How I Work: $77K/Month Solopreneur

0:01So, but basically, I work all days all year long. I love my day so much that I want to repeat it every single day. I don't like Sundays. It's my my fun is actually making stuff. So, I don't see why I would take a day off. And when I go on holiday, usually I I go mad. I've met like hundreds of people who talked [music] about their brilliant idea. The idea is in their head or maybe on their computer, but they haven't shipped it. And on the other side, I cannot recall a single person who told me like, "Hey, I have tried 10 times

0:32and it never worked." Just remember to keep shipping. Hey, I'm Mark Manson, I make $77,000 a month as a solo entrepreneur. I have built 35 startups and people often ask me uh how do I get so much done? So, today I'm excited to tell you about how I work.

0:56My days might sound boring for some people, but I live the exact same day almost every day, 365 days a year. I always start the day with a [music] coffee and breakfast with my wife. And then I hit the gym right after. [snorts] We train at the gym together. These days we're practicing [music] for Hyrox. We did a little bit of a sled push and some squat and some running. Uh then we go back home. That's the moment where I start [music] to put myself in work

1:22mode. Um I [music] don't check my phone. I don't do emails. I don't go online. I stay completely offline at the beginning of the day. I just want to have this big block of time that is usually 4 to 6 hours [music] where I really deep work. The reason that you don't check social medias is because I feel like there is a there's so much going on at the moment, especially with AI, that I get this fear of missing out that I'm not fast enough, that I should do more. And then it's 1 hour later and I lost 1 hour of my day and I feel like I I lack some motivation

1:56to go back to work and stuff. The deep work is basically a moment of time that I protect [music] cuz that's what got me here and I know that, you know, I need to get these deep work done if I want to go further. So, this this little boy here is completely off cuz that's the worst enemy. Um and then I open the computer here at this [music] desk. I open my code editor and I spend the next four to six hours coding stuff. So, I only create [music] things. Um I don't check my emails. I don't check customer support cuz sometimes you read an email

2:24that something is broken in my app and I have to fix it. If that happens at the beginning of the day, then I'll fix this bug instead of actually working on what truly matters for me, which is creating more stuff.

2:43I shipped about 35 startups [music] and on those 35, 30 of them are nothing. They don't work. They barely don't make any money. They barely don't have any users. So, the heater rate is about 5%. So, if you want to roll the dice once and you know, stick with that dice roll, nothing crazy will happen. But if you keep playing, you keep playing, playing, playing, and playing, at some point one dice one roll of dice will work. [music] You will have happy users. You'll start

3:10to make money. You can leave your job. You can roll the dice more often. When I was a student, if you tell [music] me that my routine is uh waking up at 6:00 a.m. and uh working all day on my computer and not playing video games, I would think, [music] you know, I'm crazy stupid. But the thing is at some point I started to see people liking the work. I started to see my apps having users were happy about the product. And then the routine came in in place as a part of like, "Oh, okay. So, if you stick to a routine, then more of

3:35this will happen. So, stick to it."

3:42Now, I really try to think less about what would be the output. I just try to think what what is the thing I want to exist. So, recently I launched this little macOS app that analyze your posture with a webcam and tells me if I'm sitting straight or if I'm just slouching like a shrimp like this. I did that because I spent so much time at my computer and I know it sucks to sit like a shrimp. So, I was like, "Oh, this app must exist." [music] And it's a new type of app for me. It's like an electron app so it's Mac OS so I'm not used to Mac OS

4:10apps. So, [music] before I released it on that day, I wanted to do, you know, a last few checks like does the licensing system works? When people get a checkout, do they get the email? 3:00 p.m. issue I think I launched the app. So, it went live with a tweet. I also shared on LinkedIn, Threads, [music] and

4:26Reddit. And got the first customers. It was amazing. I think the first day we did about $1,000 in in revenue. Got also good feedback. People [music] started to post stuff on Twitter. I started to see like my app in users' hands, which is the ultimate happy moments for me. Then there's the [music] other type of apps that I like to make. This sparked my curiosity. For instance, one of them was Trust the Mual. And [music] it started because I saw a tweet from Peter Levels that say that so many people are faking their revenue. But I felt like, "Oh, you know, it's fun like it What if

4:56I make a little leaderboard that showcase, you know, all the verified revenues of all those people so we can see who's a scammer and who's telling the truth." And just like this was born an app that turned [music] into a marketplace now that in itself it makes like 35 plus K per month.

