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

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

So it's funny like watching the rise of Tate because he's like a copy and paste of

20 million plus copies sold the champion the no fucks champion official title. I think mark manson. Welcome. Welcome to the pot

When subtle art came out and it blew up and it was like at the top all the best seller lists and stuff

Like everybody in the publishing industry were like, oh, you're like the new phenom debuted author

Overnight success and I was I'm like overnight success. I've been grinding on a blog for 10 years

Like what do you mean overnight success? Were you good at the beginning or did you?

Dude, I was a fucking disaster

I was a total disaster

You obviously became a great writer

But I want to talk about what we're doing now

Which is the youtube or the youtube channel and like the main thing when I saw mr. Beast a light bulb went off

I was like I love mr. Beast and like I've been watching his shit for a long time

But one of my frustrations with him is that it's all very

Intro to the camera here we got

three time new york times best seller. I believe yeah, we have uh

20 million plus copies sold

The champion the no fucks champion

official title I think

Uh mark manson welcome

Good to be here. Uh been a fan for a while

Um, although I gotta admit I read like a ton of your blogs and I didn't read the book until

Like and I said I've actually finished the book but I until we booked this interview

I was like I should probably go ahead read the actual book that he's most famous for yeah

But there's something to like the fun of like

Oh, I liked his his old shit. You know like the cool band thing. I was a fan before he was cool. Yeah, that's that whole thing

Yeah, I was gonna ask so when I was writing that intro. I was like this is pretty great pretty impressive

Yeah, but I always wonder this like

When you were younger like let's say let's say a researcher was watching you when you were like, I don't know between the ages of 10 and 20

Would it have been noticeable?

That you approached things a little different even when you were younger

I was definitely different when I was young

For sure. I don't think it would have been obvious that I would I was gonna end up an author or

In the personal development industry or whatever, but uh, you know, my whole life my teachers were like

Mark's different. He's special. We wish he would do his homework. Uh, we wish he would stay awake in class

But he could do great things one day like that was kind of the constant refrain throughout my childhood

Because you just weren't interested in school or what was the situation? Yeah, I was bored and and

I would I would just

Whatever I was into that's just kind of what I like I used to bring poker books to class and read them in the middle

Like physics class and my teachers would get mad at me. I'm like, well, I'm just like studying poker

You know, were you big into like during like the chris moneymaker phase basically? Oh, yeah

That's cool. Um, did you ever like go all in on it? I tried so it's funny. Um

Early on in college, I I decided to sit down and take it really seriously. I made a few thousand bucks, which when you're like 19 or 20

It's massive, right? I'm like, oh my god. I can pay rent all summer on my poker winnings

And then uh, I hit my college. Yeah, this is you're paying like, you know, 20 grand for school

But ignoring school to make $300 and a sit-and-go exactly like I've stayed up till 5 a.m

Like like I made 200 bucks last night, right?

and and then I hit my first big downswing and lost like half my bankroll and like

Maybe three days four days, right? And I was like, oh shit. I don't think I can pay rent this month

You know, I'm like this kind of sucks. Actually. Yeah, it's like a very very unhealthy

Uh unhealthy lie. I love the game

But the lifestyle that it requires like the grinding the the patience like the the emotional

Fortitude to like handle the ups and downs. It's

Yeah, after about six months. I was like, I don't think I'm built for this

Right and you there's a lot of like degenerates you end up hanging around around like

Doing it. So you kind of look around you're like, this isn't healthy. It's like, yeah, yeah

It's like they're not smoking, but there's like a secondhand smoke of their like life

That's like, I don't want to be inhaling right now. For sure. For sure. So I think we had kind of a similar

Set of interest. Maybe it's like very common for

I don't 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 like 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. Yep. Uh, do you know what I'm talking about? Of course the game the game

Neil Strauss, yep

Ironically my girlfriend at my girlfriend in high school before I went to college. Oh, 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 it's like you need this for college. Yeah, yeah

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

You know, it's funny. It hit me at would depend on your perspective the exact

best or worst moment possible

So my first girlfriend in high school

Had just

cheated on me and left me for another dude and I was completely heartbroken just

gutted

You know weepy whiny and sucks even more in high school because like leaving you is like she's still there. Yeah

We're still in the hallway. Yeah. Well, I would by this time I was in college

But like we'd gotten together in high school. Anyway, it was we didn't we didn't you made the right move

So we didn't split up. We were 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

You should actually look in the camera be like to the person who's 18 right now. Don't do that

It's not gonna work. The longest girlfriend when you both go to college dude. Just don't do it

And uh, so anyway, I I was absolutely heartbroken and distraught and just like very angry and confused

And I remember being in a bookstore and seen seeing that book like on the table

And I remember my first reaction was disgust. I was like, it's like

What is this? Like who would read this, right? And then I'm like, uh, yeah, maybe I'll read a few pages and

And I mean Neil's such a good writer

Like it talk about somebody who knows how to like hook your attention and kind of suck you into a world. Um

Yeah, I just I think I sat down and read probably the

First 50 hundred pages there in the bookstore

And then I think I I read the entire thing in just a couple days and and that was pretty much it like I was like, all right, like

You know the one girl who ever liked me

Completely fucked me over broke my heart and every other girl I've ever met seems to have no interest

So clearly I'm not doing something right, you know, like I'm willing to give anything ago at this point

And uh, so yeah, I I kind of got sucked into that world for

um, well

I guess

four years five years

And then it eventually kind of stumbled into my first business was in that world as well

Yeah, and I want to talk about that because I think it's again, like I it was like a formative phase of my life too

And so today I think a bunch of people rightfully so, you know, like like you admire you follow you and you

Like add a lot of value to people's lives, right? Like

Even though self-help kind of like sometimes gets a bad rep like you're almost by definition

Helping people with themselves, right? The most important thing

But I would say like

It's probably a rabbit hole. You're you went down now and content you create now

But that previous rabbit hole you went down and content you created was around

Oh, there it is. There it is. Uh, oh, yeah, mod. This is your first book, right? Yep

Models attract women through honesty. Yep. Um, at least that subtitle is like, you know

Well, we can get to this in a second but before that that was a very very intentional

Yeah, that that's jumping ahead a couple years. But yeah, so let's start with okay

So you read the game you get, you know, kind of like, uh,

I always say this about tim Ferriss's book the four-hour work week is like after you read that book

You have the four-hour fever. Yep. It's like for the next four hours you reconsider your entire 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 this schedule some time. You're gonna need this weekend to have the four-hour fever

um

Same kind of thing happens with the game and you become

You start I guess you describe you start practicing it

So let's start start with like you start actually like practicing it for people who haven't read the game

And don't know

The core principles of it like what stood out to you at that time of like, oh, I used to do things this way

But this is like this kind of thing. I'm learning this new skill. I'm learning

So the there's a funny thing about the game

Which is and it's it's funny too because I would put the four-hour work week in this category as well

