The Origin and Rise of MrBeast | Full Documentary | Beyond the Spotlight

– In some of my videos, I’ve literally given away over a million dollars. A lot of people think that I just came up in a rich household, and I’m a trust fund baby. I get called that a lot. In reality, my mom was in the military. She was a single mom and she worked a lot. What’s up, guys? What’s up, guys? What’s up, guys?

I basically did YouTube videos for years without making any money. When I first started, the videos were horrible, and then they slowly got less and less horrible throughout the years. Even then when I was making money the first few years, it was nothing, it was scraps.

You grind and you grind and you grind, year after year, after year after year. It definitely does hit you, but I had more reasons than just wanting to be famous or just wanting money. Anything that you can fit in this mysterious circle, we’ll pay for it. – [Man] Thank you so much.

– Dude that’s awesome – We ain’t never have nobody bless us like this. – As selfish as it sounds, I like helping people because it just makes me happy. I like seeing their faces light up, I like seeing how excited they get. Nothing is more entertaining than just seeing someone just go

From like having a rough day to just going like “What!”. – Genuinely from the bottom of my heart, thank you. Thank you. – Aww. It’s just what I love. It literally is what makes me happy. I was really shy, especially when I was younger, I really didn’t like being around people. Just thinking about possibly being a YouTuber one day was enough to keep me happy. I wanna use brands to allow me to help people. I was like, “I think I just cracked the code.”

At the end of the day, I’m just kind of selfish. Giving people money makes me happy. If you had told me when I was 13 that I would give away a million dollars in a single video, I just wouldn’t have even known how much money that was.

I would be like, “Is that more than a hundred bucks?” I mean, $50 was a lot to me back then. I’m just from a small town, relatively small town in North Carolina, just grew up with my brother. My mom raised us, nothing too crazy. My mom was in the military, which is why I was born in a different state than my brother. We were always moving around.

– I was on active duty for 21 years. And for a couple of those years, Jimmy was moved around on a couple army installations. – It definitely made for an interesting childhood at that age. – Jimmy as a child, some of my younger memories of him, little Legos, building Lego forts.

Like the entire room is a huge Lego fort. He was intense, and he was passionate about what it was that he was working on at the time. – As weird as it sounds, especially when I was younger, I really didn’t like being around people. And I have a very obsessive personality.

When I like something, it just consumes my life. My first instance of that was probably baseball. I didn’t want to do anything else. Good luck getting me to study for a test at that age. – When he first found that bat at 10 years old, it was nonstop.

He was driven in Little League, going on to playing in Babe Ruth, he absolutely loved baseball. – But, my first time going on the baseball field for a Little League practice was just the most awkward thing ever. I didn’t know how to socialize. A funny story is I would always wear my hat like this, and the coaches will pull it up. I was beyond shy. Even if there was a person in front of me, like good luck getting me in to talk to them, impossible. I didn’t have that much social interaction.

My mom wasn’t home much. I watched a lot of ESPN. But outside of sports, it was just literally YouTube. That was all I watched. No one in my school liked videos so I kind of just felt like an outcast ’cause I just was hyper obsessed over it

And no one else really related to me on it. – Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. – Chris is one of my oldest friends, probably my oldest friend that I still know to this day. I dare you to slap Chris. I’ve known him basically my entire life, and especially when I was doing videos earlier on. – This should be in the outtakes, I don’t know why I’m having so much fun. – He was the funniest guy I’ve ever met. And I just noticed that when he was in the videos,

They were so much funnier. And he’s just so good on camera. – I’m sorry. Interviews make me so nervous, I’m sorry. Me and Jimmy first met when we were in, like, I think he was in middle school, I was in high school. We were kind of the only kids that really liked YouTube

And really enjoyed talking about it. But then one day he said that he wanted to start a channel of his own. – I have a memory of this one video I watched back then where one of my favorite creators, Woody’s Gamer Tech, quit his job and went full-time on YouTube.

And this was like before, like a lot of people didn’t even know you could make money on YouTube back then. I remember seeing that I was like 12, then it kind of just clicked in my head, I was like, wait a minute, you can make money doing this.

That’s one of my first memories of when, like I really started consuming YouTube. ‘Cause then from that point I was like, oh, like, I kind of want to do this. – [YouTuber] This may be a challenge, back off. – I was there with Jimmy the day he created his YouTube channel

And I was actually his first subscriber. – When you create an account on Xbox, they have this thing where it just gives you a gamer tag. And I was just like Mr. Beast, this sounds cool. Oh, oh crap. I’ve never, don’t. Go, you freaking orange square.

