What the Mr. Beast Memo Can Teach You About Management Under Fire
You could build a 600-level Organizational Behavior MBA class around this.
YouTube video production is a nightmare of an industry. Few rules that were relevant in 2015, much less 2005, matter in 2025. The market upends itself annually. The rules are set by an erratic Borg that is hostile to your survival. Any given mistake can cascade into a crisis that lands you in the news. And if you’re a top player, everyone wants you dead.
This increasingly reflects the business environment of energy companies in the age of decarbonization and deglobalization. Every aspect of the business is being rebuilt at once, every ten-year forecast is wrong on principle, a good ten percent of your staff is gone now, and you need to hire new Zoomers to man the guns.
Enter the memo “How to Succeed in MrBeast Production” (hereafter “the MrBeast Memo”), an onboarding document handed to new staff for Jimmy Donaldson’s reality-warping YouTube operation MrBeast. This document, like Jeff Bezos’s “Cool Memo” and Y Combinator’s “Pocket Guide,” belongs in a modern MBA canon.
But you’re not here for an MBA. For managers of electric utilities, energy trading firms, and potentially every company, this memo is the mid-2020s state of the art for how to manage and talk to new Gen Z staff in an industry under enemy fire.
Onboarding 101
The most important part of this document is the mere fact of its existence. This memo ostensibly was handed to every new hire at MrBeast Production, independent of department—whether you were creative, production, or camera, you got the same book. It’s thirty-six pages of 11-point Google Docs Arial text, and despite the typos, informal language, and disorganized structure; it retains a density and eloquence of writing akin to St. Augustine’s On Grace and Free Will.
This memo exists because Jimmy Donaldson no longer has the time to onboard staff himself. On his behalf, this document instills the mission, expectations, core metrics, internal language, and lessons learned of MrBeast Production, because Donaldson does not expect the new hire to be fully-qualified in the MrBeast video production pipeline.1
To this end, the memo provides strategic guidance, ground-level lessons learned, and clear-cut examples at every stage. The language is terse and informal, and—importantly—if the new hire reads this memo and passes a quiz based on it, they receive a $1,000 bonus.
This isn’t mandatory onboarding. This is mandatory onboarding with a performance incentive.
Make the Core Principles Clear
The memo starts with a parable and a mission statement.
James Warren is a high-level producer on the MrBeast team who, by Donaldson’s account, “understands every single part of this company at a deep level and as a result can make decisions faster than anyone else [sic].” The company once had a problem that stumped a team of five for a week. James showed up and solved the problem in thirty minutes.
Donaldson wants to replicate Warren’s magic in every staffer. And in my estimation, that comes down to three core principles.
1. Every Staffer Should Be a Generalist
Donaldson repeatedly warns against siloing and deferring responsibility. In his account, a staffer in creative should know how production works; a staffer in production should know what creative is up to, and everyone should know how to handle a camera. This cross-training allows for leaner teams on set, but it also allows more informed decisionmaking. The staffer making the thumbnail had better know what’s in the video, because if the thumbnail has a yellow bouncy castle but the video has a red bouncy castle, the video will lose views.
2. The Goal is YouTube, Not Any Other Video Content
Donaldson has consistently shown his devotion to YouTube as a medium—and to that end, he advises new staff to stop even watching other video content, whether it be Netflix or Hulu or Hollywood. MrBeast is a YouTube operation, but within that statement is a flipside: it is not any other kind of media operation. Any lesson learned from cinema, or television, or even livestreaming is rejected in favor of a YouTube-specific practice.
Sounds obvious but after 6 months in the weeds a lot of people tend to forget what we are actually trying to achieve here.
Of course, this is not obvious. A well-considered and well-managed corporate culture does not assume anything is obvious.
3. The Number of Hours You Work is Irrelevant
The work environment at MrBeast Production is by all accounts intense. But Donaldson explicitly does not use work-hours as a metric for staff quality. Instead, he describes a taxonomy:
A-Players: Adaptable, coachable, personally accountable, striving for quality in all cases
B-Players: New staff who are not yet A-Players
C-Players: Unexceptional staff who fail to communicate, pass off responsibility, and simply work for the paycheck
C-Players are poisonous and should be transitioned to a different company IMMEDIATELY [sic].
Jimmy Donaldson tells you what his expectations are—repeatedly. And as we’ll see later, he teaches staff how to reach them. He knows he can’t hire A-Players. He hires B-Players and trains them into A-Players.2
What Are Your Core Principles for Staff?
Obviously, electric utilities do not seek out the work culture of MrBeast Productions. But these lessons are adaptable for our industry. In particular, how many people on staff understand every part of the business? Do energy services staff know what a CT is? Are the linemen hip to the transformer shortage? Could customer service representatives explain CAIDI over the phone? Not everyone at an electric utility needs to be a MrBeast A-Player—it’s a high bar to reach if you have kids. But you do need a few, and they need the leeway to steer the organization through choppy waters.
