Mark Manson: How to Go Viral & Stay Relevant for Decades

0:00If you want something to go viral, it's easy to make something go viral. What I would say about being a creator, I wish every aspiring creator would hear, is that everybody is always worried about building a bigger audience and they don't stop and ask themselves which audience they're building. You're actually building a business and the more influence you have, the more responsibility I think you have in these next 10 years. What are some things that I should be focusing on so that I can ultimately have the longevity that uh

0:23Mark Manson ultimately has? So like the the biggest piece of advice that I give young creators is like How do you go about shifting and pivoting your content? Most creators, they blow up on one platform first. And so, you can get really, really good at that platform. Where things start to get really messy and complicated is when creators go multiplatform. When you look at creators who just fizzle out after four or five years, it's either because they've never pivoted or they've done a pivot that's so drastic that it kind of undermines the audience that they've built. I need you to give my generation help. My generation is hearing this

0:55thing, which is that AI is going to completely take over every [music] single one of our jobs. I'll give you my thesis, which is that I really don't want you to miss any of our future episodes. I'm going to ask of you to subscribe and make sure you turn the notification bell on. This will only help us do more podcasts like this, bring on even better guests so that you can learn more from it. I love all of

1:15you guys and let's get back into it. There's this one idea of yours that I really appreciate and again, it's one of those concepts where I've been living upon. I didn't know that you were one of the originators of, but it's this idea that with life, it's not about what we want to get out of it, but it's the

1:29suffering that we're willing to endure. And I feel as though as creators, there are a lot of hidden costs behind closed doors that people don't actually recognize. Now, what's fascinating for me, Mark, is that you've been on this pursuit for the last 15 plus years. You're the OG. You've been making content online. You've been serving so many different people. And I've also even heard you talk about doubling down on building this media team of yours and also making more content. So my first question to you is what were those

1:53sacrifices along the way as a creator? But then more importantly, why are you electing to still make these sacrifices? What are you trying to get out of this content creation process today, Mark? Yeah. Um, I guess what I would say about being a creator that I I I wish everybody would kind of hear, every aspiring creator would hear is that the experience of doing it for fun and doing it professionally are two completely

2:17different experiences. And and this is this is very true of any [clears throat] creative pursuit, right? Like before I had an online audience and everything, I I was an aspiring musician and I wanted I initially fell in love with music because I love just sitting in my bedroom playing music, coming up with songs, practicing songs. What I didn't realize is that being a professional musician like that sitting in your bedroom playing a song is like 5% of what being a professional musician is. Like being a professional means you're dealing with managers and agents and booking schedules and logistics and rehearsals and like uh finding new bandmates and and hiring

2:55people and doing sound checks and understanding sound engineering. All this stuff that was not fun or sexy that you never fantasize in the bedroom when you're by yourself. But like that's actually the job. And I think it's the same with the creator business, right? Like I think people get into it because they love making content on their favorite platform and that's great. Like I think that's a necessary starting point, but if you're going to do this professionally, there's this there's all of this machinery and apparatus that happens behind the scenes that you're not it's not initially apparent to people. And I think it's very important for young people to go

3:32into it just sober and cleareyed of understanding like what they're actually getting into. Like you're you're actually building a business. like this is a small media startup. Um, and to your question of like why I'm still doing this or why I came back to this after writing books um, and and doing a movie like I realized that I love this business. I love the creator business. I love making online content. I love tracking analytics. Like this is to me this is just home. It's just fun. And I think that there's a deep responsibility that we hold as creatives and it's one of the sacrifices that you have to know

4:09and be aware of. And I've heard you talk about this which is such a fascinating take on it cuz I internally struggle with it quite a bit. And it's the ethical responsibility. You've talked about the parasocial relationship and how you don't want your audience to lose agency, but in the same breath naturally as you're an amazing creator, people are going to build that fandom around you and you're going to have that parasocial connection. But that does mean that people are coming to you at a vulnerable

4:32state, especially in the self-help area. But it's something that I want more creators to have at the forefront of their minds. One of those sacrifices, one of those sufferings, one of those responsibilities that we're electing for is that this thing that you're building is meaningful. You want to have significance around it. But in the same breath, it's hard to not get lost in the vanity metrics. So my question to you is, how are you keeping integrity at the forefront of your content? And those people that are listening into this,

4:55what can they practically do as well? Yeah, I I'll answer this in the abstract and then I'll just comment briefly on on my particular industry because I think it's a little bit different in my industry. So, in the abstract, I I I think what what everybody has to understand is that ultimately it's about the audience. It's it's like yes, you should make things that you're excited about. Yes, you should

5:18uh love the things that you're creating. Yes, you should be doing this um because you're particularly passionate about a subject or whatever. Like all those things are true, but at the end of the day, the the thing the reason an audience grows, the reason people even pay attention to you is because you are you are delivering some sort of value in

5:38some way. And I think if you ever lose sight of that, and I think it's very easy to lose sight of that, it's easy to get distracted by uh by money. It's easy to get distracted by chasing clout, chasing engagement, going viral an extra time. People lose sight of the value that they're delivering to an audience. And um and so what happens is they they end up cannibalizing the relationship that they've built with the people who follow them. And so you see you see a lot of people just actually like self-sabotage

6:11gradually over the course of many years. I I've seen at this point I've seen dozens of people do this. And so it is it's always keeping the most important thing the most important thing which is what is the value I'm giving? What's the value I'm delivering? Once that box is checked then yes like pay attention like what am I passionate about? What do I

6:31care about? What feels important to me? Like all those all those boxes need need to be checked as well. [snorts] In my industry I think this is especially important because like you said in personal development and mental health like you are dealing with vulnerable people. You are dealing with people who are very susceptible and suggestible to pretty much any idea that they see or hear. You're dealing with people who are struggling with depression, who just went through a divorce, who somebody just died in their life. Like they are there's a certain moral weight I think that comes with uh being careful with like what I say um or what what people