– During that time, he was kind of trying a bunch of different things. – [Jimmy] What is going on guys, I’d have kind of a mini rant for you guys real quick. – He started making commentary style YouTube videos, which is like, you have somebody playing a video game

And then you’re just talking over, giving your opinions about it. – I don’t want to give like YouTube tips or anything ’cause I’m not a big channel at, by any means. – He started doing that for a while, which kind of turned into a new series that he started,

Where he was talking about YouTubers and how much money they make. – [Jimmy] What’s up guys. Pewdiepie is getting around seven and a half million views per day, which is around 13 14,000 a day. And millions upon millions of dollars a year. – That’s the type of stuff I was making

When I was like 14, 15 on YouTube. And then when I was 15 years old, I got diagnosed with Crohn’s It was pretty rough, basically your intestines are inflamed. And because they’re inflamed, you don’t process food as well. So I eat something. It would just go right through me, like literally within a day then, because it’s so inflamed. It’s like, someone’s just dragging like a knife across your stomach.

So it was super painful. – Jimmy’s diagnosis of Crohn’s was earth shattering the weight loss, the loss of energy, all those facets of Crohn’s attacked him really, really bad. And it was, it was a pretty serious situation. – I went from like 180 pounds down to 139.

I remember 139 because that was my lowest, which at 6”2 was like a frail little twig. I mean, I barely could get out of bed. I had no energy to do anything. I didn’t even want to go to school and I just hated my life back then, I was really miserable.

– He didn’t have an ability to hold down any food. It was months and months and months for us to figure out a treatment plan so that he could start eating again. – Playing baseball was pure torture, especially the medicine I was on.

I was always throwing up behind the dugout and I always had to go use the bathroom a bunch during the games. I probably would have tried to play baseball in college, but because of Crohn’s, it definitely changed the trajectory. And I was like, all right, I’m done with that.

And then I just went all in on YouTube and I was beyond obsessed. Hey you, subscribe. Me being shy and not liking talking and not having much confidence were like such a big obstacle. I’m just kidding. But despite that, I still just did it just because I just wanted it so bad.

Have a good day, I don’t know. This is my trailer, kind of sucks. I was like, you know what, I don’t like talking to people, but I just really like making videos. So as weird as that sounds so. I just gotta get used to it because this is just kind of what I enjoy doing. So I’m gonna try to commit myself to making a video

Every other day for the next three months and just see where my YouTube channel goes. – At first, it seemed like a hobby, but then he wouldn’t want to go to the movies. He wanted to focus on filming a video. And like when I started hanging out with him,

Filming more videos with him, I understood that for him like this was like, he’s obsessed with it. Like this is what he wanted. – Look at it quadruple digits. Why does this guy have 2000 subscribers? And why am I speaking in third person? 3,000 subscribers!

I’ve always told myself when I hit 10,000 subscribers, I will tell my mom that I do YouTube. When I first started making content. I definitely did not tell my mom. And that comes back to me just being super shy. And I just didn’t know how she would react.

So for the first few hundred videos, she had no idea. And she always thought I was just talking to someone in my room. You know that chick from Twilight that can read minds? – And I’d be walking past his room. And he’d just be talking to people on the computer.

– Well, I’m her cousin and I can read minds as well. – I thought it was the people he was gaming with. I thought it was baseball friends. I thought it was people from high school. Never, ever did I connect that he was actually doing YouTube videos. – Surprise.

One time I was being really loud when filming and she actually told me you shouldn’t hang out with that person anymore. I was like, yeah mom, I’ll make sure not to hang out with him anymore. When I first started, I had this really crappy hand-me-down laptop. I think my brother got it for Christmas. And I ended up kind of just like stealing it and using it. I didn’t know how to edit. I didn’t know how to pace the video. I didn’t know how to do anything.

I basically had nothing, knew nothing had no money and just was just like grabbing things like we’re just going to try and make this work. That’s my keyboard. That’s my mouse. That’s my green screen. I’m kind of poor so that’s where I set my camera on.

It was really rough back then to make content. – I thought going through high school and while he was living in the house that this was just a hobby. This was just a filler of time. It was just an experiment. – In the first few years, I didn’t make anything on YouTube

Because I wasn’t in the partner program. To get ads on your videos you’ve got to be kind of big The next few years it was collecting scraps to buy decent equipment. Sorry, my hands shake… And the Windows phone I had, Windows phones suck. It was like 480p, it didn’t even make sense. It looked like you were rubbing sandpaper on the lens. I had to save up for months to buy a microphone.

So it would stop making people’s ears bleed. This is my galaxy tablet. It’s a piece of crap. And then I had to save up for practically a year to buy a computer that didn’t crash when I was editing. And then after that, I managed to convince my mom or my dad,

Someone to give me like a used iPhone. And that’s when it changed. – See this right here? This describes the older Mr. Beast. – I saw the drive in him come to be when he first started doing the in real life, the IRL videos. Then when him and Chris started interacting,

That’s where I saw the passion come out. – Mom, you lucked out. You’re gonna have a lot of toilet paper and saran wrap. – We should burn this. The main goal of the channel was to just make people laugh. Can’t wait to ride in this bad car, all the way to Raleigh, Jimmy.