And that those are

If I was to make a list of like the five most impactful books that I've ever read my life

Those two would be on the list for sure, right

That said

I don't actually like the majority of advice in both of those books

I don't think actually was applicable to me or actually worked for me

Right. It was more just showing what was possible, right? So

um

And definitely more so in in the games case than for, you know, four-hour work week

It's primarily principles and mindsets, you know

My my issue with the four-hour work week was that it just it made it sound way easier than it was

It's it's you know, the the the real four-hour work week is uh, you know work 16 hours a day so you can make money while you sleep

But

with the game, I think the

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 right like that never occurred to me. It just occurred like

At up to that point in my my life

Like most young people I just kind of assumed like well

Either girls are into you or they're not and if they're not you're kind of you're kind of

Fucked right or not fucked in that case, but like

it so

Reading that book and being like oh, you can actually go out and practice and get better social skills and get better at

being sexual and flirting and and

Connecting with women and doing all these things like that those are all skills that you can practice like that was very revelatory for me

That said when I actually went out and tried to do the stuff in the game

Which was a bunch of cheesy pickup lines and they called them routines like like

Stories magic routines stories you would memorize and all this stuff. It was a fucking disaster like it was just

it was completely

corny and and I felt very

Inauthentic and out of place

But like what was impactful is that it got me out of the house and like talking to women on a regular basis

And I realized like hey if I actually just get myself in front of a bunch of cute girls

I'm actually I'm not that bad like I can talk I can make a joke

Like I can use my own personality as a starting point and just build from there, right?

And so that's kind of what I started doing through a throughout college

And by the end of college I kind of had developed the reputation as

The big party guy the player, you know the guy who had four different girlfriends or whatever for me

I had the same experience you had except for the lamest moment the rock bottom moment is when you hear another guy

Saying the same thing because he read the same book and you're like, oh, shit. There's like a hundred of us running around

Yeah, it's like this thing. I was gonna say by itself was actually a little bit cringe

Yeah, maximally cringe if she heard this from another guy and I was like, oh

I can't just like there's no memorizing your way to success here

But the principles I thought were good and you're right the forcing function of like

getting you to like kind of uh

Believe yourself the self-confidence to believe that this might actually work that you can actually approach somebody and have a good conversation

And that that could lead to something. Yeah, it was like pretty powerful. I even do this with podcasts like I have

Like a note of like

What's the first thing I'm going to talk about with you?

Like I kind of know that the next 90 minutes will be great either way

Sure

But that first minute is like the social anxiety piece

Which is like the same thing with with these pickup artists, which is like

Most people just aren't even approaching anyone yeah with anything that's an interest that might lead to a conversation

So for me that was like the bigger thing. Do you uh still have that kind of like

Do you just think about that moment of social anxiety that first um

That first moment and like was the game helpful in like getting those reps for sure

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

you know because when you're

Kind of naive and a newbie you look at all the pickup lines and you think it's the pickup line that's working right and it's like

No, it's actually the pickup line is just the excuse to kind of

Get you through your anxiety to give give you the courage to actually go say something

It doesn't really matter what you're saying right and

Uh, I actually had a very for you know kind of like you hearing over here in another guy's hayward

I actually got very lucky early on because

I was trying to use some of the stuff I read in the game

I started I tried to do like some fucking coin magic tricks and stuff like just total disaster

and uh, I remember I I

was having no luck whatsoever and

I actually got very fortunate and that I was in a bar or something

I was talking to these three girls and I was like trying to do a magic trick

And they were like really into it and really excited and I kept fucking it up

And then like it kind of got awkward and at a certain point they realized they're like wait

Like you're just doing a thing like kind of hit on us

and

I like tried to make a joke and it was super lame or something and they kind of rolled their eyes and they started to walk away

And I was like wait, I have another magic trick

And I remember one of the girls turned around and she looked at me and she was like, you know, you were kind of cute

like you should just

be yourself

I was like

You know like head explode and I was and and that was kind of one of those first moments where I'm like, you know what like

Why don't I just start

Like use my personality as the baseline and then iterate on stuff that already feels natural and trying to instead of trying to be like

Some fucking weird dude in a book

Right, you know that I can't believe I spent

$10,000 in two years of my life studying all this shit. I could have just like walked up and then like hi

Where are you from and it would have gotten me the exact same results

There's a book that's like

Food diet book. I haven't even read the book but the last page of the book is like a summary

You might know the book because you're you're you're an author

um

It's like

Here's the like after all the studies and all the diets because like, you know

There's like a trillion diets out there and like they're like some are super complicated

You're like, you know peeing on a strip to see if you're like in ketosis or not

Yeah, you can do you can take it to the nth degree and it was like, yeah, so it seems like the rules are

You know eat real food like not like packaged processed food like eat real food not too much

And it was like that was like basically the the core of the advice and it's like

Oh

Yeah, and like but if you actually intensely followed that you would get all the results you want

But like there's this thing where we sort of search for this like

Other answer the secret answer. Yes. It can't possibly be just that

There there is a weird thing that happens at a lot of these industries, which is

The concepts and frame frameworks that sell well are often counterproductive, right?

And you see this in diet nutrition. You see this in exercise for sure

You see this in social skills personal development self-help. You see it in the pickup world like

It's really sexy like when a guy stands up and he says I have a three-step model that works every time

And you're gonna get laid like tile and you're gonna lose a hundred pounds and you know

It's really sexy and you really want to buy it and you like want to believe it and it works

And it makes people millions of dollars, but then it doesn't actually it's not actually good advice

Right, whereas the good advice like this is the other hard thing about these industries is that the good advice is boring and so

And the things that work and again, this is true in personal development. It's true

Social skills true with diet nutrition everything the stuff that works is boring. It's

It's not the information that's hard. It's simply doing it. It's implementing right consistently over a long period of time

that's the hard part and

There's no easy way to sell a solution to that. So

The easy thing to sell a solution for is, you know, my three steps that work every time

I see this everywhere like because I'm mostly in the kind of startup business world

And like, you know, Warren Buffett, they're like, you know, Warren, you're pretty open about your strategies. Yeah

And they're not like that complicated

Why do you think that more people don't do this?