More pressing, electric utilities need to clarify their strategic priorities. In New England, we all need to meet the tripartite standards of reliable, low-cost, and low-carbon. But in what order? Most utilities default to reliable first, low-cost second, and low-carbon third. A few utilities prioritize low-carbon over low-cost, which opens them up to controversy.
And someday, a utility will consider shipping generators or backup batteries to customers, accepting brownouts in favor of much easier cost reductions or sustainability gains. But you aren’t ready for that conversation, are you?
Lead With the Metrics, But Emphasize Flexibility and Accountability
MrBeast Production works off four metrics—three quantitative (CTR, AVD, AVP), and one qualitative (”wow factor,” measured by Donaldson’s personal interest). This memo describes all of them, including examples, normal ranges, and internal lingo: “Minute 1,” bottlenecks, prios (priorities), re-engagements, “3 out of 10.” After reading this memo once, I suspect a new hire could jump into tasks and immediately know what a team member means when they say the minute-6 brand deal led to a 10% AVP slump in the last video (that’s bad—what went wrong?).
But crucially, Donaldson repeatedly emphasizes that the numbers aren’t everything. It’s possible to do everything “right” and still fail. Instead, Donaldson prioritizes flexibility and creativity at every level.
If you want to succeed here say this 10x in your head “Creativity Saves Money” [sic]
Mr Beast Productions, as a rule, prioritizes video quality (as measured by CTR, AVD, AVP, and “wow factor”) over budget, politeness, and doing things the “right” way. New hires are instructed to pay any sum to ensure their prios show up on time and without issue. They are also told that million-dollar mistakes are to be expected. Donaldson only cares that they dispense with the excuses and learn the lesson the first time.
Processes and metrics are a means to the core principles. The memo describes them because they make better videos. But the goal isn’t to follow the process and meet the metrics—the goal is to make better videos.
Staffers who don’t get that, get fired.
Your Shop Doesn’t Do This
Ask yourself—seriously—how good your organization is at operational flexibility. What happens when something isn’t done “by the book?” I understand that utilities are more regulated than YouTube production houses, but the pendulum is too far in the wrong direction. How easily can you update a job description? How long does it take to set up a pilot battery storage project? How long did it take to upgrade your CIS? I promise you that ground-level reality is moving faster than your attempts to keep up.
Ask yourself:
What happens if someone breaks protocol to solve a problem?
How long does it take to change a process?
Who or what is the bottleneck behind a given delay? Why is it the same handful of people every time?
Teach Your Staff How to Do The Job Well
Donaldson holds himself to the standards of accountability he asks of new staff. In the section titled “I am not always right,” he describes the core reason why he is not always right: he wears too many hats to know what is happening with any given video. In a sober example of accountability, he follows up not with an apology but with a remedy. He describes two ways of asking a question. The first:
“In a coming up video we are giving away a car, what do you think of this lexus it’s only $10,000” [sic]
And the second:
“We have a coming up would you rather video. One of the bits at the 6 to 9 minute mark [is that] we will be giving away a car. We are still on budget and the budget for this car is $10,000. I checked with [the project manager]. It could go up another $5k if you really wanted. I searched all of [North Carolina] for cool a— cars around that price point and here are 5 i found that I got preapproved by creative all on budget. I also got 5 other backup options that are less “cool” looking and more avg if you’re going for that. Here is a picture of all 10 cars, the miles on the cars, and all the information you'd want. Which of these cars do you think is best or should I get other options?” [sic]
Read that second passage aloud: it’s about thirty seconds of talking that invites no follow-up questions. The staffer simply gives this briefing and hands Donaldson a sheet of paper. Donaldson thinks on it for thirty more seconds and picks one of the cars.
One minute. Done.
Donaldson is teaching every new staffer how to talk to him—and by extension how to talk to every other staffer. Give the context. Communicate up and over. Call first. Check in daily. Never assume written communication was read unless you get confirmation. And this education expands beyond communication. The memo has a whole list of common pitfalls (”Always have a backup day”), best practices (”USE CONSULTANTS”), and counterintuitive recommendations (”If something goes wrong on shoot always check to see if it can be made into content”). These lessons are ordinarily taught during the new hire’s first 90 days—or during their first crisis. This memo teaches them on Day One, so that when the crisis hits, they’re already briefed.
Who Teaches Your Staff?