5:17Um I have a big list of things I have to make so I have a few apps that are already running. Among them, there are features like important features I have to ship. Initially, I didn't have many problems, but as you start to make stuff, you will get feedback from people. You will discover problems and that will give you ideas. Now, I have a to-do list that even if I live 200 years, I wouldn't be able to make all my ideas real. Every single day at the end of the day, I have more stuff on my to-do list than I did [music] at the

5:39beginning. And then once I'm done with the cycle, so now I've released this Mac OS app, I can move on. I will just go over my list and there's this good feeling over like among those features, among those things, which one would have the most impact on the users, which one would make me the happiest, and I would just

5:55pick whatever comes next.

6:04We're always afraid to show our new creation and our your ideas to the world in the [music] first thing. Just keep in mind that that that's the biggest barrier to your success ever. There's this little voice inside of your head [music] telling you that it's too early or it's not good enough. It's a bit like going to the gym for the first time. You see people on Instagram, they lift super heavy, [music] and then you enter the gym, you don't know the machines, you

6:27don't know how it works, and all that. But the moment [music] you step in and you know, you do one session, everything is not new. It's like you've you've done it. And then the next session is completely different. So, it's a one-time fear. You kill [music] 80% of it by doing it once, and then the remaining 20% you will just kill it with more iterations, but then it just become

6:47easier and easier.

6:55The only way to validate an idea is to ship it with a buy button. Now with AI [music] that's it's even easier to ship stuff, this even more true. I have a slightly controversial take on AI is that there's a bunch of people who are obsessed with productivity and want to do more. You know, they start to have their open clue like teams of agent running in the background. But I think the the single KPI that matters hasn't [music] changed in the AI era. It's

7:19still the number of things you ship. Right now, my setup is the most boring setup ever. [music] Like I I code I I use my same code editor, and on the right side I have the chat. Single threaded like I talked [music] to you in AI, it makes a new feature, I release it, I move on to the next one. I've shipped like 300 features on [music] my marketplace in the last 3 months and six new apps this year in 2026 [music] with it. And people fall for the productivity thing trick, when in fact, you could do a lot of things with one of the first

7:47version of ChatGPT and a basic code editor.

7:55Towards the end of the day, maybe 4:00 p.m., I'll go online, I'll check [music] Twitter, I'll check my emails, I'll do the work that find a little bit more boring, that's something that is less creative. [music] 5:30 dinner, uh usually we spend way too much time uh eating cuz we watched again Better Call Saul, and then [music] usually uh a nice walk, and that's the moment where I switch everything completely off. I'm very radical, so I turn my phone off, um I go offline, the computer is off, there's no talk about work. [music] Uh sometimes watch a movie, sometimes we read a bed before going to read a book

8:25before going to bed, and we go on bed at the exact same time every single day at 9:00 p.m.

8:34It's a bit religious. Uh before bed, we have a wind-down routine that lasts 30 minutes to 1 hour. We start to dim the light at home, and then when you go to bed, you fall asleep instantly. I never set up an alarm, and I would always wake up around 6:00 to 7:00. [music] Since I I was a student, like the first 10 years, like 18 to 20, you know, 8 [music] years old, I would always be sleepy. Like I would be on my computer, and as soon as I had to focus on some tasks, I would fall [music] asleep. With a good sleep, I feel like I'm so much

9:00more emotionally stable, I have like super locked-in focus. Like I could spend like 4 hours on the same thing, so [music] I think sleep is really underrated. I think it's so important.

9:18One thing I see people making that mistake too often is [music] they got this idea or this brilliant idea, they spend 6 months shipping it, and once they ship it, they got a a few users, they make maybe they make a little bit of money online. [music] That is like become their very pet project. It become very important for them, that they're so emotionally attached to it, [music] and they You still focusing on something that maybe it will take three years until it takes off and pays you enough for you to quit your job. But it's much easier to keep rolling the dice and ship a new idea

9:44because that idea might take off like 100 x faster than [music] the previous one. And every time you ship something new, you learn more stuff, you share about it so you grow a little audience of people who discover [music] your work. So I really think that playing the game of launching stuff is the recipe to have something that at some point will

10:01work out. [laughter] Don't you dare give up. Don't you dare give up. [music]