And it was either him or Charlie Munger that were like because nobody wants to get rich slow

Yeah, it's like, yeah, we just did this in the public and he's like, you know, I made most of my wealth like from the ages of 70 to 90 and like

Uh, you know, nobody wants to do that. Nobody wants to hear that. They want to hear that guy who's not done this

Tell them that they can do xyz faster or did in a different way in a complicated way that like, you know, you just didn't have the info

Now that you got the info

Now it's all gonna work. Yeah, right. Same thing like, you know, y-combinator, which is the most successful

like, you know startup

investor and and

Accelerator

Their number one advice is just make something people want

Mm-hmm. And they're like, yeah, what's the great strategy startup advice like

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, it's like cool. So what tells you that what what evidence is showing you that people want this and they're like

Well, we don't have any

It's it's it's like that bell curve meme or it's like, you know, genius

Yeah, the idiot's like just mix up the people want and then in the middle of the bell curve

It's like, well, you've got to have these 12 steps and figure out these strategies, you know

And then the Jedi is like just make something people want. I love that thing. That's I told about it's like

That's so true. It's so true across so many domains. It's amazing

Yeah, and I catch myself all the time and I'm like, I need what would the Jedi? Oh the Jedi would just say like

Yeah, do it because it's fun instead of like, yeah, you know all these other things. Yeah

Um, when you look back because Ben's been flashing a bunch of your like, I know that's been Ben

Oh god, he flashes a bunch of your things that are like

This is the cringe section of the don't worry. It gets better the end of the year will get better

But this is the cringe section

Uh, but you have like a bunch of these things that I'm like, they're like just amazing headlines

We're gonna talk we're gonna talk titles later because you're like a title master sure, but when you look back

Do you how what's the meaning you put or like what's the label you put on these things?

I think we're both of the mindset that like

Life is not really about what happens. It's kind of like what you what you make of it

And also what you tell yourself the story you tell yourself about what happened. Yeah

So like when you look back on that phase

Is it just like

Cringe and I don't want to ever think about like I hope my I forget about that

Is it like no that was actually really useful for me in these ways? Is it just funny now? Like what's your reaction now?

It's a really good question. I I would say it's probably like one third cringe one third

I think it was actually really important and formative in a lot of ways and then

One third just kind of funny and just like can you believe that happened?

Actually when I moved out here to LA

um

I met up with neil for the first time and we spent a day together and we spent like half the day just kind of being like

Can you believe that happened right? Can you believe we actually did that?

I I look back though, especially now that a little bit more time has gone by

I really do think there there was kind of an underrated factor and I think this is very relevant because this is starting to happen again with gen z

with

I think the pickup artist industry is underrated as a

cultural or social phenomenon particularly for young men trying to find identity or find themselves in like a very

confusing world with a lot of information

uh

Because it's when I look back at that time like yeah

like we

In the industry are the coaches we used to joke with each other. It was like yeah, we all came

For the women, but we stayed for the for the other dudes

Yeah, it's it's most of the guys who really got into that. It wasn't about the girls

it was they

needed to feel accepted and

and and validated by

Other men and and just I guess I don't know their masculinity, right?

there was like a very there was like this yearning for like a masculine role model and

I always found that I was very aware of that at the time

But I didn't really know what to make of it

Uh, but as the years have gone on I look back and I think like I think it blew up to the extent it did because because of that

I don't think it was really about the dating or the girls

I think it was just it was a generation of kind of post feminism

a generation of like men who had

Fewer father figures fewer role models

A lot more confusion about like who they're supposed to be in the world and I think we're

That's that cycle is coming back today and you're seeing a lot of that happen again with a different set of role models and

Uh, a different industry. Well, let's talk about one of them. Uh, so I think andretate is like the for sure

You know poster boy right now that

Thank you pull up that tweety as you have a great tweet about energy. I want to ask

Yeah, yeah

Andretate 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

Exploited. Yeah, so it's funny like watching the rise of tape because

He just

He's like a copy and paste of half the guys that were in that industry, right?

You know, it's like all the shit he says I'm like, oh, yeah

I remember, you know, this guy used to say that. Oh, yeah, that guy used to say that too. Oh, yeah

That guy made a lot of money saying that, you know, like it's all the same shit just recycled in a new package

I do think Tate is

Uniquely charismatic and I think he is an interesting backstory that a lot of got young men respect, right?

And so that that is adds to the it's given him a lot more

Amplification it's also just a different era with social media and everything, uh, but

And he like layered on an mlm

So he was like, yeah, right

So he just combined like three of the most powerful forces in the world. Yeah, seriously pretty insane charisma

With like this like cocktail of like words that cast a spell on young men

Yeah, and then an mlm distribution model where he's like look

Cut up clips of me and post them everywhere and like that's how you rise in the ranks

And you get like you're gonna make money by promoting me. It's which is insane. It's honestly somebody really needs to do

Uh, I mean it probably we probably need some time

But like 10 years from now

I want to see somebody do like a really good book about him right and like a a fair book not like

Trying to smear like take an honest look of like who was this guy?

Why did he blow up?

Why did this work?

Right like because it's I think it's easy. Obviously you can take the worst things that he said

It's no secret some of the bad things he said

And you can just hammer on those all day, but like I think that's way less interesting than just trying to understand like

Why is there such a demand for this guy again, right?

Like I thought we kind of got over this and this kind of ties back into my first book model. So like

The pickup industry by like 2009 2010

I had really really become burnt out on on just the toxicity of it

and I I really felt that there were kind of two strains of

dating relationship advice for men one was

basically promoting narcissism

Selfishness power dynamics, right and sure that stuff can get you laid a lot

but it's

It's at the expense of preventing any sort of

Happy or joyous long-term relationship or intimacy with any female ever, right?

so you're like giving up that potential to just like

Put notches on your bed post and brag to your buddies and that

Is a very bad trade-off like if you look at just in the terms of a man's overall lifespan. That's a very bad trade-off

Um

And then so I was I was kind of like, okay. How do we like detoxify this this advice? What does that look like?

um, how do we and it's not just about

treating women with respect, but it's treating yourself with respect too because like what a lot of guys don't realize is that

Yeah, obviously if you objectify women, it's bad for the women

But it's bad for you too because you're objectifying yourself

You're start you're basically just measuring yourself by how wet your dick gets and like that's a very

demeaning way to view yourself and view your own self-esteem and so

I was kind of fed up with the whole thing. I knew I wanted to get out

I wanted to pivot out of the industry

And I was like, well if I'm getting out of the industry

I might as well just write the book that everybody needs to hear and nobody wants to hear

Which is that this is all toxic and fucked up and stop doing it. Were you good at the beginning or did you suck?

Oh, dude, I was a fucking disaster

I was a total disaster. Um

You do you want me to talk about the content side or the marketing side? Uh, whatever's more interesting. You tell me

Well, I'll 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 and you just get those reps in

You know, I you back in the day back when blogs were still a thing

I used to get asked all the time like how do I start a blog? How do I grow a blog?

make make

Make a living as a blogger

My answer was always the same, which is like write a hundred blog posts. Come ask me again, right and uh, have you seen by the

Mr. Beast has like almost the exact verbatim answer. Yes, and I love it because yeah

It's the exact same thing I used to tell people and it's a combination of like

It's actually the right advice because you need a bunch of reps and you need to suck for a little bit and get that

Just try to make each the next video better and nobody does it. 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. Yes

But 90% of you are not serious. This is the easy test exactly exactly

And the funny thing is too is that it's like most people if they go write a hundred blog posts and try to make each one better

By the hundredth one, they don't need the advice anymore. They know what they're doing wrong

They know what they need to get better at so

Was there anything that got you better?

