everything we’re doing, and we kind of have, I guess everything we’re doing is kind of like content that fits in three buckets. So we have the, I guess our studio, which is like the show YouTube, all the social media platforms. We have CPG, which is consumer packaged goods, which would be like Feastables and Lunchly. And then the third bucket we’ve been working on a lot recently is like software, doing things like Viewstats and text of a very global audience.

And even Feastables that I’ve been doing for years now, most of my audience can’t buy it because it just takes forever to scale up. So I wanted to do more digital things. And I think like, I mean, in the studio, I just now, I just want to tell great stories, make people feel things. And like this is a great avenue for that and connect with people. And it’s just like, there are just some people who only watch streaming platforms and just don’t watch much YouTube. Like they’re time on a streaming platforms, way higher than their time on YouTube. Just like there are people who you spend a ton of time on TikTok and don’t spend much time on shorts. And so like, if you’re not on TikTok, then you know, like if you’re not posting on TikTok, they’re not going to know you exist in terms of short-form content. You can post all the Reels you want, all the shorts you want, but there are just people who only consume it there. And so being on every different way people consume content and making the best of the best of the best of content in that vertical is very important to me so we can reach a lot of these people. And the reach matters because of the CPG.

[19:28–21:28]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Yeah, because of the CPG and software. And like for us, CPG, it’s obviously Feastables. I mean, I’ve talked on it here a bunch, but I think Feastables I’ve also really fallen in love with in the past year. I mean, we’ve talked about this a billion times because of the ethical sourcing side. Like when I got into chocolate, I didn’t realize how just messed up, you know, sourcing cocoa from West Africa is and how there’s over a million kids in child labor in West Africa on cocoa farms. Is that crazy? That is crazy. And when I had been running a chocolate company for a while and I didn’t even know any of that because everyone just kind of like paints it as not a big deal. And I’m like, what? Like why is everyone acting like this isn’t a problem? And so like a good, which is funny, because this year has been very hectic for me, which I haven’t been sleeping much because a good chunk of 2024 was the Prime Video show, but also I’ve been to Africa quite a bit and focusing a lot on just getting kids out of child labor because it’s just crazy that that’s just an acceptable thing in cocoa.

So that like I think at the start of this, like probably the first half of this year, I probably spent on average like five or six hours a day working on ethical sourcing. And I spent hours a day on the Prime Video show. And then I still have my normal YouTube channel on top of it. So I was, I was dying. I was probably like, I think there was a month where I probably averaged like four hours of sleep. It was not healthy. But there’s just too much stuff to do. Probably saw you at that time. Yeah. I was losing my mind. I was, I was going a little crazy. How do you solve that? Well, but to wrap that up though, but so it’s like like I think, because you asked how it all fits together. Yeah. And I want to do like in general, I want to do things that just make the world better. And so I think with Feastables, I feel really happy or, I know I feel really happy about that. Like if we can build a large chocolate company and prove you don’t need to use child labor while being profitable, then I can come on things like this and go, hey, big chocolate companies, why do you use child labor? You can do, you can not use child labor and do it properly.

And I want to use Feastables as a way to, you know, make change there. And then like with Viewstats on the software side, I mean, I think that speaks for itself. You guys put in one of your recent videos. Yeah. Viewstats is a, like our version of Social Blade where you can see data.

[21:28–23:27]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: And I want to help creators make more money, blah, blah, blah, do better. And so I just want to build these businesses that are a net positive and then use the studio to get the attention to grow them. And so this is just another avenue to make that happen. So how do you, because when you say you want to do everything that makes a net positive, I feel like there’s so many, like the voices in my head of people being like, he doesn’t want to do a net positive. He just like is competitive and capitalistic and like how do you explain the duality of yourself? Of like, no, yeah, I do want to do a net positive. And I’m also like competitive. And I really like entrepreneurship. But I think that’s where a lot of people, they try to make things binary. Like this person is motivated by blank and nothing else. And in reality, that’s just not how humans work. You can be motivated by a ton of different things. And like everyone wants to say like, oh, this person is motivated by money. Okay. And I’m sure they have other motivations as well. You don’t do things just for one thing, you know what I mean? Like, and like you’re married, right?

Yeah, you don’t just love your wife because of one thing, right? Because she’s sure great or because she’s attractive. You love her probably because you probably list 200 reasons why, 2,000 reasons why. And if I just try to boil it down to, he just loves his wife because she has a good personality. He just loves his wife because she’s attractive. That’s, that just doesn’t make any sense. And so why do we do that same thing here with this thing that, you know, for people like me, you’re spending 15 hours a day on? Like, obviously I’m going to have more than one motivation for it. So yeah, I love building businesses, shocker. Like, that is one of the things that makes me excited. It’s so much fun to just build and solve, like building a business is solving problems, right? And the bigger it is, the harder the problems are. And I love solving problems. Like, that’s one of the, it’s like, I love having a stimulated brain. I love obsessing over really complex things and come into solutions. And so that’s all building a business is. It’s like taking something from zero dollars year in revenue to 100 million dollars year in revenue is essentially 10,000 problems.

And I like, and they just get harder and harder like a video game for me. That’s fun. You enjoy strategy games.

[23:27–25:26]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Yeah. So strategy and problem solving is one thing which you could sum up as being competitive. But then yeah, I also like winning. And I have all these things that yeah, truthfully like motivate me or I find fun that aren’t about making a positive impact. But then once you take all that and you use it for something positive, it just makes it more fun. Like, and this is what I’ve always said with making YouTube videos like, you know, I can make anything go viral. But, and to be honest, even like the videos where I build wells or help blind people, there’s usually underperform compared to my other videos. But it’s just like a world where I leverage everything I know to do something, you know, good is better than a world where I don’t. It’s not like, you know, it does that make sense. And it’s just like, if I’m going to spend the next 50 years of my life building businesses, like I want to build ones that are net positives. You know, I mean, it’s just like, it’ll make it more fun. I think it will increase the probability that when I’m 70 and I look back, I’ll go, I’m happy with what I do with my life, you know, idea.

And so if I can solve intense complex problems and build large companies that I enjoy while doing stuff that makes the world a better place, then it’s like, I think that is a life I can live and I won’t regret. So you’re building, though, to the point now over the past five years since we’ve known each other. Like, you have now crossed over to the point of a massive brand and massive brands in the world are never seen as, I don’t know. Like, I know where you’re going with it. They just aren’t, right? Like a lot of them are, they are nuanced and they do good, but they’re also viewed as from the public as like, you know, mega corporations that are negative and that feed into like capitalism and whatnot. So it does feel like as you get bigger, the challenge of you coming forward and being like, I’m a nuanced, complex guy who likes all things is going to get increasingly more challenging. 100% because people see things in. That it is what it is.

[25:26–27:25]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: You’re becoming like Coca-Cola or like Procter & Gamble. You know what I’m saying? Well, and that, oh, Coca-Cola is a bad one, but yeah, I mean, coming like a large company in, yeah, I mean, what I would say is, actually speak louder than words. Name, you know, one chocolate company in America that’s working so hard to get tens of thousands of kids out of child labor. How are you doing that? Like, what’s the path to that? How much time we got? I mean, you want the high level you want me to go? Okay. Let me, yeah, cause summarize. Essentially, the reason why there’s a lot of child labor in West Africa, which is where, so Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana are two countries in the left side of Africa, where most of the world’s cocoa comes from. It’s like 60 or 70%. So that’s where, if you’re eating a chocolate bar more than likely, that’s where the cocoa for the chocolate bar came from. And over there, because chocolate companies have squeezed them dry so much, like farmers make so little that they literally, you know, in many cases can’t afford to pay people that aren’t kids to work on the farms. Like, they just actually can’t afford someone who’s over 18.

