Latest / Gimbal Podcast / He Got Job Offers from MrBeast and DOAC with This One Hiring Strategy

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He Got Job Offers from MrBeast and DOAC with This One Hiring Strategy · Gimbal Podcast

• 0:00
  Today's guest has worked for Mr. Beast, Diary of a CEO, and now he's leading a small team
• 0:05
  working for Stan Browney, one of the largest fitness creators on all of YouTube. His name is Max
• 0:10
  Holler, and honestly in my five years working in this creator economy, I don't think I've ever met
• 0:15
  anyone with as much enthusiasm and excitement around YouTube as him. In this episode, Max shares how
• 0:21
  he landed those dream jobs, what he learned from them, and how he's applying those same lessons
• 0:26
  today working for Browney, booking superstar athletes from places like Manchester City,
• 0:31
  and Red Bull Racing. As you can probably tell, I had a lot of fun recording this episode with him,
• 0:36
  so please sit back and enjoy. This is a good one. What kind of stuff did you do for Diary of a CEO?
• 0:41
  What'd you learn there? How'd you get that job? I'll answer that one first. So I moved to London
• 0:46
  because I got a job at a talent agency. Literally applying to that job, I also was applying to
• 0:51
  Diary of a CEO, so I didn't out-cold that reach there. I applied to a role on LinkedIn because
• 0:56
  they were hiring. I think I applied again to fit five roles. They were interested in me in the
• 1:01
  research role. Basically, what that would mean to me is I just scoured the internet. I was doing
• 1:06
  that, but at the same time, I was also working a full-time job. Honestly, that part was just because
• 1:10
  I wanted more money. In general, I was like, this is great. This is what I'm earning. I love this
• 1:14
  month. London wages aren't always the best for certain things, depends what you do. What do you
• 1:19
  think was the reason why you got hired for that position? Because presumably, Diary of a CEO probably
• 1:25
  gets a thousand applicants for any given role. What made you stand out? I guess honestly probably
• 1:30
  because I worked for Mr. Beast. That's like my thought. They were looking for a researcher for
• 1:33
  Mr. Beast. I had to research stuff, get answers to things, make it organized, make it make sense,
• 1:38
  and that's what essentially they were looking for. Obviously, Mr. Beast is a big name. They
• 1:42
  had always wanted to work with or do a podcast with Mr. Beast and they did last year,
• 1:46
  I think it was last year. I guess made sense compared to other people. That was the type of
• 1:51
  kind of job role I've always been interested in. It's research, but it's not like lab research.
• 1:55
  It's not like, obviously, it's so different, but it's not like, what does x equal this for
• 2:00
  something? It's like, it's just fun. It's like, what is exposed? What's the non-expose? And then
• 2:05
  it's like creative too. It's like, how can we make this more interesting than it already is or isn't?
• 2:10
  And then that's so versatile because that's also what every YouTuber needs to, depending on your
• 2:15
  niche, but it's still needed. What was the interview process like for DOAC? Was it just like
• 2:20
  that email and then done or was it kind of drawn out? It was quite thorough. It was like a one page,
• 2:25
  not essay, but questionnaire or test. It was like, how would you construct this email outreach?
• 2:30
  Who are your top 10 guests that we should have on and why? Then they gave like three kind of
• 2:37
  topics. This is this doctor about this health study. There's a AI researcher and then there's
• 2:43
  psychologists or something. And it's like, pick one and do the research about this person.
• 2:48
  Find me everything. Everything in a sense of what I guess I would find important that I would
• 2:53
  think like Stephen would need to know. And then compile an email based upon your research.