What did you read something or follow some or you know model your stuff after someone?

Like do you remember how you got good at terms of writing and content my two big inspirations

I was a huge bill Simmons fan back in the day. Wow. We were like very very alive

Like I know yeah back in the day page page two. Yeah, and um, it's I remember reading his call

I was like his column each week was like an event in my life

It was like I was so excited to go read it and I remember thinking I was like I want my art because back then the meta

In this is pre newsfeed pre social media everything so like in the blogosphere

the idea everything all traffic was either SEO or

The blog role type thing. Yeah, like link farming like, you know, you would like write something

Spicy so that a bunch of other bloggers would want to comment on it

So they'd link to you and like all this stuff and it be it was very much a volume game

So like the the standard advice was always

You know, don't write one big blog post a day write

20 single paragraphs and post those as individual blog posts each day

It just that's what's gonna make you grow and I always hated that that always felt very shitty and

Uninspiring and so and I love Bill Simmons and I was like man

I want to be the Bill Simmons of my industry, right? Like I want to have these like epic

10 page posts that that guys just get lost in and like, you know

They like scheduled their week around right and you end up feeling like a friend. It's like it's a hang

Yeah, and I think it that probably hurt me in the short run and it helped me in the long run

I tried to meet up with him when so we came out here. I was like, I want to schedule and I was like

Who's my dream guest? I was like, I would love to have Bill Simmons on this because I don't he doesn't do a lot of like

Where he's the guest and I've never really seen any to be honest. Like, yeah, he's like, uh, he's a big deal at Spotify now

So he's you know, he's yeah, that's fine. But like

But but he's written so if you haven't if people haven't read this go read. Uh, I think it's called the consequences of caring

Unbelievable post so good. Uh, anyway, sorry continue

So bill Simmons inspired you to be like, I don't need to like sell out to the algorithm the algorithm of that time the meta of that time

Yeah, and it's I also think it helped that I I was in a pretty niche and

Insulated industry like everybody kind of knew each other and everybody

Talked about each other and everything so it it actually I think it helped me get get my name out even more because I was

I did have a knack for writing it seemed and I did

eventually start posting some pretty good stuff and um

And so that kind of got talked about and shared do you remember what was uh, like kind of your first thing that broke out

I really in that era. I really don't I really don't it was so

gradual man like my

It's funny because you know subtle art is so massive like

It was funny when this is jumping ahead a little bit

But like when subtle art came out and it blew up and it was like at the top all the best seller lists and stuff

Like everybody in the publishing industry were like, oh, you're like the new

Phenom debut author

Overnight success almost I'm like overnight success. I've been fucking

grinding on a blog for 10 years like what do you mean overnight success?

right

Yeah, I was doing like, you know, that's like the low status thing in society. He's like i'm a blogger

Yes, exactly. So you're unemployed. Like what is that? You know, oh, I got I got stories

I got stories. I remember uh

Like 2013 2014 and by this time like my audience was pretty big like I had a few hundred thousand readers and uh

I remember going home for christmas one year and uh

Kind of gotten an argument with my parents and my my stepmom was just like when are you gonna get a real job and and

And she was like, you know, I know such and such like they're hiring like a web designer

You know, you could go do that and I was like that'd be a waste of my time and she's like

Oh, you could probably make a hundred thousand a year. I was like, I already make a hundred thousand a year

And she just looked at me and she goes no, you don't

It's like what the fuck

I was like, do you want tax returns? Like jesus christ. What do I have to do to get you people to believe in me?

But uh, anyway, we're jumping around now. Um

You know the con yeah the content side, I don't know. I just I had this weird confidence of like

I saw that

Bill Simmons trajectory over the page two days and I'm and he did it differently and everybody else and I was like

Why can't I do that? Right? And I I'm not gonna post 20 times a day

I'm just gonna do like one epic article that everybody gets excited about and that was kind of my mo

And it's funny because that eventually became the meta kind of the more facebook era

Um in the early 2010s, uh, so I was like ahead of the curve. I guess

On the marketing side, I was trash. I was just like

Selling does not come natural to me at all. It was very much something that I had to

Consciously train myself practice. I took a bunch of copywriting courses. Um

I like went to marketing seminars pirated marketing seminars

Uh, like that was always the it's funny because it's like the

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

Uh, and it was just it was fun. It was like kind of a hobby. So it was like

I never really had to like

Work hard to kind of figure that out like anything I was working on getting better at in my business

It was always the sales and marketing stuff, right? Like figuring that shit out

So you've done, uh, so those content reps got in you obviously became a great writer

And we'll talk about the book in a second, but I want to talk about what we're doing now

Which is the youtube video or the youtube channel and it seems like that's I don't know

Is that you're like is that like the main thing? Is that like this is my new baby right now?

That's the new main thing. Yeah, and so, uh, I think you dropped the first first like, um

Video maybe a couple days ago and doing super well. Can you pull it up? I want to actually do a little

so one of my favorite little content things is this, um

This thing that happens in sports and football, uh, they like take

Quarterbacks that are about to be drafted and now if you've ever seen they see they sit down

They like look at game film with them just to see kind of how they think sure and um

It's my favorite thing in any podcast is like when you can really like

Not like talking the abstract. Yeah talking the specific like like why did you do this?

How did you think about this? Yeah, um, we hung out with mr. Beast and when we did that with some of his videos and

The way he thinks you're like, oh, okay. I get it. I get like I learned something tactical

But also just I get you more. Yeah, um versus when you ask him general questions

And so I kind of want to play this game. I don't know how okay, but we'll try

I want to know the thought that went into this. Let's watch the first 10 seconds. I want to hear you talk about it

Okay, what would you do if someone offered you $10,000 to do whatever it takes to overcome your social anxiety?

Could you do it? Would you even know where to start?

I decided to find out all right. Let's pause right there. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Walk me through that

A lot was happening there. Well, what was how you think about this?

Obviously some mr. Beast inspiration here. He was very inspirational. So let me zoom out for a second

Uh more broadly and then I can kind of come back to this video specifically

So early in my career, I did a lot of coaching first with the pickup stuff and then just kind of like life advice in general

I stopped coaching

For a lot of reasons, but one of them is I was consistent. I was very frustrated by it which was that

I feel like the incentive like the way the incentives are structured within coaching industries

Uh in the personal development world are counterproductive, right?

