My First Million - Mark Manson: Money, Dating, & The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck

Starting point is 00:00:00 Andrew Tate is what men with no self-esteem think high self-esteem looks like. Unpacked that a little bit. So it's funny like watching the rise of Tate because he's like a copy and paste of 20 million plus copies sold. The champion, the no fucks champion. Official title, I think. Mark Manson, welcome. Thanks, man. When subtle art came out and it blew up and it was like at the top of all the bestseller list and stuff, like everybody in the publishing industry were like, oh, you're like the new phenom debuted author.

Starting point is 00:00:27 Overnight Success. I'm like, overnight success. I've been grinding on a blog for 10 years. Like, what do you mean overnight success? Were you good at the beginning or did you suck? No, dude, I was a fucking disaster. I was a total disaster. You obviously became a great writer, but I want to talk about what you're doing now,

Starting point is 00:00:46 which is the YouTube video or the YouTube channel. And it's not like the main thing. When I saw Mr. Beast, a light bulb went off. I was like, I love Mr. Beast. And like, I've been watching his shit for a long time. But one of my frustrations with him is that it's all, very, I feel like I can rule the world.

Starting point is 00:01:05 I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. Intro to the camera here. We got three-time New York Times bestseller, I believe. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:01:19 We have 20 million plus copies sold. The champion, the no fucks champion. Official title, I think. Mark Manson, welcome. Thanks, man. It's good to be here. Been a fan for a while.

Starting point is 00:01:35 Although I got to admit, I read like a ton of your blogs and I didn't read the book until, like, and I saw I've actually finished the book, but until we booked this interview, I was like, I should probably go ahead, read the actual book that he's most famous for. Yeah, yeah. But there's something to like the fun of like, oh, I liked his old shit, you know, like the cool band thing. I was a fan before he was cool. Yeah, that whole thing, yeah.

Starting point is 00:01:56 I actually was going to ask, so when I was writing that intro, I was like, this is pretty great, pretty impressive. Yeah. But I always wonder this. Like when you were younger, like let's say a researcher was watching you when you were like, I don't know, between the ages of 10 and 20. Would it have been noticeable that you approached things a little different even when you were younger? I was definitely different when I was young, for sure. I don't think it would have been obvious that I was going to end up an author or in the personal development industry or whatever.

Starting point is 00:02:27 But, you know, my whole life, my teachers were like. Mark's different. He's special. We wish he would do his homework. We wish he would stay awake in class. But he could do great things one day. That was kind of the constant refrain throughout my childhood. Because you just weren't interested in school or what was the situation? Yeah, I was bored and I would just, whatever I was into, that's just kind of what I, like, I used to bring poker books to class and read them in the middle of physics class and my teachers would get mad at me. And I'm like, well, I'm just like studying poker. Were you big into like during like the Chris Moneymaker phase basically? Oh yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Did you ever like go all in on it?

Starting point is 00:03:12 I tried. So it's funny. Early on in college, I decided to sit down and take it really seriously. I made a few thousand bucks, which when you're like 19 or 20, it's massive, right? I'm like, oh my God, I can pay rent all summer off my poker winnings. And then I hit my... You were in college? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:03:29 So you're paying like, you know, 20 grand for school, but it's massive. ignoring school to make $300 in a sit-and-go? Exactly. Like, I'm staying up to 5 a.m. Like, I made $200 last night. Right. And then I hit my first big down swing and lost, like, half my bank roll in, like, maybe three days, four days.

Starting point is 00:03:45 Right. And I was like, oh, shit, I don't think I can pay rent this month. You know, I'm like, this kind of sucks, actually. Yeah. It's like a very, very unhealthy, unhealthy life. I love the game, but the lifestyle that it requires, like, the grinding, the, the, the, patience, like the emotional fortitude to, like, handle the ups and downs. It's, yeah, after about six months, I was like, I don't think I'm built for this. Right. And you, there's a lot of, like,

Starting point is 00:04:12 degenerates you end up paying around, like, doing it. So you kind of look around, you're like, this isn't healthy. It's like, yeah, yeah. It's like, they're not smoking, but there's like a secondhand smoke of their, like, life. That's like, I don't want to be inhaling right now. For sure, for sure. So I think we had kind of a similar set of interest. Maybe it's, like, very common for, I don't guys that are going through some rites of passage. It's like, yeah, you think you can play poker or like count cards in blackjack. And then you sort of move on to like the next phase. Yeah, exactly.

Starting point is 00:04:42 Where, you know, there's a, I think, 2005, a book comes out that I know influenced you. It influenced me. Yep. Do you know what I'm talking about? Of course, the game. The game. Neil Strauss. Ironically, my girlfriend at my girlfriend in high school before I went to college, we were

Starting point is 00:04:57 like, yeah, let's break up. We're going to college in two different places. We were pretty mature about it. But she was like, here's a book. And I was like, that's the best backhanded compliment gift I've ever received. It's like your girlfriend giving you a book called The Game and it's like, you need this for college. Yeah, yeah. Describe, how did you find it and what was like the next 24 hours after you started reading it?

Starting point is 00:05:18 You know, it's funny. It hit me at, depending on your perspective, the exact best or worst moment possible. So my first girlfriend in high school had just, cheated on me and left me for another dude. And I was completely heartbroken, just gutted, you know, weepy, whiny. And sucks even more in high school because, like, leaving you is like, she's still there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're still in the hallway. Yeah. Well, I would, by this time I was in college, but like, we'd gotten together in high school. Anyway, it was, we didn't, we didn't, you made the right move. So we didn't split up. We were,

Starting point is 00:05:54 we were like, oh, we're in love. We're going to make it work. I'm going to drive back every other week and all this shit. And it's like, no, that's a horrible idea. And so, of course, she found another guy. You should actually look in the camera, be like, to the person who's 18 right now, don't do that. It's not going to work. The long-distance girlfriend, when you both go to college? Dude, just don't do it. And so anyway, I was absolutely heartbroken and distraught and just, like, very angry and confused. And I remember being in a bookstore and seeing, seeing that book, like, on the table. And I remember my first reaction was disgust. I was like, it's like, what is? What is? this? Like, who would read this, right? And then I'm like,

Starting point is 00:06:30 yeah, maybe I'll read a few pages. And, and I mean, Neil's such a good writer. Like, talk about somebody who knows how to, like, hook your attention and kind of suck you into a world. Yeah, I just, I think I sat down and read probably the first 50, 100 pages there in the bookstore. And then I think I read the entire thing in just a couple of days. And that was pretty much it. Like, I was like, all right, like, you know, the one girl who ever liked me,

Starting point is 00:06:57 completely fucked me over, broke my heart, and every other girl I've ever met seems to have no interest. So clearly I'm not doing something right. You know, like I'm willing to give anything a go at this point. And so yeah,

Starting point is 00:07:10 I kind of got sucked into that world for, well, I guess four years, five years. And then it eventually kind of stumbled into my first business was in that world as well. Yeah. And I want to talk about that

Starting point is 00:07:23 because I think it's, again, like it was like a formative phase of my life too. And so today, I think a bunch of people, rightfully so, you know, like, like you admire you, follow you and you like add a lot of value to people's lives, right? Like even though self-help kind of like sometimes gets a bad rap, like you're almost by definition helping people with themselves, right? The most important thing. But I would say like it's probably a rabbit hole you went down now and content you create now. But that previous rabbit hole you went down and content you created was around.

Starting point is 00:07:55 Oh, there it is. Oh, yeah. This is your first book, right? Yep. Models attract women through honesty. Yep. At least that subtitle is like, you know. Well, we can get to this in a second.

Starting point is 00:08:07 But before that, that was a very, very intentional. Yeah, that's jumping ahead a couple of years. But yeah, keep going. So let's start with, okay, so you read the game. You get, you know, kind of like, I always say this about Tim Ferriss's book, The Four Hour Work Week, is like after you read that book, you have the four-hour fever. Yep. It's like for the next four hours, you reconsider your entire.

Starting point is 00:08:25 life in like a fever dream. And I just tell people that when I give them the book, I'm like, you're going to have, let's schedule some time. You're going to need this weekend to have the four hour fever. Same kind of thing happens with the game and you become, you start, I guess you describe it. You start practicing it. So let's start with like you start actually practicing it for people who haven't read the game and don't know the core principles of it.

