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

Shaan Puri 0:00 Andrew Tate is what men with no self-esteem think high self-esteem looks like. Unpack that a little bit.

Mark Manson 0:05 So it's funny, like, watching the rise of Tate, because he's like a copy and paste of-

Shaan Puri 0:10 20 million plus copies sold. The champion, the no fucks champion.

Mark Manson 0:14 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:14 Official title, I think. Mark Manson, welcome.

Mark Manson 0:17 Thanks, man.

Shaan Puri 0:17 Welcome to, to the pod.

Mark Manson 0:18 It's good. When Subtle Art came out, and it blew up, and it was, like, at the top of all the bestseller lists and stuff, like, everybody in the publishing industry were like, "Oh, you're like the new phenom, debuted author, overnight success," all this.

Shaan Puri 0:28 [laughs]

Mark Manson 0:29 I'm like, "Overnight success? I've been grinding on a blog-

Shaan Puri 0:32 Right

Mark Manson 0:32 ... for 10 years. Like, what do you mean, overnight success?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:35 Were you good at the beginning, or did you suck? [laughs]

Mark Manson 0:37 [laughs] No, dude, I was a fucking disaster. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:40 [laughs]

Mark Manson 0:42 I was a total disaster.

Shaan Puri 0:44 You obviously became a great writer, but I wanna talk about what you're doing now-

Mark Manson 0:47 Mm

Shaan Puri 0:47 ... which is the YouTube video, or the YouTube channel, and is that, like, the main thing?

Mark Manson 0:50 When I saw Mr. Beast, a light bulb went off. I was like, "I love Mr. Beast," and, like, I'd been watching his shit for a long time, but one of my frustrations with him is that it's all very-

Shaan Puri 1:09 Intro to the camera here. We got three time New York Times bestseller, I believe.

Mark Manson 1:14 Yep.

Shaan Puri 1:15 We have, uh, 20 million plus copies sold. The champion, the no fucks champion.

Mark Manson 1:21 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:22 Official title, I think. Uh, Mark Manson, welcome.

Mark Manson 1:26 Thanks, man.

Shaan Puri 1:26 Welcome to, to the pod.

Mark Manson 1:26 It's good, good to be here.

Shaan Puri 1:28 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-

Mark Manson 1:36 Mm

Shaan Puri 1:36 ... like, and I still haven't actually finished the book, but I, until we booked this interview, I was like, "I should probably go away and read the actual book that he's-

Mark Manson 1:41 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:42 ... most famous for."

Mark Manson 1:43 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:43 But there's something to, like, the fun of, like, "Oh, I liked his, his old shit," you know, like the cool band thing.

Mark Manson 1:49 I was a fan before he was cool.

Shaan Puri 1:50 Right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:50 Yeah, that, that whole thing, yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:52 I actually was gonna ask, so, so when I was writing that intro, I was like, "This is pretty great, pretty impressive."

Mark Manson 1:57 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:58 Uh, but I, and I always wondered this, like,

Shaan Puri 2:00 w- 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.

Mark Manson 2:06 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 2:07 Would it have been noticeable that you approached things a little different, even when you were younger?

Mark Manson 2:13 I was definitely different when I was young. For sure. I don't think it would've been obvious that I w- 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."

Shaan Puri 2:30 [laughs]

Mark Manson 2:30 "We wish he would do his homework. Uh, we wish he would stay awake in class."

Shaan Puri 2:34 [laughs]

Mark Manson 2:34 Uh, "But he could do great things one day."

Shaan Puri 2:37 Right.

Mark Manson 2:37 Like, that was kind of the constant refrain throughout my childhood.

Shaan Puri 2:40 Because you just weren't interested in school, or what was the situation?

Mark Manson 2:43 Yeah, I was bored, and, and I would, I would just, whatever I was into, that's just kinda what I... Like, I used to bring poker books to class and read them in the middle of, like, physics class.

Shaan Puri 2:54 [laughs]

Mark Manson 2:54 And my teachers would get mad at me, and I'm like, "Well, I'm just, like, studying poker," you know? So-

Shaan Puri 2:57 Were you big into, like, I don't know, the-

Mark Manson 2:59 Yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 2:59 ... during, like, the Chris Moneymaker phase-

Mark Manson 3:01 Yeah

Shaan Puri 3:01 ... basically? [laughs]

Mark Manson 3:01 Oh, yeah. Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 3:03 That's cool. Um, did you ever, like, go all in on it?

Mark Manson 3:07 I tried. So it's funny. Um,

Mark Manson 3:11 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-

Shaan Puri 3:17 It's huge

Mark Manson 3:18 ... it's massive, right?

Shaan Puri 3:19 [laughs]

Mark Manson 3:19 I'm like, "Oh my God, I can pay rent all summer-

Shaan Puri 3:21 Right

Mark Manson 3:21 ... off my poker winnings." And then, uh, I hit my-

Shaan Puri 3:23 You were in college?

Mark Manson 3:24 Yeah. This was-

Shaan Puri 3:25 So you're paying, like, you know, 20 grand for school, but ignoring school to make $300 in a sit and go? [laughs]

Mark Manson 3:29 Yes, exactly. Like, I'm staying up till 5:00 AM, like, like, "I made 200 bucks last night."

Shaan Puri 3:33 Right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 3:34 Um, and, and then I hit my first big downswing, and lost, like, half my bankroll in, like, maybe three days, four days.

Shaan Puri 3:41 Right.

Mark Manson 3:42 And I was like, "Oh, shit, I don't think I can pay rent this month." You know? I'm like, "This kinda sucks, actually." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 3:47 Yeah.

Mark Manson 3:47 It's like a very-

Shaan Puri 3:48 Screw poker

Mark Manson 3:48 ... very unhealthy, uh, un- unhealthy li- 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."

Shaan Puri 4:06 Right. And you, uh, there's a lot of, like, degenerates you end up hanging around, around, like-

Mark Manson 4:10 Oh, yeah

Shaan Puri 4:10 ... uh, doing it.

Mark Manson 4:11 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 4:11 So you kinda look around, you're like, "This isn't healthy." It's like-

Mark Manson 4:13 Yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 4:13 ... it's like they're not smoking, but there's, like, a secondhand smoke of their, like, life.

Mark Manson 4:17 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 4:17 That's like, I don't want to be inhaling right now.

Mark Manson 4:20 For sure. For sure.

Shaan Puri 4:21 So I think we had kind of a similar, um, set of interests. Maybe it's, like, very common for, I don't know, guys that are-

Mark Manson 4:28 Mm

Shaan Puri 4:28 ... going through some rites of passage. It's like, yeah, you think you can play poker or, like, count cards in blackjack. I mean-

Mark Manson 4:34 Yeah. Yep

Shaan Puri 4:34 ... then you sort of move on-

Mark Manson 4:35 Did that too. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 4:35 ... to, like, the next phase. Yeah, exactly.

Mark Manson 4:37 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 4:37 Um, where, you know, there's a, I think 2005-

Mark Manson 4:41 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 4:42 ... a book comes out that I know influenced you. It influenced me.

Mark Manson 4:44 Yep.

Shaan Puri 4:45 Uh, do you know the one I'm talking about?

Mark Manson 4:46 Of course. The Game.

Shaan Puri 4:47 The Game.

Mark Manson 4:47 Neil Strauss. Yep.

Shaan Puri 4:49 Ironically, my girlfriend at, my girlfriend in high school before I went to college, uh, we were like, "Ah, let's break up. We're going to college in-

Mark Manson 4:54 Yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 4:54 ... 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."

Mark Manson 5:01 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 5:01 It's like your girlfriend giving you a book called The Game-

Mark Manson 5:04 Yeah

Shaan Puri 5:04 ... and is like, "You need this for college."

Mark Manson 5:06 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 5:06 Um, describe, how did you find it, and what was, like, the next 24 hours after you started reading it? [laughs]

Mark Manson 5:14 You know, it's funny. It,

Mark Manson 5:15 it, it hit me at, depending on your perspective, the exact best or worst moment possible. Um, so my first girlfriend in high school had just cheated on me and left me for another dude, and I was completely heartbroken.

Shaan Puri 5:30 Right.

Mark Manson 5:30 Just gutted. You know, weepy, whiny.

Shaan Puri 5:35 And sucks even more in high school, 'cause, like, leaving you is like, she's still there.

Mark Manson 5:39 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 5:39 Right? [laughs]

Mark Manson 5:39 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 5:40 We're still in the hallway. [laughs]

Mark Manson 5:41 Yeah. Well, I w- by this time I was in college.

Shaan Puri 5:43 Oh, okay.

Mark Manson 5:44 But, like, we'd gotten together in high school.

Shaan Puri 5:46 [laughs]

Mark Manson 5:46 Anyway, it was, we didn't, we didn't... You made the right move, so we didn't split up.

Shaan Puri 5:50 Right.

Mark Manson 5:50 But we were, we were like, "Oh, we're in love. We're gonna make it work."

Shaan Puri 5:52 Right.

Mark Manson 5:52 "I'm gonna drive back every other week," and all this shit.

Shaan Puri 5:54 Right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 5:55 And it's like, no, that's a horrible idea. And so of course she found another guy, and-

Shaan Puri 5:58 Right. You should actually look in the camera and be like, "To the person who's-

Mark Manson 6:00 Don't do that

Shaan Puri 6:00 ... 18 right now-"

Mark Manson 6:01 Don't do that.

Shaan Puri 6:02 [laughs]

Mark Manson 6:03 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 6:03 It's not gonna work.

Mark Manson 6:04 It's just, like-

Shaan Puri 6:04 The long distance girlfriend when you both go to college.

Mark Manson 6:06 Dude, just don't do it.

Shaan Puri 6:07 [laughs]

Mark Manson 6:08 And, uh, so anyway, I, I was absolutely heartbroken and distraught, and just ha- like, very angry and confused. And I remember being in a bookstore and seeing, seeing that book, like, on the table. [laughs] And I remember my first reaction was disgust. I was like, I was like, "What is this?" Like, "Who would read this," right? And then I'm like-

Shaan Puri 6:26 Yeah [laughs]

Mark Manson 6:26 "Well, 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 kinda suck you into a world.

