Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Jimmy Donaldson might have made his fortune on YouTube, but the man better known as MrBeast has plans for a much wider financial empire—and he’s well on his way to achieving it. Through Beast Industries, the $5 billion holding company for his growing corporate ecosystem, Donaldson is assembling a wide range of businesses that extend far beyond the influencer space. The latest expansion came on February 9, with the purchase of the teen-focused banking app Step. Banking isn’t the end game, either. Beyond his current holdings, Donaldson has broader ambitions that could further diversify his income streams. Here’s a look at the businesses currently under the Beast Ind…

MrBeast is currently the most-subscribed YouTuber in the world—but his biggest moneymaker isn’t content. It’s chocolate. The 26-year-old creator, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, owns the snack brand Feastables, which generated $251 million in sales and more than $20 million in profit last year, according to investor documents obtained by Bloomberg. By contrast, his main media business—including his blockbuster YouTube channel and the Amazon Prime reality competition show, Beast Games—brought in similar revenue but lost nearly $80 million over the same period. With 372 million subscribers at the time of writing, MrBeast’s videos range from spending “100 hours i…

Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough is ready to spill the tea in a new newsletter. Called The Tea, Spilled by Morning Joe, the revamped newsletter for the popular morning show on the network that will soon be called MS NOW (the name change is official on November 15, the network says) took its inspiration from the world of print magazines. It’s designed to be part of a larger flywheel to grow and connect with the show’s audience. “We wanted something that was visually arresting, that was simple, elegant, and that people could read and get insight from,” Scarborough tells Fast Company. The newsletter will be sent in the early afternoon, Monday through Friday, …

Muhammad Ali once joked that he should be a postage stamp because “that’s the only way I’ll ever get licked.” Now, the three-time heavyweight champion’s quip is becoming reality. Widely regarded as the most famous and influential boxer of all time, and a cultural force who fused athletic brilliance with political conviction and showmanship, Ali is being honored for the first time with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp. “As sort of the guardian of his legacy, I’m thrilled. I’m excited. I’m ecstatic,” Lonnie Ali, the champ’s wife of nearly 30 years, told The Associated Press. “Because people, every time they look at that stamp, they will remember him. And he wi…

Consider this: You want to book a multicity, international trip with flights from New York City to London, then Paris, and then back to New York City. There are numerous variables in the mix—different airlines, various ticketing levels, and more—that make the booking more complicated than anticipated. Accordingly, you may end up booking several separate flights, with multiple tickets and confirmation codes to keep track of. If you travel a lot, that can be a lot to manage. But Navan, a corporate travel and expense platform, says it has smoothed the whole process out for booking flights. Navan—which went public less than a month and a half ago, and mainly competes…

Police in Munich are investigating a mystery: More than 1,000 stickers were put on gravestones and wooden crosses at three cemeteries in the German city, without any indication of where they came from or why. The 5×3.5-centimeter (1.95×1.2-inch) stickers are printed with a QR code, that, when scanned, shows the name of the person buried in the grave and its location in the cemetery — but nothing else. “We haven’t found any pattern behind this yet. The stickers were put both on decades-old gravestones and very new graves that so far only have a wooden cross,” police spokesperson Christian Drexler told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “People who have witnesse…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a recall notice that warns consumers to dispose of a certain brand of mushrooms, which have the potential to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, a potentially deadly bacterium. Here’s what you need to know about the recall. What is the reason for the recall? On April 16, Harvest NYC Inc. of Brooklyn, New York, announced a recall of an Enoki Mushroom product due to fears of potential contamination with Listeria monocytogenes. Two days after Harvest NYC initiated the recall, the notice was posted on the FDA’s website. According to the notice, the recall was initiated after the New York State Depar…

A federal jury has sided with OpenAI and its top executives in a feud with Elon Musk, who accused them of betraying a shared vision for it to guide artificial intelligence’s development as a nonprofit dedicated to humanity’s benefit. The nine-person jury unanimously found that Musk waited too long to file his lawsuit (Musk v. Altman et al.) and missed the deadline for the statute of limitations. Musk, the world’s richest man, was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company that launched in 2015 and went on to create ChatGPT. After investing $38 million in its first years, Musk accused OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and his top deputy of shifting into a moneymaking mode behind his …

Be careful what you like on social media – you never know when a billionaire’s lawyers might be going over your likes with a fine-toothed comb. Elon Musk’s lawyers requested that a judge with a history of presiding over his legal battles step aside this week. The reason? A post she liked on LinkedIn. In a motion for recusal, Musk’s legal team requested that Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick remove herself from a pair of Tesla lawsuits to “avoid an appearance of bias.” The post in question celebrated a verdict in a San Francisco federal court that found Musk defrauded Twitter investors in the chaotic days before he bought the social network. In…

