“The average person does not want to live the life I live, or be in my head,” Donaldson told Steven Bartlett in a recent episode of his podcast, The Diary of a CEO. “They would be miserable, because they’re just working all the time.”

Donaldson has his hands in all sorts of ventures—most notably, being YouTube’s top content creator with 370 million subscribers, thanks to his elaborate game-show-style videos that rake in upwards of 764 million views a pop. He also owns a chocolate business called Feastables, which received $60 million in Series A funding in February 2024; Lunchly, a Lunchables-esque packaged food product; MrBeast Burger, a virtual restaurant that only allows for pickup and drop-off; and production company MrBeast LLC, which helps manufacture his viral videos. 

As the face of his many brands that bear his name, Donaldson said he rarely has time for leisure. 

“Obviously I’m not a robot. There are times when I’m like, ‘F—, I really want to play this strategy board game or I want to do this thing, then I look at the schedule and think, ‘Ah, maybe I could do that in four days,’” he said. “It’s very easy to go in moments like that, ‘F—, I feel like a zoo animal, I don’t have free will, I’m like a little robot to my businesses. So you have to be very careful—sometimes those emotions take over.”

To cope with the pressure, Donaldson said he needed to reframe his mental approach to daily life—otherwise, even the strongest savants could fall into depression.

“You gotta control your thoughts, and [think], Well, this is the life I chose. You want success, you want to change the world? This is the price you have to pay,” Donaldson said. “You should actually see this as a good thing… You’re lucky it’s hard, push through it and you’ll be happy you did.”

If the average person were in his shoes, Donaldson said they would probably opt out of his circus of businesses and “just grab a couple million dollars and be happy.” And they may have a point—Donaldson said that so far in 2025, he has been more unhappy than happy. His emotions ebb and flow, but the crushing weight of his schedule persists. 

Weighing millions against punishing CEO stress

If you’ve never been a CEO, you may imagine it’s a pretty sweet gig: million-dollar salaries, reserved parking spots, potential stardom, and no boss to work under. But it’s not all rainbows and sunshine; as the saying goes, it can be lonely at the top. 

Tim Cook leaned on a “palate cleanser” to keep him sane when he succeeded Steve Jobs at Apple in 2011, after the visionary cofounder’s death; the technology giant was booming, and Cook had big shoes to fill. He was thrust under a microscope and extreme pressure as chief executive—and had to find calm in the outdoors, away from the busy office. 

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Running a business in transition is incredibly stressful, and so is leading one during hard times. Jamie Dimon said during the financial crisis of 2008 when the markets crashed, he and his JPMorgan colleagues were running war rooms five times a day, every day that year, to get things back on track. They would work anywhere from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. to deal with clients in different time zones. It was a real grind, and as CEO, he was in the trenches. 

These stories are threads of a larger problem woven by corporate America: pushing CEOs hard with punishing schedules, to extract the most growth and profit quickly. However, it may be one factor why so many chief executives are tapping out; about 1,991 CEOs announced their departures in 2024, according to research from Challenger, Gray & Christmas—the most since the firm began recording these figures in 2002. Brutal working hours and stress may have a big hand to play in this trend. 

“What concerns me most is, when I work with startup companies, how many leaders get burned out in their late twenties or early thirties,” Klaus Kleinfeld, the former CEO of Alcoa and Siemens, told Fortune last year. “They get pushed in the hope of a quick buck and quick wealth and they literally break down.”