Shaan Puri 6:36 Right.

Mark Manson 6:36 Um, yeah, I just, I think I sat down and read probably the first 50, 100 pages there in the bookstore. Uh, 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 [laughs] right."

Shaan Puri 7:01 Right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 7:01 You know? Like, I'm willing to give anything a go at this point. And, uh, so yeah, I, I kinda got sucked into that world for, um, well, I guess four years, five years. Uh, and then it eventually kinda stumbled into my first business was in that world as well.

Shaan Puri 7:18 Yeah. And I wanna talk about that, 'cause I think it's, again, like I... It was like a formative phase of my life too.

Mark Manson 7:23 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 7:23 And so today, I think a bunch of people, rightfully so, you know, like, like you, admire you, follow you, and you h- like add a lot of value to people's lives, right?

Mark Manson 7:31 Mm.

Shaan Puri 7:31 Like, even though self-help kind of like sometimes gets a bad rep, like you're by, almost by definition helping people with themselves, right?

Mark Manson 7:39 Sure. Sure, sure.

Shaan Puri 7:39 Like 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 i- there it is. Uh-

Mark Manson 7:53 Oh, yeah

Shaan Puri 7:53 ... Mo- This is your first book, right?

Mark Manson 7:55 Yep.

Shaan Puri 7:56 Uh, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty.

Mark Manson 7:58 Yep.

Shaan Puri 7:59 Um, at least that subtitle is, is like, you know.

Mark Manson 8:01 Well, we can get to this in a second, but-

Shaan Puri 8:03 But before that-

Mark Manson 8:04 That was a very, very intentional... Yeah, that, that's jumping ahead a couple years.

Shaan Puri 8:09 Yeah.

Mark Manson 8:09 But yeah, keep going.

Shaan Puri 8:10 So let's start with, okay, so you read The Game. You get, you know, kind of the, uh... Like I always say this about Tim Ferriss's book, The 4-Hour Workweek, is like after you read that book you have the four hour fever.

Mark Manson 8:19 Yep.

Shaan Puri 8:19 It's like for the next four hours you reconsider your entire life.

Mark Manson 8:21 Yes. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 8:21 In like a fever dream.

Mark Manson 8:23 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 8:23 And I just tell people that when I give them the book. I'm like, "You're gonna have... Let's, let's schedule some time."

Mark Manson 8:26 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 8:26 "You're gonna need this weekend to have the four hour fever." Um, same kinda thing happens with The Game, and you become... You start, I guess you describe it, 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-

Mark Manson 8:43 Yeah

Shaan Puri 8:43 ... what stood out to you at that time of like, "Oh, I used to do things this way, but this is like this kinda thing I'm learning, this new skill I'm learning"?

Mark Manson 8:52 Well, so the, there's a funny thing about The Game, which is... And it's, it's funny too, 'cause I would put The 4-Hour Workweek in this category as well, in that those are... If I was to make a list of like the five most impactful books that I've ever read in my life, those two would be-

Shaan Puri 9:05 Yeah

Mark Manson 9:05 ... on the list for sure.

Shaan Puri 9:06 Right.

Mark Manson 9:07 That said, I don't actually... Like m- the majority of advice in both of those books I don't think actually was applicable to me or actually worked for me.

Shaan Puri 9:17 Right.

Mark Manson 9:17 It was more just showing what was possible, right? So, um, and definitely more so in, in The Game's case than Four. You know, Four Hour Work Week, it, it, it, it's primarily principles and mindset. So you know, my, my issue with The 4-Hour Workweek was [laughs] that it just, it made it sound way easier than it was.

Shaan Puri 9:34 Right.

Mark Manson 9:34 It's, it's, you know, the, the, the real four hour workweek is, uh, you know, work 16 hours a day so you can make money while you sleep.

Shaan Puri 9:41 [laughs]

Mark Manson 9:42 Um, but the, 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.

Shaan Puri 9:57 Right.

Mark Manson 9:57 Like that never occurred to me. It just occ- like at, up to that point in my youn- my life, like most young people I just kind of assumed like, well, either girls are into you or they're not.

Shaan Puri 10:09 Right.

Mark Manson 10:09 And if they're not you're kinda, you're kinda fucked.

Shaan Puri 10:12 Right.

Mark Manson 10:12 Right? Or not fucked in that case. But like-

Shaan Puri 10:14 [laughs]

Mark Manson 10:15 ... it, 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.

Shaan Puri 10:38 Right.

Mark Manson 10:38 Like where like s- stories-

Shaan Puri 10:40 Like magic, magic routines. Yeah [laughs]

Mark Manson 10:40 ... stories you would memorize and all this stuff. It was a fucking disaster.

Shaan Puri 10:44 Yeah.

Mark Manson 10:44 Like it was just i- 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."

Shaan Puri 11:12 Right.

Mark Manson 11:13 Right? And so that's kinda what I started doing througho- 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-

Shaan Puri 11:25 Right

Mark Manson 11:25 ... or whatever.

Shaan Puri 11:26 For me I had the same experience you had except for, uh, the lamest moment, the rock bottom moment-

Mark Manson 11:30 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 11:30 ... is when you hear another guy saying the same thing-

Mark Manson 11:34 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 11:34 ... 'cause he read the same book.

Mark Manson 11:35 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 11:35 And you're like, "Oh, shit. There's like 100 of us running around."

Mark Manson 11:38 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 11:39 It's like this thing I was gonna say by itself was actually a little bit cringe.

Mark Manson 11:43 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 11:43 Maximally cringe if she heard this from another guy. And I was like, "Oh, okay, I can't just like-"

Mark Manson 11:47 Yeah, you can't.

Shaan Puri 11:47 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-

Mark Manson 11:57 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 11:57 ... uh, some, the self-confidence to believe that this might actually work, that you can actually approach somebody and ha- have a good conversation and that that could lead to something-

Mark Manson 12:02 Yeah

Shaan Puri 12:03 ... was like pretty powerful. Yeah, I even do this with podcasts. Like I have like a note of like what's the first thing I'm gonna talk about with you?

Mark Manson 12:10 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 12:10 Like I kinda know that the next 90 minutes will be great either way.

Mark Manson 12:13 Sure.

Shaan Puri 12:14 But that first minute is like the social anxiety piece, and which is like the same thing with, with these pickup artists which is like Most people just aren't even approaching anyone-

Mark Manson 12:22 Yeah

Shaan Puri 12:22 ... with anything that's, uh, of interest that might lead to a conversation. Um, so for me, that was, like, the bigger thing. Do you, uh, still have that kind of like... Do you just think about that moment of social anxiety, that first, um, that first moment and, like, was the game helpful in, like, getting those reps?

Mark Manson 12:40 For sure. I mean, I, I, I had a lot of social anxiety when I was young and, and

Mark Manson 12:45 it's funny 'cause it took me a long time to appreciate that, that... You know, 'cause 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 12:55 Right.

Mark Manson 12:55 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.

Shaan Puri 13:05 Right.

Mark Manson 13:05 And, uh, I actually had a very for- you know, kinda like you hearing, overhearing ano- another guy say a word. I actually got very lucky early on because I was trying to use some of the stuff I read in the game. [laughs] I started... I tried to do, like, some fucking coin magic tricks and-

Shaan Puri 13:19 Yeah. [laughs]

Mark Manson 13:19 ... stuff. Like, just total disaster.

Shaan Puri 13:20 [laughs]

Mark Manson 13:21 And, uh, I remember I, I, I was having no luck whatsoever. And I actually got very fortunate in that I was in a bar or something and I was talking to these three girls and I was, like, trying to do a magic trick and they were, like, really into it-

Shaan Puri 13:34 [laughs]

Mark Manson 13:34 ... really excited, and I kept fucking it up. And then, like, it kinda got awkward and at a certain point they realized, they were like, "Wait, like, you're just doing a thing to, like, kinda hit on us."

Shaan Puri 13:43 [laughs]

Mark Manson 13:44 And I, like, tried to make a joke and it was super lame or something and they kinda rolled their eyes and they started to walk away and I was like, "Wait, I have another magic trick." And-

Shaan Puri 13:52 [laughs]

Mark Manson 13:53 ... and I remember one of the girls turned around and she looked at me and she was like, "You know, you were kinda cute. Like, you should just be yourself." And I was like-

Shaan Puri 14:03 Right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 14:04 ... sh- you know, like head explode and I was... And, and that was kinda one of those, 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-

Shaan Puri 14:15 [laughs]

Mark Manson 14:15 ... already feels natural and trying to, instead of trying to be, like, some fucking weird dude in a book-

Shaan Puri 14:20 Right

Mark Manson 14:20 ... you know, that I can't believe I spent $10,000 and two years of my life studying all this shit and I could have just, like, walked up and been like, "Hi, where are you from?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:29 Right.

Mark Manson 14:29 And it would have gotten me the exact same results. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:32 There's a book that's like a food diet book. I haven't even read the book but the last page of the book is, like, a summary. Uh-

Mark Manson 14:40 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 14:40 ... you might know the book 'cause y- you're, you're, you're an author. Um, it's like, "Here's the..." Like, after all the studies and all the diets, 'cause like, you know, there's, like, a trillion diets out there.

Mark Manson 14:48 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 14:48 And, like, they're, like, sup- some are super complicated. You're, like, you know, peeing on a strip to see if you're, like-

Mark Manson 14:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 14:52 ... in ketosis or not. Like-

Mark Manson 14:54 Yeah, yeah

Shaan Puri 14:54 ... you could do all... You can take it to the nth degree and it was like, "Yeah, so it seems like the rules are, um, you know, eat real food, like, not, like, packaged, processed food. Like, eat real food, not too much."

Mark Manson 15:04 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 15:04 And, like [laughs] ... And it was, like, that was, like, basically the, the, the core of the advice.

Mark Manson 15:09 Yeah, perfect.

Shaan Puri 15:09 And it's like, "Oh, yeah." And, like, but if you actually intensely followed that-

Mark Manson 15:14 Yeah

Shaan Puri 15:14 ... you would get all the results you want, but, like, there's this thing where we sorta search for this, like, other answer, the secret answer.