Starting point is 00:08:47 Like what stood out to you at that time of like, oh, I used to do things this way. But this is like this kind of thing I'm learning. this new skill I'm learning. So there's a funny thing about the game, which is, and it's funny too, because I would put the four-hour work week in this category as well, and that those are, if I was to make a list of like the five most impactful books that I've ever read in my life, those two would be on the list for sure. Right.

Starting point is 00:09:11 That said, I don't actually, like, the majority of advice in both of those books, I don't think actually was applicable to me or actually worked for me. Right. It was more just showing what was possible, right? So, and definitely more so in the game's case than four, you know, four hour work week, it's primarily principles and mindsets. You know, my issue with the four hour work week was that it just made it sound way easier than it was. It's, you know, the real four hour work week is, you know, work 16 hours a day so you can make money while you sleep. But with the game, I think the really powerful concept that was very life.

Starting point is 00:09:54 was that social skills and dating are skills that you can practice and get better at. Like that never occurred to me. It just occurred. Like up to that point in my life, like most young people, I just kind of assumed like, well, either girls are into you or they're not. And if they're not, you're kind of fucked, right? Or not fucked in that case. But like, it, so reading that book and being like, oh, you can actually go out and practice

Starting point is 00:10:23 and get better social skills and get better at being sexual and flirting and connecting with women and doing all these things like that. Those are all skills that you can practice. Like that was very revelatory for me. That said, when I actually went out and tried to do the stuff in the game,

Starting point is 00:10:38 which was a bunch of cheesy pickup lines and they called them routines. Like stories, magic routines. Stories you would memorize and all this stuff. It was a fucking disaster. Like it was just, it was completely corny. And I felt very,

Starting point is 00:10:53 inauthentic and out of place. But like, what was impactful is that it got me out of the house and, like, talking to women on a regular basis. And I realized, like, hey, if I actually just get myself in front of a bunch of cute girls, I'm actually, I'm not that bad. Like, I can talk. I can make a joke.

Starting point is 00:11:13 Like, I can use my own personality as a starting point and just build from there, right? And so that's kind of what I started doing throughout college. And by the end of college, I kind of had developed the reputation. is the big party guy, the player, you know, the guy who had four different girlfriends or whatever. For me, I had the same experience you had except for the lamest moment, the rock bottom moment, is when you hear another guy saying the same thing because he read the same book and you're like, oh shit, there's like

Starting point is 00:11:41 a hundred of us running around. Yeah. It's like, this thing I was going to say by itself was actually a little bit cringe. Yeah. Maximally cringe if she heard this from another guy. And I was like, oh, I can't just like, at. There's no memorizing your way to success here. But the principles I thought were good and you're right, the forcing function of like getting you to like kind of believe, self-confidence to believe that this might actually work, that you can actually approach somebody and have a good conversation and that that could lead to something. Yeah. It was pretty powerful. I even do this with podcast. Like I have like a note of like, what's the first thing I'm going to talk about with you? Like I kind of know that the next 90 minutes will be great either way. Sure. But that first minute is like the social anxiety piece, which is. like the same thing with with these pickup artists which was like most people just aren't even approaching anyone yeah with anything that's an interest that might lead to a conversation um so for me that was like the bigger thing do you uh still have that kind of like do you just think about that

Starting point is 00:12:37 moment of social anxiety that first um that first moment and like was the game helpful in like getting those reps for sure i mean i i i had a lot of social anxiety when i was young and and it's funny because it took me a long time to appreciate that, that, you know, because when you're kind of naive and a newbie, you look at all the pickup lines and you think it's the pickup line that's working. Right. And it's like, no, it's actually, the pickup line is just the excuse to kind of get you through your anxiety, to give you the courage to actually go say something. It doesn't really matter what you're saying.

Starting point is 00:13:09 Right. And I actually had a very, you know, kind of like you hearing, overhearing another guy say a word, I actually got very lucky early on because I was trying to use some of the stuff I read in the game. I tried to do some fucking coin magic tricks and stuff. Like just total disaster. And I remember I was having no luck whatsoever. And

Starting point is 00:13:29 I actually got very fortunate in that I was in a bar or something and I was talking to these three girls and I was like trying to do a magic trick and they were like really into it and really excited. And I kept fucking it up. And then like it kind of got awkward and at a certain point they realized they're like, wait,

Starting point is 00:13:45 like you're just doing a thing like kind of hit on us. and I tried to make a joke and it was super lame or something and they kind of rolled their eyes and they started to walk away and I was like, wait, I have another magic trick. And I remember one of the girls turned around and she looked at me and she was like,

Starting point is 00:14:01 you know, you were kind of cute. Like, you should just be yourself. I was like, you know, like head explode. And that was kind of one of those first moments where I'm like, you know what? Like, why don't I just start, like use my personality as the baseline

Starting point is 00:14:17 and then iterate on stuff that already feels natural. Instead of trying to be like some fucking weird dude in a book, you know, that I can't believe I spent $10,000 in two years of my life studying all this shit. I could have just like walked up and then like, hi, where are you from? And it would have gotten me the exact same results. There's a book that's like a food diet book.

Starting point is 00:14:40 I haven't even read the book, but the last page of the book is like a summary. You might know the book because you're an author. It's like, here's the, like, after all the studies and all the diets, because, like, you know, there's like a trillion diets out there. And, like, they're like somewhere super complicated. You're, like, you know, peeing on a strip to see if you're, like, in ketosis or not. Yeah, you can do, you can take it to the nth degree. And it was like, yeah, so it seems like the rules are, you know, eat real food, like, not like packaged processed food. Like, eat real food, not too much.

Starting point is 00:15:09 Yeah. And it was like, that was like basically the core of the advice. Yeah. And it's like, oh. Yeah. And like, but if you actually intensely followed that, you would get all the results you want. But like, there's this thing where we sort of search for this like other answer, the secret answer. Yes.

Starting point is 00:15:25 It can't possibly be just that. There's a weird thing that happens at a lot of these industries, which is the concepts and frameworks that sell well are often counterproductive. Right. And you see this in diet and nutrition. You see this in exercise for sure. You see this in social skills, personal development, self-help. You see it in the pickup world. Like, it's really.

Starting point is 00:15:46 really sexy. Like when a guy stands up and he says, I have a three-step model that works every time and you're going to get laid like tile and you're going to lose 100 pounds. And, you know, it's really sexy and you really want to buy it and you like want to believe it. And it works and it makes people millions of dollars. But then it doesn't actually, it's not actually good advice. Right. Whereas the good advice, like, this is the other hard thing about these industries is that the good advice is boring. And so and the things that work, and again, this is true in personal development, it's true with social skills, true with diet, nutrition, everything. The stuff that works is boring. It's not the information that's hard. It's simply doing it. It's implementing consistently over a long period of time. That's

Starting point is 00:16:31 the hard part. And there's no easy way to sell a solution to that. So the easy thing to sell a solution for is, you know, my three steps at work every time. I see this everywhere, like, because I'm mostly in the kind of startup business world and like, you know, Warren Buffett, they're like, you know, Warren, you're pretty open about your strategies. Yeah. And they're not like that complicated. Why do you think that more people don't do this? And it was either him or Charlie Munger that were like, because nobody wants to get rich slow.

Starting point is 00:17:00 Yeah. It's like, yeah, we just did this in the public. And he's like, you know, I made most of my wealth like from the ages of 70 to 90. And like, you know, nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear that guy who's not done this. Yeah. Tell them that they can do X, Y, Z faster or in a different way.

Starting point is 00:17:16 in a complicated way that you know, you just didn't have the info. Now that you got the info, now it's all going to work. Yeah, right. Same thing like, you know, Y Combinator, which is the most successful, like, you know, startup investor and accelerator, their number one advice is just make something people want. And they're like, what's the great stratus? Startup advice. Like, well, but then the way it helps is like, if you just tell someone that, they don't know

Starting point is 00:17:42 how to use it. Yeah. But the question, like the audit when you're like, so, do. Do you think that people want this? They're like, of course. I was like, cool. So what tells you that, what evidence is showing you that people want this? And they're like, well, we don't have any.

