Being Jimmy Before MrBeast

Shaan shares a story about MrBeast's advice to aspiring YouTubers and the reality of his journey to success.

"We've become friends with Jimmy Donaldson, who's MrBeast on YouTube. At his headquarters, all these YouTubers come like a pilgrimage just to see him. They always ask, 'Jimmy, got a few minutes? Any advice on how I could be successful on YouTube? Please tell me how I could be successful.'

It's so funny because first of all, all of his videos are public. Everything he's doing is visible. You can see all of his videos from ten years ago.

But beyond that, he says the same thing every time: 'You want to win? You want to be successful on YouTube? Here's what you're going to do. You're going to make 100 videos. One at a time. When you make the next video, pick one thing you're going to do better - a better intro, a better caption, a better outro, better music, better pacing, better editing, whatever. One thing every time for 100 videos. Just do that. And when you're done with the 100, come talk to me. I'm going to tell you exactly what you need to do next.'

I asked, 'Does anybody ever come back to you? What do you tell them when they come back?'

He said, 'They never come back. Nobody is willing to do 100 videos. They all want to be MrBeast. They don't want to be Jimmy, who started doing videos when he was 12. At 13, nobody watched. 14, nobody watched. 15, nobody watched. 16, is anyone ever going to watch? 17, still nobody watching. 18, oh my god, a couple of people watched. 19, finally somebody watched. Seven years through hell.

Nobody's willing to do even 100 videos, let alone seven years. And by the way, for the very few people, that 1% who are serious and do it, by the time they get to 100, they don't need me. They're flying. They forgot all about me. They are so full of stuff to do because they have so much momentum, because they made 100 videos and tried to make one thing better every single time.'

That idea, that rule of 100, applies to basically any pursuit, not just YouTube. The funny thing is nobody's serious, so nobody does it. If you just decide 'I'm serious about this, I will be serious, I'm a serious person,' you're already ahead of the game."