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Most known for his book The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*ck, Mark Manson is a three-time #1 NY Times bestselling author and entrepreneur. In this episode, he tackles questions, less about his books, and more about the business of being a writer. Can authors really make a living? Is the pursuit of fame and fortune really as glamorous as it seems? Mark also reveals what it’s like working in Hollywood, explaining why he believes the creator economy offers a brighter future.
Craving honesty over hype? Mark gives you the unvarnished truth. Don’t miss this candid discussion about his journey from broke blogger to bestselling author, the challenges of working with Hollywood, and the surprising lessons learned from achieving everything he ever wished for.
00:00 Intro
0:34 Can You Make Money As A Writer?
2:23 Should You Become An Author?
3:25 Is Mark More of An Author or an Entrepreneur?
4:40 Mark’s Journey to Wealth
7:04 Wealth’s Impact on Life and Relationships
12:10 Achieving Your Dreams Isn’t As Great As It Seems
15:17 Is Mark Done With Money?
16:42 Mark’s New Aspirations
18:31 Fame’s Impact on Mark’s Life
18:54 Mark’s Team
20:10 Mark on Managing His Team
21:23 Are Books Still Relevant Today?
23:12 Protecting Mental Health While Working in Social Media
24:16 The Advantages of Social Media
26:03 Mark’s Experience Making A Film
30:13 The Creator Economy is the Future
30:51 What Mark’s Does With His Money
31:46 Changing Social Circles & Finance Bros
36:55 Writers & Books Mark Loves
39:57 Mark’s Current Source of Stress
41:23 Mark’s Favorite Products
42:56 Mark’s Role Models
43:38 What Mark’s Excited About
Twitter: @IAmMarkManson
Instagram: @markmanson
LinkedIn: @markmanson
Tiktok: @IAmMarkManson
Youtube: @IAmMarkManson
Website: https://markmanson.net
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everything I had hoped for my entire adult life just happened in the last 3 months and I have no idea what to do next I guess I'll just like order pizzas and play video games and drink everybody likes to complain about having to work for a paycheck it gives you something to do and look forward to if suddenly a lottery win shows up it's no longer meaningful you pop a couple champagne bottles like you just kind of sit around being like okay now what I used to have a lot of self-destructive Tendencies like I was always that guy who was like ah your morning routine like who gives a crap drinking staying up to 3:00 a.m. I took like a lot of pride in being that self-destructiveness can feed creativity but it's not sustainable you got to get your together Mark thanks so much for doing this it's great to be here man yeah never met you it's always nice when somebody who's successful isn't a total jerk well we just met so yeah we Mark and I just met for lunch and he immediately put me at ease he's very nice you've done a lot of interviews about your books you said you don't really want to talk about your books it's kind of boring you've done that a million times so I want to talk about the business of being a writer and books and I want to ask you can you actually make money writing books yes well define money like you can make a dollar you can make a thousand dollars I mean it's you're probably not going to make like Tom Cruise money or Bill Gates money right but you can make a good living as an author for sure so you're probably one of the most successful authors in the world probably top 25 or something is that sure non-fiction for sure yeah and can you make like single digit millions double digit millions so there's probably you're probably at the top of the totem pole you probably got like JK Rowling or something you know which is hundreds of millions maybe James Patterson is up there Stephen King is probably up there there's probably 50 to 100 people who are in like the eight figure territory and then maybe 100 people or a few hundred people in the seven figure territory so it's not you don't get this I mean it'd be interesting to see how it matches up compared to like say film or television or whatever music but it's probably analogous would you say it's similar to like becoming a professional athlete and making money at it like it's the 0.5% that does it when people say to you I want to become an author what do you tell them why first I ask why right because there's good reasons to do it and bad the same reason why somebody says like I want to be an NBA player or a basketball player the question is like okay why what's motivating this well actually that analogy probably doesn't work because there are a lot of reasons people become an author that have nothing to do with money right you can become an author to promote a business you can become an author to promote a cause you can become an author to build a brand develop share ideas share research ideas so there are a lot of people who write books who actually don't care about the money it's the book is more of like a marketing vehicle or a brand vehicle how much did you make in royalties in your best year I mean it's hard to know exactly I mean look Subtle Art sold about almost 20 million copies and pre-tax I probably get $2 to $3 per copy pre-tax so you can do the math it's pretty good pretty good life
