If you've ever wondered when to keep going and when to stop, it comes down to a counterintuitive truth about creativity and suffering. Isn't it weird how sometimes the hardest answer is the most simple one that's right in front of you, but you just don't see it for whatever reason? It was right here in front of my nose for 5 years and I was looking over here.
My name is Mark Manson and you are listening to the future. Okay, Mark, I'm going to start off this way. I think I heard you say this where you wrote in your book, the avoidance of suffering is a form of suffering.
Yes. Can you expand on that? I think the the avoidance of any emotion there there's something weird in our psychology in that like anytime we resist an emotion, we unintentionally amplify that emotion.
Right? So, anybody who suffers from anxiety has had the experience of like the worst thing you can do when you feel anxious is to stop trying to feel anxious cuz that just makes you feel more anxious. You start becoming anxious about the fact that you're anxious.
You know, it's the same thing for anger. If you start trying to like prevent your anger, you become angry that you're angry, right? And so you get this weird kind of like feedback loop that happens.
Trying to eliminate any sort of struggle or pain or suffering in your life ultimately becomes its own form of struggle, pain or suffering, right? Cuz now you're you're constantly censoring and limiting yourself to prevent yourself from ever potentially having an experience that might be uncomfortable. And that in and of itself is uncomfortable to me.
This is this is kind of like the core thing I got from Buddhism is just that suffering is everpresent. So you might as well embrace it, accept it, and I guess from more of like an existential point of view or philosophical point of view, like find the suffering that feels worth having, that feels meaningful, that feels like it's it's adding value in some way. On the topic of suffering, it's just choosing what we care passionately about to suffer through.
If we kind of zoom out and look at your arc, how have you chosen the different forms of suffering that you're taking on? I'd like to kind of hear from your perspective how it's evolved over time. Yeah, I think there's kind of two classifications of that like I don't want to call it enjoyable suffering because suffering is not enjoyable, but like I guess I'll call it worthwhile suffering, right?
And I I'd say one bucket is it's the things that you are kind of just predisposed to do. What's interesting about that bucket is that we tend to be very bad at noticing it. So I'll give you an example.
Like I originally wanted to be a musician and I went to music school. It was I mean to this day one of the hardest things I've ever done. Music school is no joke.
It like they really put you through the ringer and it's it's because the it's just such an insanely competitive industry. So I was in music school and I remember I was at a point I was I played guitar and I was practicing I was practicing probably five six hours a day. It was reaching the point where I was starting to get tendonitis in my wrist.
My fingers were hurting. I had like you know calluses and bruises and stuff and I was so burnt out and sick of my instrument that just like the thought of playing my guitar for another hour like it just made me want to puke. And I remember I went into uh one of my my lessons one day and I started playing a song that I'd been working on and my teacher stopped me like 10 seconds in and he was like, "Stop, stop, stop." He said, "You know what your problem is?
You don't practice enough." And it was heartbreaking. I was like, it was in that moment I'm like, "I'm not cut out for this." Right? And I started thinking I I I there was a guy in my program who it was kind of clear to everybody like he was if anybody was going to make it, this guy was going to make it.
And I remember talking to him once and I was trying to like I was asking him a bunch of questions around practicing and and I was like what's your routine like? How do you warm up in the morning? You know, how do you approach each song?
And he just kind of looked at me like what are you talking about? Like I just pract I just play, dude. Like I just I wake up, I start playing, I eat, I go to bed.
Like I don't really think about it beyond that. There there's kind of a there's a follow-up story to this, which is that when I started blogging, I really took a lot of pride in that I would write 5, 10, 20 page articles and publish them sometimes multiple times a week. And I started when I my blog started to blow up, I started getting getting invited to some of these conferences, some internet marketing and blogging conferences.
And it was funny because people started corner cornering me in the hallway. And they're like, how do you write so much? I was like, what are you talking about?
They're like, what what's your routine like? You know, do you warm up? You know, I'm like, no, dude.
I just I wake up, I start writing, you know, and it it it clicked for me that there is a certain suffering in writing that I am predisposed to. Like rereading a paragraph five or six times and rewriting it and polishing it and over and over and over again. Like that is agonizing for most people.
For whatever reason, I just seem like kind of naturally disposed to enjoy that. And I look back at the music school experience and it's like most of being a musician is just practicing and I hated that. It was it was a form of suffering that I was not diso predisposed to and I did not find any sort of higher meaning in it and so I just suffered through it.
It just felt like torture. Whereas that guy in my program, he was predisposed to it. It didn't strike him as like some sort of sacrifice, right?
So, I think there's part of it is like looking for that thing that most people think is really hard, but for whatever reason, you kind of don't mind it. Like, what's the [ __ ] sandwich you don't mind eating, right? Because that's probably like your secret superpower.
What you do so naturally align with your passion or a higher calling, you probably would not describe it as suffering, right? Or would you? Let's differentiate between pain and suffering.
Pain is the just discomfort, you know, un like something unpleasant, whether it's mental, physical, whatever. Suffering is kind of a more existential misery, right? And suffering often accompanies pain, but it doesn't have to, right?
So, it's like you and I, we love our jobs, right? Our jobs are sometimes very painful. Like there's there are days that just suck.
