Mark Manson TELLS ALL: Money, Dating, & The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck (#489)

Shaan Puri

Andrew tate is what men with no self esteem think high self esteem looks like unpack that a little bit

Mark Manson

so it's funny like watching the rise of tate because he's like a copy and paste of

Shaan Puri

20,000,000+ copies sold. The champion, the "No Fucks" champion, official title. I think Mark Manson. Welcome, welcome to the pod.

Mark Manson

When *Subtle Art* came out and it blew up, it was at the top of all the bestseller lists and stuff. Everybody in the publishing industry was like, "Oh, you're like the new phenom, debut author, overnight success!"

Shaan Puri

and I

Mark Manson

Was I an "overnight success"? I've been grinding on a blog for 10 years. Like, what do you mean "overnight success"?

Shaan Puri

were you good at the beginning or did you yourself

Mark Manson

no dude I was a fucking disaster

Shaan Puri

I was a total disaster. You obviously became a great writer, but I want to talk about what you're doing now, which is the YouTube channel. Was that like the main thing?

Mark Manson

When I saw MrBeast, a light bulb went off. I was like, "I love MrBeast!" I've been watching his content for a long time. However, one of my frustrations with him is that it's all very...

Shaan Puri

**Intro to the camera here:** We've got a 3-time New York Times bestseller, I believe. Yep, we have 20,000,000+ copies sold. The champion, the "No F*cks" champion... official title, I think. Mark Manson, welcome... welcome to the pod.

Mark Manson

good to be here

Shaan Puri

I've been a fan for a while, although I gotta admit I read like a ton of your blogs and I didn't read the book until... and I've actually finished the book, but until we booked this interview, I was like, "I should probably go and read the actual book that he's most famous for." Yeah, yeah, but there's something to like the fun of... "Oh, I like his old shit," you know? Like the cool band thing.

Mark Manson

I was a fan before he was cool yeah

Shaan Puri

that that whole thing

Mark Manson

yeah I

Shaan Puri

Actually, I was going to ask... So, when I was writing that intro, I thought, "This is pretty great, pretty impressive."

Mark Manson

yeah

Shaan Puri

But I now always wonder this: when you were younger, let's say a researcher was watching you when you were, I don't know, between the ages of 10-20... would it have been noticeable that you approached things a little differently even when you were younger?

Mark Manson

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, 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.

Shaan Puri

because you just weren't interested in school or what was the situation yeah

Mark Manson

I was bored, and I would just... whatever I was into, that's just kind of what I liked. I used to bring poker books to class and read them in the middle of physics class. My teachers would get mad at me, and I’m like, "Well, I'm just studying poker."

Shaan Puri

You know, were you big into like hold'em during the Chris Moneymaker phase basically? "Oh yeah, yeah." That's cool. Did you ever like go all in on it?

Mark Manson

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 dollars, 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 [limit].

Shaan Puri

You were in college, yeah? This is so you're paying like $20 for school but ignoring school to make $300 in a sit-and-go.

Mark Manson

Exactly. I stayed up until 5 AM. I made $200 last night, right? Then I hit my first big downswing and lost like half my bankroll in maybe 3 or 4 days. I was like, "Oh shit, I don't think I can pay rent this month." You know, I'm like, "This kinda sucks, actually." Yeah, it's a very poker, very unhealthy life. I love the game, but the lifestyle it requires—like the grinding, the patience, and the emotional fortitude to handle the ups and downs—it's tough. After about 6 months, I was like, "I don't think I'm built for this."

Shaan Puri

And you've... there's a lot of like degenerates. You end up paying around, like doing it. So you kind of look around and think, "This isn't healthy." It's...

Mark Manson

like yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

It's like they're not smoking, but there's like a secondhand smoke of their life that I don't want to be inhaling right now.

Mark Manson

for sure

Shaan Puri

For sure. I think we had kind of a similar set of interests. Maybe it's very common for, I don't know, 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 the next phase. Yeah, exactly. Where, you know, there's a... I think 2005, a book comes out that I know influenced you. It influenced me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Mark Manson

about of course the game

Shaan Puri

the game

Mark Manson

neil strauss

Shaan Puri

Yep, ironically, my girlfriend in high school, before I went to college, we were 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 saying, "You need this for college."

Mark Manson

yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

Describe how you found it and what was the next 24 hours like after you started reading it?

Mark Manson

You know, it's funny. It hit me at... well, depending on your perspective, the exact best or worst moment possible. My first girlfriend in high school had just cheated on me and left me for another dude. I was completely heartbroken, right? Just gutted. You know, weepy, whiny...

Shaan Puri

anne sucks even more in high school because like leaving you is like she's still there yeah right yeah yeah

Mark Manson

We're still in the hallway? Yeah, well, by this time I was in college. But like, we'd gotten together in high school. Anyway, it was... we didn't... you made the right move. So we didn't split up. We were like, "Oh, we're in love. We're gonna make it work. I'm gonna 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, right?

Shaan Puri

You should actually look in the camera. But, to the person who's 18 right now: don't do that. It's not going to work with a long-distance girlfriend when you both go to college.

Mark Manson

Dude, just don't do it. So anyway, I was absolutely heartbroken and distraught. I felt very angry and confused. I remember being in a bookstore and seeing that book on the table. My first reaction was disgust. I thought, "What is this? Who would read this?" Then I thought, "Yeah, maybe I'll read a few pages." I mean, Neil's such a good writer. Talk about someone who knows how to hook your attention and suck you into a world. I think I sat down and read probably the first 50 to 100 pages right there in the bookstore. Then I read the entire thing in just a couple of days. That was pretty much it. I was like, "Alright, the one girl who ever liked me completely messed me over and broke my heart. Every other girl I've ever met seems to have no interest, so clearly I'm not doing something right." You know, I'm willing to give anything a go at this. So yeah, I kind of got sucked into that world for, well, I guess four or five years. Eventually, I stumbled into my first business, which was in that world as well.

Shaan Puri

And I want to talk about that because I think it's, again, like a formative phase of my life too. Today, I think a bunch of people, rightfully so, admire you, follow you, and you add a lot of value to people's lives. Even though self-help sometimes gets a bad rep, you're almost by definition helping people with themselves, frankly the most important thing. But I would say it's probably a rabbit hole you went down now, and the content you create now. That previous rabbit hole you went down and the content you created was around... oh, there it is! There it is! Oh yeah, this is your first book, right? Yep, *Models: Attract Women Through Honesty*. Yep, at least that subtitle is, you know...

Mark Manson

Well, we can get to this in a second, but before that, that was very, very intentional. Yeah, that's jumping ahead a couple of years, but yeah.

Shaan Puri

So let's start with, okay, you read "The Game." You know, kind of like I always say this about Tim Ferriss' book, "The 4-Hour Workweek." It's like after you read that book, you have the **4-Hour Fever**. Yep.