Starting point is 00:17:54 Dude, it's like that bell curve meme or it's like, you know. The genius and the, yeah, the idiot's like, just make something people want. And then in the middle of the bell curve, it's like, well, you've got to have these 12 steps and figure out these strategy. You know, and then the Jedi is like, just make something people want. I love that thing. That's, I told that. It's like, that's the meme of the year. It's so true across so many domains.

Starting point is 00:18:14 It's amazing. Yeah. And I catch myself. all the time and I'm like, I need, what would the Jedi? Oh, the Jedi would just say, like, do it because it's fun. Instead of like, yeah, you know, all these other things. When you look back, because Ben's been flashing a bunch of your like, I know it's been Ben, he flashes a bunch of your things that are like, this is the cringe section of

Starting point is 00:18:34 that. Don't worry, it gets better. The end of the beginning will get better, but this is the cringe section. But you have like a bunch of these things that I'm like, they're like just amazing headlines. We're going to talk titles later because you're like a title master. Sure. but when you look back do you how what's the meaning you put

Starting point is 00:18:49 or like what's the label you put on these things I think we're both of the mindset that like life is not really about what happens it's kind of like what you what you make of it and also what you tell yourself the story you tell yourself about what happened yeah so like when you look back on that phase is it just like

Starting point is 00:19:03 cringe and I don't want to ever think about like I hope my I forget about that is it like no that was actually really useful for me in these ways is it just funny now like what's your reaction now It's a really good question. I would say it's probably like one-third cringe. One-third, I think it was actually really important and informative in a lot of ways.

Starting point is 00:19:24 And then one-third just kind of funny and just like, can you believe that happened? Actually, when I moved out here to L.A., I met up with Neil for the first time and we spent a day together. And we spent like half the day just kind of being like, can you believe that happened? Right, can you believe we actually did that? I look back though, especially now that a little bit more time has gone by, I really do think there was kind of an underrated factor. And I think this is very relevant because this is starting to happen again with Gen Z with, I think the pickup artist industry is underrated as a cultural or social phenomenon, particularly

Starting point is 00:20:03 for young men trying to find identity or find themselves in like a very confusing world with a lot of information. Because it's, when I look back at that time, like, yeah, like, we, in the industry, the coaches, we used to joke with each other. It was like, yeah, we all came for the women, but we stayed for the other dudes. Yeah, exactly. It's most of the guys who really got into that, it wasn't about the girls. It was they needed to feel accepted and validated by other men and, and, and, and, and,

Starting point is 00:20:39 just, I guess, I don't know, their masculinity, right? There was like a very, there was like this yearning for like a masculine role model. And I always found that, I was very aware of that at the time, but I didn't really know what to make of it. But as the years have gone on, I look back and I think like, I think it blew up to the extent it did because of that. I don't think it was really about the dating or the girls. I think it was just, it was a generation of kind of post-feminism, a generation of like men who had fewer. father figures, fewer role models, a lot more confusion about who they're supposed to be in the world. And I think that cycle is coming back today. And you're seeing a lot of that happen again

Starting point is 00:21:20 with a different set of role models and a different industry. Well, let's talk about one of them. So I think Andrew Tate is like the, for sure, you know, poster boy right now that, Benke, you pull up that tweet he has. You have a great tweet about energy. I want to ask you. Yeah, yeah. Andrew Tate is what men with no self-esteem things. think high self-esteem looks like. As a rule, narcissism is always mistaken for confidence by those who have no confidence.

Starting point is 00:21:47 From there, it doesn't take much for the dynamic to turn abusive slash exploitive. Yeah, so it's funny watching The Rise of Tate because he just he's like a copy and paste of half the guys that were in that industry. Right. You know, it's like all the shit

Starting point is 00:22:03 he says. I'm like, oh yeah, I remember you know, this guy used to say that. Oh, yeah, that guy used to say that too. yeah, that guy made a lot of money saying that. You know, like, it's all the same shit just recycled in a new package. I do think Tate is uniquely charismatic, and I think he is an interesting backstory that a lot of got young men respect. Right. And so that is-

Starting point is 00:22:24 Adds to the- It's given him a lot more amplification. It's also just a different era with social media and everything. But- And he, like, layered on an MLM. Yeah, so he just combined like three of the most powerful forces in the world. Yeah, seriously. Pretty insane charisma with this like cocktail of like words that cast a spell on young men.

Starting point is 00:22:45 Yeah. And then an MLM distribution model where he's like, look, cut up clips of me and post them everywhere. And like that's how you rise in the ranks. And you get like, you're going to make money by promoting me. It's, which is insane. It's honestly somebody really needs to do. I mean, we probably need some time. But like 10 years from now, I want to see somebody do like a really good book about him.

Starting point is 00:23:05 Right. And like a fair book, not like trying to smear. take an honest look of like who was this guy why did he blow up why did this work right like because it's i think it's easy obviously you can take the worst things that he said it's no secret some of the bad things he said and you can just hammer on those all day but like i think that's way less interesting than just trying to understand like why is there such a demand for this guy again right like i thought we kind of got over this and this kind of ties back into my first book model so like the pickup industry by like 2009, 2010, I had really, really become burnt out on just the toxicity of it.

Starting point is 00:23:48 I really felt that there were kind of two strains of dating relationship advice for men. One was basically promoting narcissism, selfishness, power dynamics. And sure, that stuff can get you laid a lot, but it's at the expense of preventing any sort of, happy or joyous long-term relationship or intimacy with any female ever, right? So you're like giving up that potential to just like put notches on your bedpost and brag to your buddies. And that is a very bad trade-off. Like if you look at just in the terms of a man's overall lifespan, that's a very bad trade-off. And so I was I was kind of like, okay, how do we like detoxify this advice? What does that look like? How do we, and it's not just about treating women with respect, but it's treating yourself with

Starting point is 00:24:43 respect, too, because like what a lot of guys don't realize is that, yeah, obviously, if you objectify women, it's bad for the women, but it's bad for you too, because you're objectifying yourself. You're basically just measuring yourself by how wet your dick gets. And like, that's a very demeaning way to view yourself and view your own self-esteem. And so I was kind of fed up with the whole thing. I knew I wanted to get out. I wanted to pivot out of the industry. And I was like, well, if I'm getting out of the industry,

Starting point is 00:25:13 I might as well just write the book that everybody needs to hear and nobody wants to hear, which is that this is all toxic and fucked up and stop doing it. Were you good at the beginning or did you suck? No, dude, I was a fucking disaster. I was a total disaster. Do you want me to talk about the content side or the marketing side?

Starting point is 00:25:33 Whatever's more interesting? You tell me. Well, I'll start with the content. content side, it's less interesting, but I'll start with it because it's quicker, which is just like, most of my content was bad at first. And I think that's true of anybody and you just get those reps in. You know, I, back in the day, back when blogs were still a thing, I used to get asked all the time, like, how do I start a blog? How do I grow a blog? Make a living as a blogger. My answer was always the same, which is like, write 100 blog posts, come ask me again. Right. And, uh, have you seen,

Starting point is 00:26:03 by the way, Mr. Beasts has like almost the exact verbatim answer. Yes. And I love it. It's the exact same thing I used to tell people. And it's a combination of like, it's actually the right advice because you need a bunch of reps and you need to suck for a little bit and get better, just try to make each of the next video better. And nobody does it. Also, it's a filter. It's like, are you serious or are you not serious?

Starting point is 00:26:21 I will help you if you're serious. Yes. But 99% of you're not serious. This is the easy test. Exactly. Exactly. And the funny thing is too is that it's like most people, if they go write 100 blog posts and try to make each one better, by the 100th one, they don't need the advice anymore.

Starting point is 00:26:36 They know what they're doing wrong. I know what they need to get better at. So was there anything that got you better? Did you read something or follow some or, you know, model your stuff after someone? Like, do you remember how you got good at terms of writing and content? My two big inspiration, I was a huge Bill Simmons fan back in the day. Wow. We were like very, very aligned.