Mark Manson 15:20 Yes.

Shaan Puri 15:21 It can't possibly be just that.

Mark Manson 15:23 There, there is a weird thing that happens in a lot of these industries which is the concepts and fram- frameworks that sell well are often counterproductive.

Shaan Puri 15:32 Right.

Mark Manson 15:32 And you see this in diet and nutrition, you see this in exercise for sure, you see this in social skills, personal development, self-help, you see it in the pickup world. Like, it's really sexy. Like, when a guy stands up and he says, "I have a three-step model that works every time-

Shaan Puri 15:48 Right

Mark Manson 15:48 ... and you're gonna get laid like tile and you're gonna lose 100 pounds" and, you know, it's really sexy and you really wanna buy it and you, like, wanna believe it and it works and it makes people millions of dollars but then it doesn't actually... It's not actually good advice.

Shaan Puri 16:03 Right.

Mark Manson 16:03 Whereas the good advice, like, this is the other hard thing about these industries is that the good advice is boring. And so, and the things that work, and again this is true in personal development, it's true with social skills, true with diet and 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-

Shaan Puri 16:24 Right

Mark Manson 16:24 ... consistently over a long period of time. That's the hard part. And there's no easy way to sell a solution to that.

Shaan Puri 16:31 Yes.

Mark Manson 16:31 So the easy thing to sell a solution for is, you know, my three steps that work every time.

Shaan Puri 16:36 Right. Uh, uh, I mean, I see this everywhere, like, 'cause I'm mostly in the kinda startup business world. Um, and, like, you know, Warren Buffett, uh, they're like, "You know, Warren, you're pretty open about your strategies."

Mark Manson 16:46 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 16:47 Um, and they're not, like, that complicated.

Mark Manson 16:50 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 16:50 Um, why do you think that more people don't do this? And it was either him or Charlie Munger that were like, "'Cause nobody wants to get rich slow."

Mark Manson 16:56 Yep.

Shaan Puri 16:56 It's like, yeah, we just did this in public and he's like, "You know, I made most of my wealth, like, from the ages of s- 70 to 90."

Mark Manson 17:02 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 17:02 And, like, uh, you know, no- nobody wants that.

Mark Manson 17:05 Nobody wants to do that. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 17:05 Nobody wants to hear that.

Mark Manson 17:06 It's ... Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 17:06 They, they wanna hear that guy who's not done this-

Mark Manson 17:09 Yeah

Shaan Puri 17:09 ... tell them that they can do X, Y, Z faster or d- in a different way, in a complicated way that like-

Mark Manson 17:13 Yeah

Shaan Puri 17:13 ... you, you know, you just didn't have the info. Now that you got the info, now it's all gonna work.

Mark Manson 17:18 Yeah. Right.

Shaan Puri 17:18 And, like, same thing, like, uh, you know, Y Combinator which is the most successful, like, you know, startup, uh, investor and s- and, and, uh, accelerator. Their number one advice is just make something people want.

Mark Manson 17:31 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 17:31 And they're like-

Mark Manson 17:32 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 17:32 ... "Well, what's the great startup advice?"

Mark Manson 17:34 Oh, really? [laughs]

Shaan Puri 17:34 Like, well, and then, but then-

Mark Manson 17:35 Yeah

Shaan Puri 17:35 ... but the, the way it helps is, like, if you just tell someone that they don't know how to use it.

Mark Manson 17:39 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 17:39 But the ques- like, the audit when you're like, "So do you think that people want this?" The- They're like, "Of course." And it's like, "Cool, so what tells you that-

Mark Manson 17:46 Yeah

Shaan Puri 17:46 ... what, what evidence is showing you that people want this?" And they're like, "Well, we don't have any."

Mark Manson 17:50 Dude, it, it, it's, it's, it's like that bell curve meme where it's like, you know-

Shaan Puri 17:53 The genius and the, and the, the numbskull

Mark Manson 17:54 ... yeah, the, the idiot's like, "Just make something people want" and then in the middle of the bell curve it's like, "Well, you've gotta have these 12 steps and figure out these strate-"

Shaan Puri 18:01 Right.

Mark Manson 18:01 You know? And then the, the Jedi is like, "Just make something people want." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 18:03 I love that meme. That's ... I, I told Bas like-

Mark Manson 18:05 It's so true

Shaan Puri 18:06 ... that's the meme of the year. That's the meme of the year. [laughs]

Mark Manson 18:08 It's so true across so many domains it's amazing. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 18:11 Yeah. And I catch myself all the time and I'm like-

Mark Manson 18:13 For sure

Shaan Puri 18:13 ... I need... What would the Jedi? Oh, the Jedi would just say, like-

Mark Manson 18:16 Yeah

Shaan Puri 18:16 ... do it because it's fun instead of, like-

Mark Manson 18:19 Yeah

Shaan Puri 18:19 ... you know, all these other things.

Mark Manson 18:20 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 18:21 Um, when you look back, 'cause Ben's been flashing a bunch of your, like, I no- I noticed Ben, Ben, uh-

Mark Manson 18:25 Oh, God

Shaan Puri 18:26 ... uh, he flashes a bunch of your things that are like-

Mark Manson 18:27 Oh, God

Shaan Puri 18:28 This is the cringe section of the... Don't worry. It, it gets better. The interview will get better. But this is the cringe section.

Mark Manson 18:32 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 18:34 Uh, but you have, like, a bunch of these things that I'm like, they're, like, just amazing headlines.

Mark Manson 18:37 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 18:37 We're gonna talk, we're gonna talk titles later 'cause you're, like, a title master.

Mark Manson 18:40 Sure.

Shaan Puri 18:41 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-

Mark Manson 18:48 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 18:48 ... life is not really about what happens, it's kinda, like, what you, what you make of it and also what you tell yourself, the story you tell yourself about what happened.

Mark Manson 18:54 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 18:55 Um, so, like, when you look back on that phase, is it just, like, um, cringe and I don't wanna ever think about it? Like, I, I hope I mi- I forget about that. Is it, like, no, that was actually really useful for me in these ways?

Mark Manson 19:07 Hmm.

Shaan Puri 19:07 Is it just funny now? Like, what's your reaction now?

Mark Manson 19:10 Uh, it's a really good question. I w- I would say it's probably, like, one-third cringe, one-third I think it was actually really important, informative in a lot of ways, and then one-third just kinda funny and just like-

Shaan Puri 19:22 Right

Mark Manson 19:23 ... can you believe that happened? Uh, I 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 [laughs] we spent, like, half the day just kinda being like, "Can you believe that happened?"

Shaan Puri 19:35 Right. Right.

Mark Manson 19:35 "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 'cause 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-

Shaan Puri 20:01 Right

Mark Manson 20:01 ... 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, w- like, we [laughs] in the industry co- or 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.

Shaan Puri 20:20 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Mark Manson 20:20 Like, it, 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, the dating or the girls.

Shaan Puri 20:57 Right.

Mark Manson 20:57 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's coming back today, and you're seeing a lot of that happen again-

Shaan Puri 21:16 Right

Mark Manson 21:16 ... with a different set of role models and, uh, a different industry.

Shaan Puri 21:22 Well, let's talk about one of them. Uh, so I think Andrew Tate is, like, the-

Mark Manson 21:25 For sure

Shaan Puri 21:25 ... uh, you know, poster boy right now that... Ben, uh, Benky, pull up that tweet he has. You have a great tweet about Andrew Tate I wanna ask you about.

Mark Manson 21:32 Yeah. Yeah.

Shaan Puri 21:32 "Andrew Tate is what men with no self-esteem think high self-esteem looks like. As a rule, narcissism is al- is always mistaken for confidence by those who have no confidence. From there, it doesn't take much

Shaan Puri 21:45 for the dynamic to turn abusive/ex- exploitive."

Mark Manson 21:48 Yeah, so it's funny, like, watching Ta- the rise of Tate because, uh, he just, he's, like, a copy and paste of half the guys that were in that industry.

Shaan Puri 21:57 Right.

Mark Manson 21:57 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."

Shaan Puri 22:07 [laughs]

Mark Manson 22:07 You know, like, it's all the same shit just-

Shaan Puri 22:08 Right

Mark Manson 22:08 ... recycled in a new package. I, I do think Tate is uniquely charismatic, and I think he has an interesting backstory that a lot of g- young men re- respect.

Shaan Puri 22:18 Right.

Mark Manson 22:18 And so that, that is gi-

Shaan Puri 22:20 Adds to the

Mark Manson 22:20 It's given him a lot more amplification. It's also just a different era with social media and everything.

Shaan Puri 22:26 Right.

Mark Manson 22:26 Uh, but...

Shaan Puri 22:28 And he, like, layered on an MLM.

Mark Manson 22:30 Yeah, he [laughs] yeah, too.

Shaan Puri 22:31 So he was like... Right? So he just combined, like, three of the most powerful forces in the world together.

Mark Manson 22:34 Yeah, seriously. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 22:35 Pretty insane charisma.

Mark Manson 22:36 [laughs] Yes.

Shaan Puri 22:37 With, like, this, like, cocktail of, like, w- words that cast a spell on young men.

Mark Manson 22:41 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 22:41 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."

Mark Manson 22:50 It's-

Shaan Puri 22:51 Which is insane

Mark Manson 22:51 ... it, 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 wanna see somebody do, like, a really good book about him.

Shaan Puri 23:01 Right.

Mark Manson 23:01 And, like, a, a fair book, not, like, trying to smear him. Like, take an honest look of, like, who was this guy? Why did he blow up?

Shaan Puri 23:08 Right.

Mark Manson 23:08 Why did this work, right? Like, because, uh, it's, I think it's easy... Obviously, you can take the worst things that he's said. It's no secret some of the bad things he's 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 kinda got over this, and this kinda ties back into my first book Models. 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.

Shaan Puri 23:55 Right.

Mark Manson 23:56 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 bedpost and brag to your buddies, and that is a very bad trade-off. Like, if [laughs] 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 kinda 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-

Shaan Puri 24:59 Right

Mark Manson 24:59 ... and view your own self-esteem. And so I was kinda 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."

