How to achieve success: Advice from Rich Beato | Rick Beato and Lex Fridman

you started uh your YouTube channel in your mid50s and found incredible success. You you've had essentially multiple careers. Um is there some wisdom you can extract from that? So my my theory is that somebody's got to be successful, so why can't it be you? That was that was [laughter] that's that was my when I started my channel. I mean I didn't start it to it started by accident with the Dylan video and um and really so many people reached out to me. I started it 6 months after that viral video. So many people wrote to me, can you teach me this? Pro musicians, well-known ones that you would who you'd know. Can you teach me this? I can't teach you what Dylan did, but I can I can teach you relative pitch. develop your ear that way. But then that I had conservatories writing to me about this stuff from all over the world. How did you teach Dylan this? Because we made about four different videos and they got more and more sophisticated. And um so I thought, okay, I'll make some YouTube videos and explain this stuff. This is that's really why I started so I didn't have to keep I couldn't answer the emails. There's so many of them. So I just started making videos on how to train your ear and music theory. And that's really how I started my channel. And my wife was like, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm making YouTube videos." Why? So I don't have to keep telling people how I did this stuff. And then all of a sudden, you know, few I had 4,000 subscribers the first month, another 4,000, then hit 100,000 after a year, and then 6 months later 200,000, then 3 months later 300,000. So I think there one thing that should be said that in modern culture for young people a lot of them will see YouTube and Tik Tok and Instagram and they kind of want to be famous. They want to get the clicks and the views and so on and that's the thing they chase and optimize. I think the thing that you're leaving unstated perhaps is that you spent many years pursuing the mastery of a craft and there's a lot of value to getting good at something. Absolutely. Offline, you can actually reveal your journey online, but the thing you're chasing is not uh fame. It's getting good at something. And I think actually what happens is even if the thing you get good at is not the thing that you become famous for, if that's the thing you're uh that ends up happening, it's still like getting good at one thing kind of somehow relates to getting good at another thing. Somehow they'll lead you to get better at getting better at the next thing, at the next thing, and the next thing. But if you're just chasing fame and trying to figure out how do I do the viral thing or so on, it just seems to you might actually get there, but it'll be unfulfilling and not longlasting. >> My theory of my channel has always been make videos on things I'm interested in. And at first I thought, oh, nobody's going to watch an old white-haired guy on YouTube. Yeah, >> that was kind of my thing. >> Well, that was not correct. Um, and then it's like, we'll just make videos on stuff I'm interested. It just so happens that other people are interested in the same things I'm interested in and keep learning. And I when I produce bands, I never let them take my picture ever. I never let them record me in the studio. There's virtually no pictures of any band I ever produced. So from 1999 to 2015 when I December 2015 when that Dylan video came out, no one took my picture. There were no pictures of me on the internet. >> You're fully behind the camera kind of guy. Meaning like no, >> no, no pictures. No, no pictures with people. Hey, can we take a picture? Said no pictures with people. >> And now you're like the you're the talent. You're the face. [laughter] No, I mean but the again the thing you're leaving unstated there is is like you spent a lot of years you know teaching music like really exploring music trying a music career of like trying to create trying to produce trying to be a musician and all these not just trying like being getting extremely good at it. I just I think in modern culture there's a sense you want to skip that part. I want to be famous. I wonder, you know, this and that is a thing that's not going to be in most cases effective as a primary thing to chase. So I have an undergrad in classical bass. I have a master's from New England Conservatory in jazz guitar. Then I taught college for I taught jazz studies for five years from 87 to 92. >> Then I got a publishing deal, my first publishing deal in 1992 with Polygram Publishing. And then I became a producer when I was 37. No, having no idea how to engineer, I taught myself engineering. And then YouTube. I taught myself how to edit videos. >> And then you taught yourself how to interview. >> And I taught myself an interview. I'd never done an interview before. I never was like an interview or what? >> You haven't just done that. You've taught yourself not how to do just YouTube, but YouTube shorts. >> Yes. >> Different totally different >> thing. Totally different skill. And then not just YouTube, but like how to be like a there's a because you're both a YouTuber and and like a musician who posts stuff on YouTube. YouTuber means like you're thinking about stuff like thumbnails and >> which I make my own thumbnails. I've always made my own thumbnails. By the way, before I forget, I think I I speak for the entirety of the internet thanking you for how you introduce your videos and how you close them because you this is a big part of YouTube where people have a 30 minute introduction to to a fiveminute video. You just go straight in. That's really wonderful. It's I mean, and on all fronts, I mean, I suppose it has to do with the production skill that you have of understanding cutting cutting the song. >> Yep. Yeah. cutting cutting the fluff. Cutting the I'll just get straight to the

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