Starting point is 00:26:54 Like, I know, back in the day, page, you know, page two. Yeah. And it's, I remember reading his column each week was like an event in my life. It was like, I was so. excited to go read it. And I remember thinking I was like, I want my art. Because back then, the meta in, this is pre-news feed, pre-social media, everything. So like in the blogosphere, the idea, everything, all traffic was either SEO or, um, the blog role type thing. Yeah, like link farming. Like, you know, you would like write something spicy so that a bunch of other bloggers would want

Starting point is 00:27:30 comment on it. So they'd link to you and like all this stuff. And it be, it was very much a volume game. So like the standard advice was always, you know, don't write one big blog post a day, write 20 single paragraphs and post those as individual blog posts each day. It just, that's what's going to make you grow. And I always hated that. That always felt very shitty and uninspiring. And so, and I loved Bill Simmons. And I was like, man, I want to be the Bill Simmons of my industry, right? Right.

Starting point is 00:27:59 Like, I want to have these like epic 10-page posts that guys just get lost in. And, like, you know, they like schedule their week around. Right. And you end up feeling like a friend. It's like, it's a hang. Yeah. And I think it, that probably hurt me in the short run and it helped me in the long run. I tried to meet up with him when, so we came out here.

Starting point is 00:28:18 I was like, I want to schedule. And I was like, who's my dream guest? I was like, I would love to have Bill Simmons on this because I don't, he doesn't do a lot of like where he's the guest. I don't, I've never really seen any, to be honest. Yeah. He's like, he's a big deal at Spotify now. So he's, you know, he's. Yeah, that's fine.

Starting point is 00:28:32 But like, whatever. Who cares? But he's written some. If people haven't read this, go read, I think it's called The Consequences of Caring. Unbelievable post. So good. Anyway, sorry, continue. So Bill Simmons inspired you to be like, I don't need to like sell out to the algorithm of that time, the meta of that time.

Starting point is 00:28:52 Yeah. And I also think it helped that I was in a pretty niche and insulated industry. Like everybody kind of knew each other and everybody talked about each other and everything. So it actually, I think it helped me get my name out even more because I was, I did have a knack for writing, it seemed. And I did eventually start posting some pretty good stuff. And so that kind of got talked about and shared. Do you remember what was like kind of your first thing that broke out? I really, in that era, I really don't.

Starting point is 00:29:24 I really don't. It was so gradual, man. Like my, it's funny because, you know, subtle art is so. massive. Like, it was funny, this is jumping ahead a little bit, but like when subtle art came out and it blew up and it was like at the top of all the bestseller list and stuff, like, everybody in the publishing industry were like, oh, you're like the new phenom debuted author, overnight success.

Starting point is 00:29:48 I'm like, overnight success. I've been fucking grinding on a blog for 10 years. Like, what do you mean overnight success? Right. Yeah, I was doing like, you know, that's like the low status thing in society. He's like, I'm a blogger. Yes, exactly. So you're unemployed?

Starting point is 00:30:04 Like, what is that? You know? Especially back then. I got stories. I got stories. I remember like 2013, 2014. And by this time, like, my audience was pretty big. Like, I had a few hundred thousand readers.

Starting point is 00:30:17 And I remember going home for Christmas one year and kind of gotten an argument with my parents. And my stepmom was just like, when are you going to get a real job? And, and she was like, you know, I know such and such. Like, they're hiring like a web designer. you could go do that. And I was like, that'd be a waste of my time. And she's like, oh, you could probably make a hundred thousand a year. I was like, I already make a hundred thousand a year.

Starting point is 00:30:40 And she just looked at me and she goes, no, you don't. It's like, what the fuck? Don't lie. I was like, do you want tax returns? Like, Jesus Christ, what do I have to do to get you people to believe in me? But anyway, we're jumping around now. You know, the content side, I don't know. I just, I had this weird confidence of like,

Starting point is 00:31:02 I saw that Bill Simmons trajectory over the page two days, and he did it differently and everybody else. And I was like, why can't I do that, right? And I'm not going to post 20 times a day. I'm just going to do like one epic article that everybody gets excited about. And that was kind of my MO. And it's funny because that eventually became the meta, kind of in the more Facebook era in the early 2010s.

Starting point is 00:31:26 So I was like ahead of the curve, I guess. On the marketing side, I was trash. I was just like selling does not come natural to me at all. It was very much something that I had to consciously train myself, practice. I took a bunch of copywriting courses. I like went to marketing seminars, pirated marketing seminars. Like that was always the, it's funny because it's like the psychology side, the personal development side of everything, the social dynamics, the relationship advice,

Starting point is 00:32:01 like that all came very easily and naturally to me. And it was just, it was fun. It was like kind of a hobby. So it was like, I never really had to like work hard to kind of figure that out. Like anything I was working on getting better at in my business, it was always the sales and marketing stuff. Right. Like figuring that shit out.

Starting point is 00:32:20 So you've done, so those content reps got in. You obviously became a great writer. And we'll talk about the book in a second. But I want to talk about what you're doing now, which is the YouTube video. Sure. Or the YouTube channel. And it seems like that's. I don't know. Is that your like, is that like the main thing?

Starting point is 00:32:33 Is that like this is my new baby? Right now that's the new main thing. Yeah. And so I think you dropped the first, first like video maybe a couple days ago. Yeah. And doing Super Bowl, can you pull it up? I want to actually do a little. So one of my favorite little content things is this thing that happens in sports and football.

Starting point is 00:32:51 They like take quarterbacks that are about to be drafted. And I don't have you ever seen this. They sit down. They like look at game film with them just to see kind of how they think. Sure. And it's my favorite thing in any podcast is like when you can really like not like talking the abstract

Starting point is 00:33:06 but talking to the specific like like why did you do this? Yeah, how did you think about this? Yeah. And we hung out with Mr. Beast and when we did that with some of his videos and the way he thinks you're like,

Starting point is 00:33:16 oh, okay, I get it. I get like I learned something tactical but also just I get you more. Yeah. Versus when you ask some general questions. And so I kind of want to play this game. I don't know how it's work, but we'll try it.

Starting point is 00:33:25 I want to know the thought that went into this. Let's watch the first 10 seconds. I want to hear you talk about it. Okay. What would you do if someone offered you $10,000 to do whatever it takes to overcome your social anxiety? Could you do it? Would you even know where to start? I decided to find out.

Starting point is 00:33:41 All right, let's pause right there. Yeah, yeah. All right, walk me through that. A lot was happening there. How are you think about this? Obviously, some Mr. Beast's inspiration here. He was very inspirational. So let me zoom out for a second more broadly.

Starting point is 00:33:54 And then I can kind of come back to this video specifically. So early in my career, I did a lot of coaching. First with the pickup stuff and then just kind of like life advice in general. I stopped coaching for a lot of reasons. But one of them is I was consistent. I was very frustrated by it, which was that I feel like the incentive, like the way the incentives are structured within coaching industries in the personal development world are counterproductive, right?

Starting point is 00:34:21 So it's like if you're paying me a bunch, like let's say, I don't know, you have like self-esteem issues and you're paying me a bunch of money to like help you out. It's first of all, my incentive isn't. to fix yourself esteem issues. Like my, my incentive is to make it feel like I'm fixing yourself esteem issues,

Starting point is 00:34:35 even though they're still there. You're like a pharmaceutical company. Yeah, exactly. I don't assure you. Exactly. And then on your side of the equation, it's what often happens in practice, like on the customer side,

Starting point is 00:34:49 is what often happens in practice is people kind of show up, they pay you, say, $1,000, and they're like, well, I just paid you $1,000, so you deal with it, right? But like, I've been dealing with this my whole life. I just paid you a bunch of money. You deal with it now, right?

