Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
Motivate Your Team! Cheer Up A Friend! Inspire Yourself!
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| Wooden's Wisdom - Volume 13 | Issue 774 |
| Craig Impelman Speaking | Championship Coaches | Champion's Leadership Library Login | |
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"TOGETHER, WE CREATE MORE THAN WE EVER COULD ALONE"
Almost everyone has heard of YouTube. Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, is its most followed individual creator, with more than 500 million subscribers to his YouTube channel. Fortune estimates his net worth at $2.6 billion. How did a young man who dropped out of junior college get there?
He started with videos about computer games. He loved figuring out why one video caught on and another disappeared. In community college, he sometimes sat in his car in the parking lot, editing videos instead of attending class. When his mother found out, she cried. He moved out and kept going.
For about five years, Jimmy worked largely on his own. He studied videos, tested ideas, and learned from a small audience. Coach Wooden said, "There is no substitute for hard work and careful planning." Jimmy’s years on his own showed the Industriousness and Enthusiasm at the base of Wooden’s Pyramid of Success. They also showed Alertness, Initiative, and Intentness: he paid attention, acted on what he learned, and refused to quit.
But there was a limit to what he could learn alone.
Bill Gurley tells the next part of the story in Runnin’ Down a Dream. Jimmy found four other young YouTubers just as fascinated by the problem. They lived in different places, so they got on Skype. Some calls ran from seven in the morning until ten at night. They studied thousands of thumbnails, the pictures meant to make viewers click—to see whether brightness mattered. They counted how often successful videos changed camera angles.
Jimmy could make entertaining videos, but he struggled with titles and thumbnails. The others knew how to get a click, but Jimmy could help them make videos worth watching. They gave each other what each was missing.
Coach Wooden said, "You must listen to others if you want others to listen to you." That is what makes their calls such a good example of Friendship, Loyalty, and Cooperation. They enjoyed talking together, showed up day after day, and learned from each other. Jimmy estimated that the calls continued for about a thousand days. He told Gurley they began with roughly 10,000 to 20,000 subscribers each. By the time the regular calls ended, everyone had passed a million.
Jimmy’s solo work had prepared him. Now he had four sets of eyes, four sets of experiments, and four friends who could see what he missed.
After years of learning with the Daily Mastermind group, Jimmy changed the videos themselves. Jimmy went up another level to true Team Spirit. He brought childhood friends in front of the camera as a recurring cast. Viewers got to know their personalities, jokes, and rivalries. They still came for the wild challenges, but now they also came back to see what their favorite people would do next—much as they would follow the characters in a TV show.
This was true Team Spirit, which Coach Wooden defined as: "A genuine consideration for others. An eagerness to sacrifice personal interests of glory for the welfare of all.". Jimmy displayed a favorite John Wooden idea: "The main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team."
Giving others room to contribute helped Jimmy make something he could not perform alone.
Years later, Jimmy worked with Mark Rober and many other creators on Team Water, which raised $40 million for clean water. What began with five people talking on Skype had grown into a worldwide effort.
Jimmy’s drive got him started. His friends helped him learn faster. His team gave the work new life. As Amanda Jackson’s quote reminds us, together we can create more than we ever could alone.
Hard work and good habits can make a team strong, but it takes team spirit—bringing everyone into the effort—to reach its full potential.
Reflect on this idea of building Team Spirit. How are you doing? Write it down. Share it with someone on your team.
Yours in Coaching, Craig Impelman
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Earth is Enough We men of Earth have here the stuff Edwin Markham (1852–1940)
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