– Yeah, we’ll take the (bleep) wheel. – The original days we were doing skits and like jokes and stuff like that. – You know what you need to do. – And he had a couple of videos that went like pretty big for his size, but they never went viral.

It was always just like he had a smaller community, like a niche community that really enjoyed them. – Whoa, dude, a new monitor. A lot of my earlier videos, they sucked because I just wasn’t entertaining back then, I was stupid. Every night before bed. I’d just be like,

It sucks. It’s a lot of work. And I feel like I’m not getting anywhere, but if I just do it long enough, eventually it will click, eventually I’ll figure it out. As of right now, I’m enjoying YouTube. I don’t know why I had that kind of mindset

At such a young age, but it’s just like, I just love it. And I just couldn’t stop. It took me 75,000 views to make my first a hundred dollars off YouTube. I’m making around $30 a month. I’ve just always felt pulled to it, I don’t understand, I don’t get it.

Just thinking about possibly being a YouTuber one day was enough to keep me happy. Do it one more time. – Well, I don’t have to keep on doing this. At that point I didn’t really take it too serious. I found it as a way to just hang out, have fun.

Even when the videos were getting like three, four or 5,000 views, which at the time to me, that was incredible. I didn’t ever think they would get that many. I still was like, this is fun. I enjoy doing this, but I don’t think this is ever gonna become like a thing.

I made a mistake. – When we’re in his senior year in high school, the passion about this YouTube is coming to be the obsession with YouTube is coming to be the drive is really starting to show a lot more I’m first-generation college student. So I was raised that college was really important.

It was really important to my parents that I go. So it just seemed reasonable to me that Jimmy should go to college. – I never wanted to go to college. My whole goal in all of high school was to never go to college.

I was just like, if I can just make enough money before high school is over, I can just do this. That’s where I like doubled triple, quadrupled down on YouTube. I’m like, oh, I’m still only making a few bucks a day. Like we got to figure this out.

– I gave the ultimatum going into that fall. Jimmy, you can stay in the house if you go to school. If you don’t go to school, you’re gonna have to leave. – So I went, but I just stopped going to classes. And I just didn’t tell my mom and I would film videos

While I was at college is what I would tell her. But somehow when I got there, maybe I just got a big spark of motivation and went harder. But that’s when things actually clicked and like my viewership did start going up quite a bit. This is a table. I’m going to take these plastic knives. I’m going to cut all the way through it. So like in that first month of college, I did start making enough money to move out. Probably like a thousand bucks a month or something. That’s when I didn’t hesitate.

I was like, I’m done. I’m not going. I’m like calling Chris. I’m like Chris, we’re moving in together. He’s like, I don’t know if I can afford it. I’m like, I got you. I just need to move out places here aren’t super expensive. Like $720 a month gets you a really nice place.

And I told my mom, I was like, yeah, I haven’t actually been going to college all this time. And I was like, I’ll move out next week. – He left. I never paid for his rent. I never paid his utilities. I never paid his car bill.

So there had to been enough financial means going on behind here that he was already capable of taking care of himself. And this is months after he graduated from high school. – So this thing’s full of explosives. This is a thousand dollar keyboard. From the moment I dropped out of college that is where I just went all in. I would wake up, work on videos and then I’d go to bed. That’s where I just went hyperdrive is definitely where I got really weird with it. And then one day Chris showed me this anime

And I just couldn’t take a break from working to watch it. I was like, how can I make content while also watching anime as weird as that is, I’m about to count to a hundred thousand. To be honest, no one on YouTube has ever done something that stupid, just counting for 40 hours.

Let’s just one, two, three, four. It garnered a ton of attention. 1001, 1002, 1003, 1004, 1005, 1006. It’s one of my first like real viral videos. 76,111, 76,112 76,113, 76,114. And that’s where it kinda clicked. Like, oh, like if I do interesting things, people will watch. 100,000!

What am I doing with my life? – He started doing all these kinds of crazy, ridiculous, like lengthy challenge that nobody had ever done. – What’s up guys today, I’m gonna be reading the entire Bee movie script. With the little plot twist. Every time the word bee comes up,

I’m going to say all the previous ones. – Everybody was reacting to it. And so I think that gave him like a really big initial boost in the beginning. – Bee bee, bee, bee. And that’s when I kind of just realized that like,

If I really go all in, I really be creative and unique and I do things that… Bee, bee, bee, bee, bee, bee… just no one else would do because they’re so hard and takes so much effort, right. People have no choice, but to watch it because it’s just interesting.

You know what I mean? What’s up, guys. I’m going to be watching It’s Every Day Bro, for 10 hours straight. After that I watched two different music videos for 10 hours straight and those did well. And then I read the dictionary, masterpiece, mastery. I spun a fidget spinner for 24 hours

And I actually broke the world record on that one. – I was kind of amazed that people cared. You know what I mean? ‘Cause like who’s watching somebody read the entire dictionary, like all that kind of stuff. But if you think about it,

It’s so original that you kinda just have to click on it. And I was like, wow, that’s genius. – It broke. We’re going to be microwaving a microwave. – The moment where I knew he was gonna make it. He had an initial boost in subscribers that went from like 400 to like 750,000.

