Founder's Story - Mark Manson: The Subtle Art of Building a 20 Million Copy Empire | Ep. 337

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

Daniel and Mark Manson go behind the scenes of modern internet fame, content creation, and the psychological cost of being online. Mark shares how he went from blogging in the early backlink era to viral Facebook articles, to traditional media deals, and then back to building a full scale media company. Along the way, they talk about why social platforms can be both magical and toxic, how to stop feeding the algorithm what upsets you, and why your purpose is really about choosing what to ignore. Key Discussion Points Mark explains why emotional reactivity online is often an algorithm problem, and why you have to take responsibility for what you train your feed to show you. He breaks down his three career phases, from early blogging and viral growth to traditional media disappointment, then building a modern creator led media company. They talk about the two kinds of authority online: credential authority and “learn with me” authority, and why both are colliding in today’s creator economy. Mark shares his purpose: helping people clarify and prioritize their values, and cut out the noise to “give better fcks.” They debate AI companions and AI psychosis, and why Mark thinks the scary edge cases are real but statistically rare compared to other modern risks. Mark talks about why software is so brutally slow and expensive compared to media, and why creator owned products and equity partnerships are the next big wave. Takeaways If content makes you angry, debating it can train the algorithm to feed you more of it, so the fastest win is ruthless feed curation and non engagement. Online hate scales with impact, so the skill is scar tissue: stop reading, stop arguing, and treat a small percent of negativity as inevitable “defect rate.” The defining challenge of this era is not finding opportunities, it is pruning distractions and choosing what to stop caring about. Creators are becoming mini media companies, and the real leverage comes from building a team that repurposes one “seed” idea into many formats daily. Traditional media can be slow and misaligned, while owning a product or equity aligned partnership can turn content into long term compounding value. Closing Thoughts Mark Manson’s message is simple but brutal: your life gets better when you get ruthless about what you let in. In a world of endless noise, the new superpower is values based focus and deliberate subtraction. If you want peace, it starts with choosing better fcks and deleting the rest. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Happy birthday. Thank you. By the way. Thank you. Also, 84, right? Yeah. Me too. Oh, no kidding.

So we were talking earlier about how when we were kids or maybe depending on the age, right? Because 90s is all the rage right now. Dial up internet. Yes. I mean, that noise, the sound, the inability to really even have speed when you search. What do you think about? When you go nostalgia about the 90s, what comes to mind? nostalgic about the 90s I think about like actually those old computer games like quake and

Starcraft Warcraft like actually having to used to have to manually type in the IP of the server to like join a game and so there were these websites that had server lists and there were just lists of IPs and how many people were playing at a certain moment and it's yeah it was very old school it's very like nuts and bolts things fell apart didn't work half the time. And of course, the internet connection was awful. So you would drop in half the games. But yeah, great memories.

You know what? We might have played each other. Yeah. Because I was a big nerd. Yeah. In those games. And the same thing. I was always causing chaos in the chats.

Like I would pretend to be somebody else in the chats. Of course. Little did we know. Yeah. But when I read your book 10 years ago, which I think is the 10 year anniversary. It's coming up in about six months. Yeah.

Incredible. I mean, how does that feel? Like, thinking of 10 years. It makes me feel old, almost as old as the birthday. Actually, what's gotten weird is I've started getting, you know, I get stopped by fans occasionally. And what is, what has gotten weird is that people, people will stop me. And they're like, oh, I read your book when I was a freshman in high school. And I'm like, this is like a grown fucking man in front of me with like a kid. And I'm like, oh, my God, I'm getting old. So it's, yeah. And also people in my YouTube comments have started calling me Unk. So I think that's how you know. I mean, I've got some gray hair. My beard's getting a little white. But like when the YouTube comments start calling you Unk, that's how you know.

I know. I thought I had blonde hair in my beard. My wife's the other day. It's like, it's not blonde. This is white. That's gray. Yeah. I'm like, what?

There's gray. I can't see it. It's on the side. Like, how am I supposed to? Yeah. We're getting unk. We're getting old. Oh, yeah, we are.

I don't know if I want to be sad. So 10 years ago, your book stood out for me, the subtle art, because I have a lot of challenges with control and also caring. I don't necessarily care what people think. But online when people write something, for some reason, I really cared. It bothers me. So for many years, I stayed away from even doing anything online. Right. How do you deal with that?

Are you talking about people, like, haters in the comments? Or are you just talking about, like, idiots online posting? Both. Okay. And all of it to me makes me anxious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the haters problem, I think a certain percentage of it is just desensitization. Like, it's that hate that you get online is very much proportional to your impact and your reach.

