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

33:49He was very inspirational. So let me zoom out for a second more broadly, and then I can kind of come back to this video specifically. So early in my career, I did a lot of coaching first with the pickup stuff and then just kind of like life advice in general. I stopped coaching for a lot of reasons, but one of them is I was consistent. I was very frustrated by it, which was that I feel like the 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.

34:27It's first of all, my incentive isn't to fix your self-esteem issues. Like my, my incentive is to make it feel like I'm fixing your self-esteem issues, even though they're still there. Like a pharmaceutical company. Yeah, exactly. And I'll assure you. Exactly. Exactly. And then on your side of the equation, it's what often happens in practice, like on the customer side, is what often happens in practice is people kind of show up, they pay you, say,$1 ,000. And they're like, well, I just paid you$1 ,000. So you deal with it, right? Like, I've been dealing with this my whole life. I just paid you a bunch of money, you deal with it now, right?

35:04Like, that's actually what they're looking for. And so I hated that dynamic. It felt very, I mean, it was a lot of money. works some of the time but in a lot of cases it felt very icky and i kind of found myself in like awkward situations with clients and stuff uh so i just got away from it uh entirely and just kind of stuck to books and courses and everything when i saw mr beast a light bulb went off i was like because i love mr beast and like i've been watching his shit for a long time but one of my frustrations with him is that it's all very surface level like i'll watch a mr beast video and I'll get to the end.

35:40And I'm like, I want to know about the guys. 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 want to see. Let's get some juicy drama going. I talked to him about this. Yeah. And I was like, because I was like, he was talking about like a Netflix or like TV shows. Yeah. And it was like, oh, like, you know, what can you learn about TV? What do you learn from like TV shows that have been running for a long time, do really well. and he says he's like uh also i think they can learn a lot from us and he's like yeah he's like i'd love to see their retention curve um right they just don't know where people are dropping off he's like what we found was like if you hit them hit them hit them with like the more of like the action and the stakes and then the quest and like the curiosity you open the loop and like that's going to keep people he's like but he's like but i do think the one thing tv does well is character he's like we don't do any narrative or character and i gotta figure out how i'm going to do that yeah but he's like i don't know he's like i don't know how to do that yet but like we should probably learn that yeah so this is this is kind of another side statement and this gets more into like my personal strategy or like opportunities i see in the future but like it's the current media environment i think traditional media they've always had the luxury of having that lock-in of like you're in a theater and it's more it's like once you're in a theater it's more difficult to leave than to sit through a bad movie so everybody just sits through a bad movie, you know, and it's in the previous era of television, it's, you know, you don't want to sit there and like flip around for 10 minutes looking for something else.

37:10So you sit there and just kind of watch a mediocre show. So it's like traditional media is coming from a hundred years of a luxury of just having that buy-in and having you like locked in. And, and so they can take the time it requires to build character, build narrative, build, build drama. Right. And, and create those very emotional moments that we've all had with our favorite movies and TV shows. YouTube is kind of the other way around. Like there's always shit fighting for your attention and trying to get you to click off. And so YouTube is just retention, retention, retention, like it's merciless and absolutely brutal.

37:42And so I think we're in an interesting media environment where YouTubers have become masters of retention and the content on YouTube is super hooky and click the rig, right? Like those two, two variables. Yes. And super hooky, very clickbaity, like addictive, but also kind of empty calories. Like you can just blow through like six videos and just be like, wait, what? I don't remember a single thing I just watched. And that's kind of unsatisfying. Traditional media is like caught in the other side of things of like, wait, shit, like people are watching our shows now with like their phones in front of them.

38:15And 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 trying to catch up on the character development and drama side of things. And I think whoever figures it out first is going to like, right, win really big. But anyway, back to the Mr. Beast thing and the coaching thing. So I was watching Mr. Beast videos for a couple of years. And then like last year, I was I was kind of taking this break and I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next in my own career.

38:47And I had felt this about his videos for a long time. And and I started thinking, I'm like, man, like what if you, what if you built the challenges in a way that like forced character development? Like what if the challenges weren't built around, like, you know, stand in a circle or, uh, you know, keep your hand on a car. Like what if it was built around on this Lamborghini? What if it was built around like a real personal issue that like you have to investigate to like try to understand. 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.