Starting point is 00:35:04 Like, that's actually what they're looking for. And so I hated that dynamic. It felt very... I mean, it works some of the time, but in a lot of cases, it felt very icky, and I kind of found myself in, like, awkward situations with clients and stuff. So I just got away from it entirely

Starting point is 00:35:21 and just kind of stuck the books and courses and everything. When I saw Mr. Beast, a light bulb went off. I was like, because I love Mr. Beast. And like I've been watching his shit for a long time. But one of my frustrations with him is that it's all very surface level. Like I'll watch a Mr. Beast video and I'll get to the end. And I'm like, I want to know about the guy who won. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:43 I'm like, tell me about the guy who want. Or tell me like you're down the four people. Tell me about their lives. Like bring their families in. Like I want to see. Let's get some juicy drama going. I talked to him about this. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:35:53 And I was like, because I was like, he was talking about like a Netflix or like TV shows. And it was like, oh, like, what can you learn about TV? What do you learn from like TV shows that have been running for a long time, do really well? And he says that he's like, also, I think they can learn a lot from us. And he's like, yeah, he's like, I'd love to see their retention curve. Right. They just don't know where people are dropping off. He's like, what we found was like, if you hit them, hit them, hit them with like the more of like the action and the stakes and then the quest and like the curiosity.

Starting point is 00:36:22 You open the loop. And like, that's going to keep people. He's like, but I do think the one thing. thing TV does well as character. He's like, we don't do any narrative or character. And I got to figure out how I'm going to do that. But he's like, I don't know how to do that yet. But like, we should probably learn that.

Starting point is 00:36:35 Yeah. So this is, this is kind of another side statement. And this gets more into like my personal strategy or like opportunities I see in the future. But like, it's the current media environment. I think traditional media, they've always had the luxury of having that lock in of like you're in a theater.

Starting point is 00:36:54 And it's more, it's like once you're in a theater, it's more difficult to leave than to sit through a bad movie. So everybody just sits through a bad movie. You know, and it's in the previous era of television, it's, you know, you don't want to sit there and like flip around for 10 minutes looking for something else. So you sit there and just kind of watch a mediocre show. So it's like traditional media is coming from 100 years of a luxury

Starting point is 00:37:15 of just having that buy-in and having you like locked in. And so they can take the time it requires to build character, build narrative, build drama, right? And create those very emotional. moments that we've all had with our favorite movies and TV shows. YouTube is kind of the other way around. Like, there's always shit fighting for your attention and trying to get you to click off. And so YouTube is just retention, retention, retention, retention. Like, it's merciless and absolutely brutal. And so I think we're in an interesting media environment where YouTubers have become

Starting point is 00:37:47 masters of retention. And the content on YouTube is super hooky. And click the right, right? Yeah. Those two variables. Yes. And super hooky, very clickbaity, like, addictive, but also kind of empty calories. Like, you can just blow through like six videos and just be like, wait, I don't remember a single thing I just watched. And that's kind of unsatisfying. Traditional media is, like, caught

Starting point is 00:38:08 in the other side of things of like, wait, shit. Like, people are watching our shows now with, like, their phones in front of them. And they're like, they've now got five different streaming services they can pick from. And they can switch, easily switch to another movie, like mid-movie, right? And so they're trying to catch up

Starting point is 00:38:24 on the retention side of things. And I think YouTube is trying to catch up on the character development and drama side of things. And I think whoever figures it out first is gonna win really big. But anyway, back to the Mr. Beast thing and the coaching thing. So I was watching Mr. Beast videos for a couple years.

Starting point is 00:38:40 And then like last year, I was kind of taking this break and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next in my own career. And I had felt this about his videos for a long time. And I started thinking, I'm like, man, like, what if you built the challenges in a way that like,

Starting point is 00:38:56 forced character development. Like, what if the challenges weren't built around, like, you know, stand in a circle or, you know, keep your hand on a car. Like, what if it was built around on this Lamborghini?

Starting point is 00:39:05 Like, what if it was built around like a real personal issue that, like, you have to investigate to, like, try to understand? Right. And that's when the light bulb went off because I'm like, not only does that potentially create like very amazing transformative YouTube content,

Starting point is 00:39:21 but it solves that coaching issue as well. Because when you take somebody who's struggled their entire, life with, say, anxiety or an issue, the problem is never that this comes back to the information thing. The problem is never, I don't have the information to fix my problem. The problem is they're just not doing it. Right. Like, they're not fucking going out and doing it. And so, and they could pay a coach a thousand bucks. And the coach can say, okay, well, you paid me a thousand bucks, now go do it. And sometimes that works, but not always. Or you could say, I'll give you a thousand bucks if you

Starting point is 00:39:52 go to it and fix your own shit. Right. Like, what does that look like? Right? Like what is like the most effective lever for behavior change is financial incentive. And so what if you actually create financial incentive for people actually go deal with their shit and like do the things that they've always known that they need to do and they've just never had the guts to do it? And so that's when I was like, holy. That's kind of genius. I was like, fuck, I need to make this. So this is our first attempt at it. And it's funny because this was shot end of April, early May. This is we're recording this end of July. there are all like I'm already aware of like 15 things that are wrong with this video and like they're like it's it's actually underperforming our expectations and like there's so many things that we need to fix but it's the first rep yeah it's the first rep it's like the first it's like the beta test but super super excited about the format that makes a ton of sense and also like even just mechanically like the things you just said so if you know coaching is getting somebody to like transform the way the Transformers not information is doing it. Yeah. Best way to get somebody to do it is maybe a financial incentive or even like the fact that they agree to be in the content. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:04 There's a contract there to like do the thing. But you also, how can you offer $10,000 to, why could you pay your coat? That's not a sustainable business, but it is if it's YouTube content. Exactly. You have like almost the full loop to be able to make something. It creates a very beautiful flywheel of you're helping that individual. So in this video, it's a woman named Melinda.

Starting point is 00:41:27 So I'm helping Melinda. And she did get amazing results. You know, she's finally doing the things that she's always known that she should do or has always wanted to do. You get to all the people watching, because I could easily make a video of me sitting at a desk talking about social anxiety for 15 minutes. Everybody's heard the same shit. They've all like, everybody knows what I'm going to say. Now millions of people get to actually watch somebody overcome their character overcome. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:41:51 It's like, oh, that's what it looks like. Oh, that's what how people. respond in that situation. It's the difference between watching Rocky and then or somebody sitting at a chair and saying, you should kind of work really hard. Yeah, yeah. It's a different emotional register.

Starting point is 00:42:04 Totally. And one you remember 20 years later and still think about when you work out. And the other one, you don't. Totally. So it's the qualitative feedback on this. It's been, honestly, it's been some of the best of my entire, like if you look through the comments

Starting point is 00:42:19 of this video, there's tons of comments of people saying, I cried, right? This was me. oh my God, like I was not expecting this. This is so powerful. You know, it's pretty incredible. And so how did you think about those first 10, 15 seconds? I don't know how long we went, but like, what are you trying to achieve in those first 15 seconds of this video?

Starting point is 00:42:40 So with YouTube content, there's always this question of like, what's the hook? Like, what's going to get people to buy in? What's going to get people stick around? And one of the challenges that we face with this format is that all of the, all the stuff that we're having people do, it's, it's super abstract. Like social,

Starting point is 00:42:58 social anxiety is super abstract. Like, how do you show social anxiety? It's, like, not very obvious how you show that visually. Or, like, low self-esteem. How do you show that visually? So, we were thinking about, like,

Starting point is 00:43:10 okay, what are, like, kind of, like, hooks or gimmicks that we can, like, implement into the format that can get people bought in, right? And the first and most obvious in this, in the current Mr. Beast meta

Starting point is 00:43:21 is fucking money, right? It's like everybody on YouTube's doing it. It seems to be working for a lot of people. So kind of the obvious starting point is like, okay, well, what are we? It's the Jedi, right? Jedi in the numbschool. Yes.

Starting point is 00:43:32 What if he gave him $10,000? It's like, what if he gave him $10,000? But the funny thing is, is that it actually, this intro did not perform very well. And so what is that, what tells you that? Like, you're looking at the curve. You're like, oh, the retention chart. What should it have been?

Starting point is 00:43:46 Yes. What do you think it should have been to be, like, good? Well, I think the issue with this is that even though it's money, it's still not visual enough. It's still too abstract. And so I think what we've learned from this one is that the new approach needs to be, we just need to start like mid-challant.

Starting point is 00:44:04 So like the first challenge in this video is just approach. Yeah, we take her into a mall and we tell her she has to find somebody from Canada. And like she runs. By the way, it's so funny because she, it's so like relatable, which is why I think you should have started with this. I was actually going to suggest this.

