Mark Manson - Author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck | Why the Self-Help Industry Doesn't Want You to Get Better

Summary

Success Story Podcast with Scott D. Clary

Guest: Mark Manson – Author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fck*
Episode: Why the Self-Help Industry Doesn't Want You to Get Better
Date: March 25, 2026

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Main Theme Overview

This episode explores the flaws and paradoxes of the self-help industry, the necessity of embracing brutal honesty and values-driven living, and why modern self-help often leaves us dissatisfied. Mark Manson discusses how his contrarian, tough-love approach struck a chord with a generation tired of recycled advice, and why community, purpose, and the courage to say “no” are more important than the endless pursuit of self-optimization. The conversation also delves into the substitution of self-help for religion in secular societies, the limits of personal growth content, the dangers of parasocial relationships, and the role of AI in mental health support.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mark’s Self-Hating Self-Help Paradox

• Mark’s Brand Positioning:

  • “I jokingly call myself the self-hating self-help guru because I kind of hate the fact that I'm a self-help guru… I make self help for people who hate self help.” (01:40, Mark Manson)
  • He found self-help space cheesy, full of recycled advice, and wanted to offer a more reality-based, evidence-grounded alternative.

• Unintended Path:

  • Started with entrepreneurial blogging; the practical, non-cringe self-help content gained unexpected traction as an underserved market.

2. The Evolution & Saturation of Self-Help

• Industry Shifts:

  • “The game has changed so much. Things are very crowded… Any idea that you have that is good… as soon as it blows up, 50 other people are gonna post the same thing.” (07:55, Mark Manson)
  • Repetition is inevitable; differentiation today depends on brand and deep audience understanding.

• Most Advice is Recycled:

  • “We're all saying stuff that's been said for 2,000 years. What changes is the packaging and the delivery mechanism.” (00:08, Mark Manson)

3. Mark’s Approach: Gritty, Values-Based, Tough-Love

• Who He Serves:
  • Appeals to skeptics and those cynical of traditional self-help.
  • “I'm the gritty, realistic, slightly cynical version of self help… what are your values? What are you prioritizing?” (10:23, Mark Manson)
• Value-Driven Life:
  • Most people drift without clarity on values; his work is a call to honest self-examination.
  • Tough love: “Like a wise older brother who's calling you out on your bullshit.” (10:23, Mark Manson)

4. Self-Help vs. Religion

• Self-Help as a Spiritual Substitute:

  • Mark argues self-help doesn't fill the existential void left by religion:
    • “You need to have something bigger than yourself… self help will tell you, I'll help you make more money… but there's no why. It's just like stuff.” (17:38, Mark Manson)
  • Scott and Mark discuss how churches were original self-help seminars, providing both meaning and community.

• Consequences of Losing Community:

  • “If you solve this problem… the isolation, the loneliness, the lack of community, that… solves a lot of other issues on its own.” (36:16, Mark Manson)

5. The Psychological Dilemma of Modern Abundance

• Freedom and Anxiety:

  • “Now there is no physical danger or physical scarcity for the vast majority of us, but we've traded that now for kind of existential scarcity.” (25:52, Mark Manson)
  • The paralysis of endless options leads to existential anxiety, despite unprecedented opportunities.

• The Modern Midlife Crisis:

  • Many millennials who chased unconventional, exciting lifestyles now face loneliness and lack of community in midlife.
  • “Midlife crises are hitting millennials extremely hard… they get to 40 and they're kind of stuck.” (29:01, Mark Manson)
  • Not building community, soft skills, or commitments leads to a sense of being "lost and broken" in their 40s. (25:43, Scott Clary reading Mark’s viral tweet)

6. How to Live a Life Worth Living

• Committing > Keeping Options Open:

  • “You really need to learn how to give up options… Find things worth committing to and then really commit to them.” (38:07, Mark Manson)
  • Endless optionality leads to superficiality and lack of meaning.
  • “Meaning is found in the investment in something, giving your life over to something, rejecting the alternatives.” (38:07, Mark Manson)

