YouTuber MrBeast reveals the single worst trait he can’t stand in business.
When it comes to success, Jimmy ‘MrBeast’ Donaldson has one non-negotiable trait that he doesn’t allow in his team.
The world’s most popular YouTuber appeared on an episode of Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast where he opened up about his rise to fame, dealing with negativity and and the behind-the-scenes chaos of Beast Games.
At one point in the interview, Bartlett asked him to name the single worst trait, Donaldson didn’t hesitate.
The 26-year-old believes that surrounding yourself with high-achievers is the key to growth and as such, the trait he avoids is ‘mediocracy.’
“Great people love great people,” the YouTuber stated.
“There’s something about great people that pulls some kind of animal out of you that makes you want to do more and push more and believe things are possible.”
As a businessman, MrBeast describes that when put in a room full of successful entrepreneurs, he ‘turns into a different human.’
However, if you place him with people who ‘run small businesses’ and ‘lack ambition’, he feels like a completely different person.
According to the philanthropist: “If you put a bunch of A-players around more A-players, they just build off of each other.”
However, if you throw in a few ‘C-people’ into the mix, things start to change and the attitude to work falls apart.
“They’ll start pulling them down and […] making them not want to work as much,” he added.
“Everyone knows [to] get rid of the C-players.”
But, while C-players are obvious weak links, MrBeast says the real issue is the people in between the A’s and C’s. This is because this group of people ‘feed off the energy’ but too many of them ‘drags the culture down.’
“Those are like the worst,” the philanthropist remarked.
The Diary Of A CEO / YouTube
With a crew of 500+ people, MrBeast acknowledges that not every role requires extreme passion.
In ‘mundane roles’ like accounting, he admits they don’t need ‘A-players’ in the same way. But when it comes to video production and editing, he only wants people as ‘obsessed’ and enthusiastic as he is.
Donaldson ended by saying that strong leaders must ensure that ‘great people work with other great people.’
The top reason people leave jobs is because they don’t enjoy who they’re working with and, as Donaldson said, they’re dragged down by people who aren’t on their level of enthusiasm.
MrBeast has revealed that Beast Games was ‘not a good financial decision’ as he shared that he actually lost over $10 million.
It has been widely believed that the Amazon Prime game show must have been a huge financial success given its enormous budget, which has been reported to be over $100 million.
However, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has said otherwise.
Known for his outlandish YouTube videos involving extreme challenges with enormous cash prizes, it was no surprise when Donaldson shared that he was hosting his own game show.
And the YouTuber spared no expense. With the grand prize set to a whopping $10 million, Donaldson also gave an additional $15 million away to various other contestants throughout the show.
And that isn’t all, he even built an entire city where participants could live during filming, which cost around $14 million to construct.
Now, Donaldson has spoken out about how much money he made – or lost – during the production of the show.
Appearing in an episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett, Donaldson admitted that his game was not a ‘good financial decision’.
Bartlett asked the YouTuber: “How out of pocket are you?”
Donaldson responded with: “Tens of millions, yeah, it was not a good financial decision to make Beast Games, I lost money.
“I would have more money if I didn’t film it.”
But when asked if he had any regrets, Donaldson shook his head.
MrBeast revealed how much money he has lost making Beast Games (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Prime Video)
He continued: “No, no, it’s great. For me, it was about making season one as good as possible, you know I can’t let the YouTube Community down because creators don’t have a good rep when it comes to doing stuff on streaming platforms and I’m getting 200 million views a video on average over the course of the first year and I’m going to talk to these stream platforms and they’re like, ‘we’ve been burned by creators before’.
“I’m like, ‘bro I’m not a TikToker that dances, I have a production company and I routinely make spectacles, and even me, these streaming platforms weren’t taking serious so I was like, ‘f***, if I fail it’s over, like no streaming platform is ever going to touch a YouTuber ever again so my big thing was just making sure this crushed.”
And Donaldson has said that the show has helped ‘open the doors’ for other creators.
He went on to add: “I already know of two creators that have signed deals just on the backend
success of Beast Games and probably, I mean hundreds of millions of dollars is going to flow into creators’ pockets just because of Beast Games in the next year.”
MrBeast has revealed the reason why he has ‘less than a million dollars in the bank’ despite being a billionaire ‘on paper’.
The YouTuber is known for his over-the-top challenge videos involving high budgets competitions with huge cash prizes.
And after it was revealed that his recent game show on Amazon Prime, Beast Games, had a budget of a whopping $100 million, you’d be forgiven for thinking he had a lot in the bank.
However, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has said that he isn’t even a millionaire when it comes to his bank statements.
He appeared in a recent episode of The Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett where the YouTuber was open about his low bank balance.
When Bartlett asked if he was a billionaire, Donaldson replied: “On paper, yeah, but I mean, in my actual bank account, I have less than a million dollars.”
And the content creator went on to explain the reason for this, sharing that he invests a lot of his income back into his brand and he only pays himself enough money to live on each month.
Bartlett asked Donaldson if he pays himself to which the YouTuber responded with: “A little bit but I have some assistants and things like that so I try to pay myself what I spend personally a month just to stay even.
“Money is fuel to grow a business.”
During the podcast, Donaldson also revealed that his game show was actually not a ‘good financial decision’ for him.
Bartlett asked the YouTuber: “How out of pocket are you?”
MrBeast claims he doesn’t have a million dollars in the bank (YouTube/@MrBeast)
Donaldson responded with: “Tens of millions, yeah, it was not a good financial decision to make Beast Games, I lost money.
