My friends, I've watched hours and hours of MrBeast explaining his YouTube success and tried to put it into practice myself. Many of the things have not worked for me, and in fact have slowed me down. Others have worked really well. What I'm going to do is explain what I've learned from MrBeast, the things that worked for me, and the things that didn't. If he ever wants to chat with me, I'm available. I would love his advice on my YouTube channel, because I've been on YouTube as long as MrBeast has. And I'm almost ashamed to show you my statistics, because, wow, I've put up over 4,000 videos on YouTube, which has got to be about what MrBeast has put up himself, unless perhaps you count all of his different channels with translations.
If you don't know who MrBeast is, he's arguably the most successful YouTuber in the world. He's got 129 million subscribers. Then he's got other side channels. He's got channels dubbed in other languages. He's rapidly growing on TikTok. If you're on YouTube and you're a creator, I'd be amazed if you didn't already know who MrBeast was. Unlike many other YouTube creators who package their content into expensive courses and try to sell them to you in video calls, MrBeast has put out the information that helped him get to where he's at right now. He's done that in interviews, and they're fantastic. I listened to all of one great interview. I listened to his Joe Rogan interview and a bunch of other MrBeast YouTube videos. If you go through MrBeast's YouTube tips, I've watched a bunch of them.
The First Lesson: Grind Out Your First Hundred Videos
So I'll give you the key lessons here first. Number one is the main thing he said for starting out on YouTube. YouTube is a great place to start. You just need to grind out your first hundred videos and get better with every single video. Well, I've definitely completed that. I've uploaded more than 10,000 videos online. If you look at my website, for example, I have thousands of videos in these online classes, and in the spirit of MrBeast, I made them all free. You can take all of these. There are thousands of hours of video on my website, totally for free, that I made in online classes. If you look on my main channel, I have about 4,000 videos. I've done the work to grind out and learn how to make YouTube videos.
Where MrBeast's Formula Didn't Work for Me
This is where what MrBeast shared has not worked well for me. MrBeast has shared that you basically want to make better and better videos, and his formula is to put a ton of time and energy into thinking about ideas that people would actually want to watch, along with great thumbnails and titles. He's basically suggesting that if you can't think of a really clickable thumbnail and title, you shouldn't even go any further with doing that video. Now, if you want to reach billions of people and be at the top of the entertainment industry, then that certainly seems the way to do it. But that's not what most YouTube creators are doing. Most YouTube creators, arguably, are in a niche. You're creating certain kinds of videos for certain kinds of people. MrBeast is creating basically for any person, almost anybody, to watch. That's very mass-media entertainment.
Doing something like this on my crypto channel is much different. A lot of the videos I made are crypto videos, and creating crypto videos is much different than creating videos for mass media, or for mass consumption. There are different things that work. There are different desires from the people watching. The same goes for creating gaming videos. If you look at MrBeast's gaming channel, the different niches you're in will have different sizes of communities and different opportunities. His gaming videos have done very well, but generally they get a fraction of the views, and he's got a fraction of the subscribers there, although 25 million is still significant on a much newer channel. MrBeast Gaming is more of a niche channel and not as much for mass consumption. So the way you create differs based on exactly who you're creating for, and not every creator is going to have the same formula.
My 15-Hour Crypto Video Experiment
Let me give you an example of putting MrBeast's advice into practice as best I could. Here's a video I put out on my crypto channel where I took a week to just focus on this one video. Following MrBeast's advice, I tried to come up with the very best title and the very best thumbnail I could think of, something people would love to see. And I did. I think it's really cool. If you have a typical tutorial that people would be very curious about and interested in, something like how to buy crypto without losing money, you would want to click on that. Now, maybe that fails the believable test, because with your titles you want something believable, something someone could imagine is realistic. So you could argue about the quality of my title or my thumbnail on there, but there's something else going on.
My friend Joe Parys is a crypto YouTuber, one of the top crypto YouTubers, and he asked a director from CBC, why did you stop making videos on crypto YouTube? People prioritize and want videos with very recent updates. People want to know the newest information about one crypto or another, and people want hope, and they want predictions. That's what they want. For better or worse, people often aren't even clicking on videos that actually might help them. This is what I just talked about in my video on what crypto YouTubers don't want to tell you: giving people actually real, really good information about crypto often does not equal getting them to click on and watch your video.
I took 15 hours to make this video, which is perhaps the most amount of time I've ever spent, in 10,000 videos, to make a single video. And you'll notice this video got 500 views. The one before it that I cranked out in 20 minutes got more views than this one that I spent 15 hours on. This is what I learned from MrBeast: what works for MrBeast, and where he shines as a YouTuber, are things I can learn from. His thumbnails do really well. The titles he makes are very clickable. But that is not necessarily what is best for me to do, because the value I have to offer as a YouTuber is not mass-appeal entertainment thumbnails where I'm trying to get the most clicks. As I talked about in my crypto video, sometimes putting out the best information and giving people the absolute best I can think of to help them means I'm going to get fewer views on that video.
In my experience, just because people watch something doesn't automatically mean it actually provided them help. YouTube is getting better at assessing this with surveys, but if you make a great video and people don't even hardly watch it to begin with, then they're not going to take enough surveys or spend enough time watching it for the YouTube algorithm to push it. A lot of crypto YouTube is just hype and speculation, because that's what works to get people to click on stuff. And if people don't click it, it almost doesn't matter what else you have in the video.
