MrBeast & Mark Rober Break Down Their Billion Dollar Empires

- This is like something I'm super passionate about. - It like blew my brain. - This is the most important thing I'll do my whole life. - I'm not supposed to talk about it yet. - I guess it's easier. - No, I'm not talking about it yet. - Come on, Jimmy. - In 1957, Walt Disney made this map, which showed you how his films are connected to his merch, which is connected to theater cells, which is connected to radio, and everything across his empire. And I gotta ask Jimmy about how he's making his own version of his Disney map. We talked about Beastables, to Beast Game, to his different YouTube channels, to his new theme park, Beastline. - Beastline is a theme park that we open. We're aiming for around 10,000 people a day. We can open one here in America next. People have been talking about his Mr. Beast launching a bank. - Yes, is Mr. Beast as a company worth over $5 billion now? And then, I got to speak to Martha Rober about how he's building his own version of Disney between CrunchLad. - He was like, I will pay you $50 million right now. I was like, hell no. - To his YouTube videos. - That cost about $5 million. - Can you take me through how you think about thumbnails? - And I'd be honest, all of these, I kind of hate. - I think this is the first time you're talking about your Netflix show. - Sure, let me get the scoop. There's never been anything like this in history. This is, yeah, sorry. - Like, they need help. - When we filmed this all in the most magical place in the world, Disneyland. - All right, so Jimmy, we're at Disneyland. So, I thought I'd be fitting to go over Walt Disney's business map from 1957. What sticks out as you look at this? - This is a big influence. This graphic right here on the way media developed. - Did this have a big influence on you in terms of like, people seeing characters on TV and then buying merchandise? - And those characters are also in the movies, which are also in Disneyland and all ties together. For us, we are just, I mean, I don't have as much IP, obviously it's Disney. And inadvertently, I think this is just as your building more IP, kind of the natural way it goes, because it doesn't make sense, you know, if you're doing TV and you're doing movies, or in our case, if we're doing YouTube and we're doing streaming shows, they have completely different people every time. Obviously, my boys that are in the YouTube channel are also in the streaming show and vice versa. But the beauty is for him, it's just the sheer scale they did. I mean, Disneyland, the fact that you can come here and you see characters walking down the street in the rides and you recognize it and you know them personally and stuff. It's just amazing. Like, the scale that they've done, this is absurd. - So Jimmy, we made-- - Oh, God. - Oh, God. What looks like your Disney map, there's a lot happening here. - Yeah. - And we put a spectrum of digital to physical-- - That's cool. - Okay. - I'm wondering if you could break down your Disney map. - Okay. - So, for starters, I've never had someone make a graph like this, and I think this is actually really well put together, I'm actually very impressed. And so, for starters, we have the YouTube channel over here. We have our Mr. B.C. YouTube channel, which is the most subscribed to YouTube channel in the world. We have B.C. reacts, then we also have our gaming channel, which is one of the largest gaming channels in the world. We have our philanthropy channel, East Animations, which by the time you see this, B.C. laughs will be out on our first animated show. I've been wanting to get an animation on YouTube because I also have watched anime my whole life. And we have a ton of other channels that we're also starting. And so, at its core, yeah, this corner is YouTube. - Okay, so now tell me about experiences. What are you doing to make this happen in the real world? - B.C. Lane, if you haven't heard, is a theme park that we open. It's not a permanent one, it's in the Middle East, 'cause we have a very big Middle Eastern audience, so we opened it in the middle of Saudi Arabia, so people from the Middle East could experience it. If enough of you want, we can open one here in America next. I've obviously always looked up to Walt Disney and just seeing him bring his ideation and his brands and everything to life, it's obviously huge inspiration. And so, this has been a long time coming and something I've always wanted to do. And so, we created B.C. Lane. Roller coasters and stuff are fun. Don't get me wrong, that's fun. But there's so many theme parks. You have six likes, Disney, there's community fairs, blah, blah, blah, like city fairs, state parks. There's all this stuff where you can ride roller coasters. And so, I wanted to do something different, something bigger, like I personally am terrible at roller coasters. There are a lot of people who love rides. I just am not one of them. And so, this B.C. Lane has that for those of you, but the other half of B.C. Lane is designed for people who are like me, who are very competitive, who want to play games, who like arcades, but have wanted to do that, you know, IRL size, real life size. So, but Tower Siege is an example where we have these 10 catapults, where we fling balls into these giant tubes, and if you make it in, you get points. And our largest arcade in the world is what I'm calling it. I don't know if that's actually true yet or not. We have a pyramid over here with buns on the side, and you're racing people on the other side to press all the buns and slide down it. We have mazes over here, real mazes that you actually go through, and you're racing to get to the end. We have like a block stacking game where you see who can stack the tallest tower in a minute. And yeah, my theory is that people will love the competitiveness, people will love to just go do something. And it's almost like different versions of sports you can play just in theme park format. - Yeah, and also what's blowing my mind is like, we visited Saudi together. And the speed at which they build, something like right now, all of this is a bunch of dirt. - Well, on the ground. - Concrete. - Concrete, okay, concrete. There's a foundation. - It's a parking lot. - It's a parking lot, but okay, in 19 days. - In 19 days, there'll be a roller coaster. - Mm-hmm. - There'll be this massive entrance, and there'll be all of these game. Like how many people do you think can fit in this park at any one time? Like how, is it, is this like, - The wool wool. - And it's like this one size Disney room. - So we're aiming for around 10,000 people a day, but at a certain time, a couple thousand, we can't have all 10,000 at once. The other thing, too, to give context to what he's saying, is a lot of this stuff is assembled off site and brought over. So these things are being built. They're just being built off site and brought over. Oh, some of it is just, because, you know, we're filming this before it launches, we don't want people to know. So we're like, being sneaky, doing an off site, moving over last minute. - Talk to me about the software, 'cause there's been a lot of news about Mr. Beast financial. - So like, you, you, you, you filed that. - I got that. - Yeah, so on the, Mr. Beast financial, yeah, people saw the trademark we filed. It was literally, there's a tweet with 30 million impressions and it started going