And then we would see them get millions of views. And I was like, oh, this is where it’s at. He’s actually starting to make it like it was the beginning of all of this. – This is a new weekly series where I’m getting companies to sponsor my videos. One, two, three.

All right, so this is where things get fun. My first ever actual brand deal. Basically this agent manager kind of guy that represents Quid called me and was like, Hey, we’ll give you $5,000 for a video, which was insane at the time. Just I make a video and I get five grand. Four, five. – Jimmy calls me and he’s like over the moon ecstatic

Mom, mom, mom, mom. You’re never going to believe what just happened. Somebody just offered me $5,000 to put an ad on my channel. And I was like $5,000. That’s really, really great. Yeah, I turned it down. – And I remember this vividly because I’m just standing in my driveway

And I’m like, no, I want $10,000. And he’s like 5,000. I’m like, no, I want 10,000. I just want to walk out my front door and go give it to a homeless person. And he’s like really? Nine, 10. – And I’m shocked. Like that’s, you’re a great idea

For your first time you’re getting a brand deal. – You know, he’s probably going to think you stole this money. – I’m an undercover cop. – Just kidding, you don’t look like a cop at all. Look at those flip flops, Jimmy called me up and he was like, Hey,

I need a camera man for something I’m gonna do. And he told me to meet him at Walmart and he showed me the envelope that had 10 grand in it and he was like, I’m gonna give that homeless guy 10 grand. And you’re gonna stand here and film it. – Hey.

– That’s literally all the preparation I had for it. – I’m a YouTuber, I mean, you can see the camera. So I’m just, it’s a series where I just, you know, be nice and just give people some help. So if you want to take it, it’s about $10,000.

I’m not joking. – Yeah, right. Man, are you fucking with me? – No, I’m not. – Is it real? – Yeah. I swear. No, I don’t like. – Oh man. – After it happened, we actually went and got dinner with the guy and talked a little bit about his situation.

So it was really cool to hear him talk about how it would help him and stuff like that. – How did it feel handing someone $10,000? Obviously great, seeing his face light up. – These guys are the best. These guys are unbelievable. – I had never heard so much enthusiasm.

I had never heard so much heart. I had never heard so much feedback about any video that him and Chris had done from the time. I mean his heart was changed and he talked about it over and over and over again about how fulfilling and how awesome it was

That he was able to help somebody out and give him the money. – The video did great. Obviously the guy was happy, Quid was happy, I was happy, and since it did so well, I literally took that money and I did another one. One of the next videos I did with Quid

Was we actually tip pizza delivery drivers, a ton of cash. Do you have changed for a 100? – I do not have change for a 100. – Okay, do you have changed for 300? – I also don’t have changes? – I guess you just going to have to keep it – Oh, cool.

– Have a good day, man. – Thanks. – That was a really special video to me. ‘Cause there was a lot of them. We didn’t just do one, we did like a dozen plus drivers. – Are you for real? – Yeah. – No you’re not. – Yeah.

– Oh my fuckin’ God. – I know! And like a lot of them like, I mean just broke down in tears in front of me. – What? Come here, man! – Thank you. – Yeah, it’s all right. It’s like even it makes me tear up a little bit just thinking about it. Like they just were so emotional and one of the people that I tipped, he actually came back the next day to my house and I opened the door and he was just balling. – You gave me money.

But what money meant like to me is I actually got to ask someone to take the rest of my shift. – And he’s like, I just got to spend the day with my kid because you gave me money and it allowed me to take a day off.

And he was just like, it’s really incredibly thankful. And so like that made me feel good, that made me happy. And I was like, that’s cool. I kind of want to do this more. So I had this idea if I take this branded money

And I give it away in the video, that video will do well. And then I take the money from that video and I give away in the next video and that video will do well and kind of like create this cycle. That’s when I was like,

I want to use brands to allow me to help people. I was like, I think this would be like a really cool thing. And I was just like freaking out. I was like, I think I just cracked the code. You probably don’t take tips, but take $200. – Seriously? You got?

– Are you serious? – Yeah, yep sir. – And Jimmy has given the money away and they’re making videos. It seems to be working. And then next thing you know, he’s at my door. – Hello mother. – Hey guys. – I arrived with my friends – Oh, hey, everybody.

– Try not to be too mad at me. So you saw me carrying this. And so I wanted to give you money to put towards your house or something. Don’t you owe a lot of money on your house. Yes, so I wanted to give you a check to have you pay for it

– No. – Yeah. – Hey mom, I’m here to give you a $100,000 to help you pay off your house. What, what are you talking about? Like, you know, you’re here to help me. No, Jimmy. – Yeah. – Y’all gonna make me cry. – I remember the day he did that.