Mark Manson

it's like

Shaan Puri

For the next four hours, you reconsider your entire life in like a fever dream. Yeah, and I just tell people that when I give them the book. I'm like, "You're gonna have... let's just schedule some time."

Mark Manson

you're gonna

Shaan Puri

This weekend, to have the 4-hour fever... The same kind of thing happens with "The Game" and you become... You start, I guess you'd describe it, you start practicing it. So let's start with... For people who haven't read "The Game" and don't know the core principles of it, what stood out to you at that time? 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."

Mark Manson

Well, there's a funny thing about the game, which is... and it's funny too because I would put *The 4-Hour Workweek* in this category as well. If I were to make a list of the five most impactful books that I've ever read in my life, those two would definitely be on the list. That said, I don't actually like the majority of advice in both of those books. I don't think it was applicable to me or that it actually worked for me. It was more about showing what was possible. Definitely more so in the game's case than for *The 4-Hour Workweek*, it's primarily principles and mindsets. My issue with *The 4-Hour Workweek* was that it made it sound way easier than it was. The real *4-Hour Workweek* 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-changing was that social skills and dating are skills that you can practice and get better at. That never occurred to me up to that point.

Mark Manson

In my life, like most young people, I just kind of assumed that either girls are into you or they're not. And if they're not, you're kinda... you're kinda fucked.

Shaan Puri

right

Mark Manson

Right, or not... in that case, but like... Reading that book and being like, "Oh, you can actually go out and practice and get better social skills and get better at being sexual and flirting and connecting with women and doing all these things." Like, those are all skills that you can practice. That was very revelatory for me. That said, when I actually went out and tried to do the stuff in *The Game*, which was a bunch of cheesy pickup lines - and they called them "routines" - like where...

Shaan Puri

stories magic routines

Mark Manson

Stories you would memorize and all this stuff... it was a disaster. It was completely corny, and I felt very inauthentic and out of place. But what was impactful is that it got me out of the house and talking to women on a regular basis. I realized, "Hey, if I actually just get myself in front of a bunch of cute girls, I'm not that bad!" I can talk, I can make a joke, and I can use my own personality as a starting point and just build from there. That's kind of what I started doing throughout college. By the end of college, I had developed the reputation as the big party guy, the player, you know, the guy who had four different girlfriends or whatever.

Shaan Puri

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. You're like, "Oh shit, there's like 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, I was like, "Oh, I can't." Just like you can't, there's no memorizing your way to success here. But the principles I thought were good. You're right about the forcing function of getting you to kind of believe in self-confidence, to believe that this might actually work; that you can actually approach somebody and have a good conversation, and that could lead to something. Yeah, it was pretty powerful. I even do this with podcasts. I have a note of like what's the first thing I'm going to talk about with you. 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 the same thing with these pickup artists. Most people just aren't even approaching anyone.

Mark Manson

yeah

Shaan Puri

With anything that's of interest that might lead to a conversation, so for me, that was like the bigger thing. Do you still have that kind of... Did you just think about that moment of social anxiety? That first moment, and like, was the game helpful in getting those reps? For sure.

Mark Manson

I mean, I had a lot of social anxiety when I was young, and it's funny because it took me a long time to appreciate that... You know, 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.

Shaan Puri

right

Mark Manson

And it's like, no, the pickup line is just the excuse to kind of get you through your anxiety. It gives you the courage to actually go say something. It doesn't really matter what you're saying, right? I actually had a very forward experience. You know, I overheard another guy say a word, and I 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 coin magic tricks and stuff, which was just a total disaster. I remember I was having no luck whatsoever. I actually got very fortunate in that I was in a bar or something, talking to these three girls. I was trying to do a magic trick, and they were really into it and excited. I kept messing it up, and then it kind of got awkward. At a certain point, they realized, "Wait, you're just doing a thing to hit on us." I tried to make a joke, and it was super lame or something. They kind of rolled their eyes and started to walk away. I was like, "Wait, I have another magic trick!" I remember one of the girls turned around and said, "You know, you were kind of cute. You should just be yourself." I was like, "That's right!" It was like my head exploded. That was one of those first moments where I thought, "Why don't I just start using my personality as the baseline and then iterate on stuff that already feels natural?" Instead of trying to be like some weird dude in a book, right? I can't believe I spent $10,000 and two years of my life studying all this stuff. I could have just walked up and said, "Hi, where are you from?" and it would have gotten me the exact same results.

Shaan Puri

There's a book that's like a food diet book. I haven't even read the book, but the last page is like a summary. You might know the book because you're an author. It's like, "Here's the... after all the studies and all the diets." Because, you know, there's like a trillion diets out there, and some are super complicated. You're like, you know, peeing on a strip to see if you're in ketosis or not.

Mark Manson

yep yep

Shaan Puri

You could take it to the nth degree, and it was like, "Yes, so it seems like the rules are... eat real food." Not like packaged, processed food, but eat real food. Not too much, yeah. And it was like... that was basically the core of the advice.

Mark Manson

yeah and it

Shaan Puri

Oh yeah, and if you actually intensely followed that, you would get all the results you want. But there's this thing where we sort of search for this other answer, the secret answer. Yes, it can't possibly be just that.

Mark Manson

There’s a weird thing that happens in a lot of these industries. The concepts and frameworks that sell well are often counterproductive. You see this in diet and nutrition, in exercise for sure, and in social skills, personal development, and self-help. You also see it in the pickup world. It's really sexy when a guy stands up and says, "I have a 3-step model that works every time, and you're gonna get laid like crazy, and you're gonna lose £100." You know, it's really appealing, and you want to believe it. It works, and it makes people millions of dollars, but then it doesn't actually provide good advice. The hard thing about these industries is that the good advice is often boring. The stuff that works—again, this is true in personal development, social skills, diet, and nutrition—is boring. It’s not the information that’s hard; it’s simply doing it. It’s about implementing it consistently over a long period.

Mark Manson

Of time, that's the hard part. There's no easy way to sell a solution to that. So, the easy thing to sell a solution for is, you know, "my 3 steps that work every time."

Shaan Puri

And I see this everywhere. I'm mostly in the kind of startup business world. You know, Warren Buffett, they're like, "Warren, you're pretty open about your strategies." Yeah, and they're not that complicated. Why do you think that more people don't do this? It was either him or Charlie Munger that said, "Because nobody wants to get rich slow." Yep, it's like, "Yeah, we just did this in public." And he's like, "You know, I made most of my wealth from the ages of 70 to 90." And like, you know, nobody wants to...

Mark Manson

do that

Shaan Puri

Nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear from that guy who hasn't done this. Yeah, tell them that they can do X, Y, Z faster or that they did it in a different way—in a complicated way—that, like, you know, you just didn't have the info. Now that you have the info, now it's all gonna work.

Mark Manson

yeah right

Shaan Puri

Same thing, like, you know, Y Combinator, which is the most successful startup investor and accelerator. Their number one advice is just "make something people want."