So I just kind of the same way in like, I don't know, you know, there's like a fail rate in manufacturing, like you just always know that 1% of your product's going to come out wrong. Like, I think online, it's just understanding that 1% of the comments is always going to hate you. And that's just a fact. That's just, that just comes with the territory. So I think understanding that, internalizing it, and then and then just developing kind of the scar tissue to like not engage and not try to argue and to stop reading them. The harder thing, I think, is when you see a bunch of like idiots or misinformation or people starting up drama or whatever on social media that that like I I'm I personally

subscribe to the idea and I and I prescribe the idea of like viciously curating your own feeds like taking responsibility for your own feeds and understanding that like if somebody is posting something on X or TikTok or whatever and it's pissing you off or or making you feel really bad don't engage with it don't because if you comment, if you try to start an argument, if you send it to a friend, you're like, can you believe how stupid this person is? What you're doing is you're signaling to the algorithm. A lot of people look good on paper, but when you're hiring, you want more than a polished resume. You want someone who actually wants the role, someone who's excited about work,

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try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash audio that's ziprecruiter.com slash audio meet your match on zip recruiter that you're that that's what gets you to engage and stay on the platform and so it's going to keep serving you that stuff that makes you upset so like I try to be hyper aware of like okay how is how is this content making me feel is it adding something to my life and if it's not then I'm very aggressive about either like blocking the person, muting the piece of content, or most platforms these days, they have an option. You can, like, if you click on the three dots, you can select, like, not interested in this. Yep. I'm starting to wonder if social media was the greatest thing for humanity or the worst thing for humanity. It's probably neither.

As with most things, it's probably neither. I mean, I talk about being old, right? Like, I think one one of the benefits of being our age being our generation is you remember what was great about social media like I remember the first time I got on Facebook I was on it to like four in the morning I could not pull myself away from it it was so absolutely incredible mind blowing I was looking up like all the people I went to high school with it was incredible I so I think like just the the connectivity we take it for granted today. Like we take it for granted the fact that like you can you could get on right now and look up a guy you went to high school with and haven't talked to in 15 years and reach out to him. Right? Like that used to be impossible. Completely impossible back back in our day, right? So there is there is something incredible about that. And there is something incredible about like finding like minded individuals and reconnecting with people and keeping tabs on people like knowing when they got married or they've had a kid or whatever.

There is a lot of value in that that gets missed. But there's, yeah, there's just, there's a lot of garbage out there. I remember when I had MySpace, don't stop believing was the last song that I had on MySpace. I think he used to have the five, like the five people or ten people. And if you switch somebody out, they're like so angry at you. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was a whole thing. Like Team Mobile used to have the five faves.

Yes. They're like, I'm not a fave. Yeah. obviously you've been able to leverage social media yes massively yeah like hugely how was the transition from i know you had subtle art you also had a book before that and a blog right subtle art 2000 was at 2016 16 yeah so 2016 social media is you know coming up you know things were coming up how did you transition that into the social media empire and the content creation empire you have. Oh man it's you know there's there's kind of phases to that question so let me

let me let me kind of take it one by one I would actually divide my career up in online content to kind of three three phases so I started blogging like 2008 2009 my first business I tried to start a number I read Tim Ferriss's book four hour work week in 2008 started creating websites online businesses, a bunch of different things, tried to do affiliate marketing, e-commerce, like all sorts of stuff. And the one that kind of hit and stuck was dating advice, dating relationship advice. And initially it was affiliate promotions, but then eventually once I've, you know, the blog started to catch on, I started to sell my own info products. And I did that for a number of years. And I was doing coaching and it was just like very hard to scale and grow and build audience. Like back

then you literally had to reach out to other bloggers and convince them to link to you. I remember the back linking. Yeah, it would be like back. Link for link. Exactly. It'd be like, hey, man, I'll write a post about you. If you write a post about me or like, I'll put you in my sidebar if you put me in your, you know. And it was very arduous and like slow and a lot of it involved like networking.

And then Facebook released the news feed. I want to say 2011. And I think like if my first big break in my career was recognizing, I think earlier than most, what Facebook was trying to do, which is that it was trying to compete with like Google or the New York Times to like become everybody's homepage on the internet. And they were doing that by like really pushing publication, like published articles and different publications, very agree. aggressively on the people's news feeds. And so I looked at it and I was like, you know, if I kind of wrote a really good title with like some good copywriting and had like a interesting image, I bet I could get shared a bunch. I bet like Facebook will kind of push me to a lot of people.

