You’ve just started making content, or you’re about to. You’ve watched creators you admire and thought, how do I get that good?
The internet will hand you a dozen answers: the right gear, the perfect niche, the algorithm hacks, the posting schedule. Most of it is noise. The real answer is much simpler.
Make 100 videos.
Not 5. Not 20. One hundred. It sounds like a lot when you haven’t even posted your first one, and that’s okay. You don’t have to commit to it today. But by the end of this post, I want you to see why 100 is the number that changes everything. It’s the same number the biggest creator on YouTube gives anyone who asks him how to get better, and we’ll get to him. First, the mindset behind it.
Give success no choice
Alex Hormozi went from sleeping on the floor of his gym to building Acquisition.com, a portfolio of companies doing more than $250 million a year in revenue. He told Chris Williamson on the Modern Wisdom podcast that one of the credos in the first pages of his team’s sales handbook is just three words: “Volume negates luck.”
Most people treat success like a lottery. They post a few times, cross their fingers, and wait for the algorithm to pick them. When it doesn’t, they call it bad luck. But luck only runs the show when you take a handful of shots. Take enough of them, and luck stops being part of the equation.
Consistent volume changes the probabilities in your favor until the outcome stops being luck. Think about what you’re actually doing with 100 videos. Any single video might flop or hit, and you can’t control which. But across 100 attempts, each one teaching you something and each one a little better than the last, you’re taking so many swings that a hit becomes statistically close to inevitable.
You’re not hoping one video goes viral. You’re guaranteeing that enough shots get taken that something connects, and that by the time it does, you’ll be good enough to capitalize on it. That’s the “no choice” part made literal. You’re not begging the algorithm for a break. You’re flooding it with so many quality reps that it CAN’T NOT eventually reward you. Volume plus improvement turns a gamble into a near-certainty.
Luck still exists. It just stops being the deciding factor. One video is a gamble. A hundred videos is a numbers game, and you’re the one stacking the numbers.
One honest refinement: what you’re really making inevitable is the input, not a specific result on a specific date. You can’t guarantee that video 47 takes off. You can guarantee that you show up, improve, and stay in. Make that non-negotiable, and the output becomes so likely that for all practical purposes it’s inevitable.
Make the goal almost too simple
Here’s where most beginners go wrong. They set goals like “hit 1,000,000 followers” or “go viral this month.” Those aren’t goals you control, so every slow week feels like failure.
Make the goal so simple you can’t argue with it: publish one video a day. That’s it. Not a great video, not a viral video. Just a published one.
James Clear makes this point throughout Atomic Habits. His third law of behavior change is to make it easy, and his Two-Minute Rule says a new habit should start so small it takes less than two minutes to do.
Say you want to become a runner who wants to finish a full 42-kilometer marathon. To reach that goal, your goal every day shouldn’t be to run 40 kilometers. It’s to simply put on your running shoes. That’s it. Lace up, and you’ve won the day.
It sounds almost silly, and that’s the point. Putting on your shoes is so easy you can’t talk yourself out of it. And once they’re on, you’re far more likely to head out the door anyway. The tiny action becomes the doorway to the bigger one.
The deeper logic is that you have to master the art of showing up before you can worry about getting good. A habit has to exist before it can be improved. Nobody can optimize a routine they don’t have yet.
For a new creator, the version of putting on your running shoes is opening your phone’s camera and hitting record. Not scripting the perfect video, not planning the whole month. Just one take. Most days, once you’re recording, you’ll keep going.
So lower the bar to start. Shoot on your phone. Use one simple format. Don’t wait for the perfect idea. The goal for now isn’t quality. It’s becoming the kind of person who creates and posts every day.
Let the reps do the teaching
If you somehow haven’t heard of him, MrBeast is Jimmy Donaldson, a creator from North Carolina who started uploading to YouTube in 2012. In June 2026 he became the first creator ever to pass 500 million YouTube subscribers, and his main channel is the most-subscribed on the platform. (source)
He didn’t start there. He got good the slow way, one upload at a time.
So when small creators ask him how to get better, his advice is almost boringly simple. In his own words on X: “make 100 videos and improve something small with each video.” (source) It doesn’t matter what you improve, he says, as long as each video is better than the last. By the end, your content will be operating at a completely different level.
So what should you actually improve? Almost anything. On one video, study hooks. A few videos later, learn visual hooks that stop the scroll before you even speak. Then figure out your lighting, what looks good on camera, or a new transition. Pick one thing, learn it, and fold it into what you’re already doing.
It doesn’t have to be a new lesson every single video. Spend a week on hooks if you need to. What matters is that you’re always working on something.
And here’s the part that makes this so powerful: each thing you learn eventually becomes automatic. Once good lighting is a habit, you stop thinking about it, and that frees up room to work on the next thing. Skills stack on top of each other. By video 100, you’re not juggling a dozen new techniques. You’re doing them without thinking, and you’re a completely different creator than the one who hit record on video 1.
That stacking is the other big idea from Atomic Habits: small improvements compound. Clear’s well-known math is that getting 1% better every day for a year makes you about 37 times better. Over just 100 days, the same 1% adds up to roughly 2.7 times better than where you started.
Clear also tells the story of a University of Florida photography professor who split his class in two. One group was graded only on quantity, the other on producing a single perfect photo. The best photos came from the quantity group, because they spent the term shooting and learning while the other group theorized. Your 100 videos are your quantity group.
Notice what he’s not saying. He’s not telling you to make one perfect video. He’s telling you to make 100 imperfect ones and let the reps do the teaching.
The Plateau of Latent Potential
James Clear makes a point that matters a lot here: habits form through repetitions, not time. It isn’t about how many days have passed. It’s about how many times you’ve actually done the thing. That’s why 100 videos beats “a year of trying.” The count is what changes you.
Be ready for the middle. Somewhere around video 20 or 40, it will feel like nothing is happening. Clear calls this the Plateau of Latent Potential, and he explains it with an ice cube in a cold room. You warm the room one degree at a time, and the ice doesn’t change at all, until it hits 32 degrees and starts to melt. The earlier degrees weren’t wasted. They were stored.
This is where most new creators quit. Not because they lack talent, but because they post 5 times, see nothing, and decide it doesn’t work. You don’t lose to the algorithm. You lose to your own quitting.
And when you do slip, follow Clear’s simplest rule: never miss twice. One missed day is an accident. Two is the start of a new habit, and the wrong one.
Who you’ll be after 100 videos
Picture yourself on video 100. You’ve written 100 hooks and learned which ones hold attention. You’ve edited 100 times and your hands know the shortcuts. You’ve seen what your audience comments on, shares, and skips. You’re no longer guessing.
You won’t just be a better version of the creator you were on day 1. You’ll be a completely different creator. And you’ll have built something even more valuable than skill: the identity of someone who shows up every day, no matter what.
So don’t try to make your first video great. Make it simple. Publish one a day. Improve one thing each time. Then do it again, 100 times.
Put in the reps. Make it inevitable.
Sources
- MrBeast on X: his 100 videos advice
- SQ Magazine: MrBeast subscriber count, 2026
- Wikipedia: MrBeast
- James Clear, Atomic Habits (2018)