Just the pure happiness, like on his face as he was telling her that. – Should we get all emotional. – That was his way of saying, thanks, mom. Thanks mom, for all that you did for me. Thanks for all that you did growing up and here,

I want you to be part of my success. – Obviously it felt great. I mean, I don’t know how to really describe it in words I’m not the best at that, but you know, she needed the money and she was working a lot still and it meant a lot back then.

– I first became aware of Jimmy through a friend of mine. When I looked back at all his content throughout the years, I could see that he had been making videos since he was 14 years old. So I knew that he wasn’t gonna give up. That was actually something that stood out

Right when I went to the channel, he was going to do whatever he could to be a successful digital creator. – It’s to reminds me to upload, boys. I ain’t playin’ around no more. We’re about to grind our way to the top. – I thought he’s at a point where he’s poised

To actually catch a break. – This is actually my first time buying a storage unit. – When I met him, he did not have a lot of money to his name. – This unit, I paid $350 for. – But that’s just kinda how we ran the business early on.

It was like make a hundred thousand dollars, spend a hundred thousand dollars. – So we got 32 pairs of shoes. – He had grown 1.6 million subscribers when we had first initially met and he makes money off what Google calls AdSense. It’s the ads that you see before the YouTube video,

During the YouTube video that are burnt into the video from YouTube and creators also make money from direct sponsorships. – Pause, basically Like sponsored this video. Quid is an app where you can collect- Honey is a free browser. – And so he was taking on both of those revenue streams

And he was giving that amount of money away in the video. – We have 3 million pennies and we’re going to deliver it to my 3 million subscribers. – I’m just in shock right now because to be honest, I didn’t know what 3 million pennies look like until now.

And there’s a shit load. – Between the videos where we like gave money to people. Whether it be like people that were in need or Twitch streamers or anything like that, we kind of filmed like random videos. That’s really the only way to describe it. – Do you know what color this is?

– Orange? – He doesn’t even know he’s color blind. – We tried to climb a wall with plungers one time for a video. – One video, we’re buying everything in a store and then donating it to a food bank. And the next video, I mean walking up to people,

Giving them my credit card and telling them they can buy whatever they want. We also have videos where we spend 24 hours in the middle of a desert and completing a marathon in the world’s largest pairs of shoes. I don’t like this. – I don’t either. – They were 10 pounds.

We have blisters on our feet. We technically haven’t even past the start line. – We’re actually negative into the race. – And then after that things really started to change. Yeah, it was, it was crazy. One thing about YouTube is growth is definitely exponential.

It’s not like you go from like a million views to like 2 million. It’s like a million to 10 to 100 million. Once I got on that exponential curve, I was just like, oh my goodness, like, wow. Hey mom, I told you dropping out of college was a good idea.

– And lo and behold, you know, I met him at a million and a half subscribers somewhere in that area. And we finished out 2018, around 13.6 million. – My income didn’t go up like this over the years, it was like, you know what I mean? Around that time is where I bought my first designer clothes, like shirts that cost a thousand dollars, which is stupid. And I even bought like a nice car back then as well, because I thought expensive materialistic objects made you cool back then. But then once you have a nice sports car,

You realize like, it’s cool. But like, if you have Crohn’s or if you have other issues, they don’t just go away because you have a nicer car. And to me, a lot of that stuff was overrated. So I got rid of it all and realized like, that’s just not what makes me happy.

I didn’t just want to make money to make money. I think if you have a goal in life, right? If you have something you’re aiming for, I think it helps you work those longer hours. It helps you pull those all nighters because you have something that you wanna accomplish.

– He really looks up to, you know, Steve jobs, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, none of them were flashy. That’s not part of who they are. What they really care about is changing the world. And I think that’s really rubbed off on him. He doesn’t care about nice stuff, he never will.

Like, he cares about the people’s lives that he impacts. – I have to do a sale. Like and subscribe to Mr. Beast. Just say it real quick. – Like and subscribe to Mr. Beast. – Now, you have to say it. – Like and subscribe to Mr. Beast

– Thank you, that was pretty easy. – Dude, are you serious? – Yeah. – Heck yeah. – Why are you doing this for? – That’s just for fun. I really think positivity can be just as interesting as negativity. I just think it’s harder. That’s that’s the distinction.

I think it’s easy just to trash talk or tear down something. I think it’s a lot harder to make like an upbeat fulfilling video that’s also entertaining. We get messages all the time from like moms who are like, yeah, my little kid watched your videos and now they want to go volunteer.