Mark Manson

mhmm

Shaan Puri

and they're like what's the greatest oh really status start

Mark Manson

up advice

Shaan Puri

And like, well... and then, but then... the way it helps is like if you just tell someone that they don't know how to use it. Yeah, but the question, like the audit, when you're like, "So do you think that people want this?" They're like, "Of course!" And 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."

Mark Manson

it's it's it's like that bell curve meme where it's like you

Shaan Puri

know genius and the

Mark Manson

Just make something people want. Then, in the middle of the bell curve, it's like, "Well, you gotta have these 12 steps and figure out these..." you know? And then the Jedi is like, "Just make something people want."

Shaan Puri

I love that meme that's I I told that I was like that's a meme hero it's a meme hero

Mark Manson

across so many domains it's amazing yeah

Shaan Puri

And I catch myself all the time. I'm like, "What would the Jedi do?" Oh, the Jedi would just say, "Yeah, do it because it's fun," instead of all these other things. Yeah, when you look back, because Ben's been flashing a bunch of your... like, I noticed Ben. Oh God, he flashes a bunch of your things that are like...

Mark Manson

oh my god

Shaan Puri

This is the cringe section of it. Don't worry, it gets better; the end of it will get better. But this is the cringe section. You have a bunch of these things that I'm like, they're just amazing headlines. We're going to talk titles later because you're like a title master, sure. But when you look back, what's the meaning you put or 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 make of it and also the story you tell yourself about what happened. So, when you look back on that phase, is it just like cringe and you don't want to ever think about it? Like, "I hope I forget about that." Or is it like, "No, that was actually really useful for me in these ways"? Is it just funny now? What's your reaction now?

Mark Manson

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, and then one-third just kind of funny. Just like, "Can you believe that happened?" Actually, when I moved out here to LA, I met up with Neil for the first time. We spent a day together, and we spent like half the day just kind of being like, "Can you believe that happened?"

Shaan Puri

can you

Mark Manson

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. I think the pickup artist industry is underrated as a cultural or social phenomenon, particularly for young men trying to find identity or find themselves in a very confusing world with a lot of information. When I look back at that time, like, yeah, in the industry, our coaches used to joke with each other. It was like, "Yeah, we all came for the women, but we stayed for the other dudes."

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly

Mark Manson

It's... it's most of the guys who really got into that. It wasn't about the girls; it was that they needed to feel accepted and validated by other men. There was, I guess, a yearning for a masculine role model. I was very aware of that at the time, but I didn't really know what to make of it. As the years have gone on, I look back and think that 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 a generation of kind of post-feminism—a generation of men who had fewer father figures and role models, and a lot more confusion about who they're supposed to be in the world. I think that cycle is coming back today, and you're seeing a lot of that happen again with a different set of role models and a different industry.

Shaan Puri

well let's talk about one of them so I think andrew tate is like the

Mark Manson

for sure

Shaan Puri

You know, poster boy right now, that Ben. Can you pull up that tweet he has? He has a great tweet about Andrew Tate. I want to...

Mark Manson

ask you yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, **Andrew Tate** is what men with no self-esteem think high self-esteem looks like. As a rule, narcissism is always mistaken for confidence by those who have no confidence. From there, it doesn't take much for the dynamic to turn abusive or exploitative.

Mark Manson

Yeah, so it's funny watching the rise of Tate. He's like a copy and paste of half the guys that were in that industry, right? You know, it's like all the stuff he says, I'm like, "Oh yeah, I remember. This guy used to say that." Oh yeah, that guy used to say that too. Oh yeah, that guy made a lot of money saying that. You know, it's all the same stuff just recycled in a new package. I do think Tate is uniquely charismatic, and I think he has an interesting backstory that a lot of young men respect. Right? And so that adds...

Shaan Puri

to the

Mark Manson

It's given him a lot more amplification. It's also just a different era with social media and everything.

Shaan Puri

but and he like layered on an mlm yeah so he

Mark Manson

was like yeah that's right

Shaan Puri

so he just combined like 3 of the most powerful forces in the world

Mark Manson

yeah seriously

Shaan Puri

Pretty insane charisma. Yeah, it's like this cocktail of words that cast a spell on young men.

Mark Manson

yeah

Shaan Puri

And then an MLM distribution model where he's like, "Look, cut up clips of me and post them everywhere." That's how you rise in the ranks. You're going to make money by promoting me, which is insane.

Mark Manson

It's honestly... somebody really needs to do this. I mean, we probably need some time, but like, 10 years from now, I want to see somebody write a really good book about him. Right? And like, a fair book—not one trying to smear him—but rather take an honest look at who this guy was. Why did he blow up? Why did this work? I think it's easy, obviously, to 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 I think that's way less interesting than trying to understand why there is such a demand for this guy again. 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. I really felt that there were kind of two strains of dating relationship advice for men. One was basically promoting narcissism, selfishness, and power dynamics.

Shaan Puri

right

Mark Manson

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 giving up that potential to just put notches on your bedpost and brag to your buddies. That is a very bad trade-off. If you look at it just in terms of a man's overall lifespan, that's a very bad trade-off. So I was kind of like, "Okay, how do we detoxify this advice? What does that look like?" And it's not just about treating women with respect; it's treating yourself with respect too. Because 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 basically just measuring yourself by how "wet" your dick gets, and that's a very demeaning way to view yourself and your own self-esteem. 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. I was like, "Well, if I'm getting out of the industry, 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 messed up, and we need to stop doing it.

Shaan Puri

were you good at the beginning or did you suck

Mark Manson

No, dude, that was a *fucking disaster*. I was a total disaster. Do you want me to talk about the content side or the marketing side?

Shaan Puri

whatever's more interesting you you tell me

Mark Manson

Well, I'll start with the 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. You just get those reps in, you know? Back in the day, when blogs were still a thing, I used to get asked all the time, "How do I start a blog? How do I grow a blog? How do I make a living as a blogger?" My answer was always the same, which is like, "Write 100 blog posts, then come ask me again." Right? And have you...

Shaan Puri

seen by the way mr beast has like almost the exact verbatim answer

Mark Manson

yes and I love it because yeah it's the exact same thing I used to tell people

Shaan Puri

And it's a combination of... it's actually the right advice because you need a bunch of reps. You need to suck for a little bit and just try to make each of the next videos better.

Mark Manson

and nobody's

Shaan Puri

done also it's a filter it's like are you serious or you're not serious yeah I will help you if you're serious

Mark Manson

yes

Shaan Puri

but not every episode you're not serious this is the easy task

Mark Manson

Exactly, exactly. And the funny thing is, most people, if they go and write 100 blog posts and try to make each one better, by the 100th one, they don't need the advice anymore. They know what they're doing wrong. They know what they need to get better at.

Shaan Puri

So, was there anything that got you better? What did you read? Did you follow someone or model your stuff after someone? Do you remember how you got good in terms of writing and content?

