Forget Bill Gates, follow Mr. Beast if you want to be successful

Mr. Beast has over 100 million subscribers, with more than 17 billion views on Youtube. The North Star to his success is the desire to create the best video in the world.

24-year-old American Youtuber, Jimmy Donaldson, best known on Youtube as MrBeast, is one of the highest-earning Youtube creators in the world, estimated to have a net worth of US$25 million. He has given away a couple of US$100,000 to random people if they quit their jobs, started his own chocolate brand, and built a chocolate factory to recreate “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”, just to name a few of the insane video ideas he had. Recently, he has spent US$3.5 million to orchestrate Squid Game in real life, amassing over 276 million views to date.

This guy is clearly on a roll.

But I am not here to tell you the story of another school dropout self-starter who has wealthy parents. Neither am I going to dwell on the fact that Mr. Beast is another example of Gen-Zers breaking all norms and totally crushing it at a young age.

His journey to become one of the biggest Youtubers in the world is not a walk in the park. In his own words in an interview with Joe Roegan, he has been zealously working on his craft as a content creator on YouTube for more than 10 years. Looking at his journey, there are three lessons we can learn from him.

Be obsessed with getting so good at what you are doing that people can’t ignore you

Mr. Beast started making videos when he was a teenager with no money, no equipment, and not much knowledge about videos.

What drove him forward was not to one day become a millionaire or celebrity. It was an obsessive drive to make the best videos possible that empowered him. He was obsessed with learning everything there was to learn about videos: how to use a camera, video pacing, coloring, editing, what makes a video viral, how to look for trending ideas, etc.

He approached the domain with a single-track mind, to the extent that he hardly had friends because all he could talk about was YouTube, back in the days when being a YouTuber was not a thing.

In other words, he has always focused more on honing his crafts than trying to monetize them as early as possible. And this mindset has paid off.

This mindset is echoed in Carl Newport’s revolutionizing book “So Good They Can’t Ignore You”. Once you attain enough “career capitals”, aka gain an expert skill level in a domain, you will have the power to control how much you earn and how flexibly you work.

Unless we aim to be the best in the world, it is not necessary to be as zealous as Mr. Beast. However, the essence of the principle still applies: pursue excellence, and success will follow, pants down.

It might take years of deliberate practice to be excellent

Mr. Beast did not just make videos for 6 months or a year before he became big. It took him 5 years of religiously making videos day in and day out before one video went viral. He also did not just blindly make videos. He studied what constituted a good video, practiced emulating it, reflected upon his mistakes, and did it differently next time.

For instance, he and his friends looked at 1,000 thumbnail images and checked if there was a correlation between their brightness and the number of views.

This is what Angela Duckworth, author of the groundbreaking book “Grit: The power of passion and perseverance”, calls deliberate practice. Be it learning how to play an instrument, a sport, or make YouTube videos, practitioners need to know what the next level of proficiency looks like, and deliberately practice their weak areas to get there.

This process is by nature uncomfortable and tiring. And it requires grit for practitioners to pull through. The reward is that once you attain an expert skill level, you will experience a flow state of execution where it feels effortless to do something. For example, by now, it is probably second nature to Mr. Beast to make an impactful 40-second intro that hooks viewers.

My takeaway from Mr. Beast’s experience is to have a more realistic gauge of how much effort it will take me to be an excellent product manager or an excellent writer. I, first, need to know what the next level of skill looks like, then deliberately practice what is missing. And that probably will not happen in a month or two.

Be surrounded by “lunatics” who want to pursue the same thing

Mr. Beast’s YouTube journey was accelerated after he met four other friends who were also crazy about YouTube. They talked every day for 1,000 days micro-analyzing viral videos to extract patterns they could apply. There were days when Mr. Beast got on a call with his friends at 7 am and only got off at 10 pm. They all started with 10,000-20,000 subscribers and by the time they no longer had frequent calls, everyone had millions of subscribers.

Indeed, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

This is a powerful testament to that wisdom. Sticking to a vision of excellence and putting in hours of deliberate practice by yourself can be a lonely journey. Nothing beats a community that can support your growth.

Because of that, I would like to shout out to all product managers and writers out there who would like to connect with like-minded individuals about their journey to be better at their crafts. Feel free to connect with me at https://calendly.com/eveyle/booking.