Yes, it's not fun. But I think we would both agree that we are not suffering in those moments. Like and and the reason is is because even though that day sucks and whatever we're dealing with is just like a real pain in the ass.
We are glad that we're dealing with it. We are very happy to be there in that moment. When it becomes suffering is when you're experiencing that pain and you're like, why am I here?
Why did I take this job? Why am I still doing this stupid YouTube stuff? You know, like that's where the suffering comes in.
It's that narrative that you write around the pain in your head. I'm predisposed to writing. Like that's something that I seem to naturally just be able to sustain the pain of doing better than most people.
At a certain point in my career, I found kind of a higher mission of like I think the self-help industry sucks. I think most of the most of the advice is bad. I think a lot of it is counterproductive and like actually harming people's mental health.
Let's try to fix that, right? And so that's the mission that I attach to kind of the the talent and like that's what sustained me through the ups and downs and the wins and losses over the years. I I have a theory.
Mhm. My theory is that we were all born, designed, created, whatever your belief structure is, and we are given a unique set of skills, physical traits, our hair, our voice, our eyes. We're designed to do something.
And it's our life's mission to figure out what the heck that's supposed to be. Most of us will go into the grave not knowing what that is. That's the sad part.
Yeah. Mostly because through society, through parents, through friends, they've influenced us and told us this is what you're supposed to be in this life. And how pliable you are to accepting that kind of programming determines your level of suffering for the rest of your life.
Right? Now, if you're a Buddhist, believe in reincarnation, maybe it wasn't meant for you to figure out this life, maybe it's the next life. Mhm.
And so when I see someone that has a vibe, an aura, a certain wavelength or frequency about them, I already know you found your thing. Yeah. Which you are better created for or designed to do than anyone else in the world.
Maybe not the best, but one of the best. Yeah. And it feels natural.
It feels easy. It feels like breathing. Like when you ask yourself, what would you be doing if you weren't doing this?
Or like just this. Yeah. So to me that isn't like for me like my kids would ask me this dad if you didn't run the future what would you be doing?
I'm like and I really thought about it. I'm like I'd be doing the same thing. You just start another future.
Yeah. Yeah. It would just be I'd be reading.
I'd make content. I'd go out and talk to people and trying to help people as much as I could. So I don't think there's anything else for me.
This is it. And it took me a while to find. I I don't describe that as suffering.
And my wife holds this against me. I'm like I'm working. Yeah.
She goes, "That's not work." Cuz you enjoy it. So, it's only work if you don't enjoy it because the output is the same, right? Even the input's the same.
It's just my frame on it's different. What's your take on that? The irony is that if you enjoy your work, your output's actually probably better.
Yeah. Right. Because you care more.
You're going to put pay more attention to detail. You're going to put more energy into it. You're going to burn out slower.
Most people don't find any sort of alignment with what they do with their days and some mission or calling or talent or thing that they're predisposed to. It doesn't mean that you have to necessarily become an artist or you have to become an entrepreneur, but like you should try to find something that feels some sort of value or principle or mission that like feels aligned with what you're spending your time doing. If anything, just because a, it's going to alleviate some of that suffering.
You're not going to feel like you're just torturing yourself for a paycheck, and b, it's actually going to make you more productive. I think the the thing that a lot of people get wrong with this question is that they kind of they go looking for passion as if it's like hiding under a rock somewhere, you know? They they they think that it's like it's this magical thing that if they just sign up for the right class online, you know, they'll walk into the room and it's like boom, you know, the clouds part and the angels sing and it's like this is what you were meant to do with your life.
And it's, you know, as you know, it's a long ambiguous process. One part of it is actually investing into something and seeing what you get back from it, right? Like it's it's there is a certain amount of component to passion that comes from developing a skill and being good at something and being rewarded for it.
So, I I think the the biggest mistake that I see is is people kind of just, you know, they'll go out and try 10 or 12 different things and they'll do it. They'll do like 10 things once and they're like, "Well, I wasn't passionate about any of them, so I, you know, I still don't know what I'm P." It's not that simple. Like, it's not just going to show up and just appear to you one day.
like you have to actually try some things and work at it and and put a little bit of time in and and develop an understanding of it and and see what the the trajectory looks like. There are some skills or pursuits that it feels like pushing a rock up a hill. It's like the more effort you put into it, the harder it gets.
That's how music school was for me. It was like the more time I put into it, it was felt like the higher up the hill I was pushing the rock. Uh, and then there are other things that it's like the more you push the rock, the more it's like pushing a rock downhill.
You know, the more you push it, the faster it goes. And that's how writing always felt to me. It's like the more time I put into it, the easier it got, the more I enjoyed it, the better I got, the more I was rewarded for it.
And it it just got this like this nice feedback loop going. But you need to like put a little bit of time in the stuff to like find out what that trajectory feels like for each thing. So for five years writing was not great for you and then one day you woke up and you're like oh I like this I'm good at this and now it's good.
So there is a period of suffering there and I can totally relate to it. Like once you started explaining it like that I got it because at first if you asked me do you want to be on YouTube no please keep the cameras away. Like I don't want to do this.