• Reinvention and Honesty:

  • Don’t be afraid to move on from identities that no longer serve you.
  • “Things evolve and change… It's tough to admit, but that's what's hard about this.” (40:32, Mark Manson)
  • Pay attention to what challenges you enjoy even when things aren’t going well. (42:42, Mark Manson)

• Practical Reinvention:

  • Mark shifted from being primarily an author to a content entrepreneur, enjoying experimentation with formats like video, podcasting, and now co-founding an AI startup “Purpose.”
  • “I made an agreement with myself… I don’t do anything unless I’m excited about it.” (45:21, Mark Manson)

7. AI, Therapy, and Mental Health

• Rise of AI Self-Help:

  • Noting that hundreds of millions use AI for advice and support, but models like ChatGPT are often overly agreeable and lack critical feedback.
  • “If you have a tool… just constantly validating, agreeing… you can see how somebody like [predisposed to psychosis] could get into a spiral.” (55:17, Mark Manson)

• What Purpose Does Differently:

  • “We made it disagreeable. We need to make it so it’s willing to challenge you and call you out on things.” (56:21, Mark Manson)
  • The app focuses on surfacing blind spots and giving tough-love feedback, not just empty validation.

• AI Helps Normalize Seeking Help:

  • Many users enjoy sharing things they wouldn’t bring to therapy; privacy is a major concern, especially for men or those in unsupportive cultures. (65:49, Mark Manson)
  • “It's a super safe psychological space for people to ask these questions where normally they would feel like, oh, especially with guys. Yes, especially with guys.” (65:00, Scott Clary; 65:49, Mark Manson)

• Therapy Research – The 80/20 Principle:

  • The main benefit is simply expressing what’s on your mind to someone listening empathetically, regardless of the approach or credentials. (63:40, Mark Manson)

8. The Challenge and Responsibility of Content Creation

• Brand as the Last Moat:

  • “What are things that we can do that are really, really hard for other people to replicate?” (83:04, Mark Manson)
  • Deep research, unique perspective, and creator personality as key differentiators in a saturated market.

• Parasocial Relationships: Dangerous Potential:

  • Mark cautions against audience dependence:
    • “If you need me to tell you how to live, then that's the problem in and of itself… You need to live for yourself first and foremost.” (86:25, Mark Manson)
  • Parasocial bonds may offer comfort but risk stifling independent agency.

• Industry Lacks Integrity:

  • “The biggest problem in this industry is there's a lack of integrity among a lot of the biggest players… You are dealing with very deeply vulnerable people.” (91:39, Mark Manson)
  • Mark prioritizes integrity and responsibility, aware of the moral weight in influencing vulnerable audiences.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I make self help for people who hate self help.” (01:40, Mark Manson)
• On recycled self-help: “We're all saying stuff that's been said for 2,000 years. What changes is the packaging and the delivery mechanism.” (00:08 & 07:55, Mark Manson)
• “If you solve this problem, the isolation, the loneliness, the lack of community… that solves a lot of other issues on its own.” (36:16, Mark Manson)
• On the missing ‘why’ in self-help: “There's nothing… ultimately humans need something larger than themselves to believe in, to give themselves to, to really drive that sustaining long term happiness.” (17:38, Mark Manson)
• “Ask yourself, which problems do you enjoy having? Because… what you want to look for is the things that even when they're not working, you're still kind of enjoying it.” (42:42, Mark Manson)
• “You really need to learn how to give up options… Meaning is found in the investment in something, giving your life over to something, rejecting the alternatives…” (38:07, Mark Manson)
• On responsibility: “It's incumbent on everybody to keep that front of mind all the time… people on the other end of this are very… vulnerable…and it can be easy for us to take advantage of them or steer them in the wrong direction. So we need to take that very, very seriously.” (91:39, Mark Manson)
• Final advice: “Everything is a suggestion. The only rule is do what works for you. Everything else is a suggestion.” (94:20, Mark Manson)