• 2:59
  And how did you get hired by Mr. Beast? I applied to, yeah, three of them and I got
• 3:06
  callbacks of two, but the one that I also applied to was in North Carolina. But I think there's
• 3:10
  an option. I'm not sure if it's changed where you could be like, would you relocate? And then there's
• 3:14
  like, yes, no, maybe or something. And I think I put maybe for that one. But then after more
• 3:19
  thinking about it, I was like, no, so I just went with the one that said remote. And that's where I
• 3:23
  spoke to the person hiring for that called Amanda Bear, who she was like, my supervisor, my
• 3:28
  hire up or whatever. I loved her. We had a chat on the phone. And then after that phone call,
• 3:32
  I got the job. So then I started within a week. She was an LA. And also honestly, the team,
• 3:37
  the creative team there was mostly an LA, but there were still people who were remote. I think I was
• 3:41
  probably the furthest one because I was in Luxembourg at that time. And then basically what my job
• 3:46
  role consisted of was we were obviously trying to find outliers. What are the most optimized ways to
• 3:51
  create videos to make videos? It was basically every day I would find, collect at least like a hundred
• 3:58
  samples of back then, the trending YouTube trending page of like what all the videos were there. So
• 4:03
  I collected all that. So it went to thumbnails to titles to even watching the video. And I basically
• 4:09
  had to dissect them all, find out of like a hundred videos what were the most like what videos
• 4:15
  had patterns in them, whether it was keywords from the title, thumbnails, like anything to thumbnail,
• 4:20
  whether it's colors or the way a face was laid out. And also like the video itself replayed most
• 4:26
  replayed moments and stuff. In a nutshell, I dissected all of that and then made a graph or tables
• 4:32
  about like what like themes of those videos were popular. So like it could be like how to videos.
• 4:38
  And then like within those how to videos, it could be all different. It could be like how to make
• 4:41
  a Barbie house. And then another one's like how to get the best biceps in 2021 or something like
• 4:48
  just so different. But like the key theme there was a how to after that, I would narrow down even
• 4:54
  more what made them special regardless of the subscriber count or views. But then after a couple
• 5:01
  months that changed to also, oh, should we include the subscriber count because that could also have
• 5:05
  effect on the video. Like I really like the fact that people were like actually want to learn
• 5:09
  rather than obviously before I joined. I'm not sure if there was someone doing that role,
• 5:13
  but there was maybe someone kind of doing that role. They had data miners that would collect the
• 5:18
  videos and then what do you mean they would collect the videos like they would download them and
• 5:21
  like store them on their own servers. Like they would be the ones taking like the whole like
• 5:26
  trending page like all of the videos and then like giving it. So I didn't have to like literally
• 5:30
  screenshot or like click click click. So they would just like all of that. At that point, I was like
• 5:34
  this is something a position that I really like doing. Like it's one of the things that like
• 5:40
  working in the creative realm. I feel like you need to incorporate like data like look at the
• 5:44
  patterns rather than just think of like ideas. After by the way, I finished that we would kind of
• 5:49
  be allowed or be allowed as in like to create proposed ideas based on all the findings that we had.
• 5:54
  So that was like the creative side of it. There'd be like brainstorm sessions. Obviously everybody had
• 5:57
  their own kind of like role in that. And then within a year and a bit or something working there,
• 6:03
  it was like got the news that our team was just being slashed and everybody's going to North
• 6:08
  Carolina. And I was like what? But so there's a lot to unpack there because working for Mr.
• 6:16
  Beast is just so fascinating. You said that you would have a spreadsheet and you would go through
• 6:20
  hundreds of videos every single day pulling screenshots, you know, texting the thumbnail,
• 6:25
  taking the titles, drawing conclusions from all of this large data before chat GBT.
• 6:32
  What kind of insights did you have at that time? Like do you remember anything specific where
• 6:37
  you were like guys, I've just unlocked something crazy. We need to start applying this to the Mr.
• 6:41
  Beast channel right away. There was a lot of almost at that time for like a couple of months,
• 6:46
  like tutorial videos, like how to videos or videos that were essentially when I say tutorial,
• 6:51
  it's like key simple words at the beginning, like how long, you know, it was almost teaching
• 6:56
  something and then it could be turned into like how long can I stay hidden here or how long can I
• 7:01
  run for XYZ. And then also numbers were like a huge thing, you know, for 24 hours for 105 days,
• 7:08
  like oh, why is there 105? And then like there's five other videos with like 97, like is there
• 7:14
  something with this number 97? But like those are all principles and ideas that are still to this day
• 7:20
  huge. I'm not sure what that would say about YouTube. It's like, I guess those are proven platforms
• 7:25
  or proven ideas that they work and that people have a need to want to watch whatever it is. Like how
• 7:29
  long can I hide in the woods? Those are things that people always want to look at because they're so
• 7:33
  simple and it's like it tells you directly what you're what you're going to watch in the thumbnail.
