Spark of Ages
In every episode, we interview B2B Marketing leaders, executives, and innovators about their successes and challenges, asking them how they broke through and what spark in their careers took them to the next level.
Spark of Ages
The Contrarian Thinker of Digital Entertainment/Marc Hustvedt - YouTube, Mr. Beast, Creators ~ Spark of Ages Ep 37
Marc Hustvedt shares insights from helping to scale Mr. Beast to 350 million YouTube subscribers and building a global creator brand, revealing the unique combination of traits that separates extraordinary creators from everyone else. Check out Contrarian Thinking and Codie Sanchez to learn more about Marc's current work helping people buy and grow small businesses.
• Creator-led businesses eliminate the power imbalance found in traditional media
• The most successful YouTube integrations feel natural and appeal to the global audience
• Small, targeted audiences of 10,000 engaged followers can build lucrative businesses
• The future of media belongs to individual creators who own their businesses
• Work ethic and obsessive dedication to the craft set apart successful creators
• Jimmy Donaldson (Mr. Beast) studied YouTube content for years before finding success
• High appetite for risk and willingness to bet on yourself is critical
• Single-minded focus on "making the best YouTube videos in the world" drove their strategy
• The $3.5 million Squid Game recreation video was an inflection point for the brand
• Traditional production methods create unnecessary friction for creators
Ever wonder what makes certain creators explode while others struggle to gain traction? Marc Hustvedt, former president of Mr. Beast, pulls back the curtain on how they built one of the most successful creator brands in history expanding into ventures like Feastables Chocolate and Mr. Beast Burger.
What truly sets apart the 0.1% of creators from everyone else? Marc reveals it's a unique combination of traits: relentless work ethic, obsessive attention to detail, willingness to take massive risks, and laser-sharp focus on a singular mission. Jimmy Donaldson didn't just appear out of nowhere – he spent years making videos that barely got views, studying YouTube's ecosystem, and constantly iterating. The breakthrough came from understanding that success requires both quantity and quality, paired with the courage to bet everything on yourself repeatedly. The $3.5 million Squid Game recreation video serves as a perfect case study of their approach. While traditional media might have stretched production over months of planning and bureaucracy, the Mr. Beast team compressed timelines dramatically. They secured one of the largest brand deals ever for a single YouTube video by creating a sense of FOMO around cultural moments. Most importantly, they eliminated the traditional production hierarchy: "We were both the studio and the network," Marc explains, allowing for nimble decision-making that put creative vision first.
Marc is now bringing his digital expertise to Contrarian Thinking as their president, where he's exploring the intersection of education and creator economy. His observation? "You don't need a hundred million people to watch a video. If you've got the right 10,000 people, you can have a very lucrative business." This shift toward highly engaged, targeted communities represents the next evolution in digital content creation. Listen now for insights on building digital businesses, recognizing talent, and creating content that captivates audiences in today's fragmented landscape.
Marc Hustvedt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marchustvedt/
Marc was the President of Mr. Beast from 2021 to 2024. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he co-founded Tubefilter and the Streamy Awards.
Website: https://www.position2.com/podcast/
Rajiv Parikh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajivparikh/
Sandeep Parikh: https://www.instagram.com/sandeepparikh/
Email us with any feedback for the show: spark@postion2.com
Welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast. Today, we're joined by Mark Hustavit, a true pioneer in digital media who's been shaping the creator economy since the early days. If you've heard of Mr Beast, aka Jimmy Donaldson and I know maybe you haven't Mark was the president of Jimmy's company from 2021 to 2024, and who helped scaled it to incredible growth to over 350 million YouTube subscribers and expanded the brand into successful ventures like Feastables Chocolate and Mr Beast Burger, which reached over 1,600 virtual locations worldwide. Mark's digital media journey started long before that, though. Born into tech royalty, his dad was a legendary software engineer at Digital who helped design the VMS operating system. For geeks like me, mark's been innovating since day one. After graduating from the University of Michigan, he co-founded TubeFilter and the Streamy Awards, which are basically the Oscars for the digital video world. Now Mark's bringing his digital expertise to Contrarian Thinking as their president, where he's based in Austin, texas. Mark, welcome to the Spark of Ages.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's great to be here. Good to see you guys.
Speaker 1:It's great to have you. I apparently have built up my Michigan connections over the years. My oldest son went to Michigan Law and my youngest son is about to go to Michigan for bioinformatics top programs in the country.
Speaker 2:That's right. Well, go blue, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:A lot of blue. It's very exciting to have you here. You've built up just this amazing business and I know you're working on the next one. I'm sure you can talk about the stats, but a total subscriber base of over 476 million for Mr Beast. 868 videos the world record for an individual mail with over about 72 billion views. Incredible earnings. Net worth revenue growth, I think 2023, according to our data is 223 million. So just an incredible business in a place where only a few do really really well. Right, this is like the not just the 1%, but the 0.1. So what you guys built is remarkable. And so, mark, you've mentioned that Jimmy Donaldson, aka Mr Beast, possesses 12 great tools that set him apart. From your perspective, what are the most critical tools or skills amongst those 12, beyond just his on-camera presence or editing ability? Could you say it's this unique appetite for risk, self-conviction as an entrepreneur obsession with data. There's so many ways you could talk about it, so just love to hear the top three or four that pop to mind.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I've talked about this a little before. I think you hit on some of them and I look for this. When I, when I want to work with a creator, I need to see they have a number of these elements in place, because part of what I do is I come in. I'm an operator at heart but I like to go all in there. There's there's those who live in the representation world and there's those who live like really trying to build alongside and he you know, look, a lot has been said about Jimmy and he possessed so many different layers to his background and skills, but but ultimately he had the work ethic.
Speaker 2:So work ethic I put incredibly up there, the willing to take like a high effort approach to whatever the craft of the product is. So I mean there was a chart we would have in our decks if we were trying to tell the story externally. And you look at like the first couple of years of his channel and how many videos he put out and how many subscribers, and it'd be like he had like 600 subscribers. I'm like then the next year was like a thousand, like it didn't grow that much, but he was continually making videos and they were mostly pretty bad, like some of them were Minecraft videos or some of them were just videos about YouTube. But he was studying all of that first gen YouTube creator content and he was like he would like commentate on the titles and thumbnails and he was obsessing. So let's say high effort, high work ethic and then an obsession an obsession over, you know, I look at it became one of the core traits of what we looked for in employees there and I still, to this day, will almost always look at that. I try to assess out like, what do you obsess over? The word sometimes gets maligned and I think people over you know overuse it like a buzzword. But like, at the end of the day, it means you're willing to go so deeply down that rabbit hole and then just continually like, go to the edge of it and then just push and see, well, like, why did that work and why did that work, and then like, almost like, reverse engineer it.