Shaan Puri 25:16 Were you good at the beginning or did you suck? [laughs]

Mark Manson 25:18 [laughs] No, dude. I was a fucking disaster. [laughs] I was a total disaster. Um, you, do you want me to talk about the content side or the marketing side?

Shaan Puri 25:29 Uh, whatever's more interesting.

Shaan Puri 25:30 You, you tell me.

Mark Manson 25:31 Well, I'll, I'll, I'll ta- start with the content side. It's less interesting, but I'll start with it 'cause 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, I... Back in the day, back when blogs s- 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?" And [laughs] my answer was always the same, which is, like, "Write 100 blog posts, come ask me again."

Shaan Puri 25:57 Right.

Mark Manson 25:58 And, uh-

Shaan Puri 25:59 Have you seen, by the way, Mr.Beast has, like, almost the exact verbatim answer?

Mark Manson 26:02 Yes, and I love it because, yeah, it's the exact same thing I used to tell people. It's-

Shaan Puri 26:06 And it's a combination of, like, it's actually the right advice, 'cause you need a bunch of reps-

Mark Manson 26:09 Yes

Shaan Puri 26:10 ... and you need to suck for a little bit and get be- just try to make each, the next video better.

Mark Manson 26:13 And nobody does it.

Shaan Puri 26:14 But it's also, it's a filter. It's like, "Are you serious or are you not serious?"

Mark Manson 26:17 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 26:17 "I will help you if you're serious."

Mark Manson 26:18 Yes. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 26:19 But nine out of every 10, you're not serious-

Mark Manson 26:20 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 26:20 ... this is the easy task.

Mark Manson 26:21 Exactly.

Shaan Puri 26:22 [laughs]

Mark Manson 26:22 Exactly. And the funny thing is too is that it's like most people, if they go write 100 blog posts and try to make each one better, by the 100th one they don't need the advice anymore.

Shaan Puri 26:31 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Mark Manson 26:31 They know what they're doing wrong.

Shaan Puri 26:32 Exactly.

Mark Manson 26:32 They know what they need to get better at, so...

Shaan Puri 26:35 Was there anything that got you better? What... Did you read something or follow some... Or, uh, you know, model your stuff after someone? Like, do you remember how you got good in terms of writing and content?

Mark Manson 26:44 My two big inspira- I was a huge Bill Simmons fan back in the day.

Shaan Puri 26:48 Wow. We're, like, very, very alike.

Mark Manson 26:50 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 26:50 Like, uh, you know.

Mark Manson 26:51 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 26:51 Back in the day, page t- you know, page two.

Mark Manson 26:53 Page two.

Shaan Puri 26:53 You know? [laughs]

Mark Manson 26:54 Yeah. And, um, it's... I remember reading his co- 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..." 'Cause 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, um-

Shaan Puri 27:18 The blog roll type thing?

Mark Manson 27:20 Yeah, like link farming.

Shaan Puri 27:21 Yeah.

Mark Manson 27:21 Like, you know, you would pro- like, write something spicy so that a bunch of other bloggers would wanna comment on it, so they'd link to you-

Shaan Puri 27:27 Right

Mark Manson 27:27 ... 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, 20 single paragraphs-

Shaan Puri 27:40 Right

Mark Manson 27:40 ... 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 unin- uninspiring. And so, and I loved Bill Simmons, and I was like, "Man, I wanna be the Bill Simmons of my industry."

Shaan Puri 27:55 Right.

Mark Manson 27:55 Right? Like, I wanna have these, like, epic 10-page posts that, that guys just get lost in-

Shaan Puri 28:01 Right

Mark Manson 28:01 ... and, like, you know, they, like, w- schedule their week around.

Shaan Puri 28:04 Right, and you end up feeling like a friend.

Mark Manson 28:05 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 28:05 It's like, it's a hang.

Mark Manson 28:07 Yeah. And I think it, that probably hurt me in the short run and it helped me in the long run to see it.

Shaan Puri 28:12 I tried to meet up with him when, uh, so we came out here, I was like, "I wanna schedule it."

Mark Manson 28:15 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 28:15 I was like, "He was my dream guest." I was like, "I would love to have Bill Simmons on this-"

Mark Manson 28:18 Yeah

Shaan Puri 28:18 ... because I don't, he doesn't do a lot of, like, where he's the guest. I don't, I've never really seen any, to be honest. Like-

Mark Manson 28:23 Yeah, he's like a, he's a big deal at Spotify now, so-

Shaan Puri 28:26 Yeah

Mark Manson 28:26 ... he's, you know, he's...

Shaan Puri 28:27 Yeah, that's fine, but, like-

Mark Manson 28:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 28:29 ... uh, whatever. [laughs]

Mark Manson 28:31 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 28:31 Who cares? But, but he, he, he's written so... If you haven't, if, if people haven't read this, go read, uh, I think it's called, like, The Consequences of Caring.

Mark Manson 28:38 Mm.

Shaan Puri 28:40 Unbelievable post. So good.

Mark Manson 28:41 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 28:41 Uh, anyway, sorry. Continue. So Bill Simmons inspired you to be like, "I don't need to, like, sell out to the algor-" the algorithm of that time, the meta of that time.

Mark Manson 28:48 Yeah, and it's-

Shaan Puri 28:48 It's like-

Mark Manson 28:49 ... I also think it helped that I w- I was in a pretty niche and, uh, insulated industry. Like, everybody kinda 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 kinda got talked about and shared.

Shaan Puri 29:14 Do you remember what was, uh, like, kinda your first thing that broke out?

Mark Manson 29:18 I really, in that era, I really don't. I really don't. It was so gradual, man.

Shaan Puri 29:24 Yeah.

Mark Manson 29:24 Like, my... It's funny because, you know, Subtle Art is so massive. Like [laughs] I, it was funny w- This is jumping ahead a little bit, but, like, when Subtle Art came out and it blew up and it was, like, at the top of all the bestseller lists and stuff, like, everybody in the publishing industry were like, "Oh, you're like the new phenom, debuted author, overnight success," and all this.

Shaan Puri 29:44 [laughs]

Mark Manson 29:44 I'm like, "Overnight success? I've been fucking grinding on a blog-"

Shaan Puri 29:49 Right

Mark Manson 29:49 ... "for 10 years. Like, what do you mean overnight success?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 29:52 Right. Yeah, I was doing, like... You know, that's, like, the low status thing in society, is like, "Yeah, I'm a blogger."

Mark Manson 29:57 Yes.

Shaan Puri 29:58 It's like-

Mark Manson 29:58 Exactly

Shaan Puri 29:58 ... "So you're unemployed?" Like, what is that? You know? [laughs]

Mark Manson 30:01 Dude, oh.

Shaan Puri 30:01 Especially back then.

Mark Manson 30:02 Oh, I got, I got stories. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Mark Manson 30:05 I got stories. I remember, um, like, 2013, 2014, and by this time my, 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, kinda got in a 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."

Shaan Puri 30:28 Right.

Mark Manson 30:28 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 100,000 a year." And I was like, "I already make 100,000 a year."

Shaan Puri 30:36 [laughs]

Mark Manson 30:36 And she just looked at me and she goes, "No, you don't [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:39 I'm just like, "What the fuck?"

Mark Manson 30:40 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 30:41 Don't lie.

Mark Manson 30:41 [laughs] I was like, "Do you want tax returns?"

Shaan Puri 30:44 Yeah.

Mark Manson 30:44 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 co- 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 2 days and I'm, and he did it differently than 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 kinda my MO. And it's funny, because that eventually became the meta, kinda in 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.

Shaan Puri 31:26 [laughs]

Mark Manson 31:27 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 s- 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 kinda figure that out. Like, anything I was working on getting better at in my business, it was always the sales and marketing stuff.

Shaan Puri 32:13 Right.

Mark Manson 32:13 Like, figuring that shit out.

Speaker 32:15 [upbeat music] I can't find this client info.

Speaker 32:19 Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned. No out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot, grow better.

Shaan Puri 32:33 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 wanna talk about what you're doing now-

Mark Manson 32:40 Mm

Shaan Puri 32:40 ... which is the YouTube video.

Mark Manson 32:41 Sure.

Shaan Puri 32:42 So, or the YouTube channel.

Mark Manson 32:43 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 32:43 And it seems like that's... I don't know, is that your, like, is that, like, the main thing? Is that, like, this is my new baby?

Mark Manson 32:47 Right now that i- right now that's the new main thing, yeah.

Shaan Puri 32:49 And so, uh, I think you dropped the first, first, like, um, video maybe a couple days ago.

Mark Manson 32:55 Yep.

Shaan Puri 32:56 And doing super well. Can you pull it up? I wanna 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-

Mark Manson 33:07 Mm

Shaan Puri 33:07 ... and I don't know if you've ever seen this. They, they sit down, they, like, look at game film with them just to see kinda how they think.

Mark Manson 33:12 Sure.

Shaan Puri 33:12 And, um, it's my favorite thing in any podcast is, like, when you can really, like, not, like, talk in the abstract-

Mark Manson 33:19 Yeah

Shaan Puri 33:19 ... but talk in the specific.

Shaan Puri 33:20 Like, like, "Why did you do this?"

Mark Manson 33:22 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 33:22 Like, "How did you think about this?"

Mark Manson 33:23 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 33:23 Um, and w- we hung out with MrBeast 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..."

Mark Manson 33:30 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 33:30 Like, I learned something tactical, but also just I get you more-

Mark Manson 33:33 Yeah

Shaan Puri 33:33 ... um, versus when you ask him general questions. And so I want, kinda wanna play this game. I don't know how it's gonna work-

Mark Manson 33:37 Okay, cool

Shaan Puri 33:37 ... but we'll try. I wanna know the thought that went into this. Let's watch the first 10 seconds, I wanna hear you talk about it.

Mark Manson 33:41 Okay.

Speaker 33:41 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.

Shaan Puri 33:54 [laughs] All right, let's pause right there.