• 7:38
  Everybody, no matter who you are, you can always learn no matter what level, no matter who you're
• 7:42
  working for. Like it's always slightly changing but still keeping like the principle, I think,
• 7:47
  of how to keep, how to get an audience attention the same honestly. What I found out with Mr.
• 7:52
  Beast was, I guess everybody knows the standout, but to have like it look relatable and real,
• 7:57
  you probably want to put like a $1 because it's like nothing is usually zero. So how are people
• 8:02
  going to think it's automatically fake? Yeah, Mr. Beast has talked about that too sometimes,
• 8:06
  where you put the number and it looks fake even though it is real. I've heard him say that about
• 8:11
  prizes like $100,000 or anything over $100,000. It's like, or a million dollars. I can't remember
• 8:15
  exact number. Yeah, and like it depends on like your audience too. Obviously Mr. Beast has a
• 8:20
  variety, a variety of audience, but obviously there's all kids who watch this stuff. It's like kid
• 8:24
  friendly. If you want to entertain your, I don't know how old age range, like your 12-year-old,
• 8:30
  what are you going to watch? You're going to watch something crazy. That's almost like, I used to
• 8:34
  love watching X-Factor when I was a young kid teenager. That would be like my X-Factor if I was
• 8:39
  like a kid I guess nowadays. It's like intense, crazy. Mr. Beast and Diary of the CEO are two
• 8:45
  like the most impressive operations that exist right now. How did you like take everything you
• 8:50
  learned from those two places? Now you're at Brownie. What do you do at Brownie and like how has
• 8:55
  your previous experience informed what you do? I mean team collaboration is huge as well. Like the
• 9:00
  people you hire make a huge impact on how your work also gets done and walk gets done in your work.
• 9:05
  But with Brownie, what I do is I find out ideas by finding out ideas for a video. It's two different
• 9:12
  ways. It's like generally just talking to each other. Like the team, whether it's Stan or like
• 9:17
  the team, I'm just thinking like how can we make that fun or how can we make that like optimize
• 9:20
  for YouTube? But like in a way where Stan also doesn't feel like he's it's a fake like he's forced
• 9:25
  to do something like we never want to do a video where Stan is like I have to do this reviews.
• 9:30
  And I don't think he's ever to this day done a video like that. So big ups to him. And then also
• 9:35
  it's like researching like everything I've done for Mr. Beast for Diary of the CEO. Not the exact
• 9:40
  same, but it's still the same principle like I mentioned like researching what is out there like
• 9:45
  Brownie is like the creative head as well. He used to help a lot like the video editors as well
• 9:50
  that he has now like he's trained them a lot like he loves to video. He loves to really be hands-on
• 9:54
  with his stuff. So then I take the lead as well with like coming up with ideas us literally like
• 9:59
  freelancing coming up with ideas or from research. I help as well with figuring out how to tell
• 10:04
  the story. Although Stan also like really loves to take control of that as well. Like how do we make
• 10:09
  like I don't know I don't want to give out any future ideas right now just because there's
• 10:13
  some in the making but like if he's like like I don't know bounce you ball or something how do you
• 10:16
  make this bounce to both fit into like what we're doing right now and then it's like let's brainstorm
• 10:20
  and then the logistics like how do we make this video actually happen from not just an idea
• 10:25
  and then I help manage as well some of his brand deals. It sounds like you basically started with
• 10:30
  like analytics data research stuff in both of your previous or you had many previous roles but those
• 10:37
  two main roles and then now you take that and you do like the next few steps in the process. So
• 10:41
  it's not just research and like analytics it's like coming up with the ideas based on that research
• 10:47
  and then like actually implementing it. Yeah exactly and it's like it kind of ties together almost
• 10:52
  like a role again like as I've always kind of dreamt of but also he's the leading fitness
• 10:56
  entertainment creator and just like any other creator they want to continue growing and we want to
• 11:01
  continue always being the leaders like just elevating everything that's our goal just elevating
• 11:05
  everything we do how do we make it the most optimized fun for not only like producing it but like
• 11:11
  for the team as well for the viewers his demographics are off the charts like he hits like every
• 11:16
  country like he gets everything his views are crazy his shorts do well like he is such a good
• 11:22
  creator with also not being not having an ego. So it's like how do we also keep the team small
• 11:27
  because like when you have a team that's too big sometimes that you know I've heard as well that
• 11:31
  happens I've also experienced it myself when a team gets too big you know there's a lot of