So it’s, the number one cause of child labor is just poverty. They just don’t make enough money. So at least in the cocoa supply chain, I don’t know about other ones. But so at its root, if you want to, I mean, if you want to stop child labor on your farms, you have to pay the farmers more money. So with Feastables, we, when I first started getting into all this, like, whatever, I think I’ve probably been obsessing over it now, like 18 months, I met a company called Tony’s Chocolonely. Yeah, they’re phenomenal, they’re awesome. Yeah, they’re great. And so I started off by, because this is what you do. When you want to learn something new, you find who’s the best in the world at it. You go to them, you obsess and you just absorb everything they have and, you know, go, you know, talk to journalists. And so I talked to a lot of journalists who have been very critical of the cocoa industry. And then once you are very positive about it, you talk to experts in different fields, you talk to people at work in different childhood companies, you talk to every charity in it. You just go and observe all this knowledge.

I did, and Tony’s Chocolonely, which is like, you know, the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in Europe, they’re phenomenal.

[27:25–29:25]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: They had all the answers, and they’ve been living and bringing this the past 15 years. So at the start, a lot of what we’re doing is just doing what they’re doing. And we formed a joint company with them where Feastables is sourcing their cocoa beans through a lot of like a joint sourcing company. Yeah, they call it Tony’s Open Chain that we source, not all of our Feastables beans, but majority through. And then we’re also, because the thing is, to stand up a program like they have would take a very, very long time. Could you get a higher people on the ground? You have to hire farm inspectors to go and audit the farms and CLMRS and all this other stuff. So which we’re building, but it just takes time. So we’re sourcing a majority of our beans through Tony’s Open Chain supply chain, and then a small amount we’re doing on our own and setting up our own ethical supply chain. But at its core, you pay, you gotta pay the farmers more. But how do you decide what’s enough? Like what’s enough where they can hire someone or sorry, over 18, not under 18.

And so that’s where they have this living income reference price where they look at like the cost of bread and all the things you need to live in West Africa. And they come up with a metric ton or like a shipping container of cocoa beans, a farmer needs to make blank based off of inflation, food and all these other things. And if they make under blank, it’s not reasonable for them to be able to live and blah blah. So that’s called a living income reference price. And so with 100% of our farmers and Feastables, we guarantee them a living income reference price. So if you’re a farmer in West Africa and you go, you know, you harvest your entire farm and you’re like, here’s a shipping container of cocoa, I’m gonna make up a number. I want a thousand dollars. We’ll go, hey, you want $1,200 and pay you $1,200 because we don’t want you using child labor and this is what you need to do. Because you know it’s impossible at $1,000. Yeah, exactly not to do it. So to make a living income. So we will actually pay more if we need to, if they make under the living income reference price. So that at its core, 100% of Feastables is fair trade certified, which is blah blah.

Google, if you wanna know what that is, we’ll be here a long time ago. And then on top of fair trade certification, 100% of our farmers, we pay a living income reference price. So they actually make enough money and exchange for these things and a lot of other stuff on top.

[29:25–31:28]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Because another to address poverty, you don’t just pay them more money, but you also help them increase their yields. We have coaches that help these farmers increase yield. Because if you can help them get 10% more cocoa per hectare of trees, then that’s 10% more money as well. So we have coaches that help them get more yield, help them have less trees, get disease, blah blah, make sure they’re doing everything correctly. So all these things, you work with them to help them generate more money, make more income. And then in exchange for all these things, it’s like, hey, we don’t want kids working on our cocoa farms. And then you have to audit the farms, you want to inspect them. And then if there is a case where there is child labor, they have to remediate it and you check back in in the future. And if they don’t remediate it, then you drop the farm, but it’s like, we’re not trying to just be like, oh, you have child labor drop them, never talk to them again, because that would screw them over. So it’s like educating them, why this is bad? Like, hey, you want your kid to get an education. You don’t want them to have to work on a farm forever. So they need to do this.

And so we’re going to check in on the future. This, we really need this kid to go to school and not be working on this farm. And here’s all these guidelines, work with us, so we can keep buying from you and paying you this premium and all this stuff. And not taking approach of, oh, nope, bad, and kick them to the curb. And so it’s like, it’s really in depth. A lot of stuff like that. And Feastables is the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in America. I mean, there’s not a chocolate company in America that is doing the kind of revenue we’re doing and anywhere near as ethically sourced as we are. I mean, I can’t even think of a large chocolate company in America that pays their farmers a living income. So I think it’s very important for Feastables to succeed and do well, because I mean, there’s over a million kids in West Africa that would benefit from it.

And if we can get where Feastables is doing over a billion dollars a year in revenue while paying our farmers a living income while doing all these ethical things, then and while being profitable, big one is while still being profitable, because if we’re doing all these things and losing money, because it’s very expensive, like we’re building schools in West Africa. Because like, you know, a problem I run into with some of our farms is like, we’ll be like, hey, I don’t want this kid work on your farm, put him in school.

[31:28–33:27]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: And they’re like, there’s no school in our village. Like, fuck, you know, so like we’re building schools in West Africa, like we’re, it’s a lot. We’re, I’m trying to bring in some other nonprofits like help us out in like ones that build schools. We’re like, hey, can you build schools here in this village? Because I’m getting all these kids out of child labor and I need a school for them to go to and not, I gotta build it, but I don’t have that kind of money. And it’s like getting, it’s. You really took the simplicity of launching a YouTube channel on, do you? Yeah. I think it’s a great, but like, well, I just thought what I thought I was getting to. I’m still chakra. I just thought I was talking to you all. But then I’m just like, well, I’m gonna keep a song in chocolate, but I don’t want to use child labor. So it’s like, I just like, fuck it, I gotta solve it. But to wrap that up though, it’s like, with these stables, if I think like over, cause the, the problem now, like for us, not problem, like we’re getting pretty big, but a lot of these, you know, other chocolate companies that sell per day, 50 times more chocolate bars than we do.

So they’ll, you know, they can say, well, yeah, if we did a little volume like you, we could ethically source, but you don’t understand Jimmy, we’re much bigger. That stuff doesn’t work on scale. So I got to get to the point where we’re actually large where I can go, no, look, we did achieve scale while doing these ethical things. Fuck you, stop using child labor. Or if you don’t, I’m gonna start blasting on my YouTube channel, which I don’t currently do it because I don’t think we’re big enough yet. We’re like, we can prove these things. And I want to, I really want to get things like fleshed out to a crazy level where, you know, they can poke, cause like the second I start going at other companies for using child labor and being unethical and like not trying to stop it is, they’re obviously gonna just come at us super hardcore. And so I want to make sure everything with Feastables is like perfect before I do it, right. So we can just be like, look, here it is, it’s working. And I’d also prefer not to get to this thing where I’m slamming other brands. Sure, sure. I’d rather they just be like, you know what, we want to ethically source as well. You’re doing it properly, teach us.

And we’d work behind the scenes to help them out and that kind of stuff, which would be the best outcome. Right. But we know that’s not going to be the outcome, but it would be ideal, blah, blah.