This is terrible. What a dumb idea. And you resist and you resist and for years and countless videos it's like it sucks.
I'm I'm still really bad at this, but maybe you and I are wired a certain way where we're like, there could be something there. I'm not even sure, but let's just keep going. So, my belief is life is hard.
Life is I don't use the word suffering, but it is tough and it's supposed to be tough. Yeah. Cuz if it were easy, it's not worthwhile to pursue because everyone could do that.
Yeah. This I think Seth writes about Seth Goden writes about it's like if something is hard to do, it means that it's scarce and scarce things are valuable. If everyone was a great writer, if everyone was really clear and they're thinking about how to help other people, what you do would not be worth anything.
Right. Right. And so, how do we know though?
Or maybe we don't know that that is a worthwhile form of suffering. Because my my thing is give it everything you've got. And when you don't think you got more, give it even more.
And maybe you you get to that tip of the hill where the rock doesn't feel heavy anymore. Yeah. And feels weightless and then it pulls you and you don't have to push it so much.
Yeah. How do we know we're not just at the tip and if we just kept at it another month, another year, it would have broken we would have broken through. Where is the momentum?
Is does it feel like it's against you or do does it feel like it's for you? Right? Like if if if you put three more like really focused months into this, do you feel like you're going to be further than you are now or uh or do you feel like you're going to be in the same spot?
If you feel like you're you're going to be in the same spot, then that like that might be a signal that this isn't the right path for you, right? Like you just you shouldn't be banging your head against the wall for year after year after year. There should be some sort of progress or acceleration in some direction.
Okay. So, there are things that can be painful and I I think I saw on your feed recently like you're exercising. Yes.
You lost I think 50 pounds. Yeah. About that.
Yeah. That's a lot of weight. 50 60.
Yeah. Yeah. And Okay.
So, here's the thing though. Um some people like to exercise. Some people like to be very strict about their diet.
Most people I know do not. But they do it because they know the benefit of it. So, that's a worthwhile pursuit.
Do you love to exercise? Sometimes, not always. Yeah.
But I I will say this and and I I did a podcast episode about kind of my fitness journey and one of the most important learnings along that path was finding a way to make it fun. Because I did when I started, I did the thing that most people do, which is like, well, here's the workout plan, here's the diet. I guess I'm just going to suffer through this, right?
cuz this is what you do. This is how it this is how it happens. And that'll get you maybe 3 to 6 months, right?
I think it it got it got the first 10 to 15 pounds off, but then you hit a plateau because that that's not sustainable. Like it's just human nature is we don't we we don't continually do something uh that we hate, you know, and so I started slipping and I started messing up and I started, you know, going back to the bad eating habits and skipping workouts and stuff. And so there was a point where I realized I'm like I need to find a way to make this fun and interesting.
Whether that's doing it with other people, whether that's through accountability with a coach, whether whether that's like just gamification of like tracking my workouts and trying to set PRs and like setting challenges for myself on a monthly basis, which I did all of those things and they all helped a lot because it it made that next workout not feel so much like drudgery. It felt like, okay, well, let's see, you know, let's see if I can do this this time or my buddy Dan is going to come do this with me and, you know, we're going to do it together and it'll be more interesting, you know. So, anything that you're going to have to do for a very, very long period of time and like exercise is something you kind of have you have to do for the rest of your life.
You really need to find what you like. Whether it's a sport, whether it's running, you signing up for marathons, doing CrossFit, like find the thing that you like. And you see this in the research, too.
It's like just the fact that you did any exercise is like 80% of the benefit. Like the exact exercise you do, the perfect workout, quote unquote, is like the 20%. It's the cherry on top.
If you want long-term sustainability around exercise, just like find the thing that you enjoy doing enough that you could see yourself doing it 20 years from now. I want to talk about three things before this thing is over. Okay?
And before I ask you those things, I want to just complete one question that's been kind of just I've been trying to finish here. But I want to talk to you a little bit about personal branding, about embracing the the ugly stuff inside of you as a part of all of you. I want to talk about content creation and how you seem to be going pretty hard on content on social.
And of course I want to talk a little bit about business like how one becomes somebody like you and build a media company around your thoughts and ideas. Okay. So those are the big three.
Okay. So I asked earlier about your timeline of suffering or pain and your evolution of embracing it. So what I recall is okay I played guitar for a while that didn't work.
Fingers are bleeding. It's not going anywhere. And then somewhere along the way I'm going to write.
Mhm. It sucks for a while and then you're like hey I'm pretty good at this. I'm going to keep writing.
what are some of the other jumps that you've done? So, the just to clarify really quick, back in 2007208, uh I tried to start a number of like e-commerce and affiliate marketing businesses. And back then, the way to market a new website was to blog.
And so, blogging was actually just a side effect of like trying to start these e-commerce businesses. The e-commerce businesses went nowhere, but it turned out I was actually good at the blogging. And so, that's kind of how the blogging started.
you know, the the blog started to blow up probably 2011, 2012. Developed a pretty large audience, self-published a book, put out some courses, was like making a decent, you know, a decent living. At a certain point, things went pretty super viral like around 2013, 2014.