39:24Because 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. Like they're not fucking going out and doing it. And so, and they could pay a coach a thousand bucks and the coach can say, okay, well you paid me a thousand bucks, now go do it. And sometimes that works, but not always. Or you could say, I'll give you a thousand bucks if you go do it and fix your own shit. Right. Like, what does that look like?

39:56Right. Like what is like the most effective layer lever for behavior change is financial incentive. And so what if you actually create financial incentive for people to actually go deal with their shit and like do the things that they've always known that they need to do. And they've just never had the guts to do it. And so that's when I was like, holy, that's kind of genius. Yeah. I was like, fuck, I need to make this. 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 there are all like i'm already aware of like 15 things that are wrong with this video and like they're like it's it's actually underperforming our our expectations and like there's so many things that we need to fix but it's the first rep yeah it's the first rep it's like the first it's like the beta test but super super excited about the format that makes a ton of sense and And also like even just mechanically, like the things you just said.

40:53So if, you know, coaching is getting somebody to like transform the way the transformers on information is doing it. Yeah. Best way to get somebody to do it is maybe a financial incentive or even like the fact that they agree to be in the content. And it's like there's a contract there to like do the thing. But you also how can you offer$10 ,000 to why could you pay your coat? That's not a sustainable business, but it is if it's YouTube content. You have like almost the full loop to be able to make something. It creates a very beautiful flywheel of. You're helping that individual. So in this video, it's a woman named Melinda.

41:27So I'm helping Melinda and she did get amazing results. You know, she's finally doing the things that she's always known that she should do or has always wanted to do. You get to all the people watching because I could easily make a video of me sitting at a desk talking about social anxiety for 15 minutes. Everybody's heard the same shit. They've all like, everybody knows what I'm going to say. Now, millions of people get to actually watch somebody overcome their character overcome. Yeah. It's like, oh, that's what it looks like. Oh, that's what how people respond in that situation. It's the difference between watching Rocky and then or somebody sitting at a chair and saying, you should kind of work really hard.

42:02Yeah, yeah. It's a different emotional register. And you remember 20 years later and still think about when you work out. And the other one you don't. Totally. So it's the qualitative feedback on this. It's been honestly, it's been some of the best of my entire career. Like we if you look through the comments of this video, there's tons of comments of people saying I cried. Right. This was me. Oh, my God. Like I was not expecting this. This is so powerful. You know, it's pretty incredible. And so how did you think about those first 10, 15 seconds? I don't know how long we went, but like what are you trying to achieve in those first 15 seconds of this video.

42:40So with YouTube content, there's always this question of like, what's the hook? Like what's going to get people to buy in? What's going to get people to stick around? And one of the challenges that we face with this format is that all of the, all the stuff that we're having people do, it's, it's, it's super abstract. Like social, social anxiety is super abstract. Like how do you show social anxiety? It's like not very obvious how you show that visually or like low self-esteem how do you show that visually so we were thinking about like okay what are like kind of like hooks or gimmicks that we can like implement into the format that can get people bought in right and the first and most obvious in this in the current mr beast meta briefcase of is fucking money right it's like everybody on youtube's doing it it seems to be working for a lot of people so kind of the obvious starting point is like okay well what are we jedi right?

43:31Jedi in the numbskull. What if he gave him$10 ,000? It's like, what if he gave him$10 ,000? But the funny thing is, is that it actually, this intro did not perform very well. And so, what is that? What tells you that? Like, you're looking at the curve, you're like, what should it have been? What do you think it should have been to be like good? Well, I think the issue with this is that even though it's money, it's still not visual enough. It's still too abstract. And so I think what we've learned from this one is that the new approach needs to be we just need to start like mid challenge so like the first challenge in this video is just approach we yeah we take her into a mall and we tell her she has to find somebody from Canada and like she by the way it's so funny because she it's it's so like relatable which is why I think you should have started with this I was actually going to suggest this yeah it's so relatable because you tell her like someone in this mall is from Canada you need to go approach them and ask them and find them and she's like nervous laugh and then she starts like faking being on a phone call like which is everybody's done it like and then she's like it's like are you faking a phone it's like yeah yeah i am i just i don't know it makes me feel more comfortable dude she was so relatable such a spaz right such a spaz it was really fun and and yeah in hindsight it's like we should have just opened up with that and then explain the format later yeah uh but like yeah i mean we're new we're we're paving the road as we drive down it so cast yes which is hard and you don't know what's going to happen and like this is kind of reality tv for sure and there's also like how this i would say this is a common theme from the pickup to uh subtle art to now this which is how do you avoid selling out so like yeah when you've been in the the industry you kind of know okay if i pull this lever i'm gonna get more juice yeah like maybe maybe this will let's just pretend if this woman's transformation was not that that crazy but like in the edit you could kind of like oh for sure make this video better.