And so sure enough, I had from like 2012 to 2015, I had probably 10 or 15 articles go super viral, like millions and millions of shares. And one of those, the biggest one, the one that went most spiral was an article called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. And it had a picture of a kitten with an explosion behind it. And the kittens like calmly walking away from the explosion. Cat things go crazy. Dude, it was it was it was a magic formula. And it, I think it did something like, I think it did six million page views and

like the first day or something like that. Just like absurd numbers. It kept crashing my website. It was a whole thing. And so then that, is what opened up the opportunity for the book deal. And I got an agent, I went and got a publishing deal, and then that's how the book happened.

Now, what's interesting is that back in those days, the roadmap or the playbook was like, you get big on the internet so you can go get a deal in conventional media, right? So there were like YouTubers who were using YouTube to get on the TV shows. And there were, musicians that were, you know, posting on band camp to get record deals.

And I think my generation of blogger, like you can look at people like me and James Clear and Ryan Holiday, like what we were doing is we built these massive blog audiences and then that got us book deals. And so the idea was that like once you get your foot in the door and you're like, okay, now I'm a published author, now I'm a bestseller. Like now you're just an author. Like, you don't have to do that stupid internet stuff anymore. And that was kind of my attitude for the next few years. I did a bunch of book deals. I did a movie deal. Did a couple TV deals that never got made. But in my head, I'm like, okay, I'm like, I'm an author, screenwriter, whatever, producer now. Don't have to do this internet stuff. When those

projects ran out, then the pandemic happens. And everybody goes online and online, just like goes there's a bonanza of online content and it was around that time I looked around and I was like you know what I actually a I actually miss the content game and then B I actually think this is where more more of the opportunity is because I just spent five years with traditional media companies publishers movie studios Hollywood production companies and they're all so fucking slut and incompetent. And like, I remember getting on a marketing call for, so we did a low budget documentary film

called The Settler and not giving a fuck with Universal Studios. And I remember getting on the marketing call with the Universal Studios marketing team. And they couldn't tell me when it was coming out because it was different in every country. They couldn't tell me what platform it was going to be on because it was going to be different in every country.

They couldn't tell me. me like they had their marketing campaign was basically just incomprehensible like essentially what it boiled down to an hour long call with like nine people what it boiled down to was mark can you post about this on instagram like that was essentially what everything kept coming back to is like well if you posted it on instagram we'll figure it out and i was like damn like it feels like they're just paying for my instagram account like that's kind of all they're interested in and so it got me thinking And it got me like looking back at the kind of the online content ecosystem. And I realized that like I missed it.

Like that's actually, that's my roots. I miss being entrepreneurial. I missed having my own team. I missed like making my own content, like not having a gatekeeper, like controlling my own fate. So in 2022, I kind of came back to this world, launched a YouTube channel, a podcast, started scaling content on every platform. and that's that's what I'm doing today it's incredible now we can control that yeah used to be like you're saying if you want to be a musician you got to get a deal one point zero zero one percent get a deal or even a book deal right a movie like these things were only for the very few people

now you post something online overnight like your blog you might become something the thing that you wanted to become when did you realize that this this is a a business in itself. I think I realized that when Mr. B started to like really take off. I remember I discovered him, I think, I want to say like, 2018, 2019. And I just remember being like, wow, this kid's brilliant. This is so cool.

But I think it was like 2021 or something. He went from, I think like maybe 20 million subscribers, like 100 million in a year. And he was just doing stupid amounts of money and like getting 100, hundreds of millions of views on his videos. And I remember, and it was right after I had just done a bunch of the movie and TV stuff and was pretty dissatisfied with it. And I remember sitting there and like sitting down and doing the math of like, okay, how many views is this guy getting?

What's his reach? How many views does like a typical TV show get sitcom or whatever? And then kind of doing back, like working backwards, doing some research into just where is everybody's eyeballs going? And sure enough, if you do the research, it's like TV is dying. Most streaming platforms are losing money. Hollywood is just hemorrhaging money all over the place. People don't go to the movies anymore.

They don't want to spend money on movies. People are spending all their time online. And then you see it, you look on the flip side online, and it's like YouTube is now the biggest media company in the world. Podcasts are growing at like just absurd rates. And people are spending more and more time on social platforms. So I just kind of like read the tea leaves and I was like, okay, if I'm going to be creating content for the next 20 years, like, which door am I going to pick? Right? And because now I have the resume and the experience to like do either, but like where am I going to place my chips and put in the bet?