And then that's when the prospects of like a book deal started showing up and that's eventually what led the the subtle art. What a lot of people don't realize is that the ideas in subtle art were actually market tested for like three years before that, right? It's like almost everything in that book had at least been played with or tested as a in a blog post somewhere and I had gotten feedback on what resonated with people and what didn't.
I think that's that that's an underdised re reason why that book did so well is that it it had that that market feedback leading into it. interesting caveat here which is that when the book took off to such an extent I kind of forgot that I was an a creator and I I think there was a tacid assumption of like well the most successful thing I've ever done is write a book so I must be an author so now I I should do author stuff you know I should go on morning shows and I should uh do a celebrity book and I should uh talk to Hollywood producers about screenwriting and like did the whole author thing and looking back I actually really didn't like it. There was a lot of speaking in there as well.
I I didn't enjoy it. And so that was actually one of the only periods that I would actually characterize is like there was a decent amount of suffering in there because it was like I was doing things not because I genuinely love doing it. I was doing it because I thought I should be doing it.
But it was a a subtle enough should that I wasn't completely aware of it. I was just like, I don't know, my career blew up. This is what you do.
Not realizing there was a totally a choice. So by 2021 or so, I burnt myself out. Uh took some time off and during that time off, what I realized is I really miss the internet stuff.
I miss posting online. and I miss like getting the audience feedback and seeing what works and what doesn't and looking at analytics and all the creator stuff that we do. So, I slowly started doing that again in in 2022 and really just fell in love with it again and realized like, oh, this is actually where I'm supposed to be.
I should have been here the whole time, but I kind of got deviated, you know, for a number of years there. And so I would say the for a couple years some of it was just catching up, you know, because as the creator space evolved and grew so much since I was I kind of left it in 2016. So there was a couple years of just like catching up.
It's like okay, I need to get on, you know, we need to start doing video, we need to launch a podcast, we need to start posting short form on in, you know, doing Instagram reels and get on TikTok and all this stuff. Like it was all new. It was all stuff that I had like fallen way behind on.
And so it was just this probably two years of catching up. And then I feel like just now, just like the last six months, it's kind of like, okay, now we can, you know, take the business into its next phase. Feels like we're doing everything at least confidently now.
Now, now how do we find the thing that we're going to be excellent at and move into the future with that. So, that's kind of where I'm at uh with my creator business. So, was that about a six or sevenyear detour into the author thing?
2014 then 2021 you find your way back to social and content about five year detail. Okay. Yeah.
It's a normal natural reaction that what you had was like the universe is telling me man I'm really good at writing books. It'll happen. Yeah.
And so it'd be pretty safe to assume like maybe this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Everything took me to this point and you pursued that. You didn't enjoy it.
You didn't know if this is what you're supposed to be doing but you tried that. When did you know like that's it. I'm I'm I'm going to go back to this other thing I I love so much.
It was it was taking that time off honestly. Okay. Because in the author side of my career, the opportunities were incred.
I mean I I mean it it's it's literally the sort of stuff that any author or aspiring author like dreams of having happen to them and it was happening to me and it just felt stressful. It felt overwhelming. It felt and that's part of where I got so unhealthy, right?
I gained a ton of weight. I was like really out of shape. Had a lot of bad habits, drinking too much.
And I think a lot of it was because of that. It was just because I was not doing what I should have been doing. When the stuff you're doing is what everybody in your industry wishes they were doing, it's hard to stop and tell yourself, ask yourself, maybe I shouldn't be doing this.
So, it wasn't until I really kind of burned myself out and and I took six months off. The first six months of 2022, I I just took off because I was just like the the last book that I was working on came out. A movie I had just finished shooting a movie that I was working on and I was like it was the first time that I ever my plate kind of opened up and I was like before I loaded up with the next batch of stuff, let me just take a few months.
And that few months turned into six. And it was during that 6 months that I was just like, what am I doing? Like I don't I kind of did an inventory and I was like, let's pretend I become a billionaire tomorrow.
What's the stuff that I would still do anyway? And when I did that list, it was it was exactly what you just said. It was like, well, I'd probably write blog articles and post on social media.
Like that's it, you know? And so then it would then that became the question like, well, why am I not doing that? Isn't it weird how sometimes the hardest answer is the most simple one that's right in front of you, but you just don't see it for whatever reason.
You feel like an idiot. It's It was right here in front of my nose for 5 years and I was looking over here, right? You know, all the shiny sexy stuff is over here.
Yeah. I I really want to talk to you about business. I want to talk about content, your pursuit just as two geeks trying to make content.
Talk about that. There there's something I would love for you to speak about which is like most people post on social to show you like the very best of what they're doing. But most people don't get to see that because the algorithm says the best of the best is what we're going to show you.
It's the 1% of the 1%. Now you're going to see that I I kind of get sick to my stomach thinking everyone lives such a curated life now and we all do to a degree the the persona shows up to be accepted to be loved cuz no one wants to be hated. I get that.
What is your take on all this? Like who are you supposed to be in this life? How do you how do we present ourselves?