45:25It's like, do we want to have our video be better or worse? Obviously better, but at the same time, we don't want to sell out. How have you just dealt with that? Like, how hard do I want to turn the knob or pull the lever of like, you know, manipulation to make something work? The few that we've shot, all of them have been very successful so far, but I've told the team that I want to be, eventually we're going to hit one. That's not successful. Like we don't help the person. It doesn't work. Right. Or maybe we help them a little, but, they don't get there, right? I think it's very, very important to be honest about that and to actually make a video, like have the video kind of explore why that is, you know?

46:06Because it's, yeah, there's a credibility and authenticity that it's just so, so important, especially, and that's, it's been one of my criticisms of my own industry for 10, 15 years of just like the lack of trustworthiness, the lack of credibility, because if you promise the magic pill that works in two minutes, you're going to sell more. And if you say this takes you two years of tough work, right? Right. So you've probably dealt with that a bunch. And like, maybe now, you know, you got fuck you money from the book and you're like, I don't have to do that anymore. You know, I guess, how has that changed?

46:41Well, I'm very fortunate in that the book did. Well, first of all, it is true. The book did so well that I do have fuck you money. So I don't really care. Like this is this YouTube project's losing money and it's probably going to lose money for a year or two and I'm fine with that. 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, 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.

47:17Nothing. Like, there's no form of therapy that is successful, like, produces positive outcomes more than 50 % of the time. Which is crazy, because it's like, therapy is like the most tried and true. Like, we've had it for 200 years. Like, it's the one thing everybody's like is directed to go to. So there's, in the world of psychology, there's just so much that we don't know what works. Like, and what works for you could completely fail for me and vice versa. Because everybody's so individual. So, to your point about casting, a huge part of our casting process is doing pre-shoot interviews, me doing pre-shoot conversations and interviews with the person to really gauge of like, is this a person I can help?

47:59Because for every video we shot, we talked to probably two or three people and half of those people, I'm like, you know, not really confident I can actually like, right, get them over the line. whereas like with this with this woman you know i talked to her and within 10 minutes i'm like yeah right now i could give me a week with her i'm like i could get i can get something out of it right did you um do you watch the tv show the bear by any chance i have not everybody says it's amazing but i've not yet yeah it's actually it's a little bit i would say it's a little bit slow but it pays off it's the thing you talked about which is like the retention curve for me was terrible at the beginning it's slow it's like it's like one of those like cool shows where it's like no we're not gonna like be clickbaity yeah and i'm like i'm kind of used to that hit so you know like if you're really gonna pay this off with character it's gonna it takes the time but man it does there's like a episode in the second season it's like such a huge payoff on character that like now i'm like telling everybody you gotta watch the show just get to the second season get to the end of it yeah you know it's so so satisfying but there um but we so we reached out to one of the writers and we were like hey there was respect and uh just we like to learn from people like that?

49:07Like, how do you do this? How do you do this character thing? Have you learned anything in the process of like doing these videos of like, because it's new, it's not writing, it's not books. You now have like casting and characters and stuff that you probably haven't done before. Like, first of all, I'm learning a million things. One of the reasons I wanted to do this too, I should specify is like, you know, I came out of this period, the post-subtle 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.