crazy. I get news, NBC literally covered it. You could throw it up on the screen yesterday on national television. So people, I've been talking about, is Mr. Is Mr. Yes, I, we deal a lot with money in our videos and I actually have this fun story of when I was younger, there's this YouTuber called Woody's Gamertack, but he's a Call of Duty YouTuber. But, you know, when I was younger, I loved Call of Duty, but this guy would also give life advice while talking about Call of Duty. And so I was watching him for Call of Duty, but he was like, weirdly giving me life advice. And one time he did a video of his investment portfolio and he showed up 'cause he's older, showed how money he invests when he was younger, turned into a couple million dollars and he showed like the power of compounding. And I remember when I was like, 13, I was like, what? He, he put like $10,000, but that turned into like $100,000 and then he kept doing that and turned into a million dollars and I like, blew my brain. I never, I mean, I'm sure obviously I would have learned about compound interest in investing later, but this guy who was playing Call of Duty, and I wasn't even watching him to learn about finances, ended up teaching me a lot about investing and kicked off a lot of my passion about just, you know, building business and things like that. And so I think it would be fun to start weaving in more, you know, tones in our videos where we educate people. I'm probably also on a separate YouTube channel. This is not all that would fit on the distribution, but educating people on investing and showing them what is Roth IRA and just like taking my younger audience to a similar experience I had with Woody back in the day. You probably could find that video very tied about investing. And so I'd love to make financial content on end and just feels like a nice fit for us because we do so much with money. - Wow. - And we also have Viral. So it's just essentially Viral's like a platform where we connect brands with Clippers and basically let's say you're a movie studio and you just drop the movie. You can, you know, put up here. Hey, if you guys post clips about the trail of the movie, I'll pay you a thousand dollars for every million views that those clips get on TikTok or Instagram. And what about view stats and tell me about that? View stats is our analytics platform. We just use a lot of data to make informed decisions on YouTube. We give everyone else access to it. So on view stats you can see how many views any channel on YouTube is doing per month. You can see if they change the thumbnail. Just a lot of cool stuff like that. - And then the biggest thing I was curious, I had a long conversation with your CEO, Jeff, about Beast Mobile because I'm like, how does this all fit together? And he was talking about how, you know, Beast Mobile is still early days, but shaping up to be a cell and internet service where you may offer exclusive content or a chance to be on set for your next video. - Well, Beast Mobile is the furthest out. So that's where I'm gonna have to plead the fifth order. We got some big plans here and it will all make sense, but for now, trust me, it's gonna be cool. - How do you innovate there? That is such a, I don't wanna call it boring category. - Oh, no, it is very boring. And that's where, again, as it gets closer, 'cause the problem with this is we're still road mapping and doing it as we speak. So I don't wanna say anything that I'm then pinch and hold into, but it's similar to, like I was saying, with the financial stuff, you know, it'll make sense. Don't worry, this one, very, very excited about it. If everything here, this is obviously could be the biggest thing we're doing. And when you look back through your show now, it will all make sense. - Yeah, and what about books and film, like they do? - Yeah, and then, and other media, books and films. Well, I think the announcement already came out, writing a book with James Patterson. He's a phenomenal author. Obviously, James Patterson is doing a lot of the heavy lifting. He's the one that has written tons of books, but given my inspiration here and there, man, I wish I could tell you what the book's about, but he would kill me. - No, I'm not allowed to say what the book is about. But we have, well, it's a good story. Just give me, it's a really good story. - Let me add, did the book have anything to do with the YouTube content? - Well, yeah, the big thing though is, which James is very passionate about, I'm very passionate about is, when I was younger, you would have these things where your English class, whatever, they'd give you a book, you have to read it, and you have to pass a quiz, they'd get you to read, hated it, I hated it. I would always clip, note it, whatever. The internet was starting to become a big thing. I'd just cheat on it. 'Cause I hated reading the books. And so I thought that I just, I'm not a reader. I thought books suck, books are boring, books are lame. And a lot of young people share the same mindset as me, that books suck, and they don't know. and you grow up and you miss out on so much knowledge. And then when I got my early 20s, I read Steve Jobs' biography, loved it. I mean, like I couldn't put it down. It was the first time in my life I ever enjoyed it. As far as I can remember, I ever enjoyed a book. And then I read Elon Musk' biography. I read The Goal, which I make my employees read now. I started reading business books. And I was, I love reading books. I just hated the books they're making reading school. The books at school were boring. They're horrible. And I want to help kids have that same realization because once I realize I love books, now I throw on audio books. I don't actually physically read too many. I just listen to them. But I get so much knowledge and so much value out of it that I otherwise would have lost because I thought books were just terrible because that's what I was conditioned to. And so me and James are just really hoping that, if we make something that my audience would love, we could potentially get millions of kids to realize that books are fun. And just because school told you books suck and made you read books that suck doesn't mean they do suck. It just means you weren't reading the right thing. Yeah, how does the Mr. Beast channel, which has over 400 million subscribers, how does that play with streaming? Like we just did behind the scenes of-- Tell 'em, he did the behind the scenes for Beast Games. It's crazy. Coming next year. I don't know how much we could talk about it. But that was crazy to see how you've used YouTube to test ideas before doing it bigger on Beast Games for streaming. Yeah, so the beauty for us with Beast Games is we have a YouTube channel where we can test things that don't cost tens of millions of dollars like they might on our big show. And so that's nice because we're always doing things with contestants in these small versions of a game. And so I can do a game for $200,000 in one of my YouTube videos. And if it goes well and people really like it, then now I can feel more confident when I spend, you know, sometimes $10 million building a set on Beast Games that the viewers will like it. And the products are another final aspect here. I was looking at your videos. Over 60% of your YouTube videos now have a mention of festivals. Surprise is not 100%. To be honest. How do you think about like