“I would have more money if I didn’t film it.”
But when asked if he had any regrets, Donaldson shook his head.
He continued: “No, no, it’s great. For me, it was about making season one as good as possible, you know I can’t let the YouTube Community down because creators don’t have a good rep when it comes to doing stuff on streaming platforms and I’m getting 200 million views a video on average over the course of the first year and I’m going to talk to these stream platforms and they’re like, ‘we’ve been burned by creators before’.”
He went on to add: “I already know of two creators that have signed deals just on the backend
success of Beast Games and probably, I mean hundreds of millions of dollars is going to flow into creators’ pockets just because of Beast Games in the next year.”
Anyone who is anyone knows who Jimmy Donaldson is, the thing is, you probably know him as his online alter ego of MrBeast. Boasting the most popular channel on YouTube and an incredibly successful Amazon Prime show, MrBeast has come a long way from uploading Minecraft Let’s Plays as “MrBeast6000”. He’s now sat down for an interview on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
His big break came when he posted a video of him counting to 100,000 in 2017, and from there, there’s been no stopping him. These days, MrBeast’s biggest video is his November 2021 “$456,000 Squid Game In Real Life!”, which earned him a jaw-dropping 755.5 million views.
He regularly breaks the internet with videos of him living in a cave for a week, making real-life chocolate factories, and forcing members of the public to survive for 100 days in a nuclear bunker.
The content creator deals with his diagnosis despite a packed schedule (Amazon Prime)
Despite his astronomical fame, reported net worth of over $1 billion, and recent engagement, it hasn’t been easy for Donaldson. Speaking to Steven Bartlett on the The Diary of a CEO podcast, he opened up about his diagnosis with Crohn’s disease.
Explaining how Crohn’s disease is where your immune system attacks itself, MrBeast says he first noticed it when he started going to the toilet up to 10 times a day at age 15: “My GI (gastrointestinal) tract is like literally just attacking itself. It’s very weird, your immune system in your gut thinks your gut is a foreign invader.
“And so it just starts attacking itself, which if you’re just using the bathroom 10 times a day and not digesting food, it’s why you drop weight rapidly.”
Saying it ‘hurts like crazy’, Donaldson added: “It feels like someone’s stabbing you in the gut with knife constantly when it’s really, really bad.”
He says that Crohn’s disease led to him losing 50lbs, and after trying a series of different medications, he’s now on Remicade that ‘nukes’ your immune system.
As for the side effects, MrBeast continued: “My voice sounds a little off right now because I just got the flu, I got COVID six times, I got shingles. I get sick all the time because for me to have my GI tract stop attacking itself, we basically have to shut down my immune system.”
There are still flare-ups of his Crohn’s disease, and coupled with his Remicade, Donaldson says it makes him very sick and very tired: “I just live life on hard mode, to be honest…If you wake up and you have energy, like you’re already leaps and bounds ahead of me.
“You know, it makes things way more difficult.”
Admitting that MrBeast looks like someone who is so productive and full of energy, Bartlett asked if the content creator still wakes up some days with fatigue. Explaining how he spent four days in a South African hospital because he got the flu and it takes him a lot longer to recover, MrBeast said that if he didn’t spend so much time working, he’d put his time and efforts into researching Crohn’s disease.
Referring to his medicine as a ‘band-aid’, he claims he’s met with the top Crohn’s doctors and this is the best solution for now. As for pushing through, Donaldson concluded: “You just got to really love what you do, I mean and push through, it’s pretty brutal.”
MrBeast has revealed just how much every Beast Games contestant won from the $25,019,995 prize fund.
And fans were shocked to discover how much the winner of the show earned.
MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is known for his outlandish videos involving extreme challenges with enormous cash prizes.
The winner earned a cash prize of $10 million (Amazon Prime)
So, it was no surprise when the YouTuber shared that he was hosting his own game show on Amazon Prime.
And now, Donaldson has given viewers a full breakdown of the winnings that were distributed during the series.
One thousand contestants battled it on Beast Games with the hope of winning big, with the grand prize set to a whopping $10 million.
Donaldson spent around $14 million just building the accommodation, which became known as Beast City, for participants in Toronto, Canada.
The YouTuber also gave an additional $15 million away to various other contestants throughout the show.
But that’s not all, Lamborghinis and even a private island were up for grabs.
Player 831, whose real name is Jeff Allen, ended up taking the crown prize but interestingly, he will only take home $5.03 million after taxes.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Donaldson broke down exactly how much cash he had given away in Beast Games.
MrBeast revealed how much money the contestants of his show made (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Prime Video)
The lowest amount that was awarded to a player was $5,000, while the YouTuber explained that every single person who took part in the reality show was awarded $2,000.
But despite the show being one of the most expensive to put together in history, we shouldn’t be losing any sleep over the state of Donaldson’s finances.
The content creator hasn’t exactly been left in financial ruin after appearing to break the bank in the name of good TV.
In fact, that is far from reality as, according to Forbes, Donaldson boasts an enormous net worth of $85million.
So it looks like the money it cost for Beast Games was merely a small drop in the ocean for him.
Despite airing the show’s payouts to the world, people still had pressing questions about the money which had changed hands.
One fan asked Donaldson to provide an ‘inside look into the underwriting model of the show’, adding: “[I’m] interested in the returns with this level of costs incurred.”
It is not yet known how much money was made from the show’s success on Prime but here’s hoping they were able to scrape back the millions of dollars they spent.