7:08in my industry say that is a little bit heavier than most industries. But I do think the principle is true in that the more people listen to you, uh, the more influence you have and the more influence you have, the more responsibility I think you have to just not do harm. I love your priority around making sure the audience receives value and checking off that box. And in order for us to do that, we have to know who the audience is. And I've heard you talk about psychoraphics a ton. It's one that I talk about in my content as well because if you don't know what your audiences

7:44are struggling with or what they desire, there's no way to fill that gap of the value. Now, for you after you've been doing this for a long period of time, I'm curious to hear how are you ascertaining exactly in the current climate what your audiences are struggling with? Like how are you staying in touch with that? It's a great question. I So, we actually survey our audience. Um, nice. And it's I mean look, I think the obvious thing would be like look at comments, look at your DMs, but the the problem with comments and DMs is that that's a very self- selected small group of people. Those are those are going to

8:19be the most engaged people. And and the most engaged people aren't necessarily like your core audience itself. like there's often a silent majority within your audience uh that is very easy to overlook or to miss if you're not paying too much attention. Um, so we we actually um we'll actually run surveys through my email list and as part of that survey, we have people check off every platform

8:46that they follow me on. And then that way [clears throat] we can sort out like this is the Tik Tok audience and this is this is their age, their gender, what they're thinking about, what they what they're worried about, right? This is the YouTube audience. This is their age, their gender, what they're thinking about, what they're what they're worried about. Um, and I think this is I mean there's a reason marketing has been doing this for a hundred years. Um, because it's just a very important best practice in terms of really understanding who you're talking to. Um, hearing back directly from them, like listening to them in their own words,

9:21like asking them why do you follow me? Why do you consume my content? What is the value I've given you? And it's and it's shocking because often times they will say things that you didn't expect, right? They'll be like, "I love your content cuz uh it helped me deal with a gap year after I graduated." And you're like, "Wow, I've never once

9:41thought about recent graduates, right?" You know, and it's just like stuff like that pops up and it's uh and it's incredibly powerful. It's one point of conversation that I always tell creators to never lose sight of as in these are real human beings on the opposing side of the screen. They have thoughts, beliefs, and opinions on what you're making. And it's important that you actually listen to them to see which direction that you're going to ultimately cultivate. But there is a level of discernment needed as well because people are going to tell you their two cents. They're going to tell you that they don't like this or they do

10:10like that. And what is your filtration process? How are you discerning? Let's say this is really good feedback and I should take this on for my next steps or maybe it's not actually in my lane for the immediate future. Yeah, it's a really good question. I think everybody is always worried about building a bigger audience and they don't stop and ask themselves which audience they're building, right? So like you can chase numbers, but you can easily like if you want something to go viral, it's easy to make something go viral. Just find like the most hairbrain conspiracy theory politically charged nonsense, right? And [snorts] and it'll

10:45go viral or like you'll get a lot of views, but is that the audience you want to build? Like are those the people you want listening to you and following you? And that that's an extreme example although people do do that. Um I think it's what what has to the starting place before you do any of this kind of research into your audience is like asking yourself who do I want to talk to? Who do I want listening to me? Uh because there is such a thing as as

11:13growing the wrong audience for yourself. If it if you're if you're building an audience of people that you hate hearing from that you like that every message that comes through you're like god really [laughter] like that's a bad sign. That's that's a signal right that like you are appealing to people that you may not necessarily want to appeal to. Like ideally the people that you're reaching are people that you're excited to talk to that you're like really happy to get stopped on the street and and you know hear

11:44about them and hear about their life. I've heard you talk about buying low and selling high on ideas. And when I heard that it's a different way of speaking to it. I've heard people talk about as in like when people are zigging, you're trying to zag and you're trying to carve out your own unique lens. And you're the king of contrarian takes. I know that throughout your essays. I know throughout your content, your books, and this is what people love about you. Now, what I found recently, and and I've been doing this for significantly less time than you have. I've been doing this for about six and a half years, and even in

12:14my time, I've noticed an evolution where because the barrier of entry is a lot lower. There are more competitors. And that naturally means that when you do post an idea online, even though it's core to you, you'll see it tomorrow with 100 plus different faces. And they're going to have the exact stripped idea of

12:29it. [laughter] And the the the hard part of this is like you were constantly trying to identify a uniqueness for your own vantage point, but then it stops being unique when everyone else starts taking upon it, especially with someone like you. They're looking at as the goalpost. So, how are you today trying to identify these ideas that maybe people aren't talking about? How are you trying to zag

12:48when people are zigging? Yeah. Well, first of all, I I I struggle like I experience the exact same thing. It's anything you post these days that works, it's going to get copied a 100 times by next Tuesday. Which really raises the question, right, of like what is the uniqueness that we're providing? Like I I believe you have this phrase of like you are the

13:10niche or am I getting that right? Yes. Like I think that's that's at the core of it, right? Cuz like I think ideas and information is becoming commoditized just be be even social media given how it is these days the the the marginal value of any idea is going to be very low. Then you throw AI on top of that and it's just like information is essentially free at this point. So, what makes it what is it unique about you or what is unique about me that still makes it worth people stopping and watching us for 60 seconds or 3 minutes or whatever it is, even

13:50though the information is is something that they could get in 20 other places. And and this is something I've been I've been thinking about a lot the last couple years. And I really think it is that that sense of relationship that that kind of parasocial relationship that that you alluded to earlier that there's a certain style and personality and uniqueness to whether it's like the way you deliver the content, the way it's the the production value of the content. um the your identity like the your personality like who you are, your background, your backstory, all these things like people it's human nature to uh to look for uh people that we

14:30identify with. And once we find those people we identify with, we we're much more open to hearing things from them than a bunch of random strangers. And so I think a lot of this is like really just owning your identity and owning like the unique combination of traits and uh and and viewpoints and and experiences that you have and then just packaging packaging those in the most interesting and entertaining way possible. Everything you're saying is so golden because I I talk about this and the fact that you also alluded to the idea of you are the niche is incredibly powerful especially for my listeners and the reason why they came out to be is