[33:27–35:29]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: So that’s been, it’s funny, while I’m making YouTube videos in the show, that’s like my third life. And it’s, the crazy part is like setting all this up takes forever. And I don’t, I didn’t want to be like, hey, I am doing this. I’m going to do this cause that feels weird. I was just like, you know, screw it. I’m just not gonna say anything publicly and I’m just gonna work on this. And it however long it takes it takes. And I’m probably closing it on 18 months now. And like, I didn’t even really mention this publicly to like another podcast like a week ago. So it’s like, it’s basically, it’s kind of crazy that it’s been such a large part of my life and I’ve never even spoke about it publicly. And even now, we’re still building a lot of the things like we haven’t even finished a single school in West Africa. Well, not in a, for Feastables, hasn’t. I’m a beast philanthropy’s built schools, but not for our farms. And a lot of the things I want to do just take time. And I’m sure. And so it’s like, this is like, probably like the next five to 10 years of my life going to be pretty intensely revolved around this. What have you learned about scaling companies in this process?

Because like, there’s this massive spectrum for YouTube creators of like, you know, the Ryan Trahan on one side of like, I have a couple employees or, you know, a few employees or whatever. And I’m really close to every edit. And then there’s you who’s like, I’m actually scaling so much that I’m taking on the responsibility of building schools in West Africa for my CPG brand, which is a truly the far end of the spectrum. Yeah, it’s so like, you like, when we sit down with you, it was like, AVD and CTR. Here’s the metrics you need to know about YouTube. Here’s how you do storytelling. Yeah. But now we don’t talk about that stuff. Yeah. Because you’ve scaled. Yeah. What have you learned about scaling? Like I, I mean, the shortest answer, it’s hard. I do not recommend, I think very, a lot of creators obviously try to do what I do. And I know your audience is almost all creators. I, it’s very, very difficult, especially because so many creators now are launching CPG brands. Yeah. And I mean, where you see them, they go, and then they know it’s time they go up and down.

It’s a very like attractive thing to do as a creator because like the base premise is because I have an audience, I can have a lower customer acquisition cost on a product, right?

[35:29–37:24]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: That’s a base premise. And that sounds, but that’s the thing is it’s like, almost all everyone is not making products that are better than what’s out there. Most best case are making something that’s just parity with what’s out there. But the thing is it’s like, there’s so much more to a company, like especially CPG company than just having a product. It’s like, you know, putting it on the shelf, knowing the right pricing, knowing the right, you know, of SKUs and like, you know, even especially if you get into beverage, DSD, like direct service delivery and all that kind of stuff. And there’s just, it’s such a, it’s like, it’s like if some, you know, movie star, I mean, actually this is a great example, if like some famous movie star was like, yeah, I have all these people who love watching my movies, YouTube’s easy, I’ll just, you know, spend a couple hours a week making YouTube videos, surely I’ll be one of the biggest YouTubers, which we’ve seen a million times and I’ve never, ever, ever worked.

It’s the same way people on CPG look at creators, they’re like, I fucking idiots, like data, like just how we would look at movie stars coming over, you know, and be like, that is just the most lazy mid front to never, that’s never gonna do well and it doesn’t. It’s a good, it’s like, that’s exactly how the people in the CPG world when I look at them, they’re, they’re talking to them, they’re like, wow, that’s like a fine product, but they’re like literally doing nothing right. Like what do you, and these are things that, again, you would think it’s as simple as just put a product on a shelf, people buy it, but it’s not, there’s so much more to it, just like making YouTube video isn’t just turn on a camera and hear record.

And so I would highly recommend for most creators, almost every, like, like, Feastables now, I don’t know where it’s at, maybe 100 employees, but I mean, I’m hiring so many people with West Africa, but even if you ignore all the ethical sourcing I just want to make my life easier, just scaling the child company and like, you know, inventory management and all these other things are doing in margin profile, which, you know, like for us, like going into whether we sell like, here’s one, right, like our normal bars are 60-gram, right, there’s 12 gram bars you can put in pouches, like Halloween bag ones, or we could make a candy-coated chocolate, our own version of an M&M, right? Both our miniature versions of what we sell, but which one do you go into?

[37:24–39:23]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Like those are big decisions and like, you know, there’s a theoretical fork and roll where one, you know, could sell $100 million a year and one could sell 10 and your decision can make that big of a difference, you know what I mean? And it’s like, but there’s all these micro decisions you’re making and if you’re not living and breathing and obsessed with it, you’re just going to fuck it up because you’re competing against, just like on YouTube, you’re competing against, you know, or I guess social media in general, you’re competing against speed, you’re competing against Kai, you’re not even just competing against me, you’re competing against all these freaks that live and breed this and CBG, it’s the same way. There are thousands of monsters that this is all they’ve done for the last 30 years, this is what they live and breed. And if you think just on a whim, you’re just going to make better product decisions, better placement decisions, better, you’re just not, you know.

So it’s one of those things where you’re either all in, which then is the problem is if you go all in on that, you’re just going to destroy your channel, because most people aren’t like me and I have all these employees and infrastructure set up and blah, blah, blah. And yeah, so it’s, you shouldn’t go all in, unless you’re just planning on quitting to be a creator, but that doesn’t make any sense, because that’s the reason they got into it. So then I think for almost everyone, it makes sense to partner with someone who is an expert in the field, have them run the business and you just kind of do the marketing and that kind of stuff. I think that makes sense, but anything past that, you’re just going to destroy your YouTube channel or it’s just going to fail because a business isn’t, like if you, let’s say you launched, let me think of a product, no one’s launched, so they don’t think I’m targeting them. Let’s think, let’s say you launched Pina jelly, like yeah, bottle of jelly, bottle of jelly. Yeah, a bottle of jelly, you know, sure, you can get a lot of people to buy a bottle of jelly once.

You can’t, a lot of, and we’ve seen that with influencer products, but that’s not a business. A business is getting someone to buy that bottle of jelly every two months for the next 10 years. That’s a business. And basically every creator company minus prime, you know, yeah, Feastables, and a bunch of maybe one or two others, like they don’t, they just get that, you literally just see in their sales graph, goes up, and then it knows times. And that’s not, at that point, just do a brand deal if you’re a creator, like why start a business, you know what I mean?

[39:23–41:25]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: I think just because of the attractiveness of it, because it sounds like, I think everyone is looking for, can I get equity in a thing and then that sells and I make a large some money, right? Everyone’s looking for a big deal. Everyone can I de-risk myself from being a business. And people only buy the companies because it has consistent repeat purchase rate over long terms and they believe that they acquire that company. Yours in the future, they’ll be getting the cashflow off the repeat sales. And that is why they’re sales. They’re not sales, just because which, like the thing is, you know, it’s not all creators’ faults. It’s also like the companies that are working with creators and getting them to start these, and they’re not educating the creators. And they make it seem like, oh yeah, you just build a business, you just sell a couple million dollars and then people pay five extra a day, oh you made 10 million bucks.

And it’s like no, like they’re only, investors are only gonna pay that kind of money if they believe you’re gonna keep doing those sales and growing year over year, you know, cause like, let’s say you do theoretically two million in revenue and you have 10% even us, you make $200,000, you know what I mean? Like if someone’s, you know, like if you think someone’s gonna pay $10 million for that business, you know, at your current rate, even a sales stayed steady, that would take 50 years for them to make that 10 million back. The reason people pay crazy multiples is because if you’re two million, but you’re projected to do three million the next year and then five million and then six and then, you know, four years from now 10 million, well now it’s like if you look four years in the future, you’re spending off a million or three cash, that’s only 10 years to recoup. And then if, you know, you assume 30% growth. And it makes sense if a business is growing fast while having good margin, then it like acquisitions makes sense, but that’s not what’s happening with a lot of these creator brands and the repeat purchase rate isn’t there. So there’s just never gonna be an act.