So it is funny. It's a total reversal to like back when I, I remember when I did my publishing deal, it was really unconvinistic. for a blogger to get a big book deal. Like it was it was kind of like a little bit of a salacious headline within the publishing industry. Now it's the reverse. Now it's like now I meet all these like professors and PhDs and TV personalities who are like trying to get a book deal, but like they can't get a book contract because they don't have a social following. It's kind of crazy. I know I have a lot of friends who are like, but I'm the world leading expert in XYZ. and I can't get a book deal because they were asking me about,

we just launched with Penguin our book a couple months ago. And I'm like, look, unfortunately, this is how it is. Fortunately, it also kind of democratizes the ability for more voices to get out there. But that also leads to more competition, you going up against more people.

I think there's a really interesting change that I'm seeing around the expertise, like we're saying, where it used to be, if you're a content creator, you talk about something. You may not have really like a lot of expertise in it, but you're just talking about it.

And you might be the only one. I feel like there's a new push towards people like yourself who have extensive experience in it. Right. Where people are like, okay, I like this person who doesn't really have experience, but they have a following. But then I see this other person who has PhD,

who's, you know, like you're saying, established in it for 10, 12, 15 years. And wow, you know what? I think I want to listen to them. Yeah. It's interesting. I think in the content world, there's kind of two types of authority. One is kind of the classic credentialed authority. Like, okay, you're a Harvard professor and you are the world's leading expert

on studying motivation or whatever, right? So it's like, okay, I'm going to listen to you. And that's been around forever. But there's, the internet has kind of created this new form of authority, which I would kind of say is epitomized by like a Joe Rogan or something, which is, which is the, I'm going to learn with you, right? Like, I'm, I'm not an expert. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, but I'm really curious and I'm going to put a lot of time into this and I'm going to document it as I go. So let me talk to the experts. Let me dig into the research and try to figure something out. Let me go read 10 books and come back and tell you what I learned about it or like what are the five things that you need to know. And so you see a lot of really big social media figures or podcasters or YouTubers who are like, it's the learn with me crowd.

And I think I think wires get crossed sometimes like you'll see somebody like Rogan get criticized all the time in traditional media because they're like it's just he's an idiot comedian. He doesn't know what he's talking. Well it's like yeah, that's the appeal. That's the appeal because it's like his listeners get to be curious along with him. And they get to like he's going to ask the exact same questions that a completely uninformed person is going to ask. So like that is why people listen. And it's it is. It's interesting though because I think if you are that credentialed expert, it can it can feel incredibly frustrating. It's like, okay, this guy who knows nothing has ten times the audience. I do. I'll never forget. Do you remember Clubhouse? Yes. So one day I was on Clubhouse and I was listening to this room about this topic and it was kind of idiotic. And there was a lot of thousands of people were listening. Then I went to this room. It was like 20 Harvard professors. And there was like 20 people listening to these 20 people. And at that moment, I realized this is like 2021. I'm like, this is fascinating to me.

Like I can't believe the how far, it doesn't even make any sense sometimes. I'm like, but I think there is a, I think there's a recent transition though. At least I feel like. Yeah, I'd say the last five years. Professors are like rock stars now, I like to say. Well, the funny thing is, is like, so this is the interesting thing, that I would say in the last few years, the professors, the CEOs, you know, the former politicians, like they're figuring out the game, right? It's, it, Gavin Newsom just launched a podcast. Like,

it's, it's, they're figuring this out. And I'm seeing it all the time. Like, I was, I was, I was actually on YouTube the other day, and there was this guy, um, it was like an MIT professor. And he was like a private equity billionaire. And he started a YouTube channel. And he was, and he had like really well done thumbnails and it was like really well edited. I mean, it was clearly, clearly he was spending a lot of money on it. But I remember just like watching it and being like, why does this guy give a shit about YouTube? Like if he's so weird, we retire or so. Yeah.

Yeah. It is interesting who, who's who like you're saying, who's looking for attention. Yes. Who's seeking online attention. Same like you. I imagine. People reach out and sometimes I'm like, why are they reaching out to me? Yes.

Like, I don't know what I'm doing. What value can I add to them? So it sounds like, like you've created the business now. Yeah. I see the transitions. What does it take, though? You know, let's go behind the scenes. What is a day like for you, your team, everything you're doing to be able to push out the content that you do?