involving your products, like Mr. Beast Lab, like, you know, that directly like feeds into the animation? A bunch of things like, how do you think about these were like Mr. Beast Dot Store? You know, Sour Strikes, you just like, how do you think about the products mapping to everything else? Yeah, well, that's where, you know, it's not just YouTube also, Beast Games, you know, season two. We talk about festivals. We talk about our Jacqueline's co-brand of products, which I'd also put up here. That's a big part of our products now too. And they kind of all tied together because even if festivals are, you know, content company, we also make a lot of content on the festival's Instagram. It's not all just promotion through here. But yeah, like, festivals with a larger set of the resource Charlotte Company in the world, we pay our farmers leaving income reference price. We auto remediate child labor on all our farms. If farms don't do that, we don't work with them. Most people don't realize that's 70% of the labor West Africa. So, festivals, you know, we're trying to get those 1.5 million kids out of child labor. So, the beauty of how all this works is like, Beastables is doing all this other stuff. If nothing over here existed, the world would never know that festivals pays its farmers a living income reference price that we audit and remediate child labor on our farms. That we actually care that there are 1.5 million kids in a legal child labor and we want to get them out. But because I have such a big voice over here on YouTube and now on streaming and in these other avenues for building, I can get that message out there. So then, it can resonate with people. And people can realize it's not just a chocolate brand. It's more than that. And so, that is kind of the beauty of how it all works and are connected. Also, I think it's a launching fact. I remember when we did behind the scenes of season 1 of Beast Games, you launched Launch League. Yep, because that was the first time. Trippie cheese. Yeah, trippie cheese. Beastables, there's a feastables cafe in Beast Games is obviously in a lot of YouTube videos. I wonder if you're going to put feastables in Beastland. You don't have to wonder, yes. There might be even like a chocolate slide or a chocolate ride or something. I mean, I literally have people who are going to go around just handing out feastable bars to people in the theme park. Wow, all day. Wow. And then maybe you serve like lunch Lee, like as part of the lunch, like your merch and that store. Oh, you were definitely having merch there. Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask Jimmy, you know, in the same way that Disney had like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Minnie Mouse, like you've developed like your cast of characters. Yeah. In many ways that you have a Chandler to read. Yeah, I would call my boys. Yeah, your boys. But they become beloved in the Beast universe. But I thought it was really interesting that you're launching new talent now. Like, matched. Was in that. Yeah. Lose 100 pounds video. And that skyrocket is Instagram and YouTube channel. And now it's become a co-host with you and the boys on your other videos. How do you think about talent development, like within Beast? Because being in a Mr. Beast video now could launch your career. And it seems like that keeps them also within this ecosystem. Well, so the big thing where most people get it wrong on YouTube is it's not like traditional Hollywood. You can't just go cast a person and jam it in and be like, all right, people are just going to love them. Like, the beauty of marriage, he's just a very likeable, charismatic guy. You know, when we put him in that video, they'll lose 100 pounds video. I wasn't like thinking, oh, he's going to turn into talent. This is how we grow his personality. Get people to love him and make him tell him. I was just like, imagine a good candidate for this. People loved him in the video. He was very vulnerable. He's very open, very charismatic and likable. And people wanted to see him more. And so now we're bringing around more. And so I can't just go grab five people that are attractive and, you know, smooth talking and just jam them in the video and be like, all right, you're now part of the talent. Be like, hey, guys, love it. They see through that. So it's got to be slower and it's got to be done the right way on YouTube. But if you do it, yeah, that's, and that's what we're working on. That's also what allows us to do so many channels. Yeah. So now contestants are almost like, if it's authentic, like a pipeline to develop like talent. Like Susie, we had her in two videos. People seem to like curious. I was thinking about potentially bringing her back. Not as like a competitor, but just to hang out with us in a video. Yeah. But yeah, just keep building out the YouTube channel and getting more and more views. But that's, you know, the YouTube is essentially the nucleus that powers all these different verticals. And then obviously, obviously, we have Make a Wish, which we're in Disneyland right now. They've been so amazing to work with. Most people don't realize. But Disney does more wishes than anyone else, especially with their parks. And so it was awesome because I reached out to Disney. I knew that was something that a lot of wish kids wanted. And I've been getting a lot of wishes, which I'm very grateful that, you know, these kids would use their wish. I mean, I want to make sure they do that they get an amazing experience. So I was like, what if we do something together? And so that turned into this event. They were like, well, what if we take this a step further? What if we brought Mark Rover out here? What if we brought, you know, Sam and Colby and all these other creators down here? Some of these kids have been a hospital about two or three months straight. Like the parent didn't remember what it was like for the kid to be happy. And so to give them that moment, it's like, literally, it's like the greatest thing ever for the parents, too. And so like all around, it's just a very magical, beautiful thing. I think this year, we're on track to get on the main show. I think like 35 billion views. Wow. Just on the Mr. B's show. And then billions across all these other ones. I want to ask, is Mr. Beast as a company worth over five billion dollars now? I plead the fifth. We've seen, I mean, is it close to that? I got a, oh, yeah. I would love some water, thank you. I want to tell you guys behind the scenes real quick, because in just a few moments, Mark Rover is going to be here to break down his creator business. But if you're watching this and wondering, how can you go about even launching some of these products? Then I have to tell you about today's sponsor, Shopify. So from Mr. Beast to Mark Rover, so many creators run their businesses on Shopify. And with their new Shopify sidekick, you have an AI powered business partner that's trained on your store. Like, here's how it works with our created apparel store with our caps, crewnecks, and hoodies. I could just ask it, can you make this photo of our cap, look like it was taken in a professional shoot? And boom, almost instantly I'll get this. Then on voice, I could ask it, hey, sidekick, what percent discount should I provide on our store to drive conversions over the holidays? A 20% discount, it's significant enough to boost conversions