And there’s not much money to make along the way. Yeah, and that’s why I just wish someone would educate a lot of these creators because in the problem is you spend all this money on inventory and just like with the new startup, you burn so much cash, you mess so many things up. Like I mess up bajillion things up with Feastables. Like we launched with the like wrong boxes where the bars were falling out of the boxes. I think I’ve told this story before, it was horrible. And that cost me tens of millions of dollars to fix and it was a really bad thing. And like a lot of creators, you know, make all these mistakes and the repeat purchase rate isn’t there and they end up not making anything or very little.

[41:25–43:23]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: And it’s like if they like instead of launching a jelly company just did a partnership with the jelly company, not even for equity, just for brand deals. It’s like the difference over a four year spectrum of like doing, I mean for like a, I don’t know, like a creator of a 10 million subscribers. It’s like they could get paid theoretically, we’ll say 50 grand a video to promote this jelly. And let’s say they do like fucking seven promotions a year. That’s 350,000 times seven. You know, that’s how much money they could have in their bank account. Whereas if they launch a jelly company, they spend all this money on inventory. They make all these mistakes and then four years later then one’s buying it and they shut the company down. It’s like one scenario, you know, they basically have zero dollars or lose money. And the other scenario, they just did brand deals risk free. they had more time to put into their content. So their videos do better. And they’re walking away with $1. 5 million. It’s like, and it hurts to see so many creators just ruin that, you know, because they’re just, I think in a lot of times it’s just they’re not getting advice from the right people.

And a lot of managers or companies just are taking advantage of creators because they’re just not business savvy. Like they didn’t get big on YouTube because they know how to run a business. They got big on YouTube because they know how to make great videos and they’re trusting business people who aren’t giving them their real picture. So let’s talk about that then if the trajectory is not getting into like CPG products and it might be getting deeper in the world of content because creators are great at making content. So let’s talk about this intersection of YouTube and streamers because you experience this now firsthand with Prime Video and Beast Games. Do you believe that that is a future for creators? Why or why not? Like, do we get the opportunity in a year from now to explore like, is Netflix calling creators now is Prime Video calling more creators? In what world would you recommend that we do it? Yeah. I, it’s hard. I think it should be because you want to do it, right? Like at that, it’s core because, because again, you have to maintain your YouTube channel or what’s the point if you just kill the thing that’s feeding you.

[43:23–45:22]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: So if it’s something a creator really wants to do, then yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense. Like we talked about before, it’s a way to go deeper with your audience, provide something different. And truthfully, there’s just a lot of money and streaming. I didn’t make any money off my show, but if I wanted to, I could have made a lot of money. And like, I think for, yeah, it could be, it’s obviously a great way to diversify a great, it’s just all around. Yeah, if you can do it without destroying your YouTube channel, then yeah, it’s a no brainer for a lot of creators. It’s just doing it well is not as straightforward. A lot of people go to do streaming shows and then they just bring in people who normally do streaming shows and give them control and then they lose what makes their channel special and the soul or what their community likes. And then it ends up flopping and being a giant waste of time. So it’s just like, you just gotta make sure you do it right. Cause like, you know, if someone try, like if a Minecraft Let’s Play or wanted to make Beast Games, that’s like, hey, that’s not why people watch that Minecraft Let’s Play or write.

And B, they would just suck into a thought because they’ve never done something like that. And so I think streaming shows make sense if you take what your community loves about you and why your community likes you, plus your area of expertise and zone of genius and then you modify it towards a streaming show. Not, I think that is a formula that will work, but when you try to be something you’re not, do something that is not why your community likes you and do a streaming show. I think that’s why there’s been so many flops in the past. And it’s like, on paper, it’s like this doesn’t make any sense. Like this person has so many followers, so many people love this person. Why the hell aren’t they watching the show? And it’s like, that’s not, that show isn’t what they’re good at. That’s not the kind of content they know well. And that’s not what their community wants. So it flopped, you know. So think Prime Video or Netflix Prime Video, Prime Video, whatever, open up like a creator program where they essentially say, you’re an approved creator, you can upload to our plot for years.

[45:22–47:21]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: And we’ll give you a share of subscription based on the viewership you drive. I mean, I could call them and ask. I mean, I’m sure they, or do you think that would be a good, because like the question obviously is the cost of programming is getting really high on streaming platforms, right? Especially when you’re working with legacy actors. That’s like talent fees can be through the roof for that, right? So you can end up spending millions and millions of dollars, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars on programming. But YouTube obviously has this incredible model of like, yeah, I think to just answer though, it’s the problem is like, it’s available on YouTube for free. And so like, it’s not that valuable to, I know a lot of creators who have gone to streaming platforms have been like, hey, how much would you pay me to put my catalog up there? And it’s like, it’s funny because some of them will call me and be like, I think I can get like $500,000 for YouTube video to put it on Netflix, because I’m getting, this many views are probably, or I won’t even say a streaming platform.

And then I’ll be like, yeah, they’re just not gonna pay that, like, especially if you’re not doing exclusive. It’s like, no, we get this, and then like they’ll call me back a week later and I’ll be like, yeah, it was like 30 grand. And I’m like, yeah. I guess the only reason it would be if the economics of share of subscription revenue was higher than the economics of, yeah, but they don’t share subscription revenue, they just pay flat fees, right? So that’s, because the subscription revenue is like, all the upside for them. So that’s how they make money is they just, they think, oh, this show’s gonna get a 20,000 people to subscribe and the LTV of that is playing. So we’re gonna pay them, you know, you’re blank and over three years we’ll quadruple our money. I know you listened to our dude perfect episode, which would you ever do something similar to what they’re doing with the Dude Perfect app, where it’s like, you get your own app, you’re selling your own app. I’m gonna be honest, I didn’t know that was, well, I knew it was a thing, but I didn’t know how big it was to your episode.

Like, I called the CEO after that episode and talked to him, and I was like, you know, tell me more about this app. That was very fascinating.

[47:21–49:19]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: That was one of your better episodes. I texted Samir afterwards, I was like, that was good, they were- That was high praise. That was probably in the same vein as like, I would be terrified to send any of our videos to Casey Neistat. I think that’s like, what you do is like, that to me is like terrifying. Like, even the BTS video we did together, like, I like to see his storytelling notes would be terrifying, but especially too close to the release. I would be a good like. I’ll send it to him an hour before you drop it. And I’m like, here’s all of Casey’s notes. That would stress me out so much. I think I quit. But you texted me about the Dude Perfect thing with a similar experience of like, okay, Jimmy liked that, really happy to hear that. Yeah, it was good. I mean, I don’t know if smaller creators liked it, but as someone, cause they’re doing very similar things to me. Yeah, I was like, this really hit home. But I don’t know about the doing an app like that. I’ve got enough going on right now. I really want to solve, you know, ethical sourcing and Feastables, and I want to launch and keep improving the SKUs and then Feastables and keep helping creators.