Yeah. I'm glad you're asking this because I think people don't realize how much work goes. into it. They just, they see a couple Instagram reels or a TikTok or something and, you know, join your newsletter and they're like, oh, that's cool. And I actually get people in my daily life who come up to me and they're like, wow, you must spend a lot of time filming. I'm like, you know, I have people who do that for me. But so our team currently, we had two new, two new people start today. So I believe we're 22 people, 22 or 23 people. We have five or six editors. I mean, basically, we're pushing content out. I think we post around 10 to 15 pieces of

content per day across all platforms. We have weekly podcast episodes, weekly YouTube episodes, two newsletters a week, and then literally hundreds of pieces of social media content each month. So obviously I'm not doing all of that. And usually the way it works is it kind of starts, Like, I create the seed of something, which is usually a YouTube script or a newsletter. I write kind of the initial content, and then the team is trained to repurpose that across tons and tons of different formats. So it's you take a newsletter, you pull an Instagram real script from it, you pull a couple tweets from it, you pull a Facebook post from it, and then that all gets scheduled to go out

to its, like, appropriate places. So it takes it is it's like a mini media company essentially like you have pre-production people You have production people we're sitting here in my studio right now like and then you have post-production people and it's you go through very similar processes that people You know do for making commercials or music videos or or TV shows Well thank you for having me here by the way yeah like you said we're in your studio yeah I appreciate it. It's incredible you're It's sad that we don't have the footage of your studio. Maybe we can add some footage here because you have the best props. It's a goofy place.

I could spend, I don't know if it's because I have like an ADD brain of like, I could have fun in there. There's so many different things to play with. You have costumes? Why are we not wearing a costume? We could like do a snap edit here to like you and a hot dog suit and me in an eggplant suit. I mean that I would do that. That's legit.

My wife and I one time, I think we were like ketchup and mayonnaise for me. I think I was a hot dog at some point. I like that idea. I want to go back to purpose. So thinking back, you mentioned 2020. That was an odd year for me, like most people in the world. Right. All of my businesses, everything basically at that moment came to a zero.

Yeah. And I'm like, I don't know what the heck I'm going to do with my life. And I created a personal mission because I noticed for me before everything I had was like a business mission. to make money. And the moment that I like realized that I have no money, like I don't know if I'll ever be able to make money what I've been building, right, at that, when everything shut down,

I said, I'm going to impact 100 million people in my life and I want to fit everything I do around that personal mission. Yeah. So if my business collapse, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Purpose is obviously very important to you. Not only it's your new app, which I use daily, but what is your purpose?

My purpose is to help people clarify and prioritize their values, which is essentially help people give better fox. But I personally think that the psychological problem of our age is we are exposed to too much, too much information, too many opportunities, too many people, too many perspectives. and the challenge that all of us face that no previous generation has ever faced is knowing what to cut out, knowing what to get rid of. What do I stop focusing on? What do I stop reading?

What opportunities do I stop pursuing? And in many ways, that's like so much harder than finding something to pursue, right? Or to pay attention to. But it's when we're so inundated with all this stuff and all this noise all the time, It's that constant pruning that needs to be like practiced and focused on.

And so all of my work, whether it's, you know, the social media content or a newsletter or a book or the app, it's all geared around the same thing. It's like helping people narrow their focus and like really just let go of the stuff that doesn't matter. I like that because I got, you know, I've struggled. So when I was 12, I was sadly diagnosed with obsessive completely. impulsive disorder. And I took many years and someone telling me like, hey, you don't need a title. Like, you can get over something. And that's when I realized, like, I need to stop giving a fuck. But, but the way my brain had, like, become wired was, like, control was a big problem. Right. Like, if I couldn't control other things, it really, like, create a lot of anxiety for me.

Yeah. So I like the purpose. I like everything. The app you have, I like your mission. It's amazing. Being a tech founder, though, it's not easy. It's not easy. We've had some amazing tech founders on the show. Making an app, I tried. I've done like 10 businesses that failed, maybe 15 at this way. And one of them was an app, by the way.

And I realized like, oh, wait, I have to build an app and I have to get users and I have to like make money. I mean, there's like a lot of, it's like chicken and egg. You got to do a lot of things. So hard. It's really hard. Yeah. How has the experience been? It's hard.

It's like many businesses, right? like where if you knew how hard it was going to be beforehand, you probably wouldn't have done it. You're too deep, man. Yeah, but it's like now you're in and you know, you've gotten this far, so you have to keep going. Software's tough. And I would say the hardest thing for me personally was coming from media where it's like if something isn't good, like you want to change your website or there's a paragraph that needs to be cut. Like it's it literally takes 10 seconds, right?

You just go in there, you know, you're watching a cut of this, this interview, right? It's like, oh, I didn't like what I said there. It's like cut, you know, it takes 10 seconds. So easy, done, you move on. Software, it takes forever. And as soon as you cut that one little thing, it breaks like four other things that need to be go be fixed. And so then you have to go fix those things.