Mark Manson

my 2 big inspirate I was a huge bill simmons fan back in the day wow

Shaan Puri

we were like very very aligned

Mark Manson

yeah

Shaan Puri

back in the day page you know page 2

Mark Manson

Page 2. Yep, and I remember reading his column. Each week was like an event in my life. I was so excited to go read it. I remember thinking, "I want my art" because back then, the meta—this is pre-newsfeed, pre-social media—everything in the blogosphere was either SEO or the blogroll type thing. Yeah, like link farming. You know, you would write something spicy so that a bunch of other bloggers would want to comment on it, so they'd link to you and all this stuff. It was very much a volume game. The standard advice was always, "Don't write one big blog post a day. Write 20 single paragraphs and post those as individual blog posts each day." That’s what’s going to make you grow. I always hated that. It always felt very **shitty** and uninspiring. I love Bill Simmons, and I was like, "Man, I want to be the Bill Simmons of my industry."

Shaan Puri

right

Mark Manson

I want to have these epic 10-page posts that guys just get lost in. You know, they schedule their week around them, right?

Shaan Puri

and you end up feeling like a friend it's like it's a hang

Mark Manson

Yeah, I think that probably hurt me in the short run, but it helped me in the long run. So, yeah.

Shaan Puri

I tried to meet up with him when we came out here. I was like, "I want to schedule..." and I was thinking, "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 [interviews] where he's the guest. I don't... I've never really seen any, to be honest.

Mark Manson

like yeah he's like a he's a big deal at spotify now so

Shaan Puri

yeah

Mark Manson

he's you know he's

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's fine, but like whatever, who cares? But he has written some... If people haven't read this, go read it. 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 sell out to the algorithm," the algorithm of that time, the meta of that time.

Mark Manson

Yeah, and I also think it helped that I was in a pretty niche and insulated industry. Like, everybody kinda knew each other and everybody talked about each other and everything. So it actually, I think, helped me get my name out even more because 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.

Shaan Puri

do you remember what was like kind of your first thing that broke out

Mark Manson

I really... in that era, I really don't. It was so gradual, man. It's funny because, you know, *The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck* is so massive. It was funny when—this is jumping ahead a little bit—but when *The Subtle Art* came out and it blew up, it was at the top of all the bestseller lists and stuff. Everybody in the publishing industry was like, "Oh, you're like the new phenom, debut author, overnight success." And I was like, "Overnight success? I've been grinding on a blog for 10 years! What do you mean, overnight success?"

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I was doing like, you know, that's like the low status thing in society. It's like, "Yeah, I'm a blogger." Yes, exactly. So you're unemployed. Like, what is that, you know? Oh, I got...

Mark Manson

I got stories... I remember like 2013, 2014. By this time, my audience was pretty big; I had a few hundred thousand readers. I remember going home for Christmas one year and kind of getting into an argument with my parents. My stepmom was just like, "When are you going to get a real job?" She said, "I know such and such; they're hiring a web designer. You know, you could go do that." I was like, "That'd be a waste of my time." She said, "Oh, you could probably make $100,000 a year." I replied, "I already make $100,000 a year." She just looked at me and said, "No, you don't."

Shaan Puri

it's like what the fuck you don't lie I

Mark Manson

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 had this weird confidence. I saw Bill Simmons' trajectory over the past two days, and he did it differently than everybody else. I was like, "Why can't I do that?" I'm not going to post 20 times a day. I'm just going to do one epic article that everybody gets excited about. That was kind of my MO. It's funny because that eventually became the meta kind of in the more Facebook era in the early 2010s. So I was ahead of the curve, I guess. On the marketing side, I was trash. Selling does not come natural to me at all. It was very much something that I had to consciously train myself to practice. I took a bunch of copywriting courses, went to marketing seminars, and even pirated marketing seminars. It's funny because the psychology side, the personal development side of everything, the social dynamics, the relationship advice—like that all came very easily and naturally to me. It was fun; it was kind of a hobby. So I never really had to work hard to figure that out. But anything I was working on to get better at my business, it was always the sales and marketing stuff, right? Figuring that shit out. I can't find this client info.

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Shaan Puri

So, you've done those content reps. 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.

Mark Manson

sure

Shaan Puri

Or the YouTube channel, and it seems like that's... I don't know, is that your main thing? Is that like your new baby?

Mark Manson

right now that's the new main thing yeah

Shaan Puri

And so, I think you dropped the first video maybe a couple of days ago.

Mark Manson

yeah

Shaan Puri

And doing the Super Bowl, can you pull it up? I want to actually do a little... So, one of my favorite content things is this phenomenon that happens in sports, particularly in football. They take quarterbacks that are about to be drafted, and I don't know if you've ever seen this, but they sit down and look at game film with them just to see kind of how they think. Sure, and it's my favorite thing in any podcast when you can really not just talk in the abstract.

Mark Manson

but talk

Shaan Puri

In the specific, like, why did you do this? How did you think about this? Yeah, we hung out with Mr. Beast and we did that with some of his videos. The way he thinks is like, "Oh, okay, I get it. I get it." I learned something tactical, but also, I understand him more. This is versus when you ask them general questions. So, I kind of want to play this game because I don't know how it will work, but we'll try it. 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.

Mark Manson

It’s 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. Alright, let's pause right there. Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri

Alright, walk me through that. Well, a lot was happening there. How do you think about this? Obviously, some Mr. Beast inspiration here.

Mark Manson

He was very inspirational. So let me zoom out for a second more broadly, and then I can kind of come back to this video specifically. 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 that I was consistently very frustrated by it. I feel like the incentives are structured within coaching industries in the personal development world are counterproductive. Right? So it's like if you're paying me a bunch—let's say, I don't know, you have self-esteem issues and you're paying me a bunch of money to help you out—first of all, my incentive isn't to fix your self-esteem issues. My incentive is to make it feel like I'm fixing your self-esteem issues, even though they're still there.

Shaan Puri

like a pharmaceutical company yeah exactly I don't wanna assure you

Mark Manson

Exactly. And then on your side of the equation, it's what often happens in practice. On the customer side, what often happens 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? I've been dealing with this my whole life. I just paid you a bunch of money, you deal with it now. That's actually what they're looking for. 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. I've kind of found myself in awkward situations with clients and stuff, so I just got away from it entirely and just kind of stuck to 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 I've been watching his stuff for a long time. But one of my frustrations with him is that it's all very surface level. 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..."

Shaan Puri

won character

Mark Manson

Yeah, I'm like, "Tell me about the guy who won," or "Tell me, like, you're down to four people. Tell me about their lives. Bring their families in. I wanna see... let's get some juicy drama going," right?

Shaan Puri

I talked to him about this. Yeah, and I was like, because I was like, he was talking about like Netflix or TV shows.

