Andrew Tate is what men with no self-esteem. Think High self-esteem? Looks like unpack that a
little bit so it's funny like watching the rise of tape because he's like a copy and paste of
20 million plus copies sold the champion. The no fucks Champion official title, I think, Mark fans and welcome. Thank you, the pot when subtle art came
out and it blew up and it was like at the top, all the bestseller list and stuff. Like everybody in the publishing industry were like, oh, you're like the new Phenom debuted author overnight success. I was I'm like, overnight success.
I've been grinding on a Blog, right? 10 years. Like what do you mean overnight success?
We're good at the beginning. Or did you suck?
Is a fucking disaster? I was a total
disaster. I'm just become great writer, but I wonder what we're doing now. Hmm, which is the you to be of our YouTube channel and sound like the main thing when I saw mr.
Beast a light bulb went off. I was like, I love mr. Beast, and like, I've been watching his shit for a long time, but one of my frustrations with him is that it's all
very
I feel like I could rule the world. I know, I could be what I want to
put my all into it. Like all Days on the Road, Less Traveled never looking back.
Intro to the camera here. We got three time New York Times bestseller. I believe. Yeah, we have 20 million plus copies, sold the champion. The no fucks Champion official title. I think Mark Manson well.
C'Mon, thank you,
good, to be here. Been a
fan for a while. Although I got to admit, I read like a ton of your blogs, and I didn't read the book until like I said, I've actually finished the book, but I until we booked this interview, I was like, I should probably go a read the actual book that he's most famous for. Yeah, something to like the fun of like, oh, I liked his, his old shit, you know, like the cool band thing I was a
fan before, he was cool. Yeah, that's that whole thing. Yeah.
So when I was writing that in trousers,
Is pretty great. Pretty impressive. Yeah, but I know was Wonder this like, when you were younger like let's say, let's say a researcher was watching you when you were like, I don't know. Between the ages of 10 and 20, hmm. What did have been noticeable that you approached things? A little different even when you were
younger, I was definitely different when I was young for sure. I don't think it would have been obvious that I would, I was gonna end up an author or in the personal development industry, or whatever. But, you know, my whole
Whole life. My teachers were like,
Mark's different. He special. We wish he would do his homework. We wish you would stay awake in class but he could do great things. One day like that was kind of the constant refrain
throughout my childhood because you just weren't interested in school or what was the
situation. Yeah. I was bored and I would, I would just whatever I was into that's just kind of what I like I used to bring poker books to class and read them in the middle like physics class and my teachers would get mad at me and I'm like well I'm just like studying poker,
you know,
When you begin to like him during like the Chris Moneymaker phase basically. Yeah. Did you ever like go all in on it? I
tried. So, it's funny.
Early on in college. I decided to sit down and take it really seriously. I made a few thousand bucks which when you're like 19 or 20 its massive right? I'm like oh my God I can pay rent all summer my poker winnings and then I hit we
were in college. Yeah this is your pain. Like you're 20 grand for school but ignoring school to make $300 in a sit and go, exactly pick
up stayed up till 5:00 a.m. Like I made 200 bucks last night. And and then I hit my first big downswing and lost like half my bankroll and like maybe three.
Days. Four days, right? And I was like, oh shit, I don't think I'm pay rent this month, you know, I'm like this kind of sucks actually. Yeah. It's like a very,
very
unhealthy unhealthy. Like I love the game, but the lifestyle that it requires like the grinding, the patient's like the the emotional fortitude to like handle the ups and downs. It's
Yeah. After about six months I was like I don't think I'm built for this, right?
And you there's a lot of like degenerates you end up hanging around like okay doing it. So you kind of look around like this isn't healthy. It's like, yeah, it's like they're not smoking but there's like a secondhand smoke of their like life. That's like I don't want to be inhaling right now for sure, for sure. So I think we had kind of a similar set of Interest. Maybe it's like very common for. I don't know guys that are going through some Rites of Passage. It's like, yeah. You think you can play poker or like count cards in?
Jack and yeah but they sort of move on to like the next means. Yeah, where you know there's a I think 2005. Hmm. A book comes out that I know influenced you at influence me. Yep. Do you know why I'm talking about hours game? The game, you'll Strauss. Yep. Ironically my girlfriend and my girlfriend in high school before I went to college, we were like, yeah, let's break up. We're going to college and yesterday in 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, was like your
Girlfriend, giving you a book called The Game and it's like you need this for college. Yeah. Describe how did you find it and what was like the next 24 hours after you started reading
it? You know it's funny it hit me at depending on your perspective, the exact best or worst moment possible. So my first girlfriend in high school had just cheated on me and left me for another dude and I was completely heartbroken. Just gutted
You know, we be
whiny and sucks even more in high school because like leaving, you is like she's still there. Yeah. Yeah, we're still in the hallway. Yeah. Well, I would buy this
time, I was in college, I got, but like, we'd gotten together in high school anyway. It was we didn't we didn't you made the right move so we didn't split up. We were like, oh, we're in love. We're gonna make it work. I'm gonna drive back every other week and all this shit. And it's like, no, that's a horrible idea. And so, of course, she found another guy and you should
actually look in the camera but like to the person who that 18 right now, do that,
It's not going to work alongside his girlfriend. When you both go to college, you
just don't do it. And so, anyway, I was absolutely heartbroken and distraught and just like very angry and confused. And I remember being in a bookstore and seen seeing that book like on the table. And I remember my first reaction was discussed, that was like, it's like what is this like who would read this, right? And then I'm like,
yeah, yeah yeah, maybe I'll read a
few pages and and I mean Neil's such a good writer like it talk about
You can knows how to like hook your attention and kind of suck you into a world. Yeah, I just, I think I sat down and read probably the first 50, 100 Pages there in the bookstore. And then I think I read the entire thing and 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 fuck me over, broke my heart and every other girl I've ever met, seems to have no interest. So clearly I'm not doing something right, you know? Like I'm willing
To give anything a go at this point. And so, yeah, I kind of got sucked into that world for well, yes, four years, five years and then eventually kind of stumbled into my first business was in that world as
well. Yeah. And I want to talk about that because I think it's again, like I was like a formative phase of my life too. And so today I think a bunch of people rightfully so, you know, like like you admire you follow you and you like add a lot of value to people's lives right in, like,
Even though self-help, kind of like sometimes gets a bad rep. Like you're almost by definition helping people with yourself, friendly the most important thing. But I would say, like, it's probably a rabbit hole. Your, you went down now and content, you create now, but that previous Rabbit Hole, you went down and contact. You created was around there. It is. There it is. Oh yeah, mod is this your first book, right? Yep. Models attract. Women through honesty. Yep, at least that subtitle is like, you know, whoa, we
can get to this in.