So it's like if you're paying me a bunch like let's say, I don't know

You have like self-esteem issues and you're paying me a bunch of money to like help you out

It's first of all, my incentive isn't to fix your self-esteem issues

Like my my incentive is to make it feel like I'm fixing your self-esteem issues even though they're still there like a pharmaceutical company

Yeah, exactly

Exactly and then on your side of the equation, uh

It's

What often happens in practice like or on the customer side is what often that happens in practice is people

Kind of show up. They pay you say a thousand dollars and they're like, well, I just paid you a thousand dollars. So

You deal with it, right? Like I've been dealing with this my whole life

I just paid you a bunch of money. You deal with it now, right? Like that's actually what they're looking for

And so I hated that dynamic. It felt very

I mean, it works some of the time

But in a lot of cases it felt very icky and I kind of found myself in like awkward situations with clients and stuff

Uh, so I I just got away from it entirely and just kind of stuck the books and courses and everything

When I saw mr. Beast

A light bulb went off

I was like

Because I love mr. Beast and like I've been watching his shit for a long time

But one of my frustrations with him is that it's all very

Surface level like I'll 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's one character

Yeah, I'm like, tell me about the guy who won or tell me like you're down the four people

Tell me about their lives like bring their families in like I want to see let's get some juicy drama going right?

I talked to him about this

Yeah, and I was like, uh, because I was like he was talking about like a Netflix or like tv shows

And it was like, oh like you know what can you learn about tv show?

What do you learn from like tv shows that have been running for a long time do really well?

And he he says that he's like

Uh, also, I think they can learn a lot from us and he's like, yeah, he's like, I'd love to see their retention curb

Um, right. He's like, they just don't know where people are dropping off

He's like what we found was like if you hit him hit him hit him with like

The more of like the action and the stakes and then the the quest and like the curiosity you open the loop

And like that's gonna keep people he's like, but he's like, but I do think the one thing tv does well is character

He's like, we don't do any narrative or character and I gotta figure out how I'm gonna do that

Yeah, he's like, I don't know. I don't he's like, I don't know how to do that yet, but like we should probably learn that

Yeah, so this is this is kind of another side statement

And this gets more into like my personal strategy or like opportunities. I see in the future, but like

It's the current media environment. I think traditional media

They've always had the luxury of having that lock in of like you're in a theater and it's more it's like once you're in a theater

It's more difficult to leave than to sit through a bad movie

So everybody just sits through a bad movie, you know, and it's in the previous era of television

It's

You know, you don't want to sit there and like flip around for 10 minutes looking for something else

So you sit there and just kind of watch a mediocre show

So it's like

Traditional media is coming from a hundred years of a luxury of just having that buy-in and having you like locked in

And and so they can take the time it requires to build character build narrative build build drama

Right and and create those very emotional moments that we've all had with our favorite movies and tv shows

YouTube is kind of the other way around like there's always

Shit fighting for your attention and trying to get you to click off

and so

YouTube is just retention retention retention like it's merciless and absolutely brutal

and so I think we're in an interesting media environment where

YouTubers have become masters of retention and the content on youtube is super hooky and click the right right

Yeah, those two two variables. Yes, and super hooky very clickbaity like

Addictive but also kind of empty calories like you can just blow through like six videos and just be like wait

I don't remember a single thing. I just watched

And that's kind of unsatisfying

Traditional media is like caught on the other side of things of like wait shit like

People are watching our shows now with like their phones in front of them

And they're like they've now got five different streaming services they can pick from and they can switch

Easily switch to another movie like mid-movie, right?

And so they're trying to catch up on the retention side of things

And I think youtube is is trying to catch up on the the character development drama side of things

And I think whoever figures it out first is gonna like right win really big

But anyway back to the mr. Beast thing and the coaching thing. So I was watching mr. Beast videos

For a couple years and then like last year I was I was kind of taking this break

And I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next in my own career

And I had felt this about his videos for a long time

And and I started thinking I'm like man like what if you

What if you built the challenges in a way that like forced character development?

Like what if the challenges weren't built around like, you know stand in a circle or uh, you know

Keep your hand on a car like what if it was built around on this Lambert game?

Like what if it was built around like a real personal issue that like

You have to investigate to like try to understand right and

And that's when the light bulb went off because I'm like not only does that

potentially create like very amazing transformative youtube content

But it solves that coaching issue as well because when you take somebody who's struggled their entire life with

Say anxiety or an issue

The problem is never that this comes back to the information thing. The problem is never

I don't have the information to fix my problem. The problem is they're just not doing it, right?

Like they're not fucking going out and doing it and so

And they could pay a coach a thousand bucks and the coach can say, okay

Well, you paid me a thousand bucks now go do it and sometimes that works but not always or you could say

I'll give you a thousand bucks if you go do it

And fix your own shit right like what does that look like right like what is like the most effective

lever for behavior change is

Financial incentive and so what if you actually create financial incentive for people to actually go deal with their shit?

And like do the things that they've always known that they need to do and they've just never had the guts to do it

And so that's when I was like, holy that's kind of genius. Yeah, I was like fuck. I need to make this

so

This is our first attempt at it and it's funny because this was shot

end of april early may

This is we're recording this end of july

There are like i'm already aware of like 15 things that are wrong with this video and like they're like it's it's actually

underperforming our expectations and like

There's so many things that we need to fix but it's the first rep. Yeah, it's the first rep

it's like the first it's like the beta test but

Super super excited about the format that makes a ton of sense and uh, also like even just mechanically like

The things you just said so if you know coaching is getting somebody to like transform

Uh, the way the transformers not information is doing it

Yeah

Best way to get somebody to do it is if maybe a financial incentive or even like the fact that they agree to be in the content

And it's like there's a contract there to like do the thing. Um

But you also how can you offer $10,000 to why could you pay your coat? That's not a sustainable business

But it is if it's youtube content

You have like almost the full loop to be able to make something

It creates a very beautiful flywheel of

You're helping that individual so in this video it's a woman named melinda

So i'm helping melinda and she did get amazing results

Uh, you know, she's finally doing the things that she's always known that she should do or has always wanted to do

You get to all the people watching because I could easily make a video of me sitting at a desk talking about social anxiety for 15 minutes

Everybody's heard the same shit. They've all like everybody knows what i'm gonna say now

Millions of people get to actually watch somebody overcome their character overcomes. Yeah, it's like, oh, that's what it looks like. Oh, that's what

How people respond in that situation, you know the difference between watching rocky

And then some or somebody sitting at a chair and saying you should kind of work really hard

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

And the other one you don't totally so it's the

qualitative feedback on this

It's been honestly, it's been some of the best of my entire career like we if you look through the comments of this video

There's tons of comments of people saying I cried right. This was me

Oh my god, like I was not expecting this. This is so powerful. You know, it's pretty incredible

And so how did you think about those first

10 15 seconds? I don't know how long we went but like what are you trying to achieve in those first 15 seconds of this video?

So with youtube content, there's always this question of like, what's the hook?

Like what's gonna get people to buy in what's gonna get people to stick around

And one of the challenges that we face with this format is that all of the

All the stuff that we're having people do

It's it's it's super abstract like socially social anxiety is super abstract. Like how do you show social anxiety?

It's like not very obvious how you show that visually

Or like low self-esteem. How do you show that visually? So

We were

thinking about like, okay

What are like kind of like hooks or gimmicks that we can like implement into the format that can get people

bought in right and

The first and most obvious in this in the current mr. Beast meta briefcase of is fucking 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 are we Jedi right Jedi in the numbskull?