• 11:35
  miscommunication there's a lot of people maybe not happy and that's our goal is to also have
• 11:40
  like learn from all those experience whether it's from people posting on LinkedIn or for me like I'm
• 11:44
  there really only outsider that's joined them like you know let's let's stay away from kind of making
• 11:48
  it super like corporate. What does the team look like? Who's on the team or like what kind of roles
• 11:53
  does everyone have? There's Stan's brother York who's a video editor and videographer then there's
• 11:59
  the lead editor Colondre who's in Germany who's also a video editor and videographer so they do
• 12:05
  main channel videos and then there's another editor who does shorts videos and then also works on
• 12:09
  Stan's app 90 day app which also there's social media on as well and then there's a thumbnail designer
• 12:18
  with brownie I mean I think almost any creator can attest to this but it's like you're always
• 12:22
  trying to learn how to improve your thumbnails like that's like 50% of the battles like why would
• 12:25
  someone want to click on this thumbnails for even like old videos of brownie I might be like
• 12:30
  randomly just going through LinkedIn and there's a post I'm like oh that's a good idea maybe we
• 12:34
  should try that and like AB test it and see if there's some sort of result in boost obviously sometimes
• 12:38
  there's not or like sometimes we're like actually like to talk about this more in you know never mind
• 12:42
  are you reaching out to people who are just interesting to you or you're reaching out to people
• 12:45
  who you maybe can work with for brownie down the line? I would say most of the time it's for like
• 12:51
  a collaboration whether it's like for video or something maybe bigger or on the same
• 12:56
  area as that? Are you ever worried about or are you thoughtful about like oh this person's
• 13:01
  a lot higher up on the ladder than I am or you know they're kind of at a road or you just like not
• 13:06
  message message I don't care because it's like I feel like if you have that attitude like it's
• 13:10
  gonna stop you like everybody was like here at some point unless like you're you grew up in a
• 13:15
  family that like he was already like or she was already like a CEO of like a town agency so you
• 13:20
  you know this is kind of you have that because like even when I started like reaching out for like
• 13:24
  creators I had like technically no experience unless your friend is a creator or you are the creator
• 13:30
  and I was just like I don't care who you are I'm I'm sending out my profile I'm making videos I'm
• 13:33
  sending out I'm reaching out to emails I'm putting it there and I don't care what you think
• 13:37
  and like the worst case scenario is they just don't respond and honestly no one cares
• 13:41
  well yeah the worst case scenario actually is like stop emailing me and then it's like oh awkward
• 13:48
  but I'm like okay fine like I'll just brush it off feel sad for a day and I believe it
• 13:52
  how often does that happen well when I first start like so this was back in like early 2020
• 13:58
  I always knew I love YouTube but still back like five almost six years ago YouTube was still like
• 14:03
  something where you're working for it if maybe your friend is in it or I don't know like you're
• 14:09
  you actually work for YouTube not like a creator so I didn't know how to like get into that
• 14:13
  and obviously most parents think like how are you going to like survive off of making videos or
• 14:17
  something but so I was kind of pivoting so I was like maybe I'll reach out to talent agencies or
• 14:21
  like brands that kind of coexist with creators so I was like I'll reach out to a dating app that
• 14:27
  was relatively new but they were working with creators to promote their dating app and I don't
• 14:31
  sure if they've even done much since then but those kind of like they don't have a lot of followers
• 14:35
  yet they seem quite active on their social looks aesthetic there's some micro creators I reached
• 14:40
  out to them you know some my coldest excessive I called it like eager but like I was like I'll
• 14:45
  find out who the CEO is I'll find out who like who's like the social media person reached out to
• 14:49
  all of them I got like zero response I'm like that's crazy like you don't even have a lot of
• 14:54
  followers how are you not seeing my messages so then like I don't know I guess I reached out
• 14:59
  the third time and they were like basically you're doing too much and I was like damn that's
• 15:04
  crazy and that was the only negative response I've like ever gotten but usually I would only reach
• 15:10
  out three times and I stopped three four times I'm like if there's like no response I'm like
• 15:13
  hey I'm just gonna leave it until like three months and then I'll go again in three months
• 15:19
  I give you back
• 15:22
  but have you guys ever done that? Yeah of course and like that I think is the thing that like
• 15:27
  elevates you from just kind of the herd of people who work in this industry there's you know