Speaker 2:So he had that ability. You know the high appetite for risk is a real thing. They're willing to sort of focus on what matters. I'll say the risk factor is like of focus on what matters. I'll say the risk factor is like he's willing to bet on himself too. So if, like, if there's a chance, you know if it's cost a million dollars but it's going to make the video really really exceptionally well, like and it's all the money for the brand and all the money that you're basically like taking all the money you make on this video and then just like betting it again on the next one. That's not everybody who can do that. A lot of people actually are in this like I need to be profitable and take money off the table, and I kind of look at it like a sort of a traditional business model. And instead, what I think he'd focused on was like the number one mission. It was like the best YouTube videos in the world. And we have it on our walls. We're here to be YouTube first. It was like we make the best YouTube videos in the world, not the best produced videos in the world, and if you don't know the difference, ask Jimmy. It really was.
Speaker 2:This single, single focus is another trait that I think was just absolutely part of the success. It meant you could you could literally like be literally outsourced for a period of time things like Facebook, so like there would be cuts on Facebook but it'd be made by like another company because, like the, the people in that building, the ones you actually invested in, should be like the best in the world. His ability to recruit people is actually really strong to talent. You know what's the old expression? Like game recognizes game. There there's, there's definitely that sense of like he would.
Speaker 2:He had he had the ability to. He would talk to almost anyone, like pick up the phone and call them, and that's that's initially how I got to know him. I was actually working with the fine brothers and was running their business with them in LA and he would call and he would ask all kinds of questions and like that was just part. That's part of what he does. He's just like willing to ask direct questions and I think that's what like great founders do in general, rather than go through sort of formal channels, is like just get to the, get to the person who knows the thing and get them on the phone. That's awesome, yeah. So I mean I could go on a lot about this.
Speaker 1:I think you nailed it right, you said it's hard being a super hard worker. It's almost a core element, but not just. There are a lot of people who work hard but they're not focused and he's obsessive, where other people may just jump from thing to thing. So he's obsessive and then he reaches out to great talent and reaches out for advice about it. So he's an A player, he's attracted A players and that obsession then bleeds off to the rest of his team. He's only going to attract those types of people who are like him. So I think it's a great way of putting it together. Then, when you, as part of building this, the thing that made Mix Mr B, or what it's known for, is the Squid Game video.
Speaker 1:It's a $456,000 squid game in real life, right when you. You did this complex production completely. Uh, did a almost a real life without the death version, or simulated death version, of a squid games. Could you walk us through some of the thinking behind that? That project and it's really ambitious and usually in, frankly, in YouTube it was known, at the time at least, to do a lot of stuff, as opposed to super high quality stuff, whereas you guys had like a $3.5 million budget, right, I mean. So just talk us through this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was an inflection point, for sure, that was fall of 21. And it was, yeah, I mean, things were working already for the company and the channel. There was a certain momentum, but there was nowhere near the infrastructure, you know, even to pull off that. That was super ambitious. It was you know, all the trades that we talked about set a big goal, a big, ambitious goal. Let's recreate Squid Game in real life.
Speaker 2:The trend had had, you know, it was sort of obvious that this had become a cultural moment and there was the first wave of quick, derivative content that would come and there would be other channels that did red light, green light or versions of the game, but you could tell they were all watered down and so you had, you see, you knew, we knew we had to move super fast, but we also had to do it with spectacle, like really, really big. In a way that was true to the how would Mr Beast do this thing? And of course it would be. Yeah, let's actually get 456 people and let's get the costumes and let's get the games right. And when you think about it, there was no. It sounds like oh well, great, it was pretty easy. Just follow these games right was a scripted show and and you're making irl, unscripted entertainment, which is what we made you don't actually know what's going to happen and you actually don't know. There's no actual playbook for red light, green light, like you. Just you can't just like google how to play like green light and how to pull that off. Remember, production point of view, that was a massive amount of engineering that went into pulling that off and transforming a horse arena in rural north carolina into a stage that then could, we could play, and an incredible amount of work went into that and so many people worked on this video and they were super talented.
Speaker 2:I would say it was, you know, move quick, set a a very tight deadline. So so, like, one of the biggest hacks, of course, was just overall, was that like we shrunk time. We we focused on how do we, how do we get the most out every day and how do we not fall victim to sort of traditional and and really even the entertainment industry tends to get in this stuff like, well, we need this much time for development and creative and then we'll lock the budgets and we'll, you know, just sort of a well-defined way of doing things. Well, we would like this is YouTube, so you still needed to like, shrink that down and frankly respond to the trend, because there would be a point where it was too late after the holidays. So we ended up releasing it like thanksgiving of, or maybe it was actually two days after that.
Speaker 2:It was a saturday after thanksgiving so just as people are getting off the family stuff, getting tired of the family, oh yeah, it was perfect great action, great, a great time to release, because, because the communal viewing and and like people were discovering it. But you could.
Speaker 2:If you waited too long, there'd be a problem like after the holidays, like you know, we get stale and people get into holiday mode, right totally so anyway, quick I mean it was like no formal budgeting process very like, very much like write some numbers on the whiteboard wall and just go like send teams as a business person were you kind of skeptical.
Speaker 1:I mean, you know you've done other types of production. That's a big number, did you have? You had the capital, obviously, to do it.
Speaker 2:Well, we had to go get it like we actually like we went out and a lot of things. We had to go get a brand excited about this, comfortable with it, and ultimately create this like sense of FOMO, like this is going to be a huge thing. We ended up actually securing one of the largest brand deals at the time ever for a single YouTube video and it was well above the quote of where we were at at that time. But, as with sometimes, you just know it's going to be a big deal, right, it was sort of it could have been a sports analogy. This was a game seven versus a mid-season game, so this was like you had to go obviously secure a brand partner and ultimately take again a very big bet. It was not. The company was certainly not like. This was nothing.
Speaker 1:You're talking about this extraordinary appetite for risk. Would it have been one of these things that if it didn't work, would that be the end? Would that have been the end?
Speaker 2:scrapped, weren't good enough to upload or had to be reshot, that type of scrap or just didn't work. They just kind of flopped and were low performance. The goal was always a one out of 10. If you don't, if you're a YouTuber, one out of 10 is your last 10, it's your number one out of the cohort. So it depends. I mean, obviously there are certain types of failure that can be existential.