15:10that I would find people that would join my offers, right? They would go and pay for a product of mine. Rarely was it because of the information alone. It was because of some form of connector between me and that other person. Whether it was the immigrant story, whether it was us growing up poor, whether it was this underdog mentality, whatever it was, people started to gravitate towards. And so I always tell people that storytelling is a very great differentiator to find your own respective angle on social media. But then the question that I get often, it's the one that I'm going to pose on you right now is when you say find your

15:41identity and actually know the characteristics and attributes of you that make you you. A lot of people just aren't introspective. A lot of people never even question that about themselves. They're coming on to this this landscape of social media. They're hearing us talk about this. What would be a good very first step for a lot of these individuals who want to start creating content, but they don't even know about their identity internally outside of social media? It's like, how

16:03do they cultivate that online? It's counterintuitive because generally the things that make us the most unique are or our instinct is to hide them from other people, right? To fit in. We don't want to like stand out or be weird or be be an oddball. But it it's like the oddball aspects of you are actually what make you interesting. And and it turns out that the things that make you an oddball, there's a million other oddballs out there who are oddballs in the exact same way who also think they're alone. And so when they see you, they're like, "Oh my god, he gets it. He totally gets me." [laughter]

16:37So I think the the psychological challenge is to counteract that instinct to to fit in because if you if you just try to fit in online, like you're you're not going to get aggregated at all. If you're stuck right now and you don't know what to post, you have to try storytelling content because it's the

16:55easiest way to build the right audience. So, I'm running a completely free webinar from August 12th to August 14th called How to Turn Your Story into Content. Inside, we'll break down exactly how to find, shape, and tell your story that immediately connects with your audience. Hundreds of thousands of people have come to my free events before, and they leave with a ton of clarity and practical strategies. So, I don't want you to miss out. The link is in the description below. And now, let's get back into the episode. you talked about with the I would call it now the influx of AI. I'm going to put

17:23it nicely like that. There there is even a more higher difficulty level to standing out. But I need you Mark for something here. I need you to give my generation hope and I need another contrarian take from you. The king of contrarian takes. My generation is hearing this thing which is that AI is going to completely

17:42take over every single one of our jobs. all of the work that we've been pouring into the last four or five years in university or let's say in other forms of education and they're telling us I come from a biomedical engineering background and they're even telling biomedical engineers that your jobs are at risk because of AI and it's hilarious I've been watching these graduation speeches from these guests and they're coming on literally they're talking about AI taking over people's jobs I'm like read the room a little bit these are students that have just poured in $100,000 of debt to come out of here and you're telling them that AI is going to

18:11take over their jobs and so my question to you is with everything that you've seen in society, everything you've seen with the social media landscape too. What is your contrarian take for the next 5 to 10 years of how AI is going to be integrated in our individual workflows? And can you give my generation some hope, Mark? [snorts] I I do think there's hope. And by the way, I say this as somebody who started an AI company and and built an AI product. That that was actually one of the most valuable things I did because it showed me all of the ways that AI is actually limited and

18:44is often a [ __ ] idiot. So, it's [laughter] it is I I do there is hope and I I'll I'll give you my thesis which is that there are a handful of traits or or I guess you could say like valuable things in life that are not replicable by AI in any any way, shape or form. Human relationships, I would say, is is one of them. Um I would say experience and credibility, right? So like let's say uh let's say I'm an immigrant from a similar background as you and I want to build a a career on social media like your background like there's no AI that can fake that and and

19:23in any credible way right like I there's something inherent by the fact that you have had that lived experience and as a as a human I also want to connect with somebody who's had that that similar experience like that's never going to go away. I think what we're what we're going to see I've always thought of it as the internet is going to kind of

19:42bifurcate in in two directions. Anything that is like pure entertainment or pure information, I think AI will probably eat it. Um, so like I don't know news aggregators or um memes or or like a bunch of stuff like it it it AI will just start replicating billions and billions of versions of it and like we'll go to it for that. It will be kind of be like uh it's like if if everything if if Wikipedia just like expanded a thousandfold um and you had access to anything you wanted at any time. That's the that's the information internet. I think there will be a human internet where people will go

20:25specifically because they want to connect with somebody. They want to have a shared social experience. They want to feel part of a community. They want to find people that uh they relate to or who potentially relate to them. And I think on that side, it's actually going to be extremely human and like raw and gritty. And it's going to be less about, you know, information or or what can you uh what can you teach me about this? And it it's going to be much more about just like understanding each other and and feeling like you're part of something bigger than yourself. There's a lot there to unpack cuz I've also felt this

21:00too. And that's why I've been doing a lot more inerson events and why I want to even do the podcast in the first place. And what I envision the next era of content could look like for even podcasts are going to be you hopefully you'll join me one day, Mark. It's going to be us on a stage and there's going to be a live audience and trying to actually formulate those real human connections. Is that something that's also part of your long-term planning now

21:20that you have this funnel of attention? It's where where to bring that to? 100%. So, we're actually looking to upgrade our studio later this year. And I I've told my team that one of the conditions for whatever whatever the new studio is is that it needs to be able to fit a live audience. uh because I I I think this is going to be so important not not only in terms of like providing the audience with a unique experience like that's valuable inherently and I do think live events in general are just going to become much more popular but also it is it it's a credibility marker

21:57to to content viewers right because it's like there's so there's so much AI slop now I'm sure you I'm sure it's like infiltrated your niche like as it's infiltrated mine and people are very quickly like becoming very skeptical and and losing patience with it. And so one of the things and as AI gets better, it's going to be able to fake more and more things. But I think one of the things that's not ever really going to be able to fake is a live audience and a group of say a hundred people. Like it's one thing for you to sit in your living room and say something. It's

22:31another thing for you to be on stage and have 300 people in the audience laughing after you say it, right? Like there's just a visceral there's something much more there that can't be arbitrarily generated. And what's fascinating is that my first inerson event was just in New York and it was actually 300 people and I have been so accustomed to certain numbers on social media that were magnitudes higher than that. When I saw 300 people mark I was terrified. [laughter] I saw 300 people and I'm like, "Holy cow, that's a lot of people." But you're right, after, you know, my cold sweats went away and I finally got my voice to