• 15:31
  a thousand applicants for every single job but the squeaky wheel is the one that gets the grease so
• 15:37
  I'm a full supporter of this and I hadn't actually heard like people actually say please
• 15:41
  don't do this anymore we don't want you to do this anymore normally it's just you get ignored
• 15:44
  you get ignored or like I don't know eventually as long as you're providing value and as long
• 15:48
  as you're good intention like really things can't go too bad maybe olino you could chime in on this
• 15:53
  like what's the right way to call that reach someone like that? It's exactly what Max is doing it's
• 15:58
  the people that put in the effort that show they want to be there the people we end up hiring
• 16:03
  always are the ones that go above and beyond it's like they show us that they can do the job
• 16:08
  they show us they're excited and it's like you can't ignore someone who just like made a video
• 16:11
  that's amazing and you're like you know compared to someone who just sends an email with nothing
• 16:17
  do you guys also do hire like anywhere or do you prefer people in studio? Our team is everywhere
• 16:23
  we're all over the world yeah I there's definitely I mean that's a huge debate like so many people
• 16:28
  are like everyone needs to be here in the office every day eight to five or you know whatever
• 16:34
  but it definitely helps to have people together like the thing is like the small ideas get transferred
• 16:41
  that like it's like something that's not worth putting into slack but you just like say it out loud
• 16:46
  in person yeah like and then those are those are important too like those grow into bigger things
• 16:52
  I definitely think not only allowing countries to basically limit your chances like that shouldn't
• 16:58
  be a problem like you know if imagine there was an amazing person in Costa Rica and they just
• 17:04
  you know couldn't be in Amsterdam or London for work it's like why can't we make that accessible
• 17:09
  to them and they can like benefit the team by like tenfold but just because like they're not here with
• 17:13
  you I don't know I feel like that yeah that is limiting and then some companies you know if they
• 17:17
  offer to relocate and then I mean I guess it's also different countries like some salaries just
• 17:22
  aren't good enough if you have to relocate like there's so many different things that goes into that
• 17:26
  but like I'm so with you guys that remote is definitely to your advantage rather than not
• 17:30
  that's the nice thing about the creator economy right like it's very very flexible for every
• 17:34
  single person if you can provide enough value to justify not being in person even when they want
• 17:38
  to in person then you get you get the job offer that's not like the real world that's not like if you
• 17:42
  were going to bank you can't just like work remotely because you're a good banker you know you
• 17:46
  still have to go into the office every day so yeah how did you convince Manchester City to do a
• 17:51
  collab with Brownie football is a global soccer is a global sport like everybody either loves it
• 17:57
  or knows about it it's also very hard to get into the the European soccer league to actually film
• 18:01
  with them unless you're already just like a niche of soccer but we made that happen so then Sydney
• 18:07
  and I his girlfriend we were like there was some stuff that's that needed because also there's
• 18:11
  on top of that there's things that football players can't do because they want to make sure they
• 18:14
  don't get injured so we were like how do we get these products over on a flight but like make
• 18:20
  them work in real life we knew that they have media days and I outreach to them and I say like
• 18:26
  this is what we want to do and this is who Stan is and these are his stats honestly once you see his
• 18:30
  demographics and his work and who he is in his channel like it's quite hard to say no unless you
• 18:35
  don't want a really cool opportunity there's also you know you could be a really good YouTuber but then
• 18:39
  if you don't pitch it right that could also be like sometimes you can read an email and be like
• 18:42
  they don't even click a link that you sent you know because they're just like skimming it so we
• 18:45
  came up with a lot of ideas actually like that would globally universally kind of translate to a
• 18:50
  fun entertaining video I saw you recently worked with Red Bull for their Formula One team I thought
• 18:54
  that was super cool yeah that was really fun like video we definitely want to put out more of a
• 18:59
  series like that oh I would watch I would watch it be great let's go yeah well that's that's
• 19:04
  whatever goals you know it's like a simple idea hard to like get into because you know people
• 19:09
  are very protective over their athletes and and their schedules but it's just proving as to why it
• 19:14
  works and then obviously it goes out saying it helps the way it's formulated and it helps the way