Second before that that was a very, very intentional.
Yeah, that that's jumping ahead a couple of years but yeah,
he'll start with. Okay, so you read the game, you get, you know, kind of like I always say this about Tim Ferriss book. The 4-Hour workweek is like after you read that book you have the for our fever. Yep. For thanks for hours. You. Reconsider. Your entire life and like a fever dream. Yeah. And I just tell people that, when I give him the book, I'm like you're going to have this schedule some time. Yeah, I mean this weekend to have the for our fever, same kind of thing happened with the game and you become you start, I guess you describe, you start practicing it. So let's start with like you start actually practice
For people who haven't read the game, and don't know the core principles of it, like, what stood out to you at that time of like, oh, I used to do things this way, but this is like this kind of thing. I'm learning this new skill, I'm
learning. So the there's a funny thing about the game which is and it's funny too because I would put the four hour work week in this category as well. And that those are if I was to make a list of like the five, most impactful books that I've ever read in my life, those two would be on the list for sure, right?
That said, I don't actually like the majority of advice in both of those books. I don't think actually was applicable to me or actually worked for me, right? It was more just showing what was possible, right? So and definitely more. So in the game's case than 40, you know, four hour work week, it was it's primarily principles in mind sets but you know, my issue with the 4-Hour workweek was that it just it made it sound way easier than it was. It's, you know, the the real for
Work week is, you know, work 16 hours a day so you can make money while you sleep. But with the game, I think the really powerful concept that was very life-changing, was that social skills and dating are skills that you can practice, and get better at like that never occurred to me. It just looks like up to that point, my yup, my life. Like most young people, I just kind of assumed like, well,
Either girls are into you or they're not and if they're not your kind of your kind of fucked right? Or not fucked in that case but like it is 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 connecting with women and doing all these things like that. Those are all skills that you can practice like that was very revelatory for me. That said, when I actually went out and tried to do the stuff in the game which was a bunch of cheesy pickup lines and
They called them routines like we're likes
stories magic, routines stories, you
would memorize and all this that it was a fucking disaster like it was just it was completely corny and I felt very inauthentic and out of place. But like what was impactful is that it got me out of the house in like talking the women on a regular basis and I realized like hey if I actually just get myself in front of a bunch of cute girls,
I'm actually I'm not that bad. Like, I can talk, I can make a joke like I can use my own personality as a starting point and just build from there, right? And so that's kind of what I started doing through a throughout college and by the end of college, I kind of had developed a reputation as the big party guy the player. You know, like I had
four different girlfriends or whatever. For me I had the same experience you had except for the lamest. Mama, The Rock Bottom moment is when you hear another guy saying the same thing,
Read the same book and you're like, oh shit. There's like a hundred of us running around. Yeah, it's like this thing I was going to say by itself was actually a little bit cringe. Yeah. Maximally cringe, if she heard this from another guy and I was like okay I can't just like yeah 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 believe some self confidence to believe that this might actually work that you can actually approach somebody and have a good conversation and that could lead to something yazrick pretty powerful.
I even do this with podcast. Like, I have like a note of like, what's the first thing I'm going to talk about with you? Like, I kind of know that the next 90 minutes will be great either way, sure, but that first minute is like the social anxiety piece at, which is like the same thing with, with these pickup artist which was like, most people just aren't even approaching anyone. Yeah. With anything. That's an interest that might lead to a conversation. So for me that was like the bigger thing. Do you still have that kind of like,
Do you think about that moment of social anxiety, that first, that first moment in like, was the game helpful in like getting those Reps, for
sure. I mean II had a lot of social anxiety when I was young. And, and it's funny because it took me a long time to appreciate that, that, you know, because when you're kind of naive and a newbie, you look at all the pickup lines and you think it's the pickup line that's working right? And it's like, no, it's actually the pickup line is just the excuse to kind of get you through your anxiety to
Give you the courage to actually go say something. It doesn't really matter what you're saying, right? And I actually had a very for, you know, kind of like you hearing over here. And then 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. I started, I tried to do, like some fucking coin magic tricks and stuff like just total disaster. And I remember I was having no luck whatsoever and
I actually got very fortunate and that I was in a bar or something. I was talking to these three girls and I was like, trying to do a magic trick and they were like, really into it, they're really excited and I kept fucking it up and then like it kind of got awkward. And at a certain point they realize they're like, wait, like you're just doing a thing like that I hit on us and I'd like, tried to make a joke and it was super lame or something and they kind of rolled their eyes and they started to walk away and I was like, wait, I have another magic trick. And and I remember one of the girls turned around and she looked at me and she was
Like you know you were kind of cute like you should just be yourself. I was like driving you know, like had exploded almost and and that was kind of one of those first moments where I'm like, you know what like why don't I just start like use my personality is the Baseline and then iterate on stuff that already feels natural and trying to instead of trying to be like some fucking weird dude in a book, right? You know that I can't believe I spent ten thousand dollars in two years of my life. Studying all this shit.
It I could have just like walked up and then like, hi.
Where are you from? - and it would have gotten me the
exact same results. There's a book.
That's like, food diet book. I didn't read the book, but the last page of the book is like a summary, you might not because you're an author is like here's the like after all the studies and all the diets because like you know there's like a trillion diets. Yeah and like they're like super summer super complicated. You like peeing on a strip to see if you're like in ketosis or not. You have. Yeah, you can do it. You can take it to the nth degree and
Like yes, it seems like the rules are, you know, eat real food? Like not like packaged processed food like eat real food. Not too much. Yeah. I like it was like that was like basically the core of the advice. Yeah. And it's like oh yeah. And like but if you actually intensely followed that, you get all the results you want. But like does this thing where we sort of search for this like other answer, the secret answer.
