MrBeast – the YouTube creator with more subscribers than any other individual – gives aspiring creators consistent advice: make 100 videos before you expect any of them to go viral. Don’t expect video #1 or #10 or even #50 to break through. Put in the volume first. Quality follows quantity.

This advice frustrates people who want shortcuts. It’s also undeniably correct.

And it applies directly to dance competition.

The Volume Principle

The MrBeast principle isn’t about grinding for its own sake. It’s about understanding how mastery actually develops.

Early attempts are necessarily imperfect. You don’t know what you don’t know. You can’t feel what you can’t feel yet. Skills require repetition to develop. Judgment requires experience to calibrate.

Video #1 can’t be great because you haven’t learned from videos #2-99 yet. Those lessons don’t exist until you earn them through doing.

Similarly, your first freestyle can’t be your best freestyle. Your first competition can’t be your peak performance. The experience you need to excel doesn’t exist until you’ve done it imperfectly enough times.

In fact, the expectation that early attempts should be excellent is one of the biggest barriers to excellence. It creates performance anxiety that undermines performance. It sets up failure before you’ve even started.

YouTube Creator vs. Dance Competitor

The parallels are striking:

YouTube Creator – First Videos:

• Awkward on camera
• Poor production quality
• Unclear messaging
• Nervous delivery
• Minimal audience
• Self-conscious throughout

Dance Competitor – First Competitions:

• Awkward on floor
• Rough technique
• Unclear expression
• Nervous execution
• Lower level placements
• Self-conscious throughout

YouTube Creator – After 100 Videos:

• Comfortable with the camera
• Improved production instincts
• Clear voice and message
• Natural delivery
• Growing, engaged audience
• Focused on content, not self

Dance Competitor – After 100 Freestyles:

• Comfortable on the floor
• Refined technique
• Clear expression
• Natural execution
• Improved placements
• Focused on dancing, not self

The transformation isn’t mysterious. It’s the predictable result of accumulated experience. The question is whether you’re willing to put in the volume that creates it.

The Perfection Trap

The alternative to the volume approach is the perfection trap: waiting until you’re “ready” before putting yourself out there.

Aspiring YouTubers fall into this constantly. They don’t publish because their lighting isn’t perfect. Their script isn’t polished. Their thumbnail isn’t optimized. They’re waiting to be ready before they start.

The problem? Readiness comes from doing, not waiting. Every day of perfecting video #1 is a day you’re not learning from video #2. The preparation that feels productive is actually procrastination.

Dancers do the same thing. “I’m not ready to compete yet.” “I need to work on my technique more.” “Maybe next year.” Each delay feels responsible. It’s actually the opposite.

You become ready by competing, not before competing. The nervousness, the pressure, the performance context – these can only be learned through experience. No amount of lesson preparation substitutes for actual competition.

Spoiler alert: you won’t feel ready for your first competition. Enter anyway. That’s how readiness develops.

Embracing Early Imperfection

The MrBeast principle requires a mindset shift: accepting that early work will be imperfect – and doing it anyway.

This isn’t lowering standards. It’s understanding that high standards are the destination, not the starting point. You aim for excellence while accepting that excellence requires practice, and practice requires imperfect attempts.

Every great YouTuber has embarrassing early videos. Every great dancer has cringeworthy early competition footage. The difference between them and people who never became great? They kept going.

Your first freestyles will have problems. Your first competition will feel overwhelming. Your first showcase performance will be rougher than you wanted. This is normal. This is the process. This is how it works.

The goal isn’t perfection – it’s progress. Each imperfect attempt teaches you something. Each competition builds experience that improves the next one. The volume creates the quality.

What 100 Freestyles Teaches You

Let’s get specific. What do you actually learn from doing 100 freestyles?

Freestyles 1-10: You learn that you can survive. The anxiety is manageable. It’s not as terrifying as you imagined. Basic familiarity with the experience.

Freestyles 11-25: You start adapting to floor conditions. Different music. Different spaces. Different judges watching. The variables become less disorienting.

Freestyles 26-50: You learn what goes wrong and how to recover. Mistakes happen. You don’t die. You figure out how to keep going when things aren’t perfect.

Freestyles 51-75: The nervousness transforms from fear to energy. You’re not trying to suppress anxiety anymore – you’re channeling it. Performance starts feeling like expression rather than evaluation.

Freestyles 76-100: Competence creates confidence. You’ve done this enough that you know what you’re doing. The focus shifts from surviving to thriving, from adequate to excellent.

This progression can’t be shortcut. Freestyles 1-10 must happen before 76-100 is possible. The learning is sequential, cumulative, and dependent on volume.

Applying the Principle

How do you actually accumulate 100 freestyles? You pursue every opportunity.

Enter competitions. Each event offers multiple freestyle opportunities. A single competition might contribute 10-20 freestyles toward your 100.

Dance at showcases. District showcases and studio events provide freestyle experience in supportive environments. The stakes are lower, but the learning is real.

Treat Practice Parties as practice. Dancing in front of other students isn’t the same as competition – but it builds some of the same awareness. Social dancing with observers is a step toward performance dancing with judges.

Record yourself. Video yourself freestyling and watch it back. The self-consciousness of being recorded approximates some performance pressure. It’s not the same as live competition, but it builds related skills.

Stop waiting. The biggest barrier to accumulating volume is the waiting – for perfect readiness, for the right moment, for confidence that only comes from doing. Stop waiting. Start accumulating.

The Mental Reframe

The MrBeast principle isn’t just about practice volume – it’s about mental framing.

When you expect video #1 to be great, failure feels catastrophic. When you expect video #1 to be learning, everything goes better. The performance improves because the pressure decreases.

Same with competition. When you expect your first competition to reveal your peak ability, nerves spike and performance suffers. When you expect your first competition to be part of a learning journey – freestyle #7 of 100 – the pressure releases.

This isn’t about lowering expectations for your eventual ceiling. It’s about having realistic expectations for where you are in the process. You’re building toward excellence through accumulated experience. That’s how it works.

In fact, the best performers often describe this exact mindset. They don’t pressure themselves to be perfect in any single attempt. They pressure themselves to keep showing up, keep learning, keep accumulating the reps that lead to mastery.

Your 100 Freestyles

Where are you in your count? Have you done 5 freestyles? 15? 50?

Whatever the number, the path forward is clear: add more. Sign up for the next competition. Enter the showcase. Stop treating each freestyle as a final exam and start treating it as one step in a long journey of development.

MrBeast is one of the most successful creators in YouTube history. He didn’t get there by making one perfect video. He got there by making hundreds of imperfect videos, learning from each one, and gradually building toward excellence.

The same path is available to you on the dance floor. Volume precedes quality. Experience creates excellence. Doing teaches what waiting cannot.

Time to start counting. Time to start accumulating. Time to embrace the process that actually works.

Freestyle #1 is waiting. Go get it.