49:42I moved to LA. I took, took a few months off and I was just like, man, I miss like the grindy grassroots internet stuff. Right. And, but what I also realized is like, I miss being bad at something. Like I miss, I miss just like throwing shit at a wall and being like, did that work? Like, no. All right, let's try this. You know, like, and, and in traditional media, I don't, you don't really have the flexibility to do that. Like you're, you're being, if a studio or a large publisher is bringing you in, it's because like they know you can make a hit and you need to make a fucking hit. And so I, I miss the internet days of like, all right, let's try 10 things and just know that like six are going to fail.

50:22And, uh, like, that's just exciting to me. And so part of this project was like, I want to learn, I want to get back on a learning curve and like experience that again. And so, yeah, I've been learning a million things about video production and about storytelling, visual storytelling in particular. Like one of the big lessons from this video is that I still very much just write like a book writer. Like a lot of the mistakes that were made in this video, it's because it was organized in such a way that would work really well on like an article or a book. Right. But it works terribly on video. What's an example?

50:58So an example is is like the intro, right? It's like, that's a great intro on paper. It's a terrible intro on video because it's abstract. It's not visually interesting. You know, it's like you start with the challenge, right? This woman spaz running around a mall, like ask people who are from Canada, like that's super weird. And you're like, what's going on? And then it's like, you slowly like drip context over the course of like 10 minutes. Whereas when you're writing a book or, or an article, like you have, you need to put all the context up front of like, this is what we're doing. This is what this is about.

51:31You know, it's like the old school essay. It's like, you got to have your thesis in the first paragraph and then you got to have your three bullets and like all this stuff. So I still, my brain still kind of defaults to that. And I'm having like untrained myself in a lot of ways. The funny thing is, is like, and again, one of the reasons i'm doing this is i think my natural strength is story and character and narrative like that that's where i shine naturally what i'm weaker at is the retention the hooks the like uh gen z shit the gen z shit yeah yeah exactly yeah exactly there's something have you ever heard this term like the millennial pause no it's so funny it's like if you were to it's like what's a millennial pause it's basically gen z people if you watch the start of their video starts with them already they're already talking so they're like mid word oh yeah as the video starts whereas every millennial is like they click record like hey everybody and then like that little like that little pause it's like you're already swiped on tiktok if you haven't like you got to be like mid interesting thing and i was like that's so fucking true that's funny that's so true that's so funny man you so you're doing this this uh series what's like the craziest or most interesting challenge?

52:45I guess you can't give it away too much, but like what concepts are like, oh, I can't wait to see how that's going to turn out or like I really want to try something like this. A lot of the social stuff is like the most interesting because you can do a lot of fear-based stuff. I mean, you can take somebody up in a plane and throw them out, you know, make them skydive or whatever. And that's exciting, but like, I don't know, it doesn't feel like there's as much depth as like the social stuff. So we have a challenge in another video where I printed out flat earth flyers saying like, you know, do you, do you know the truth about the planet?

53:17You know, it's a picture of a flat earth. And I made her go into a public place and hand them out to people. Right. And like try to convince them to be flat earthers. And she was like absolutely mortified, like just horrified. And, 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 going to see them again. Like, why do you care? Why is it so horrifying? Right? Like it's just, yeah, it's super exciting for me. This is honestly, it's the most fun I'm having in my career in probably six or seven years. Which is a dope lesson because, you know, you wrote a book with Will Smith, you got a movie, you got to do a bunch of things that like, I would say are like the on paper, like the hashtag goals people think they want.

54:00And like, actually that's not where the source of joy and happiness comes from. I think you had said something which was like, happiness is from solving problems. Is that you? Yeah. Which is when you start at the beginning of a learning curve, you're just going to suck and solve a bunch of problems to make something good. Yeah. And that's a lot more satisfying than, uh, for me, at least it is, you know, I'm sure there are people out there who prefer like kind of a traditional media environment. But one of the things I learned is that I can do traditional media projects and I can do very well at them, but like, I don't feel that same passion with them as I do with stuff like this.

54:39I like owning my own stuff. I like experimenting. I like the creative process, having the complete creative freedom and then also owning it and then also getting to package it and also controlling the brand around it. Like it's also part of, I mean, we can talk about this too, but it's funny. So when my movie came out and I did all the press for the movie, every single journalist I talked to was like, so are you going to do another movie? And like in my head, I'm like, Fuck no, absolutely not. I'm going to go make a YouTube channel because it's like, that was actually my lesson from making a movie.