Mark Manson

yeah

Shaan Puri

And it was like, "Oh, you know, what can you learn about TV shows? What do you learn from TV shows that have been running for a long time and do really well?" He says that he thinks they can learn a lot from us. He's like, "Yeah, I'd love to see their retention curve." He mentions that they just don't know where people are dropping off. What we found was that if you hit them with more action and stakes, along with the quest and curiosity, you open the loop, and that's going to keep people engaged. But he also thinks the one thing TV does well is character. He says, "We don't do any narrative or character, and I gotta figure out how I'm going to do that." He's like, "I don't know how to do that yet, but we should probably learn that."

Mark Manson

Yeah, so this is kind of another side statement, and this gets more into my personal strategy or the opportunities I see in the future. In the current media environment, I think traditional media has always had the luxury of having that lock-in. When 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? In the previous era of television, you didn’t want to sit there and flip around for 10 minutes looking for something else, so you just kind of watched a mediocre show. Traditional media is coming from a hundred years of the luxury of just having that buy-in and having you locked in. They can take the time it requires to build character, build narrative, and build drama, right? They 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. There's always something fighting for your attention, trying to get you to click off. So, YouTube is just about retention, retention, retention. It's merciless and absolutely brutal. I think we're in an interesting media environment where YouTubers have become masters of retention, and the content on YouTube is super hooky.

Shaan Puri

and click through rate right like those 2 two variables

Mark Manson

Yes, and super hooky. Very clickbaity, like addictive, but also kind of empty calories. You can just blow through like six videos and then be like, "Wait, what? I don't remember a single thing I just watched." That's kind of unsatisfying. Traditional media is caught on the other side of things, like, "Wait, shit! People are watching our shows now with their phones in front of them." They've now got five different streaming services they can pick from, and they can easily switch to another movie mid-movie, right? So they're trying to catch up on the retention side of things. I think YouTube is trying to catch up on the character development and drama side of things. I believe whoever figures it out first is going to win really big. But anyway, back to the MrBeast thing and the coaching thing. I was watching MrBeast videos for a couple of years, and then last year, I was kind of taking a break and trying to figure out what I was going to do next in my own career. I had felt this about his videos for a long time, and I started thinking, "Man, what if you built the challenges in a way that forced character development?" What if the challenges weren't built around, you know, standing in a circle or keeping your hand on a car? What if it was built around hanging on this Lamborghini? Yeah, like what if it was built around a real personal issue that you have to investigate to try to understand?

Shaan Puri

right

Mark Manson

And that's when the light bulb went off. I'm like, not only does that potentially create amazing, transformative YouTube content, but it also solves that coaching issue as well. When you take somebody who's struggled their entire life with, say, anxiety or another issue, the problem is never that they lack information to fix their problem. The problem is that they're just not doing it right. They're not actually going out and doing it. They could pay a coach $1,000, and the coach can say, "Okay, well, you paid me $1,000, now go do it." Sometimes that works, but not always. Alternatively, you could say, "I'll give you $1,000 if you go do it and fix your own issues." What does that look like? What is the most effective lever for behavior change? It's financial incentive. So, what if you actually create a financial incentive for people to deal with their issues and do the things they've always known they need to do but have just never had the guts to do? That's when I was like, "Holy..."

Shaan Puri

kinda genius yeah

Mark Manson

I was like, "Fuck, I need to make this." This is our first attempt at it, and it's funny because this was shot end of April, early May. We're recording this end of July. There are... I'm already aware of like 15 things that are wrong with this video. They're... it's actually underperforming our expectations, and there's so many things that we need to fix. But it's your first rep.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Mark Manson

It's the first rep. It's like the first... it's like the beta test. But I'm super, super excited about the format.

Shaan Puri

Makes a ton of sense. And also, like, even just mechanically, the things you just said. So if you know, coaching is getting somebody to transform, the way they transform is not just information; it's about doing it. The best way to get somebody to do it is maybe through a financial incentive or even the fact that they agree to be in the content. Yeah, there's a contract there to do the thing. But you also have to consider, how can you offer $10,000? Why could you pay your... that's not a sustainable business. But it is if it's YouTube content, right? Exactly. You have almost the full loop to be able to make something.

Mark Manson

Create work. It creates a very beautiful flywheel where you're helping that individual. In this video, it's a woman named Melinda. I'm helping Melinda, and she did get amazing results. You know, she's finally doing the things that she's always known 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 stuff; they all know what I'm going to say. Now, millions of people get to actually watch somebody overcome their character. Overcome... yeah, it's like, "Oh, that's what it looks like. Oh, that's how people respond in that situation."

Shaan Puri

You know the difference between watching *Rocky* and then somebody sitting in a chair and saying, "You should kind of work really hard."

Mark Manson

yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

it's a different emotional register and totally you remember 20 years later and still think about when you work out

Mark Manson

Yeah, and the other one... You don't totally... So, it's the qualitative feedback on this. It's been, honestly, some of the best of my entire... Like, if you look through the comments of this video, there's tons of comments of people saying: > "I cried." > "This was me." > "Oh my god, I was not expecting this." > "This is so powerful." You know, it's pretty incredible.

Shaan Puri

And so, how did you think about those first 10 to 15 seconds? I don't know how long we went, but what are you trying to achieve in those first 15 seconds of this video?

Mark Manson

So, with YouTube content, there's always this question of, "What's the hook?" What's going to get people to buy in? What's going to get people to stick around? One of the challenges that we face with this format is that all the stuff we're having people do is super abstract. For example, social anxiety is super abstract. How do you show social anxiety? It's not very obvious how to represent that visually. Similarly, low self-esteem—how do you show that visually? So, we were thinking about, "Okay, what are some hooks or gimmicks that we can implement into the format that can get people bought in?" The first and most obvious in this current Mr. Beast meta...

Shaan Puri

briefcase of cash

Mark Manson

Is it money, right? It's like everybody on YouTube is doing it. It seems to be working for a lot of people. So, kind of the obvious starting point is like, "Okay, well, what is it?"

Shaan Puri

With the Jedi, right? Jedi and the numbskull. What if you gave him $10,000? Yeah, like what if he gave...

Mark Manson

Him $10,000. But the funny thing is that this intro did not perform very well. So, what is that?

Shaan Puri

What tells you that? Like, you're looking at the curve, you're looking at the retention chart. What should it have been? Yes, for what? What do you think it should have been to be considered good?

Mark Manson

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. So I think what we've learned from this one is that the new approach needs to be... we just need to start mid-challenge. So like the first challenge in this video is just approach. We'd... yeah, we take her to a mall and we tell her she has to find somebody from Canada. And like she...

Shaan Puri

brought by the way it's so funny because she it's it's so like relatable

Mark Manson

which is why

Shaan Puri

I think you should have started with this. I was actually going to suggest this. Yeah, it's so relatable because you tell her, "Someone in this mall is from Canada. You need to go approach them, ask them, and find them." And she's like, nervous laugh, and then she starts faking being on a phone call, which everybody's done. It's like, "Are you faking a phone call?" It's like, "Yeah, yeah, I am. I just... I don't know, it makes me feel more comfortable."