Yes. It can't possibly be just that. There is a weird thing that happens at a lot of these industries.
He's, which is the concepts and Frameworks that sell well are often counterproductive, right? And you see this in diet nutrition, you see this an exercise for sure. You see this in social skills, personal development self help you see in the pickup world, like it's really sexy like when a guy stands up and he says, I have a three-step model that works every time and you're going to get laid like tile and you're going to lose 100 pounds. And, you know, it's really sexy and you really want to buy it and you like one up
Leave it and it works and it makes people millions of dollars, but then it doesn't actually. It's not actually good advice, right? Whereas the good advice like this is the other hard thing about these industries is that the good advice is boring. And so, and this things that work and again this is true personal development. It's true social skills, true with diet nutrition. Everything, the stuff that works is boring. It's
It's not the information that's hard. It's simply doing it. It's implementing right. Consistently over a long period of time. That's the hard part, and there's no easy way to sell a solution to that. So the easy thing to sell solution for is, you know, my three steps at work. Every time
I see this, every like because I'm mostly in the kind of startup business world and like, Warren Buffett, they're like, you know? Warren, you're pretty open about your strategies. Yeah. And they're not like that complicated.
Why do you think that more people don't do this? And it was either Hammer, Charlie Munger that was like because nobody wants to get rich
slow. Yep. It's like
yeah we just did this in public and he's like, you know, I made most of my wealth like from the ages of 60 70 90 and like you know nobody wants to do that. Ya hear that? Ya hear that kind? Who's not done this? Yeah, tell them that they can do XYZ faster, or in a different way, in a complicated way that. Yeah. You know, you just didn't have the info now that you got the info. Now, it's all going to work. Yeah, right. Same thing. Like, you know why?
Commentator, which is the most successful like startup investor and accelerator. Their number one advice is just make something people want. Hmm. The like we're what story is really a starting
point
and then but then the way it helps is like if you just tell someone that they don't have to use it. Yeah. But the quest like their audit when you're like so do you think that people want this of their lack? Of course is a cool. Someone tells you that what evidence is showing you that people want this and they're like well we don't have any
It's like that bell curve me more it's like you know genius and then yeah
it's like just mix up and people want and then in the middle of the bell curve it's like well you've got to have these 12 steps and figure out these strategy, you know. And then the Jedis like just make something people want. I
love that. That's why I told back like that so you might hear you. It's the across so many domains. It's amazing. Yeah. And I catch myself all the time and I'm like, I need what would the Jedi? Oh, the Jedi would just say like yeah, do it because it's fun instead of like yeah, we do all these other things. Yeah.
Yeah, when you look back, has been flashing a bunch of your like I noticed been a God, he flashes a bunch of your things that are like, this is the cringe section of the, don't worry. It gets better. They don't think it will get better. But this is the current section. But you have like a bunch of these things that I'm like they're like just amazing headlines. We're gonna get we're gonna talk titles later because you're like a title Master. But when you look back, do you, how do what's the meaning you put are like, what's the label? You put on these things? I think we're both of the mindset that, like, mmm life is, not really about what happens is.
Like what you what you make of it and also what you tell yourself the story, you tell yourself about what happened. Yeah, so like when you look back on that phase is it just like Fringe? And I don't want to ever think about. Like I hope my forget about that. Is it like no, that was actually really useful for me in these ways. Is it just funny. Now, like, what's your reaction now?
It's a really good question. I would say it's probably like, 1/3 cringe 1/3. I think it was actually really important informative and a lot of ways. And then,
Then 1/3 just kind of funny and just like can you believe that happened? Actually, when I moved out here to La, I met up with Neil for the first time and we spent a day together and we spent like half the day just kind of being like, can you believe that happen right? Dre. Believe we actually did that. I look back though, especially now that a little bit more time has gone by. I really do think there was kind of an underrated factor and I think this is very relevant because this is starting to happen again with Gen Z.
With I think the pickup artist industry is underrated as a cultural or social phenomenon. Particularly for young men, trying to find Identity or find themselves in like a very confusing world with a lot of information because it's when I look back at that time like yeah, like we in the industry Co are the coaches. We used to joke with each other. It was like, yeah we all came for the women but we stayed for the other
Like
its 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 just I guess I don't know their masculinity, right? There's 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. 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. 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 Cycles.
I mean back today and you're seeing a lot of that happen again with a different set
of role models and
a different industry.
Well, let's talk about one of them. So I think Andrew Tate is like the for sure, you know, poster boy right now that thank you. Pull up that treaty as you have. A great tweet about energy, I want to ask. Yeah. Andrew Tate. Is what men with no self-esteem? Think High self-esteem? Looks like as a rule narcissism is 0 is always mistaken for confidence by those who have no confidence from there.
Are it doesn't take much for the dynamic to turn abusive / has exploded.
Yeah, so it's funny like watching tape the rise of tape because he just he's like a copy and paste of half the guys that were in that industry, right. You know. It's like all the shit he says. I'm like oh yeah I remember you know this guy used to say that. Oh yeah that guy used to say that too. Oh yeah, that guy made a lot of money saying that you know, like it's all the same shit just recycled in a new package. I do think Tate is unique.
Charismatic. And I think he is an interesting back story that a lot of got young men retrospect, right? And so that, that is the adds to the, it's given him a lot more. Amplification, it's also just a different era with social media and everything, but,
and he like, layered on an MLM. So, yeah. That's right. So, you just combine like three of the most powerful forces in the world. I seriously pretty insane Charisma. It's like this like cocktail of like words that cast a spell on young man. Yeah. And then an MLM distribution.
I know where he's like look kind of clips of me and post them everywhere and like that's how you rise in the ranks and you get like you're going to make money by promoting me. It's which is insane.