But then fixing those things causes this bug and this completely other screen that you hadn't even considered before. and then you have to fix those bugs and then you have to like submit the build to the app store and then apple doesn't like something that you did and so it's just like you don't have control over everything no you have little control it's crazy man like even something as simple as like removing a button from a screen like it can be two weeks before it shows up in the app and then you're like oh that hurt our engagement we need to put that button back and then it's like another two weeks to bring it back and so it's just the i would say the feedback loop um both the

the speed and the friction of the feedback loop in software is extremely difficult and agonizing in a lot of ways. And it's expensive too, right? So you have you have a run rate and you and like, you're burning through cash and you've got to go hire more developers. So I've been very fortunate. I found an amazing co-founder who's been building software his whole life. And he's CEO. So like, so I don't have to like. You are the face of the ads though. Your ad follows me everywhere, by the way. So that's a good thing. Good. Good. I'm glad to hear that. It means it's so I see you made us like four or five times doing this job. Yeah. I see you a lot. I'm like, oh wait, there's Mark. He's telling me about purpose. I need to go to the app. Yes. It reminds me.

Good. So I love that. It's you build an audience and the good thing is you're using what you have for that audience. Because I think a lot of people like I build an audience. Hopefully I go get like a deal from some brand, but not realizing it's also a big opportunity for you to build something on your own. Right. And this is this is the thing that's it that is new and I think very exciting. And I think we're going to start seeing a lot more of this. Like there are some creators that are experimenting with this, but this is from what I from what I can tell, it's like relatively new and new territory. You know, so as a creator, right? Like most of your revenue is either coming from brand deals and sponsorships. Right. So Hawking, whatever, element or AG1, you know, whatever the hell.

Or you are selling some sort of back-in course, consulting, a workshop, whatever. And you've got some sort of product funnel that you're pushing people into. And, you know, that's all fine and great. If you do the brand deals and the sponsorships, that's a bit of a treadmill, right? Like you've got to close new brand deals like every quarter and, you know, convince the old brand. Make sure you're converting for them. Make sure they keep renewing and coming back. year after year. And then on the product side, it's in my experience, you know, I've sold back in

courses and products for 15 years now. You can make good money, but there's kind of, you, they kind of run their course, you know, so it's like after three, four years, you kind of squeeze all the juice that can come out of that certain product funnel and then you've got to start over and build another one. And that, so that also feels like kind of a treadmill. And I like the idea of like finding it, whether it's co-founding a company, which is what I did, or simply partnering and taking equity in a company and kind of having them as a mainstay sponsor of like, okay, you know, I own a piece of this business. It aligns super well with my creator brand.

And so I'm just going to promote it forever. And incentives are aligned. you're not like renegotiating i.o invoices like every quarter you're not getting angry emails that your last YouTube video didn't convert for them and like they want to make good and all this stuff like it's just like I own a piece of the business we're aligned philosophically I'm just going to like promote the crap out of it I've been doing that lately more yeah like I want to just a piece like bring our expertise in the ability to do what we can do versus like you paying me for the service.

Yeah. I feel like there's something to be said because failure rate is quite high, as we know of many things, tech things. So it's almost like the, you know, if you could invest across 100 and you maybe 10 hit or five hit or one is a massive hit. AI is fascinating right now. Yeah. There's something I'm very scared about.

And I wanted to hear your thoughts. Okay. I heard you talk a little bit on this. AI companions. So there's a lot, I was just watching this show yesterday, and it's almost as if it's not real, but it was real. Yeah. And it's a media outlet. They did a documentary for the last year.

They followed a person around with his AI companion. And the finale is him telling his mom that he is in love with this AI companion. Yeah. And it almost seems like it's a joke because I was laughing about watching it. Then I realized like, this is real. and we're seeing a lot of this. I don't know if anyone in the future will even have kids. Like humanity, I don't know what to think, what's going to happen to humanity now that people are like falling in love with AI.

They're taking AI's advice, AI guru. Right. Like they're listening only to AI as if it knows everything as if it's a human. What do you think about that? I think, okay. I think I'm less worried about this than most people, simply because I think when you look at any technology, there's always edge cases of people who are, for whatever reason,

psychologically susceptible to being diluted by that technological innovation. And there's going to be problems. And those problems, because it's a new technology, those problems are going to be completely novel and scary and like, oh, my God, we've never seen this. before. So I mean, it's, you know, when cars were invented, you started getting car accidents. And when television was invented, you started getting couch potatoes. And, you know, when the internet was invented, you started getting like child predators in chat rooms. And remember those meals?

What is like TV meals, TV dinners? Yeah, yeah. TV dinners, man. Hell yeah. The, so in social media, obviously, like, you get these, this social media addiction and anxiety and depression and all this stuff. So I think in many ways this is just AI's version of that. And I think if you look at the statistics, it's a relatively small sliver of the population that is really developing unhealthy, I guess I'd call it use cases or behavioral patterns with AIs.