And then I really want to make a video game. So those things plus everything we’re doing to studio, like, that’s kind of enough for me at the moment. And I feel like my brain is always stimulated and I always have plenty of stuff to work on. So, but I know a couple of creators who are on that app and they say they’re like making pretty good money and it’s going really well. So I’m like, kind of surprised. What does it mean for Beast Games to be ROI positive for you and for Prime Video? Well, it’s not gonna be our end of terms of money. It won’t be ROI positive. But let’s say like, in terms of brand or in terms of like, what does it mean? If it’s, if it’s successful. It might be if there’s a year two or a year three and it becomes old. Yeah, it could eventually. Whatever they pay me for a season two and three, I’m just gonna reinvest. I hope I break even on season two and three, but that’s not, I use, I’m not good at breaking even. It’s not your vibe, yeah. But yeah, but I get you what is, what is, I guess, success on both sides. Well, I guess at its core, like at the high part of the non-enverist is do people watch the show and obviously enjoy it, right? That is success.

[49:19–51:19]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Like do, I think I said it earlier, but do people get connected to the contestants? They feel like they know them. Do they, I guess this is more success on my side. I mean, my video probably cares about these things, but ultimately they have data and others. But from my side, do people watch the show, get to know the contestants, love them, and just feel things, you know? But the way I’ve been on the last 18 months is like making people feel things and telling stories and less about retention, data, analytics, because if people feel stuff and like know that like, they can watch this and it’s gonna give them emotions and they’re like that to me as a win. But obviously there’s not just one singular thing. So that’s one, I mean, obviously I want Beast Games to be the biggest competition reality show to ever exist. Like I’m, so I don’t think that’s gonna happen with season one, but hopefully it’s by viewership or by what? I don’t really know what that means. I just wanna win, by like brand. I guess, I haven’t really thought that part. I just thought I wanted to be the biggest.

But I guess views, yeah sure, and so, which again, I don’t think season one will do that, but I think over time that would be success for Beast Games is that this, you know, it’s just, people are like, wow, I can’t find anything like this, like just kind of like on YouTube, like there’s a lot of great content, but in terms of like big spectacles, like you just can’t find anything even a third as big as ours anywhere else. And so people are like, wow, I think keep coming back. This is great, I can’t find this anywhere else. I want that, but for, there are a lot of people every year that watch competition shows that watch reality shows like tens of millions of people. I want those tens of millions of people to be like, damn, I’ve been watching competition shows for decades. None of them, or anywhere near Beast Games level. This is my new thing, this has changed everything. So that, and then obviously, you know, I wanna break any records we can on viewership. I actually, this, this is so funny.

Cause if you compare our interview now to like the first interview we did, I’m gonna seem like such a different person, but I think success on my side too would be I’d love to win an Emmy or some kind of award.

[51:19–53:20]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: I think that would be great. Personally, I don’t care about awards. I mean, I’ve won a lot of streamies and I’ve never even gone, which I feel kind of bad. Cause uh, I wish you would stop, you would stop winning. No, no, I’m gonna go, I’m gonna go to this next streamies. So I’ll go. Cause I, cause I, when if this is the one you go to win, I’m fine, I don’t care. I mean, like if Speed or Kai won one, that’d be cool. But yeah, I think Link, when I didn’t show up, was like, it says like this me last year and I was like, oh, I feel kind of bad. It’s all go. But I, having said that, yeah, I don’t care about it, but my team really does. They are like, some, like our editors in example, we have some editors who like, they’ve dreamed for years, like their whole lives of one day, winning an Emmy or something like that. And so like I feel, I see their energy and I see that we’ve now worked on something that could. And I know how much it would mean to them if we did. So like that energy’s infectious. And so now I really want to win one just so I can see how happy it would make my team. So, but also I think it would be a good reflection on creators because of Beast Games wins an Emmy.

Then it’s like, see creators can’t make good shows. Creators, creators are fucking awesome. Or, you know, like creators five years ago versus creators now are not just like creators are building businesses, like especially in the content world in like building mini production companies and doing it successfully. So arguably some of the biggest production startups over the last few years, all of them basically have been creators. And so success is ideally winning an award of some type. And then successes, you know, having this crush so other creators can use it and go, look, Jimmy killed it with Beast Games, give me a good deal, believe in me and get more creative freedom, get better terms and that kind of stuff with the streaming deal. And yeah, my side success is a lot of things. I think those are the major ones. On prime side, it’s probably just how many people sign up for Prime Video and, you know, they stick around. What’s your advice to both sides? Like, if in the next year more YouTubers get into rooms with streamers and get into negotiations, what’s your advice for both sides?

Like, how should Hollywood be thinking about working with creators and how should creators think about working with Hollywood?

[53:20–55:20]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Well, we’ll start off with the easy one. Hollywood working with creators, you know, when I was, I talked to every platform for our show before we landed with Prime Video in. I mean, there’s some pretty dumb things that were said. Like, even, like, I won’t name specific platforms because obviously, but like one, they, like, a high up exact at one of the streaming platforms, like, was telling me how they did a deal with the different influencer and it’s like, it didn’t do well. And they really grinded me through and I was like, they’re like, what makes you different? And I was like, that person does like a million views of video and has like two employees. Right. I do a 200 million views of video and have a 200 person production team. Well, I, why you, and you’re telling me you don’t know the difference between me and them? Like, oh my gosh, how are you in charge of this? So it’s like, for, I was having to do a lot of educating with a lot of these platforms, which, you know, if I’m playing devil’s advocate, obviously, in terms of knowledge in the creator space, I’m probably like, the top 10, top three, number one, maybe.

So it’s like, I guess it’s not fair to expect them to be at my level, because it’s all I’ve done with my entire life. But also the fact that someone, when they’re talking with me wasn’t in the room on their side that was at that level, it’s just kind of sad. So I think it’s a lot of education, for them to be honest. And I would say it’s like the number one lesson they should take away. And, you know, and one of the biggest reasons why I went with Prime is because they actually watched a lot of my content and big fans of it. And I wasn’t having to go like, hey, I did this. And when I say, I buried myself alive, they didn’t go, you buried yourself alive. It’s like, yeah, I’ve done it three times, you know. Did you even open my channel? I don’t know. So that, you know, that, and then on the creator side, that I have a lot to say. Yeah, these are, this is, it’s a big deal when you, it’s not just money, right? Like a lot of creators are just thinking how much money I can get.

[55:20–57:20]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: But, you know, there are a lot of levers that there are a lot of instances where you should take less money if it means you get more creative freedom. If it means you own the IP. If it means you get blank blank blank or deciding, you know, do you sell, you know, if you’re, let’s say, I’m just gonna pick a random. Let’s say, just make up a streaming platforms name. Like a one, I don’t want to say one because someone might, you know how big clips are. Or make up, because someone might clip this and then it might seem like I’m talking about something. Like if I was like, you know, when you’re negotiating with Netflix, so like, what’s a fake streaming name? I can use the beast app. Streamflakes. Streamflakes. It might be real, but it’s fine. Streamflakes, good. That way people can clip this and it doesn’t seem like you should talk in a platform. So like, let’s say you’re negotiating with streamflakes, right? Like, you know, even something as simple as like, what if they try to buy the first three seasons, you know, how well do you think season one will do?

Because if you think season one is gonna crush and you’ve never done anything on a streaming platform before, you would make infinitely more money and have more leverage if you just did season one, you know, and then negotiated season two and three afterwards because, you know, like, you would theoretically could get an offer like, we’ll give you $5 million for season one through three, you know, upfront to do all of them. But, you know, there’s a separate world where you just sell them season one for $1. 5 million. It crushes and then you come back and you get $7 million just for season two and three. Now that’s a net difference of, you know, 60% just because you believed in yourself and took a risk, right? Like that’s a thing that most these creators wouldn’t even think of. And so, but this is just an example of one of the many things that like, my biggest advice for creators would be like, you don’t know how to negotiate these kinds of deals because that’s like a very simple one.