What if you gave him $10,000? It's like

What if you gave him $10,000?

But the funny thing is is that it actually this intro did not perform very well

And so what is that? What tells you that like you're looking at the curve? You're like do a retention chart?

What should it have been for what do you think it should have been to be like good?

Well, I think

Though the issue with this is that even though it's money. It's still it's still not visual enough

It's still too abstract. And so I think what we've learned from this one is that

The new approach needs to be we just need to start like mid challenge

So like the first challenge in this video is just approach

We yeah, we take her into a mall and we tell her she has to find somebody from canada and like she

By the way, it's so funny because she it's it's so like relatable, which is why I think you should have started with this

I was actually gonna suggest this. Yeah, it's so really because you tell her like someone in this mall is from canada

You need to go approach them and ask them and find them and she's like

Nervous laugh and then she starts like faking being on a phone call like which is everybody's done it like

And then she's like it's like are you faking a phone? It's like, yeah

Yeah, I am I just I don't know it makes me feel more comfortable dude. She was so relatable such a spaz

Such a spaz it was really fun and and yeah in hindsight

It's like we should have just opened up with that and then explain the format later. Yeah, but like

Yeah, I mean we're new we're we're we're

Paving the road as we drive down it. So cast yes, which is hard

And you don't know what's gonna happen and like this is kind of reality tv for sure

and there's also like

how this I would say this is a common theme from the pickup to

Uh subtle art to now this which is how do you avoid selling out?

So like yeah, when you've been in the the industry you kind of know, okay, if I pull this lever, I'm gonna get more juice

Yeah

Like maybe maybe this will let's just pretend if this woman's

Transformation was not that that

Crazy, but like in the edit you could kind of like 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 just dealt with that like how hard do I want to turn the knob or pull the lever of like

You know manipulation to make something work

The few that we've shot

All of them have been very successful so far, but I've told the team that I want to be

Eventually we're gonna hit one that's not successful like we don't help the person it doesn't work right or maybe we help them a little but

They don't get there right

I think it's very very important to be honest about that and to actually make a video like have the video kind of explore why that is

you know, um

because it's

Yeah, there's a credibility and authenticity that it's just so so important especially and that's

It's been one of my criticisms of my own industry

for

10 15 years of just like the lack of trustworthiness the lack of credibility

Because if you promise the magic pill that works in two minutes, you're gonna sell more

Then if you say this takes you two years of tough work, right? Right?

So you've probably dealt with that a bunch and like maybe now, you know

You got fuck you money from the book and you're like, I don't have to do that anymore

You know, I guess how has that changed?

Well, I'm very fortunate that the book did well first of all it is true the book did so well

And I do have fuck you money

So I don't really care like this is this youtube project's losing money and it's probably gonna lose money for a year or two

And I'm fine with that

but like

it's

I'm also very fortunate that I made my money being very explicit about that that like there is no magic pill

There is no cure all like it's funny dude. Like even when you dig into research on

uh

Therapies like what modality of therapy is the most effective, right?

you start looking at the research and it's

It's startling because

There's nothing that has more than a 50 hit rate nothing like not there's no form of therapy that is

Successful like produces positive outcomes more than 50% of the time

Which is crazy because it's like therapy is like the most tried and true like we've had it for 200 years

Like it's the one thing everybody's like is directed to go to so there's in the world of psychology

there's just so much that we don't know what works like and

What works for you could completely fail for me and vice versa because everybody's so individual so

to your point about casting

a huge part of our casting process is

Doing

Pre-shoot interviews me doing pre-shoot conversations and interviews with the person to really gauge of like

Is this a person I can help because for every video we shot we talked to probably two or three people

And half of those people i'm like, you know

Not really confident. I can actually like right get them over the line

Whereas like with this with this woman, you know, I talked to her and within 10 minutes. I'm like, yeah

No, I could

Give me a week with her. I'm like, I could get I can get something out of it

right

Did you um, do you watch the tv show the bear by any chance? I have not everybody says it's amazing, but I've not yet

Yeah, it's it's a little bit. I would say it's a little bit slow, but it pays off

It's the thing you talked about which is like the retention curve for me was terrible at the beginning sure it's slow

It's like it's like one of those like cool shows where it's like, you know, we're not gonna like be clickbaity

Yeah, and i'm like i'm kind of used to that hit

So, you know, like if you're really gonna pay this off with character, it's gonna take some time

But man, it does there's like a episode in the second season. It's like such a huge payoff on character that like

Now i'm like 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 there um, but we so we reached out to one of the writers and we were like, hey, there's respect and uh

Just we like to learn from people like that like how do you do this? How do you do this character thing?

um, have you learned anything in the process of like doing these videos of like

Because it's me. It's not writing. It's not books. You now have like

Casting and characters and stuff that you probably haven't done before like first of all i'm learning a million things

One of the reasons i wanted to do this too. I should specify is like

You know, I came out of this period the post-sub art period of my career

I did three books back to back to back. I did a movie like a bunch of traditional media success like everything was

wildly successful

Very busy lots of money

I moved to la I took took a few months off and I was just like man. I miss like the

grindy

grassroots internet stuff right and

But what I also realized is like I miss being bad at something like I miss

I miss just like throwing shit at a wall and being like did that work like no, all right

Let's try this, you know, like and in traditional media. I don't you don't really have the flexibility to do that

like you're you're being

If a studio or a large publisher is bringing you in it's because like they know you can make a hit and you need to make a

Fucking hit and

So I I miss the internet days of like, all right, let's try 10 things and just know that like six are gonna fail

and uh, like that's just exciting to me and so

part of this project was like

I want to learn I want to get back on a learning curve and like experience that again

and so yeah, I've been learning a million things about video production and about

Um, storytelling visual storytelling and in particular like one of the big lessons from this video is that I still very much

Just write like a book writer like a lot of the mistakes that were made in this video

It's because it was

Organized in such a way that would work really well on like an article or a book, right?

But it works terribly on video. What's an example?

So an example is is like the intro, right? It's like that's a great intro on paper

It's a terrible intro on video because it's abstract. It's not visually interesting. You know, it's like you start with the challenge

right

Woman spas running around the mall like asking people that are from canada like that's super weird and you're like what what's going on

And then it's like you slowly like drip context over the course of like 10 minutes

whereas when you're writing

A book or or an article like you have

You need to put all the context up front of like this is what we're doing. This is what this is about

You know, it's like the old school essay

It's like you got to have your thesis in the first paragraph and then you got to have your three bullets and like all this stuff

So I still my brain is still kind of defaults to that and I'm having like untrained myself in a lot of ways

The funny thing is is like and again one of the reasons I'm doing this is

I think my natural strength is story and character and narrative like that

That's where I shine naturally what I'm weaker at is

The retention the hooks the like

Uh gen z shit the gen z shit. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. There's something I've heard this term like the millennial pause

No, it's so funny. It's like if you were to it's like what's the millennial pause? It's basically

Gen Z people if you watch the start of their video starts with them already

They're already talking so they're like mid-word. Oh, yeah as the video starts

whereas every millennial is like

they click record like

Hey, everybody

That little like that little pause is like you're already swiped on tic-tac if you haven't like

You got to be like mid interesting thing and I was like, that's so fucking true. That's funny. That's so true

You so you're doing this this series. What's like the craziest or most interesting challenge?