And now they want to go donate their own money. And they’re wanting to give away their own allowance. Even other creators that, you know, after we do something, they do something similar. And that is one thing that’s fulfilling for me to know that like a lot of the influence we are leaving

Is positive and encouraging. We have a circle under this tarp, but anything you can fit in this mysterious circle we’ll pay for it. – We are the only soup kitchen in town, and we serve about 35,000 meals. – Wow. – Thank you so much. – We ain’t never had nobody bless us like this. – I like to do just unique, crazy, insane things, and just keep the focus with positive helping. So whenever we come up with a crazy, insane idea, usually it does go that direction ’cause that’s kind of just the goal. So I had this idea that I wanted to plant a million trees for one of my videos. And so, you know, like we do, we start just seeing if it’s actually feasible. We did a bunch of research. We called a bunch of companies and we came to the conclusion

That I was stupid and it’s not possible. A million trees is way too many trees to plant. So then I did something that’s typical for me when something’s not possible. I somehow make more impossible. And I’m like, oh, I’m about to hit 20 million subscribers. I want to plant 20 million trees.

And everyone’s like, does your brain not work? And I’m like, Nope, I want to plant 20 million trees. So then I just threw out a tweet and I was like to celebrate 20 million subscribers. I want to plant 20 million trees if anyone wants to help reach out.

And that’s kind of where this ball started rolling. I ended up connecting with Mark Rober. – I am a former NASA and Apple mechanical engineer turned YouTuber. – Obviously, unlike me, he’s a NASA scientist and engineer. He’s done lots of cool stuff and he’s a lot older and wiser.

And so he was able to help me iron out the details. – I was still working at Apple. He called me up and I know exactly where I was. I walked outside of the building and we were pacing back and forth being like, is this something we could do, is this possible?

You know, more and more people started liking it and retweeting it. So it was clear there was like an appetite for this. – How do we actually plant 20 million trees? At first we wanted our subscribers to buy seeds and then like, they go plant seeds in like their backyard or saplings.

But the problem is like you could plant a tree and it could be an invasive species. So you could harm the trees around them depending on where you plant them. – We realized whatever we did we wanted it to be like ironclad, bulletproof.

If we were going to be asking kids to like give their money like to this cause we want her to make sure it was going towards actually planting trees. And it would be done in a way that would actually help the planet. – So we kept working on it relentlessly

And eventually we got connected with the Arbor Day Foundation, they’ve planted hundreds of millions of trees. If these guys can plant hundreds of millions of trees, I think they could actually plant 20 million trees. They gave us hope. So then me and Mark asked them like,

Could they actually plant a tree for a dollar? Because we thought of the slogan, right? $1 equals one tree. Here’s a dollar and I donated it. – Literally that dollar will go towards planting one tree somewhere across the globe. Ultimately our goal was to plant trees on all the continents, except for Antarctica.

Arbor Day will work with local partners all across the globe, their message is plant the right tree at the right place at the right time. It’s like doing this responsibly so it actually matters and makes a difference. – So then we started tinkering with the name,

We eventually ended up on Team Trees, $1 equals one tree. Team Trees was also different than what I normally do because the point wasn’t really a video. The point was literally to plant 20 million trees. – We actually didn’t create a ton of content around Team Trees.

He was like, this is something that I truly care about. I think we can do it. It’s going to take a lot of work. But if we’re able to raise $20 million to plant 20 million trees, like that is life-changing on so many ways.

– I think the biggest thing we wanted to prove is that the internet isn’t just all talk. Like if we really put our minds together and try to make a positive change, like we can actually do it. – And then once I decided that the next problem was,

How do we raise $20 million to plant the 20 million trees? – So the goal was to plant 20 million trees by 2020, in other words, to raise $20 million. But that meant we had like two months to do it, which is bonkers. But by making such an audacious goal

And just saying like the only way this happens, you guys, is if we all band together and just really selling that vision. – They started reaching out to these YouTubers and I was expecting them not to care. I was expecting them to be like,

Yeah, yeah, I don’t care about your stupid tree thing. Like I got my own stuff, I’m busy. But that wasn’t the response. Almost every single YouTuber I message was like actually excited. And I was shocked. They were like, yes, like I want to be involved. This is a good cause.

And like a lot of them seemed like genuinely interested in helping. And so as we started reaching out to creators, we kept seeing the same enthusiasm. We slowly just built a large group of influencers. – Oh, hi Mark. – Hey Zach. – We’ve got a dollar for you. Oh, okay.

– So you’re gonna take the dollar, put it in some dirt and then pull you get a tree. – I’m so excited. – I genuinely was just shocked by just how much these creators cared. Literally hundreds of creators made videos on their channels to raise money, to plant trees,

– 20 million trees, I am so in. – Proud members of Team Trees, filming a music video. – I would plant at least a couple of trees. – The reason I’m most excited about this is it feels like the end of Power Rangers when they would all assemble into the big thing

And fight stuff together and do good. – We will be planting 20 million trees. – Team Trees was launched on October 25th, 2019. – And we put them in the hole. – We either thought it would just absolutely crash and burn and it would just be an absolute disaster

Or we would hit our goal. And it would be like a big success. – Only 19,999,980 more trees, let’s go. Once we put it out there, the world kind of just like took it and just blew it up. Look at all these people we’re easily going to hit 20 million.