Because I think there's something you're you're talking about which really resonates with me. Honestly, my take on social media these days is that it 10 years ago it used to be mostly social and I think now it's just mostly media and I think maybe the public perception hasn't caught up with that yet, but it's everything is extremely curated. I don't know if you've had this experience, but it's like now that I've done a fair amount of video production myself, there's so many videos that will pop up on my feed that look like they're spontaneous and I can tell that they were staged.
I can tell that there was a script that's probably an actor, you know, even when it's on the street, even when it looks, you know, like completely spontaneous, whatever. It's like that's clearly script that was clearly staged. I honestly I approach social media that way now.
It's not a dishonest expression of myself. It's not like I'm not showing you what I ate for breakfast or, you know, talking about the cool Netflix show I watched last week. Like that.
That's 2010 stuff. Like the the 2020s now it's media. My team and I, we're sitting down.
We're like really strategically thinking like, you know, what is the best content we can put together for our audience and put it up and that people get something out of it and that we can grow the audience. And it's the same exact conversations that a TV studio has, that a movie studio has, that a book publisher has. I try to be very transparent about that because um I think the users need to understand that.
Do you guys sit around and brainstorm like what we think are going to be hits and make that or what what is your creative process like? I would say it's the the container of the creativity is kind of analytics and results driven, right? So, we'll look at we'll look at say the previous month's social content and we'll look at what did best and what did worst and we'll kind of discuss like what was good about it, what was bad, what people seem to like, what they don't and what I'll pull from it is just some general principles of like structuring the script this way seem people seem to like that they seem to it seems to resonate or like talking in this way seems to land for people like it's more engaging or whatever.
And so I'll just kind of take those principles as like you know let's try to make something around those principles like those are the those are the lines that I need to color with inside of but then that coloring is whatever I want it to be like that's where the creativity that's like where the personal satisfaction is is like okay you gave you gave me the the boundaries in which to play now I'm going to go play however I want to play. This is a perfect bridge, I think, to then you maybe the content conversation about how you do what you do. You're obviously very good at writing books.
Surprisingly, you're also really good on Instagram and I hate you because you're also good on YouTube. So, somebody is like, "This is not fair. It's not fair.
You shouldn't be good at all these things." And so, what are the biggest things that you've learned in writing Mhm. and creating content that connects with so many people? M can you distill that down to maybe a couple of principles?
Well, I I think a lot of that success is that cross medium success is actually comes from just really understanding my audience on a very deep level. Like I really understand the personal development audience and kind of what they're looking for and what they like. It's funny because I've taken I've done some experiments to to get into other formats and get into other uh styles and and be a little bit creatively crazy and do something completely new and and a lot of it hasn't really landed.
And I think a lot of that is because really it's just about understanding what people are looking for when they come to somebody like me. And so whether it's a two sentence Instagram photo uh or quote on an Instagram photo or it's a 10-minute YouTube video or it's a a newsletter or a 60-minute podcast. Like I just try to be very I'm very cognizant of like, okay, who are the people who listen to this or watch this?
What are they looking for if they're on this platform? what's the best way I can provide value to them and meet them where they are and not not kind of obsess about like my genius or what I want you know what I want to do or what the world needs to see from me it it's just like being very practical about it you know it's most people who come to my content like they are suffering in some shape or form right and they're looking for help and they're looking for advice and they're looking for inspiration and so those are all very emotional things and So when you kind of understand how to speak to those emotions or what sort of ideas are useful for people in certain places, they translate well across platforms. How would you describe your own tone of voice when you're talking or writing to them?
Because your titles are pretty bombastic. This little art of not giving an F and everything is F. It's like there's a lot of Fs in here.
Yeah. But if people are suffering and they need help and they're in a dark place, like maybe they're miserable, right? and you're going to help them.
How would you describe your own tone of voice when you're writing? So, part of it is that, you know, the tone of my writing and my content, I mean, hopefully you you agree with this is a reflection of just kind of who my personality like it's just how I talk. It's how I show up in person.
So, that's a piece of it like it is authentic to who I am. But the other piece of it that I found is that when somebody's really struggling or suffering in some way, uh, irreverence in humor can be liberating to a certain extent. You know, it's like if somebody's going through something tough and you can kind of make them laugh about it, like that's actually very therapeutic.
And I do think there's something to the attitude and the and and the vulgarity to to be honest that like people find a little bit empowering. It does appeal to a lot of people in those states like it it is a certain type of person like I'm not everybody's cup of tea but for the right personality like it it it lands pretty well. I I don't swear never have.
I'm kind of straight edged that way. Mhm. But I think the right fbomb strategically placed changes the whole meaning of what you're going to say.
And so sometimes like maybe I need to break my own rule because when used well Yes. when used with intention. Absolutely.
It'll just completely make that 10 times funnier. Yeah. Or more profound.
Absolutely. Right. It's interesting because I've been criticized so much for my profanity over the years that I actually at one point I did research into like what profanity is and why it exists.
First of all, it shifts. It's arbitrary. You know, the words that are offensive today were normal 100 years ago.
And the words that were offensive 100 years ago are normal today. But what's interesting is that the whole point of profanity is that it calls attention to something. is that it like focus narrows people's focus on a certain idea or concept.
And I think in in the space of of personal development like that can be extremely useful. It's kind of like grabbing somebody by the shirt callers and be like pay attention you know this is important and doing it in a way that is can be enjoyable or relieving. I I always laugh when people I get emails.