and would you say that you're more an author or a business person this is a funny question because I'm more known as an author I'm most successful as an author I think I see myself primarily as a business person and I enjoy the business side more than I do I think I'm a better writer than I am a business person but I think I enjoy business more than I do writing which is a strange place to be and did you become a business person because of the opportunity no I became a business person cuz I just wanted to like party on beaches in Brazil and make money while I slept like the whole 4-Hour Work Week promise that's why I got into it writing kind of happened as a side effect of trying to build some e-commerce brands in the early 2010s and when I started blogging it just turned out that I was really really good at the blogging aspect and the marketing aspect and I was terrible at the e-commerce aspect so the writing really took off and took on a life of its own and I never had aspirations as a kid to be an author I never I didn't do great in writing class I didn't study writing in college like it just I kind of stumbled into it I always remember my first dollar I made online I sold something on eBay that was like lying around my parents house and then I transported it into money and it was magic what was your first online dollar I love this question I sold a $19 ebook on bartending Mixology and through ClickBank and they took like a 33% fee or something absolutely ludicrous but I remember like that first deposit they had like a $50 minimum that first deposit of like $63 or something hitting my bank account when I was completely broke and yeah it felt like magic
so you went from a blogger selling $19 ebooks in say 2007 to in 2017 hitting big Subtle Art of Not Giving a F blew up and you started making serious money what was that transition like for you so that's a 10-year window right so the first 9 years of that window my income probably compounded at a 20 25% rate so I was pretty broke the first couple years and then kind of had a middle class income for a few years and then had like a low six figure income for a few years and then suddenly everything like 10 20x from there I think there's really something about our psychology like the slow compounding feels natural and normal it feels very good it feels like if you make 20% more than you made last year you feel really good about that and you don't feel like a different person the world hasn't changed your life hasn't really changed it just feels like a slightly better version of your previous life when suddenly that 10x hits that like that curve goes exponential I don't think our brains are really wired to handle that so initially it just felt very unreal it was just kind of like I remember that first royalty check coming in and I just kind of stared at it like what like are you serious and then I think there's a little bit of almost like seeking and finding new identity stability really understanding what the implications are on your life understanding I don't have to live in this small apartment anymore I can go get a big apartment and then all the repercussions that come with that or I can take a much nicer vacation now and all the repercussions that come with that but then also the repercussions that happen on your relationships on your interests the people you relate to the people you don't relate to it starts changing everything and most of those changes are subtle and unexpected
what kind of stuff so you mentioned getting a bigger apartment for example what are the repercussions of that that's a great kind of microcosm to look at this like when you don't have money it's very easy to fantasize like I just wish I could have this sick Penthouse or whatever right and so then you get money and you try to go get the penthouse and you do and suddenly you realize like okay now I have to fill this place with furniture and Furniture is expensive and you don't want to buy like Ikea stuff because you spend all this money on a penthouse so now you got to buy like the nice designer stuff well now you've got all sorts of designers and then the designers have the connections in Italy and France and then there's all these Customs issues and next thing you know like everybody is siphoning off money off the top and very quickly you realize that you're just getting kind of screwed left right and center that was one of the first realizations that happened a couple years in it's just like Oh I'm a target now like there's people who are going to try to skim a little bit off the top I'm going to be the first customer that they try to come get
we were in my house I've got this dog and we're trying to build a dog fence and so it's like a 20ft metal fence right should cost a small amount of money and my assistant calls a fencing company and she says yeah it's a house this is the fence and this is the neighborhood and she gets this crazy astronomical quote and then she calls back the next day and she says okay this is the fence this is how big it is and she says a neighborhood with a lower income totally different quote so that's not surprising right like I don't blame those people for that I understand why they do that but then what my wife and I didn't realize is that starts making you distrust people right so it's like now when that contractor shows up and offers you a quote my initial reaction is like this guy's full of it he's trying to screw me and that I didn't like how that made me feel about people around me it's actually one of the reasons why I left New York because New York kind of has this permanent professional class that their unique skill is knowing how to siphon off a percentage point off every transaction off rich people
so you run into repercussions like people attach a lot of moral value and judgment around money and I think a lot of that's probably for good reason but a lot of that is kind of unconscious bias and a lot of people have a lot of self-worth issues around money like it's a sensitive topic right and so if you have a friend say you've had a friend for a long time who also lives in a tiny apartment and he used to come and hang out with you in your tiny apartment and then suddenly he shows up and there's this big multi-million dollar Penthouse with all this fancy French furniture some people don't take that well like some people get really weird about it and maybe start making judgments about you or they think that you're making judgments about them some people get very insecure it doesn't complicate every relationship but it complicates some relationships depending on the person's disposition towards money and wealth I had a very similar experience and I noticed people would say little microaggressions where they'd say things like thanks for making time for me right or wow you got a lot of space just these little comments and it others you a little bit