It's honestly somebody really needs to do. I mean it probably probably need some time but like ten years from now I want to see somebody do like a really good book about him, right? And like a fairy book not like trying to smear like take an honest look like who was this guy? Why did he blow up? Why did this work right? Like because it's I think it's easy obviously you can't
The worst things that he said, it's no secret. Some of the bad things he said and you can just hammer on those all day. But like, I think that's way less interesting than just trying to understand like
Why is there such a demand for this guy again, right? Like I thought we kind of got over this and this kind of ties back into my first book model. So like,
The pickup industry by like 2009-2010 I had really, really become burnt out on, just the toxicity of it. And I really felt that there were kind of two strains of dating relationship advice for men. One was
Basie promoting narcissism selfishness, power dynamics, 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 you
if you look at just in the terms of a man's overall lifespan, that's a very bad trade-off. And then so I was, I was kind of like, okay, how do we like detoxify this this advice, what is that look like? How do we and it's not just about treating women with respect, but is treating yourself with respect to because like what a lot of guys don't realize is that.
Yeah, obviously if you objectify women, it's bad for the women, it's bad for you, too, because you're objectifying yourself, your start. You're basically just measuring Yourself by how wet your dick gets. And like, that's a very demeaning way to view yourself and view your own self esteem. And so, I was kind of fed up with the whole thing. I knew I wanted to get out. I wanted to Pivot out of the industry and I was like, well, if I'm getting out of the industry, I might as well just write the book that everybody needs to hear and nobody wants to hear it.
Which is that? This is all toxic and fucked up and stop doing
it. We're good at the beginning. Or did you suck
dude, I was a fucking disaster. I was a total disaster. You do you want me to talk about the content side or the marketing
side? Whatever is more interesting. You tell me?
Well, I'll talk to start with the content side. It's less interesting, but I'll start with it because it's quicker, which is just like,
Most of my content was bad at first, and I think that's true of anybody. And you just get those reps in, you know, II you back in the day. Back, when blogs were still a thing I used to get asked all the time. Like how do I start a blog? How
do I grow blog
make make make a living as a blogger. My answer was always the same, which is like, right 100 blog post. Come ask me again, right? And
have you seen by the mr. Beast has. Like almost the exact verbatim answer. Yes. And I love it because yeah, it's the exact
same thing. I used to tell people and
it's a combination of like
it's actually the right advice because you need a bunch of rats and you need to suck for a little bit and get Baptist. Try to make each of the next video better and nobody's also. It's a filter. It's like, are you serious or not serious? I will help you, if you're serious. Yes, but 99 percent. You're not seriously. This is the easy task. Exactly.
Exactly. And the funny thing is too, is that it's like, most people. If they go right, 100 blog posts and try to make each one better by the 100th one, they don't need the advice anymore. They
know what they're doing wrong. They know what they need to get better at. So was there anything that got you better? What did you read?
Her follow. Some are your model yourself after someone like, do you remember how you got good at terms of writing and
content? My two big inspiration? I was a huge, Bill Simmons fan. Back in the day.
Wow, we were like, very, very aligned. I got ya back in the day, page to page
two. Yeah, and it's, I remember reading his cock. I was like his column each week was like an event in my life. It was like, I was so excited to go read it. And I remember thinking I was like, I want my art because back then the meta.
The in this is pretty Newsfeed pre-social media, everything. So it's like in the blogosphere, the idea. Everything all traffic was either SEO or blogroll type thing. Yeah, like link farming like you know, you would like write something spicy so that a bunch of other bloggers would want to comment on it. So they linked to you and like all this stuff and it be it was very much a volume game. So like the the standard advice was always, you know, don't write one big blog post a day right?
20/20 single paragraphs and post those individual blog posts each day. Just that's what's going to make you grow. And I always hated that, that always felt very shitty and uninspired uninspiring. And so, and I love Bill Simmons, and I was like, man. I want to be the Bill Simmons of my industry, right? Like, I want to have these like epic 10-page pose. That guys, just get lost in it. Like, you know, they like schedule their week
around, right? And you end up feeling like a friend. It's not. It's a hang.
Yeah.
And I think it that probably hurt me in the short run and it helped me in the long run. See,
I tried to meet up with him when I was so we came here. I was like I want to schedule and yeah it was my dream. Guess I was like, I would love to have Bill Simmons on this because I don't he doesn't do a lot of like, where he's the guest and I've never really seen any to be honest. Like, yeah,
he's like a, he's a big deal at Spotify now. So yeah. He's, you know,
he's yeah, that's fine but like whatever.
Consequences of caring. Hmm. Unbelievable post, so good, I restart continue. So Bill Simmons inspired you to be like I don't need to like sell out to the algorithm the algorithm of that time. The meta of that
time. Yeah. And it's I also think it helped that I was in a pretty Niche and insulated industry. Like everybody kind of knew each other and everybody talked about each other and everything. So it 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
I did eventually start posting some pretty good stuff and so that kind of got talked about
and shared, do you remember, what was the like, kind of your first thing that broke out?
I really in that era. I really don't, I really don't. It was so gradual man. Like my, it's funny, because, you know, subtle art is so massive, like it was funny with this is jumping ahead a little bit but like, when subtle art came out and it blew up and it was like at the top, all the bestseller list and stuff like
Everybody in the publishing industry were like, oh, you're like the new Phenom debuted author overnight success almost? I'm like overnight success. I've been fucking grinding on a Blog fright, 10 years. Like what do you mean overnight success? Right
now, doing like, you know, that's like the low status thing and societies. Like I'm a blogger. Yes, exactly. So you're unemployed. Like, what is that? Yeah, especially goddamn. I got stories.
I got started. I remember.
Like 2013 2014. And by this time might like my audience was pretty big like I had a few hundred thousand readers and I remember going home for Christmas one year and kind of got in an argument with my parents and my stepmom was just like when are you going to get a real job and and and she was like you know I know such and such like they're hiring like a web designer. You know you could go do that and I was like I'd be a waste of my time and she's like oh you could probably make a hundred thousand a year. I was like I already make 100,000 a year and she just looked at me. She go.
