The Science of Luck

26,000,000,000 views and 176,000,000 million subscribers. The man behind this YouTube channel, Jimmy Donaldson, just seems unstoppable at this point.

Jimmy’s channel, MrBeast, which started in early 2012, is now one of the most talked about and influential topics on social media. He runs not only one channel but also Beast Reacts, MrBeast Gaming, MrBeast Shorts, and Beast Philanthropy. This is excluding the channels that are dubbed into other languages like Spanish, Russian, Portuguese, French, and Hindi. On top of this, Jimmy is also the founder of MrBeast Burger and Feastables, a co-creator of Team Trees, a fundraiser for the Arbor Day Foundation, and Team Seas.

MrBeast is not a man with tiny ambitions.

Now, every YouTuber in the world wants to work with him, while a plethora of companies place their bids to sponsor his videos. This man does not need any favours from the almighty luck; he’s now a luck magnet.

And to think that all of his side ventures came from making videos, it feels as if he has the golden touch of virality.

…

Micro habits

Prior to writing this piece, I spent two hours watching other YouTubers try to unravel MrBeast’s viral-content manufacturing brain. From interviews to some of his older videos. Some covered general ideas and approaches to internet content marketing, while others went into the technical depths of storytelling, storyboarding, and the YouTube algorithm.

To be honest, I barely learned any applicable actions. It’s mostly an endless void of whataboutism.

But, if I had one takeaway to save you two hours, it’d be that all his success today is the culmination of thousands of tiny optimisations. It includes, but is not limited to: the pacing of the video, the editing, how to come up with fresh ideas, the thumbnails, the click-worthy titles, etc.

MrBeast’s new subscribers assume he is a prodigy that has all the answers, but in reality, he barely got any traction on any of his videos from 2012 to 2017. It was only once a video of him got viral that he started to get noticed. And all his latest viral videos are the results of thousands of little tweaks he had previously learned.

Luck is often confused with the amalgamation of thousands of micro-actions. By being ultra good at what you do, you rely lesser and lesser on luck.

As for us, we can get lucky by:

Hanging out with optimists who look for opportunities.
Talk to strangers and offer them something for free.
Schedule free time to allow for new ideas.
Quit self-rejecting; retire that self-sabotager inside you.
Do right by everyone. Most people today are horrible. Being kind to everyone helps you instantly stand out.
Embrace the unexpected. Try new approaches.
Give knowledge for free and make someone’s life better.
Become the expert of experts.
Follow your curiosity. Go explore.

Put yourself in the position to get lucky

One understated aspect about MrBeast’s job is that there is no ceiling to anything he does and no limitations as to what he can achieve. His channel can grow from the current 100 million subscribers to 200 million, then 500 million, then 1 billion; his business can go from a startup to a corporation; he can even create an infinite amount of channels and hire new talents to run them.

This makes a vast difference when we compare it against our corporate jobs, where our income is limited to what the company is willing to pay us. In other words, even if the average salaryman does an exceptional job, their career and financial success do not grow exponentially in accordance. Ergo, even if they are unfathomably lucky, they don’t benefit much from it (maybe a few praises and bonuses), but that’s all.

Let’s admit it — Luck has its limits too.

Even if you’re the luckiest person on earth, your dream company is not going to send an entourage to your doorstep, knock on it, and hand you an offer letter while you’re lying on your bed at 3 pm on a Wednesday afternoon, watching Netflix; the government won’t drop a bag with $100,000 into your chimney; your crush is not going to show up in your room one day and ask you to marry them.

When you place yourself in a position to get lucky, you’re essentially buying a ticket to ride the train of exponential growth.

There is a saying in investing that depicts this situation:

The risk of not buying speculative assets is far greater than the risk of losing the initial investment.

Search for those infinitely scalable opportunities. Often, all it takes is one extremely lucky event and you’ll have all the success you ever wanted.

Maximise those lucky moments

For MrBeast, no views go to waste.

There are certain videos that have cost more money to make than they actually returned. But, because of the exposure he gets with these insane ideas, he gets to funnel his audience towards the other channels, which allows him to capitalise on them eventually.

Going viral and having eyeballs on something you’ve worked on for a long time is fun, an indescribable feeling you can’t get anywhere else. But you know it isn’t going to last forever.

Prior to going viral, build those funnels and pipelines that allow you to harness and stretch out the success for as long as possible.

For MrBeast, those are his merchandise, other channels, and his businesses.
For investors, it can be holding on to the winners for as long as they can, then selling them and putting the money into dividend-paying assets.
For online writers, it may be an email list or an e-book for the audience to read more about them.

Good fortune is rare. It comes and goes like clouds drifting through the windy sky. While waiting for it to come by, find out how you can stretch and maximise it for when it comes.

…

Closing thoughts

I have thought about luck a lot.

In some cases, we have absolutely zero influence over how luck can determine the course of our lives. But in other cases, we can pave a perfect road for lady luck to arrive as quickly as possible and without many setbacks. And once she arrives, it’s our job to make sure we squeeze every last bit out of her before she goes.

—

This post was previously published on medium.com.

***