But then it goes all the way in depth of the IP, the ownership rights of the show, who has control over the edge into, you know, even like how you have to do the budgeting the line by line, it’s these, these are big like deals, especially the bigger they get. And so, there are people who have negotiated hundreds or thousands of these streaming deals on behalf of other people. First thing I would do is get on the phone with them and educate yourself and then just say, I don’t know anything and let them handle it.

[57:20–59:20]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: And like, you know, and bring experts in, don’t try to negotiate these with your internal team. If you have a manager who has never negotiated a streaming deal or has negotiated less than 100, don’t have them negotiate this deal, right? Because they’re going to lock you into things, they’re gonna leave money on the table, they’re gonna not get you the creative control you need. They’re just like, yeah, like, I mean, I’m very happy with the deal I got with Amazon and, you know, and it worked out very well. But, you know, when I saw like some of the other platforms were putting on the table and in there, like, you know, things that I was like, oh, this isn’t a big deal. Like, but then I would talk to these people who have negotiated lots of these deals and they’d show me 10 examples of how, you know, other shows left those in and it became a big deal. And I was like, oh, I didn’t, I even know that’s what that meant. You know, and I negotiate a lot and do a lot of contracts and build businesses for a living and even there are things like, you know, that I just know like a normal creator would just get screwed on. So, yeah, that’s kind of my advice.

So, we’re recording this right before Beast Games comes out. I know. I was wish it was after, so we could talk about it. By the time we publish this episode, there will have been tons of reviews. Yeah. There will be, you two positive ones, you two about to, yeah. Yeah. Positive ones. Your BTS video will be out. I can’t wait to see what people think of that. It’s gonna be positive ones. It’s gonna be negative ones. Oh, you look out. If you had to guess, uh-huh. Why do people love it? And why do some people hate it? You had to guess. No. Yeah. I hate, I don’t know. I think the show’s phenomenal. I mean, obviously some people are not gonna like it, but I’m not. You’re deepest fears. Like when you send a Casey Neistat and you’re like, oh, I hope you like it. I guess my deepest fear would be, it probably said the start we have more contestants than any show in history. So would the character building doesn’t really start till episode three, but it like really, really doesn’t start to like episode five or six. Like where you actually can name the characters and know them. And so I guess my biggest fear would be that people think how episode one and two are. It’s how all 10 will be.

And episode one and two are phenomenal. But I think like halfway through is when people are just gonna be like, wow, this is crazy. I feel like I’m friends with these people.

[59:20–1:01:17]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: I feel like I know what they’re gonna do before they do it. And I really, you’re gonna have people you’re rooting for and it’s just gonna be great to a level that you never expected. And so, and then on the positive side, I would say, yeah, man, I think people are gonna be like, how do they build this, how do they do this? But I’m just like, I feel like people are gonna love it because it’s just like, it’s not one of those shows where like a lot of times when I watch these kinds of shows like, I’m struggling to keep up. It’s like a chore at certain parts. I’m like forcing my, because it’s like, there are great moments in competition reality shows, but a lot of times they’re then followed by a lot of boring stuff that, you know, you almost watch on two X-feed, but this isn’t that. You’re just like, it’s good. And so I think people are gonna love the way they feel and if they watch deep enough, they’re gonna love the way they get to know the contestants like nothing else. Week to week versus binge. I know we talked about that a bit before. Yeah.

Was that a decision that came really easy of like, okay, we’ll at least these three and then we’re gonna go week to week because that to me again feels like a big conversation in the world of entertainment of mostly what happened was, you know, the streaming platforms that introduced the binge model, which was like, here’s a whole season. Yeah. Watch the whole thing. But we’re also working in a direction even where creators are doing appointment viewing, speed or a guy, they market the hell out of their streams. You’re going on a stream right after this. That’s marketed like where it’s like show up at this time at this day. So was that a discussion that you guys had between binge and appointment? Oh, of course. I mean, that was a rough decision to make. I think weekly is their correct play, especially for us because these episodes are so grand and big. I feel like you almost need time afterwards that I just, the volume of stuff that happened because these are sort of big.

And I think the enjoyment of being able to talk to other viewers and like, you know, if you just binge it and it ends, it’s like there’s nothing to really discuss but every week being able to discuss with your friends, like yo, did you see what this contested is or so much backstabbing? There’s so many crazy social experiments and to be able to discuss it, I think we’ll make the viewing experience way more fun.

[1:01:17–1:03:13]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: So based on the data I’ve seen in the more I’ve thought about it, I think weekly is the way to go but honestly, time will tell and maybe season two, we do the binge model. I mean, yeah. You talk about season two and three quite a bit. Is that something that’s like happening or what needs to happen? I probably shouldn’t. I was told not to talk. Okay, I got it. But the things I loved what we did with games and I’m doing it. Now, and I love working with prime videos so I’m sure we’re going to do it with them. But the concept of beast games you want to continue. Oh, yeah. There’s no world where I’m not. Like, I do a thousand contestants again or 2,000 on the zero. It was a lot. I see why no one’s ever done a thousand. I see why that was a world record. I mean, I even saw it from them lining up to get into set and out of set was such a long problem. It would take an hour and a half for bathroom. Yeah, just being there was overwhelming with a thousand. Yeah. Like just being there. I can’t imagine seeing a thousand people with so many people bathroom breaks. The other thing is the GoPro’s, everyone on a camera, there’s footage of a time lapse of your team unboxing a thousand GoPro’s.

Really? I mean, it’s so long. Like to do anything times a thousand, it’s insane. I guess you’ll see if it’s worth it, right? As if it comes out, how people receive it. It’s like, was it worth it? So yeah, because it’s so much effort and then inversely, the more people you have, the less depth you can develop. Yeah. Or do you pick the top people from your episodes, you know? Yeah. So I, right now, I need to show the drop and I need to see what people think. I’m, I’m not opposed to doing a hundred. I’m not opposed to trying to do 10,000. I just like, I need to see what, I’ll do whatever I think people want. I just need to. I actually think, I think probably less. I mean, personally. Same. I’m leaning towards less now, but you never know. Because you’re right, like as I’ve watched through the season, like like anything else, you want to know the characters. It’s easier to know when there’s less. Yeah. All that matters is that the characters are good.

[1:03:13–1:05:13]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: It’s like even with like American Idol, they start with like thousands and thousands and thousands of candidates, but they only show you even in episode one, the best stories, the people that are going to pretty much make it. Yeah, and maybe the answers I do a thousand, but I just hone in on 30 and just ignore the rest. I mean, at least when it comes to stories, like you know who has the best story. But I think this sheer spectacle of a thousand is cool, but I think it’s more impactful if it’s just like, here, here’s these 100 people they’re vying for this thing. I agree. Or it might be, you know, instead of like, we just can’t creep people quicker, right? Sure. In episode one of season two, who just go from a thousand to a hundred, you know. Yeah, maybe in the future like what was what happened in episode one in terms of doing the windowing down actually happens in the first five minutes. Exactly. Yeah. Which is crazy. In the first three minutes of season two of these games, we eliminated 900 people, give away five million dollars in the employee employee employee. And that is just in the first three minutes of the show.