No you don't. It's like what the fuck do you want tax returns? Like
Jesus Christ. What do I have to do to get you people to believe
in me? But anyway, we're jumping around now. You know, the caught ya, the content side. I don't know, I just had this weird confidence of like,
I saw that Bill Simmons trajectory over the page two days and I'm and he did it differently and everybody else. And I was like, why can't I do that, right? And I'm not going to post 20 times a day. I'm just going to do like one Epic article that everybody gets excited about and that was kind of my Mo and it's funny because that eventually became the meta kind of numb or Facebook era in the early 2010's. So I was like ahead of the curve I guess on the marketing side I was trash. I was just like
Selling does not come natural to me at all. It was very much something that I had to consciously train myself, practice, I took a bunch of copywriting courses. I like went to marketing seminars pirated marketing seminars. Like that was always the. It's funny because it's like the psychology side, the personal development side of everything, the social dynamics, the relationship advice like
That all came very easily and naturally to me, and it was just, it was fun. It was like, kind of a hobby. So it was like, I never really had to like, work hard to kind of figure that out like anything. I was working on getting better at my business, it was always the sales and marketing stuff, right? Like figuring that shit
out, so you've done. So those content reps. Got energy, obviously, become great writer. And we'll talk about the book in a second, but I wonder what we're doing now. Which is the YouTube video, Cheryl our YouTube channel and yeah, seems like that's I don't know. Is that your
Like that's like the main thing is. I like
right now baby right now that's the new main thing.
Yeah. And so I think drop the first first psych video. Maybe a couple days ago. Yeah. And doing super well can you pull it up? I want to actually do a little. So one of my favorite little content things is this thing that happens in sports and football. They like take quarterbacks that are about to be drafted and out of everything. They see they sit down. They like look at game film with them just to see kind of how they think. Sure. And as my favorite thing in any
Me podcast is like when you can really like not. Like talking the abstract.
Yeah. Talking the specific
like like why did you do this? Yeah, about this. Yeah, and we hung out with mr. Beast and would be do that with some of his videos and the way you think she's like, oh okay, I get it, I guess. Yeah, I learned something tactical but also just I get you more.
Yeah. Versus when you ask some general
questions and so I want kind of want to play this game. I don't know. How. Okay, well, we'll try. I want to know the thought that went into this. This is watch the first 10 seconds. I wanna hear you talk about it. Okay, what would you do if someone offered you ten
thousand dollars?
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. Let's pause
right there. Yeah. All right walk me through that. Well, the a lot was happening there. What was how you think about this? Obviously, some mr. Pease inspiration here.
He was very inspirational. So let me zoom out for a second more broadly. And then I can kind of come back to this video specifically so early in my career, I did a lot of coaching first with the pick up 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 consisted. I was very frustrated by it, which was that? I feel like the incent, like the way the incentives are structured with in coaching, Industries in the personal development world are counterproductive, right? So, it's like if you're paying me a bunt, 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. Its 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 yourself, just
Some issues. Even though they're still there. Like a pharmaceutical company. Yeah,
exactly. I assure you.
Exactly. And then, on your side of the equation, it's what often happens in practice, like are on the customer side is, what often happens in practice is people kind of show up, they pay you say a thousand dollars and they're like, well, I just paid you a thousand dollars. So you deal with it right? Like I've been dealing with this my whole life. I just paid you a bunch of money. You deal with it now, right? Like, that's
See 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 kind of found myself in, like, awkward situations with clients and stuff. So, I just got away from it entirely and just kind of stuck the books and courses and everything. When I saw mr. Beast a lightbulb 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. Abuse video and I'll get to the end. And I'm like, I want to know about the guys water. Ha, yeah. I'm like, tell me about the guy who want to 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. Right? I talked to him about this. Yeah. And I was like
because I was like, he was talking about like, a Netflix are like TV shows. Yeah. And it was like, oh, like what can you learn about TV shows? Looking what do you learn from like TV shows have been running for a long time' do really well. Mmm.
And he says, he's like, 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 Riley's, right? They just don't know where people are dropping off. He's like, well, we found was like, if you hit him hit him, hit him with like, 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 characteristic. We don't do any narrative or character and I got to figure out how I'm going to do that. Yeah. He's like, I don't know. I was like I don't have to do that yet but like,
We should probably learn that. Yeah, this 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 the set to about it, okay? So everybody just sit through that movie, you know, and it's in the previous era of Television. It's, you know, you don't want to sit there and like, flip around for 10 minutes, looking for something else. So you sit there and just kind of watch a mediocre show. So it's like traditional media is coming from 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 and TV shows. YouTube is kind of the other way around. Like, there's always shit fighting for your attention and try and get you to click off. And so YouTube is just retention retention retention, like is 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
Hookey and Crick the right, right? Yeah, those two two variables.
Yes, it's super hooky very quick Beatty like addictive but also kind of empty calories. Like you can just blow through like six videos and just be like wait what did? I don't remember a single thing I just watch 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 and they're like
They've now got five different streaming services, they can pick from and they can switch it 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 drama side of things and I think whoever figures it out first is going to like right when really big but anyway back to the mr. B's thing and the coaching thing so I was watching mr. B's videos for a couple years and then like last year I was I was kind of taking this break and I'll trying to figure out what I was going to do next.
In my own career and I had felt this about his videos for a long time. And, and I started thinking I'm like, man, like what? If you what if you built the challenges in a way that like, forced character development, like what are the challenges weren't built around like, you know, stand in the circle or, you know, who keep your hand on the car? Like, what if it was built around on this Lamborghinis? What 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, 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 information thing. The problem is never, I don't have the information to fix my problem. The problem is they're just not doing it, right? Like they're not fucking going out and doing it. And so, and they could pay a coach 1,000 bucks. And the coach can say, okay, will you pay me?
A thousand bucks. Now, go do it and sometimes that works. But not always or you could say, I'll give you a thousand bucks, if you go do it and fix your own shit, right? Like, what does that look like, right? Like what is like the most effective layer lever for Behavior? Change is financial incentive. And so what have 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, it's kind of Genius. Yeah. I was like, fuck. I need to make this
So this is our first attempt at it, and it's funny because this was shot in the vapor Lemay. This is where recording this end of July.