Mark Manson 33:55 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 33:55 All right. Walk me through that. What-

Mark Manson 33:57 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 33:57 A lot was happening there. W- what was... How are we thinking about this? Obviously some MrBeast inspiration here.

Mark Manson 34:02 He was very inspirational. So let me zoom out for a second, uh, more broadly, and then I can kinda come back to this video specifically.

Shaan Puri 34:10 Yeah.

Mark Manson 34:10 So early in my career, I did a lot of coaching. First with the pickup stuff, and then just kinda, like, life advice in general. I stopped coaching for a lot of reasons, but one of them is I was consist- I was very frustrated by it, which was that I feel like the incent- 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.

Shaan Puri 34:44 Right.

Mark Manson 34:44 Like my, my incentive is to make it feel like I'm fixing your self-esteem issues-

Shaan Puri 34:48 Right

Mark Manson 34:48 ... even though they're still there.

Shaan Puri 34:49 You're like a pharmaceutical company.

Mark Manson 34:50 Right, exactly. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 34:50 "It'll cure you." [laughs]

Mark Manson 34:53 Ex- exactly. And then on your side of the equation, uh, it's what often happens in practice, like on the customer side, is what often that happens in practice is people kinda 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?

Shaan Puri 35:12 [laughs]

Mark Manson 35:12 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've kinda found myself in, like, awkward situations with clients and stuff. Uh, so I, I just got away w- from it, uh, entirely, and just kinda stuck to books and courses and everything. When I saw MrBeast, a light bulb went off. I was like... Because I love MrBeast, 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.

Shaan Puri 35:50 Yeah.

Mark Manson 35:50 Like I'll, I'll watch a MrBeast video, and I'll get to the end, and I'm like, "I wanna know about the guy who won."

Shaan Puri 35:55 His character.

Mark Manson 35:56 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. Like, bring their families in." Like, I wanna see... Let's get some juicy drama going, right?

Shaan Puri 36:03 By the way, I talked to him about this.

Mark Manson 36:05 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 36:05 And I was like, uh, 'cause I was like, he was talking about like a Netflix or, like, TV shows.

Mark Manson 36:10 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 36:10 And it was like, oh, like, you know, what can you learn about TV sh- what can you, what do you learn from, like, TV shows that have been running for a long time, do really well?

Mark Manson 36:16 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 36:17 And he, he says, he's like, "Uh, also, I think they can learn a lot from us." And he's like-

Mark Manson 36:22 Yeah

Shaan Puri 36:22 ... he's like, "I'd love to see their retention curve." Um, right?

Mark Manson 36:25 Right.

Shaan Puri 36:25 He's like, "They, they just don't know where people are dropping off." And he's like, "What we found was, like, if you hit them, hit them, hit them with, like, the more of, like, the action and the stakes-"

Mark Manson 36:33 Yeah

Shaan Puri 36:33 "... 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-"

Mark Manson 36:43 Yeah

Shaan Puri 36:43 "... and I gotta figure out how I'm gonna do that."

Mark Manson 36:44 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 36:44 But he's like, "I don't know," uh, he's like, "I don't know how to do that yet, but, like, we should probably learn that." Um-

Mark Manson 36:49 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, 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 a... Like, once you're in a theater, it's more difficult to leave than to sit through a bad movie.

Shaan Puri 37:11 [laughs]

Mark Manson 37:11 So everybody just sits through a bad movie. You know? A- and it's... In the previous era of television, it's, you know, you don't wanna sit there and, like, flip around for 10 minutes looking for something else, so you sit there and just kinda watch a mediocre show. So it's like-

Shaan Puri 37:25 Mm

Mark Manson 37:25 ... traditional media is coming from 100 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-

Shaan Puri 37:42 Right

Mark Manson 37:42 ... and TV shows. YouTube is kinda the other way around. Like, there's always shit fighting for your attention-

Shaan Puri 37:48 [laughs]

Mark Manson 37:48 ... 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-

Shaan Puri 38:04 And click-through rate, right?

Mark Manson 38:05 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 38:05 Like, those two, two variables.

Mark Manson 38:06 Yes. Super hooky, very clickbait-y. Like, addictive, but also kinda empty calories.

Shaan Puri 38:12 Right.

Mark Manson 38:12 Like, you can just blow through, like, six videos and just be like, "Wait, what did I... I don't remember a single thing I just watched." And that's kinda unsatisfying. Traditional media is, like, caught on the other side of things of like, "Wait, shit," like, people are s- 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 and drama side of things. And I think whoever figures it out first is gonna, like-

Shaan Puri 38:45 Right

Mark Manson 38:46 ... w- win really big. But anyway, back to the MrBeast thing and the coaching thing. So I was watching MrBeast videos for a couple years. And then, like, last year I was, I was kinda taking this break and I was trying to figure out what I was gonna 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 s- you know, stand in a circle or-"

Shaan Puri 39:14 Right

Mark Manson 39:14 ... "uh, you know, who keep your hand on a car." Like, what if it was built around-

Shaan Puri 39:17 Put your tongue on this Lamborghini. [laughs]

Mark Manson 39:18 Yeah. [laughs] Like, what if it was built around, like, a real personal issue that, like, you have to investigate to, like, try to understand?

Shaan Puri 39:25 Right.

Mark Manson 39:26 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.

Shaan Puri 39:50 Right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 39:51 Like, they're not fucking going out and doing it. And so... And they could pay a coach 1,000 bucks and the coach can say, "Okay. Well, you paid me 1,000 bucks. Now go do it." And s- sometimes that works, but not always. Or you could say, "I'll give you 1,000 bucks if you go do it and fix your own shit."

Shaan Puri 40:07 Right.

Mark Manson 40:08 Like, what does that look like, right? Like, what is... Like, i- the most effective lay- 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-

Shaan Puri 40:19 Mm

Mark Manson 40:19 ... 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-"

Shaan Puri 40:25 That's kinda genius, yeah.

Mark Manson 40:26 I was like, "Fuck, I need to make this." Uh, 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. Um, uh, there are... Like, I'm already aware of, like, 15 things that are wrong with this video.

Shaan Puri 40:44 [laughs] Right.

Mark Manson 40:44 And, like, there are, like... It's, it's actually underperforming o- our, our expectations, and, like, there's so many things that we need to fix. But-

Shaan Puri 40:52 It's your first rep, yeah.

Mark Manson 40:53 It's the first rep. It's, like, the first... It's, like, the beta test. But super, super excited about the format.

Shaan Puri 40:59 The concept makes a ton of sense. And, uh, also, like, even just mechanically, like, the things you just said. So if, you know, coaching's getting somebody to, like, transform, uh, the way the transform is not information, it's doing it.

Mark Manson 41:12 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 41:12 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-

Mark Manson 41:16 Yeah

Shaan Puri 41:16 ... and it's like, you know, there's a contract there to, like, do the thing. Um, but you also... How can you offer $10,000 to... Y- why could you pay your co- That's not a sustainable business. But it is if it's YouTube content, right?

Mark Manson 41:28 Exactly.

Shaan Puri 41:28 So, like, you have, like, almost the full loop to be able to make something, uh, work.

Mark Manson 41:31 It creates a, it creates a very beautiful flywheel of you're helping that individual. So in, 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... 'Cause I could easily make a video of me sitting at a desk talking about social anxiety-

Shaan Puri 41:55 Right

Mark Manson 41:55 ... for 15 minutes. Everybody's heard the same shit. They've all, like... Everybody knows what I'm gonna say.

Shaan Puri 42:00 Right.

Mark Manson 42:00 Now millions of people get to actually watch somebody overcome this.

Shaan Puri 42:02 A character overcome, yeah.

Mark Manson 42:04 Yeah. It's like, "Oh, that's what it looks like. Oh, that's what... how people respond in that situation."

Shaan Puri 42:09 Right.

Mark Manson 42:09 You know?

Shaan Puri 42:09 It's the difference between watching Rocky and then some- or somebody sitting in a chair and saying, "You just gotta work really hard."

Mark Manson 42:15 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 42:15 It's a different emotional register.

Mark Manson 42:16 Totally.

Shaan Puri 42:17 And one you remember 20 years later and still think about when you work out.

Mark Manson 42:19 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 42:20 And the other one you don't. [laughs]

Mark Manson 42:21 Totally. So it's... The qualitative feedback on this has been... Honestly, it's been some of the best of my entire c- Like, we've... If you look through the comments of this video, there's tons of comments of people saying, "I cried."

Shaan Puri 42:36 Right.

Mark Manson 42:36 "This was me." "Oh my God." Like, "I was not expecting this. This is so powerful." You know? It, it, it's pretty incredible.

Shaan Puri 42:44 And so how did you think about those first 10, 15 seconds? I don't know how, how long we went, but, like, what are you tr- trying to achieve in those first 15 seconds of this video?

Mark Manson 42:53 So the... With YouTube content, there's always this question of, like, what's the hook? Like, what's gonna get people to buy in?

Shaan Puri 42:58 Yeah.

Mark Manson 42:58 What's g- 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 s- it's super abstract. Like, social, social anxiety is super abstract. Like, how do you show social anxiety? It's, like, not very obvious-

Shaan Puri 43:15 Right

Mark Manson 43:15 ... how you show that visually. Uh, 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-

Shaan Puri 43:34 Brief- briefcase of cash

Mark Manson 43:35 ... is fucking money, right?

Shaan Puri 43:36 [laughs]

Mark Manson 43:36 It's like everybody on YouTube's doing it. It seems to be working for a lot of people. So kinda the, the obvious starting point is, like, "Okay, well, what are we-"

Shaan Puri 43:43 It's the Jedi, right? Jedi and the numbskull.

Mark Manson 43:44 Yes. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 43:45 What if you gave him $10,000?

Mark Manson 43:46 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 43:46 It's like, what if you gave him $10,000? [laughs]

Mark Manson 43:49 Yeah. But the funny thing is, is that it actually, this intro did not perform very well.

Shaan Puri 43:52 Yeah.