At a previous job, I took up an unofficial role in the onboarding process, largely because I was one of two or three people who understood how the whole company worked. My job was to swoop in on day one or two and give a “reality lowdown” to the new staffer, intern, or manager. I could not assume the new employee knew what was coming in terms of regulatory pressure, technological change, or incoming market dynamics—so I told them. It was a two-to-four-hour conversation.
This was an important aspect of the onboarding process, but it was incomplete by the standards of the MrBeast Memo.
I should have explained terms that I thought were obvious. I should have provided baseline numbers for monthly electric bills, annual revenue, and normal outage lengths. I should have taught them how to speak to customers, how to communicate between divisions, how to name files in the SharePoint. This information seemed self-explanatory, but it wasn’t.
I needed to tell new staff what their job entailed in detail, and I needed to hand them best practices so that they didn’t have to learn them the hard way.
But I didn’t even have a record of those best practices.
Good Onboarding Returns Dialed-In Teams
One vignette in the video “$1 vs $500,000 Experiences” shows what this memo teaches. One of the expensive experiences was a private track day on the Yas Marina circuit in Dubai. This track day apparently comes with a free Lamborghini Urus, which Donaldson and his crew drove to Abu Dhabi. They could not find parking for their new car, so instead they gave it to a security guard who “just so happened” to be a subscriber of MrBeast. This hand-off happened exactly at the ten-minute mark, right as a viewer would be tempted to click off, wrapped in a call-to-action to subscribe to MrBeast.
This moment is a natural consequence of the MrBeast Memo. The Lamborghini trip to Abu Dhabi was likely planned—they needed to get there, and a road trip in a “free Lamborghini” is an obviously cool bit. However, they ran into a problem on shoot finding parking. They could have turned a parking garage hunt into a bit, but instead they pulled a move only a MrBeast video could: hand a Lamborghini to a random dude and presumably handle the paperwork post-hoc.
By the way, the transitions between shots in this video are minty-fresh, because this video is the product of a 300-person organization operating at maximum effectiveness. Peter Drucker would be proud. If electric utilities were half as dynamic and organizationally aligned, we would be able to handle the next twenty-five years of disruption with aplomb.
This 26-year-old YouTuber is running circles around your management and HR practice. Maybe Jimmy Donaldson could have put his mind to better uses. But if you think he has nothing to teach you, you deserve the consequences of your hubris.
Conclusion: This is How You Talk to Gen Z
I need to talk about the writing style again—this memo is how you should talk to Gen Z. The modal Zoomer had their innocence sandblasted out of their eyeballs by their phones as adolescents. We have seen limited proof of competent authority.3 Formality is dead. Casual, direct speech is the new signal for trustworthiness.
I’d rather you be honest with eachother then nice to eachother [sic]
Gen Z, at the zeitgeist level, associates decorum and propriety with unwillingness to call a spade a spade.4 Speak on current issues with the wartime vulgarity they deserve. And remember that Zoomers are not necessarily lazy. The most successful Gen Z media company—arguably the most successful media company today—ends their onboarding document like this:
If you’re ambitious and want to dedicate your life to work, you picked the best company in America to do it at. I really don’t care to hoard a bunch of money and I deeply believe in rewarding the people that help this business get where it needs to be…We need more leaders in the company. We need hard working, obsessive, coachable, intelligent, grinders that can step up and take some of these leadership spots over the next 2 years. Every single department has an opportunity for you to grow in and you’re in luck because we don’t do yearly reviews. We do whenever the f— you want reviews. If you want to become a production manager, tell james your intention and ask him why you suck and how you can become better…This isn’t a bureaucratic corporate company. You don’t have to do something for 5 years to get a promotion, I hate the word promotion. The more responsibility, risk you help us navigate, and overall bulls— you deal with, the more you make. And if you want more of that we will gladly help train you to receive it haha. There is infinite room for you to grow here. This isn’t a stepping stone, this is your final destination. We will win and we are going to build something amazing…Now read this all over again because I guarantee you didn’t retain enough. [sic] [Emphasis mine, abridged slightly]
At an electric utility, one does have to do something for five years to get a promotion. And it’s not because there’s an abundance of leadership or analytic capacity.
Tell me again about your workforce challenges.
This post and the information presented are intended for informational purposes only. The views expressed herein are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of their current or previous employers or any elected officials. The author makes no recommendations toward any electric utility, regulatory body, or other organization. While certain information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, the author has not independently verified this information, and its accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. Accordingly, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is made as to, and no reliance should be placed on, the fairness, accuracy, timeliness or completeness of this information. The author assumes no liability for this information and no obligation to update the information or analysis contained herein in the future.
I’ve read enough job descriptions to know that your company does expect the new hire to be fully-qualified for the position. Dispel that illusion immediately.
And—again—this starts with your job descriptions.
Yes, even the delusional ideologues.
Really great piece.