I think the crazy thing is though, your YouTube videos are like a season of television in one video, like the wilderness video. Yeah. That’s a season of TV. I could make an entire show on Prime Video over there. And even crush people would love it. Beat Ronaldo, that is a season of TV. That’s a pros versus Joes, you know. Okay, I wanted to show you a clip. We have to get you out of here. Okay. Very soon in like three minutes. And I want to take some photos. But I just want to show you the opening of Beast Games episode one and the opening of two of your YouTube videos. Okay. As I thought, it was just interesting. You kept saying, you wanted more like, you had the opportunity to go slower on Prime Video. Yeah. And I just, I was trying to understand what that meant. And then I watched this. I am standing on five million dollars of real money. The largest grand prize in entertainment history and competing for this five million dollars are these 1,000 contestants. Okay, so that’s the opening of Beast Games episode one. Behind me are a hundred sets of twins. And they’re going to come see for $250,000. And everyone, go to your queue. Out of these 100 pairs of identical twins.

[1:05:13–1:07:12]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Only one is walking away with this corner of a million dollars. If either twin crosses the red line, they’ll both be eliminated. Let’s find out which pair of you is the best of the twins and wins a 250 grand. I have never been around this place. I mean, you get the point. I’m basically saying that what’s really interesting is the opening of Beast Games has no cuts. The first 12 seconds of Beast Games is just you. I am standing on five million dollars. Yeah, it is. It doesn’t like whoosh into the five million. Yeah. And entertainment history. Ah, that’s such a good shot. Fuck yeah. This five million dollars are these 1,000 contestants. But that’s a, I actually think that’s more symbolic than people might realize that. That is just a shot of you for 12 seconds. You guys never do that. Not at an intro. You would never hold on an intro for 12 seconds. No, and it’s just like on, because on YouTube, you have to just different, man. It’s different expectations. It’s different. It’s like YouTube, you just got to reassure him the title and thumbnail is like a big problem with my YouTube videos is people just don’t think they’re real. And so like I have to like show so much at the start.

I have to like, you know, I have like this 10 second window to convince someone I did this. I did this. I swear to God I did it. I swear a promise. I promise years prove I did it. I did it. You know what I mean? Like it’s like in the twins video, 100 twins compete for 250 K. It’s like here. No, here’s 100 twins. Look, here’s the close up their twins. There’s 250 K, that’s real money. I’m giving it to them. All right. But now it’s like, okay, there’s twins of money, but are they just going to stand here? Now all right, there’s cubes. Look, there’s this big set. This is a good video. And like at YouTube at the start, you almost have to like beg. Like you’re like, you’re like, look, I promise what I put in the title of thumbnail is real, especially for us because when we do so big and you have to convince them of all of it and then give permission to slow down. Where is on the bag? Yeah, what these shows like, I mean, you know, most competition shows are like, you know, a fraction as big as this. And so it’s like, and people still sit down watch.

[1:07:12–1:09:08]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Like people like will give you at least a couple minutes on a show before they give up on it. It’s not like 10 seconds out. You know what I mean? Like how I can’t think of a time I’ve ever clicked on a show and then 10 seconds later clicked off. Like I want to, you understand that it takes a little bit of time to get to know what’s going on. And so like what in YouTube you have to do in 20 seconds and streaming you can do in, you know, three minutes. And like, that’s a huge difference. I got a question about like what you said about viewers on YouTube think it’s not real. So you have to prove that it’s real. Yeah. I want to ask about the creative choice of using CGI. Yeah. Because I feel like CGI, although it looks cool and it’s not impacting like the challenge, right? So you’re not using it to alter the challenge or using it to alter the environment. To extend sets makes you extend sets. Yeah. But I feel like even just using CGI gives ammo to people who are like, oh, it’s not real. Yeah. Or it takes them out of the realness of it. 100% and that’s where I’ve thought about this so much and that’s why we very rarely use it.

Like we’re literally talking about like, I mean, CGI also is incredibly expensive. So it’s expensive and like point 1% of the content we use has it in it. So it’s like, but I agree with what you’re saying. But then like look at our squid game video and imagine if we didn’t do like, use CGI, like how much like that’s like part of what made it so cool and like close the gap between what happened in the show and what we did. And so I’m cool with never using CGI, you know, I don’t care like we build phenomenal sets and I don’t want because we use CGI people to doubt the authenticity of our videos. And so that’s that’s something I’ve I’ve thought about a lot and that what I wish is like, I wish more creators used it and entertainment video. So I could kind of look at how they gauge it and like get inspiration, but I’m kind of trailblazing here. No one else does these big budget YouTube videos. And so we already dial it back way more than traditional does to, you know, and yeah, I mean, the honest answers. I don’t know. Like I think this is something you’ve asked me in three years from now. I’d be like, yeah, this is how you use it and blah, blah.

[1:09:08–1:11:08]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: Something I said this on a different podcast, but something I’ve been thinking a lot about is like, maybe watermarking it every time we use CGI and I’ve been working with the team to try to figure that. Like if every time we do something, there’s just like a beast logo that’s on the side of it. So you would know, if you see that beast logo, you know, we extended a set or something like that. So it’s like or timestamp in the description. I think I felt that the most in the city, the wide shot of the city with the moat around it. Yeah. You know, that’s where I felt it the most. Cause I mean, probably cause I was there. You were there there. Yeah. Well, it’s also, oh, you’re talking about in beast game. Well, beast game, we were talking about YouTube. I mean, sorry, beast games. Yeah, we use it quite a bit. But that’s that’s why for beast games, we’re doing a lot of BTS. We have your video and I, you know, you guys had a Mr. Who’s the boss at the YouTube video because that was a big one. You guys have basically all of episode one, the lead up to it. Just great. And then John and a couple other people are taking over the later stuff. So that’s why I was so intent on doing BTS.

Cause I was like, here’s everything that happened. So we’re not hiding things because the CGI, you know, in beast games, like we built the craziest sets in the history of entertainment. And I didn’t want people to think like that city CGI when it’s not like, yeah, they put a little moat around it. And I’ll be 100% honest. This is what’s crazy is like, cause there’s seven hours of content here and I can’t be involved in everything. I didn’t even know they’re putting a moat around it. Like cause there’s like a bunch of trucks and cars around the city. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, first simplicity, cause we wanted people to focus on the city, you know, just removing that. All the stuff around the city is what I was on in the impression we were doing. And the thing is we locked the episode but the like intense computer stuff happens after you lock it. So I didn’t, so like they made all these decisions after it was locked and I was already moving on to future episodes. And then I watched, I received the final cup of episode one and I saw that mode there. And I was like, why the fuck is there emoji? But it’s a lot, but it’s too late now because the team’s working on the future one.

So I actually agree. I was like, I don’t know why we put a mode there. Like I was under the understanding we were just gonna, you know, make it grass. Yeah, just make it grass.

[1:11:08–1:13:07]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: I was like, this doesn’t, especially cause like when we’re on top of the tower and stuff, you can see out back behind and you can see there’s not a boat. So it’s also just like not even immersive. It was a very, it’s also only that one shot. It’s just one shot. One shot and seven hours of content, there’s one single shot and they put a mode, someone somewhere of the 100 editors we’re working with made a decision to put a mode there. And not running it by me. And yeah, I don’t agree with it, but it is what it is. I can’t change it now. I wanna ask you about my home country, India cause you went to India, I did. And you know, I’ve witnessed over the past probably 10 years, the creator economy just start to slowly grow and it feels like it’s exponentially in India, over there, in India. Yeah. Like the first time I went out there, I got asked to speak at a college. Like this is years ago cause I was just like an Indian guy on YouTube that everyone was like, oh my God, that’s an Indian guy on YouTube. Yeah. And I went and I spoke and at that time TikTok existed in India and there was people making, you know, a couple thousand bucks a month, which was super significant in India.