Speaker 1:But if it was a five out of 10-, you guys had enough and had enough momentum that people would have backed the next one. So that's really cool. So this brings me to the next one. So you talked about how fast you had to move right, this incredible operational speed and execution. So what did Mr Beast understand about entertainment and how does it drive go to market that traditional Hollywood didn't understand? Yeah, and I would even go further with that question and say frankly, I don't even think YouTube necessarily understood, because around that time, or even before that time, youtube was paying creators to just crank out hours and hours of content. So that also wasn't great. You guys went for high production value.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's funny because right while we were shooting and prepping that video, we were finishing what would be the last YouTube original that we would do. It was that last crop of YouTube original. I remember we were pulling an all-nighter at SoFi Stadium in LA filming Creator Games 3. We had Logan Paul and Zach King and all kinds of creators in this. Um, it was actually two video series, if you will, that was funded by youtube and I remember we we actually thought like why, what, what, what did we need to do a youtube original for outside of capital? It added all of these other like process steps and in fact, what they did is they would pair a traditional production company with the creator because, of course, when you're spending millions of dollars this sort of typical network behavior, right, they're like well, we want you to work with a real production company.
Speaker 3:They want the girls in the room, yeah.
Speaker 2:And wow, the cultural difference.
Speaker 2:So so you know I'd I'd been at at Beast long enough We've done some videos and had seen just just how nimble you were, even just the way we shot. I mean even just like handheld small camera profiles, running gone, like literally like our camera team with athletes is the best way to describe them. And then we show up at SoFi I'm not joking, there were guys, these like older gentlemen with cameras on their shoulders, just kind of looked like they were filming a basketball game or something, and we were kind of looking around like do they realize what's about to go down here we're doing a hide and seek in SoFi. Do they realize what's about to go down here we're doing a hide and seek, and so five and as soon as jimmy says start, they are going to sprint in every direction and logan takes off and everybody said takes off. It was we didn't even bring enough camera of our team, so we were using their team and their team. I remember these camera ops just were like slow and and you could see there was I.
Speaker 1:I honestly like so, so like you, you guys found like sort of the track artists or you know the game, the folks that are willing to break rules or break the normal rules to to drive the production of this right. So you don't have to just be like a nimble.
Speaker 3:You don't just have to be like, uh, you know, a nimble company. You actually actually need nimble human beings on the ground to move and capture these people that's so interesting.
Speaker 1:By the way, folks, that's Sandeep who's back and joining us after a little bit of a hiatus, so go ahead, Sandeep.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, no, sorry, I'm jumping in as the producer just to say because this you know, this is, this is, this is very much in my, in my world, Mark, like you've talked about with me how you guys and you mentioned a little bit, but like ditching budgeting, like that is that? Like talk about a totally wild, you know, reversal from the norm, right, Like from how we do stuff in Hollywood.
Speaker 1:What does that mean? To ditch budgeting?
Speaker 2:We didn't have line producers and we realized, like, look at the traditional setup, it often had to do with power and trust. If you get down to sort of root cause right, the, the, the general suppliers of entertainment, are generally not the buyers of entertainment and they're not the end consumer. So you have these different steps right. So it's a production company makes content that is ordered up by a buyer, which is a network who's trying to reach the end consumer. Well, we were both the studio and the network, so like we didn't need that step necessary. It doesn't mean we didn't need to have general frameworks for what certain formats should cost, but the objective was a one out of 10 video keep and then iterate, make it better and better and better and grow the channel so that if we said, okay, fine, it's roughly, it's going to cost us this, we'll do this. All right, roughly three and a half million dollars Great, low, mid, high. It's three to $4 million Great. Let's try to hit that bullseye somewhere in that target. Now let's go.
Speaker 1:You threw a general number in. You didn't have to do line by line budget analysis.
Speaker 3:Traditionally you have a line producer who is basically your onset cop that is making sure every line and every department is not overspending, and this is not how you guys were thinking about it. It's like you were taking those, that energy, that resource and devoting it, you know, into what mattered more for the video, into whatever it is experimentation or R&D for, like how the heck you're going to pull off the Squid Game thing live.
Speaker 1:you know like right Is that the idea, but I mean a lot of time, these things. Just the costs escalate once you get there and as you realize things, they just explode. How do you just say, well, I'm going to put three or 4 million in, let's see what happens? How do you prevent three from becoming six or eight?
Speaker 2:Well, it's a good question. I'll say, look, part of it is ultimately creative is in charge. We were a creative led company and a lot of people say that very few actually have the stones to run it that way and like Jimmy did and that means that like if, if, if we showed up and looked at it day of and it wasn't ready, I say we, that crane isn't big enough. I don't, I don't think we've got it, let's get another crane. It meant because you're you're doing it for the viewer's sake. You're like this is going to be a better video. You didn't need to go make some business justification.
Speaker 2:So business production, everything else was in service of creative and that's what the viewers reward. The viewers kind of inherently knew that and that's what the viewers reward. The viewers kind of inherently knew that, that they were going to have, they were going to be surprised and delighted by holy cow, how are you guys doing this, how are you doing that? And then, like the profits would follow and ultimately we can talk about business model in a second. But I think at the core it's grow, this attention engine, this thing that you can't stop watching because it's like the most interesting thing in the world.
Speaker 1:It just totally surprises you as you watch it. Like they really did this. They really threw him in a water and threw him into a pool with his chains tied, his feet tied to a chain, and then a character would negotiate with Mr Beast and try to get more money out of it. It's just really clever stuff that you guys put in to get it there. And then a character would negotiate with Mr Beast, right, and try to get more money out of it. It's just really clever stuff that you guys put in to get it there. Maybe talk about the business model.
Speaker 2:I think the note here is that this is why I love creator businesses the creative who is the creator owns the business I see. So it means that you have to go back to the power structures. You look at a lot of traditional business and media or even digital media. You take that era of venture funded. They put the suits in charge, they bring in a bunch of C-suite and the creatives would either be contracted they'd pitch a show you know one of they they pick up one of Sandeep shows and and yet he's not the owner of that company's owner of his company, but but ultimately, like the ones that were that were buying the show, here was a case where, like, the creative owned the company, so it was going to ultimately had both the business sense in their head and then ultimately, the you know make the best product and he would always say look, let's make the best product. So that, of course, then we have to make sense of it and part of my job is to make sense of it of like. Where are we actually going to like, build actual like value and actually return cash? Because ultimately the thing eats a lot of cash. That's right.
Speaker 2:Cash cycles in media are fairly quick in digital media, which is great. If you make a video and it bangs right like totally 100 million views, you're getting paid. Oh, you know, call it 60 days max from youtube after you got upload. A lot of your revenue is happening right away. And then there's sort of it's a, it's a long curve and a tail, so you'll just keep. It becomes part of your library and it's just kicking off cash.
Speaker 1:Is that the way you think about this? So when you put out, when you get ready for the video, you have this notion, like you talk about, where right after you release it, there's going to be a pop because your advertising is based on CPMs Cost per thousand you get so much for advertising, but you also have a sponsor yeah who's helping to back it?
Speaker 1:what like what? Do you think that there's a percentage of the production they're covering? Or maybe you have sponsors and they're covering it, especially the one that you highlight in the video that you guys have so clever you know, really clever product placement as part of this? Yeah and so how do you think about percentages and numbers for each element and and the timing of that?