Mark Manson 43:53 And so it-

Shaan Puri 43:54 And what do you... What does that... What tells you that? Like, you're looking at the curve, you're like, "Oh-"

Mark Manson 43:56 The retention chart, yeah

Shaan Puri 43:57 ... what, what should it have been, uh-

Mark Manson 43:59 Yes

Shaan Puri 43:59 ... for... What, what do you think it should have been to be, like, good?

Mark Manson 44:01 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-

Shaan Puri 44:19 Just approach

Mark Manson 44:20 ... we, yeah, we take her to a mall, and we s- tell her she has to find somebody from Canada, and, like, she runs-

Shaan Puri 44:25 And by the way, it's so funny 'cause she, it's, it's so, like, relatable-

Mark Manson 44:28 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 44:28 ... which is why I think you should have started with this.

Mark Manson 44:30 Yes.

Shaan Puri 44:30 I was actually gonna suggest this.

Mark Manson 44:31 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 44:31 It's so relatable 'cause 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.

Mark Manson 44:42 Yes.

Shaan Puri 44:42 Like, which is everybody's done it.

Mark Manson 44:43 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 44:43 Like, and then she's like... It's like, "Are you faking a pho-" It's like-

Mark Manson 44:47 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 44:47 "Yeah, I am. I just... I don't know. It makes me feel more comfortable."

Mark Manson 44:50 Dude, she was-

Shaan Puri 44:51 It's so relatable

Mark Manson 44:51 ... such a spaz.

Shaan Puri 44:52 Right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 44:53 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 explained the format later.

Shaan Puri 45:00 Yeah.

Mark Manson 45:01 Uh, but, like, yeah, I mean, we're new. We're, we're, we're paving the road as we drive down it, so.

Shaan Puri 45:06 You also have to, like, cast.

Mark Manson 45:08 Yes.

Shaan Puri 45:08 Which is hard.

Mark Manson 45:09 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 45:09 And you don't know what's gonna happen, and, like, this is kind of reality TV.

Mark Manson 45:12 For sure.

Shaan Puri 45:13 You... And there's also, like, h- 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-

Mark Manson 45:22 Yeah

Shaan Puri 45:22 ... when you've been in the, the industry, you kinda know, "Okay, if I pull this lever, I'm gonna get more juice."

Mark Manson 45:27 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 45:28 Like, maybe, maybe this...

Shaan Puri 45:30 Let's just pretend. If this woman's transformation was not that, that crazy, but, like, in the edit, you could kind of, like-

Mark Manson 45:36 Oh, for sure

Shaan Puri 45:37 ... make this video better. It's like, do we wanna have our video be better or worse?

Mark Manson 45:40 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 45:40 Obviously better, but at the same time, we don't wanna sell out. How have you just dealt with that, like, how hard do I wanna turn the knob or pull the lever of, like, you know, manipulation to make something work?

Mark Manson 45:52 The few that we've shot, all of them have been very successful so far, but I've told the team that I wanna be... Eventually, we're gonna hit one that's not successful. Like, we don't help the person. It doesn't work.

Shaan Puri 46:04 Right.

Mark Manson 46:04 Or maybe we help them a little, but they don't get there.

Shaan Puri 46:08 Right.

Mark Manson 46:09 Right? Uh, I think it's very, very important to be honest about that and to actually make a vide- like, have the video kind of explore why that is.

Shaan Puri 46:17 Right.

Mark Manson 46:17 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-

Shaan Puri 46:36 Right

Mark Manson 46:36 ... the lack of credibility.

Shaan Puri 46:37 'Cause if you promise the magic pill that works in two minutes, you're gonna sell more-

Mark Manson 46:40 And it-

Shaan Puri 46:40 ... than if you say this takes you two years of tough work, right?

Mark Manson 46:44 Right.

Shaan Puri 46:45 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-

Mark Manson 46:50 Yeah

Shaan Puri 46:50 ... "I don't, I don't have to do that anymore." [laughs] You know?

Mark Manson 46:52 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 46:52 I guess, how has that changed your psychology?

Mark Manson 46:53 Well, I'm very fortunate in that the book did s- 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. Like, this is, this YouTube project's losing money, and it's probably gonna lose money for a year or two-

Shaan Puri 47:04 Right

Mark Manson 47:04 ... and I'm fine with that. Uh, 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-

Shaan Puri 47:22 Right

Mark Manson 47:22 ... 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.

Shaan Puri 47:30 [laughs]

Mark Manson 47:30 Nothing. Like, noth- there's no form of therapy that is successful, like produces positive outcomes more than 50% of the time, which is crazy 'cause 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, like, is directed to go to. So there's, in, 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-

Shaan Puri 47:54 Right

Mark Manson 47:54 ... 'cause 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-shoo- pre-shoot conversations and interviews with the person to really gauge of, like, is this a person I can help? Because, uh, 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-"

Shaan Puri 48:23 Right

Mark Manson 48:23 ... "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."

Shaan Puri 48:30 Right.

Mark Manson 48:30 "No, I could... Give me a week with her. I'm like, "I could get, I can get something out of it."

Shaan Puri 48:34 Right.

Mark Manson 48:34 You know?

Shaan Puri 48:35 Did you, um, do you watch the TV show The Bear by any chance?

Mark Manson 48:38 I have not. Everybody says it's amazing, but I've not yet.

Shaan Puri 48:41 Yeah. It's act- uh, 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-

Mark Manson 48:46 Yeah

Shaan Puri 48:46 ... the retention curve for me was terrible at the beginning-

Mark Manson 48:48 Sure

Shaan Puri 48:48 ... 'cause it's slow. It's like, it's like one of those, like, cool shows where it's like, "No, we're not gonna, like, be clickbaity."

Mark Manson 48:53 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 48:54 And I'm like, "I'm kinda used to that hit." [laughs]

Mark Manson 48:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 48:56 So, you know, like, if you're really gonna pay this off with character, it's gonna-

Mark Manson 48:58 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:59 ... take some time. But man, it does. There's, like, this episode in the second season that'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."

Mark Manson 49:09 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 49:10 The h- you know, it's so, so satisfying. But there, um, but we t- w- so we reached out to one of the writers and w- we were like, "Hey, you know, 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?"

Mark Manson 49:22 Mm.

Shaan Puri 49:22 Um, have you learned anything in the process of, like, doing these videos? Of like... 'Cause it's new. It's not writing. It's not books. You now have, like, casting and characters and-

Mark Manson 49:31 Yeah

Shaan Puri 49:31 ... stuff that you probably haven't done before. Like-

Mark Manson 49:33 First of all, I'm learning a million things. O- 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-Sought After 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 s- took a few months off, and I was just like, "Man, I miss, like, the grindy grassroots internet stuff," right?

Shaan Puri 50:03 Right.

Mark Manson 50:03 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-

Shaan Puri 50:16 Right

Mark Manson 50:16 ... and, and 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-

Shaan Puri 50:28 Right

Mark Manson 50:28 ... and you need to make a fucking hit.

Shaan Puri 50:29 Right.

Mark Manson 50:29 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 wanna learn. I wanna get back on a learning curve and, like, experience that again." And so yeah, I've been learning a million things about video production, about, um, storytelling, visual storytelling in, in particular. Like, one of, 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-

Shaan Puri 51:08 Right

Mark Manson 51:08 ... but it works terribly on video.

Shaan Puri 51:10 What's an example? What do you mean by that?

Mark Manson 51:11 So an example is for, 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.

Shaan Puri 51:23 Right.

Mark Manson 51:23 This woman spaz running around the mall, like, asking people if they were from Canada. Like, that's super weird, and you're like, "What? What's going on?"

Shaan Puri 51:30 Right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 51:30 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."

Shaan Puri 51:44 Right.

Mark Manson 51:44 You know, it's like the old-school essay. It's like you gotta have your thesis in the first paragraph-

Shaan Puri 51:48 [laughs]

Mark Manson 51:48 ... and then you gotta have your three bullets and, like, all this stuff. So I still, my brain still kinda defaults to that, and I'm having to, like, untrain 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, um-

Shaan Puri 52:16 The Gen Z shit.

Mark Manson 52:16 The Gen Z shit.

Shaan Puri 52:17 [laughs] Yeah.

Mark Manson 52:18 Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Shaan Puri 52:19 Naturally. [laughs]

Mark Manson 52:19 Yeah, e- exactly.

Shaan Puri 52:20 There's something... Have you ever heard this term, like, the millennial pause?

Mark Manson 52:23 No. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:24 [laughs] 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-

Mark Manson 52:35 Oh, yeah

Shaan Puri 52:35 ... as the video starts, whereas every millennial's like, they click record, and they're like, "Hey, everybody."

Mark Manson 52:40 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 52:40 And like that little, like, that little pause is like you're already swiped on TikTok if you haven't, like... You gotta be, like, mid-interesting thing. And I was like, "That's so fucking true."

Mark Manson 52:51 That's funny.

Shaan Puri 52:51 That's so true. [laughs]

Mark Manson 52:52 That's so funny, man.

Shaan Puri 52:54 You, so you're doing this, this, uh, series. What's, like, the craziest or most interesting challenge? I, I guess you can't give away too much, but, like, what, what concepts are like, "Ooh, I can't wait to see how that's gonna turn out," or like, "I really wanna try something like this"?

Mark Manson 53:05 A lot of the, the social stuff is, like, the most interesting, uh, uh, 'cause it's... You can do a lot of fear-based stuff. I mean, you can take somebody up in a plane and-

Shaan Puri 53:13 Right

Mark Manson 53:13 ... 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.

Shaan Puri 53:20 Right.

Mark Manson 53:20 So, uh, 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?"

Shaan Puri 53:30 [laughs]

Mark Manson 53:30 You know, and it's a picture of a flat Earth. And I made her go into, uh, a public place and hand them out to people-

Shaan Puri 53:37 Right

Mark Manson 53:37 ... and, like, try to convince them to be flat Earthers, and she was, like, absolutely mortified.

Shaan Puri 53:41 [laughs]

Mark Manson 53:41 Like, just horrified. And, uh, but it's super fun 'cause 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?"

Shaan Puri 53:50 Right.

Mark Manson 53:50 "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 in probably six or seven years.

