This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Bart Dziedzic, a 27-year-old who left investment banking to work for YouTube’s top creator, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson. It’s been edited for length and clarity.
I grew up in Darien, an upscale town in Connecticut, but I didn’t belong to the world of finance bros. My parents were Polish immigrants, and we lived paycheck to paycheck. I was enamored by the big guys: Steve Jobs, Elon Musk.
I went to Fordham and landed at JPMorgan Chase, where I worked my way up into investment banking. It was prestigious, and the money was good.
But the investment banking lifestyle started to get repetitive. I was working 80- to 100-hour weeks, and if you break it down to the hourly rate, it’s not a ton of money. And the noise of the city was starting to wear on me.
One day, I was talking to a partner at a VC firm who was doing some recruiting for MrBeast. They were looking for smart, obsessive, athletic people.
I always wanted to be either a soccer player or an entrepreneur. Growing up, I did construction with my dad in the summer. In elementary school, I sold duct-tape wallets until the principal shut it down because you weren’t allowed to sell stuff at school.
I didn’t grow up with media or social media, but I realized that everyone from my cousins in Poland to people in Asia and Africa knew who MrBeast was.
Going to MrBeast had pros and cons
There were a lot of reasons not to go there. I didn’t really understand the role completely — working in development for the chief of staff. I wondered about the key-man risk. I’d be taking a 50% pay cut and going to Greenville, North Carolina, and leaving all my family and friends behind. My parents thought I should stay at JPMorgan.
But I figured, I don’t have a family or mortgage, and everyone knows the MrBeast name. I saw the opportunity to learn, add value, be part of a brand that is growing very rapidly, and have autonomy. That’s the one thing I didn’t like about JPMorgan — like any corporate job, it’s too structured.
In the worst-case scenario, I can come back. If nothing else, it’d be an experience in itself. So I left JPMorgan in January 2024 and started at MrBeast in February.
My first week on the job, I got to watch a video being produced where people aged 1 to 100 were competing for a prize. These are multimillion-dollar shoots. It was exciting. This is a totally new landscape, the creator economy. How do you take this massive megaphone of followers and then turn it into something sustainable?
I had to adjust to small-town life
The transition to Greenville was tough at first. I lived out of suitcases in a hotel for two weeks because they didn’t have housing ready for me; they were hiring so rapidly. There wasn’t a lot to do. I ended up getting a dog and a truck. I went on Hinge, where I met my girlfriend. I played a lot of pickleball.
I’ve had a lot of different roles in my time here. Although we have titles, the roles are very ambiguous. You just break down problems and figure things out. One of the projects we had was doing this pop-up theme park in Riyadh that was supposed to be something between a Six Flags and a carnival pop-up, and gamified — MrBeast-style.
I was part of the negotiations and planning, so I kind of took the lead and worked with our partners over there to design and build it. Seeing it come to fruition was similar to doing a construction project with my dad. It was beautiful.
A high point was launching MrBeast’s theme park
Operationally, there were a lot of things to figure out. Jimmy [Donaldson] was there on opening day, so that’s a world of its own from an operational perspective. We had 7,000 people on opening day. A few days before, MrBeast said he wanted a prize wall. We had to figure out a points system to award prizes, what the prizes would be, and how we’d get them here in three days. We brought some stuff from the states, like an authenticated piece of a set or Jimmy’s hat from a set.
Jimmy also wanted to take pictures with a bunch of people. We had to design it so as many people as possible could take pictures with him while making it a good experience for them. We handed out 250 golden tickets and built barriers to control the crowd. Then people started coming in with one ticket and three families. So we limited it to five people.
I enjoy getting my hands dirty and doing things. I think a lot of people operate in fear of decision-making. You always have to think about, “What’s the opportunity cost of this decision? Is it a big decision where I could literally ruin this park? Or is it a micro decision where I can live with the consequences?”
I was pretty proud of the team and myself. We were supposed to open in December, but we ended up opening it earlier. We’re in a foreign country, dealing with a lot of inputs. There was a lot of just figuring it out. And it was cool to see it all come together in a project of this size.
Now I’m manager of strategy and operations on the holdco team. There wasn’t really a reason for them to be in Greenville, so the team moved to New York, and I moved back in the summer.
After a break from New York, I’m glad to be back. I appreciated the nice weather and greenery, but there wasn’t as much to do in Greenville. I’ve also slowed down as I’ve gotten a little older. I enjoy going on walks instead of going to a bar until three in the morning.
I learned to prioritize experience over pay
I’ve learned you shouldn’t optimize for salary in your 20s. You should build skills and experiences so you can make more money when you’re older or start your own thing. I would tell people out of college, take as much ownership as you can in something. Do something that’s exciting, risky, with a good leadership team behind you, where you can learn something. Because the further you get along in your career, the harder it will be to pivot.
I think a lot of people want certainty in their careers, and that’s why a lot of people stay at roles like JPMorgan even though they’re miserable. But it’s an ever-changing world. Google didn’t even exist when I was born. Also, everyone’s going to give you advice based off of their own experience when those experiences don’t necessarily apply to you. In the same way you would do benchmarking comps for a business or analyze anything in life, you should take 10, 15 inputs and then decide what the risks and rewards are based on that.
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