Speaker 2:yeah, obviously at each stage of the growth you want it to keep somewhat in line with the performance of the videos. So you had to know how much you're getting from the brand. Let's start with that. That was sort of a known number. You signed a contract. Typically it would be one or multiple videos with some sort of advanced payment, some sort of payment mid-stage, and then certainly payment when you upload, because you sort of delivered it at that point in time and our rates kept going up as the views got higher and we had a, you know, a wonderful return rate of advertisers they were getting. They were seeing the beast effect and how powerful it could be, especially with the right integration and then the right cta, like it could be game changing for a squid game. It was brawl stars. That's a globally available free to play game. I think I saw it past three billion dollars in total revenue. You might want to check me on that. I know it crossed two at some point. You think about how I loved that category because it's it's so lucrative right?
Speaker 1:Because in that one they have in the game. You either buy the game or in the game you're buying things and they're just if it works, it really works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, plays the global audience. Well, you know, we'd have some brands come to us that would be for US only and they'd be like a financial services product and they're like, ah, well, it's for you got to be 18. And you start just narrowing the box a little bit and you're like, yeah, you're going to pay for the total audience If you're going to take our spot. You're buying out, effectively, the spot you're going to take.
Speaker 1:you know, you, there's all this sort of wasted audience that are going to see that because we, you know you can't regionalize integrations at this point maybe one day and no, but I think what you're bringing up is a really great point about this is that, as part of being the creator, that, if you're creatively led, part of picking a great sponsor is making sure you're appealing to your audience, right? You're not just taking it for money. You could take it for money, right, and some of these financial firms will pay a lot for access to a small portion of that audience, but you want to make it. Even the promoted item should be part of the show and should be interesting to a wide group of people. So it's a really smart way of looking at it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, with Squid Game we had actually made Brawl Stars integrated into a game element and the contestants are like throwing, like their dodgy, and it was like thank you, brawl Stars, thank you, brawl Stars. And I know my kids at home would be with their friends and they would start playing and they'd be like, thank you, brawl stars, thank you. But it became like its own little meme in a. In a sense, it's just the power of integrating into something that culturally relevant is was super valuable and the right. The brands that understood that were rewarded. So so yeah but hopefully that answers your question.
Speaker 2:That does it really helps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you have a brand deal, you have your CPMs, you have follow on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I exactly. So what we think about is brand deal ad rev from YouTube specifically, and that's largely determined on. You know. You wanted a duration where you had a long enough video to pop mid roll, kind of basic YouTube 101 stuff. So one of the over eight minutes long, longer videos typically could generate more ad breaks, could generate more revenue, but ultimately, again, it wasn't revenue. First it was make the best YouTube videos first, but you had some sort of nice associations with longer videos. Then you had downstream syndication. So we launched fast channels like Roku and Samsung TV and there's like whole dedicated channels on the grid where you can just watch beast content which is fun, and so that kicks in, obviously Facebook and then cut downs for other platforms. So there would be an ancillary pool of revenue, but you wanted to return the cash as much as possible with those first two buckets.
Speaker 1:Nice, and so now you're the president of Contrarian Thinking. It's a business, media and education company and you're building on. So now you have this great experience of what you learned and built together at Mr Beast and navigating the creator economy. So what do you believe is the most significant contrarian insight or approach needed for businesses and individuals to find their spark? How do they achieve outside growth in today's crowded digital landscape?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a great question. Well, so, by the way, I will say Cody Sanchez is going to be a household name in a few years, when maybe even a lot of people already know about her. But, like, she has that same package in many ways that I saw in Jimmy the work ethic, the drive, the willing, just discipline and obsession. She comes from the business world and was former Wall Street turned private investor and is now teaching people how to buy small businesses. So very, very fascinating business model. This part for me, and what I find really interesting, is how big the opportunity is. With call it the education and info products world, you're seeing the creator world, which which really learned first how to go native to the platforms and speak directly to an audience, and then you have this whole coaching world, which goes way back to Tony Robbins in this space, dave Ramsey in this space.
Speaker 2:And the more I look like these are wildly successful cashflow driven businesses that are not venture backed, but that the and I think that the spark for me is, like you don't need a hundred million people to watch a video. If you've got the right 10,000 people that watch it can, you can have a very lucrative business. And I know of small channels who who are doing coaching programs and masterminds making millions of dollars. There's one I am not joking, not a single video has more than 10,000 views.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and and all the people came from YouTube. They like did a whole mastermind, like people who paid in person. How many people they all raised their hand of how many found you? So I think the algorithm is getting really efficient at finding the rights of. In that particular example, that person explains how to do VSL funnels, video sales letters and like the whole the very specific niche-y stuff within paid ad streams. But like it's so, it's so perfectly aligns to that niche that, like those who are seeking it out are quickly find it and then it you know you start watching that the algorithm already matched it.
Speaker 2:Whether you subscribed or not, you're going to get served that content. So that's the opportunity.
Speaker 1:So that's the opportunity. You have a much more focused audience, much more focused objective, but then you can't. How do you chart? Is it? Is the business model necessarily about, then, CPMs or or media, you know it's. It's more about getting them to an event, or buying the next level, advice, or buying a workshop, or buying maybe a tool Is that?
Speaker 2:a workshop or buying, maybe a tool? Is that? Yeah, is that the thing? I think? I think the big trend here is that that that monetization strategy is is going to be less reliant on the media side of it. Media is the tool to reach the audience, but you bring them through a funnel. If we're using marketing language, your top of funnels, your youtube, you bring them. Or it could be instagram. It could be a series of things you're testing and you're on your multiple platforms and you need both short and long form content, but ultimately, bring them into that next step and that could be just a great questionnaire filtering them on your landing page. It could be a dedicated page, and so what's the product that could be? I think you're seeing a lot of group coaching masterminds. I think courses are a bit, they're getting a little bit played out, even the people who pay for courses. The completion rate, or even watch rate, is super low. It was surprisingly lower than I thought.
Speaker 1:Unless you have like a Duolingo for finance.
Speaker 2:it's really hard oh gosh, if we all could have that. I'm on a 344-day streak on Japanese, so I'm trying to hit my first year.
Speaker 1:I love that. Yeah, I think I'm on 450-something and it's hard because I'm doing Hindi and they're not as good in Hindi as they are in Spanish, where my friends are. So luckily, because my friends they're pushing me along. Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about some of what sparks you and what drives you. You did talk about this quite a bit already, and I think it's a great description of how you've moved from business to business similar type of business to a similar kind of business.
Speaker 1:So you co-founded airclicknet in college. So going back to your way, back.
Speaker 2:You did your homework. I was at Michigan yeah, Michigan.
