A Beast of a Job

K-State marketing alum Kyle Rohrmann is using his “producer’s brain” to create videos with one of YouTube’s most famous, and most generous, personalities.

Before his career as a producer, Kyle Rohrmann was a kid with a camera in his hand. He imagined being a farmer. But as often as he was showing animals at a competition, he was shooting footage of his friends and cutting it together into clips of them showing off.

“They were into skateboarding and BMX, but I was bad at it,” he said in a recent conversation. A catcher on the baseball field, he “picked up a camera as a way to fit in” at the skatepark too.

Fast forward about a decade, and Rohrmann is still grabbing video and telling the stories of people doing wild tricks. Out are the skaters’ kickflips and ollies. In are the antics of MrBeast – the fourth biggest YouTuber in the world, who has more than 130 million subscribers.

MrBeast and his crew are known for their big stunts and their big hearts. They’ve run rock-paper-scissors tournaments with $250,000 prizes, hosted giant Monopoly games played for real cash, and spent 50 hours buried alive. They’ve also raised millions of dollars for environmental charities in partnership with other YouTubers, paid for 1,000 people to have cataract surgery, and provided a house for someone who needed it, rent-free.

 

“Jimmy [MrBeast’s name when he’s not in front of a camera] is who he says he is. He’s making this money to give it away. He means it…We’re doing this authentic, heart-warming stuff that has a real mission and making some of the most successful videos of all time,” Rohrmann said.

Rohrmann joined MrBeast in January 2023 with several others, as the company continues a boom of growth and hiring. But he developed what he called his “producer’s brain” in previous jobs. “Producers are the people who get things done. We get these crazy, insane ideas. We make them happen, or we figure out an alternative that still captures that creative vision.”

That involves planning, logistics, prep work, and video production skills – some of which he picked up at K-State and some of which he learned working for the United States Golf Association and Fox Nation. While at Fox, he developed, launched, and ran a show called “Mansion Global” with Kacie Hosmer, the host of the show. After a few online-only episodes, Fox Business picked up the show, which looks at luxury homes around the country. It is now part of Fox Business’ primetime line-up and is in its sixth season.

“There’s a mindset shift that I’m still in the middle of. At Fox, the question was ‘What’s the timeline and budget?’ At MrBeast, it’s creative first. ‘What’s the idea?’ Everything in the middle is fundamentally the same,” he said.

Whether it’s millionaires giving tours of their digs or MrBeast giving Uber rides in a tank, being a producer means being flexible. “You say yes, and you figure it out later,” according to Rohrmann.

It’s a job that turns on a dime. But even that “producer’s brain” – with its ability to switch things up quickly and its willingness to be on the road hundreds of nights per year – grew some deep roots in Manhattan.

“My closest friends all came directly from K-State. I try to get back to see my best friend and his family once a year. The person I roomed with in LA while working for Fox was a friend from K-State. I’ll be forever thankful for those people,” he said. “When I was a kid, I didn’t know the place existed, and now I can’t imagine my life without it.”