without hurting your margins. And boom, that's why we have a 20% discount right now. Plus Shopify's new AI store builder helps you start from scratch. Like when I built my first Shopify site for created, I just described my brand and then I got a custom theme and images in seconds. And best of all, when you sign up for Shopify using my link below, you'll get a free trial to try it all. No pressure, no strings attached. So thank you again for Shopify, check out the link below, and now back to the video. Mark, being a Disneyland with you, I feel like it's only fitting that we talk about Walt Disney's maps that he made in the 1950s. Have you seen this before? No, this is remarkable. Like it's visionary, right? This is sort of the template for how brands operate today. And so to come up with this is bonkers. It makes me feel like I wouldn't want Walt Disney's brain. Like this is too much Walt. So Mark, I wanted to map out all the things I've seen that you put out in terms of content and products, in terms of your own Disney map going from digital to physical. First, is this accurate? Did I capture everything? Because you're doing a lot now. Yeah, this feels pretty comprehensive. This is the first time I've ever seen it laid out like this. This makes it look like I was a lot more intentional about what we've done. Yeah, I'm curious, like, how do you think about the Mark Robert channel today with the tens of millions of subscribers that you have? I mean, this is where we do our biggest videos still. Like, we really swing for the fences. And none of these cost less than a couple hundred thousand dollars to make now. Wow. So it's kind of like the big ideas. You know, we usually do about 10 to 12 a year. We pretty much have all of those laid out for 2026. Wow. With four more still to release in 2025. Can you take me through one of them as an example? Because I think what's interesting about you is that, you're not only going to have to come up with the idea, the thumbnail. You have to build something. Yeah, I mean, I think a good one that sticks out here is like, I tried building my own space satellite. So we actually, over a period of three years, you know, took a, like, made a CubeSat, basically, which is now in space right now, zooming above us at 25,000 miles per hour, five times faster than a bullet. So that cost about five million dollars right there. I have video cost five million dollars. Yeah, to make the satellite, you know, For that, we had a sponsor with T-Mobile and Google Pixel. So these big-- swings, a lot of times I'll reach out with brands and say like, I have this great idea, but like, we didn't really make any money off this video, right? - What's another big swing that took a lot of years to happen? - This one here, can you fool a self-driving car? We tested to see if you could fool a self-driving car with like a road runner wall, but it started about me going into space mountain, and truthfully, I've had that idea for a video since I was a teenager. Like, I thought it'd be really cool one day to map out space mountain. I know the technology isn't there yet, but someday, there will be technology. And finally, I saw these lidar that were like, you could, you know, be small enough to be on your body. I was like, oh, this is it. A similar story with my very first video, it's an iPad on the front, an iPad on the back. I have this idea where you could, if you had a screen in a camera, you could do this. But I was like, the technology's, there's gonna be a simple way to do that. So as soon as I saw the presentation for the iPad, I think it was in spring, I was like, that's my Halloween costume. I'd never uploaded a video. I was like, that's gonna be my first video, and I wanna get on Gismoto, just like a tech blog. I was like, the pinnacle of my life goals. - Yeah. - Can you take me through like how you think about thumbnails? Because I mean, we have a newsletter where we curate thumbnails and we're always looking at your channel. - Can I be honest? Like, we are going away from like all of these, I kind of hate. - Why? - Like, I want it to feel more, like my original channel, like this is a great thumbnail. I like this one more, I like this one. - Huh. - This one's okay. I want it to feel more like, just a freeze-faring in the video. I think what happens is the reason some of these last, is your face is big in it. And I don't know, it just feels to like, Mr. Beastification. I love Jimmy, but like, that's his style. And I want to get back to like, kind of the OG, you know, like I love this. This is by far my favorite thumbnail. And I'm not even in it, right? - Interesting. - This is by far my least favorite. I need to change that one. It just feels like, overproduced. It doesn't, it feels like you're not, I feel like you see a lot of these kind of thumbnails on YouTube. What's remarkable about what we do is like, there's these crazy situations. So if you could actually just take effectively a screenshot from the video, you kind of give a proof that like, hey, there's gonna be a payoff for this. This isn't just some like AI Photoshop thing. - Yeah. - And you're gonna get bait and switched. Like this, you'll actually see this in the video. And so I'm going to be, we're like, really focusing on like a return to the roots. And I'm gonna update a lot of these. - So we talked a bit about the YouTube side. Tell me about the products. Like, why did you launch Crunch Labs and actually have a slide of which videos you've made that are just Crunch Labs sponsored versus other brands? - Oh, interesting. I've been very interested to see that. - So we'll break that down. But for people who don't know what is Crunch Labs, what are kind of the product offerings that you guys have now? - So Crunch Labs actually came from, Jimmy Kimmel and I did this like live stream for my son who has autism in early 2021. And after live stream, I was like staying at his house and he's like, you need to make a product. And I was like, ah, this isn't easy. Like people tell me all the time. You need to do a podcast, you need to write a book, you need to go on tour. And ultimately, when I say, why, why? I trace the thread down. It's always so you can make more money. And I'm like, oh, well, great news, Jimmy. I have enough money. I don't need 20 jet skis. So it's like, I have enough money, I'm good. And then Jimmy was like, yeah, but like ultimately, if you love teaching science and getting kids stoked about that, like you'll be able to do that better. They can go deeper into the trenches they actually have something that they're like integrating and working with. And I was like, so I slept on it the next morning. I was like, he's totally right. And so that was the genesis of it. So then I did this creative engineering class through the brand monthly, or I think it's called Studio Now. And that did really well. And so I had a proof point that there was some appetite here for learning engineering via my videos, right? Which I think is such an important point for creators, which is like, if you're doing a sponsorship for another brand and you're driving, like, significant click through a revenue, whatever data they show you, maybe that's a business that if it's aligned with your audience, you'd be like, well, I knew we really had something because when we told Max, he's the CEO of that, we're like, hey, I'm thinking about launching this. Do you think this is a good idea? I want to have advice. And he's pretty entrepreneurial. He's like, I will pay you $50 million right now. If I own, if you let me own the whole concept, and I do it. And that immediately told me, first of all, I was like, hell no, but I also, I knew, okay, I've got something on my hands. 