Speaker 1:As an early internet business rewarding users with airline miles for clicking banner ads you mentioned. The great moment of success for AirClick was receiving cease and desist letters from all the major airlines that you've kept framed so you're in. Michigan. You faced a moment of whether to leave school or go to AirClick. What was your thinking? What was your internal calculus?
Speaker 2:Luckily, I had a mother, specifically, who valued education and was like you got to stay in school, so I had the family influence and pressure, I think, also realizing that you know that there's this was going to be tough and I think that like it wasn't, it wasn't going to be easy.
Speaker 2:I think we were onto something and I think it was a great experiment and project and I I think everyone should do like and now it's so much easier to do. I like if I had the AI tools that we had, I probably would have like 20 of these things going at one period of time in college just for fun, just to like see what's going on. I mean we had to manually, with php, build the whole database and like like it was just a clunky thing but it worked. We got people and we got all these freaking flyer sites because everyone was just looking for ways to maximize miles and we were like cool, like people are also looking for ways to get people to click on ads and we're like well, the people who travel a lot are like higher, their HHO is higher and there's just a more valuable customer. So we got some brands excited about it and basically did these money losing campaigns at first, just to get some testing.
Speaker 1:You were living the case study. If you're taking economics and you're doing this, you're learning the case study, and I think you were writing code too right, so you had both together. You were combining both as part of your school experience.
Speaker 2:I got my brother involved and my brother now he's been like 20 years at Google as an engineer. So it was great for him and him and I both. You never remember that well, so it was fun to work with him Making your brother do the code work.
Speaker 3:that's always important. Well, you said. I think at one point you said you said that, would you say that? I said no, I know a thing or two about making your brother do the heavy lifting something is the best at it.
Speaker 1:You. You mentioned right content is the new code. When did you realize that, like, you, built a business that was based on code air click? When did you realize that you built a business that was based on code AirClick? When did you realize that? Was there a point there where it just hit you?
Speaker 2:It was probably going back to the Guild and Sandeep's days when we started to realize that anybody could go direct to an audience. It now became about all of all the you could experiment and engineer with that. That's what I loved about the tube filter community that we had and we were all just sort of like figuring it all out together.
Speaker 2:And I think that yeah, and then and then you guys were like I mean, you guys were superstars, like we were all kind of like starstruck when y'all would come around, cause you were like your when y'all would come around, because you were like your show was so popular and it was. You know, obviously you won a bunch of streamies and it was that. That's like what we're trying to reward.
Speaker 3:We're like that you guys didn't need a buyer to tell you yeah, I'm buying you say that because, like, my experience of it at the time too was like we didn't even know. We were like like it's almost like the analytics or something wasn't there yet. Like Like I, I didn't, I didn't even know how popular it was really. Like we were just in our own little world, in our own little you know, just like hey, hoping that our PayPal button would fill up enough so we could shoot the next episode of the guild that we had no concept of like how far reaching it was at the time. So it's, it's just funny to hear that you know you guys felt that way about us, we were just like we're, you know, like everybody else is looking
Speaker 2:for the next opportunity to just to continue creating. So it's really kind of wild, yeah, I mean, it was that I, that that was what drove me and became that's when I got obsessed. It was honestly that era, that get certainly the guild there was. There was other little there's like tiki bar tv and just like tiki bar, like like people who were just kind of doing their own thing and it had. It had some some parallels to independent music scene and just like a lot of the way people would self-distribute and what I was always obsessed with was the sort of distribution hacks that people would figure out and that led me down that whole long part and was a part of my career where I made some movies and comedy specials with creators. Cause I thought it was. I was like wow, we can like hack the iTunes charts If we like, go to iTunes and we send people there and if you surge at the right time that in a minute you know you do a bunch of sales right away, it all of a sudden pops up on the charts and that that generates more activity because you're and sell that to Netflix or whatever.
Speaker 2:But and I think that was ultimately like and that's what now the YouTube community. That that's the underpinnings of it, sharing the sort of learnings and secrets of, like, basically, growth and growth marketing, in a way, like there's so many cross parallels with marketing. And yet the code itself was like, effectively, the's what I mean. The content can be code. Did we create an emotional hook? Did we get them early enough to commit to the video, to pay off the expectation of the click? Like the click had a lot, like the click trigger drove some emotional response that chose that one out of that. We have to study why that click and then pay it off in the first 30 and and I think those are that's what separated those who who really rose to the top of YouTube and the ones who would struggle and they'd be like I don't know, I'm sort of just making this episodic show and nobody's watching and I'm like, cause you're not really thinking about that part, there's an engineering.
Speaker 1:So that's the part that I find really interesting about you, right? Is that you see growth marketing. Of course I'm from a growth marketing company. As part of figuring, as part of hacking this together. You're looking at the data as you're going, right, you're watching components of the data as it's moving, and so I'm wondering where some of that came from, right?
Speaker 1:So you came from a family obsessed with computers and technology. Your father was a great software engineer VMS operating system, one of the foundational mini computer operating system. For those who are geeks, I actually know a little bit about it because I was at one point at Sun and Solaris product marketing group, so I had to learn about operating systems and kernels and how to market it actually. So do you find that one of the things when you're building operating systems and kernels and how to market it actually? So do you find that one of the things when you're building operating systems is you really have to know the core, the first principles about how things work and generalize it? Does that resonate with you in terms of what you do for your businesses or when you work with creators?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've never really thought about that that way and I love that. You, by the way, know VMS and no we don't.
Speaker 3:I never really talk about my dad.
Speaker 2:He had a tragic car accident in 84. He got really head injured and sort of ended his career a little early, sorry about that.
Speaker 2:No, it's all good, I mean, it's life right, but it's such an interesting way of thinking.
Speaker 2:It's even even at michigan the way they taught cs, and I don't know if they still teach it.
Speaker 2:But you started with binary and then you moved up to assembly and then you couldn't, you couldn't learn c until you you learned literally how, and you had to take hardware right alongside software so you understood integrated circuits, you understood why there was like an and gate, an orgator, and you'd understand fundamental logic of how the systems worked. And to me that's like when I approach a business too and I'm I become sort of a little annoying sometimes because I I get deep in everybody's department and I'm like, yeah, yeah, so show me this funnel in hubspot, like, show me all of the logic steps, I want to see the trick, like the tree, don't just, don't just tell me what it does, I need to see it. And like, because ultimately I can't, I can't help a system grow and debug the system unless I understand it. And I think I hadn't really thought about it in paralysis, but I guess that's what computer science and probably sure Some family background maybe helped me get into. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it's amazing. So let's jump a little bit to the media ecosystem. So the media ecosystem continues to fragment. Where do you want to put your attention in the future, like, what kinds of entertainment are you excited about making? And then how do you make those creative choices?
