Everybody knows who MrBeast is. He has broken massive records, such as the most-subscribed channel on YouTube, YouTube’s most-liked video, and most video views in a day. He even broke a whopping 44 Guinness World Records through his show Beast Games.
But who exactly is MrBeast? Or, better yet, who is Jimmy Donaldson, the man behind the persona? That is what Steven Bartlett sets out to find out in an interview for his podcast, Diary of a CEO.
The Personal Challenges of Jimmy Donaldson
During the interview, Donaldson revealed that he’s been privately fighting Crohn’s disease since he was fifteen. “I just get sick all the time, like random rashes and things like that,” he said. “So it’s pretty, pretty brutal, to be honest, and then it randomly clears up sometimes and just makes you very sick, very tired.”
He then went on to highlight how his mental health affects how he operates, describing himself as a “robot” to his business. “This is killing me, to be honest,” he said. “I work every hour my eyes are awake.”
In the podcast, he also claims that if his mental health were a “priority,” he wouldn’t be as successful as he is now. In fact, MrBeast argues it is “so much easier” to be broke” because you aren’t “traveling constantly.”
“The average person does not want to live this life,” he added. “In my head, just working all the time? And they would probably just ask themselves, why am I working all the time? I don’t do literally anything else.”
As for his work ethic, Donaldson is all about motivation, telling Bartlett that “working with people that aren’t motivated is the fastest way to make [him] depressed.” He also said that his superpower is to “obsess endlessly about something.”
Wealth and Beast Games
Arguably, Donaldson is one of the most successful creators in the world. However, he told Bartlett that he had less than $1 million in his personal bank account, arguing that money is “fuel” for growing a business. “I don’t feel risk,” he said. “If anything, it excites me.”
He also confirmed that Beast Games cost over $100 million to produce. Donaldson invested $50 million in the project, which led to him losing “tens of millions” on the show. Furthermore, he claimed that he gave away $20 million to contestants, including $2 million in the first episode.
Indeed, the production scale of episode one alone was massive, as they needed to build “8000 towers that were 10 feet tall and safety testing them all.”
While Beast Games has proven controversial, Donaldson says he has “no regrets.” For him, the show is an opportunity to break the glass ceiling for fellow creators. “I can’t let the YouTube community down,” he said. “If I fail, it is over. No streaming platforms will ever touch a creator again.”
While that is clearly not true, that statement does reveal how much pressure MrBeast puts on himself to succeed.
Reach for the Stars
But the biggest revelation of them all was Donaldson’s global reach. Allegedly, his videos now regularly reach 3%+ of the global population, with his monthly viewership averaging 200 million across his channels. As MrBeast admits, getting to this scale of success as a creator isn’t easy. It requires every ounce of your attention and tireless work. It also requires a good team and sacrifices along the way.