'Cause he had all the data to back this up. Yeah. He was like, I will literally get $50 million and I will give it to you right now. If you create this crunch-labs thing and then I own 100% of it. Pre-launch. Pre-launch. Pre-any product being made. Nothing, yeah. Wow. So I was like, all that did was embole the mail. I was like, oh, well, that's definitely not. Because I'm not gonna become some indentured servant. And this is my, like, this is my thing, right? So we launched, and see, we'd made 30,000 boxes. Like, we could take 30,000 annual subscriptions. And then we sold those in less than a week. And so then we were sold out. So we launched that in June of 2022. And then by the time the holidays came around, we had a restock. And so we could hit it again at the holidays. So it was a great launch. And it was just really exciting to build, you know, basically embodying everything we have in the YouTube videos. And the stories we've heard from that have just been so hard. We hear this all the time. Take me through the products that you now have for crunch-labs. This one's called Buildbox. It's what we started with. It's kind of like eight to 12 years old. It's your core. Really fun toys. But most of them are either, you know, no batteries required or like simple battery on off. The next thing we released was right here. This is HackPack. So this is like what you graduate into. And this actually uses, you know, a microcontroller. So an Arduino effectively. No program required. You have this cool, you know, the first one's like this desktop turret that moves around, shoots cool darts. So that's the idea with HackPack. And we have people who have never coded before to like very, very powerful builders and coders who do this and just do crazy stuff. So it's like its own community, which is really awesome. So these tackle the engineering, but we've never had anything to tackle the creative part. And so now we're just launched, we just launched this. It's called Creative Kit. And basically we worked with Professor Adam Green and studied like what it means to be creative. We actually like ran brain scan on people's brain as they played with different things. And the idea here is you have this really fun toilet. You build out a town every month. There's a new part of the town. And there's guide rails. But then there's prompts on how to put your own spin on how to be creative. And we kind of teach the principles of creativity. So the idea is like this teaches you how to build. This helps you come up with what to build. So this is the trilogy. Like this is it. We're not going to do anything else. This is like the life cycle from six years old to 106. The other part of Creative Kit is it's a little bit of if I'm showing my cards a little bit, a Trojan horse to get more females and girls into STEM, right? Our hope is like through this, it can be a little bit more girls basically in working building a little bit. I mean, it's a more natural transition. Because like we're in an all brains on deck situation. Worldwide. And so to say that like, you know, boys do this and girls do this. It's like an incredible way of potential. So it's like we need more incredibly, you know, intelligent, creative, passionate, dedicated, female brains solving some of the big problems as well. And just obviously there's a lot of systemic and historic reasons why that isn't the case. So this is our attempt to like see if we can affect that balance. How many boxes have you guys shipped out? Because when people get these, they get them once a month, right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, we've shipped millions of boxes, plural less. Wow. Millions of boxes in four years. Yeah, that's wild. Mark, just talking about that connection between like you having this massive audience to promote your products, I thought it'd be interesting to look at your past 20 videos. Yeah. And analyze which ones were just promoting crunch laps? Interesting. Versus of which ones were promoting other brands? Fascinating. Like T-Mobile, Disney Plus, Roblox, Google. How do you think about like which videos are just exclusively for crunch labs versus having another brand on it? Ultimately, what it comes down to is if I make a video for T-Mobile and they sell $100 of the phones, and they give me $100, like they, like I just made $100 for that and I helped build their brand. But if I do it for myself, and I'm able to sell $100 with my own product, I didn't just make $100, but I just increased the value of my brand. I'm building this brand, this brand awareness. And a general fund for evaluation for a company would be like 5x times gross revenue or something. So in some ways, you made five times that amount if you made it for your own product. Interesting. So generally, and it's just better, I believe in crunch labs. Like I think it's such a great alignment for what means a lot to me, for what the videos are. So it's like I'd rather be talking about that and promoting that than like, you know, some VPN company or something, right? Fair enough. - This is video sponsor right over here. - That's a lot of VPN. - That would be hilarious though. Have you found yourself saying no to more brand deals now that you have crunch labs? - For sure. - So the threshold on what it takes to do a brand sponsorship is just it's a higher threshold to clear, right? - Yeah. - And you know what we've also found is like shorts have been a way to like integrate a brand where it's like okay, it doesn't make sense for a main channel video, but we can do shorts and stuff which has been like really helpful and valuable. - Yeah, can you tell me a bit about how you make shorts versus long form because when we're with you inside Disney, like I was amazed that it was you, your creative director, two smartphones, and you're ripping through a short, trying to measure how wet people get on a ride. Like is that typical that you guys are more run and gun with shorts or like average budget? Like a amount of people have worked on it. Like it's just fascinating to see that those videos get tens of millions of views, but the behind the scenes was so run and gun. - Yeah, I think it depends and that's the beauty of shorts. Like at first I was really annoyed when shorts came out 'cause I'm like oh, it's one more piece of thing I need to like seek about and content create. But then pretty soon I realized it's like an incredible opportunity. There's so many things that wouldn't make it into a main channel video that would make for a great short. I mean, you and I were talking, right? Then we were talking about the barber thing. - Yeah, so wait, what was that? Oh yeah, you had an idea where you just, out of your own curiosity you asked your barber to do something. - Yeah, I think I paid my barber like $100. And I said, for the next month, I want you to keep track of every tip you get. And I had a column of like, here are all the things I want you to like, is it, how old are they? Are they male and female? What color hair do they have? What kind of haircut did they get? What time of day was it? I wanted to see if I could find some