Speaker 2:I mean, I obviously have been. My bet is always, for the last couple of decades now, been on creators, and a lot of people say that and they're really just trying to grift off creators in a way. I actually mean the atomic unit, I think, of a media company is one meaning that we are driven by single personalities leading media companies, and I think that trend is just continuing and continuing. They sort of reach, you know, even Barstool or some of these that are sort of the modern, so they have a singular founder right, but then they grow another star and then that star like you know, alex Cooper gets a $60 million Spotify deal and has to leave. Like I don't even know that there's anything you could have done to stop that force. It's like a force of energy that when it, when it's going to leave it's, and there's very, very few examples of media companies retaining creator stars.
Speaker 2:I talk a lot sometimes about Buzzfeed being the ultimate opportunity they were one of the best at generating through their creative fellowship program is just the way they like approach the process of making YouTube, that they actually had one of the best talent pipelines ever and they would try guys and Sophia Nygaard and name it tons of, tons of talent came out ofeed and yet they all left. They didn't know how to retain them. So I think still I don't. And so then I'm like, well, you can't fight sort of the laws of physics, right. And so to some degree I think some of the laws of physics are small companies led by creators where they own the company. That's stable state because they can make when they want to make. They can pivot quickly. You're not beholden to some investor timeline or expectation of what the business should be. Obviously there's investors now trying to get into that space and trying to buy pieces of it. I think good luck. I mean, there's certainly risks there. There's key person risk, all that kind of stuff. So trend-wise, think that's.
Speaker 1:That's where I'm at so the focus on the great creator.
Speaker 2:In your case, you're obsessed by the single creator at a time right, as opposed to the portfolio creators because you can build off of that and build continuity off of that I think that people obviously want to watch or listen to one person could be a group of people. I, when I say creator, I you know.
Speaker 1:A creative group? Yeah, you could put.
Speaker 2:Dude, perfect in the same, but you know it's that kind of where it is in a sense. But having 30 of those under some sort of corporate umbrella you know people are trying it, I you know it just historically doesn't tend to work. The incentives aren't aligned correctly, it's hard to manage and it gets a little tricky. What about agents? Does it work? Look the concept of representation and I've gone all ways on this, but I basically see them as like they're force multipliers if applied correctly. There's certainly trends and habits of agents around transactional mindset and short-term thinking.
Speaker 2:Where you're sort of because of the incentive alignment is around commissioning the sort of cash portion of a deal you sometimes, if not managed correctly, that can get off track Like. So example, you're brought into a deal like there's one for like a million dollars and there's one for $5 million. The million is probably a better long-term strategy and the 5 million isn't. But it's a bunch of cash and it's a crypto deal and you take the cash Like that and the tendency to steer towards that is there. That being said, having to build everything in-house like one of the challenges with a single creator business is you're just not getting market visibility, so you want to know where the market really stands and I think the agencies have proven to be good. They get market intel very quickly and they're able to find decision makers and route. It's really in how you manage and who that person is. That is your agent.
Speaker 1:And then what about the studio production companies? And then, of course, there's the streaming platforms, right, Streaming platforms are interesting for reach.
Speaker 2:I think it's why Netflix is the other YouTube right, they are now the two biggest video platforms. Youtube is number one, netflix is number two. One is an open system and one is a closed system. If you're trying to reach everybody in the world, you probably want to be on both, and so there's strategic value to get to both of them. A lot of people only focus on trying to get on netflix and, by the way, I'll say netflix also, yeah, also, yeah and others but.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I only think the interesting ones are global. I wouldn't waste your time with regional stuff or like the us only things.
Speaker 2:I. I mean that in least the way I think about it, at least. I suppose for some people that totally works to do a country-specific show. But generally the trend is, especially if you're building a brand that is global, go global. So I think there's value to doing something there. But you don't want to cannibalize your asset of the channel that you've created. So that's why, if you look, even with Beast Games on Amazon, the channel on YouTube kept uploading consistently and still is meeting the viewer expectations, even if, like, okay, there's this other narrative and storyline and they really smartly marketed into it where there was the lead-in to it that then went to Amazon Prime. That's cool.
Speaker 3:Well, speaking of a lead-in, I'm going to take this opportunity to jump and lead into our game, because we're getting to that part of the episode. Let's do it All right, mark, you are in the hot seat. Welcome to this part of the show. It's called Spark Tank. So you're now in the Spark Tank, and this is where marketing legends come to flex their strategic muscles and occasionally, while trying to reach for ideas that seem just out of grasp, they pull those strategic muscles, landing them on the 60-day DL.
Speaker 3:Today we're joined by the one and only Mark Hustved, former president of MrBeast, the MrBeast YouTube empire, and the man who turned that sounds completely impossible into this is just Tuesday afternoon at the office. But tonight we're not talking about burying people alive for 50 hours or giving away private islands like they're party favors. Instead, we're diving into the mad, magnificent world of marketing stunts. Okay, so, from skydives from space to disappearing fast food icons, we've scoured the history for the most audacious, brilliant and downright weird campaigns ever conceived. Some that even Mr Beast might say that's a bit much. So here's how this is going to work. All right, I'm going to read you guys three statements. Two of them are true, bonafide, real tales of marketing genius that made CFOs everywhere clutch their pearls. One of them I completely made up. So your job is to sniff out the fake and I'm going to count down three, two, one, and you guys will reveal your answer at the same time. No Googling, no consulting your inner circle, no getting your friend on the phone, mark Mr Beast for a lifetime.
Speaker 1:No AI feed into my headset.
Speaker 3:All right, you guys ready to separate fact from fiction? Yeah, let's go, okay.
Speaker 3:Round number one Burger King once encouraged customers to unfriend 10 people on Facebook in exchange for a free Whopper, resulting in over 230,000 friendships ended before Facebook shut down the campaign B, so we'll call it an A. That's choice A, choice B. In 2017, skittles launched a campaign where they sponsored an exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science to teach refraction and create indoor rainbows that would then precipitate actual Skittles C. Red Bull sponsored a record-breaking 24-mile free fall from the edge of space, generating over 50 million live stream views and cementing Red Bull's reputation for extreme stunts. Which of these is not the true marketing stunt? All right, you guys ready, ready, bring it on Three.
Speaker 3:Two, one B, okay, or two yeah two I guess it makes sense to do the numbers, that's right. So Mark says two, rajiv, you say one, all right, well, you guys are both right in that. The Red Bull one was definitely true. Red Bull Stratos event was one of the most successful branded stunts in history, setting world records and boosting Red Bull's brand visibility. The next correct one, or the next true one, is in 2009,. The Whopper sacrifice campaign was well documented and received widespread media coverage for its boldness and viral, viral reach. So, I'm sorry, rajiv, that's right.
Speaker 1:The Skittles I did want to believe that one was true because it's really clever. But I was like why would you ever tell somebody to unfriend someone? That's just evil.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Because it's attention getting.