Starting point is 00:44:18 Yeah. It's so related because you tell her like, someone in this mall is, from Canada, you need to go approach them and ask them and find them. And she's like, nervous laugh. And then she starts like faking being on a phone call, like, which is everybody's done it. Like, and she's like, it's like, are you faking a phone? It's like, yeah, I am.

Starting point is 00:44:36 I just, I don't know, it makes me feel more comfortable. Dude, she was so relatable. Such a spaz. Right. Such a spas. It was really fun. And, and yeah, in hindsight, it's like, we should have just opened up with that and then explain the format later.

Starting point is 00:44:47 Yeah. But like, yeah, I mean, we're new. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, the road as we drive down it. You also have to like cast. Yes. Which is hard. And you don't know what's going to happen.

Starting point is 00:44:57 And like this is kind of reality TV. For sure. And there's also like how this I would say this is a common theme from the pickup to subtle art to now this, which is how do you avoid selling out? So like yeah, when you've been in the the industry, you kind of know, okay, if I pull this lever, I'm going to get more juice. Yeah. Like maybe maybe this, let's just pretend.

Starting point is 00:45:17 If this woman's transformation was not that that crazy, but like in the edit, you could kind of like, oh for sure. Make this video better. It's like, do we want to have our video be better or worse? Obviously better,

Starting point is 00:45:28 but at the same time, we don't want to sell out. How have you just dealt with that, like, how hard do I want to turn the knob or pull the lever of like, you know, manipulation to make something work?

Starting point is 00:45:39 The few that we've shot, all of them have been very successful so far, but I've told the team that I want to be, eventually we're going to hit one that's not successful. Like, we don't help the person. It doesn't work.

Starting point is 00:45:51 Right. Or maybe we help them. a little, but they don't get there, right? I think it's very, very important to be honest about that and to actually make a video, like have the video kind of explore why that is, you know? Because it's, yeah, there's a credibility and authenticity that it's just so, so important, especially, and that's, it's been one of my criticisms of my own industry for 10, 15 years of just like the lack of trustworthiness, the lack of credibility.

Starting point is 00:46:24 Because if you promise the magic pill that works in two minutes, you're going to sell more than if you say this takes you two years of tough work, right? Right. So you've probably dealt with that a bunch. And like, maybe now, you know, you got fuck you money from the book and you're like, I don't have to do that anymore. I guess how has that changed your psychology? Well, I'm very fortunate that the book did, well, first of all, it is true.

Starting point is 00:46:43 The book did so well that I do have fuck you money. So I don't really care. Like this is, this YouTube project's losing money and it's probably going to lose money for a year or two, and I'm fine with that. But, like, it's, I'm also very fortunate that I made my money being very explicit about that, that, like, there is no magic pill, there is no cure-all.

Starting point is 00:47:00 Like, it's funny, dude, like, even when you dig into research on therapies, like, what modality of therapy is the most effective, right? You start looking at the research, and it's startling, because there's nothing that has more than a 50%

Starting point is 00:47:16 hit rate. Nothing. Like, there's no form of therapy. that is successful, like, produces positive outcomes more than 50% of the time, which is crazy because it's like therapy is like the most tried and true. Like, we've had it for 200 years. Like, it's the one thing everybody's like is directed to go to. So there's, in the world of psychology, there's just so much that we don't know what works. Like, and what works for you could completely fail for me and vice versa. Because everybody's so individual. So to your point about casting, a huge part of our casting process is doing,

Starting point is 00:47:50 pre-shoot interviews, me doing pre-shoot conversations and interviews with the person to really gauge of like, is this a person I can help? Because for every video we shot, we talked to probably two or three people. And half of those people, I'm like, you know, not really confident I can actually like, right, get them over the line. Whereas like with this, with this woman, you know, I talk to her and within 10 minutes, I'm like, yeah. No, I could give me a week with her. I'm like, I could get, I can get something out of it. Did you watch the TV show The Bear? By any chance?

Starting point is 00:48:25 I have not. Everybody says it's amazing, but I've not yet. Yeah, it's a little bit, I would say, it's a little bit slow, but it pays off. It's the thing you talked about, which is like, the retention curve for me was terrible at the beginning. It's slow. It's like one of those cool shows where it's like,

Starting point is 00:48:39 now we're not going to like be click baby. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm kind of used to that hit. So, you know, like, if you're really going to pay this off with character, it's going to take the time. But man, it does it. There's like an episode in the second season that's like such a huge. huge payoff on character that like now I'm like telling everybody you got to watch the show just

Starting point is 00:48:55 get to the second season get to the end of it yeah you know it's so so satisfying but there um but we so we reached out to one of the writers and we were like hey there respect and uh just we like to learn from people like that like how do you do this how do this character thing um have you learn anything in the process of like doing these videos of like because it's me it's not writing it's not books you now have like casting and characters and stuff that you probably haven't done before. First of all, I'm learning a million things. One of the reasons I wanted to do this, too, I should specify, is like, you know, I came out of this period, the post-settled art period of my career. I did three books back to back to back. I did a movie, like a bunch of traditional

Starting point is 00:49:36 media success. Like, everything was wildly successful, very busy, lots of money. I moved to L.A. I took a few months off and I was just like, man, I miss like the grindy grassroots internet. stuff, right? And but what I also realize is like, I miss being bad at something. Like, I miss I miss just like throwing shit at a wall and being like, did that work? Like, no, all right, let's try this. You know, like, and in traditional media, I don't,

Starting point is 00:50:05 you don't really have the flexibility to do that. Like, you're being, if a studio or a large publisher is bringing you in, it's because like they know you can make a hit and you need to make a fucking hit. And so I, I miss the internet days of like, right, let's try 10 things and just know that like six are going to fail. And, uh, like, that's just exciting to me. And so part of this project was like, I want to learn, I want to

Starting point is 00:50:30 get back on a learning curve and like experience that again. And so yeah, I've been learning a million things about video production and about, um, storytelling, visual storytelling in particular. Like, one of the big lessons from this video is that I still very much just write like a book writer. Like a lot of the mistakes that were made in this video, it's because it was organized in such a way that would work really well on like an article or a book. Right. But it works terribly on video. What's an example?

Starting point is 00:50:58 So an example is like the intro, right? It's like, that's a great intro on paper. It's a terrible intro on video because it's abstract. It's not visually interesting. You know, it's like you start with the challenge. Right. This woman spas running around them all, like ask people that are from Canada. like that's super weird and you're like what what's going on and then it's like you slowly like

Starting point is 00:51:18 drip context over the course of like 10 minutes whereas when you're writing a book or or an article like you have you need to put all the context up front of like this is what we're doing this is what this is about you know it's like the old school essay it's like you got to have your thesis in the first paragraph and then you got to have your three bullets and like all this stuff so i still my brain still kind of defaults to that and i'm having like untrained myself in a lot of ways the funny thing is is like and again one of the reasons I'm doing this is I think my natural strength is story and character and narrative like that that's where I shine naturally what I'm weaker at is the retention the hooks the like uh gen Z shit the Gen Z shit yeah yeah exactly yeah exactly

Starting point is 00:52:07 there's something I have you heard this term like the millennial pause no it's so funny it's Like, if you were to, it's like, what's the millennial pause? It's basically, gensing people, if you watch the start of their video starts with them already, they're already talking. So they're like mid word. Oh, yeah. As the video starts, whereas every millennial is like, they click record. Like, hey everybody. And that little like, that little pause is like you're already swiped on TikTok if you haven't like, you got to be like mid interesting thing.

