This is an auto-generated transcript of Never Enough Podcast Episode 4. It may contain minor errors.
Andrew: Mark, thanks so much for doing this.
Mark: It's great to be here, man.
Andrew: Never met you—it's always nice when somebody who's successful isn't a total jerk.
Mark: Well, we just met, so—yeah.
Andrew: 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. Can you actually make money writing books?
Mark: Yes. Well, define money. You can make a dollar, you can make a thousand dollars. I mean, you're probably not going to make like Tom Cruise money or Bill Gates money. But you can make a good living as an author for sure.
Andrew: So you're probably one of the most successful authors in the world? Probably top 25 or something?
Mark: Non-fiction, for sure, yeah.
Andrew: And can you make like single-digit millions? Double-digit millions?
Mark: So there's probably—you're probably at the top of the totem pole. You probably got like JK Rowling, 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 the eight-figure territory, and then maybe a few hundred people in the seven-figure territory. When people say to you "I want to become an author," I first ask why. Because there's good reasons to do it and bad. You can become an author to promote a business, to promote a cause, to build a brand, to share ideas, share research. So there are a lot of people who write books who actually don't care about the money—the book is more of a marketing vehicle or a brand vehicle.
Andrew: How much did you make in royalties in your best year?
Mark: I mean, it's hard to know exactly. Look, "The 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.
Andrew: And would you say that you're more an author or a business person?
Mark: 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.
Andrew: And did you become a business person because of the opportunity?
Mark: No, I became a business person because I just wanted to like party on beaches in Brazil and make money while I slept. 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.
Andrew: I always remember my first dollar I made online. I sold something on eBay that was lying around my parents' house and then I transported it into money and it was magic. What was your first online dollar?
Mark: I love this question. I sold a $19 ebook on bartending mixology through ClickBank, and they took like a 133% fee or something absolutely ludicrous. But I remember that first deposit of like $63 or something hitting my bank account when I was completely broke, and yeah, it felt like magic.
Andrew: So you went from a blogger selling $19 ebooks in say 2007 to in 2017 "The Subtle Art" blew up and you started making serious money. What was that transition like for you?
The first 9 years of that window my income probably compounded at a 20-25% rate. The slow compounding feels natural and normal—it feels very good. You don't feel like a different person. When suddenly that 10x hits, that curve goes exponential—I don't think our brains are really wired to handle that. I remember that first royalty check coming in and I just kind of stared at it like—what? Like, what the heck, are you serious?
Mark: Then I think there's a little bit of almost seeking and finding new identity stability—really understanding what the implications are on your life. Like 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. 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.
Andrew: What kind of stuff? So you mentioned getting a bigger apartment, for example. What are the repercussions of that?
Mark: When you don't have money, it's very easy to fantasize like, "I just wish I could have this sick penthouse." So then you get money and you try to go get the penthouse. And suddenly you realize—okay, now I have to fill this place with furniture, and furniture is expensive. And you don't want to buy Ikea stuff because you spent all this money on a penthouse. So now you've got to buy the nice designer stuff. Well now you've got to hire the right designers, and then the designers have the connections in Italy and France, and then there's all these customs issues. And very quickly you realize that everybody is siphoning off money off the top. That was one of the first realizations that happened a couple years in—I'm a target now.
Andrew: We were in my house and we're trying to build a dog fence—a 20-foot metal fence, right? Should cost a small amount of money. And my assistant calls a fencing company and gets this crazy astronomical quote. Then she calls back the next day and says a neighborhood with a lower income—totally different quote.
Mark: That's not surprising. I don't blame those people for that. But what my wife and I didn't realize is that starts making you distrust people. So 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 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.
Andrew: So let's go back to 2017. You get that massive royalty check. What do you feel in that moment? And then what happened over those next couple years?
Mark: 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. When you're young and you have all these goals, it's very exciting—you're working hard towards them, you're making your life better. Suddenly when reality exceeds all the things that you thought was possible, something very counterintuitive happens: 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 order pizzas and play video games and drink. And that's basically what I did for most of 2017.
Mark: The lottery winner thing—it's 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 something meaningful in your life. And if suddenly a lottery win shows up, it's no longer meaningful. After a couple champagne bottles, you just kind of sit around being like—okay, now what?
Andrew: I found it so depressing to go from—when I was 20, buying a new Apple product like an iMac was this incredible thing. And then you know, I started buying 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. And every single one came along with all these miserable logistics. 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. There's no satisfaction, there's no journey.
Andrew: So you get all this money, it's very hollow. Are you done with money? Do you have enough?
Mark: When you hit your number—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. Because I think our entire lives, unless you grew up with a bunch of money, 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. Once you hit that point where you're like, okay, I've got enough, I'm good—
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