Mark Manson

dude she

Shaan Puri

was so relatable

Mark Manson

Such a spaz, right? Such a spaz! It was really fun. In hindsight, it's like we should've just opened up with that and then explained the format later. Yeah, but like, I mean, we're new. We're paving the road as we drive down it.

Shaan Puri

So, cast. Yes, which is hard and you don't know what's going to happen. And like, this is kind of reality TV for sure. You'd... 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 industry, you kinda know, "Okay, if I pull this lever, I'm gonna get more juice."

Mark Manson

yep

Shaan Puri

Let's just pretend if this woman's transformation was not *that* crazy, but in the edit, you could kind of... oh, for sure make this video better. It's like, do we want to have our video be better or worse? Obviously better, but at the same time, we don't want to sell out. How have you dealt with that? How hard do I want to turn the knob or pull the lever of, you know, manipulation to make something work?

Mark Manson

The few that we've shot, all of them have been very successful so far. However, I've told the team that I want to be realistic; eventually, we're going to hit one that's not successful. We might not help the person, or it might not work out right. Maybe we help them a little, but they don't get there. I think it's very, very important to be honest about that and to actually make a video that explores why that is. There's a credibility and authenticity that is just so, so important, especially in my industry. This has been one of my criticisms of my own industry for the past 10 to 15 years: the lack of trustworthiness and the lack of credibility.

Shaan Puri

Mhmm, because if you promise the magic pill that works in 2 minutes, you're gonna sell more. And if you say this takes you 2 years of tough work... right? So you've probably dealt with that a bunch, and like maybe now you've got "fuck you" money from the book and you're like, "I don't have to do that anymore." You know? I guess... how has that changed?

Mark Manson

Well, I'm very fortunate that the book did well. First of all, it is true; the book did so well that I do have "fuck you" money. So, I don't really care if this YouTube project is losing money. It's probably going to lose money for a year or two, and I'm fine with that. But, like, I'm also very fortunate that I made my money being very explicit about that. There is no magic pill; there is no cure-all. It's funny, dude. Even when you dig into research on therapies, like what modality of therapy is most effective, you start looking at the research and it's startling. There's nothing that has more than a 50% hit rate. Nothing! There’s no form of therapy that produces positive outcomes more than 50% of the time, which is crazy because therapy is like the most tried and true. We've had it for 200 years; it's the one thing everybody is directed to go to. So, in the world of psychology, there's just so much that we don't know about what works. What works for you could completely fail for me and vice versa because everybody's so individual. So, to your...

Mark Manson

About casting. A huge part of our casting process is doing pre-shoot interviews. I conduct pre-shoot conversations and interviews with the person to really gauge if this is someone I can help. For every video we shoot, we talk to probably 2 or 3 people. Half of those people, I'm like, "You know, I'm not really confident I can actually get them over the line." Whereas with this woman, I talked to her, and within 10 minutes, I was like, "Yeah, no, I could give me a week with her. I could get something out of it."

Shaan Puri

you know did you do you watch the tv show the bear by any chance

Mark Manson

I have not everybody says it's amazing but I've not yet

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's actually... 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, it was terrible at the beginning. Sure, it's slow. It's like one of those cool shows where it's like, you know, we're not gonna be clickbaity.

Mark Manson

yeah

Shaan Puri

And I'm like, I'm kind of used to that hit. So, you know, if you're really going to pay this off with character, it takes some time. But man, there’s like an episode in the second season that has such a huge payoff on character that now I'm telling everybody, "You gotta watch the show. Just get to the second season, get to the end of it." Yeah, you know, it's so, so satisfying. But we talked, so we reached out to one of the writers and we were like, "Hey, there's respect." We just like to learn from people like that. Like, how do you do this? How do you do this character thing? Have you learned anything in the process of doing these videos? Because it's me, it's not writing, it's not books. You now have casting and characters and stuff that you probably haven't done before.

Mark Manson

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. The post *Subtle Art* of my career. I did three books back to back to back. I did a movie, like a bunch of traditional media success. Everything was wildly successful—very busy, lots of money. I moved to LA, took a few months off, and I was just like, "Man, I miss the grindy grassroots internet stuff." But what I also realized is that I miss being bad at something. I miss just like throwing shit at a wall and being like, "Did that work?" "No? Alright, let's try this." In traditional media, you don't really have the flexibility to do that. If a studio or a large publisher is bringing you in, it's because they know you can make a hit, and you need to make a fucking hit. So, I missed the internet days of like, "Alright, let's try ten things and just know that six are gonna fail." That's just exciting to me. Part of this project was like, "I want to learn. I want to get back on a learning curve and experience that again." So yeah, I've been learning a million things about video production, about storytelling—visual storytelling in particular. One of the big lessons from this video is that I still very much just write like a book writer. A lot of the mistakes that were made in this video are because it was organized in such a way that would work really well in an article or a book.

Shaan Puri

right

Mark Manson

but it works terribly on video

Shaan Puri

what's an example what do

Mark Manson

You mean by that example, it's like the intro, right? It's a great intro on paper, but it's a terrible intro on video because it's abstract and not visually interesting. You start with the challenge, right? This woman is running around the mall, asking people who are from Canada. That's super weird, and you're like, "What's going on?" Then, you slowly drip context over the course of like 10 minutes. Whereas when you're writing a book or an article, you need to put all the context upfront. This is what we're doing; this is what this is about. You know, it's like the old school essay. You have to have your thesis in the first paragraph, and then you have to have your three bullets and all this stuff. So, my brain still kind of defaults to that, and I'm having to untrain myself in a lot of ways. The funny thing is, and again, one of the reasons I'm doing this, is I think my natural strength is story, character, and narrative. That's where I shine naturally. What I'm weaker at is the retention, the hooks, the...

Shaan Puri

gen z shit the gen z shit yeah yeah exactly

Mark Manson

yeah exactly

Shaan Puri

There's something... have you ever heard this term, like, "the millennial pause"? No? It's so funny! It's basically Gen Z people. If you watch the start of their videos, they start with them already talking. They're like mid-word as the video starts. Whereas every millennial is like, they click record and they're like, "Hey everybody!" That little pause is like, you're already swiped on TikTok if you haven't. You gotta be like mid-interesting thing. I was like, "That's so fucking true!" That's funny. That is so true. That is so funny, man. So, you're doing this series. What's like the craziest or most interesting challenge? I guess you can't give away too much, but what concepts are like, "Oh, I can't wait to see how that's gonna turn out," or like, "I really wanna try something like this?"

Mark Manson

A lot of the social stuff is the most interesting because you can do a lot of fear-based activities. 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, it doesn't feel like there's as much depth as the social stuff. So, we have a challenge in another video where I printed out flat earth flyers saying, "Do you know the truth about the planet?" It's a picture of a flat earth, and I made her go into a public place and hand them out to people, right? She tried to convince them to be flat earthers, and she was absolutely mortified—just horrified. But it's super fun because then it's like, "Well, why do you care? You don't know these people. You're never gonna see them again. Why is it so horrifying?" It's just... yeah, it's super exciting for me. This is honestly the most fun I'm having in my career in probably 6 or 7 years.