correlation of like, who tipped and how much and why? No reason, I wasn't planning on making a video about that. That's not big enough for a main channel video. It was just really curious. And like, that's a bigger short, right? - Oh, you thought of that idea back in the era where shorts may not have been as much of a thing. - They didn't exist. And there might have been pressure to turn that into a long form video where you're like, I don't know, but now you have an outlet. - Yeah, or like, when we were there like, which seat do you get, you know, the most drenched in the front of the back on a log right? It's a great, simple question that, it's not big enough for a main channel video, but it's just, it's punchy for a short. - Yeah. Can I ask Mark, can you say your cost or like, like, above six figures? Like, what a brand deal today looks like for like an external brand, not Crunch Labs? - Yeah, I mean, it depends. But like, the Google and T-Mobile one, you know, we needed like, you know, $5 million to make that video. So, you know, we're talking multi-million dollars worth of brand deals. Obviously, they're getting a lot of content from that. You know, the Pixel win up to space, right? We talked about T-Mobile space. I did a bunch of content for them. - Yeah. - So there's a lot that, it's not just like a 60-second ad read. - Yeah. - But, you know, it's not crazy to have a brand deal that's in the seven figures. - Wow. - But that's also not just like, oh, now we make that money. Like, there's a lot of costs that go with that. - Of course. - Of course. How many people work for you now? - We have about like 50 on the YouTube side, give or take, and 50 on the Crunch Labs side. - Wow. - Yeah. - And how do you think about, like, having both? Because I'll be honest, we just launch an accounting company for creators. - Oh, nice. - And it's called boring stuff. - Oh, cool. - What a great day. - Yeah, we're like, we're doing bookkeeping, accounting for creators. But honestly, I'm trying to navigate this new terrain of having my own brand and having sponsors that pay us. But I've seen you navigate this really well, where it's like, okay, Roblox gets a spot. But then you still talk about Crunch Labs. - Yeah. - Is that just something that you negotiate? You talk about like, has it always been up front that they'll always be a Crunch Lab spot? - Yeah, you kind of just tell 'em up front. And in those videos, the Crunch Lab spot, sometimes it's like, little less, it's not as big, you know what I mean? So it's just a negotiation you have with them. - Got it. - But they understand that it's just going to, somehow, we'll sneak into every video. - Yeah. And tell me about streaming, because like, you made headlines like with your new Netflix show. I think this is the first time you're talking about your Netflix show publicly. - That's true. - It's true. - Tell me about it, Mark. - Where do you get the scoop? - Two things. One, we also get more back catalog. Like, or some portion of it. Which they, you know, paid for. And Samsung Plus is also on here, like a vast channel. - Yep. - But our philosophy is like, there's a lot of parents who don't let their kids watch YouTube, 'cause it just feeds them wherever. Where Netflix is just like wall of garden, it's curated. - Yeah. - So it doesn't feel like there's a cannibalization there. - Interesting. - And you've seen other channels, you know, Ms. Rachel, Coco Mellon, do really well on something like a Netflix. - Yeah. - You know, for 2026 towards the end, there's going to be a family competition show that's like banger idea. It's so cool. I'm so excited about it. - I can't wait to see that. - It just stands for, it just encapsulates everything that I care about, that I stand for, has to do with like, schools, education, teachers. It's going to be insane. But we're also doing like a Christmas special, Sesame Street, all the characters came to crunch labs. Elmo and Mark Rovers, Merry Gift Miss. (laughing) - And so, and in that, I sing a song called "Failure's Awesome" with Elmo. - That is heavily, heavily auto tuned. - I was gonna say, I didn't know you have a color show. I know you've been lifting, man. I didn't know. You being a singer is just not fair. - Too much. - Yeah, too much. - Okay, good, auto tuned. All right, all right. There's hope for the rest of us. - Yeah. - Anything else you could tell us about the show? - Yeah. - Like, budget, competition, scale. I know like Jimmy doing bee-skins, kind of the next level of YouTube videos. Like, how are you thinking about, like, leveling this up? - It's definitely like, one of the deals was like, I wanna be able to promote Crunch Labs in the main brand. So there will be an element of, it will all feel connected. When you're seeing the sets on the show, it will feel very similar in design style to like a Crunch Lab build box, right? Or to like, what you see on the channel. - Yeah. - So it's kind of this whole ecosystem. Like, if it was just this and a vacuum, wouldn't really make sense for me. It wouldn't be interesting. But the idea that it can kind of get new eyeballs, unlike what we're all about and what we're trying to do, is kind of the exciting opportunity here. - So the products can be promoted through your streaming show. - Yeah. 'Cause I know YouTube you have a lot of control, but it's interesting that a platform like Netflix or Samsung will allow you to have this revenue stream as well. - Yeah, that's right. And we are missing one product here, which is we are teaming up with Moose Toys, who happens to also be who Jimmy Mr. Beast teamed up with. And we are making some retail toys that are like really, really cool. That teach engineering. And so yeah, in the Netflix show, there'll be portions where we'll have giant versions of these toys in the Netflix show, right? - Wow. - So it's like, oh, you can own the small thing. And like that crazy experiment you saw on the screen, like you could re-create and re-live that and have that same visceral experience on your own at home. Have that same aha moment, right? Connect those synapses. - That is so cool. The way that all works together is fascinating. But take me through like in person, like physical experiences. - We do have our eye on like potentially something, like something we're very good at is saying no. I'm just single-mindedly focused. The exception is like the really juicy pitches that are just coming down that you know as a grand slam, we swing at those, but that's it. But anything else we don't. So that means that you pretty much just say no to everything. Every opportunity, but the ones that you're just like, you know, this is just like a no-brainer or what you got, like low-hanging fruit. So there are some idea, you know, dude, perfect. You know, they made headlines with some experience. We have like some ideas there that could be something in the future, but right now we're more laser-focused on what's in front of us. We always have a pretty steady flow of make-a-wish kids coming to Crunch Labs. We have the platinum tickets, those go in the boxes. That's an opportunity to come to Crunch Labs. And Crunch Labs itself is almost a character. - Yeah. - It's a location. It's like a engineering factory. So the kids, you know, people really want to come there. We've offered up a few of these platinum tickets in like local school fundraisers when someone asks. And the going rate, this happened