Inspire, don't compete: how comics and MrBeast treat others in their field

The Short Version

Joe Rogan, Bert Kreischer, Sam Tallent and MrBeast all describe the other people in their field as people to learn from [1][2][3]. Rogan tells Kreischer it is better to be inspired by other comics than to compete with them, and that jealousy only hurts the person feeling it [1]. With Tallent, he goes further: a comic cannot get good alone, which is why he built a club in Austin around other comics [2]. MrBeast calls other creators collaborators, gives away nearly everything he knows, and credits a couple of equally obsessive friends with much of his own growth [3]. They do not agree on everything: Rogan will be friends with comics who do not make him laugh, while he and MrBeast both say your progress depends on having strong people around you, and MrBeast admits that it got lonelier at every milestone [1][2][3].

Table of contents

What They Said

Joe Rogan and Bert Kreischer: inspired by, not competing with

The exchange begins with a question from Kreischer: "Do you ever be friends with someone? And then all of a sudden realize you've been competing the whole time, but you didn't know you were in a competition." [1] Rogan calls that unfortunate and answers with a rule: "Inspired by is a better way to look at life." [1] He adds, "Competing is just not a good way", and then, "I've never once competed with another comic." [1]

His reasoning is about who pays for jealousy. Ego, he says, is not good for you: "It doesn't help you. It only hurts you." [1] It does not hurt the person you are jealous of [1]. The alternative he offers is to take another person's success as proof of what is possible: you can look at someone who made it and say, "I can do it too. But don't be jealous." [1] When someone else's success provokes a strong reaction, he suggests asking why, because a lot of the time it is jealousy [1].

He applies the same attitude to comics he does not rate. There are comics he does not think are very good: "They don't make me laugh, but I don't care. I don't get mad at them." [1] He says he had to learn this; it used to be that if someone wasn't funny he couldn't hang out with them [1]. Now he will be friends with them, because being a good person matters more [1].

Kreischer agrees, and gives examples. He describes how Dave Chappelle generously broke down how he prepares for a special [1]. He says he loves watching Tom Segura and Andrew Schulz roast whole cities [1]. And the whole episode is framed by a debt he says he owes Rogan, whom he calls the big brother he never had [1]. Years ago, backstage at the Comedy Store, Rogan told him that Segura was doing theaters and that Kreischer needed a special too, and summed it up in two words: "be undeniable" [1]. Rogan also called him while he was filming a Travel Channel show in Vietnam and told him to get out; of such television jobs Rogan says, "It's a velvet prison" [1]. Kreischer admits he once thought Rogan was out of his mind for telling him and Segura they needed a podcast [1]. He named his special Lucky, and part of the luck he counts is "finding the friends I did later in life", at 37 or 38 [1]. Rogan's reply to the talk of luck is that Kreischer's success also comes from relentless touring: "if you work really hard, you tend to get luckier." [1]

Joe Rogan and Sam Tallent: you can't get good alone

With Tallent, Rogan makes a harder claim: other comics are not just good company, they are how a comic improves [2]. He explains that after moving to Austin he opened a club because he needed to rebuild the community he had in Los Angeles: a place set up for comedy, an easy way for young comics to get on stage, and the hang [2]. The door staff are comics who auditioned, and there are open mics two nights a week [2].

The main point the two make is that isolation kills growth [2]. Rogan says that if you are in some weird town somewhere and start an open mic night, "it's hard to get good" [2]. The exchange goes on, "You need like real comics around you." [2] Watching is no substitute, Rogan says: "It's not even enough to be watching it on YouTube. You got to kind of see it live." [2] He says it is real hard to develop if you are the funniest guy in the room [2]. In the same exchange one of them describes meeting someone really funny on the road, in a place like South Bend or Cincinnati, and telling them to leave: "you're really funny and you're not going to get as funny as you can here." [2]

The danger does not end with success. Rogan warns that established comics who bring weak openers and only play for their own fans slowly lose their edge, and he quotes Bill Burr: "You got to do the clubs." [2] He adds what the pandemic taught him: "You can't practice stand up in a vacuum." [2]

The club itself was shaped by peers. Rogan credits Louis CK with the advice to shrink the small room's stage and lower its ceiling [2]. Dave Chappelle visited, and Rogan recalls his reaction as "dude, now I'm inspired"; Chappelle is building a 120-seat room in an old firehouse in Yellow Springs, Ohio [2].