23:10be steady, there was a real human connection that even I personally enjoyed. Now, what's cool is that when I was watching your content, so something that I did was I actually went through your comments and everyone who knows Mark loves Mark. It's like there's like a championing that is actually [laughter] very unique, I think, in the social media space. How are you building that depth of connection and that

23:31community with your audience? I think so much of it comes down to consistency. Ultimately, as as creators, our real currency with our audience is trust. And part of building that trust, right, is not is always keeping the audience top priority, delivering value top priority, not selling them out for something cheap or stupid or for easy easy clicks. Um, but part of that is just consistency. So, I started my first blog in 2008. Um, and I went full-time

24:04in 2009, end of 2009, so 2010 really. So, I've been doing this full-time for 16 years. And one of the things I've I've always told my team is like the thing we have to protect at all costs is is the brand integrity. It it is like we can miss viral moments. We can uh we can underpromote something that maybe we should have promoted more. Um we can put out some bad pieces of content that bomb because that's inevitable. Uh what we can't do is ever do something that undermines people's trust in us. So, and there have been many points throughout my career where I had an opportunity to do something that

24:47probably would have gotten me tons of views, tons of clicks, tons of new audience, but it would have undermined my relationship and the trust that people have in me. I don't know, man. Like, I get stopped on the street and pe I literally meet people who have been following me for 12 years and um I I I get people who are like, I read you in high school. I like dude I've met people who are like three times 10 times more successful than me have like started massive companies that have made them obscene amount obscene amounts of money and they're like I used to read you in

25:19high school and I'm like it breaks my [ __ ] brain, right? [laughter] Like it just it like blows my mind. Uh and so there's I it's interesting because it is this is a young industry. It's a young technology and and there haven't been many people that have been here for a long time. But [clears throat] I do think there's a lot to say for longevity in this in this work. Um it's very hard to stick around for for a long time without either burning yourself out or becoming audience captured and and undermining your own brand. Um, but it's like if you can hang around for a long time, like it

25:57just it's it's like it's like compound interest, right? It just it just grows and grows and grows and you just end up with this incredible thing after a couple decades. It's funny how nonchalant you're saying 16 years of experience when I know creators can't get to 16 posts. Mark, [laughter] dude, dude, it I like creator years are like dog years. Like I'm I'm like I'm like that mangy dog that like can like

26:22barely get down the stairs. [clears throat] [laughter] [gasps] Um it's one conversation about longevity and keeping integrity of your brand where I I've heard even some of the best creators all talk about that. It's I think it's the difference in priorities. It's like it's one thing to see the shortterm trend, but it's another to think about the sacrifice of your long-term equity or ownership around this personal brand of yours. And my question to you, and this is something that I'm struggling with as well, and I want to hear from your perspective, is with the influx of AI, I think it's important that we as creatives also keep

26:55up with it and we can integrate into our workflows. But in the same breath, you don't want to lose what is integral to your brand. And I think it's different for creator to creator, right? whatever is that own uniqueness value, but what are you currently doing to actually use AI to expedite, let's say, workflows or increase throughput while not sacrificing the integrity of your voice or your copy, which is what you're known

27:14for? Yeah, I I 100% agree. I I I don't know how much you talk about AI, but I I make content around AI occasionally, and there's always a small group of haters who just are like talk a bunch of [ __ ] and they're like, "Why are you posting this? AI is it's a bubble. It's a fraud. It's all this stuff. Uh it's not going anywhere. It's gonna I think within five years, 10 years, it's going to be part of every single person's life, an inherent part of everything they do in their lives. So, I I think it it is completely reasonable to talk about it

27:50and I and I feel some degree of responsibility to talk about it. We definitely use it in our in our business. Uh we use it we use it quite a bit. I would say the the two places that it's been most useful is around like ideiation, research, brainstorming, um coming up with like schedule scheduling, figuring out kind of like you know what's our uh posting strategy over say the next 60 days. Um a lot of that kind of pre-production planning stuff. It's generally depending on the content it can I would say it can do an okay rough draft but it really depends. Um anything long form I

28:33think it sucks. Anything really short form I think it can give you a nice starting point and I think kind of like the lower uh risk the better you know. So, it's like if you need a caption for an Instagram post, it's like AI can probably give you like a decent first draft that you can then go in and edit and revise. But if I'm writing like a long Substack post or an email newsletter or uh like a long form YouTube video, um I it's not really worth it. The other really good use case is around analytics and data analysis. Um, we've built a back-end dashboard that pulls in all of

29:12the data from every single platform and basically keeps track of it in one single place. And then we can look at um we can look at trends across platforms. We can look at trends within our own audience. we can actually um have an agent go out and look at a bunch of uh other people's uh audiences and and content in our space and like try to deduce trends and like things that are catching on. So we found a lot of use for on that side on the analytic side especially cuz as you know like analytics on a lot of these platforms is [ __ ] terrible. Um, so it's it's

29:48actually been like really liberating to just pull in all the data via API and then be able to do what we need to do with it um internally in house. Um, so that's that honestly that's been the most amazing part. Like that's the part I'm most excited about. Yeah. And and even when we're utilizing analytics, it's important that you have team members that actually understand those platforms to help us extrapolate what are the next steps. This is the part of the conversation that I was really looking forward to from a selfish perspective. Mark, I want to hear about building a team. And it's because for us

30:20as creators, I I find that we're on the spectrum where there's an artist side of us, but then there's also the sales side of us as well. And a lot of the in between is is this gray area that we're trying to navigate in real time. And a part of that is hiring. And for me, I've had a really difficult time understanding who to hire for the actual media side. Like the fulfillment side, I

30:39think it's been more established. there's particular rules for it. But for the media content side, especially the thing that I care about a lot, what are you doing to build out your media team? What are some good first hires? What's a good piece of advice, especially for these listeners, right, that are also trying to build out their media teams,