I guess you can't give it away too much

But like what what concepts are like?

Oh, I can't wait to see how that's gonna turn out or like I really want to try

Something like this a lot of the the social stuff is like the most

interesting

Because it's you can do a lot of fear-based stuff

I mean you can take somebody up in a plane and throw them out, you know

Make them skydive or whatever and that's exciting

But like I don't know it it doesn't feel like there's as much depth as like the social stuff

so

We have a challenge in another video where

I printed out flat earth

Flyers saying like, you know, do you do you know the truth about the planet?

You know, it's a picture of a flat earth and I made her

Go into a public place and hand them out to people

Right and like try to convince them to be flat earthers and she was like absolutely mortified like just

horrified and

But it's super fun because then it's like, well, why do you care?

Like you don't know these people you're never gonna see them again. Like why do you care?

Why is it so horrifying, right? Like it's just yeah, it's super exciting for me. This is honestly

It's the most fun I'm having in my career and probably

Six or seven years

Which is a dope lesson because you know, you wrote a book with will smith

Yeah, a movie

You know, you got to do a bunch of things that like I would say are like the on paper like the hashtag goals people think they want

and

Like actually that's not where the source of joy and happiness comes from

Yeah, I think you I think you had said something which was like happiness is from solving problems

Yep, is that 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

Yeah, and that's a lot more satisfying than

For me at least it is, you know, I'm sure there are people out there who prefer like kind of a traditional media environment

but one of the things I learned is that

I can do traditional media projects and I can do very well at them, but like

I don't feel that same passion

With them as a as I do with stuff like this like I like owning my own stuff. I like

Experimenting I like the creative process like having the complete creative freedom and then also owning it

and then also getting the package it and also like controlling the brand around it like it's

also part of I mean we can talk about this too, but

It's it's funny like so when my movie came out and I did all the press for the movie

Every single journalist I talked to was like, so are you gonna do another movie and like in my head. I'm like

Fuck no absolutely not

I'm gonna go make a youtube channel because it's like that was actually my lesson from making a movie was like

I should ask saying it. I should just have a youtube channel like this is because

The economics of the creator economy are fundamentally better. The distribution is

miles better

You have like complete ownership there's complete creative freedom like I just don't see how

This doesn't end up ahead right in 10 years

It's like hanging by like a prestige thread. It really is right of like. Oh, yeah status

It really is and it's I'm sure I I don't think like Hollywood's gonna die

But I I imagine it's gonna be very similar to like kind of what's happened with like newspapers and twitter of like

They're still prestigious newspapers and they still kind of matter a little bit like it's still nice to like be in the new york times or whatever, but

the real intellectual

debate and

Substance and like the stuff that drives culture happens on twitter and sub stack and has for years now, right and it's like

I think we're coming up on an inflection point that that's that's also gonna 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 where it's like, yeah, there's still gonna be like Marvel movies and stuff and

Netflix is gonna have its tv shows and it's gonna be very prestigious to be on those but like

Cultures can be driven by like it probably within this decade

Creators they're gonna grow up for one

Uh and two the production value is gonna get better the storytelling is gonna get better

And it's gonna it's gonna hit an inflection point where it starts driving culture and not

The traditional media if it's not already, I mean, uh, I think I think if you're under 25 it is already right

Fair enough. I want to talk to you about titles because I think you're a title master

Um, do you think you're good at titles?

apparently I

I don't feel good at them, but

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

It wasn't intended to be like a book. It was like, yeah, here's a blog post

Why'd you know to turn that one into a book by the way?

There's it like did it hit in a different way or yeah, that that is that one

I mean, I had a lot of articles go viral over that period like 2012 to 2015

Like I probably had 10 or 12 articles go super viral

But that one just hit on like a whole another level like 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, uh

I think you could change the title of the book. Yeah, and you hadn't done a book in

Years right before that. No, I just done models. That was right

So you're you're you're but you're already thinking about a book and then it was like, yeah

Oh

Leaning into this one. Yeah, so there's this diet a little picture or diagram

That's is that did you make that or the one of the guy floating way on the balloons?

Oh, that was is that a from something. What is this? That was an old meme back in a day. Okay, so good

Yeah, yeah, I love it. And that's that's like as good as that mid-wit meme. It's like yes

This image can become like yeah, you know transformational

It's funny. Yeah, I haven't seen that that I used that used to be around everywhere back in like 2013 2014

And then it's I haven't seen it in a long time

Right, there was also the original article also because back then a big part of packaging an article for like facebook and twitter

Was what image pops up share meta the meta yeah that when you share

And so we used to spend a lot of you know kind of similar like thumbnails on youtube

We used to spend a lot of time like looking for the right image for the share

share image on on facebook and uh

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 like an action scene

That meme is is huge. Yeah, and so we pulled that and used that as like the share

Yeah, the share the share image and it was just kind of this magical combo of content title

Image and it just like all worked. Do you remember how you thought of that title?

So the subtle art of not giving a fuck where does that come from um sitting down?

Are you just hammering out a bunch of possibilities or I back then?

I used to keep a list of article ideas

Like just kind of a running list of ideas that I would just add to like I'd have

Conversations with people and something would pop up and I just pull out my phone add it to the list

um

And it came from it came from there was a heavy metal song

uh

From a band called lamb of god they had a they had a song called the subtle art of murder and persuasion

and um

And at that time I had just done

Like two different articles with fucking the title like I I had just kind of discovered that if you put fucking the title

It would go further. It would yeah everything would go further

So I was like adding fuck to all my titles or to a bunch of my my titles at the time

And so I was just kind of on the lookout of like cool titles that you could add add fucking to

Um, and I think I knew I wanted to do an article about not giving a fuck

Uh, because that was just an obvious topic

Uh

And so when I heard that song I was like well subtle art not giving like that's pretty damn good like I should use that

Let's pull up some of your other ones. So you have uh, the most important question of your life

Yep, that's good. I like that was a huge one because you gotta know I need to know

Well, what is this jackass think you know, it's like probably nothing, but let me just check

Yeah, the most important x

Like it's it's it's always gonna work. You have uh life as a video game and here are the cheat codes

Yeah, like a you know master path that that's become a

I feel like that's become a

It's so this is the other thing like I think a lot of I guess my skill with this just came from cranking out

