There's a reason no one makes videos like me. Because no one wants to live the life I live or be miserable. Are you happy? Um...
I... I'm gonna be honest. So far, more unhappy than happy? Well, has it ever crossed your mind to quit YouTube as a whole?
Oh yeah, of course. Really? Yeah. Oh yeah.
Mr. Beast. Mr. Beast.
He is the biggest YouTuber on the planet. And he's building empires. I mean, is that anything this man can't do? Your business empire is much bigger than the most people realize.
Yeah, I mean, I'm only 26 and we have a large YouTube channel in the world. And Beast games are just gonna shatter us in pretty crazy records. And we do nine figures of these schools. But a lot of that stems from being a very confused child.
It's not fitting in that feels like a freak. Plus, I really wanted to take care of my mom because when I was 11, I literally went bankrupt and lost everything. Luckily, it worked out. And it's because I'm really good at obsessing over one thing more than anyone else on the planet.
Like, all that's 10s of million dollars on these games. But he's about making season one as good as possible. And I just really love solving complex problems. Like, how many kids do you think are in child labor in West Africa?
Just on cocoa farms. Just 1.5 million. And so with these schools, we're trying to get over a million kids out of child labor. But the ironic part is the more I help people, the more I get.
Like, I've read over 5,000 messages telling me to kill myself. I mean, there's definitely times where I would cry. But if my mental health was a priority, I wouldn't be a successful day. This is the price you have to pay.
But when is enough enough? Honestly? I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and all the other channels, the majority of people that watch this podcast haven't yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button. Wherever you're listening to this, I would like to make a deal with you.
If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button, I will work tirelessly for now and until forever to make the show better and better and better and better. I can't tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button. The show gets bigger, which means we can expand the production, bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do this thing we love. If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button, whatever you're listening to this, that would mean the world to me.
That is the only favor I will ever ask you. Thank you so much for your time. Back to this episode. Jimmy, we've really just only met and you are already, to me, a bit of a Rubik's Cube.
In so many ways. I've been trying to piece the pieces together to understand the uniqueness of you because you're so unbelievably unique. We just drove over here in the car and hearing you speak about the way that you view life and speaking to yesterday on the phone. I've interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people.
I've never ever met someone who has the perspective on life that you have. You are truly unique. What do I need to understand about your earliest years to understand who you are? Oh boy.
Yeah, my earliest years, I'm just a government. I just never give up. I mean, there was no world where I ever would have quit. I just, I mean, we're just jumping right into it.
It's a great, no intro or anything. Just boom. It's like whole people. When I was 11, I just said I'm going to be a YouTuber.
I'm going to die trying and I meant to, and there was like, even if no one still watch my videos this day, I would still be going. And so people hate it, but I'm just the most competitive, stubborn person you'll ever meet and I just never give up. Where did that come from? I have no idea.
It feels like it was just in my DNA, my bloodstream. My mom hated it growing up. We always argue and like, you know, she has this thing where like once Jimmy said it's mine, it's something he just never stops, and it would always piss her off because when it was YouTube, she wanted me to be studying or things like that. But I really don't know.
It's just always been how I am. And I think a lot of people have these weird tendencies and they tend to like, like unlearn them. And like, I had faces in my life where I was like, am I too extreme. Like, people are very intimidated by me because I just am so obsessed with work and I'm so all in.
And like, is this like unhealthy? Should I try to be more like a normal human, especially when I was a teenager? It's a lot easier. when you're making lots of money, it's admirable, it's respectable, it's like, look, those are traits we want, but when you're not successful, you're a lunatic when you have all these traits.
And so back then, I'd occasionally be like, man, like should I try to be more normal? But I just could never do it anytime I tried to, I mean, I mentioned this before, but one of the things that I have a memory of that, like really is burning my brain is like, people, one time like a high schooler told me when I was in middle school, like, all you do is talk about YouTube, like, do you know how to do anything else, like you're just like a freak. And I tried to like watch South Park, you know, because that's what a lot of people in my school watch that fit in, and I just couldn't. And I eventually just like stopped talking because I just didn't relate to anyone.
And people used to call me Mew. Like, one of my teachers literally asked like, if I was Mew, like, because that's how little I spoke, because no one in the school I went to was entrepreneurial or one to build businesses, and I just didn't want to do anything else. And yeah, eventually I started to succeed, found other lunatics, and that's great. But, you know, I like to tell this story when I'm on podcast, because if you have a younger viewer who's in that same spot, you're not the problem, you're environment, and you just gotta put yourself in a better environment.
What about your parents, mum and dad? You talk about your mother a lot? Yeah. No, I don't, I didn't get it from them.
What influence did they both have on you? Well, I don't really talk about my dad much. That's a long story I don't need to get into it. But my mum, honestly, it wasn't, it's great now.
Me and my mum have a phenomenal relationship, but on the come up it was pretty rough, because in 2008 they were over leveraged, so we literally went bankrupt, and so they had properties that they used to get other properties, and then when everything collapsed, they lost basically everything. So my mum was working two jobs and barely getting by. And so we, like I didn't see her that much, because when I was coming home from school, she was doing her second job. So it was a lot, because she was a single mum, raising us.
She's working all the time. I don't talk about a lot of this, I have Crohn's disease, so I was very sick growing up. My brother also had issues as well, and so we're not the healthiest kids in our teenage year. She's just trying to get by and take care of us.
And then she comes home and she just has this brat that's being annoying, and like, I want to be a YouTuber, and she's just begging me. Sometimes she would literally cry and beg me to do homework. And I mean, I was, I was like, I didn't mean it in a mean way, but I mean, even one time I literally told her, if you want my homework done so bad, well, you just do it. That's what I told my mum.
What am I doing? I don't know. Since it's like, I don't care. I just want to be successful on my little businesses.
And so it was like, bless her heart. Luckily it worked out. So now I spoil her, she has her second home, she has anything she could ever want, she has. And so the first thing I did was start paying my mum, take care of her once I started making money, because she gave everything to like, give me.