Shaan Puri

Which is a dope lesson because, you know, you wrote a book with Will Smith. Yeah, he had a movie. You know, he got to do a bunch of things that, like, I would say are like the on paper...

Mark Manson

the hashtag goals people

Shaan Puri

Think they want, and like, actually that's not where the source of joy and happiness comes from.

Mark Manson

I think

Shaan Puri

You, I think, had said something which was like "happiness is from solving problems." Is that you? Yeah, which is when you start at the beginning of a learning curve, you're just gonna suck and solve a bunch of problems to make something good. And that's a lot more satisfying than...

Mark Manson

For me, at least, it is... you know, I'm sure there are people out there who prefer a more traditional media environment. But one of the things I learned is that I can do traditional media projects and do very well at them. However, I don't feel that same passion with them as I do with stuff like this. I like owning my own projects. I like experimenting. I enjoy the creative process, having complete creative freedom, and also owning it. Additionally, I like getting to package it and control the brand around it. That's also part of it. I mean, we can talk about this too, but it's funny. When my movie came out and I did all the press for it, every single journalist I talked to asked, "So, are you going to do another movie?" In my head, I'm like, "Fuck no, absolutely not! I'm going to go make a YouTube channel." Because that was actually my lesson from making a movie. It was like I should...

Shaan Puri

saying it

Mark Manson

I should just have a YouTube channel like this because the economics of the creator economy are fundamentally better. The distribution is miles better, you have complete ownership, there's complete creative freedom... I just don't see how this doesn't end up ahead in 10 years.

Shaan Puri

it's like hanging by like a prestige threat

Mark Manson

it really is

Shaan Puri

right I'm like oh yeah status

Mark Manson

It really is. I'm sure... I don't think Hollywood's going to die, but I imagine it's going to be very similar to what's happened with newspapers and Twitter. There are still prestigious newspapers, and they still kind of matter a little bit. It's still nice to be in The New York Times or whatever. However, the real intellectual debate and substance, the stuff that drives culture, happens on Twitter and Substack, and it has for years now. I think we're coming up on an inflection point. 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 as well. Yes, there are still going to be Marvel movies and Netflix is going to have its TV shows. It's going to be very prestigious to be on those platforms. But culture is going to be driven by creators. Within this decade, creators are going to grow up, and the production value is going to get better. The storytelling is going to improve, and it's going to hit an inflection point.

Mark Manson

Where it starts driving culture and not the traditional media

Shaan Puri

if it's not already I mean what what's the I

Mark Manson

think I think if you're under 25 it is already

Shaan Puri

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?

Mark Manson

apparently I am I guess

Shaan Puri

so so the book

Mark Manson

I don't feel good at them but

Shaan Puri

the book obviously has a good title and it started with the the book came from a blog post correct

Mark Manson

like it

Shaan Puri

wasn't intended to be like a book it was

Mark Manson

like yep

Shaan Puri

Here's a blog post. Why did you know to turn that one into a book? By the way, did it hit in a different way or...?

Mark Manson

Yeah, that one... I mean, I had a lot of articles go viral over that period. From 2012 to 2015, I probably had 10 or 12 articles go super viral, but that one just hit on a whole other level. It was so... I had already written probably 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...

Shaan Puri

hadn't done a book in years right before that

Mark Manson

no I just done models I was like

Shaan Puri

so you're you're but you're already thinking about a book and then it was like

Mark Manson

yep

Shaan Puri

Oh, lean into this one. Yep, so there's this... diagram or picture. Is that... did you make that? Or the one of the guy floating away on the balloons, is that... Oh, that was... is that from something? What is this?

Mark Manson

that was an old meme back in the day okay

Shaan Puri

So good! Yeah, I love it. And that's as good as that Midway meme. It's like, "Yes, this image can become..." like, you know, transformational.

Mark Manson

It's funny... Yeah, I haven't seen that. That used to be around everywhere back in like 2013-2014, and then I haven't seen it in a long time. Right, there was also the original article. Because back then, a big part of packaging an article for Facebook and Twitter was what image pops up.

Shaan Puri

you share meta the meta yeah

Mark Manson

When you share... So, we used to spend a lot of time, you know, kind of similar to thumbnails on YouTube. We used to spend a lot of time looking for the right image for the share image on Facebook. 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 Photoshopped a picture of a kitten in front of like a bomb exploding, kind of.

Shaan Puri

like a that meme is is huge

Mark Manson

yeah and so we pulled that and used that as like the

Shaan Puri

the share

Mark Manson

Yeah, the shared image... it was just kind of this magical combo of content, title, and image. It just all worked.

Shaan Puri

Do you remember how you thought of that title? "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck." Where does that come from? Are you sitting down, or are you just hammering out a bunch of possibilities?

Mark Manson

Back then, I used to keep a list of article ideas... just kind of a running list of ideas that I would add to. I'd have conversations with people and something would pop up, and I'd just pull out my phone and add it to [the list].

Shaan Puri

the list

Mark Manson

And 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." At that time, I had just done, I think, two different articles with "fuck" in the title. I had just kind of discovered that if you put "fuck" in the title, it would go further. Everything would go further. So, I was adding "fuck" to a bunch of my titles at the time. I was just kind of on the lookout for cool titles that you could add "fuck" into. I think I knew I wanted to do an article about **not giving a fuck** because that was just an obvious topic. When I heard that song, I was like, "Well, 'Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck'—that's pretty damn good."

Shaan Puri

like I should use that let's pull up some of your other ones so you

Mark Manson

have

Shaan Puri

the most important question of your life yep that's good

Mark Manson

I like that that's a huge one

Shaan Puri

Because you gotta know, I need to know. Yeah, what is this jackass thinking? I was like, "Probably nothing," but let me just jack this.

Mark Manson

the most important x like it's it's it's always gonna work

Shaan Puri

you have life is a video game and here are the cheat codes that's like a you know faster path

Mark Manson

That has become... I feel like that's become a trend. So, this is the other thing: I think a lot of my skill with this just came from cranking out articles in the Facebook era, trying to get articles to go viral. It was like so much of it had to do with the title. It's been interesting, you know, now that it's been 10 years. Some of these have kind of just become, I guess, classic or common. Yeah, yeah. You just see there's probably 10 different brands that use these same titles all the time. For example, the "Life is a Video Game" one—I see that everywhere.

Shaan Puri

I wrote this thread about that. The first line of it was, "Everybody seems to think Clubhouse is the next big thing." Yep, but I think it's gonna fail. It's like, "Grab some popcorn. Here's how I think it goes down." Yeah, yeah, and that thing went crazy viral. And like my hero, you know, Malcolm Gladwell started following me. Bill Simmons DMs me, and it's like, "Oh shit, this is amazing!" 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...

