Three lessons for indie hackers, from MrBeast's playbook for success

Everyone's talking about MrBeast's leaked employee onboarding document, and for good reason: It's amazing.

I've read it twice, and I think you should, too. Every indie hacker should.

MrBeast is the #1 most-subscribed channel on YouTube for many reasons that are obvious if you read the doc. But there are a few things in there that jumped out at me as less obvious, and yet extremely important.

1. Why MrBeast's writing is full of typos.

One of the first things MrBeast says to this team is:

“Sorry in advance for all the run on sentences and grammar issues, I’m a youtuber not an author haha."

He's not joking. The 36-page document is full of typos, and his grammar is atrocious. Personally, I'm usually a stickler for correct spelling, grammar, and usage. Why would anyone choose to make a poorly-edited screed the first touch that new employees have with their company?

But what surprised me as I read was just how little his errors bothered me. I was learning a lot and having a good time doing so. When someone's spitting knowledge, only a fool stops to question the spit.

What I realized is that MrBeast writes to his employees in the same quick, informal lol-filled way that I talk to my founder friends in our group chats, because he understand his priorities.

Effective communication within a team is not about formality. It's not about grammar. It's about getting crucial information from one person's mind into another's, quickly, frequently, accurately, and memorably. That's it.

And that's exactly what MrBeast does. His memo is chock full of educational stories and vivid examples that help get his points across.

Compare MrBeast…

“An example of the ‘wow factor’ would be our 100 days in the circle video. We offered someone $500,000 if they could live in a circle in a field for 100 days and instead of starting with his house in the circle that he would live in, we bring it in on a crane 30 seconds into the video. Why? Because who the fuck else on Youtube can do that lol… You can’t track the “wow factor” but I can describe it. Anything that no other youtuber can do.”

…to “professional” language found in corporate handbooks across the globe:

“Strive to maximize viewer retention by delivering high-impact, value-driven content that synergizes our unique core competencies and competitive advantages to produce compelling, differentiated media experiences that not only capture audience attention but also solidify our market position as a leader in innovative content delivery.

The surface level point here is that formal language can obscure poor communication and a lack of substance (or in this case, lack of examples). Not to mention, it takes longer to both write and read for many people. Is that where you want your team's efforts going?

The less obvious but more important point is that blindly aping the rituals and policies practiced at big companies, thinking that's what got them big, is a bad idea for founders.

Established companies can afford to waste effort on their 2nd and 3rd and 4th priorities like “presentation.” They've earned that luxury. And so many of us have become accustomed to those luxuries.

But we run startups, not established companies. Startups are small and still fighting to survive. And when you're small and fighting for survival and you haven't earned anything, the only priority is to be effective.

MrBeast understands that and leads by example to keep his team fast, hungry, and effective, for as long as possible.

2. Why having passion is necessary, but not.

Probably the most obvious quality that bleeds through in MrBeast's document is passion. This is a man who truly loves making videos:

“I have to be the main talent for every Gaming video, every reacts video, every philanthropy video, every tik tok, insta post, and every main channel video… [plus] little things like sending videos to people for birthdays, attending events, networking, etc. all add up because i’m the face of the channel.”

But before MrBeast became a master of making videos, he spent years watching them:

“I spent basically 5 years of my life locked in a room studying virality on Youtube. Some days me and some other nerds would spend 20 hours straight studying the most minor thing… And the result of those probably 20,000 to 30,000 hours of studying is I’d say I have a good grasp on what makes Youtube videos do well.”

Which came first, the effort or the passion? Most would say passion. After all, if he wasn't passionate, he wouldn't have put all those years into studying to begin with. But I don't believe that's quite correct.

What comes first is interest. Simple curiosity about a subject.

Curiosity spurs action, and in return action creates information (based on the results of your action), and that new information can then spark more curiosity, creating a virtuous cycle. And that cycle presents an opportunity. If you allow yourself to stay within that cycle for long enough, it becomes easier and easier to stay, until it reaches the point where it changes you.

Repeated exposure to a cycle of information and action affects the facts, ideas, and perspectives that most readily enter your mind and give rise to your thoughts. In a sense, you can modify your very personality by changing what you repeatedly consume and do.

The ultimate result of this process is passion — the energy that arises from doing what aligns with your true nature. And it comes, at least in some sense, from literally changing your true nature. That passion also fuels your behavior and curiosity, and so recursively ends up contributing to the very cycle that birthed it.

In probably the most controversial section of his document, MrBeast groups his employees into the familiar buckets of A-players, B-players, and C-players.

But instead of defining B-players as inferior to A-players, he instead defines them as simply earlier in their journey. They're the precursor to becoming A-players. They're circling through the Passion Loop, and if they stick with it, they'll become highly motivated, passionate, and the best in the world at what they do.

MrBeast advocates the same thing later in the document, when he recommends fine-tuning your information diet to consume the kind of content that will make you better at what you care about.

This is the essence of a growth mindset. If you aren't passionate, that's okay, you don't need to be. What you need is to know how to become passionate. It's not something that just happens to you. It's something you can decide to make happen by choosing how you live.

3. Why MrBeast calls other YouTubers.

Ben Franklin, who was a big fan of vicarious learning, once said, “Experience keeps a dear school, but a fool will learn in no other.”

Charlie Munger put it even more bluntly: “Learn everything you possibly can from your own personal experience, minimizing what you learn vicariously from the good and bad experience of others, living and dead. This prescription is a sure-shot producer of misery and second-rate achievement.”

It's obvious that MrBeast not only likes this advice, but lives it:

“I spent basically 5 years of my life locked in a room studying virality on Youtube. Some days me and some other nerds would spend 20 hours straight studying…”

“I also multiple times a week have to call other youtubers and see what they are testing/doing so I can always stay up to date and make sure we arn’t missing anything.”

“Consultants are literally cheat codes. Need to make the world's largest slice of cake? Start off by calling the person who made the previous world’s largest slice of cake lol. He’s already done countless tests and can save you weeks worth of work. I really want to drill this point home because I’m a massive believer in consultants.”

When you're a founder, everything you do is an open-book test. There is no cheating. There is no requirement to figure everything out yourself. In fact, that's an inefficient waste of time that will not only take you forever, but also lead to worse results than if you'd just asked an expert for help.

And yet so many founders struggle in obscurity, trying to start blogs, podcasts, newsletters, websites, and apps from scratch, without talking to a single person who's done it before.

When was the last time you were struggling with something, looked up a founder who'd done it, then offered to pay them to consult you?

For some people, this is a habit. For most of us, it's an oversight, and we suffer for months because of it, trying to learn from experience what we could learn vicariously.

While the document is ostensibly a guide for how to succeed as an employee on MrBeast's team, what I appreciate most is that it's really MrBeast's attempt to turn his employees into mini MrBeasts. Which means that, by reading it, we're getting a candid playbook about how to be MrBeast himself.