There are all I got I'm already aware of, like, 15 things that are wrong. That this video and like, there are like, it's actually under performing our expectations and like there's so many things that we need to fix but first rep. Yeah, it's the first rap. 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 also like even just mechanically like the things you just said. So if you're coaching is getting somebody to like transform the
Transformers on informations doing it yet. Best way to get something to do is if maybe a financial incentive or even like the fact that they agree to be in the
content and say there's a contract
there like do the thing but you also how can you offer ten thousand dollars to why could you pay your coat? That's not a sustainable business but it is if it's YouTube content, right? Exactly. You have like, almost a full loop to be able to make
something. It creates it creates a very beautiful flywheel of
You're helping that individual. So in this video it's a woman named Melinda. So I'm helping Melinda and she did get amazing results. 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 overcoming a character overcome. Yeah, it's like, oh, that's what it looks like. Oh, that's
But how people respond in that situation, you know, the
difference between watching Rocky and then sup or somebody sitting at a chair and saying you should kind of work really hard. Yeah. Different emotional register and only remember 20 years later and still think about when you work out. Yeah. 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 sec's? I don't know how long we went but like what are you trying to achieve in this first 15 seconds of this video?
So that 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? 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. B's meta. Briefcase of cases fucking
Money, right? It's like everybody in YouTube's doing it. It seems to be working for a lot of people. So kind of the obvious starting point was
like, okay well what are we Jedi right? Jedi in the nums. Yes. What if you gave them ten thousand dollars like what if you happen to miss.
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 the retention chart? What should it have been for? What do you think it should have been to be like
good? Well, I think though the issue with this is that even though it's money, it's
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 an approach we do. Yeah, we take our no mall. And we tell her she has to find somebody from Canada and like she runs away. It's so funny because she,
it's so like relatable. This is why I think you should have started with this. I was gonna suggest this. Yeah, it's so early because you tell her, like, someone in this mall is from Canada.
Need to go approach them and ask them and find them. She's like nervous laugh. And then she starts like faking being on a phone? Yes. Like which is everybody's done it like? And she's like, it's like, are you making a fuss like yeah. Yeah. I am I just, I don't know. Makes me feel more comfortable, dude. She was so
relatable such a spaz, right? Such a spaz. It was really fun. And yeah, in hindsight, it's like, we should have just opened up with that and then explain the format later. Yeah, but like yeah, I mean, we're new
were
Paving the road as we dry
I also to though 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 this I would say this is a common theme from the pickup to subtle art to now this which is how do you avoid selling out? So like yeah, when you've been in the the industry you kind of know, okay, if I pull this lever, I'm going to 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 take do we want to have our video be better or worse? Obviously a better. But at the same time we don't want to sell out. How have you just dealt with that bike? How hard do I want to turn the knob or pull the lever of like 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 get 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 their 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, because it's
Yeah, there's a credibility and authenticity that it's just so so important especially and that's, it's been one of my criticisms of my own industry for 10 15 years of just like the lack of trustworthiness, the lack of credibility.
Because if you promise the magic pill, that works in two minutes, you're 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 of, like, maybe now, you know, you got. Fuck you money from the book and you're like, yeah, I don't have
Do that anymore. Well, I guess how is that changed? You know, I'm very
fortunate in that the book did so. 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 beauty projects losing money and it's probably gonna lose money for a year or two and I'm fine with that. But like it's I'm also very fortunate that I made my money being very explicit about that, that like there is no magic pill. There is no cure-all, like, it's funny dude. Like even when you dig into research on therapies like what modality of
Therapies the most effective, right? You start looking at the research and it's it's startling because there is nothing that has more than a 50% hit rate nothing like not there's no form of therapy. That is successful like produces positive outcomes more than 50% of the time
which is crazy because it's like therapy is like the most
tried-and-true like we've had it for two hundred years like it's the one thing everybody's like is directed to go to. So there's a 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 priest, pre-shoot conversations and interviews with the person to really gauge of, like, is this a person? I can help? Because for every video we shot, we talk 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 do watch the TV show? The Bear - yes I
have. Not everybody says It's amazing but I'm not yet.
Yeah. It's a, it's a little bit. I would say it's a little bit slow, but it pays off. It's something you talked about which is like the retention curve. For me was terrible at the beginning. Sure it's slow. It's like one of those like
All shows recycle now we're not going to like be click baby. Yeah. And I'm like, I'm kind of used to that. So, you know, I'm really gonna pay this off with character, it's gonna take some time, but man, it doesn't, there's like a episode in the second season is 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, the here, you know, it's so satisfying but there, but we will, we reach out to one of the writers and we were like, hey, there was respect. And just we like to learn from people like that. Like, how do you do?
This. How do you do this character thing? Have you learned anything in the process of 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, 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 to 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, bunch of traditional media success, like everything was
Wildly successful, very busy, lots of money. I moved to LA. I took a few months off, and I was just like, man. I miss like the grind e, 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 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 being if a studio or a large Publishers 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 missed the internet days of like all right let's try 10 things and just know that like six are going to fail and 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 about storytelling visual storytelling and particular, like one of the big lessons from this video is that I still very much just write like a book writer. Like a lot of the mistakes that were made in this video.
It's because it was organized in such a way that would work really well on like an article or a book, right? But it works terribly on video what's an example. So an example is for is like the intra, right? Let's like that's a great intro on paper. It's a terrible intro on video because it's abstract, it's not visually interesting, you know? It's like you start with the challenge, right? Woman, spaz, run around a mall like ask people that are from Canada, like that's super weird. And you're like what is going on? And then it's like you slowly like drip.
Just over the course of like 10 minutes. Whereas when you're writing a book or an article, like you have you need to put all the context up front of like, this is what we're doing. This is what this is about, you know, it's like the old school essay. It's like, you gotta have your thesis in the first paragraph and then you gotta 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 gen Z shit. The Gen Z.