Finding My Own Unique Formula
So for me, my unique formula on YouTube seems to be to just grind out real, authentic videos. And you know what? That doesn't work as well as cranking out miscellaneous, clickable stuff. One reason MrBeast's videos have worked so well is because they're not scripted. He makes up funny challenges and crazy things and just kind of lets what would happen naturally happen. From all that I've studied him, that's how he does it. He doesn't script out every single thing like traditional TV and media does. Well, if you're on YouTube, you really need to find your own unique value proposition. This can be difficult, and it has been difficult for me. My winning formula seems to be to just be real, be raw, and grind out videos.
Now, while MrBeast isn't grinding out videos per se, he's taking a lot of time and energy to try to make a much smaller amount of high-quality videos. What most YouTubers do is just grind out videos. MrBeast suggested you grind out your first 100 videos because you shouldn't even think about getting views until you've already done 100. Well, I've done 10,000 now, and the only formula I see that makes sense for me is to just grind out videos, try to show up, and help somebody every day, and actually not put too much time or energy into the title or the thumbnail. If you want to build something like this with me and grind alongside other creators, I'd love for you to join the Jerry Banfield Family.
What was amazing with my crypto channel is that I paid for thumbnail designs, but the thumbnails designed by a graphic design professional have not performed any better than the ones I did myself. If you go to my most popular videos so far, I did that one. This Cardano one really would be up near the top. But I've done most of these thumbnails myself, and the professionally designed ones haven't beaten them. In some areas of YouTube, it doesn't seem like the thumbnail even matters that much, or the title even matters that much. If you go through the trending page, there are lots of thumbnails that aren't even that good.
I realized I might as well do my own thumbnails, because here's what sucks about my workflow: I like to just crank five videos out a day, which means I would need to have a thumbnail designed beforehand. And I often don't know what videos I'm going to make every day. I didn't realize until just before this that I needed to upload a video talking about what people don't realize on crypto YouTube. I often don't know when I get up in the morning what I'm going to make videos about. That's what makes my videos kind of interesting, and where you can keep coming back to them. It's why some people say I've developed a cult following of Jerry Banfield people who just watch any crap I put up on any different subject. What MrBeast did inspire me to do is start new YouTube channels, because I've noticed he doesn't put his gaming videos out on his main channel. But something is clearly still wrong with my approach.
Why variety content doesn't work on YouTube
What's wrong with the everything-on-one-channel approach is that variety content sucks on YouTube. That's why MrBeast has so many different channels. That's why he has a channel called MrBeast 2 where he puts out other things. You'd think he'd put that out on his main channel, but he didn't. He tossed that on a side channel. He put out a video about how to work for MrBeast that I watched, and you can see that he puts his other things on that side channel. He has his gaming channel. He has his reaction channel. He doesn't just put all of his stuff out on his main channel. He uses separate channels.
So one of the best things I learned from MrBeast is that I need to put my top topics out on separate channels. Crypto, for example: I made around 4,000 videos for one channel, and the crypto videos were some of the best videos on it. My gaming videos, my business videos, and my recovery videos are also some of people's favorite videos. So now I put those out on all my different channels. This one is going on my business channel. What's worked best for me is simply to grind out videos.
Now that I've got these different channels, the gaming people don't have to sit through the crypto videos anymore. You can choose. The crypto people don't have to watch gaming videos on the same channel. That puts me in a position to do really well going forward. And this is exactly why it's important, in learning, to diversify who you learn from, and not to take one person as knowing everything that's right for you.
Every creator's situation is unique
MrBeast clearly knows a lot about YouTube, and I would love to get his specific feedback for my specific situation. At the same time, from watching him, this is what I've learned. As MrBeast himself said, every creator's situation is unique. What works well for me is that I've got a studio where I can just grind out videos really quickly, where I can make five videos for five separate channels, usually in about three hours of real time. That's pretty amazing, and that's my unique value proposition.
What people love about my videos is my realness and my authenticity. In my experience, if I do a scripted video that I spent 15 hours on, trying to make it the best I can at the highest possible quality, that unfortunately ruins the very thing people really like, which is my realness and my authenticity. So I've also learned that I need to try to shorten my videos up a bit. Basically, if I look up and I've been talking for longer than 10 minutes, it's time to wrap it up.
The mastermind idea, and how to work with me on it
I really appreciate you spending this time with me today. If you'd like the best experience with me, the way I've come to think about it is a mastermind. I'm intending to be a millionaire. I'm aiming for it. I'm on the path, and I'll be there as soon as it's possible. If you want to get there faster too, let's work together and help each other get there faster.
The idea of a mastermind is identified in the book Think and Grow Rich, which is one of the most popular wealth-building books of all time. A mastermind is a group of people gathered together for the same purpose, and it's one of the most effective tools to help everybody do better. For example, the book cites a group of salespeople all looking to increase their commissions. Even if one is selling cars, one is selling vacuums, and one is selling newspapers, they all meet together in a mastermind, they all talk about increasing sales, and everybody's sales go up. That's what I'm doing here. We have regular calls and a community space to talk in, and I'm very excited about it.
Today, the best way to get all of that and to work with me on this is to join the Jerry Banfield Family. It's exactly what I need for myself and exactly what I have to offer, a group of us gathered together for the same purpose, helping each other move forward.
I really appreciate you sticking with me all the way to the end, and I would love to see you in the group. If you want more videos like this one, you can dig into my YouTube Coaching playlist, where I share more of what I've learned about growing on YouTube and building a life you love around it.