Kansas State alumni Kyle Rohrmann visited K-State Oct. 3 to give a presentation about his career after college and his current occupation under Mr. Beast, a prevalent YouTube personality with over 300 million subscribers.
Raised in Fresno, California, Rohrmann originally came to K-State to pursue agriculture with hopes of taking over his family’s pistachio farm.
“I heard that they had a great ag business school,” Rohrmann said. “So I was like, ‘that sounds awesome, I’ll go do that.’”
Although Rohrmann originally pursued a career in agriculture, he soon realized his true passions laid elsewhere.
“I never really was that passionate about it,” Rohrmann said. “It was just kind of something that was there for me to take advantage of. And so I had kind of this crisis at K-State, where I didn’t really know what I was going to do … I was all over the place.”
Rohrmann said to solve the crisis he spoke with a K-State advisor, who had him list things he was passionate about.
“I started listing off things, and we landed on videos, and I didn’t really even know that you could make a career out of making videos,” he said. “… I ended up getting a marketing degree. He helped me get a job at the KC Foundation making videos, which I was terrible at, but it kind of set me on the right path. So there’s a lot of self-discovery of realizing things I didn’t want to do, more than realizing things I didn’t want.”
Rohrmann graduated in 2017 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing.
Rohrmann said the goal of his presentation was to provide content or advice that is “relatable to students.” He remembers attending similar K-State presentations and not knowing how to use the advice he was given.
“I don’t know how it applies to me, and that’s why I kind of told some stories of failure and struggles and kind of how my career is really unorthodox, and it’s not a blueprint that people should follow,” Rohrmann said. “But there are nuggets in there, things that you can take away from it, that I think have lessons that can be applied no matter what you do, whether you’re an accounting major or finance major, economics, whatever you do, you know if you can learn how to problem solve, if you learn how to creatively think, if you can learn how to build a good network, those sorts of things, I think that that’s super valuable.”
Rohrmann said he wanted to make sure his presentation was applicable to anyone.
“… Most of those people, if not all those people, will not end up working for a YouTube channel in their career,” Rohrmann said. “So I wanted to be broad enough that those skills could be translated to anything to do.”
In Dec. 2023, Rohrmann received a job offer on LinkedIn from Mr. Beast, who had just surpassed 100 million subscribers.
“It was just a cold LinkedIn DM, so I guess check your LinkedIn, and maybe something will come of it,” Rohrmann said. “Honestly, I think they were looking for people in production. I had production in my resume … At the time, I had never seen a second of [a] Mr. Beast video, but I said yes to the opportunity because it sounded interesting.”
For Mr. Beast, Rohrmann had to build his problem-solving skills. He described an instance where he had to come up with a quick solution.
“It’s an hour before the shoot and Jimmy [Mr. Beast] goes, ‘it’d be cool if this plane had sushi on it,’” Rohrmann said. “I went, ‘what?’ And then we had to Uber Eats [around] $1,000 worth of sushi. And while the Uber Eats driver was getting there, I had to get him security clearance through the airport to then pull onto the tarmac, because the plane was going to take off, and we didn’t have time to transfer the sushi on. And somehow we did that. So that’s an example of … what types of problems that we have to solve.”
Rohrmann said he wears “a lot of hats” working for Mr. Beast.
“I make the best-branded content in the world for the biggest content creator,” Rohrmann said. “One day I have to be an explosives expert. The next day I have to learn about caves. The next day I have to be a philanthropist building houses. The next day you have to, you know, learn about trains. There’s a lot of things that go into that one little sentence, and that’s why I love it so much. Literally, no day is the same.”
Rohrmann said he helped produce an episode of the upcoming Amazon show “Beast Games.”
“We were just focused on making bigger and bigger, bigger YouTube videos and channels, that’s what we do, but we just made the biggest TV show in history,” Rohrmann said. “We didn’t do that because we’re running out of growth on YouTube. We did it because it’s a new frontier. It’s exciting, and it’s a chance for Jimmy to prove that a YouTuber can own and really run the space that is streaming and game shows and challenges. So it’s just about challenging ourselves and proving that, you know, we’re here to stay and we’re the best there is.”
Rohrman advises students not to make themselves seem more qualified than they actually are and students should emphasize their passion for their work and the right attitude and mindset.
“… [you should] use your network and the people you meet at K-State and be really intentional about keeping those relationships, because I’ve leaned on people that I’ve met at K-State over and over and over again during my entire career, and those people have been invaluable to me,” Rohrmann said. “So just keep those connections and keep those relationships, because you never know what you’re gonna need.”