30:53too? It's a really good question. I I have personally found the most difficult thing in this business is to scale yourself, is to scale your own kind of creative vision, creative taste. There's two aspects of it. So I I would say on the one side you want to hire great creative talented people, but you also want to kind of check for alignment, right? That because there's a lot of extremely talented people that are just like they make something and you're like that's not really my style or like I would never say that. Uh, and look, you're never going to find anybody who's like perfectly aligned with your

31:31[clears throat] style and taste, but you want to find somebody who's kind of in the same territory and is like very good at taking feedback and very receptive and you you can kind of work with them over a certain period of time. What I found is that once you kind of find those people and get that feedback loop going, you can after I'd say like a year or two, you can kind of get them to a place where you don't really need to like

31:55check their work a whole lot anymore. Um, but it's hard to find those people and then once you do, you like really want to take care of them and make sure that they're happy because it's it's that is the rarest thing. If you can find somebody in your business who like already knows what you like, already knows how you would say it, already knows like what feedback you would give on this cut or on this shot and you don't have to be there like that person once you find that person that is like yeah treat them very well. The second part of it and this this is something

32:24that I didn't discover until pretty recently. I'd say like a year or two ago. And this is actually a very good exercise for for you or for anybody listening this who has a creator business is building out your own like brand bible for yourself. And I don't mean just like design templates like oh this is the font we use. These are our colors. This you know it like actually being like this is our

32:49philosophy. This is what we stand for. This is these are our core values. um this is who we appeal to. This is why we appeal to them. This is the sort of content we make. This is sort the sort of content we never make and this is why we never make it. Right? Like like I wrote I think in 2024 I ended up sitting down and writing like it's probably like a 10 or 15page document that we give to all new hires when they come on board. And it and it's just full of examples of like some of our best performing content. And it's like this

33:21is why this is a great piece of Mark Manson content because it fulfills like these core tenants of our philosophy. It it fulfills these aspects of what our brand stands for. It is appealing to these people in our audience that we are trying to serve. Um and it and it gives like very deep level guidelines of like this is what this is why we exist. this is why we are making things and this is who we are making things for. And I think the more you can kind of codify your own philosophy, your taste, um, and like what sort of content, you know, your content pillars and

33:58everything that that comes out under that, that becomes a source of truth. So that when that new creative comes in and makes something and and you don't like it, when you shoot it down, you're not just being the bad guy and being like, "No, that sucks. Sorry. Like you you can actually point at something and be like, "So if you look at the third section of our brand bucket, our core tenants say this, this, and this. Does this does what you made doesn't really reflect

34:23these tenants, and this is why, right?" And then it's like then they understand and they can adapt to it. How many people are currently on your media team at the moment? Uh we are 22 full-time and then we work with a a handful of contractors and agencies. And are you hiring? This is a big question for me is are you hiring for particular parts of the pipeline as in like this is the research phase, we want to hire these individuals. Are you hiring per platform? I just want to know

34:51exactly how I should start the search. Oh man. Uh the org chart question. So once you go multiplatform like I I things start to get really complicated because on the one hand you need people to kind of specialize you know you like each platform is so unique and has its own quirks and optimizations and everything. Um I do think it is useful

35:15to have people kind of own per platform. Um but you also need kind of like a upper layer of just broader say production operations and creative vision um to kind of oversee everything. Um so I mean this is something that we're still trying to figure out but um we used to what so I

35:37can describe to you what didn't work. [laughter] What what we initially did is we just we kind of like looked at a production studio like a Hollywood production studio and we're like let's just do that, right? And and so what they do is they just they have their pre-production people, you know, your script writers and set location scouts and, you know, producers and everything. Then you have your production onset production people and then you have your post-production people. And so we just hired a bunch of people in all three of those categories, but we were doing content on like six or seven different platforms. And so you

36:13ended up in this crazy situation where it's like one week an editor is editing a podcast and then the next week he's ed editing YouTube shorts and then the next week he's like, you know, editing a a course video for our community and it's just like every everything is a absolute mess. It's just a total cluster [ __ ] And so what we went to this year and it's working a lot better is um really building teams around each individual platform. So the podcast has editors who only edit the podcast, has researchers that only research for the podcast. YouTube has

36:51editors that only edit for YouTube. Social has editors and and um and pre-production people who only do for social. and dividing it up that way has made it way simpler because it allows people to like really uh develop expertise on their particular platform or like what they're doing for that particular platform. Um but then that makes hiring harder because like let's say you want to find an editor who specializes in Tik Toks, right? Like it's it narrows your pool very very dramatically. And so you either have to find somebody who you can train into that spot or you need to kind of go find a unicorn who has worked in your space,

37:35knows that platform, and has the skill set to like come in and and do it on day one. And that's just it's much harder to find that. I knew you'd be the perfect person to talk to about this because [laughter] it is such a big conversation and I experience it. I I see a lot of big creators who I talk to on a daily basis who are struggling with this exact same thing and there seems to be no playbook out there for us because again it's our first time hiring for these respective roles and a lot of times we've actually done all of it ourselves. So we have

38:02this intuition and skill based on a particular point a field or knowledge and then it's like how do we even ascribe a particular role on LinkedIn or where do we find these people? Um so it's really fascinating to hear your own take on this. It it's hard too because the platforms change so quickly, right? Like it's just if you look at uh you know YouTube today versus three years ago like it's it's a it's a very different landscape. Um or you just mentioned LinkedIn, right? Like LinkedIn's completely changed in the last two or three years. Um so it is not only do you need to find people who have that skill

38:38set, but like they're also adaptable. They can learn a new platform if you need to like move them over from one to the other. Um there's like I I guess there's some kind of grounding principles of being a creator, right? You need to understand ideiation, market research, you need to understand scripts and hooks, you need to understand production and editing. Um and if you have like if you develop that expertise, I think in one platform, you can then kind of learn a new platform, adapt

39:11those principles to that new platform. But you just have to be able to recognize like, okay, here's where YouTube and Instagram are the same, but here's where they're completely different. And um and then like have the the context and and wherewithal. But like what you're describing, I see it a lot too because I I kind of what I what I have observed um just anecdotally is that you know most creators they blow up on one platform first and everything's kind of goes through that platform. all your monetization, all of