Shh. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, exactly. There's something I have you heard this term? Like the millennial. Pause know. It's so funny. It's like if you were to it's like possibility of Oz is basically gen Z people. If you watch the start of their
Starts with them already, they're already talking. So they're like mid word. Oh yeah, as the video starts. Whereas every Millennials like the Click record, like, hey everybody, as I like that little like a little pause, is I your already swiped on Tick-Tock. If you haven't liked, you gotta be like mid interesting thing and I was like, that's so fucking true. That's funny. That's so true. You, so you're doing this this series. What's like, the craziest or most interesting challenge. I guess you can't give 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
the social stuff is like the most interesting it because it's you can do a lot of fear based stuff. I mean, you can take somebody up in a plane and throw them out, you know, make them skydiver whatever and that's exciting. But like, I don't know it, it doesn't feel like there's as much depth as like the social stuff. So we have a challenge in another video where I print it out Flat Earth, fliers saying like you know do you do you know the truth about the planet? You know it's a picture of a flat
Earth and I made her go into a public place and hand them out to people, right. And like try to convince them to be flat earthers and shoes, like absolutely mortified like she's horrified and but is super fun because then it's like well why do you care like you don't know, these people, you're never gonna see him again. Like why do you care? Why is it so horrifying, right? Like, it's just yeah, it's super exciting for me. This is honestly, it's the most fun. I'm having in my career and probably
Six or seven years,
which is a dope lesson because you know, you wrote a book with Will Smith. Yeah. Movie. I got to do a bunch of things. I like I would say like the on paper like mashed had goals, Peter think they want and like actually that's not where the source of joy and happiness comes from. Thank you. Think you had said something which is like happiness, is from solving problems. Yep. Is that? Is that you? Yeah, which is when you start at the beginning of a learning curve, you're just going to suck and solve a bunch of problems to make.
And good. Yeah. And that's a lot more satisfying than
for me. At least it is, you know, I'm sure there are people out there who prefer, like kind of a traditional media environment, but one of the things I learned is that I can do traditional media projects and I can do very well at them, but, like,
I don't feel that same passion with them, as I do with stuff like this, like, I like owning my own stuff. I like experimenting. I like the creative process like having the complete creative, freedom, and then also owning it and then also getting the package, it and also like controlling the brand around it, like it's
also, part of that mean, we can talk about this too, but
It's it's funny. Like so when my movie came out and I did all the press for the movie, every single journalist, I talked to was like, so are you gonna do another movie and like, in my head I'm like fuck. No, absolutely not. I'm gonna go make a YouTube
channel because it's like that
was actually my lesson from making a movie was like I should actually admit. I should just have a YouTube channel like this because the economics of the Creator economy are fundamentally better. The distribution is Miles better.
You've like complete ownership, there's complete creative freedom. Like I just don't see how this doesn't end up ahead. Right in 10 years
it's like hanging by like a Prestige thread, it really is like, oh yeah, Status.
It really is. And it's I'm sure I don't think like, Hollywood's gonna die, but 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 like it's still nice to like be in the New York Times whatever. But the real intellectual debate and substance in like the stuff that drives culture happens on Twitter and substract 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
You as well where it's like, yeah, there's still going to be like Marvel movies and stuff. And Netflix is gonna have its TV shows, and it's gonna be very prestigious to be on those but like, cultures going to be driven by like it probably within this decade creators, they're going to grow up for one and to the production values 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
traditional media. If it's not already. I mean
Things. I didn't think if you're under 25, it is already right. Fair
enough. I'll talk to you about titles because I think you're a title Master. Do you think you're good at
titles? Apparently, I guess I don't feel good at them but but
obviously has a good time on it. Started with the book came from a blog post correctly. It wasn't intended to be like a book was like, yeah, here's a blog post. Why'd, you know, to turn that one into a book? By the way, there was it like did it hit in a different way
or? Yeah. That that is that one. I mean I had a lot of
Chuckles. Go viral over that period like 2012 to 2015 like I probably had ten or twelve articles, go super viral but that one just hit on like a whole nother level. It was. So I had already written. Probably half the book when that article came out and then when that article hit the way it did, my agent was like, hey, I think you could change title book. Yeah. And you
hadn't done a book and
years right before that. No, I just done models fought was
right? So your
Or a your but you're already thinking about a book and then I was like, yeah. Oh lean into this one? Yeah. So there's this, that 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, oh, that was. Is that a from something? What is this? That
was an old meme back in the day. Okay,
so good. Yeah, yeah, I love that. And that's, that's like as good as that made with me. 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,
13 2014. And then it's, I've been seen in a long time, right? There was also the original article also because back then a big part of packaging, an article for like Facebook and Twitter was what image pops up share meta that matter. Yeah. That when you share. And so we used to spend a lot of their kind of similar like thumbnails on YouTube. We used to spend a lot of time, like looking for the right image for the share, share image on Facebook and I think the other thing that made that article work was I think on Reddit one day just
Only on Reddit. I saw somebody at photoshopped a picture of a kitten in front of like a bomb exploding. Like
I've seen that intent. Have enemies is huge.
Yeah, and so we pulled that and use that as like the share, yeah. That share the share image and it was just kind of this magical combo of content title image. It just like all work. Do you remember how you
thought of that title? So the subtle art of not giving a fuck, where does that come from sitting down? You just hammering out a bunch of possibilities or
I back. Then I used to keep
List of article ideas like just kind of a running list of ideas that I would just add to. Like, I'd have competent conversations with people and something would pop up. And I just pull out my phone at its list and it came from, it came from, there's a heavy metal song from band, called Lamb of God, they had a song called the subtle art of murder and persuasion and and at that time I had just done two different articles with fucking the tight. Like I had just kind of discovered that if you
Put fucking the title it would go further, it would. Yeah, everything would go further. So I was like, adding fucked all my titles or to a bunch of my titles at the time. And so I was just kind of on the lookout of like cool titles that you could add add fucking to. And I think I knew, I wanted to do an article about not giving a fuck because I was just an obvious topic. And so, when I heard that song, I was like, whoa, subtle are 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.
One of your life. Yeah, that's good. It was a huge one because you gotta know I need yeah yeah.
