Pre-production determines whether content wins or loses. Most creators spend their time in the wrong place.

Source: This insight comes from Caleb Ralston's consultation with Taki Moore. Caleb is the content strategist behind Gary Vee and the Hormozis for 16 years. This was a working session on content strategy, not a polished presentation.

The standard content workflow goes: come up with an idea, hit record, edit, publish. Maybe spend an hour or two on planning if you're diligent. The result is content that looks fine but never seems to perform as well as you think it should.

The problem is the ratio. Most creators spend 80% of their time on production and post-production, and 20% on planning. The math should be inverted.

Where the 80/20 Split Comes From

MrBeast didn't invent pre-production, but he brought it back to YouTube. The film industry has always operated this way: months of development, weeks of pre-production, days of actual shooting. Somewhere in the transition to digital content, creators forgot this and started treating the camera like a stream-of-consciousness tool.

The shift back to pre-production is what separates channels that plateau from channels that compound. 80% of your content time should happen before you hit record, because that's when you make the decisions that actually determine performance.

This sounds extreme until you do the math. If a video takes 10 hours total, you're spending 8 hours on planning, ideation, scripting, and preparation. Only 2 hours on filming and editing combined. That ratio feels wrong to most creators because filming and editing feel like "the work." But the real work is figuring out what to film in the first place.

What Pre-Production Actually Looks Like

Pre-production isn't just writing a loose outline. It's stress-testing every element of the video before you commit to producing it.

The title and thumbnail come first. Not after filming, not during editing, but at the very beginning. If you can't imagine a thumbnail that would make someone click, you don't have a video yet. You have an idea that needs more work.

The hook gets written and rewritten. The first 30 seconds determine whether anyone watches the rest. Most creators wing this and it shows. Pre-production means knowing exactly what you'll say in those opening moments, and why it will stop someone from scrolling.

The structure gets planned section by section. What's the promise? Where's the first payoff? How do the middle sections build momentum? What's the resolution? These decisions made in advance produce tighter videos than decisions made in the edit bay.

The weak points get identified before they become problems. Is this topic actually interesting to your audience? Is the angle differentiated enough? Does the payoff justify the setup? Better to kill a video in planning than to spend 8 hours producing something that won't perform.

Caleb Ralston recommends using ChatGPT as a "ruthless skeptic" during this phase. Tell it to rip your outline apart, section by section. Try to disprove your own claims. If you can't defend the video in the planning phase, you won't be able to make it work in post.

Why MrBeast Spends 95% on Ideas

The most successful content creator on the platform has said publicly that 95% of what determines a video's success happens before filming begins. The idea, the title, the thumbnail, the structure. The execution matters, but execution can't save a weak concept.

This is counterintuitive for most creators, especially agency teams producing client content. The billable work feels like production: cameras, editing, graphics. But the highest-leverage work is the thinking that happens before any of that starts.

Consider the math from a different angle. A weak concept with excellent production might get 10,000 views. A strong concept with good-enough production might get 1,000,000 views. The 100x difference doesn't come from color grading or b-roll; it comes from choosing to make a video that people actually want to watch.

This doesn't mean production quality doesn't matter. It means production quality is downstream of concept quality. Get the concept right first, then make it look good.

A Framework for Busy Operators

If you're running a content operation, whether for your own brand or for clients, here's how to shift the ratio without adding total hours:

Batch your pre-production. Don't plan one video at a time. Set aside dedicated planning sessions where you develop 4-8 concepts to the point where they're ready to film. This creates a production queue that keeps filming efficient.

Create template structures. A "Mad Lib-style" approach to video planning reduces cognitive load. Fill in the blanks rather than starting from scratch each time. The template isn't the creative work; figuring out what goes in the blanks is.

Separate the planning role from the production role. The person who's good at ideation and scripting isn't always the person who's good at filming and editing. Let specialists specialize.

Make pre-production a checkpoint, not a suggestion. Before anything goes to production, it passes through a planning review. Title confirmed, thumbnail concept clear, hook written, structure locked. No exceptions.

The shift feels uncomfortable at first because it front-loads the hard work. But that's exactly the point. Do the hard work early, when it's cheap to iterate and easy to change direction. By the time you're filming, the decisions are made and you're just executing a plan that's already been stress-tested.

The Sustainability Factor

There's a meta-benefit to pre-production that doesn't show up in view counts: it makes content sustainable.

Content burnout usually happens because creators are constantly in reaction mode. They have to come up with an idea, film it, edit it, and publish it all in the same cycle. Every video is a fresh problem to solve under time pressure.

Heavy pre-production changes this dynamic. When you've already planned the next 8 videos, each filming day is execution, not creation. The cognitive load drops significantly. You show up knowing exactly what you're making, which lets you focus on making it well.

Caleb's advice to Taki: "I will only continue doing this if the content I put out for the first year I'm very, very proud of." That pride comes from preparation. When you've done the thinking beforehand, the final product reflects that investment.