And rupees, like that’s really significant. Yeah. But now I’m looking at it. I’m like, these are some of the biggest channels. Yeah, big terms that are used. In terms of just straight-up views, what do you think about, what was your experience like in India and what do you think about the importance of India to the digital entertainment world? Yeah, you know, India is my second largest audience behind the USA now. Wow. It’s like, it’s very big for us. So yeah, India was, it was, it was not what I was expecting. There are people like, how do I say this where it doesn’t sound arrogant? I mean, they just like, they were really like their channel over there. Like they were, I mean, I didn’t tell anyone I was going there any time, but there were like tons of people waiting at the airport for me to land and say hi to me there. It’s Indian hospitality. Yeah. It’s hospitality. I’m kidding. No, but it’s a crazy celebrity culture. Oh, yeah. That is it. Yeah, it’s like, it was, they were, yeah.

[1:13:07–1:15:09]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: So I met so many people that had just seen every video I’ve ever made, new every MrBeast Lord, they were just so into it. And they, yeah, it’s just the create. And the thing that actually was the craziest, because I went over there to film, well, we launched the schools in prime in India, but while it’s there, I filmed a karymanati. Yeah. And he brought like all the biggest creators from India over, like myth pat and a couple others. And I was just like, they’re like, care to be like, oh, here’s this guy. And I’d look at their channel. I’d be like, it’s pulling 20 million views of it. I’ve never even heard of him before. And it’s like, there’s so many large creators over there. And like, you know, what’s interesting, I don’t, I don’t think Karyman might be saying this is like, you know, Kerry’s audience is like, almost 90% in India. It’s like, it was like 86% and the other 14% I believe was like, whatever, like Pakistan or whatever that other country that speaks Hindi. And, and so it’s like, and I’m looking at all these other creators analytics. And it’s like almost all India. And so that’s why we don’t know who they are. Right. And we don’t know the exist.

And most of your viewers don’t know the exist because if you’re not in India, you literally just don’t get served their content. It’s because a lot of them do the same where they speak English and Hindi and they bounce back and forth. So then boom, it just dies there. Or they have, you know, some cultural cultural, yes. But then they also have a lot of accents that are pretty shaken hard to understand if you’re in America or Europe. And so, but yeah, it’s like for people who don’t know, there is a massive creator scene in India. Like there are a lot of creators over there that are pulling tens of millions of views of video that are massive, like borderline, like demigods to like people in India. And by the thing is their audience, their viewership is like basically all India. So you, you’ll probably never hear of them unless you go there or like try to study it. How does monetization get solved there, you think? Like, cause those are huge views, but monetization is really hard in India. Cause there’s not as big of an ad culture. It’s not as much disposable income from consumers. So what happens?

Do they like join, but isn’t there like a wave of like GDP growth that’s coming in a major way?

[1:15:09–1:17:09]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: And that’s why all the like CPG brands are so interested in India. Well, and also, even if, let’s say you make one seventh per of you, but you know, because, you know, these guys are pulling, these guys have views because you get way more viewers, you know, maybe that helps closely out. So I think, I think the hope for them in the long run is as more and more people over there come online and start using these platforms, they’ll just get more and more viewership which increase income plus like he said GDP is rising over there. I think it’s one of the fastest growing economies in the world. And so you know, increase GDP plus more people coming online. I think, I mean, I think the next couple of years like it just is what it is. They’re not going to make that much money. But I do think like, you got to take a long, like I’ve been doing YouTube for 15 years. You know what I mean? You take the long term approach. And I would say long term, they’re like a decade from now. Like I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the top earners are in India, you know what I mean on YouTube. But yeah, in the next three years, I just don’t see it happening.

I think there could be scripted shows that emerge on YouTube that eventually turned into like Bollywood production on YouTube. Yeah, but even like Bollywood, like the highest-grossing films just pale in comparison to Hollywood’s highest-grossing films. So it’s just like, you know, it’s just not a level playing field for them. But I do think the playing field, I mean, I won’t be level in 10 years, but I think it will get more equal liberalized over time. And so I think the answer is just keep building to get the resources you can, go all in and realize that like the reward you’ll get for the value of create will be higher in the future and you just gotta win. I’m surprised that there hasn’t been as much exports of Indian entertainment to the US in the same way that South Korean entertainment has come to the US. You know what I mean? Like, parasite and squid game, like, I’m just surprised that maybe that’s something that ends up happening is that some Indian creativity ends up in the US. Yeah, that’d be great, yeah. I want to shift gears and ask you questions about Hot Ones. Okay, so we made an episode about Hot Ones. It actually just sold.

So Buzzfeed’s old Hot Ones back to Sean Evans and some investors. George Soros. Oh, I thought it was ready to leak. Mythical, yeah. Well, yeah, they’re a part of that too. Oh, there’s the article headline, I saw said Mythical Bot Hot Ones.

[1:17:09–1:19:34]

Colin Rosenblum, Samir Chaudry, and Jimmy Donaldson: It’s a group of people. It’s George Soros, Mythical and Crooked Media. Yeah. And Sean Evans and Chris Schomber about Hot Ones. So it sold for 82 million. But when we made our episode ahead and sold yet, and David our showrunner was on the show with us and he was like, I have a hot take. I think that MrBeast would potentially buy Hot Ones from Buzzfeed. He’d never reached out. I mean, if he did, I’m probably, is that something you’d be interested in? Of course. You would acquire media properties like that. I mean, I don’t have that kind of money right now because I’m dumping everything into everything I’m doing. But I mean, we could have financed it through a bank. And I would have actually really loved to help run the show and just because, especially with how knee deep I am in CPG, I mean, I could have showed him probably had two, three Xsales and the sauce pretty quickly. So maybe there’s still an opportunity there. It sounds like it’s all that article. I was like, oh, you should have called me. Second question. Why haven’t you been on Hot Ones yet? I need to. I mean, it’s cause I’m too busy doing 10,000 interviews with you guys. Okay. Okay. Hey, make a note.

Next time we’re going to call it Samir can it. We’re going on Hot Ones. That seems like you should go on that one. I know. I want to. I hate with the passion hot food. Like I spicy food or whatever. I don’t, I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. But I just don’t want to do it. I wish I could just go talk to Sean without eating spicy shit. But I think I’ll do it just because, like, some of my most videos have run up here myself alive. So I’ll turn people to love watching me suffer. And so I think the same thing will happen here is like, because I hate it so much, it will really shine through. And then that will make people enjoy it. I agree. I think that would be an astronomically viewed episode out. But dude, you got a long day ahead of you. I thought this was one of our better podcasts. It’s fun. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. I think we’re only getting better with time. Yeah. Yeah. I remember, are we still doing this? I remember we used to do on a year. And it was always, it always helped me form the best one.

But I feel like though, we haven’t topped that one from that level years ago, we got to, I think you’re your BTS video, which they haven’t uploaded yet. Yeah. I think, depending on their title and thumbnail, I haven’t seen it yet, but assuming they don’t butcher it, I think that’s going to be one of their most few videos. I think that VTS video is crazy. Like there’s no way that doesn’t have like 25, 30 minute retention. Yeah, it’s going to be fun. It’s going to be really fun. Well, dude, I’m excited for you. I’m excited to see how people react to the show. Thank you.

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