One of the fun things about Team Trees is we actually had a leaderboard. So you could see that the top donators. And so it started off at like 10,000 and then it got up to a hundred grand, which is insane. A hundred thousand dollars donated is a hundred thousand trees planted.

Elon Musk donated a million dollars. I think we ended with the top donation being like $1,000,001 just to be at the top. – It’s definitely not true that this campaign happened because all these corporations stepped in the median donation was something like $4. This was tooth fairy money.

This was sixth grade bake sale money. And the real power here is that kid who’s now part of Team Trees who donated $2. They also are much more likely to turn off the light when they leave the room. Or if they see their friend putting trash on the ground

Or not recycling, it’s like, yo, like I’m on Team Trees, all right. – It only took a month to hit the goal, a 20 million. – It was just so crazy to see us smash that goal in such little a time. And like, yeah, I honestly did not think

We were gonna hit the goal by the end of the year, but we crushed it. – I cannot express in words just how amazing the YouTube community was and how much love they showed Team Trees and just how hard they pushed it and just how great everyone was like, it really was beautiful

To see all these hundreds, if not 1,000 plus creators come together and just support this one cause that was for good. – Jimmy is an inspiration, not just to fellow creators on the platform, but people who watch his videos that show that, you know,

You can be a force for good in the world and you don’t have to have all these super powers. You could just be like a dude with his buddies, having fun and doing cool stuff that makes people happy. – When COVID first hit, it was pretty brutal for a lot of people. And financially and everything, things been good or has the pandemic affected you negatively? – The pandemic definitely affected us negatively. I got laid off from my job. – We tried to do more content than normal, where we helped people.

We did one video where over Zoom, we gave random people, $10,000. Pick a number between, one to 10, – Nine. – Do you think $9,000 will help make your life better? – Yeah, I think $9,000 would be amazing. – In that video we ended up giving away

Like a quarter of a million dollars to just people who lost their jobs because of COVID. We’d like to give you a $10,000 to make everything going on a little bit easier for you. – That’s just insane. – Oh, you’re about to make me cry, okay. – We’re glad we could help you.

– I’m glad you could help me, I’m glad. – When the COVID pandemic first started in Eastern North Carolina, there was a huge shortage in meats like poultry, ham, all that kind of stuff. So we decided to do a video where we partnered with Smithfield to donate 2 million meals to our area.

– As you can see we dropped off 170,000 servings of protein to the next shelter. – This is where he grew up, and just like he wanted to take care of his mom for helping him out, and he wants to do the same to his community.

– I’m really grateful for the way our community and just people in general have been helping us with our videos. ‘Cause these are massive projects, I can’t do them on my own. Today we’re gonna buy every item in this store. So I had this idea for a video.

I want to buy everything in the store. – [Chris] I don’t think you can do this all by yourself. – I don’t think you should speak anymore. – We just didn’t have enough people. And we were running out of time before the store closed. – So I brought some friends. You might be wondering, why are we buying all this stuff? Well we’re buying it because we want to give it to charity like a bank, a homeless shelter, or if a random guy on the street wants beans, we’ll just give it to them. So we’re at a food bank and we’re gonna give them food. – We’ve talked to soup kitchens that have told us that like they got cleared out and they didn’t know where their next donation was coming from. And like, to hear that and to see how it changes their lives

Is just an incredible experience. – Well, we serve anywhere from a thousand to 1500 people a week. It couldn’t have come at a better time. – It’s your lucky day, this is all free. – Thank you. – We have people come up to us, you know,

Just randomly everyday, all the time telling us they’re so thankful for it. – Thank you, thank you. – Thank you, Mr. Beast. – Thank you Mr. Beast – I appreciate that right here, man. We gonna shout out Mr. Beast for looking out for the community.

– Being over here in this Eastern North Carolina community has been fantastic. We can call so-and-so and say, Hey, we need this location. And it’s like, sure, no problem. They just love being part of what it is that he stands for and what it is that the channel’s doing.

– It’s a, win-win all around. Like the people we help is because the videos we make and we take the money from the videos to help people. And it creates a cycle and viewers get content, they enjoy it, really just about everyone involved just comes up with a win. Put it on now.

Yeah, I’ve never ran a restaurant before. – Hey, come on in everybody. – And then I opened the world’s first free restaurant. It was a restaurant, but everything was free. Basically, we went to a restaurant owner and we were like, Hey, I want to use your restaurant.

They didn’t think we were being serious and we tried to explain to the owner of this restaurant that we have 40+ million subscribers and that I want to open a restaurant for a day and they didn’t really think that many people would come to our restaurant.

The second we put up the signs, right, free food. The line started piling up quick. We thought if we rented the field, this giant field beside the restaurant, that’d be fine. The drive through line goes to the parking lot. And then it goes to the field and it zigzags.

That should be good, right? What’s up, boys, welcome, what can I get you? So we serve a few dozen people and the line it’s just growing and growing and growing. It goes out the parking lot, goes through the field, through another parking lot and it started backing up traffic.