It's usually from boomers like who who are like, you know, if you're a guy, don't look at me when you say that. I'll get these emails of like, you know, if you'd be smart if you didn't use the fbomb so much. I just I kind of shake my head.
I'm like, right, there's a method to the madness. Cuz at a certain age, when you use an Fbomb, it's it sounds like you're not well educated. Yes.
That clear is not the case. Okay. So, I wrote down one tip.
Understand your audience. Mhm. What else you got?
Be willing to experiment. Okay. I I do think one thing that I do very well is I'm I'm willing to kind of fall on my face, like try something and and have it just bomb terribly.
And like I don't lose sleep over it. I think a lot of creators do lose sleep over it. Like they're I think a lot of creators when they find the thing that works, they're afraid to deviate from that.
And I not only believe very strongly in experimenting and and trying different formats and new things and you know if you have an oddball idea like whatever let's take a shot but I I I enjoy it as well. And I think that I think part of that lends itself to my longevity because if you stay with the same thing sure it might work this year it might work next year but in five years the trends are going to change the platforms are going to change the algorithms are going to change. 100 people are going to copy you.
So, like it's not going to work anymore. Like you have to you have to always be moving to kind of stay in the same place in this industry. And I think that's that's something that I'm good at.
I think you have a skill at phrasing things a certain way that it reads well and it kind of it's like a mind war. It just burls into your brain. You think about it.
Then I read other people who are trying to do things like that and clearly writing is not their gift in life. Is there anything that you can say like if you just looked at it this way like your Mark's secret recipe on how you know a line is good? Yeah.
Especially for Instagram where it's just like a sentence. It's funny cuz you know Instagram or Twitter, you know, like those single sentence posts many times are like much harder than say a newsletter, right? Cuz it's you're distilling you're compressing so much value and information into like six words.
There's a lot of writers who excel at that. And I don't mean online writ like go back and read literary writers who are famous. Go read Hemingway.
Hemingway was famous for being able to pack like paragraphs of meaning into six words. That's one thing I did early in my career that I think paid off a lot is like when I decided writing is my thing. This is what I'm going to do.
I didn't go read other blogs. I like I bought Toltoy's books. I bought Himmingway's books.
I bought Fitzgerald. Like I started reading all the canon and trying to understand like what made this author a great author. I went and bought all the self-help books all the way going back to the early 20th century.
It's like taking the craft very seriously even though you're just you know posting quotes on Instagram. Like I don't see many creators doing that like taking them seriously themselves seriously as artists in that way. They're like, "Well, I'm not making Hollywood films, so you know, why would I go watch Copa stuff?" It's like, "No, you're a filmmaker.
[ __ ] that. It's just it's Tik Tok, but it's you're still making it's video production, right? So, you should at least understand the principles of like what makes something good.
Doesn't mean you need to make The Godfather. It just means that you should understand like what makes a a good scene a good scene." Now, I thought you were going to say you need to be a correct contrarian. I was queuing you up for that.
Oh, but I came across that video on I think it was on YouTube. I'm like, "Yeah, here's Mark again. God dang it.
What is he talking about? This 1% thing, a correct contour." I love that, by the way. So, my my feeling and maybe it's and maybe you you have a different POV on this is that pretty much everything that needs to be said has been said by somebody already.
Yeah. Multiple times now. So, we're living in this age of of like an abundance of information.
The only reason why I think someone's going to listen to you or somebody else is because you have a point of view on this that it's going to be different because if you're going to say the same thing that everybody else is saying, why bother saying they've already said it? Yeah. They they have a bigger audience than you.
So you have to figure out where you are different. Yes. And when I read your things, I'm like that's Mark pushing that a little bit there.
Or maybe not a little bit, a lot. So this kind of gets into the brand stuff, right? Like I differentiation is just so it's every especially in this day and age I feel like it's everything.
It's like really understanding how are you going to stand out? How are you going to be different? And I think where people struggle with this and I include myself in this too is that like when you decide how you're going to be different from the other people in your space in a sense you're choosing who what audience you're going to lose, right?
is like the nature of differentiation is you're gonna be loved by this group of people over here, but then all these people over here, they're going to like roll their eyes and think you're kind of lame. And like that doesn't feel good. It's it's a tough thing to think about and accept, but I think it's, you know, like you said, with the abundance of information and the abundance of content like that is, in my opinion, more important than ever these days.
What are you doing actively to be different other than the thoughts that you have? Like are you producing your videos differently? Are you editing them differently?
Is there anything else that you're doing? I think on the video front, uh, we're not. And that's actually that kind of comes back into been just trying to catch up for a few years.
I think just now we're starting to have those conversations of like how can we be better? Um, how can we elevate these? How can we stand out in a way that's like very positive?
You know, I think in writing, you you touched on a a a few of them. I think that the things that have really made me stand out over the years is one is the tone. It's the humor, the irreverence, the silliness, the pop culture references.
One of it is the the brevity, you know, the compression, like, you know, getting very deep philosophical ideas into a couple sentences that are very memorable. Um, I'm I tend to be very good at that. So that's been my differentiator on the writing front.