What is this jackass thing? You know, so probably nothing. But let me just check the most important acts
like it's it's it's always going to
work. You have life is a video game and here are the cheat codes. Yeah. Like a you know a faster path 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 has 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 that of the first line of it was everybody.
Seems to think Clubhouse is the next big thing. Yeah. But I think it's going to fail as I can grab some popcorn. Here's, here's how I think it goes down. Yeah. And that thing like crazy viral and like, I like my hero 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 matter doesn't really work, but like yeah, Twitter threads, actually, for a Time less recently could go viral. And, and now that same theme is like,
We'll just replace is 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, they're copy paste but I obviously like losses fact, of course as it
goes, that's the other interesting thing too, that's kind of changed in the last 10 years. Like there was a real and II, 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, who's like, that was yours. Right. Yeah. You know. It's like, No. And if somebody stole it was like, they're a piece of shit and recall them out.
Audience we call them out. Like I used to get emails from fans being like this guy copied your article and like all this stuff like I never get those emails anymore like it's everybody just rips everybody off now. So anybody post anything that goes viral anywhere, there's a like the next day there's Half-Life there's 20 more versions on every platform and it's just like it's the way the game is
played today. It's that being that it's like you know, I made this thing and it's like do not hold anything I made this. I made this. Yeah, I don't think people even are aware of it anymore. Yeah.
Is blogging
dead.
I think it depends on how you define dead. So
there was an ERA in the early 2010's where a you a Blog could gain reach Beyond its own specific Niche. Like it, you could kind of get mainstream audience like hit like a critical mass. I think today you can still make a living off a Blog. It's just you've got to have your Niche figured out. You gotta like, really be tuned into them and you're probably never going to scale an audience past like
Low six figures, whereas ten 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 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 blog route instead of podcast or video like it you have to have a really good reason and it probably has to be a very specific Niche to
put. Did you podcast or do you punk
ass? I do not.
Is there like a reason or Why didn't
it?
I never started one, just because of lack of bandwidth like writing too many books.
And then but now I'm doing the video stuff, like I'm probably going to do something in the podcasting space. It won't be something like this. Like last thing the world needs is another interview podcast except on my turf. Yeah, yeah. Right made this I made this is - yeah, but I would I do think it's I think it I would like to be in this medium in some shape or form. So right 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.
Like, I don't exist. A real specific question. It's kind of like, it's whatever. How are they? Yeah, every area is like, how are they? As a person? Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, like they 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 some of you witnessed that was like just not how the common person would have approached a given situation. So the
quick answer to 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 here. I'm 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 most obvious one that's not going to surprise anybody. It's just this Charisma like
He?
Is by far the most naturally charismatic but 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 them. And so it's not hard. You spend a little bit of time with them and it's not hard to see and understand like, oh okay, I see why this guy is so famous,
right?
His mind is is very almost delusional e+ like he kind of has this like, you know, we all have a little bit of a the psychologist Dan Gilbert calls. It a psychological immune system which is like, when bad things happen, we kind of like rationalize or explain them in a way that, you know, makes us feel better, or helps us his psychological immune
like, it's just
- Lee just bounces, right? Off him any sort of failure. Setback like he doesn't doesn't bump them out. Like 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 cuz it also gets him in trouble like when there actually is a problem that needs to be addressed and you do need to be sad and you do need to like deal with it.
He just rationalizes it in such a positive way so quickly that it kind of like, it can cause problems for him. And that's that's actually one thing he and I talked about for the book is that, you know, he came from a very chaotic and
Like abusive childhood and he said he's like I developed that as like a survival mechanism and it's helped me so much throughout my life 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 on Tethered to reality some solvent 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 we were you like, yeah, what was your cut over you? Like stunned? Like because you know more
than like everybody's shocked because it's a shocking
thing. Yeah. You know the person you might have like either is even more shocking than that, or its last because you understood that maybe it was something from, it was definitely
less shocking for me. He slapped your once or twice.
Yeah, you're like yeah, it's comments. He keep her name out of your mouth.
No, I mean like what
One of the things and we this is in the book. He's a very abusive alcoholic. Father 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 is 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 going to sit there and laugh, you find whatever like you go after his mom, his daughter or his wife like
Shit's gonna get real real fast and so I wasn't surprised. It was funny, actually, I was watching with my wife live in like, my wife turned to me, and she was like, this is a bit, right? I was like, no, but like he's actually saying that right now, she's like, what
kind of a text afterwards? Are you like, just give him space? Super famous people. You like, is hard to even navigate, so you don't want to be one of those people. Yeah, I was like, I might, if I'm your friend, I just send you something
like
Yeah, it's weird. That'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 message me that night asking for, like my opinion or whatever. And I'm like, literally people like I haven't talked to him since high school. You know are like reaching out like wait, this is the thing that got you to reach others. All the shit I did. He didn't like didn't bother like, you know, couldn't be bothered to say anything but like this, this got you here.
Got to reach out to me. All right. All
right. Yeah, that was just, I mean, like something can win the internet for the day and like that one, the internet. So, you know, she has like insane. Reach. It was insane. Yeah, amazing. Thanks for doing this. By the way, I know that mu. You know, you kind of know what you're going to do. Hope you enjoyed it. I hope you had a fun time. Yeah, I definitely did because you're somebody followed for a long time. And I think the people I respect the most, like, some people just like Elon Musk the most some people respect because it's like, oh, he conquers like, you know, taking us to another planet. Yeah.
But I always admired thinkers. Like, I think a great thinker somebody who puts out original thoughts and
I don't know, makes you think about
the world a little differently? Those are my favorite types people. So I really appreciate you
coming on. Thanks, I'm glad that we did it. Absolutely, man. Where's your,
where do you want people to go there YouTube channel? I'm assuming is check out the
YouTube channel. There's going to be more of those videos from our Manson,
what is the? Yeah. If you
just search Mark Manson on YouTube it will pop up and then arguments and.net got a newsletter there.
And I think that's, you know, by the books, whatever.
I don't give a fuck. Yeah. Fuck. Why? My
shit awesome.
Cool. That's right.
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be
what I want to
put my all in it like a day's travel never looking back.