39:43your audience growth, everything. And so you can get really really good at that platform. Where things start to get really messy and complicated is when people when creators go multiplatform, right? So you like you blow up on Instagram, but now you've got a YouTube channel, a Tik Tok, a LinkedIn, and a podcast, right? So like [ __ ] you need a lot of people and a lot of those skills do not cross over from one platform to the next. And so it gets it gets hard and it's um and it's still a relatively small industry. So like the talent pool is it's not super deep. So you you

40:18I I have found that you it's you often need to find just really talented creative people who are open to learning and and and can be trained up. I've been learning that even with the podcast itself, as in we obviously brought on a production manager, but even how do we distribute the content? It's just a completely different ballpark. It's like how do you navigate it? And then hiring for those specific roles when those roles aren't necessarily traditional roles. It's quite fascinating too cuz then I've noticed this a ton when I will go and let's say look for an editor. These are like wedding videographer editors or

40:52like traditional media editors and that's very different from the social first landscape. So again, it's cool because I've always wanted to talk to somebody that has been on this pursuit that has developed the team larger. So again, I appreciate your insight for it. There's this one topic, the Manson's law of avoidance, and it's one that I have bookmarked. It's the one that I've been starring because as a creator, and and to define it, it's this idea that we as humans will avoid anything that threatens our identity, whether good or bad, right? And I thought about this so hard throughout the last 48 hours particularly because as a creator we

41:26actually have two identities, right? As in no matter how much we're trying to be authentic online and we want to show our stories, we want people to get to know us, it's still a very small fraction of who we are. So there are people with their own discernment and judgment about who we are. But then ultimately there's an internal progression as well in evolution. And I find a lot of creators burn out here. So a lot of creators will evolve internally. They'll have different interests. They'll want to talk about different passions, but then the actually online persona lags behind, right? It's like this thing is actually

41:56getting views. Like how do you shift away from it? I know that you've actually evolved quite a bit throughout your content journey as well. So I'm curious to hear from your perspective, how do you go about shifting and pivoting your content? It's a great question and I think this plays into the longevity piece, right? When you look at creators who just fizzle out after four or five years, it's either because they've never pivoted or they've done a pivot that's so drastic and unexpected that it kind of undermines the audience that they've built. Um the the the first thing I want to say that you alluded to though is is

42:28this kind of two separate identities of like the internal identity and then the say the social identity or the the online identity. The thing that causes burnout is when people don't have separation between those two things, right? Like I think I think it's because when you create content, by its very nature, creating content is objectifying, right? As soon as you pull a camera out and you are shooting yourself doing something or shooting something in the middle of your day, you are now objectifying it and judging it as something that is like separate from yourself. So, it's not just you going to the gym or you going

43:05out and having a bagel for lunch. Like, now you're thinking about, does this bagel look good? Am I doing the exercise, right? What do people think about my outfit? Should I Is there better lighting at that table instead of this table? Right? Like, there's an objectification that happens to your day-to-day existence that is that is ultimately not sustainable and it's not it's not healthy over a long period of time. And so, if you don't carve out clear boundaries within your own life of like M this will never be content. This is for me. Uh and then this category is content sometimes and and I will I am willing to

43:41like carve out moments to objectify it and make content around it. Like if creators don't establish that boundary for themselves, I that's where that's where burnout happens. That's where like they get lost in the sauce and like that they're they be kind of become head cases about being judged about everything they say and do. Um, so like the the biggest piece of advice that I give young creators is like find the things that in your life that are sacred and you you are never going to share and then keep those like protect those, right? Because that's that's what's going to keep you sane and that's what's going to allow you to do

44:14this for 10 or 20 years. The the the second piece that you asked about about pivoting, I personally look at pivots as like it's a little bit of a Goldilocks thing, right? like you, like I said earlier, like you you need to pivot a little bit, but you can't you can't go wild. You can't just like suddenly show up making something completely different out of left field than you were making yesterday. And so I I view it as like I I I feel like probably 10 10% of of my content should be some form of experiment, right? It should be some sort of new idea, new format, um, new

44:54approach to something and just see how it goes. And it's and it's don't just see how it goes on on the audience side, like you know, how many views it does or whatever, but see how it goes like making it, right? Because sometimes [clears throat] you try a new format and you're like, "Okay, well that performed okay, but making it sucked. I don't want to make like I don't want to make this every week for the next three years. So,

45:17we're just going to cut that format. we're not going to do that anymore. And at the same time, sometimes you'll find formats that you actually love making, but they don't perform super well. And I also think it's very important to kind of carve out maybe 20 25% of your content and just do it for yourself. Just do it cuz like you think it's cool and you love it. Um, in Hollywood, they have an old saying which is you do one for them, one for you. And and what that refers to is that if you were like a big A-list movie star or whatever, let's say the studio wants

45:49you to do some big cheesy action movie that's going to make a bajillion dollars, a lot of times actors, they would agree to do the big action movie that they weren't really excited about under the condition that afterwards the studio would then fund their like pet art project that everybody knew was going to lose money. And so it's you got this one for them, one for you dynamic, right? It's like, okay, we're going to go make the thing that's going to make a ton of money, and then we're going to make the thing that like makes me happy as an artist and as a creative. Um, and

46:22so I I I think it's important to budget your own creative satisfaction and and emotional stability into your content strategy in such a way that like you take your own satisfaction seriously. It's what I admire about you so much. you just go ahead and do the experiments and you actually reflect whether or not it's the right decision and then you make those decisions afterwards and it's

46:46a part of you that I want to learn from. Again, this conversation is more me learning directly from you and how you're wired cuz a lot of my success, right, a lot of the things that I'm doing right now, I can't say that I love every bit of it and I can't say that I even enjoy a lot of the contents that I