In a trial featuring a clash between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, neither of the tech titans has emerged as an overly sympathetic character. But nobody has more to lose than Altman, who is expected to take the stand this week to defend himself. Already, testimony about Altman’s turbulent tenure at the ChatGPT maker has become prime fodder for internet jokes. One piece of evidence that has inspired countless memes was a text exchange between Altman and a company officer, Mira Murati, in 2023 during his short-lived ouster as CEO, when Altman asked if things were moving “directionally good or bad” and she wrote back: “Sam this is very bad.” Musk, the world’s riches…

Elon Musk‘s lawyers will urge the Delaware Supreme Court on Wednesday to restore his $56 billion pay package from Tesla, as one of the biggest corporate legal battles enters its final stage nearly two years after a lower court judge rescinded the Tesla CEO’s record compensation. The outcome could have substantial consequences for the state of Delaware, its widely used corporate law, and its Court of Chancery, a once-favored venue for business disputes that has recently been accused of hostility towards powerful entrepreneurs. The January 2024 Court of Chancery ruling striking down Musk’s pay has become a rallying cry for Delaware critics. Chancellor Kathaleen McCo…

On the morning of March 20, Mathew Roberts was working at a chemical plant on the outskirts of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when he was involved in an accident with a forklift. Unresponsive and in critical condition, the father of two and Iraq War veteran known for his big laugh and warm smile was taken from the Nutrien nitrogen plant to a local hospital, where he died of his injuries. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the incident, along with local law enforcement, but Roberts’s family members said they are still waiting for answers. The workplace death is not unusual in Louisiana, which has been ranked the sixth-most-dangerous s…

I’m addicted to the curtain. That moment when you walk through a dark hall, push through two layers of dark drapes, and whatever you see next—no matter what it is—is a bit of a thrill. It’s one of my favorite motifs of Milan Design Week, when half a million people from around the globe for a citywide celebration of all things design. The hook is Salone de Mobile, the world’s largest furniture trade show. Its 3/4-mile-long fairgrounds feature 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries. (The fairgrounds are so expansive they actually sit outside Milan in a city called Rho.) But many visitors never make it there, instead exploring Milan’s design districts that are f…

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: My boss is playing favorites, what should I do? A: So much of adult life can feel like you’re perpetually stuck in high school: gossip and office politics, making friends, and who the boss favors. If you feel like your boss is playing favorites, the first step is evaluating why you feel this way as objectively as possible. The more specific you are about the problem, the more specific you can be about how you address it. A vague feeling of “I think you like …

Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: My coworkers are always complaining. What should I do? A: The world is made of all kinds of people, and so it follows that in any workplace you’ll also find a lot of personality types: The narcissist, the interrupter, the martyr, the workplace BFF (if you’re lucky), and the straight up jerk (if you’re unlucky). The office complainer is challenging in their own way. If you have one who is getting on your nerves, here are some ways to handle the situa…

Most of us know the general (albeit simplified) story: Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov used a stimulus—like a metronome—around the dogs he was studying, and soon, the hounds would start to salivate. They had learned that the sound meant food was coming. The phenomenon, now known as classical conditioning, became one of modern psychology’s foundational discoveries. It’s an unconscious process where a neutral stimulus becomes associated with a naturally occurring stimulus, eventually leading to a connection between the two. The dogs, seeing the researcher who often brings them food or hearing the noise of the cart on its way, would immediately know they were about to h…

A reader asks: Two years ago, I began managing Craig, who had been doing the same tasks day in and day out for a decade. He hadn’t adapted to new technology, best practices, or industry trends. My first order of business was to coach him and challenge him to grow and learn. For more than a year, we built up a great trajectory. People saw how much his work improved and commented on it frequently, and said he seemed revitalized in many ways. His progress gave me a lot of hope that he could become good at the modern demands of his role. Then about six months ago, Craig suddenly reverted to his old patterns. It was as if the prior year of progress got completely wiped…

A reader asks: A while back, an employee who reported to me (I’m a man) became visibly pregnant soon after she started. But she never brought it up. Not with me, not with HR, not with anyone. I didn’t ask her about it, though nearly everyone else in our office asked me. I cringed when I responded since it was obvious she was pregnant but I felt that I needed to protect her privacy. I felt like I was walking around on pins and needles with this very obvious elephant in the room. Her job description included occasionally lifting objects up to 40 pounds, and the only way I treated her differently was that I went out of my way to pick up anything remotely heavy. E…

A reader asks: I run a small business that supplies a product to major companies. To keep the details anonymous, let’s say that we supply garments to a few mid-tier clothing retailers that you can buy in the mall. The problem is that one of my employees two levels down (he reports to someone who reports to me), Dave, behaves as though we’re making clothing for Gucci or Prada. This causes enormous production headaches. It means everything moves much more slowly through his department, because he is extremely conscientious about quality. That is admirable, but it results in things like being short with our subcontractors because they have not produced the products t…

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor. A reader asks: I manage a team of four. One of my staff members, Jeff, asked to go to a conference that was about a five-hour drive away. I approved the request as the conference would be good for his professional development. Three other staff members from our closely connected teams were also going. Jeff registered for the conference. A couple of weeks later, he asked me about booking a flight to it. I was surprised by this, as the conference was a reasonable drivi…