What MrBeast Understands About Attention That Most Don’t

Beast is the preview to you can build an empire on the back of a human. Beast has done it bigger, better, piece of content by piece of content. He's got the receipts. There's a video of him sitting in his room that has no views. All the social networks are still underpriced. You just have to be great at it. The algorithm is the report card. I don't even think Beast has even begun to actually cook. We created this story. You can have a life making content on the internet. It made Hollywood realize you can easily translate from here to that screen. The creator is the studio. There's a lot of kids dreaming right now because of Jimmy's work. He's super young. He's creative. It's incredibly impressive. This is a behindthescenes look on how we do articles. Everyone's got their own process. I'm not a writer, but I'm a talker and I got the team. Pay attention. Hopefully, this maps to something some of you can replicate to get your writing game up in the era of Substack long form X and LinkedIn. Gary, when you talk about the individual empire, would you say Mr. Beast is a prime example of that? — A prime example. He is the example. Um, ironically, use the word prime. Logan's another one. KSI. Yeah. I mean, these kids, you know, it's funny. I came from a business lens to content and Empathy Wines. I had a brand years before a lot of the brands content like, but they did it bigger and better and Beast has done it at the highest scale. He's super young. He's got all the leverage right now and he's creative and creative is dangerous. The infrastructure he's building, the capabilities he's building, it's incredibly impressive. — Which aspects of Mr. Beast and what he's built translate to the Joe or the Mary on Main Street trying to start their own content empire? — I mean, he's got the receipts. There's a video of him sitting in his room that has like no views and he's nice and clean and shaved and very cute. South Carolina, I believe. And he's an inspiration because he did it and he did it piece of content by piece of content and you can literally watch I mean by the way this is why I've always loved to bid watched him and you know me too. Like you can go watch the first episode of Wine Library TV. — Hello everyone and welcome to I didn't even have a mic. lighting like you know $300 camera and you can like there he is. There's Gary working in a liquor store at 31. Then Beast has done it bigger, better, better. And um and that's where he's at. — If Mr. Beast were doing this in 2010, it'd be on YouTube. If he were doing this in the ' 70s, '8s, '90s, it'd be on traditional television cable. What about this moment 2026 2027 um makes this so possible for him? — I think live streaming even beast because he always knows where the attention is as well. He hangs out with streamers. So the live streaming ecosystem, the Twitch, the kick, the Tik Tok live, the YouTube live, that ecosystem, that whole world, the Kais, the speeds, that whole world is happening. So that's an underpriced attention place. And then it's just being good. YouTube, YouTube Shorts, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, TwitterX, they're all underpriced. You just have to be great at it early on. When they're underpriced and no one's knowing about it, you have to be good at it to be huge. The more need it gets bigger and everyone's on it, the more you have to be great. On Instagram right now, you have to be remarkable to break through. And that's supply and demand of attention. — What does the rise of creators like Mr. Beast and others signal about the rise of creatorowned IP verse studioowned IP. — Yeah. I mean, this is why I'm writing the book, The Individual Empire. Like, the creator is the studio. Mr. Beast has a studio. We have a studio. We're a production company. Everybody's going to have a studio. Everyone's consumer packaged goods infrastructure, a marketing infrastructure, a supply chain infrastructure. We're making our own stuff here. We're I'm making my comic books. We made this. I invented this character. We made this physical comic and we sell it on [clears throat] live streaming. The individual empire is here and Beast and Bartlett and me and Alex Cooper and Earl and you're just going to see it over and over again. And this is the beginning. Crush it. Show it. crush it was you can be an influencer in 2009. I wrote that in '09. Now I'm telling you beast is the preview to you can build an empire on the back of a human. — Mr. Beast talks a lot about the audience rather than the algorithm. And you can see that flow through everything he does. It's audience, audience. Not about let me scheme the algorithm. — Just for on the record so no one's confused, the words are interchangeable.

The algorithm is the black and white scorecard that you made it for the audience. The algorithm is the report card. It's the score. When I say make it for the algo or I say consumer centric or audience, it's all the same thing. It's for the people. That's exactly right. You need to know how the algo works. Mr. Beast talks about the audience, but he was the person that was savant level skilled at the thumbnail. — In a decade from now, what do you think Beast Games and Mr. Beast as a whole will be remembered as? being one of the pioneers of the individual empire, a human that built an audience through what he first loved, scaled that. Beast Games is the scaled execution of what Jimmy always wanted to do. And at first he had five bucks to do it. And then he had 5,000 bucks 50,000 bucks and that was wow on YouTube. And then he had 500,000 bucks and that was wow wow. And now he's got at the highest levels. But he's also got a consumer product and he's going to do everything he ever wants to do in nonprofit, for-profit. He's a preview, not the anomaly. — What do you think about Beast Games in particular? — Let me tell you what Beast Game really is. It made Hollywood realize it was all true along the way. There was this moment in Hollywood where they're like, "Yeah, you could be famous here, but you can't. " Beast Games is a lightning rod in culture, but in Hollywood now, I mean, it helps people like me and everybody else that's big on social and on the internet. It proved to everyone that you can easily translate from here to that screen because they're all the same screen. It's all the same Kudos to Amazon. I don't know the details, but they clearly let Jimmy Cook, you know, they let him have all the creative in infrastructure he I assume needed. So um beast schemes is important and will also be looked back on as I think you'll see more and more creators and entrepreneurs and creator entrepreneurs and entrepreneur creators win in feature films meaningful series reality scripted non-scripted I mean listen it inspires me back to this when this different than Beast games you know because that's non-scripted when this becomes a feature film like that's going to be a creator who created. So, I'm really excited about all of this. And, you know, I think what I'm happy about is there's a lot of kids dreaming right now at 13, 14, 15 because of Jimmy's work.