three times. They go for about $180,000 per platinum ticket. - What? - Yeah. - Wait, wait, wait. The platinum ticket that you put in the Crunch Lab boxes that anyone could order. - Yeah. - Like auctioning off a standalone has went for how much? - $180,000. That's happened three times. - But yeah. - So yeah, the point is it's like, we give away one every month. And if you're a tazit, it means you're coming to Crunch Labs. So you have to win it. The only time you could buy with money is if it's like a charitable thing. - Yeah. - Very, very rarely we do that. But it's given us the going rate of what the value is of making a character. Like that has been really valuable to have a location. - Yeah. - That people want to come to and like experience and feel the wow of like, wow. This is like engineering come to life. This is where like, if you dream it up, you can build it and make it happen. Infinite slinky staircases, you know? The Fireman's piston, the Emerging Gladiators, tennis ball cannon, foam pits, like museum from all the builds. This is a rock paper scissor robot you can't beat. It's like all these whimsical things that is like in your engineer and you want to, if you can dream it up, then generally you can build it. And so we do. I remember seeing this with like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory as a kid. And like, I guess I knew it was a movie set and I could tell it wasn't necessarily real, but I really, really wanted to go there. The cool thing about Crunch Labs is like, this isn't a fictional movie, this is real life. So it's like we are building cool stuff that actually exists and you can actually go to this place. So it's like that same idea of like that affinity towards this location and this, almost like a character, but it's real and you can go there. And that's why the plan is. and took it is such this valuable thing, right? - Yeah, but when we were inside Disneyland, I was really impressed with how much of a process you had to take kids through the Crunch Labs experience, even though we weren't at Crunch Labs. Like I remember we were doing the egg drop, and it seems like you had these stations. Can you talk about how, like you think about like people visiting like Crunch Labs and the experience you bring them through? 'Cause like now they've been telling us make a wish that creators are being requested more than 2x over the past few years, and you're one of the most requested from make-a-wish kids. Like how do you think about like what experience you give them or the people that come in by getting the platinum ticket? - Yeah, I mean, just try and make it experience I'll never forget, right? And so, you know, I have a team that helps me, and we kinda do have a process. If we would go through a lot of time, egg drops are a great part of that process. Then they get to also work with the other toy engineers. So yeah. - It's really well done. And you also said this thing to me when we were in line at Tiana's Buy You Ride Formally Splash Mountain, where you're like, oh Disney is almost like a set now for a lot of creators and you were there filming a short. Is there any other thoughts you have about working with like brands like Disney or going to Disneyland to make content? 'Cause now they're doing things like the creator lab where they spotlight emerging creators or the creator's celebration days where they bring in big creators for like an invitation only type of experience like we did. Do you think about like, oh, I wanna go to this place to make content? You know, Disney, the storied brand, there's an argument for them to be really protective and really prescriptive. But they were pretty cool about like opening up and like that always works great for brands. Like it's really hard. You kinda gotta take a deep breath and unclench. But if you do, like great things can come from that. And I think Disney is actually leading the way now in sort of teaming up with creators and letting us tell their story in an organic way without them being super over prescriptive. - Yeah. And then take me through. So we talked about YouTube and streaming, the experience of the product. Tell me about schools and the curriculum. Like what is class crunch labs? 'Cause I feel like there's something that a lot of people don't know about. - Well, they don't 'cause we haven't really announced it yet. Like I'm gonna officially announce it big with like a Ted Talk in next April. - Okay, wow. - We've put out the pilot episode basically like, who years ago? Maybe two and a half by COO Jim Lee. I asked his daughter like, what are you learning in school and science? And she's like, oh, we just watched a Bill Nye video. And I was like, really? And then she showed me the worksheet that came with it and asked questions about the video. It'd been copied like a thousand times. So I'll just tell her, right? And I'm like, that's wild. They're still watching that because like, that wasn't made for this generation. Like I have had to learn like a lot. You know, we have had to learn a lot on how you hide the vegetables, how you get their attention and then sneak in the science, right? And so like, we're really good at doing this. And like 40% of teachers already show my videos in the classroom and they have nothing to do with the lesson. - They're just showing the YouTube videos in the channel, right? - Wow. - So then the ideas like, well, what if we took the national standards that you have to teach to, made a full science curriculum, third to eighth grade, where we just teach everything in a super engaging way. And our toy engineers come up with like, really cheap, simple hands-on demos that could be used. And we have lesson plans for the teachers and teacher support materials. And if we just really went for this and made it fully comprehensive, we realize it would cost us about $55 million to make and three years to pull off. So it's like, all right, well, let's do it. Because then we make it free for all teachers forever. That's the punchline. So, wait, wait, wait, my mind is blown. Like, why does curriculum cost $55 million to make? - 'Cause these are like big videos, right? Like, in the next video, I'm like jumping 100 feet on a crane to show like what gravity is like on Mars. And we just rendered like the world's biggest magnet. I just did one where I was like, standing in front of an MRI machine, holding like a 10 pound hammer and there's a watermelon inside. And then we turn on the MRI machine and by the power of Thor, this hammer just rips out of my hand through this watermelon. And that is how we introduced the lesson on electromagnetic fields, right? 