Starting point is 00:52:36 And I was like, that's so fucking true. That's funny. That's so true. That's so funny, man. So you're doing this, this series. is what's like the craziest or most interesting challenge? I guess you can't give it away too much. But like what concepts are like,

Starting point is 00:52:48 oh, I can't wait to see how that's going to turn out. Or like, I really want to try something like this. A lot of the social stuff is like the most interesting. Because it's, you can do a lot of fear-based stuff. I mean, you can take somebody up in a plane and throw them out, you know, make them skydive or whatever. And that's exciting. But like, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:53:04 It doesn't feel like there's as much depth as like the social stuff. So we have a challenge in another video where I printed out flat earth. flyers saying like, you know, do you know the truth about the planet? You know, it's a picture of a flat earth. And I made her go into a public place and hand them out to people. Right. And like, try to convince them to be flat earthers. And she was like absolutely mortified. Like, just horrified. And, but it's super fun because then it's like, well, why do you care? Like, you don't know these people. You're never going to see them again. Like, why do you care? Why is it so horrifying, right? Like, it's just, yeah, it's super exciting. For me, this is honestly, it's the most,

Starting point is 00:53:42 fun I'm having in my career in probably six or seven years. Which is a dope lesson because, you know, you wrote a book with Will Smith, you got a movie, you know, you got to do a bunch of things that like, I would say are like the on paper, like the hashtag goals people think they want. And like, actually, that's not where the source of joy and happiness comes from. Yeah. I think you had said something which was like happiness is from solving problems. Yep.

Starting point is 00:54:09 Is that you? Yeah. Which is when you started. at the beginning of a learning curve, you're just going to suck and solve a bunch of problems to make something good. Yeah. And that's a lot more satisfying than...

Starting point is 00:54:19 For me, at least it is. You know, I'm sure there are people out there who prefer, like, kind of a traditional media environment. But one of the things I learned is that I can do traditional media projects and I can do very well at them. But, like, I don't feel that same passion with them as I do with stuff like this. Like, I like owning my own stuff. I like...

Starting point is 00:54:41 experimenting. I like the creative process, like having the complete creative freedom and then also owning it and then also getting the package it and also like controlling the brand around it. Like it's also part of, I mean, we can talk about this too, but it's funny. Like so when my movie came out and I did all the press for the movie, every single journalist I talked to was like, so are you going to do another movie? And like in my head, I'm like, fuck no, absolutely not. I'm going go make a YouTube channel because it's like that was actually my lesson from making a movie was like I should actually I should just have a YouTube channel like this is because the economics of the creator economy are fundamentally better the distribution is miles better you have like complete

Starting point is 00:55:29 ownership there's complete creative freedom like I just don't see how this doesn't end up ahead right in 10 years it's like hanging by like a prestige threat It really is. Right. I'm like, oh, yeah, status. It really is. And it's, I'm sure, I don't think, like, Hollywood's going to die, but I imagine it's going to be very similar to, like, kind of what's happened with, like, newspapers and

Starting point is 00:55:52 Twitter of, like, there's still prestigious newspapers and they still kind of matter a little bit. Like, it's still nice to, like, be in the New York Times or whatever. But the real intellectual debate and substance and, like, the stuff that drives culture happens on Twitter and Substack, and has for years now, right? And it's like, I think we're coming up on an inflection point that that's also going to happen in video and audio-based media. I think it's probably already happened with podcasts, and it's about to happen with video

Starting point is 00:56:24 as well, where it's like, yeah, there's still going to be like Marvel movies and stuff, and Netflix is going to have its TV shows, and it's going to be very prestigious to be on those, but, like, culture is going to be driven by, like, it probably within this decade, creators, they're going to grow up for one, and two, the production value is going to get better, the storytelling is going to get better, and it's going to hit an inflection point where it starts driving culture

Starting point is 00:56:50 and not the traditional media. If it's not already, I mean, I think if you're under 25, it is already. Right. Fair enough. I want to talk to you about titles, because I think you're a title master. Do you think you're good at titles?

Starting point is 00:57:03 Apparently I am, I guess. So the book, I don't feel good at that. them, but. The book obviously has a good title. It started with, the book came from a blog post, correct? It wasn't intended to be like a book. It was like, here's a blog post.

Starting point is 00:57:16 Why did you know to turn that one into a book, by the way? Is it like, did it hit in a different way? Yeah, that, that is that one. I mean, I had a lot of articles go viral over that period, like 2012 to 2015. Like I probably had 10 or 12 articles go super viral. But that one just hit on like a whole other level. Like it was. So I had already written probably.

Starting point is 00:57:37 half the book when that article came out. And then when that article hit the way it did, my agent was like, hey, I think you could change the title of the book. Yeah. And you hadn't done a book in years, right, before that? No, I'd just done models. But you're already thinking about a book. And then it was like, yeah. Oh, lean into this one. Yeah. So there's this little picture or diagram. That's, is that, did you make that or the one of the guy floating away on the balloons? Is that, is that from something? What is this? That was. That was. an old meme back in the day. Oh, okay. So good. Yeah, yeah, I love it. That's like as good as that midwit meme.

Starting point is 00:58:14 It's like, yes. This image can become like, you know, transformational. It's funny. Yeah, I haven't seen that. That used to be around everywhere back in like 2013, 2014. And then it's, I haven't seen it in a long time. Right. There was also the original article also, because back then a big part of packaging an article

Starting point is 00:58:32 for like Facebook and Twitter was what image pops up. Share, meta. Yeah, when you share. And so we used to spend a lot of, you know, kind of similar like thumbnails on YouTube. We used to spend a lot of time like looking for the right image for the share image on Facebook. And I think the other thing that made that article work was I think on Reddit one day, just randomly on Reddit. I saw somebody had Photoshop a picture of a kitten in front of like a bomb exploding, kind of like an action team. That meme is huge.

Starting point is 00:59:02 Yeah. And so we pulled that and used that as like the share. Yeah, the share image. And it was just kind of this magical combo of content, title, image. It just like all worked. Do you remember how you thought of that title? So the subtle art of not giving a fuck. Where does that come from? You're just sitting down and you just hammering out a bunch of possibilities? Or I back then I used to keep a list of article ideas, like just kind of a running list of ideas that I would just add to. Like I'd have conversations with people and something would pop up and I just pull out my phone and add it to a list. And it came from it came from. It came from. There was a heavy metal song from a band called Lamb of God. They had a song called The Subtle Art of Murder and Persuasion. And at that time, I had just done, I think, two different articles with fuck in the title. Like, I had just kind of discovered that if you put fuck in the title, it would...

Starting point is 00:59:56 Go further. Yeah, everything would go further. So I was like adding fuck to all my titles or to a bunch of my titles at the time. And so I was just kind of on the lookout of, like, cool titles that you... could add, add fuck into. And I think I knew I wanted to do an article about not giving a fuck, because that was just an obvious topic. And so when I heard that song, I was like, well, I was subtle art and not giving, like,

Starting point is 01:00:19 that's pretty damn good. Like, I should use that. Let's pull up some of your other ones. So you have the most important question of your life. Yep. That's good. That was a huge one. Because you got to know.

Starting point is 01:00:28 I need to know. Yeah. What does this jackass thing you know? It's like, probably nothing, but let me just check. Yeah. The most important X, like, it's. It's always going to work. You have life is a video game

Starting point is 01:00:39 and here are the cheat codes. That's like a, you know, a bastard path. That's become, I feel like that's become a, so this is the other thing. Like, I think a lot of,

Starting point is 01:00:49 I guess my skill with this just came from cranking out articles in the Facebook era of like trying to get articles to go viral because it was like so much of it had to do with the title. And it's been interesting, you know,

Starting point is 01:01:02 now it's been 10 years. It's been interesting because some of these have kind of just become, I guess, classics. Yeah. Yeah, like, it's, you just see, there's probably 10 different brands that use these same titles all the time.

Starting point is 01:01:14 And like, the life is a video game one. It's like, I see that everywhere. I wrote this thread about, um, that, the first line of it was everybody, everybody seems to think clubhouse is the next big thing. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:27 Um, but I think it's gonna fail. And it's like, grab some popcorn. Here's, here's how I think it goes down. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:01:32 And, um, that thing went crazy viral. And like, uh, like my hero, Malcolm Gladwells are following me, Bill Simmons DMs me, it's like, oh shit, this is like, this is amazing.