Shaan Puri 54:01 Which is a dope lesson because, you know, you wrote a book with Will Smith.

Mark Manson 54:05 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 54:05 You had a movie. You know, you got to do a bunch of things that, like, I would say are, like, the on paper, like-

Mark Manson 54:10 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 54:10 ... the hashtag goals-

Mark Manson 54:11 Sure

Shaan Puri 54:11 ... people think they want. And, uh, like, actually that's not-

Mark Manson 54:15 Yeah

Shaan Puri 54:15 ... where the source of joy and, and happiness comes from.

Mark Manson 54:18 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 54:18 I think you, I think you had said something which was like,

Shaan Puri 54:20 "Happiness is from solving problems."

Mark Manson 54:22 Yep.

Shaan Puri 54:22 Is that, is that you?

Mark Manson 54:23 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 54:24 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.

Mark Manson 54:29 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 54:29 And that's a lot more satisfying than, uh-

Mark Manson 54:32 For me at least it is. You know, I'm sure there are people out there who prefer, like, kind of a traditional media environment. But one of the things I learned is that I can do traditional media projects, and I can do very well at them. But, like, I don't feel that same passion with them as I, as I do with stuff like this.

Shaan Puri 54:52 Right.

Mark Manson 54:52 Like, I like owning my own stuff. I like experimenting. I like the creative proce- like, having the complete creative freedom and then also owning it and then also getting to 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, um- It, 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."

Shaan Puri 55:21 [laughs]

Mark Manson 55:22 I'm gonna go make a YouTube channel.

Shaan Puri 55:23 [laughs]

Mark Manson 55:23 Because it's... Like, that was actually my lesson from making a movie, was like, "I should ac-

Shaan Puri 55:28 This ain't it

Mark Manson 55:28 ... I should just have a YouTube channel."

Shaan Puri 55:30 Right.

Mark Manson 55:30 Like, this... Because the economics of the creator economy are fundamentally better. The distribution is miles better. You have, like, complete ownership. There's complete f- creative freedom. Like, I, I just don't see how this doesn't end up ahead-

Shaan Puri 55:50 Right

Mark Manson 55:50 ... in 10 years.

Shaan Puri 55:52 It's, like, hanging by, like, a prestige thread.

Mark Manson 55:54 It really is.

Shaan Puri 55:54 Right, of like, oh yeah, status.

Mark Manson 55:56 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, kinda what's happened with, like, newspapers and Twitter of, like, there's still prestigious newspapers, and they still kinda matter a little bit.

Shaan Puri 56:11 Right.

Mark Manson 56:11 Like, p- it's still nice to, like, be in The New York Times or whatever, but the real intellectual debate and substance and, like, the stuff that drives culture happens on Twitter and Substack-

Shaan Puri 56:24 Right

Mark Manson 56:24 ... 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 al- 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, culture's gonna be driven by... Like, at, probably within this decade, creators, they're gonna grow up, for one, uh, and two, the production value's gonna get better, the storytelling's gonna get better, and it's gonna, it's gonna hit an inflection point where it starts driving culture and not-

Shaan Puri 57:04 Like-

Mark Manson 57:04 ... the traditional mediums

Shaan Puri 57:05 ... if it's not already. I mean, w- uh, wouldn't you say it is already?

Mark Manson 57:07 I think, I think, I think if, if you're under 25, it is already.

Shaan Puri 57:10 Right. Fair enough. I wanna talk to you about titles, 'cause I think you're a title master. Uh, do you think you're good at titles?

Mark Manson 57:15 [laughs] Apparently I am, I guess. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 57:19 Yeah. So, so the book-

Mark Manson 57:19 I

Mark Manson 57:20 don't feel good at them, but... [laughs]

Shaan Puri 57:22 The book obviously has a good title. It started with... The s- the book came from a blog post, correct?

Mark Manson 57:26 Yes.

Shaan Puri 57:26 Like, it wasn't intended to be, like, a book. It was like-

Mark Manson 57:28 Yeah

Shaan Puri 57:28 ... here's a blog post. Why'd you know to turn that one into a book, by the way? Is it, like, did it hit in a different way or?

Mark Manson 57:34 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 nother level.

Shaan Puri 57:48 Gotcha.

Mark Manson 57:48 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," [laughs] "think you could, uh, change the title of the book?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 58:01 Yeah. And you hadn't done a book in years, right, before that?

Mark Manson 58:05 No, I had just done Models-

Shaan Puri 58:06 Mo-

Mark Manson 58:06 ... that was it.

Shaan Puri 58:06 Right. So you were, uh, you're, you're... But you were already thinking about a book, and then it was like-

Mark Manson 58:09 Yeah

Shaan Puri 58:09 ... oh, lean into this one.

Mark Manson 58:12 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 58:12 So there's this di- uh, little picture or diagram. That's... Is that... Did you make that or, um, the one of the guy floating away on the balloons? Is that-

Mark Manson 58:18 Oh, that was-

Shaan Puri 58:18 Is that, uh, from something? What is this?

Mark Manson 58:20 That, that was an old meme back in the day.

Shaan Puri 58:22 Oh, okay. So good. [laughs]

Mark Manson 58:24 Yeah, yeah. I love it. And then I-

Shaan Puri 58:25 That's, uh, that's, like, as good as that Midwit meme. It's like-

Mark Manson 58:27 Yes

Shaan Puri 58:28 ... this image can become, like-

Mark Manson 58:30 Yeah

Shaan Puri 58:30 ... you know, transformational.

Mark Manson 58:32 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.

Shaan Puri 58:40 Right.

Mark Manson 58:40 There was also... The original article also... 'Cause back then, a big part of packaging an article for, like, Facebook and Twitter was what image pops up when you-

Shaan Puri 58:48 The share, meta, the meta image

Mark Manson 58:49 ... yeah, the, when you share. And so w- we used to spend a lot of, you know, kinda similar to, 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-

Shaan Puri 59:13 Yes

Mark Manson 59:13 ... kinda like an action scene.

Shaan Puri 59:13 I've seen that. I've seen that. That meme is, is huge.

Mark Manson 59:15 Yeah. And so we pulled that and used that as, like, the-

Shaan Puri 59:19 The share. [laughs]

Mark Manson 59:19 ... yeah, the share, the share image. And it was just kinda this magical combo of content, title, image. And it just, like, all worked.

Shaan Puri 59:28 Do you remember how you thought of that title? So The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, where does that come from?

Mark Manson 59:32 Um-

Shaan Puri 59:32 Are you just sitting down? Are you just hammering out a bunch of possibilities or?

Mark Manson 59:35 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 conver- conversations with people, and something would pop up, and I'd just pull out my phone, add it to the list.

Shaan Puri 59:47 Right.

Mark Manson 59:47 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 t- song called The Subtle Art of Murder and Persuasion.

Shaan Puri 59:57 Uh-huh.

Mark Manson 59:58 And, um, and at that time, I had just done, I think, two different articles with fuck in the title. Like, I, I had just kinda discovered that if you put fuck in the title-

Shaan Puri 1:00:08 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:00:08 ... it would-

Shaan Puri 1:00:09 Go further

Mark Manson 1:00:09 ... it would, yeah, ev- 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 kinda on the lookout of, like, cool titles that you could add, add fuck into. Um, and I think I knew I wanted to do an article about not giving a fuck, uh, 'cause that was just an obvious topic. Uh, and so when I heard that song, I was like, "Well, the subtle art of not giving... Like, that's pretty-"

Shaan Puri 1:00:32 Right

Mark Manson 1:00:32 ... "damn good. Like, I should use that."

Shaan Puri 1:00:34 [laughs] Let's pull up some of your other ones. So you have, uh, The Most Important Question of Your Life.

Mark Manson 1:00:38 Yep.

Shaan Puri 1:00:38 That's good. I like that.

Mark Manson 1:00:39 That was a huge one.

Shaan Puri 1:00:39 'Cause you gotta know. I need to know.

Mark Manson 1:00:41 Yeah. Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:00:42 What, what is this jackass-

Mark Manson 1:00:44 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:00:44 ... think he knows? Like, probably nothing, but let me just check. [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:00:46 Yeah. The most important X.

Shaan Puri 1:00:48 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:00:48 Uh, like, it's, it's, it's always gonna work.

Shaan Puri 1:00:50 You have, uh, Life is a Video Game and Here Are the Cheat Codes.

Mark Manson 1:00:53 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:00:53 That's like a, you know, faster path.

Mark Manson 1:00:55 That, that's become, um... 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, 'cause it was, like, so much of it had to do with the title. And- It's been interesting, you know, now that it's been 10 years, it's been interesting because some of these have kind of just become, I guess, classics.

Shaan Puri 1:01:21 Common, yeah.

Mark Manson 1:01:22 Yeah, like, it's... You just see there's probably 10 different brands that use these same titles all the time.

Shaan Puri 1:01:28 Right.

Mark Manson 1:01:28 And, like, the life is a video game one is, like, I see that everywhere.

Shaan Puri 1:01:31 I wrote this thread about, um, that, uh, the first line of it was, "Everybody, everybody seems to think Clubhouse is the next big thing."

Mark Manson 1:01:39 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:01:40 Um, "But I think it's gonna fail." And I was like, "Uh, grab some popcorn. Here's, here's how I think it goes down."

Mark Manson 1:01:45 Yeah, yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:46 And, um, that thing went crazy viral. And, like, uh, and, like, my her- you know, Malcolm Gladwell starts following me.

Mark Manson 1:01:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:52 Bill Simmons DMs me. It's like -

Mark Manson 1:01:53 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:01:53 ... oh, shit, this is, like, this is amazing. I didn't know this could happen. 'Cause, like, today the Facebook Meta doesn't really work, but, like-

Mark Manson 1:01:59 No

Shaan Puri 1:01:59 ... Twitter threads actually for a period of time last, recently could, could go viral. And, uh, and now that same theme is like-

Mark Manson 1:02:06 Oh, people just replace-

Shaan Puri 1:02:07 People think AI is the next big thing-

Mark Manson 1:02:08 Yep

Shaan Puri 1:02:08 ... but here's, uh, you know, h- grab some popcorn. Here's how I think it goes down.