Maybe it just meets the news. Maybe I see it more because it's- Absolutely does. The news is promoting it as if it's everyone almost. And as a founder of an AI product, Like, I did do research in the AI psychosis to see how prevalent it is. And it is, I mean, yes, there are some very scary cases of it. But if you look at it statistically in terms of, like, how many people per 100,000 users are actually like...

Marrying their AI. It's small. It's, it is, let's just put it this way. You're more likely to develop psychosis from smoking weed or taking psychedelics than talking to an AI. So statistically speaking, it is safer than the drug. you did last weekend. And so I for now. Yeah, for now. I'm interested when it goes into robots.

Yes. Like when you have AI and robots and they're walking. I just had this woman on. She lived with a robot for the last year because she does, she does research for EU. Yeah. About how it is to live with a robot. Okay. She was telling me like she has to take the robot with her on the train.

She has to take the robot. She has to do everything that you would do with the robot to, to, to, they're documenting it and finding out, like she had to call an insurance company. and add her robot on because what if the robot slaps somebody that's what she was saying wow who's that fault yeah like I'm I'm like what never thought about what this world that we are entering it seems very rapidly that we are going in there which I mean that's amazing but when you think back like you sold over 20 million books right like I said I'm a new author I think I've sold like a thousand books at this point 20 million seems incredible what what feelings go through your

When you hear, you've sold 20 million books. And by the way, 10 years, it seems maybe 10 years is long, but it's not that long of a time to sell 20 million books. Yeah. It just kind of becomes like this big abstract number at a certain point. In terms of like what it feels like, you know, when you hit a million, it's a huge milestone. So like that's obviously, I would say selling a million copies is kind of,

it's like the next level of being a New York Times bestseller, right? It's the sort of thing that you can slap behind your name for the rest of your life, for the rest of your career, and it's always going to be there. Once you get past that, it just kind of becomes gratuitous. Like, it's just, and it was the same thing with like, I guess, my lived experience of it. You know, like that first takeoff when the book blew up was really incredible and disorienting and exciting and scary and surreal and all of the different feelings mixed together.

I would say everything passed that first year or two was just like a number that came in the mail or showed up in my bank account. And it was like, oh. So 18 was the same as 19, the same as 20. Honestly, like you stopped carrying or tracking at a certain point, you know. Do you drop, do you stop at bookstores? because I do that now, but do you stop at bookstores? Or that's kind of like...

Occasionally. I mean, I stop at bookstores just because I love books. But I also stop at bookstore. So here's actually why I stop at bookstores. So yes, early on, it was always to see if my book was there. And if so, which books were there? Now it's more just like curiosity about the market. Like I'm always, like, I was just, I just flew back from Austin a couple days ago.

And I stopped in the bookstore in both the Austin Airport and the L.A. airport, mostly just to see who's hot right now, what's kind of like who's getting shelf space, what's taking off. And the other fascinating thing about bookstores, especially in airports, is it's very different from city to city. So it actually is kind of a reflection of that city's culture.

And so you'll see books that are like super hot on the East Coast or West Coast, but then you fly to Texas or you fly to the middle of the country and like you won't see them anywhere. I spend a lot of time in the Philippines. Oh, yeah? In Southeast Asia. Okay.

You're huge there. Yeah. Because I told the comedian that that we're going to be talking today yeah they went bananas i see your book everywhere though yeah philippines is a big market it's amazing you and james clear yep it's wild every bookstore i go to because i want to see my book too yeah it's always you and james clear yeah always at the top i'm fast i'm like that's amazing like it's it's wild to think like how you resonate with a certain group of people it yeah honestly i i haven't talked to james in a couple

years so james and i are like we're old friends you call him jim Jim. Just laughing, thinking about calling him, Jim. I should do that next time I see him. Tell him, I said it. What's up, Jim? No, James and I are like, we go way back. He started blogging like a year or two after I did.

And I remember discovering him, I want to say like 2012 or so. And I remember being like, oh, wow, this guy's really good. Like he's doing some really cool stuff. And then I think he and I started corresponding around 2013. And then he and I actually joined a mastermind together when I was writing subtle art and he was writing atomic habits. So we were actually part, we were like accountability buddies during that period. And it's just so weird because back then we were both these like blogger internet guys that nobody in publishing really seem to take seriously. And we had both just gotten these like really nice book deals.

And we were super insecure and nervous about like, is this even? going to work. What are we doing? Is anybody going to read this thing? Um, and it is, it's pretty crazy, actually, like the stain power of both books. Um, isn't it why they think like you're just a blogger? Like you, like Mr. Beast, he's just a YouTuber. Right. It's funny how we, we bucket people like just a YouTuber. Like, he's like, he's worth like $5 billion. Arguably the most famous person in the world. Exactly. You're just a blogger. Yeah. Like people can say that. Yeah. I don't know why. they put us in buckets.