But yeah, on the video and the podcast front, it's been it's been more difficult. And that that's actually this question of differentiation of like how are we going to be different? Like in my space, there's a million self-help podcasts that they all interview the exact same authors and we're interviewing those authors.
And so it's been this long conversation on my team of like we got to stop interviewing the same authors everybody else. Like we've got to find something else. Like we have to we have to move into a new territory in some way.
Um, so we're we're still working on that. I found the the Hot Ones video, YouTube, podcasting super interesting because they added just element of just increasing levels of heat as you're talking. And even if you don't have an interesting person in front of you, just how they respond to the hot sauce Yeah.
is its own form of entertainment. And so that was kind of a unique approach to that. Brilliant.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it was Did you see that was sold for like $40 million or something like that?
Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.
Yeah. Super smart. It is.
And it's one of those things that when you see it, it seems obvious. But I and I think that's true of most of I mean I think that's true of most create brilliant creative work is it seems obvious once you see it, but then of course it's impossible to come up with. That's some of the central questions that we're working with right now.
A great way to sell his hot sauce too by the way. Yeah. And it was like we were distracted by it, but it was like a brand play all along.
Just it was a gigantic marketing video. Yeah. Who knew?
Who knew? Who knew? Dirty, but very effective.
Okay. Um, we're in your studio and it's surprising me to walk into the studio and see the level of production, the lights, and the gear that you have here. Clearly, you're making an investment.
It's not just this studio. There's another one that you're building out. Yeah.
So, you're taking this very seriously, more so than any other author I've seen. Many times they you can barely see them on on a Zoom call. It's like, what?
I think your your lens is you got a fingerprint on it or something. Why are you making this investment? What is this saying about where you're heading in the next couple of years?
I am extremely bullish just on online media in general. Um, I think probably in the next 10 to 20 years, online media will just be media. Um, and I think people like you and me, like our businesses right now are probably early stage media companies.
Um, so I I have high conviction in that and I would rather be I would rather overinvest and underinvest on that thesis. Video content in general is like what I find most interesting at the moment and it's also kind of what works best at the moment in the online environment. I'd rather do go overkill than like not do enough.
Are you involved in picking out the titles and the thumbnails in your own videos? Yeah, for better or worse. Sometimes I wish I wasn't.
Well, for for people who don't understand this, your title and your thumbnail is going to be 80% of the success of the video. You can take a bomb piece of content, screw it up with the title and the thumbnail, and get nothing. Yeah.
How do I know this? Because if you have a sleeper and you you really believe it's good, keep testing thumbnails and titles, and eventually you'll see it go like that. Yeah.
Titles, thumbnails, and first lines of scripts. Like, it's just I probably should touch all of them and I should probably approve all of them. That they're too important and they they move the needle too much.
Sometimes I wish I could just outsource some of that stuff and not have to worry about it. But um it's also super important for the brand because it is the first thing people see so often. Okay, final question for you.
What business are you in? Mark, can you zoom out and tell us like what is the business that you're in and maybe we can poke around of there a little bit? So back in the peak blog days 20 like 2015 2016 I launched a uh a membership to my website.
This is basically Substack before Substack. We built it ourselves. We still run it on on our own server and everything, but basically in the members area, there's six online courses.
There's probably 2530 exclusive articles. There's a bunch of bonuses, some audios, some old webinars, stuff like that. And so, it's just a simple simple monthly subscription to kind of unlock all of the Mark Manson content.
That model, I would say, peaked probably 2021. Um, it was very successful for us. It was great.
It was like 80% of the content's free. And then for the super fans who love my content, they can get 20% more for, you know, whatever, 10 bucks, $9.99 a month or whatever. Since everything is now native on the social platforms it sells, like nobody clicks through the websites anymore.
Like that model's kind of dead. it's been dying a very slow death. Um, and so we've been just slowly replacing that with brand deals and sponsorships.
So on the newsletter, uh, podcast and YouTube channel. And then there's the usual, uh, speaking events, live appearances. There's book royalties.
I also have a self-published book from 13 years ago that still does well. Um, so yeah, that's the overall business. It's kind of a hodgepodge of monetization.
Have you looked into doing premium memberships on Instagram and on YouTube? I have. Two things I don't like about it.
One is the cut that they take is right extremely high. I think YouTube takes 30% or something something like that. Yeah.
Which is absurd. It's like absolutely absurd because we run everything natively on my own website um all we have to pay is the Stripe processing fee which is 2.2%. Right?
So it is a big difference and when you're doing you know uh six seven figures of revenue like that adds up that becomes tens of thousands of dollars over a long period of time and in case of YouTube that would be hundreds of thousands of dollars. The other thing I don't like is is that it is you're just limited in the content you can give, right? So the YouTube you just you upload videos for your members and nobody else can't really do a whole lot else as far as I understand.
Instagram kind of same thing. And so there's just a lack of flexibility there. It's still early days for us, but I'm always excited when platforms figure out how to reward us for making content and when they launch new features, they will do everything to support you because they obviously don't want it to fail.
Yeah. So, it's early days for us when we're experimenting with YouTube premium memberships. And so, we have I think we were over a thousand people now.