Tallent's side of the conversation is about what working under and beside other comics did for him. Opening for Tim Dillon in arenas, where crowd work doesn't work, forced him to build "a bullet proof 25" [2]. He thinks playing offensive lineman made him a better host: "I was used to like never touching the ball and never getting the accolades." [2] Rogan calls hosting a kind of cross-training that gets a young comic the most stage time and is the way into any club [2]. Tallent's years opening in mountain towns for a veteran headliner, sharing a room and splitting about a hundred dollars, taught him in another way: Rogan calls it an education in what that kind of comic is, a man doing it for 15 years and making $350 a night in the middle of Wyoming [2]. Tallent's novel Running the Light is about that kind of forgotten road comic [2]. And one night of Rogan's attention went a long way at Tallent's home club, Comedy Works in Denver: Tallent says a dozen comics added opening for Joe Rogan to their bios after Rogan closed one of its new-talent nights [2].

MrBeast: collaborators, not competitors

MrBeast, then the most-subscribed creator on YouTube, states the position most flatly: "I just see everyone else as collaborators, not competitors" [3]. He knows it is unusual; he says most people in his position would not take this stance [3]. His reason is short: "I don't think giving advice and helping other creators do well in any way harms me." [3]

He acts on it. He shares nearly everything he knows [3]. He critiqued a friend's thumbnail detail by detail, and by coaching one struggling friend through regular calls he helped him go from about $10,000 a month to over $400,000 [3]. He also takes as much as he gives: he keeps learning through a mastermind retreat with about ten of the smartest creators he knows, and on walks he calls people and asks them to teach him something [3].

The view behind it is his biggest piece of life advice, that "the people they are around 100% dictates the outcome": surround yourself with people you want to become [3]. His example is friends who lift, who make healthy eating effortless; he calls such friends cheat codes [3]. He puts a number on it for himself: without a couple of equally obsessive friends when he was at around a million subscribers, he says, he might have 80 million fewer [3]. He holds his closest relationship to the same standard: "I can't truly love someone that doesn't make me better." [3] And he wants his team to push back on him and not be yes-men [3].

His generosity has an edge, though. He warns other creators against copying him: "But just know you're not going to get to where I am doing that. And so I advise you don't." [3] Be unique, he says, because nobody will beat him at his own game when he reinvests everything he earns [3].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

All four treat a peer's success as useful to them [1][2][3]. For Rogan it is inspiration, for Kreischer it is Chappelle explaining his preparation, for Tallent it is the arena slots that forced him to write a tighter set, and for MrBeast it is the friends and the retreat he learns from [1][2][3]. None of them describes a field in which one person's gain is another's loss [1][2][3].

Rogan and MrBeast both pass help on to people behind them [1][2][3]. Rogan pushed Kreischer toward stand-up and podcasting, and built open mics and a door staff of comics into his club [1][2]. MrBeast coaches friends and gives away what he knows [3].

The first real difference is over who belongs in your circle. Rogan, talking to Kreischer, says he has learned to be friends with comics who are not funny, because being a good person matters more [1]. Rogan, talking to Tallent, says it is hard to develop when you are the funniest person in the room, and that watching comedy on YouTube is not enough [2]. MrBeast is stricter still: the people around you decide the outcome, so choose the ones you want to become [3]. These are not quite the same question. Rogan's first statement is about friendship and about not resenting people; the second, like MrBeast's, is about who you practice your craft beside [1][2][3]. But the generous rule and the selective rule both come from Rogan [1][2].