Starting point is 01:01:42 I didn't know this could happen. Because like today the Facebook meta doesn't really work, but like Twitter threads actually for a period of time recently could go viral. And now that same theme is like, people just replace. People the gay eyes the next big thing. But here's a, you know,

Starting point is 01:01:56 grabs a popcorn, here's how I think it goes down. It's like the copy paste, but it obviously like loses effectiveness as it goes. That's the other interesting thing too that's kind of changed in the last 10 years. Like, there was real, and I don't have any moral judgment around this, but it's, you know, 10 years ago, it was very much a sense of like, if you came up with a title that like,

Starting point is 01:02:16 like a banger, it was like that was yours, right? Yeah, you know, and it's like, no, and if somebody stole it, it was like, they're a piece of shit and you would call them out and your audience, we'd call them out. And like, I used to get emails from fans being like, this guy copied your article and like all this stuff. Like, I never get those emails anymore. Like, it's everybody just rips everybody off now. And so anybody who posts anything that goes viral, anywhere. There's a, like, the next day, there's half-life. There's 20 more versions on every platform. And it's just like,

Starting point is 01:02:42 it's the way the game's played today. It's that beam that it's like, you know, I made this thing. And then it's like, the other guy holding is like, I made this thing. I made this. Yeah. I don't think people even are aware of it anymore. Yeah. Is blogging dead? I think it depends on how

Starting point is 01:02:57 you define dead. So there was an era in the early 2010s where a, you a blog could gain reach beyond its own specific niche. Like you could kind of get mainstream audience, like hit like a critical mass. I think today you can still make a living off a blog.

Starting point is 01:03:20 It's just you've got to have your niche figured out. You've got to like really be tuned into them. And you're probably never going to scale an audience past like low six figures. Whereas 10 years ago, I mean, I think at my peak, it's getting like two, two and a half million visitors a month. Right. So it's a different world now. It is still possible, but it's like, I think it really only, if you're going to go a blog route

Starting point is 01:03:48 instead of podcast or video, like it, you have to have a really good reason. And it probably has to be a very specific niche to do it. Did you podcast or do you podcast? I do not. Is there like a reason or why didn't it? I never started one just because of lack of bandwidth. just like writing too many books. And then, but now that I'm doing the video stuff,

Starting point is 01:04:09 like I'm probably going to do something in the podcasting space. It won't be something like this. Like, last thing the world needs is another interview podcast. Don't step on my turf. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? I made this. I made this. This is mine.

Starting point is 01:04:22 But I do think it's, I think it, I would like to be in this medium in some shape or form. Right. You did a book with Will Smith and presumably we spent a bunch of time with Will Smith. Yep. you know, when people meet celebrities, I always ask, like, what are they like? Yeah. It's not like, I don't know,

Starting point is 01:04:38 it's a real specific question. It's kind of like, that's what everybody is. How are they? It's like, how are they as a person? Yeah. It's kind of like, you know, like, are they dick?

Starting point is 01:04:47 Are they awesome? There's like that version of it. But to me, I'm sort of like, what was a, what was something you saw them do or like something you witnessed that was like,

Starting point is 01:04:56 just not how the common person would have approached a given situation. So the quick answer to the one everybody always asked, which is like, what's he like in person? He is exactly like the fresh prince. Like, that is, I spent the, I remember spending one day with him and then I went back to the hotel and, and called my wife. And I was like, he did not act on that show. Like, they literally just put him in a room and then put actors around him. Right. Like, that is, that is his personality. Will, will is like, there are a few dimensions that I think he is like at the extreme

Starting point is 01:05:31 end of the bell curve. The most obvious one that's not going to surprise anybody is just this charisma. Like he is by far the most naturally charismatic. I mean, it can literally just be like

Starting point is 01:05:44 me and him sitting in a kitchen at midnight talking about cartoon. Like he's so charismatic. Just like built into him. And so it's not hard. You spend a little bit of time with him

Starting point is 01:05:58 and it's not hard to see and understand like, oh okay I see why this guy's so famous. His mind is very almost delusionally positive. Like he kind of has this like, you know, we all have a little bit of a, the psychologist Dan Gilbert calls it a psychological immune system, which is like when bad things happen, we kind of like rationalize or explain them in a way that, you know, makes us feel better or helps us.

Starting point is 01:06:22 His psychological immune system, like, it's just negativity just bounces right off him. any sort of failure set back like he doesn't bum him out like I've never really been around somebody who is so easily to like able to construe challenges and obstacles

Starting point is 01:06:41 in a way that that is confident and beneficial like it's actually very impressive but it's funny because it also gets them in trouble like when there actually is a problem that needs to be addressed and you do need to be sad and you do need to like deal with it he just

Starting point is 01:06:57 rationalizes it in such a positive way so quickly that it kind of like it can cause problems for him. And that's, that's actually one thing he and I talked about for the book is that, you know, he came from a very chaotic and, like, abusive childhood. And he said, he's like, I developed that as like a survival mechanism. And it's helped me so much throughout my life and my career. Like, I'm just absolutely relentless. Like, anything goes wrong. It never bothers me. Like, I just get up and do it again. But yeah, it's like I'm a little bit untethered to reality sometimes. So that's like, that was very interesting and remarkable.

Starting point is 01:07:37 When you saw the Chris Rock slap or whatever, that's obviously kind of like not like, you know, Mr. positive or whatever in that moment. No. Were you like, were you like, stunned? Like, because you know them more than, like, everybody's shocked because it's a shocking thing. Yeah. But when you know the person, you might have like either, it's even more shocking. than that or it's less because you understood maybe where he's coming from.

Starting point is 01:08:02 It was definitely less shocking for me. He slapped you once or twice. Yeah. You're like, yeah, it's common. Keep her name out of your mouth. No, I mean, like one of the things, and we, this is in the book, he had a very abusive alcoholic father. He used to beat the shit out of his mom, and he was the oldest, he was the oldest child.

Starting point is 01:08:22 He was the male, right? So he felt responsible and very protective. And so he is a lot of issues around women. He's very protective. He's very sensitive. Like, the women in his life are his Achilles heel. Like, that's, if you want to get to him, like, that's the route. Like, you can talk shit about him all day, all night.

Starting point is 01:08:43 He's going to sit there and laugh. You find whatever. Like, you go after his mom, his daughter, or his wife. Like, shit's going to get real, real fast. And so I wasn't surprised. It was funny, actually, I was watching with my, wife live and my wife turned to me and she was like this is a bit right I was like no that's not a bit like he's actually saying that right now she's like what?

Starting point is 01:09:05 I made you. You set up a text afterwards or you like just give him space? Because the Uber famous people you like it's hard to even navigate. It's like you don't want to be one of those people. Yeah. You're also like if I'm your friend do I just send you something like yeah it's weird that's a whole like we could spend an hour just talking about that that's like super weird. It's funny too because it's like.

Starting point is 01:09:26 everybody who I've ever known in my life message me that night asking for like my opinion. And I'm like literally people like I haven't talked to since high school, you know, are like reaching out. I'm like, wait, this is the thing that got you to reach out. Like all the shit I did, you didn't, like didn't bother.

Starting point is 01:09:44 Like, you know, couldn't be bothered to say anything. But like this, this got you to reach out to me. All right, all right. Yeah, that was just, I mean, like something can win the internet for the day. and like that won the internet for the day. So it has like insane reach. It was insane, yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:59 Amazing. Thanks for doing this, by the way. I know that you, you know, you kind of didn't know what you're going to do. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you had a fun time. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:10:06 I definitely did because you're somebody I followed for a long time. And I think the people I respect the most, like some people respect like Elon Musk the most. Some people respect because it's like, oh, he conquers like, you know, taking us to another planet. Yeah. But I always admire thinkers.

Starting point is 01:10:21 Like I think a great thinker is somebody who puts out original thoughts. and I don't know, makes you think about the world a little differently. Those are my favorite types of people, so I really appreciate you coming on. Thanks, dude. I'm glad we did it. Absolutely, man.

Starting point is 01:10:33 Where do you want people to go? The YouTube channel, I'm assuming. Check out the YouTube channel. There's going to be more of those videos coming out. Mark Manson? What is the... Yeah, if you just search Mark Manson on YouTube, it'll pop up.

Starting point is 01:10:44 And then Markmanson.net. Got a newsletter there. And I think that's, you know, buy the books, whatever. I don't give a fuck. I don't even fuck. Buy my shit. Awesome.

Starting point is 01:10:58 Cool. That's a wrap. All right. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel,

Starting point is 01:11:11 never looking back.

My First Million - Mark Manson: Money, Dating, & The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck

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