It's, there's almost this weird, like, parallel universe right now where it kind of comes back to that, the two types of authority I was talking about earlier. Like, there's, there's, like, credibility. You know, there's like the classic credibility markers, so credentials and, you know, being a movie star or getting some sort of like conventional award or whatever. And then there's just being internet famous. There's like proof of the market, you know? So it's like, and it's, I've always felt that it's kind of awkward as like an internet guy who's like, basically my credibility is just like tens of millions of people listen to what I say. But I don't have, I don't have, I'm not like, I don't have a psychology degree. I didn't go to business school. I like, you know, I didn't go to Ivy League.

I've never been on a board of anything. Like it, it just feels awkward. And then you get some guy who does have all those credit, like conventional credential markers and like no audience. And in many cases, it's like, it's... Maybe they want to be a YouTuber and they'll never, like, maybe they want to be titled a YouTuber. Yeah. Because that's better now. And they will never be, they're like, they're just an educator.

It's becoming more lucrative. I'll just put it that way. It's becoming way more lucrative than being, my dad was a teacher. He retired. I think, I always told him you should go on YouTube, but he never, he never listened to me. Final two questions. Okay. Fame.

How has fame changed your mindset? Or has fame not changed you at all? I don't think it's changed me much. First of all, I'm not that famous. I like the joke that I'm like the perfect level of famous. I'm famous enough that I will get stopped and recognized a few times a week. And it's always a fan. And they're always like, love your shit, dude.

Oh, so cool. Can I get a selfie? You know, it's like they're very respectful. They don't, they're not creepy. They don't do weird stuff. So it's honestly like my relationship with fame is, is I just get this ego boost every few days. No stalkers. Yeah.

Well, not recently. But like, but like, it's just, it's like a periodic ego boost. Now that's a, okay. Sorry, continue. I don't know if that was a joke or not, but that's, okay. Another podcast. Okay. There's a whole episode.

Did you ever go up to someone when they're, have you ever had someone reading your book? you saw and you just walk up next to him and just stand there for a couple of seconds. Like, hey, I like that book or what do you think about that? What do you ever do anything like that? I've never done that. There was one time I was on a plane and the guy across the aisle from me was reading my book. And I actually got so nervous. I felt like a schoolboy watching a girl he had a crush.

I was like, how many pages is he going to read? Is he what face is he making? Did he just laugh? I think he laughed. You know, like I was so insecure. watching him read my book and then I was like I need to just like turn the other way and pretend this isn't happening over here okay well one day I want to videotape you watching somebody watching someone like going up to someone just stand there for it be subtle yeah the subtle art of standing next to

somebody okay okay maybe that's the next book title yeah yeah and you just say something like hey what do you think about that book yeah you know um so I wrote the book unlimited possibilities and it was all about breaking through barriers that I didn't think was possible. My wife and I wrote it together. Cool. I want to know what is your unlimited possibility. So it's that moment that maybe you broke through something that you never thought was possible. Unlimited possibilities. I mean, the funny thing is, is I never intended to be a writer. I never thought I was going to be I didn't even think I was good at writing until I started writing online. I had been blogging semi-professionally for three years before it finally occurred to me of like,

I could do this for a living. Like I actually might be good enough at this to make a living doing it. So that's the first thing that comes to mind for me. It's just like, as somebody who never made good grades in English class, never wrote good papers in school, never aspired to be an author. the fact that like you can just get online and start sharing things that you care deeply about and ideas that are really important to you and have thousands, millions of people respond to it and then turn that into an entire career as an author. It's it's still mind-blowing. That's your moment. If universal basic income comes in because AI is taken over everything, I want to be a DJ.

and I want to make funny skit videos. Nice. So I'm hoping, I really, the DJ thing, I think would be pretty amazing. Yeah. So if you ever DJ anywhere, can you invite me? Yeah, sure. Because I'll stand next to you because I want to live vicariously through a DJ. The subtle art of standing next to somebody.

Oh, there's something here. That's going to be the show. You just stand next to people. That's, I think we come up with something. A million dollar idea. There we go. There it is. Mark, this has been great.

I mean, amazing. I love the studio, the opportunity to, come out here and do this in your in your home court your place is amazing and really you've you've changed my life 10 years and I know you hear this all the time but I just want to say I super appreciate all the energy and effort that you do because I know it's a lot from the writing to the content to everything that you do and I just want to say thank you awesome thank you I appreciate that