55:14It was like, I should actually, I should just have a YouTube channel because the economics of the creator economy are fundamentally better. The distribution is miles better. You have like complete ownership. There's complete creative freedom. Like, I just don't see how this doesn't end up ahead thread in 10 years. It's like hanging by like a prestige thread. It really is. Right. I'm like, oh yeah, status. It really is. And it's, I'm sure I don't think like Hollywood's going to die, but I, I imagine it's going to be very similar to like kind of what's happened with like newspapers and Twitter of like, they're still prestigious newspapers and they still kind of matter a little bit.

55:58Like it's still nice to like be in the New York times or whatever, but the real intellectual debate and substance and like the stuff that drives culture happens on Twitter and Substack and has for years now. Right. And it's like, I think we're coming up on an inflection point that that's, that's also going to happen in video and audio based media. I think it's probably already happened with podcasts and it's about to happen with video as well, where it's like, yeah, there's still going to be like Marvel movies and stuff. And Netflix is going to have its tv shows and it's going to be very prestigious to be on those but like culture is going to be driven by like it probably within this decade creators they're going to grow up for one uh and two the production value is going to get better the storytelling is going to get better and it's going to it's going to hit an inflection point where it starts driving culture and not the traditional media if it's not already i mean i think i think if you're under 25 it is already right fair enough I want to talk to you about titles because I think you're a title master um do you think you're good at titles apparently I am I guess so the book I don't feel good at them but the book obviously has a good title and it started with the book came from a blog post correctly it wasn't intended to be like a book it was like yeah here's a blog post why'd you know to turn that one into a book by the way is it like did it hit in a different way or Yeah, that is that one.

57:23I 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. 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, I think you could change the title of the book. Yeah. Yeah. And you hadn't done a book in years, right? Before that? No, I just done models. I was right. So you're you're you're but you're already thinking about a book. And then it was like, yeah. Oh, lean into this one.

57:59Yeah. So there's this little picture or diagram. That's is that did you make that or the one of the guy floating away on the balloons? Is that that was is that from something? What is this? That was an old meme back in the day. OK, so good. Yeah, yeah. I love it. And that's like as good as that midwit meme. it's like yes this image can become like yeah you know transformational it's funny yeah i haven't seen that that i used that used to be around everywhere back in like 2013 2014 and then it's i haven't seen it in a long time right there was also the original article also because back then a big part of packaging an article for like facebook and twitter was what image pops up yeah when you share and so we we used to spend a lot of you know kind of similar like thumbnails on YouTube, we used to spend a lot of time looking for the right image for the share image on Facebook.

58:47And I think the other thing that made that article work was I think on Reddit one day, just randomly on Reddit, I saw somebody had photoshopped a picture of a kitten in front of like a bomb exploding, kind of like an action thing. That meme is huge. Yeah. And so we pulled that and used that as like the share. Yeah, the share image. And it was just kind of this magical combo of content, title, image. It just like all worked. Do you remember how you thought of that title? So the subtle art of not giving a fuck. Where does that come from? You're just sitting down and you're just hammering out a bunch of possibilities?

59:22Back then I used to keep a list of article ideas. Like just kind of a running list of ideas that I would just add to. Like I'd have conversations with people and something would pop up and I'd just pull out my phone and add it to the list. And it came from, there was a heavy metal song. from a band called lamb of god they had a they had a song called the subtle art of murder and persuasion and um and at that time i had just done i think two different articles with fucking the title like i i had just kind of discovered that if you put fuck in the title it would go further it would yeah everything would go further so i was like adding fuck to all my titles or to a bunch of my my titles at the time and so i was just kind of on the lookout of like cool titles that you could add fuck into.

1:00:08And I think I knew I wanted to do an article about not giving a fuck because that was just an obvious topic. And so when I heard that song, I was like, well, subtle art, not giving, like, that's pretty damn good. Like, I should use that. Let's pull up some of your other ones. So you have the most important question of your life. Yep. That's good. I like that. That was a huge one. Because you got to know. I need to know. Yeah. What is this jackass thing you know? It's like, probably nothing, but let me just check. Yeah, the most important X. Like it's it's it's always going to work. You have life is a video game and here are the cheat codes.

