For MrBeast, arguably the biggest star on YouTube, the journey from bed to boardroom is about 30 seconds. That’s because the 25-year-old content creator, entrepreneur and philanthropist sleeps in his office—just down the hall from the business operations in his North Carolina studio.
In an appearance on the ‘Howie Mendel Does Stuff’ podcast, MrBeast—real name Jimmy Donaldson—gave the comedian a tour around his bedroom.
The pair had been chatting in a meeting space within Donaldson’s studio warehouse when he volunteered to show Mendel “where he lived”—the room next door.
“This is my bedroom,” Donaldson tells TV personality Mendel. The room features a standing desk with a couple of screens, a sofa in front of a large TV with another desk behind it, and in the corner a double bed behind a set of curtains.
Off the main office/bedroom is a bathroom and a walk-in closet.
Donaldson said he lives in the studio full-time, except when his girlfriend’s in town.
“Sometimes … I’ll go to a house,” in these instances, he adds.
The man worth $500 million, according to Forbes, reportedly owns a modest four-bedroom, four-bathroom property which he purchased in 2018 for approximately $320,000, according to records obtained by the New York Post.
The property is also in Donaldson’s home state of North Carolina, a city called Greenville, where the star has also been buying homes for his family and employees.
Last year Donaldson pushed back at social media critics who said that buying up the cul-de-sac for his loved ones was cult-like. “Only I could get canceled for giving people a place to live with no strings attached,” Donaldson wrote on X.
However, it turns out that despite the proximity to loved ones and the added space his larger home offers, the studio is more convenient.
“It’s much easier to stay here because then I don’t have to drive a lot,” Donaldson old Mendel. “This is where I sleep and you just get up, walk out the door and then there you go.”
Hosting celebrities like Brady and Timberlake
The studio has also played host to NFL star Tom Brady and artist Justin Timberlake, Donaldson said—though whether or not they were privy to the YouTuber’s living arrangements wasn’t made clear.
Donaldson—who has 264 million subscribers on his main channel alone—knows his lifestyle is unusual.
Unlike many content creators who are based in California or New York, Donaldson admits his studio is in “the middle of nowhere.”
However, he told Mendel that being removed from these so-called hubs of creators doesn’t impact his ability to keep in touch with what his global audience wants to see.
“There are just things that people intrinsically like, things that kind of transcend culture and borders and things like that. For the most part a lot of what we do is like no matter if you were in Mexico or you’re in America or you’re in Germany, it’s stuff you would like,” he explained.
Drawing inspiration from Steve Jobs
A look around Donaldson’s room gives a peak into the young philanthropist’s aims—be it in his content career or the wider business world.
Donaldson also founded MrBeast Burger, which broke a world record, and chocolate business Feastables.
According to Business Insider, the endeavors bring his yearly earnings to between $600 million and $700 million.
On the walls of Donaldson’s studio bedrooms are quotes from the likes of Apple founder Steve Jobs reading: “If you want to make everyone happy, don’t be a leader—sell ice cream.”
“One of my favorite quotes of his,” Donaldson told Mendel.
The insight reveals the drive behind the fun-loving creator, who makes videos such as ‘Stop this train, win a Lamborghini’ and ‘World’s deadliest laser maze.’
But Donaldson is also emulating the world’s most famous CEOs by bringing a new meaning to home office.
Elon Musk, for example, is a figure MrBeast has had several interactions with after the Tesla CEO and X owner asked the YouTuber to begin releasing his content on the social media site.
Musk notoriously slept on the factory floors at Tesla before moving to nap under his desk so his team could see him.
Additionally, shortly after acquiring X in 2022, Musk—who is slipping down the rankings of the world’s rich list—began sleeping in the offices at Twitter, as it was known then.
He told the BBC that he had a spot on a couch in a library on the building’s seventh floor “that nobody goes to.”
Meanwhile Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said he also used to compete with his peers to see how little he could sleep, while Peter Brown, the CEO of hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, told the Goldman Sachs Exchanges podcast he had spent almost 2,000 nights sleeping in his Long Island office.