47:01produce or even like for example, right? So, this is me being fully vulnerable, but when I when I go ahead and we have these new opportunities in front of us, we have the live events, the inerson events, and then we're doing these virtual events for like 100,000 plus people, and then it's like the next day it's like, "All right, we're starting up a podcast, June, let's go to LA, and let's go do that. June, you're going to be speaking at XY." And it's it's quite this experience where like I know it's the right thing for me as in it's going to be good for our career and it's going

47:26to be good for our cause. But in the same breath, there's a lot of the suck all the time. And I can't understand when is it that something sucks for too long and I'm like I should give it up or when is it like it is the suck and I need to enjoy it cuz the suffering that I've elected for cuz obviously the goal and the pursuit and the purpose is much bigger than that. It's like how do I

47:44know if I'm making that right decision? How are you going through different decision frameworks to be like ah let me give this up now or let me just keep pursuing through the suck coming with the easy questions. [laughter] For the record I'm the same way. I would say that I I'd say there's probably 20 25% I I actually wrote this in an in an article way back in the day. I said even your dream job will suck 30% of the

48:10time. Uh and the article was called screw finding your passion. Um and I found that to be true. Like I am living my dream job. This is my dream career. I can't imagine doing anything else. I don't want to do anything else. Yet, I would say probably 20 to 30% of the time I'm like, "This sucks. I hate that I have to do this." [laughter] So, there there's like a certain amount of it that I think is just like a tax, you know? It's just a a life it's a life tax. Like a everybody nobody's going to

48:42nobody enjoys their job all the time. So, there's that piece of it. To your question, is this worth it? Is this the suck that I'm happy to have? To me, it's it's I guess there's a few questions I ask myself around that. One is, am I learning something? Like, is is the sucking is it is it skill acquisition, right? Because doing something new always is always painful and it's always difficult and it always feels weird at first. And so sometimes it's like I see it as kind of a it's an investment of like, okay, this is going to suck for like the first 3 months we do it, but

49:17then if it starts getting traction, it's going to be worth it down the down the road. um and it's going to get easier and I'm going to develop a skill set that's going to be valuable and I can use in different places. So, there's that piece of it. I think the second piece of it is

49:30just like how much does the thing scale? Um because sometimes you can do something that sucks but it scales really beautifully and um and it's it's totally worth it in the long run. Um, and so I think that's important to look at. Whereas there are other things that like it just doesn't scale, you know, like it's it's you you create it or you build it and it's a week later you have to build it again and you're like, "Okay, this is really annoying." [snorts] Um, so I think that's another question to look at. And then and then the last question is I I think kind of the mission piece,

50:07right? Like is it aligned with the mission? Is this like furthering your overall goals? Um, one thing that's that's useful here is that when you look at research around what people actually enjoy doing and what people are passionate about, most people assume that you like find the thing you're passionate about and then you get good at it and you build a career around it. And it's actually the

50:30research shows it's it's the opposite. You get good at something and then the fact that you're good at it means that you get rewarded for it. You get rewarded financially, you get rewarded socially, you get rewarded uh in terms of like validation from other people from just like the satisfaction of of developing mastery in something and then

50:49that causes you to fall in love with it. So the like I'll say for example like the first 20 podcast episodes I made like I didn't really love it, you know, now it's probably my favorite part of the business. Um, and so sometimes things can evolve like that and your relationship to it can change over time, but I would say that if you if you're if you've been doing something for a long time and it just feels like you're banging your head against the wall, then it potentially it's time to step back and kind of re-evaluate. You said skill acquisition, you talked about scalability, and you

51:23talked about mission. Is that also those three pillars, the reason why you decided to do purpose, the app of yours that we're talking about earlier? Is that ultimately the reason for it? cuz in my head I'm like Mark is so unbelievably successful. It's like why would he go ahead and try to tackle on a very difficult pursuit of scaling this app of his is is this where you're like I want to do something that's aligned to me with those three decision frameworks and that's why I'm going to pursue this

51:47thing no matter how difficult it is. I didn't think about it in those terms but I'm happy to to talk about why I did it. So the first thing and this is very broadly applicable to the whole creator space which is you know there's kind of two primary ways to monetize a creator business right you can take sponsorships uh and and do brand deals or you can build out back-end products live events courses community all you know all the stuff that that you've been doing. Um, and both of those are great, but ultimately like both of those things, they have a ton of challenges related to

52:27them. Um, and in some cases, like there's kind of a ceiling on how much you can make from them, how much you can do. And then there's kind of this third option which is I so I started getting in 2024 I started getting approached by a number of brands that um were open or interested in some sort of equity deal um either bringing me on as an adviser or some sort of partner um or in the case of startups like having me be an investor. And I thought this was super interesting because it's like, okay, if you what if the thing that you're promoting is the thing that you actually also own

53:13and is completely aligned with your brand, right? Like it's it's not like it's not like [ __ ] AG1, you know, you're promoting for the 25th time. No offense to AG1, but I'm just using them as an example because everybody promotes AG1. like it's what if it's like actually a thing that is perfectly aligned to your brand, your

53:32audience, to you yourself. Um and you you own it because you helped start it and build it. And so I became very fascinated with that option. And um and around that time, what I noticed was that tons and tons of people in my life had started using chat GPT for like coaching or therapy, for life advice. And if you've ever gone to Chat GBT and asked it for life advice, pretty much whatever you say to it, it's going to kiss your ass and tell you that you're a special snowflake and oh my god, it must be so hard for you. You know, this is this is so stressful. Um

54:13it's it just kind of like like gives you empty validation. Um and so I I I became very fascinated with the idea of like what if you actually took an AI and it and it and it actually challenged you. it gave you it really forced you to think like critically about your your own life and your own decisions um and kind of held you accountable for some of your [ __ ] um and so I met my co-founder and we started building a product with the goal to do that and so that that's what became purpose what I will say to you since you you asked about you know challenging myself

54:50kind of what my personal motivations were around I think as with most entrepreneurship, the only reason you do it is because you were like delusionally optimistic about how hard it's going to be. Uh [laughter] like you think it's going to you're like, "Oh, I got this. It's only going to be this hard." It ends up being like