so how did it affect your friendships family relationships a lot of it I think probably starts with you is like your personal view on money I never attached very much self-worth to money I've had friends who are like dude like why don't you have a watch collection I'm like cuz I don't care about watches and then I had other friends who are like why aren't you giving more to charity and I'm like well yeah maybe I should it's it raises all these questions judgments assumptions and sometimes conversations although usually it's passive aggressive that wasn't there before and so it just complicates things in a way that you didn't expect and you didn't anticipate it does present opportunities for the relationships to get better like there are people in my life that I've been able to help financially and it's gone very well so this is another thing that happens is you dream about if I get super rich I'm going to help all these people in my life and it's going to be amazing because I love them so much and we're all going to be so happy and it doesn't play out that way like some people don't want the help they take offense to it some people they take the help but then they resent it they resent that they have to take it it's complicated
so let's go back to 2017 so you get that massive royalty check and what do you feel in that moment and then what happened over those next couple years in the moment it was really cool it was kind of a celebratory moment I remember taking a picture of the bank balance and sending it to my dad and that was fun that was cool but it lasts like a day two days right and then you're back into your life I actually became pretty depressed during that period which is like I always feel weird talking about it because who wants to hear about the guy who got rich I mean yeah play the world's smallest violin for me things that I didn't anticipate right when you have all these goals when you're young it's very exciting you're working hard towards those goals you're making your life better suddenly when reality exceeds all the things that you thought was possible something very counterintuitive happens which is that you don't know what to hope for next it's like oh everything I had hoped for my entire adult life just happened in the last three months and I have no idea what to do next I have no plans beyond this point and I'm 32 so I guess I'll just like order pizzas and play video games and drink and that's basically what I did for most of 2017 it's actually like one of the most unhealthy years of my life which is very strange
it's like being a lottery winner or something totally the lottery winner thing is very confusing on the surface but it gave me an understanding of why it happens everybody likes to complain about having to work for a paycheck but it gives you something to do and look forward to and it gives you something to work on and something meaningful in your life and if suddenly a lottery win shows up it's no longer meaningful there's no longer any reason to work on it or work on anything and so after a couple champagne bottles you just kind of sit around being like okay now what I found it so depressing to go from when I was 20 I remember buying a new Apple product like an iMac or something was this incredible thing I was so excited about it and then I started buying like 20 of them for my company and it's not a big deal and then a car I'd fantasize about a car for a year and before I knew it I would just oh I'll buy three cars why not and then it was a house oh I just messaged my banker and now I have a new house and every single one like you said came along with all these miserable logistics there's like an overhead yeah didn't want to deal with and suddenly I had to have people to manage the houses and none of it brought me any joy it was like imagine the joy of winning the Olympics and winning gold versus ordering an Olympic gold medal on eBay and putting it on yourself right like there's no satisfaction there's no journey
so you get all this money it's very hollow are you done with money do you have enough it's funny because I've noticed this I've had a number of friends who kind of hit financial escape velocity recently and I've seen them go through it a little bit as well when you hit your number right when you hit the number that you're like I'm good I'm set for life I don't have to work again if I don't want to it raises this question of what's worth doing right because our entire lives everything we do is mostly influenced by this is going to increase your earning power you go to this school you get this degree you get this certification because you're going to get a better job you'll make more money you'll have a better life once you hit that point where you're like okay I've got enough I'm good I'm set I don't need anymore then you're in this position of like okay the only reason to do something is either it's fun or it adds value to the world and that's kind of it when you've spent your entire life kind of programmed to just do the rat race it takes a while to reprogram your brain to think in those terms of no only do it if it's fun and it adds value to the world if it doesn't do those two things don't do it because you don't have to there's no other reason to do anything that mental transition is surprisingly difficult