Speaker 3:it's attention getting, and I do think Skittles should try to make real rainbows that rain Skittles. That was my idea.
Speaker 1:I thought that was so cool Good pitch. Remember Museum of Science, where it's fun to find out Exactly.
Speaker 2:I grew up there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, boston Museum of Science. That was another tell that it was. Obviously. I wrote that because it's the place I'd go. Okay, round number two. All right, so Mark is in the lead, hopping off right out of the gate here. Well done, all right, round number two.
Speaker 3:Number one Snickers once launched a hidden camera campaign in escape rooms across the country, where an actor in a giant monster costume pops out at unsuspecting players who have to then feed it to Snickers to tame the hunger beast. Two IKEA once built a fully furnished apartment inside a Paris subway station, allowing commuters to live in it for a week to demonstrate the brand's space-saving solutions. Or number three Taco Bell once claimed to have purchased the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, announcing it would be renamed the Taco Liberty Bell in a full-page ad causing a national stir. Which one of these is not the real marketing campaign? All right, ready. Three, two, one. Display your answers. Okay, mark says one was fake. Rajiv says three was fake. All right, so number two was, in fact, real. So you guys both got that right. The IKEA transformed the Albuquerque Metro Station into a live-in showroom, with five people living there for six days, attracting global media attention.
Speaker 1:It's just too good.
Speaker 3:That was true, it's brilliant. Here's the other true one. This 1996 prank was an April Fool's joke. Taco Bell later revealed the joke and donated $50,000 to the National Park Service. So once again, two for two. Two, mark, way in the lead here, cause while Snickers has run very many, you know, a lot of creative campaigns, there's no record of a worldwide escape room. I really do like that, you that, that you believe my stupid ideas so much. That's like, that's I love outlandish stuff.
Speaker 1:I mean, what can I say? Well, you guys want stupid ideas, so much I love Outlander stuff.
Speaker 2:Well, you guys want to know the hack. You actually pick the dumbest idea of the three and then that's usually the one Because the others wouldn't have gone viral and we would be talking. That's right, right, right.
Speaker 3:Okay. Well, let's see if this holds up. All right, this is the third and final round. Of course, for this one, points are doubled, you know, so that we can give my brother a fighting chance. Here we go. Number one KFC once launched a chicken sandwich into the stratosphere using a high-altitude balloon and documented the journey in a viral video. Two Coca-Cola once installed happiness machine vending machines on a college campus that dispensed everything from flowers to entire pizzas, delighting unsuspecting students. Or? Three Pepsi tried a surprise taste test campaign centered around convincing disappointed restaurant patrons who ordered a Coke at a restaurant but was then asked you know, is Pepsi okay? And this resulted in a viral digital ad campaign, as many customers surprisingly favored Pepsi in the blind test.
Speaker 1:All right, hold on a second. So you have KFC sending a chicken sandwich to the moon.
Speaker 3:Not to the moon, but like to the stratosphere, to the stratosphere. That would be wild, Just to the stratosphere. Yeah, yeah, they're not claiming they went to the moon.
Speaker 3:And the happiness machine, the happiness machine, vending machine and this Pepsi sort of gorilla taste test campaign. Okay, all right, ready Three, two, one. Okay, you both did not choose number two. So, rajiv, you chose number one. Mark, you went for number three. You both didn't choose number two. The Happiness Machine campaign did, in fact, become a viral sensation, with millions of YouTube views and positive press for Coca-Cola's brand, so you're both right on that. Now the other real marketing campaign. In 2017, kfc partnered with the Worldview Enterprises to send a zinger chicken sandwich to the edge of space, and the stunt was widely covered in media. Once again, my brother believed my BS idea.
Speaker 1:Mark is the best outlandish marketer.
Speaker 2:I remember these. I realize I spend a lot of time on the internet. They pay attention to brand campaigns.
Speaker 3:I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually wild hack. If you ever go to Cannes Cannes Lion Marketing Festival, you go into the basement of the Palais. All of these random international marketing campaigns are put up there for art. I love it and when I can get some free time I just wander around and read all those campaigns. So this kind of stuff I love I love it.
Speaker 1:That's I'm going there the next time I'm going to that museum.
Speaker 2:I was just in can last year but we did not know to go there, so it's only during can line oh, it's only during that week yeah, yeah, it's only if you're there Otherwise, but I think you can just see them online.
Speaker 3:All right, Well so Mark, clearly the victor here of Spark Tank. Well done, I mean just a clean sweep, I mean absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think you might be the only one that's ever gotten all three.
Speaker 3:I think so too. Three for three. I don't think I've seen that before. So well done, mark. I do have to know which of these should I go out and pitch the Skittles, taste the Rainbow, the Snickers, surprise Monster or the Pepsi ad campaign?
Speaker 2:surprising more people customers who beg for a Coke at a restaurant. None of them, they're just not. None of those I think would pop off.
Speaker 3:Damn it and go viral. This is why Mr Beast didn't. I couldn't get a job there.
Speaker 1:Oh well, there you go.
Speaker 3:Oh well, I love it, I love it.
Speaker 1:Okay, this is awesome. I really thought it would be the Pepsi one, because I thought that would be really a great surprise to catch. But maybe they don't want to acknowledge Coke that much anymore. They think they're just.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when they say is Pepsi, okay, I'm like like, absolutely not.
Speaker 1:You know, I'd rather drink a water. Sorry, that's just me. There you go. Well, there goes your next sponsorship for this quest. I'm out. All right, that's awesome. All right, mark. I got, uh, one or two more questions if you still have time, so I'd love to like to shoot a couple at you. This is so much fun to hang out and learn from you. What's your personal moonshot?
Speaker 2:Oh God, that's an interesting question.
Speaker 1:And try to do it in one sentence, one or two sentences.
Speaker 2:What's your personal? Oh God, oh God.
Speaker 1:Because then I can ask you more things. Give us the log line.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, so this is a rapid fire. Yeah, so this is a cool rapid fire. Yeah, let me. Oh God, this is really a tricky one. God, I need a quick answer. I mean, I have dreams we're getting into like hopes and dreams, but personal moonshot, I mean I'd like to make, I'd like to figure out personalized video experiences so that each person has a different experience and we somehow use AI to do that.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. Sundeep, he's your man. You, sunday, he's your man. You guys should get back together on this Interactive film. Man, how about this one? Do you have a favorite life motto?
Speaker 2:No, God, there's so many. If you didn't have one.
Speaker 1:What pops to mind? Do the work, Do the work. I like that. It's kind of like it's almost the next stage of do your job. Do the work, do the work, get it done. Yeah lot. If you could instantly gain mastery in a skill completely unrelated to your professional field, what would it be?
Speaker 2:Piano.
Speaker 1:Piano why?