– Hi, hi, hi, here. – So we were stuffing bags, full of cash. We were going out throwing cash to people everywhere we could. We were given out video game consoles to kids. – Here’s a brand new iPad. We’re just like throwing bags out the window. At one point, we’re just grabbing money

And just throwing it in their cars to keep them moving because we couldn’t cook the food fast enough. – Thank you. – No problem. Are you crying, oh, she’s gonna make me cry. The head of the police kept telling me like, the lines getting too long in the road.

He’s like, it’s a mile long. Then he’s like, it’s two miles long. And they’re like, literally it felt like an hour later, he’s like, dude, the lines like 20 miles long. It went really well. We had a lot of people come and it was a really good video.

We were able to feed a lot of people. – And that just started in thinking about what’s the next step that I can take? – This is my food pantry. We have over 50,000 pounds of food here in this warehouse and we’re doing weekly deliveries to communities in need, I made a completely separate YouTube channel

Called Beast Philanthropy and 100% of all the ad revenue, all the brand deals, all the merch I sell on that channel will go towards running the food bank. And I’m gonna make videos around the food bank. How many hundreds of thousands of people can this food bank feed

If it’s fully funded by a YouTube channel? You know what I mean? And the content on the channel is the food bank. Every view on this channel is literally putting food in people’s mouths like this. – Was that sharpie? – Yeah. – Helping people’s fun. – On my philanthropy channel

I literally just wanna help people. I want to use the money to grow a food bank that supports tens of thousands of families if possible. – So what we’re doing is we’re actually launching food banks across America. The first food banks will be in North Carolina

And then we’ll scale them out across the United States and hopefully internationally at some point in time. – Right now, I really just want to learn all these nuances and actually learn how to help people as effectively as possible. And then, yeah, just as I make more money in my life,

Just do it at scale. – One thing that’s been truly special for me to watch was what really started early on with Jimmy is just giving away money so people could click and watch and have some kind of shock and awe at that content has really changed into a greater effort

To have an impact on the world. – My channel has billions of views and those are real people. You know, it’s not just numbers on a screen and a large chunk of that are on videos where we help people and we did good

And, I mean, now that you got me thinking about it, yeah, the videos that got 50 plus million views of me giving away money probably did inspire those 50 million people to go give money to other people. I don’t really think about it much, but yeah.

– I get a story from a family where 11, 12 year old kid said no presents. I’m not taking any presents. I want anything that you want to give me to be a donation to the future. You know, Mr. Beast charity,

I believe in what he’s doing and I want to be part of it. Getting feedback stories from parents like that, that they’re saying thank you for the positive role model that your son is becoming for us, that behind the scenes stuff, it’s just truly amazing.

– I put out a tweet and I have tons of people coming here tomorrow to plant trees. – The idea of this kind of philanthropy through an online campaign through influencers feels like it is the future. There’s like a communal aspect to it. It’s not just about giving your money.

It’s about joining a team. You gave your money. You’re officially part of something bigger than yourself. That type of philanthropy does more to like move people’s hearts and change behaviors. – Just because you can’t do something massive like me doesn’t mean what you’re doing isn’t important.

Tipping a pizza delivery guy a few extra dollars is cool. Or even better just doing something unique and even more unexpected, like compliment someone or randomly mow your neighbor’s lawn. It might seem minuscule, but obviously if millions of you do it, it has like a very macro impact.

And it does start with you. Go and give away money. – Yeah! – Jimmy’s future is without boundaries. I see the philanthropy growing as big as his social media presence. The whole world is a playground and it’ll be amazing what he will get accomplished in the next couple of years.

– Congratulations on your brand new car. No one’s ever done this before, I don’t even know how this is gonna work out. In a perfect world over the next few decades I make tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions, whatever it is, and then when I’m like 50, I’m just like,

All right, I have all this money. And then we just go open up a few thousand homeless shelters or food banks. I don’t know what it is. What I do know is I want to help people. – So this idea of using his influence

To make the world a better place while at the same time, like making that kind of cool and normalizing it for other people to do the same. I honestly think that’s his guiding principle and he’s killing it. – Jimmy’s heart is to make a change in this culture. He does it really, honestly, because that’s just what he loves to do. – I like helping people because it just makes me happy and it makes me feel good. I like seeing their faces light up. I like seeing how excited they get.

A lot of people like, I don’t know, watching movies, or these other things, other forms of entertainment. But for me, nothing is more entertaining than just seeing someone just go from like having a rough day to just going like, what? It just makes me feel good. Okay, come here, come here.

So what was your name again? – Cody. – Cody, okay. Cody, here’s a few thousand dollars for filming. I’ve had this in my pocket and you were Josh, right? All right, Josh, here’s a few grand as well. Thank you guys for filming this. Yeah, it’s been a fun episode, thank you for watching.

– [Cody] What just happened? (relaxing music).