Started notes ~an hour in
If he interviews job applicants who say their goal is movies or some other thing, instant rejection – YouTube should be THE goal
$100K is around max prize giveaway that most captures attention – above that, diminishing returns
First time in western social media you can go viral on all platforms with same content (short viral video)
Viral videos is a teachable skill
Lex: crucial part of your success is idea generation – others don’t put enough ideas on paper
Every 6 months, you should look back and be embarrassed by your old videos – otherwise you’re not learning enough
Need to be endlessly learning – will go on walks and call people to learn stuff
If new channel, what should you do?
“Just fail”
Your first 10 videos will not get views
Just start uploading
Make 100 videos and improve something every time – better script, better editing, better thumbnails
Maybe by 101st video you’ll have some views and can get serious
No such thing as a perfect video – every little thing can be improved
Create best ideas – then determine if they’re doable (don’t let practicality stop you)
eg, when they gave away a $10M island, really had to find creative methods to find a worthwhile island
It’s about intuition – you know your viewers the best, you spent most time on your content, trust your gut
His typical viewer: “a teenager boy that plays video games”
But if 30% of his viewers are women, and a video gets 100M views, that’s still 30M women (!)
Elon said “We want to limit the amount of regrettable minutes people spend on Twitter”
Lex: “I follow the thread of curiosity”
Lex: “I’m against centralized censorship and shadow banning”
Beast: agrees shadow banning should be transparent, you should let people know
Antarctica video
-during summertime the sun never goes down
-named a mountain that wasn’t named
-lucked out with warm weather
Process eg, Stand in circle for 100 days
-figure out idea, act on inspiration
-need independent crew for those 100 days
-need 10 cameras rolling all times – trailer, cameras, house
Process, 100 adults v 100 kids
-did 100 boys v 100 girls, people loved it, wanted to do more
-lots of shooting problems eg, room with bad acoustics
–
Earlier on, if video did bad, he’d be devastated, cry over it
Now he’s much better about it, just figure out how to improve and move on
Earlier on, spent 24 hours on deserted island – but didn’t like the footage
So scraped it, went back and spent another 24 hours LOL
Videos where weather is very hot, or filmed on water – he suffers a lot more (gets sea sick)
“Once you get over fear that you’ll wake up one day and be irrelevant”
Some creators go a little mentally insane during this process
Subscribers is vanity metric – doesn’t really correlate with views
If goal is to be super successful entrepreneur, you either need be WORKING or recharging / resting to recover
Need to find balance
Used to overwork and hate rest / downtime
Optimal day – going down list of his 8 companies, go thru biggest pain points for each (eg, Beast Burgers, Beast Charity, etc)
Delegated most day to day to his teams
For younger first time biz owners
-whenever he hires from traditional industries (eg, Disney) – they just don’t get it – YT is its own new thing
-doesn’t wanna get trapped in bubble of what works today
-shouldn’t start experimenting only when you plateau / start declining – could get even worse
–imperative to experiment while you’re still growing / winning
Beast Burgers
-just started as an experiment, didn’t plan to run a restaurant chain
Always wanted to do Feastables, hasn’t been any innovation in American snacks in a long time
“Feastables is just crushing”
Wal-Mart – didn’t think they’d do this kind of revenue
Had to stop promoting for awhile due to supply chain issues
Expect to 10x in 2023