Speaker 2:I love the way a piano sounds, almost any song on a piano, and I've been trying to like teach myself as a little hobby piano, so I'm actually learning. I'm learning an Adele song right now, which one? I never someone like you, and just literally, literally. I didn't take piano lessons as a kid. That was not my instrument, so this is like totally new to me wow, it's a big retraining.
Speaker 1:It's a. I've learned piano. It is really hard to master when you're a bit older and I only got good at, only got decent at it by memorizing, not necessarily by reading sheet music. Okay, what's a seemingly small act of kindness or generosity you've received that had a disproportionately large impact on you?
Speaker 2:Oh, I don't know if it's kindness, I guess it's kindness.
Speaker 2:I would have to say, like people reaching out and acknowledging, when I lost my mother, it was the amount of empathy that my professional and personal network had just meant a lot. That my professional and personal network had just mental law. It just people attuned to your life. Moments like that and I guess that's an act of kindness. It really had an impact on me. I still think about that and it makes me more conscious of recognizing the humans, of all the people that we interact with, to be more present in their lives.
Speaker 1:I love that. Thank you, that was amazing. And final one if you could have a billboard with any message to your younger self, what would it say?
Speaker 2:Stay curious. Yeah, probably stay curious. I know it's a borrowed quote, of course.
Speaker 1:By the way, at the end of the show I end with be ever curious.
Speaker 2:I didn't even know that I should have done my homework.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that, which is why I was so happy that Anand and Salip got you for the show. So thank you so much for being with us. I think it's just amazing to be with someone who sees the business side as an art in and of itself of working with incredible creators. I appreciate your level of obsession and how that drives not just great quality content that moves people, but also just brings about great success and inspiration. So, mark, thanks for being with us.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me Terrific discussion and let's do it again sometime.
Speaker 1:All right, great, and plus you got to win the game. So I was gonna say thanks for kicking my brother's ass, thanks for beating me. Nothing makes me happier than when I humble my older brother's games great, I'll.
Speaker 2:I'll send you an address for the t-shirt thank you guys for for booking mark husfeld.
Speaker 1:I mean it just is so. Frankly, I am not the target audience for for mr beast, but I found it really interesting and compelling. Or maybe maybe I haven't really realized I'm one of the ones who aren't, I think you don't know that you are the.
Speaker 1:When I watched it I was just having a blast and I love all the integrations and I love the cleverness by which they did it and I was like I can't believe this is a show only for YouTube. I'm just blown away by the level of thinking and production and product integration and marketing. It's just, it's wonderful stuff. It's wonderful content.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, he said it right. He said that they wanted to be an intention engine and I think they definitely accomplished that on, you know, the world's most foremost global platform to consume entertainment, right.
Speaker 1:And I think of attention in terms of some of the latest books written by it, where our political leadership does it to create controversy Sure, and this is just more pure attention-grabbing fun.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:With some risk to it. This is fun to watch, that's right.
Speaker 3:With some risk to it, it's just fun to watch. It's joy, yeah, and you know, one of his 12 keys that you guys didn't touch upon was, you know, in the creators that he looks to work with there's have a good heart, and you know, but that's something that he does espouse. And certainly certainly Jimmy and Mr Beast. They're all about literally. There's videos where they help people who haven't seen before. Blind people get the operation, the surgery that is so hard to afford to be able to see. It's unbelievable to watch somebody see for the first time. It's those types of things, these big ideas, that and the way they rally. Yes, it's all about. It is about getting views, it's about making sure your efforts are rewarded. But it comes from these innate ideas of wanting to better the world and enough people thinking that, yeah, I want to see that. I want to see how someone goes out there and literally pedals the metal, puts the work in to better the world. That's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, that's what I like about what Mark said. Right, he encapsulated a lot of these characteristics in do the work. I like his point about it's working hard and being obsessive. There are many people who I've met who they show up every day on time, they do work and they go home but because they're not obsessed about what they're doing, they don't see the nuance and insight that they could to really bring things forward. Like table stakes is, you have to work.
Speaker 1:But doing the work meaning digging in and obsessing about the details. And obsessing about the metrics, about the detail is where you find he described it well, where he talks about how, when he releases something, he looks at the arc of traffic and tries to see how it connects to the actual content. In an industry, when you create content, a lot of people like to just do it and move on to the next thing. I know I have that feeling, but you have to go back and say, no, what really resonated and what did it? And that's what they do. It seems like they do it. They obviously have the record of success to do exceptionally well 100%.
Speaker 3:I really it personally pinged me pretty hard the me pretty hard, the idea of obsession, because it sort of hearkened me back to a time when I was so obsessed about the stuff that I was making, in part because I had more time. Right, I have a family now Things are just so different but there was a time where I was obsessed with the Legend of Neil or stuff that I would create and I would just put in all those hours and those extra hours Couldn't go to sleep until I finished the episode or this really small detail that was really nagging at me and it sort of made me long for that.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're not an old man yet, just yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, well, you got to find it again. It's not over, but it's rediscovering continuously.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's rediscovering.
Speaker 1:And I think there's also this thing Maybe we'll talk about it one day, maybe we'll even get Arthur Brooks on this where when you're younger, you do put in a lot of hard work in terms of obsessing about something, but then, as you get older, what happens is, or more mature, you know what characteristics you need to drive in the people who work with you and you're the connector, being that puts all these things together.
Speaker 1:So you're not working the 16 hours on one item, but you're helping others who are obsessed, who are part of that obsessed team channel their energy appropriately, which is basically what Mark exactly does.
Speaker 3:He identifies the right creator and then helps them put that obsession in the right place.
Speaker 1:So I thought that was really interesting, fun, illuminating, and it's a great cross-section between entertainment and business and great to have you with us. So I was super excited to have you with us and to play the game again. Obviously, I got bested, but in the best way, so I appreciate it.
Speaker 3:In a way, I got bested too, because I couldn't fool him on one of them Threshing him. Oh, Appreciate it. In a way, I got bested too, because I couldn't fool him on one of them Brushing him, oh well, all right.
Speaker 1:Well, you tuned it for me well, so great job with that, all right. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed the pod, please take a moment to rate it and comment. You can find us on Apple, spotify, youtube and everywhere podcasts can be found.
Speaker 3:Yes, and this show is produced by Anand Shah and edited by Sean Marr and Aidan McGarvey and Lauren Bolland.
Speaker 1:I'm your host, rajiv Parikh from Position Squared, an AI growth marketing company based in Silicon Valley. We've got some really cool new AI offerings that we will be putting out to the market. Taking our service, and we've turned it into tech and I'm so excited to show it off to you. Oh man, it is going to be game changing how you can enter in what you're looking to market and how you're looking to market, and our system takes our expertise and gives you a full plan on how to make it happen. So come visit us at position2.com Awesome.
Speaker 3:This has been an effing funny production.
Speaker 1:And we'll catch you next time. And remember, folks be ever curious.