1:00:40Yeah, it's like a, you know, faster path that that's become I feel like that's become a it's. So this is the other thing. Like, I think a lot of, I guess, my skill with this just came from cranking out articles in the Facebook era of like trying to get articles to go viral because it was like so much of it had to do with the title. and it's been interesting you know now it's been 10 years it's been interesting because some of these have kind of just become i guess classics yeah yeah like it's you just see there's probably 10 different brands that use these same titles all the time and like the life is a video game one is like i see that everywhere i wrote this thread about um that the first line of it was everybody everybody seems to think clubhouse is the next big thing yeah um but i think it's going to fail and it's like uh grab some popcorn here's here's how i think it goes down yeah yeah and um that thing went crazy viral and like uh i like my hero you know malcolm gladwell's are following me bill simmons dms me it's like oh shit this is like this is amazing i didn't know this could happen because like today the facebook meta doesn't really work but like twitter threads actually for a period of time last recently could could go viral and uh and now that same theme is like people just replace the next big thing but here's a you know he grabs a popcorn here's how i think it goes down it's like yeah the copy paste but it obviously like loses effectiveness as it goes that's the other interesting thing too that's kind of changed in the last 10 years like there was real and i i don't have any moral judgment around this but it's you know 10 years ago it was very much a sense of like if you came up with a title that like like a banger it was like that was yours right yeah you know and it's like no and if somebody stole it it was like they're a piece of shit and you would call them out and your audience would call them out like i used to get emails from fans being like, this guy copied your article and all this stuff.

1:02:29I never get those emails anymore. Everybody just rips everybody off now. So anybody who posts anything that goes viral anywhere, the next day, there's 20 more versions on every platform. It's the way the game's played today. It's that meme that it's like, I made this thing. And then it's like, the other guy holding it. I made this thing. I don't think people even are aware of it anymore. Is blogging dead? I think it depends on how you define dead. So there was an era in the early 2010s where a blog could gain reach beyond its own specific niche. Like you could kind of get mainstream audience, like hit like a critical mass.

1:03:15I think today you can still make a living off a blog. It's just you've got to have your niche figured out. You got to like really be tuned into them and you're probably never going to scale an audience past like low six figures. Whereas 10 years ago, I mean, I think at my peak, I was getting like two, two and a half million visitors a month. Right. So it's, it's a, it's a different world now. It is still possible, but it's like, I think it really only, if you're going to go a blog route instead of podcast or video like it it you have to have a really good reason and it probably has to be a very specific niche to do it did you podcast or do you podcast i do not is there like a reason or why didn't i never started one just because of lack of bandwidth uh just like writing too many books um and then but now that i'm doing the video stuff like i'm probably gonna do something in the podcasting space it won't be something like this like last thing the world needs is another interview podcast.

1:04:17Don't step on my turf. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I made this. I made this. This is mine. 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, uh, you did a book with Will Smith and presumably spent a bunch of time with Will Smith. Yep. You know, when people meet celebrities, I always ask like, what are they like? Yeah. It's not like, I don't know. It's just a real specific question. It's kind of like, that's what everybody, how are they? Yeah. Everybody, everybody is like, how are they as a person yeah it's kind of like you know like are they a dick are they awesome there's like that version of it but to me i'm sort of like what was this what was something you saw them do or like something you witnessed that was like just not how the common person would have approached a given situation so the quick answer to the the one everybody always asks which is like what's he like in person he is exactly like the fresh prince like that is i spent the i remember spending one day with him and then I went back to the hotel and and called my wife and I was like he did not act on that show like they literally just put him in a room and then put actors around right like that is that is his personality will will is like there are a few dimensions that I think he is like at the extreme end of the bell curve the the most obvious one that's not going to surprise anybody it's just this charisma like he is by far the most naturally charismatic I mean it can literally just be like me and him sitting in a kitchen at midnight talking about cartoon like he's so charismatic just like built into him and so it's not hard you spend a little bit of time with him and it's not hard to see and understand like oh okay I see why this guy's so famous right his mind is, is very almost delusionally positive.