'Cause it's like, I can't teach you if I don't have your attention. So instead of a boring old worksheet, we get their attention just like with the YouTube videos. And now we've made that connection and now we can talk about these invisible fields around us. So, wow. And like this, this is a, there's no way. So when you lay this all out, it seems like this master plan. And when I was like, we have to do this. This is like the right thing to do. Then, you know, responsible people like Jim, my COO, is like, well, how do we make money off this? I was like, we don't. Like there's no way, we don't make any money off this. Like we're not sneaking in, you know, we're not doing like, it's not ad supported with CrunchLabs stuff. We are just doing this and we are putting it out there. And I'm like, I tell my team and like, I feel like there's the most important thing I'll do my whole life. Wow, yeah. And we've finished the first, fully finished the first pilot episode, there'll be like 40 units total to cover all the standards. We're now filming tomorrow, three of those 40. And then we're like scaling up the team. So we're getting funds raised for this. So we've already raised a portion towards the $55 million. And, you know, if we have to contribute our own money, we will. So, I'm so speechless. I don't know, it's 'cause the creator signed me the new dad in me. This is, wait, wait, wait. So just so I'm getting straight. The $55 million is a lot of this going towards making better content for students to watch in school. Not just watch, it's like a full curriculum. There's like lesson plans, there's booklets. You know, it has the assessment. It's a full science curriculum. Wow. And so this is like interactive in the same way that like, I'll get homework, I'll get a worksheet. Maybe as I'm watching it, like I'm trying to think back in my like elementary. Or even better, like think as AI comes along. You know, we're teaching a lesson and the teacher's like, all right, break into groups at your tables. And if it's a school that has an iPad, for example, there can be like, I can be at the table on the iPad. And I'm like, all right, guys, let's brainstorm. What's our catapult gonna look like, right? So they draw it and they show it to me because it's multi-modal. I'm like, oh, that's good. But like, you know, this is AI, Mark Rober. But like, where's the energy source? And they're like, oh, shoot, good point. And they're like, and they draw it and they show, I was like, oh, perfect, that looks amazing. Raise your hand and tell your teacher you're ready. And then she's like, all right, when Mark Rober says it looks good, raise your hand and we're good. - Wow, because you, like that AI could have pattern recognition, like you can know like, even if you're not there. - Like that technology exists now today. Like that part's not hard. - Wow. - Damn, I'm so sorry. - It's gonna be in, and like, not only that, then when we launch it, like, there's never been anything like this in history because we're not just gonna quietly put it out there. In my YouTube channel, I'll be like, if you're watching anything else in school, just like the community against your teacher. Because the content that's out there is not, I have to be careful. There's a lot of stuff out there that people charge these poor teachers. Who like already, like they don't have a lot of money. Sorry, this is like something I'm super passionate about. And they're paying for this content. That's like, not good. And so we're gonna make something that's just like, way, way better, and then we're gonna make it free. Like they need help. Like teachers are quitting, huge rates. Like this is, yeah, sorry. Yeah, so I mean, this is what our approach is gonna be. And then we're just gonna make it free. And then, and then when we launch it on the channel, we'll be like, we'll have a map. And like, okay, here are the places, you know, where this isn't being used in schools. And so we have like, it's a grassroots effort. Where it's like, oh, Des Moines, Iowa, we need some ambassadors there, right? And so it's like, it's bottoms up, but then it'll be top down. We'll also go through the, you know, the senators in the school programs. And by the way, we're testing all this, right? So we're getting West Ed and he's really accredited. People who actually test the efficacy for these things. 'Cause I don't wanna waste my time or my money or anyone else's money in time if this isn't way better than what already exists. So as we do this, we're like, here's a control classroom. Here's a class that had class. Crunch labs will show that it's way better. So we actually have the data to back it. And if it needs to be tweaked, we'll tweak it. That's why we're doing the pilots, right? So we're just like, make the most kick ass, like curriculum for science that's ever existed and then free forever. Wow. Wow. - Is there a teacher you've spoken to like a story that comes to mind? - Yeah, well, I went, I spoke at NSCA, which is like the National Science Teacher Association. And I basically said, this was the plan last year. Actually, there was like a year and a half ago. And we got like three standing ovations. I was crying, they were crying, it was the whole thing. So it's like the teachers are hungry for this. Like they really want it because it's, you know, the kids care, when we make science on the channel, like the kids get into it. And so it's like the teachers want that. 'Cause they're in the same boat. Like they can't teach the kids if they don't have their attention. We know how to get their attention. And we know how to teach really effectively and hide those vegetables. So we're not replacing the teachers at all. Like we're making the teachers the hero of the classroom. So it's like I'm working with them. And, you know, I work with the teachers in all this. The teachers have a role, I have a role, we have a role in the videos. And then the combination of those is like, it's gonna be sick. - I wanna say that in lots of words. - Yeah, no, I'm really, really, really, really excited about this. I think like everything we've done so far is like, helps. to make this the thing. I'm kind of glad it's in the center in the middle and on top on this diagram. We really also try and grow as slow as possible. Like, we probably could have taken a bunch of outside money, we haven't taken any, and you know, have a team of 500 and really like, but it's like, we really, we want to maximize for area under the curve, right? It's a very long term, meaning like you could spike and just juice the business and try and get some high valuation. And then you're gonna have, if you calculate the area under that curve 'cause it's gonna inevitably, I would say crash. That's a smaller area than if you just have slow, sustained growth, right, over time. Plus that's more fun, like, that's why in Zelda and video games, you start with like a wooden sword and a wooden shield and three hard containers. You don't start with everything. Like you get, you maximize the dopamine to your brain if you just get little incremental level ups. And they've done studies that show this. If you get a huge raise than you're flat for 10 years, you're way less happy than if you creep up on that amount and get like a 5% raise every year. So like, philosophically speaking, we're kind of the same with the channel. I think at some point you always need to be growing a little bit, otherwise you're sort of dying. That's just like a principle of life. That's just the fact. So we just try and do it like as slow as possible. - Yeah, thank you, Mark. - Cool walk downstairs, I appreciate it. - Thank you, Oprah, for making me cry. Not cool, John. Not cool. - If you haven't already, go to whiteyhackpack.com to get our free YouTube hack pack with all our best tools, tips and templates to grow on YouTube today from our intro and thumbnail templates to our 100 viral ideas for any niche, we constantly update it as we interview more creators. So you get the latest and greatest for free. And yes, that means you'll also get the maps that we made for Jimmy and Mark in this video. So you can map out your creator business too. All right, thanks for watching.