55:10five [laughter] times harder than that. And and then you're just like, "Holy [ __ ] if I had any idea, I never would have started." [laughter] Um, but it it is uh I would say building that company has been one of the most difficult things I've ever done in my career. I would also say it's one of the most satisfying things I've ever done in my career. And and I I think there's a very good chance it ends up being one of the most successful things I ever do in my career. Um, but I I think it's I do think this is kind of where our industry

55:40is going because one of the cool things about building that company is that it is given me a lot of access and exposure to to the tech world. And when you talk to people in that world, what everybody is saying is that distribution is becoming impossible. The attention economy is becoming impossible. And really like there is no longer a captive audience anywhere in the world except for two places. Sports and creators. Like that's those are the only two things that like audiences are loyal to and and they will show up time after time after time

56:18again. And um everything else is just like this absolute free-for-all for people's attention and getting clicks. Um, so I think I think what's you're going to start seeing a lot more of this sort of thing over the next five or 10 years of a lot of these brands and companies coming to people like you and me and being like, "Hey, look, you've been you've been promoting our product for

56:44two years now. It's gone really well. Like, what if we work out some sort of deal? Like, let's get your skin in the game here." you know, you you give us a a huge deal on the ad side and promote us um you know, extra for like super low cost and we'll give you a piece of the company and like everybody's happy. So, I I wouldn't be surprised if that

57:07started happening more. That's a huge awesome statement that distribution is the new moat and it's one that I have noticed quite a bit. A lot of people that are in my inbox are exactly who you're talking about, which are very successful business owners or let's say techheavy individuals, but the distribution is one that they're trying to unlock. And I think that often as creators, we forget what we're actually building. It's it's an audience that fully trusts us and there's like a level of human connection that we're formulating. My my one question about this cuz I'm going through this right

57:36now is there are so many options, right? So when a creator has success, it's like a hundred different hands want to get into that pile. It's like, hey, you should do this, you should do that, you should do this, you should. Even with equity and ownership, I I do believe that's a new age of creators and that's going to be the thing that keeps building. But how do you know as in like this is a really great opportunity? I'm sure that you probably had like 55 other opportunities and funny that you were like, oh, this actually could make sense. Like how did you know that it was

58:00the right decision to pursue it? Uh, or was it like a blind positivity, opportunistic mind of like, I think this is the thing. Let me just go and pursue it for as long as I can fathom it. Is definitely the definitely the latter. It's like [laughter] I see entrepreneurial but I do think so like your question raises a good point and this kind of brings us full circle to kind of started right where it's the being a creator professionally is a very different experience than being a creator casually or as an amateur, right? It's as an amateur it's all about let's just make cool [ __ ] and post it

58:31online. Once you're professional, like you do have a lot of these questions because there are a lot of bad sponsorship deals and there are a lot of brand deals that will harm like interfere with your relationship with your audience. There are a lot of bad products for you to create and sell potentially, right? Like all of these

58:50decisions have to be made at some point. And and and so the reality of it is that kind of the higher up the scale you get in terms of audience and monetization, the more this just turns into a business. Like it turns into a media business where you have to sit down and crunch the numbers and look at like okay, you know what is uh we we currently have the bandwidth to create

59:13this much content. This is how much we can monetize this content in these like three different ways. what's the optimal way to do this? What's the what's the chance that we're willing to take? Um who do we need to hire to to make sure that we service all these sponsors? Like it it's it really does turn into uh kind of a nuts andbolts like pull out the spreadsheet

59:36and figure it out type of situation. The best creators that I know that are actually having the longevity segment of this are the ones that are doing it like the way you're talking about which is you do have to turn it into a business. Not in a way you're losing your creative joy for it, but you just have to be smart with where your attention is ultimately going. And this brings me to my very final question for you, Mark, and it's again from more of a selfish perspective because I admire you in so many different ways. Your longevity is brilliant, right? I mean, again, I know

1:00:04we're kind of scoffing at this or saying it nonchalantly, but 16 years doing something and to have the success that you've had now with this app, with your books and being recognized around the world, like that is a humongous achievement that me as a creator 6 years in, I'm looking at that, I'm like, that's where my north star is. Like, I want to be able to show up and still love the work that I do. Like, I still want to show up and build businesses that are aligned to me. And we have about 10 years difference in experience, right? So, you've been doing it for 16

1:00:30years. I've been doing it for six years. My final question for you is in these next 10 years, what are some things that I should be focusing on to ensure that I remain purposeful in my work to ensure that I don't necessarily burn out so that I can ultimately have the longevity that uh Mark Manson ultimately has. Well, you're dude, you're killing it by the way. Like it's I I I've seen your content for probably a couple years now and it's it's awesome. You're you're you're doing great. Um, and I think it's part of why you're doing so well is like you can feel the genuiness in in what

1:01:07you're doing. Um, and I think that matters a lot more than people think. Um, and so just keep that first of all, like really know why you're doing this and what you care about and and hold on to that. Like don't ever it's easy to get distracted or lose sight of that. never stop making that the first and most important thing. I would say going forward I I think the space I mean the space is exploding in size. I think it's only going to continue to explode in size and I do think a lot of large creators are going to start turning into kind of mini media conglomerates or

1:01:43media companies. And so I I personally think the most important thing to do right now um aside from making sure the content's still great and it's going out on a regular basis is is really developing figuring out and developing these systems, these processes, understanding what do these new teams look like? How do you get everybody aligned on the same vision? Um what sort of um you know what sort of workflows and stuff are are you building? Um because like you said, I don't think anybody's really figured that out yet. And um and there isn't really like a common road map. At least if there is, I

1:02:23certainly haven't heard of it yet. Um but I I do think that is that's the next big solve and and whoever does solve it um or once it does get solved is it's just going to be like it's going to it's going to be huge going forward. Thank you, Mark, for your time. I respect you so much. I'm going to ask of you whenever I meet you in person, you got to sign the books. I just went and ordered a ton of your books on Amazon as well. So again, thank you so much, Mark, for all the wisdom that you're providing

1:02:51my audience. And this was creator up.