Mark Manson 1:02:11 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:02:11 It's like the copy paste, but it obviously, like, loses effectiveness-

Mark Manson 1:02:14 Of course

Shaan Puri 1:02:14 ... as, as it goes.

Mark Manson 1:02:15 That's the other interesting thing, too, that's kind of changed in the last 10 years. Like, there was real... And I, 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?

Shaan Puri 1:02:31 Yours, yeah. [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:02:32 Yeah, you know? And it's like, no, and if somebody stole it, it was like they're a piece of shit-

Shaan Puri 1:02:35 Right [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:02:35 ... and you'd call them out, and your audience would call them out. And, like, I used to get emails from fans being like, "This guy copied your article."

Shaan Puri 1:02:41 Right.

Mark Manson 1:02:41 And, like, all this stuff. Like, I never get those emails anymore. Like, it's everybody just rips everybody off now.

Shaan Puri 1:02:46 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:02:46 And so anybody who posts anything that goes viral anywhere, there's a, like, the next day there's-

Shaan Puri 1:02:51 Half-life. [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:02:51 ... there's 20 more versions on every platform, and it's just, like, it's the way the game's played today.

Shaan Puri 1:02:56 It's that meme that it's like, you know, "I made this thing," and then it's like the other guy-

Mark Manson 1:02:59 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:02:59 ... holding it is like-

Mark Manson 1:03:00 [laughs] Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:03:00 ... "I made this thing."

Mark Manson 1:03:01 I made this, yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:03:02 [laughs] Yeah, I don't think people even are, are, are aware of it anymore.

Mark Manson 1:03:05 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:03:06 Um, bl- is blogging dead?

Mark Manson 1:03:09 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

Mark Manson 1:03:20 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 gotta have your niche figured out. You gotta, like, really be tuned into them, and you're probably never gonna scale an audience past, like, low six figures. Um, whereas 10 years ago, I mean, I think at my peak, I was getting, like, two, two and a half million visitors a month.

Shaan Puri 1:03:52 Right.

Mark Manson 1:03:52 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 gonna go blog route instead of podcast or video, like, it, it h- you have to have a really good reason and it probably has to be a very specific niche to do it.

Shaan Puri 1:04:08 Right. Did you podcast? Or do you podcast?

Mark Manson 1:04:10 I do not.

Shaan Puri 1:04:11 Is there, like, a reason? Or why didn't...

Mark Manson 1:04:14 I never started one just 'cause 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, last thing the world needs is another interview podcast, but-

Shaan Puri 1:04:30 Yeah, don't step on my turf.

Mark Manson 1:04:31 Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Shaan Puri 1:04:32 I made this. [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:04:33 Yeah, I made this. This is mine. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:04:34 Yeah.

Mark Manson 1:04:35 But, um, I w- I do think it's, I think it... I would like to be in this medium in some shape or form, so.

Shaan Puri 1:04:41 Right. Uh, you did a book with Will Smith, and presumably spent a bunch of time with Will Smith.

Mark Manson 1:04:46 Yep.

Shaan Puri 1:04:47 You know, when people meet celebrities, I always ask, like, what are they like?

Mark Manson 1:04:50 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:04:50 It's not like... I don't know, it's just a real specific question. It's kind of like-

Mark Manson 1:04:54 That's what everybody asks

Shaan Puri 1:04:54 ... how are they?

Mark Manson 1:04:55 Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:04:55 You know, everybody, every... It's like, how are they as a person?

Mark Manson 1:04:58 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:04:58 It's kind of like, you know, like,

Shaan Puri 1:05:00 are they a dick? Are they awesome? There's, like, that version of it. But to me, I'm sort of like, what was a s- what was something you saw them do, or, like, something you witnessed that was, like, just not how the common person would have approached-

Mark Manson 1:05:11 Mm

Shaan Puri 1:05:12 ... a given situation?

Mark Manson 1:05:14 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-

Shaan Puri 1:05:22 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:05:23 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."

Shaan Puri 1:05:30 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:05:31 Like, they literally just put him in a room and then put actors around him. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:05:35 Right.

Mark Manson 1:05:35 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, it can literally just be, like, me and him sitting in a kitchen at midnight talking about cartoon... Like, he's so charismatic.

Shaan Puri 1:06:05 Right.

Mark Manson 1:06:05 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.

Shaan Puri 1:06:15 Right.

Mark Manson 1:06:16 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 or setback, like, he doesn't, it 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 'cause 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."

Shaan Puri 1:07:32 Right.

Mark Manson 1:07:32 "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." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:07:45 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:07:45 Like, uh, so that, that's like, that was very interesting and, and remarkable.

Shaan Puri 1:07:51 When you saw the Chris Rock slap or whatever, that's obviously kinda like, not like, you know, Mr. Positive or whatever in that moment.

Mark Manson 1:08:00 No.

Shaan Puri 1:08:00 Were, were you like... Yeah, what was your ki- Were you, like, stunned? Uh, like, w- 'cause you know him more than m-

Mark Manson 1:08:05 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:08:05 Like, everybody's shocked 'cause it's a shocking thing.

Mark Manson 1:08:07 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:08:07 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 maybe-

Mark Manson 1:08:14 It was definitely-

Shaan Puri 1:08:14 ... where he's coming from

Mark Manson 1:08:15 ... it was definitely less shocking for me. Um.

Shaan Puri 1:08:18 He slapped you once or twice, you-

Mark Manson 1:08:19 Yeah

Shaan Puri 1:08:19 ... you're like, "Yeah, it's common." [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:08:20 [laughs] Yeah. Keep, keep her name out of your mouth.

Shaan Puri 1:08:23 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:08:23 Uh, no, I mean, like, one of the things, and we, this is in the book. He had a very abusive alcoholic father, used to beat the shit out of his mom, and he was the oldest si- 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 wanna get to him-

Shaan Puri 1:08:52 Right

Mark Manson 1:08:52 ... like, that's the route. Like, you can talk shit about him all day, all night, he's gonna sit there and laugh and be fine, whatever.

Shaan Puri 1:08:58 Right.

Mark Manson 1:08:58 It's 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.

Shaan Puri 1:09:07 Right.

Mark Manson 1:09:07 It was funny, actually. I, I was watching it with my wife live, and like, my wife turned to me and she was like, "This is a bit, right?" I was like, "No." [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:09:13 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:09:13 "That's not a bit. Like, he's actually saying that right now." She's like, "What?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:09:17 [laughs] Amazing. You send him a text afterwards? Are you like, just-

Mark Manson 1:09:23 Dude

Shaan Puri 1:09:23 ... give him space? [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:09:24 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:09:24 'Cause uber famous people, you, like, it's hard to even navigate.

Mark Manson 1:09:27 You-

Shaan Puri 1:09:27 It's like you don't wanna be one of those people.

Mark Manson 1:09:29 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:09:29 You're also like, "I might, if I'm your friend, do I just send you something?"

Mark Manson 1:09:31 It's-

Shaan Puri 1:09:32 Like...

Mark Manson 1:09:32 Yeah. It's weird, man.

Shaan Puri 1:09:33 That's a whole, like, we could spend an hour just talking about that. That's, like, super weird. It's funny too, 'cause it's like everybody who I've ever known in my life messaged me that night asking for, like, my opinion or whatever.

Mark Manson 1:09:47 Right. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:09:48 And I'm like, literally people, like, I haven't talked to since high school, you know-

Mark Manson 1:09:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:09:52 ... are, like, reaching out. I'm like, "Wait, this is the thing-"

Mark Manson 1:09:54 Right

Shaan Puri 1:09:54 "... that got you to reach out?"

Mark Manson 1:09:55 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:09:55 Like, all the shit I did, you didn't, like, didn't bother, like, you know, couldn't be bothered to, to, to say anything. But, like, this, this got you to-

Mark Manson 1:10:02 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:10:02 ... to, to reach out to me? All right. All right. [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:10:05 Yeah, that ha- that was just, I mean, it, like, something can win the internet for the day, and like-

Shaan Puri 1:10:09 Yeah

Mark Manson 1:10:09 ... that won the internet for the day.

Shaan Puri 1:10:09 Oh, it was-

Mark Manson 1:10:10 So you, it has, like, insane reach.

Shaan Puri 1:10:11 It was insane, yeah. Amazing. Thanks for doing this, by the way. I know that-

Mark Manson 1:10:15 Of course, man

Shaan Puri 1:10:15 ... you, uh, you know, you kinda didn't know what you were getting into. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you had a fun time.

Mark Manson 1:10:19 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:10:19 Uh, I definitely did because you're somebody I've followed for a long time, and I think the people I respect the most, like some people respect, like, Elon Musk the most.

Mark Manson 1:10:27 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 1:10:27 Some people respect 'cause it's like, oh, he conquers, like, you know, taking us to another planet.

Mark Manson 1:10:32 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:10:32 Uh, but I always admire thinkers. Like, I think, uh, a great thinker is 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.

Mark Manson 1:10:43 Thanks, dude.

Shaan Puri 1:10:44 And, uh, I'm glad, glad we did it. [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:10:46 Absolutely, man.

Shaan Puri 1:10:47 Uh, where-

Mark Manson 1:10:47 My pleasure

Shaan Puri 1:10:47 ... where do you want people to go? Their YouTube channel, I'm assuming, is like-

Mark Manson 1:10:50 Check out the YouTube channel. There's gonna be more of those videos coming out.

Shaan Puri 1:10:53 Is it just Mark Manson? What, what is the-

Mark Manson 1:10:54 Yeah, if you just search Mark Manson on YouTube, it'll, it'll pop up. And then, uh, markmanson.net, got a newsletter there. Um, and I think that's, you know, buy the books, whatever. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:11:06 [laughs] I don't give a fuck.

Mark Manson 1:11:07 Yeah, I don't give a fuck.

Shaan Puri 1:11:08 [laughs]

Mark Manson 1:11:08 Buy my shit. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:11:10 Awesome.

Mark Manson 1:11:11 Cool. That's a wrap.

Shaan Puri 1:11:12 All right. [upbeat music]