It should be a lot higher than that, but I haven't really pushed it as hard. I'll report back to you if it's working. Let me know.
But some of those people pay us a dollar, some people pay us 15. Those are the two tiers. The ones who pay us a dollar are just happy to support us and they get nothing else except for little badges says they're a supporter.
Yeah. The ones who pay us 15 bucks get content that I don't know where else to release these long six-hour workshop like I don't want to turn into a course. It's too much work.
Yeah. Too much responsibility. So I'll leave it here.
Or there's really kind of weird BTS stuff that only a super fan would want to watch would probably hurt our main channel. So we put it there and they get a kick out of it. So eventually when this becomes thousands or tens of thousands of people, it's very viable now even if I have to pay them the 30 or 40% that they take on top of that.
So what do you think your your next move will be then? Cuz you're like you have this membership that you say started 2014 15 and it's peaked. Is it more brand deals you think or is it something else?
No, I'd actually like to get away from brand deals. Um I think like everybody else. Um so we're relaunching uh the membership community this year actually just in a few months.
Um we're and we're actually going to relaunch it along with the podcast. So we're relaunching the podcast in a new format differentiation and then we're relaunching my membership community off the back of that and it will kind of live off the back of the podcast. we're going to be using like one of these community platforms so it'll be, you know, there'll be like discussion forums and I can show up and get involved and do live webinars and stuff.
So, we we'll be announcing that stuff. Uh I don't know when this is going to come out, but probably within a month or two of this coming out. And then the other thing I'm working on, uh it's still pretty early days, but I think there's a lot of potential applications of AI and in the mental health space and the personal development space.
you can kind of imagine like a an AI coach who can like coach you through whatever problem you're going through or help you apply certain principles um from like a book or a school of thought to like whatever your situation is. So currently working with somebody to build a business around that um but that's still probably a year away I would guess. So but really excited about that.
That's fun. That's like fun new stuff. So the new community will be on a different platform or the same one and just upgraded different one.
Different one. Are you using one of those? Yeah.
Commercial ones. Yeah. One of the Yeah.
One of the big white label. Okay. Yeah.
The We're using Mighty Networks. So by the time you're watching this video, we'll put the description in the link below if you're curious about this platform. What is it called?
The your community. The new community. It's going to be called A Thousand Small Wins.
A Thousand Small Wins. We'll put that in the link. They're going to get access to exclusive courses, content, y posts, articles, and some interactive things that you may or may not be doing, right?
Yes. Kind of vague and ambiguous, but I like that non-committal mark. I mean, it's not la I don't have the sales pitch yet because it's not launched yet.
So, it's uh well, I'll come back to you with the sales pitch in a month. And in some kind of AI coach, mentor something in the future. Yes.
Okay. Sounds wonderful. So that'll be trained on the way that you think and how you see the world.
Is that the idea or no? Initially, yes. But actually what we're really excited about doing is is uh there's just so much psychological literature on everything that's like publicly available, right?
But I think the current foundational models, you know, like chatbt and claude and everything like they're not trained on it. They're not trained on therapy modalities and therapy transcripts and stuff like that. So it's like I think there's a big opportunity of um if you can kind of train a model on all that stuff like feed all that data and research into it and then give it my skill set which is like knowing how to communicate with somebody who's struggling or going through something in their life and like meet them where they are.
You can kind of combine those two things like you can get something very powerful. I look forward to seeing what you do. I am also dabbling actually I shouldn't say dabbling.
We're we're investing heavily time, resources, energy towards figuring out how to use AI in every facet of what we do in our business, including creating a doppelganger of myself and allowing that person to coach because obviously I want to help as many people as possible. Time constraints, resources, energy level, I can't do that. So, we've done a pretty good job so far.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's called Dobot.
So, people can talk to Dobot and people have emotional experiences with the AI version of what it is that I believe in. So, I think there's some promise there. It's not perfect, like you say, but I'm not waiting for perfect to start.
Yeah. Like, let's get going. Right.
Mark, it's been a real pleasure. I've been wanting to have this conversation with you really long time. It was very serendipitous when Priestley is like, "Oh, hey, you want to go and hang out with Mark Manson?" I'm like, "Yeah." And then I meet you.
I'm like, "Okay, this is cool." Yeah. And I I'll just admit this, man, cuz I'm petty. I'll just admit it.
I don't want to like you. When I went to your YouTube channel, god dang it, what is he? You just leave some things alone.
Yeah. Then I watched them like, "This guy's smart. He's got it." Yeah.
His deliver is impeccable. And look at his view count. God, I just don't want to like you.
I hate to admit it, but you're kind of a likable guy. I'm I'm sure I'll find That's what Jess said. Kind of likable.
Kind of likable. She said I'm kind of likable. Yeah.
I'm sure I'll find something to mess it up or what? Yeah. Yeah.
Give Give me a little more time. I'm sure I'm sure I'll ruin it somehow. You'll be a scandal.
It's like you'll be like, I knew he was an [ __ ] Yeah. No, there was a This whole thing was a Ponzi scheme, guys. This whole book, the whole thing was all facade.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, well, thanks for doing this.
I had a good time. I hope you did, too. Yeah, man.
Thanks for coming out.