• 19:20
  who the creator is like unfortunately probably if you have like 500,000 followers and like you know
• 19:25
  maybe no experience as well with athletes like sometimes they take they're like who have you
• 19:29
  worked with before it's not like you almost want to say does that matter you know but obviously it
• 19:33
  can matter because imagine like I can totally understand if you if I was a manager for an athlete
• 19:38
  and then I let a creator come in who I maybe don't really know their stuff and then they were just
• 19:44
  like completely messing up everything or they just took everything as a joke it's kind of like
• 19:47
  they're gonna give creators such a bad rep but yeah working with Red Bull the communication
• 19:52
  manager for Yuki she was so helpful it just worked so well in fluid like it couldn't have gone
• 19:56
  better to be honest are these people's emails just readily available online like are they really
• 20:01
  easy to find most of the time not I do two things I like Lincoln message them connect with them
• 20:07
  LinkedIn obviously sometimes it's red or it's not red or I like literally Google their email until
• 20:13
  I see like this is a possible email this and I just add all them down yeah wow yeah or I just like
• 20:20
  or I just like if I see someone is connected with that person I'll be like hey I'm blah blah we
• 20:25
  have an idea of this can you please connect me to this and then either get a oh yeah or a just
• 20:32
  not right or something you talked a lot about getting jobs and you also talked a lot about
• 20:36
  reaching out to people and communicating with people what would you say to someone who is
• 20:40
  interested in getting a job working for a really premium tier creator what's like one or two
• 20:47
  things that they should apply to their life starting today or like apply to like they're tactic
• 20:53
  because people reach out on white sea jobs and a thousand people apply but it sounds like you've
• 20:58
  gotten in everywhere you've gotten in the Premier League you've gotten in with diary of a CEO with
• 21:04
  Mr. Beast with Brownie what's the secret like give me one or two things I think like whenever you
• 21:09
  outreach you need to like prove in some way that you add value into what you're like your goal is
• 21:16
  so like I tailored what my like video CV was to like what they would need or basically checking out
• 21:22
  their whole content to see what they should have to make their content even better like sometimes
• 21:27
  like their Instagram for example like you can have a really cool youtuber they want to grow their
• 21:31
  Instagram how can you make that better what can you do to make that better so it's almost like
• 21:35
  finding out something that they didn't even think of or something that they maybe thought of just
• 21:40
  never shout out loud and saying hey look I'm that guy and this is why pretty simple but it just
• 21:45
  takes time and effort unlike the kind of like looking into the small details who is a creator that's
• 21:50
  on your radar right now that's really cool and doing cool things the first one that comes into my
• 21:55
  head is Jack Pembroke he does kind of like honest it's not pranks it's just kind of like
• 22:01
  social experiments but they're not fake and they're so so it's almost kind of like I don't
• 22:06
  want to say I hate kind of comparing youtubers but just to kind of get an idea like a Ryan Trey and
• 22:11
  Arak but Will Tennyson ish personality in a video in a channel and I I think it's like you know he
• 22:19
  kind of does like he tests if you can I don't know stay in a resort for free it's almost like seeing
• 22:23
  like oh actually it's kind of this is maybe taking it too far but you know the way Mr. B's start off
• 22:28
  with just like doing things that we're so boring and so simple but like it just took off because
• 22:32
  they're like relatable kind of what Jack does but like I guess like just in a different way if that
• 22:37
  makes sense like a bit more I don't know like elaborate and I think I found him like 2023 or
• 22:42
  something I mean he's still like relatively like he's big of course but like he's still small
• 22:47
  considering how big YouTube is yeah I like his stuff like he does he has he's really like you
• 22:52
  could tell he's really passionate nice nice good shout out all right Maxwell thank you very much
• 22:56
  for sharing your insight and for being on the show is great meeting you and speaking with you
• 23:01
  you're very passionate yeah well thanks for having me like I really appreciate the outreach like
• 23:09
  it was really fun talking to you guys it's just to give me talk about YouTube I'm like oh yeah
• 23:14
  haha thanks so much for watching and listening to this episode if you liked it please consider
• 23:19
  subscribing or leaving us a review it's still very early days for the gimbal podcast and we need
• 23:24
  all the support that we can get if you like this episode consider watching another one and I
• 23:28
  will see you there new episodes every Tuesday thanks for joining in