1:06:10Like he kind of has this, like, you know, we all have a little bit of a, the psychologist Dan Gilbert calls it a psychological immune system, which is like when bad things happen, we kind of like rationalize or explain them in a way that, you know, makes us feel better or helps us. His psychological immune system, like it's just negativity just bounces right off him. Any sort of failure setback, like he doesn't doesn't bum him out. Like I, I've never really been around somebody who is so easily to like able to construe challenges and obstacles in a way that that is confident and beneficial. Like it's actually very impressive, but it's funny because it also gets him in trouble.

1:06:49Like 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 kind of like it can cause problems for him. And that's, that's actually one thing he and I talked about for the book is that, you know, he came from a very chaotic and like abusive childhood. And he said, he's like, I developed that as like a survival mechanism and it's helped me so much throughout my life and my career. Like I'm just absolutely relentless. Like anything goes wrong, it never bothers me.

1:07:26Like I just get up and do it again. But yeah, it's like, I'm a little bit untethered to reality sometimes like uh so that that's like that was very interesting and and remarkable when you saw the chris rock slap or whatever that's obviously kind of like not like you know mr positive or whatever in that moment were you like yeah what was your kind of were you like stunned uh like because you know him more than like everybody's shocked because it's a shocking thing but when you know the person you might have like either it's even more shocking than that or it's less because you understood maybe where he's coming from.

1:08:02It was definitely less shocking for me. He slapped you once or twice. You're like, yeah, it's common. Keep her name out of your mouth. No, I mean, like one of the things and we, this is in the book, he had a very abusive alcoholic father. He used to beat the shit out of his mom and he was the oldest, he was the oldest child. He was the male, right? So he felt responsible and very protective and so he has a lot of issues around women he's very protective he's very sensitive like the women in his life are his achilles heel like that's if you want to get to him like that's the route like you can talk shit about him all day all night he's gonna sit there and laugh you find whatever right like you go after his mom his daughter or his wife like shit's gonna get real real fast and so I wasn't surprised it was funny actually I was watching with my wife live and like my wife turned to me and she was like this is a bit right I was like no that's not a bit like he's actually saying that right now she's like what you send him a text afterwards or you like just give him space because uber famous people you like it's hard to even navigate it's like you don't want to be one of those people yeah you're also like if I'm your friend do I just send you something Yeah, it's weird.

1:09:20That's a whole, like, we could spend an hour just talking about that. That's, like, super weird. It's funny, too, because it's, like, everybody who I've ever known in my life messaged me that night asking for, like, my opinion or whatever. And I'm, like, literally people, like, I haven't talked to since high school, you know, are, like, reaching out. I'm, like, wait, this is the thing that got you to reach out. Like, all the shit I did, you didn't, like, didn't bother. Like, you know, couldn't be bothered to say anything. but like this this got you to reach out to me all right all right yeah that that was just i mean like something can win the internet for the day and like that won the internet so you know it has like insane reach it was insane yeah amazing thanks for doing this by the way i know that you uh you know you kind of didn't know what you're gonna do i hope you enjoyed it i hope you had a fun time yeah i definitely did because you're somebody i've followed for a long time and i think the people i respect the most like some people respect like elon musk the most some people respect because it's like oh he conquers like you know taking us to another planet yeah uh but i always admire thinkers like i think uh a great thinker somebody who's who puts out original thoughts and i don't know makes you think about the world a little differently those are my favorite types of people so i really appreciate you coming on thanks dude i'm glad glad we did it absolutely man where do you want people to go the youtube channel i'm assuming check out the youtube channel there's gonna be more of those videos coming out mark manson what is the yeah if you just search Mark Manson on YouTube, it'll pop up.

1:10:44And then markmanson.net, got a newsletter there. And I think that's, you know, buy the books, whatever. I don't give a fuck. Yeah, I don't give a fuck. Buy my shit. Awesome. Cool. That's a wrap. All right.

1:11:02I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like my days off. On the road, let's travel. never looking back.

1:11:17Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love. I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And you know, as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the nineties, you're operating like you're in the nineties. And trust me, I've been there clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow. You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done.

1:11:47If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column N8, and Evolve Bank and Trust members, FDIC.