Articles in the facebook era of like trying to get articles to go viral because it was like so much of it had to do with the title

and

It's been interesting, you know now there's been 10 years

It's been interesting because some of these have kind of just become

I guess classics. Yeah. Yeah, like it's you just see there's probably 10 different brands that use these same titles

All the time and like the life is a video game one. It's like I see that everywhere. I wrote this thread about um

That the first line of it was everybody everybody seems to think clubhouse is the next big thing. Yeah

Um, but I think it's gonna fail

And it's like uh grabs some popcorn. Here's here's how I think it goes down. Yeah. Yeah, and um that thing went crazy viral and like

I like my here, you know, Malcolm Gladwells are following me Bill Simmons DMs me. It's like, oh, shit. This is like this is amazing

I didn't know this could happen because like today the facebook meta doesn't really work

But like no twitter threads actually for a period of time last recently could could go viral

And uh, and now that same

Theme is like people just people the AI is the next big thing

But here's uh, you know, he grabs a popcorn. Here's how I think it goes down

It's like the copy paste but it obviously like loses effectiveness as it goes

That's the other interesting thing too. That's kind of changed in the last 10 years like there was real

And I I don't have any moral judgment around this

But it's you know 10 years ago

It was very much a sense of like if you came up with a title that like

Like a banger

It was like that was yours, right? Yeah, you know, it's like no and if somebody stole it

It was like they're a piece of shit and I call them out and your audience would call them out

Like I used to get emails from fans being like this guy copied your article and like all this stuff

Like I never get those emails anymore. Like it's everybody just rips everybody off now

So anybody who posts anything that goes viral anywhere. There's like the next day. There's half life

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

It's that meme that it's like, you know, I made this thing and then it's like that like I hold anything

I made this I made this yeah

Yeah, I don't think people even are aware of it anymore. Yeah, um

Is blogging dead

I think it it depends on how you define dead so

There was an era in the early 2010s where

a

You a blog could gain reach beyond its own specific niche like it you could kind of

Get mainstream audience like hit hit like a critical mass. I think today

You can still make a living off a blog

It's just you've got to have your niche figured out

You got to like really be tuned into them and you're probably never going to scale an audience past like

low six figures

Um, whereas 10 years ago. I mean, I think at my peak I

It's getting like two two and a half million visitors a month, right? So

It's it's a it's a different world now. It is still possible, but it's like I think it really only

If you're going to go a blog route instead of

podcast or video like it it

You have to have a really good reason and it probably has to be a very specific niche to do it

Did you podcast or do you podcast? I do not is there like a reason or what?

I never started one just because of lack of bandwidth

Uh, just like writing too many books. Um

And then but now that i'm doing the video stuff like i'm probably gonna do something in the podcasting space

It it won't be something like this like

Lasting the world needs is another interview podcast. Don't step on my turf. Yeah. Yeah. I made this

I made this is mine

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

Uh, you did a book with wil smith and presumably spent a bunch of time with wil smith. Yeah

You know when people meet celebrities, I always ask like what are they like? Yeah, it's not like

I don't know. There's a real specific question. It's kind of like that's what everyone how are they?

Yeah, everybody is like, how are they as a person? Yeah, 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 like

What was this?

What was something you saw them do or like something you witnessed that was like

Just not how the common person would have approached like a given situation

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 him

Like that is that is his personality

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 going to surprise anybody. It's just this charisma like he

Is by far the most naturally charismatic

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's so famous

his mind is is very

almost

delusionally positive

Like he kind of has this like, you know, we all have a little bit of a

The psychologist Dan Gilbert calls it a psychological immune system

Which is like when bad things happen we kind of like rationalize or explain them in a way that

You know makes us feel better or helps us

his psychological immune system like it's just

Negativity just bounces right off him

Any sort of failure set back like he doesn't

Doesn't bum them 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 kind of like

It can cause problems for him

And that's that's actually one thing he and I talked about for the book is that you know, he came from a very chaotic and

Like abusive childhood and

He said he's like I developed that as like a survival mechanism

And it's helped me so much throughout my life in 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 uh, so that that's like that was very interesting and and remarkable when you saw the

chris rock slap or whatever

that's obviously kind of like

Not like, you know, mr. Positive or whatever in that moment. Were you like

Yeah, what was your kind of were you like stunned like because you know more than like everybody's shocked because it's a shocking thing

Yeah, but when you know the person

You might have like either it's even more shocking than than that or it's less because you understood it

Maybe it was definitely coming from it was definitely less shocking for me. Um, he slapped you once or twice

Yeah, you're like, yeah, it's common

Keep her name out of your mouth. Uh, no, I mean like one of the things

and we

This is in the book. He had a very abusive alcoholic father

He used to beat the shit out of his mom and he was the oldest. He was the oldest child

He was the male right so he felt responsible and very protective and so

He has a lot of issues around women. He's very protective. He's very

sensitive

like

The women in his life are his Achilles heel like that's if you want to get to him like that's the route

Like you can talk shit about him all day all night. He's gonna sit there and laugh you find whatever

like you go after his mom his daughter or his wife like

shit's gonna get real real fast and

So I wasn't surprised. It was funny. Actually, I was watching it with my wife live and like my wife turned to me

She was like, this is a bit, right? I was like, no

Like he's actually saying that right now. She was like, what?

She sent him a text afterwards or you like just give him space

Because uber famous people you like it's hard to even navigate. It's like, you don't want to be one of those people

Yeah, you're also like, if i'm your friend, do I just send you something? Like

Yeah, it's weird. That's a whole like week. It's been 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 like my opinion or whatever and I'm like

Literally people like I haven't talked to since high school, you know, or like reaching out. I'm like, wait

This is the thing that got you to reach out like all the shit. I did you didn't like didn't bother

Like, you know, couldn't be bothered to say anything but like

This this got you to reach out to me. All right. All right

Yeah, that that was just I mean it like something can win the internet for the day and like that won the internet

So, you know, it has like insane reach. It was insane. Yeah, amazing. Thanks for doing this by the way

I know that you uh, you know, you kind of didn't know what you're gonna do. I hope you enjoyed it

I hope you had a fun time. Yeah, I definitely did because

you're somebody I followed for a long time and

I think the people I respect the most like some people respect like Elon Musk the most some people respect because it's like

Oh, he

Conquers like, you know, taking us to another planet. Yeah, uh, but I always admire thinkers like I think a great thinker

somebody who's who puts out original thoughts and

I don't know makes you think about the world a little differently

Those are my favorite types of people. So I really appreciate you coming on. Thanks, dude. I'm glad glad we did it

Absolutely, man. Where do you want people to go the youtube channel? I'm assuming is check out the youtube channel

There's gonna be more of those videos coming out mark manson. What is the yeah, if you just search mark manson on youtube

it'll pop up and then

markmanson.net got a newsletter there

And I think that's you know, buy the books whatever

I don't give a fuck. Yeah, I don't give a fuck buy my shit

Awesome

I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to

I put my all in it like no days off on a road. Let's travel never looking back

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.