Mark Manson

like people just replace api

Shaan Puri

Is the next big thing. But here's, you know, he grabs a popcorn. Here's how I think it goes down. It's like, yeah, the copy-paste, but it obviously loses effect as it goes.

Mark Manson

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 you know, 10 years ago it was very much a sense of like if you came up with a title that was... like a banger, it was like that was yours.

Shaan Puri

right yeah

Mark Manson

Yeah, you know, and it's like... no. If somebody stole it, it was like they're a piece of shit, and then you'd call them out and your audience would call them out. I used to get emails from fans saying, "This guy copied your article," and all this stuff. I never get those emails anymore. It's like everybody just rips everybody off now. So anybody who posts anything that goes viral anywhere, the next day there's...

Shaan Puri

half life

Mark Manson

there's 20 more versions on every platform and it's just like it's the way the game's played today

Shaan Puri

it's that meme that it's like you know I made this thing thing and then it's like they're like not holding

Mark Manson

it's like

Shaan Puri

I made this thing

Mark Manson

I made this yeah

Shaan Puri

I don't think people even are are aware of it anymore yeah is blogging dead

Mark Manson

I think it depends on how you define "dead." There was an era in the early 2010s where a blog could gain reach beyond its own specific niche. You could kind of get a mainstream audience and hit a critical mass. I think today you can still make a living off a blog; it's just that you've got to have your niche figured out. You really need to be tuned into them, and you're probably never going to scale an audience past low six figures. Whereas, 10 years ago, I mean, I think at my peak I was getting like 2.25 million visitors a month. So, it's a different world now. It is still possible, but I think it really only works if you're going the blog route instead of podcasting or video. You have to have a really good reason, and it probably has to be a very specific niche.

Shaan Puri

do it did did you podcast or do you podcast

Mark Manson

I do not

Shaan Puri

is there like a reason or why didn't it

Mark Manson

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, I'm probably gonna do something in the podcasting space. It won't be something like this; like the last thing the world needs is another interview podcast. Don't step on my turf, yeah?

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah right I made this

Mark Manson

yeah I made

Shaan Puri

this this is mine yeah

Mark Manson

But I do think it's... I think I would like to be in this medium in some shape or form. So, right?

Shaan Puri

You did a book with Will Smith and presumably spent a bunch of time with Will Smith, right? You know, when people meet celebrities, I always ask, "What are they like?" It's not like... I don't know, it's just a really specific question. It's kind of like that's what everyone asks. "How are they?" Everybody... it's like, "How are they as a person?" It's kind of like, you know... like, "Are they big? Are they awesome?" There's like that version of it. But to me, I'm sort of...

Mark Manson

like what

Shaan Puri

Was this something you saw them do? Or like, was it something you witnessed that was just not how the common person would have approached a given situation?

Mark Manson

so the quick answer to the the one everybody always asks 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 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 end of the bell curve the the most obvious one that's not gonna surprise anybody is just his charisma like he is by far the most naturally charismatic per I mean it can literally just be like 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 and it's not hard to see and understand like oh okay I see why this guy is so famous right his mind is is very almost delusionally positive like he kinda 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 kinda like rationalize or explain them in a way that you know makes us feel better or helps us his psychological immune system like it's just negativity just bounces right off him any sort of failure setback like he doesn't doesn't bum him out like I I've never really been around somebody who is so easily to like able to construe challenges and obstacles in a way that that is confident and beneficial like it's actually very impressive but it's funny because it also gets him 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 rationalizes it in such a positive way so quickly that it it kinda like it 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 right 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 like

Shaan Puri

So that was very interesting and remarkable. When you saw the Chris Rock slap, or whatever... That's obviously kind of not like, you know, "Mr. Positive" or whatever in that moment. Were you stunned? Because you know him more than... like, everybody's shocked because it's a shocking thing, but when you know the person, you might have either: 1. It's even more shocking than that, or 2. It's less shocking because you understood where he's coming from What was your kind of reaction?

Mark Manson

it was definitely less shocking for me

Shaan Puri

he slapped you once or twice you you you're like yeah it's common keep

Mark Manson

Her name out of your mouth! No, I mean like one of the things... and this is in the book. He had a very abusive, alcoholic father who used to beat the shit out of his mom. He was the oldest child; he was the male, right? So he felt responsible and very protective. He has a lot of issues around women. He's very protective and very sensitive. The women in his life are his Achilles' heel. If you want to get to him, that's the route. You can talk shit about him all day and all night; he's going to sit there and laugh, fine, whatever. But if you go after his mom, his daughter, or his wife, shit's going to get real, real fast. So I wasn't surprised. It was funny, actually. I was watching it with my wife live, and my wife turned to me and said, "This is a bit, right?" I was like, "No."

Shaan Puri

that's not a bit

Mark Manson

like he's actually saying that right now she's like what

Shaan Puri

a baby

Mark Manson

you send

Shaan Puri

Are you like, "Dude, give him space?" Because the uber-famous people, you know, it's hard to even navigate. It's like you don't want to be one of those people. Yet, you're also like, "If I'm your friend, do I just send you something?"

Mark Manson

It's weird. That's a whole... we could spend an hour just talking about that. That's like super weird. It's funny too because it's like everybody who I've ever known in my life messaged me that night asking for my opinion or whatever. I'm like, literally people I haven't talked to since high school, you know, are reaching out. I'm like, "Wait..."

Shaan Puri

this is the thing that got you

Mark Manson

To reach out... like all the shit I did, you didn't like, didn't bother... you know, couldn't be bothered to say anything. But *this*, this got you to reach out to me? Alright, alright.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that was just... I mean, something can win the internet for the day, and like that won the internet for the day. So, you know, it has like insane reach.

Mark Manson

it was insane yeah

Shaan Puri

amazing thanks for doing this by the way I know of

Mark Manson

course man

Shaan Puri

You know, you kind of didn't know what you were going to do. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you had a fun time. Yeah, I definitely did because you're somebody I have followed for a long time. I think the people I respect the most... like some people respect Elon Musk the most. Some people respect him because it's like, "Oh, he conquers, you know, taking us to another planet."

Mark Manson

yeah

Shaan Puri

But I always admire thinkers. 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 Steve, glad we did it.

Mark Manson

absolutely man my pleasure

Shaan Puri

where do you want people to go the youtube channel I'm assuming

Mark Manson

check out the youtube channel there's gonna be more of those videos

Shaan Puri

coming out mark manson what what is the yeah

Mark Manson

If you just search "Mark Manson" on YouTube, it'll pop up. And then markmanson.net has a newsletter there. I think that's, you know, [where you can] buy the books, whatever.

Shaan Puri

I don't give a fuck yeah

Mark Manson

I don't give a fuck

Shaan Puri

buy my shit awesome go that's alright