The second difference is over competition itself. Rogan says he has never once competed with another comic [1]. MrBeast rejects the word competitors, yet he says what makes entrepreneurs like him happy is winning, and his warning that nobody will beat him at his own game is a competitor's sentence [3]. Tallent, for his part, says he loves competition, though he says it about sport, adding that he does not think he has one-on-one combat in him [2]. Rogan's own advice to Kreischer used a peer as the measuring stick: Segura is doing theaters, you need a special [1]. What they reject, then, is jealousy and secret rivalry; none of them rejects ambition [1][2][3].

The third is over how much company the top actually offers. The comics describe a profession full of it; Rogan built a room to keep it [2]. MrBeast expected to meet many people with his all-in, reinvest-everything approach as he grew, found only one or two, and says it got lonelier at every milestone, so he increasingly connects with obsessive people outside content creation [3].

Why It Works

Rogan's explanation of the inspiration rule is a simple accounting: jealousy costs the jealous person and nobody else [1]. Inspiration turns the same sight, a peer doing well, into evidence that it can be done [1].

His explanation of why comics need comics is about how the craft is learned. It has to be experienced live, a comic who is the funniest in the room finds it real hard to develop, and stand-up cannot be practiced in a vacuum [2]. What he built in Austin answers each: a place set up for comedy, an easy way onto the stage for young comics, and the hang [2].

MrBeast's explanation is that the people around you make the hard things easier, as lifting friends do with eating well [3]. He also argues that virality can be engineered and taught, which is what his coaching of a friend rests on, and that there is no such thing as a perfect video, only something to improve each time [3].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

It applies most clearly where the work is learned by doing it in front of people, among others who do it. Rogan's point about the town with no scene is that it is hard to get good there [2].

It does not mean anyone's help will do. To build his team, MrBeast tried four or five people who had worked in different veins of media, including one hire from Disney, and says "every single time, they just don't get it" and that they don't understand his world [3].

It does not mean imitation. MrBeast shares his methods and tells people not to copy him [3].

It gets harder with success. Established comics can drift into playing only for their own fans, and MrBeast says it got lonelier at every milestone [2][3]. He also describes a cost of his way of working: working every day for two or three months straight left him ready to explode, and it took him a long time to accept that he needs time to recharge [3]. He says the best thing for his mental health was giving in to his nature to work; anyone whose work is affecting their own mental health should talk to a professional rather than take that as a prescription [3].

And belonging has a second face. Rogan and Tallent spend part of their conversation on how people get pulled into groups, and both return to the idea that people need a community, which can make them better or can do their thinking for them [2].

What To Do With It

1. When a peer's success stings, ask why. Rogan's suggestion is that the strong reaction is often jealousy, and that it hurts only you [1].
2. Turn the comparison into evidence. Rogan's alternative to jealousy is to take a peer's success as a sign that you can make it as well [1].
3. Go where the strong people in your field are. If you are the best in the room, Rogan's advice is that you will find it hard to develop there [2].
4. See the work live. Rogan says watching on YouTube is not enough [2].
5. Take the supporting jobs. Hosting gets a young comic the most stage time, and opening for a bigger act forced Tallent to build a stronger set [2].
6. Keep playing the hard rooms after you make it. Don't bring weak openers and play only to your own fans [2].
7. Ask people to teach you something. MrBeast does it on walks, by phone, and at a retreat with about ten creators he considers the smartest he knows [3].
8. Give away what you know. MrBeast shares nearly everything, and coached a friend through regular calls [3].
9. Choose a few people you want to become, and stay near them. He credits a couple of equally obsessive friends with tens of millions of his subscribers [3].
10. Learn from peers without copying them. His advice to other creators is to be unique [3].

Sources

1. 2291 – Bert Kreischer · The Joe Rogan Experience
2. Sam Tallent on the Comedy Grind, Belonging and Mad Honey (Joe Rogan Experience #1969) · The Joe Rogan Experience
3. MrBeast on Making Viral Videos, Building a Content Company and Money vs Happiness · Lex Fridman Podcast