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Important Timestamps

• 00:00–01:40 – Mark’s self-hating self-help persona; why people gravitate to his candor
• 03:12–05:43 – Mark’s journey into self-help, the underserved market, and evolution of the industry
• 07:55–09:54 – Content saturation, brand, and the limits of originality
• 10:23–13:05 – Mark’s tough love, values-first approach; authenticity vs. standard 'pep talk'
• 17:38–24:14 – Self-help as “replacement religion”; lack of higher purpose and community
• 25:43–31:47 – The modern midlife crisis, social media, and the dangers of optimizing for Instagram vs. real life
• 36:16–39:42 – Lack of community as root of mental health crisis
• 38:07–40:32 – The trap of infinite choices, need for commitment, giving up options
• 42:42–47:28 – On finding which problems you enjoy and Mark’s personal reinvention process
• 54:14–59:31 – Why AI-based tools for self-help go wrong, and how Purpose is different
• 61:47–66:45 – How AI is lowering the barrier for personal support, importance of privacy, gender/cultural shame
• 83:04–86:25 – Brand differentiation, irreplicability, and the problem with parasocial dynamics
• 91:39–94:20 – The lack of integrity in self-help and Mark’s final words on responsibility and individual agency

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Actionable Takeaways & Final Wisdom

• Question the source: All advice (including Mark’s) is a suggestion—not a rule. Find what works for you, not what sells best online.
• Seek commitment over options: True satisfaction and meaning come from depth—not endless potential. Think hard about what’s worth investing yourself in.
• Value community and purpose: Don’t prioritize only self-serving goals; meaning and happiness are linked to something larger than yourself.
• Beware easy fixes: Most self-help is a pep talk or “band-aid”; real change requires honesty, discomfort, and sometimes, tough feedback.
• Guard your independence: Don’t let influencers or creators become substitutes for your own values or lived experience.
• Responsibility is key—especially for creators: Content creates real-world impact for vulnerable people. Integrity matters.

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Mark’s Parting Advice:
“Everything is a suggestion. The only rule is do what works for you. Everything else is a suggestion.” (94:20)

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For more from Mark Manson, check out his podcast “Solved,” his new AI project Purpose (PRPS), and his books. For more Success Story episodes, visit successstorypodcast.com.

Transcript

[Mark Manson]

I want to be a better person. I want to be more confident, more successful. I want to make a bunch of money. I want to have a great relationship. But you go to the self help section. I just want to puke over everything. So I felt like there's got to be something here. All of the advice is recycled. We're all saying stuff that's been said for 2,000 years. What changes is the packaging and the delivery mechanism.

[Scott Clary]

What happens when brutal honesty becomes a global philosophy? Mark Manson is the best selling author who challenged the entire self help industry with a radically different idea. Stop. Stop chasing positivity and start embracing what

[Mark Manson]

actually matters, what self help lacks. You need to have something bigger than yourself. I'll help you make more money, be more successful, be happier. But there's no why. It's just like stuff. If you solve isolation, the loneliness, the lack of community, that solves a lot of other issues on its own. The biggest lesson you really need to learn how to give up options.

[Scott Clary]

From writing brutally honest essays on the Internet to becoming one of the most influential voices in modern personal development, Mark's work forces us to confront the questions we rather ignore.

[Mark Manson]

Find things that are worth committing to and then really commit to them. You have to be able to listen to yourself of the things that you really don't want to do and the things that are exciting and light you up. You need to be able to say no to stuff and not feel conflicted about that. The only rule is do what works for you. Everything else is a suggestion.

[Scott Clary]

Mark, I'm happy you're here.

[Mark Manson]

Good to be here.

[Scott Clary]

It's very, very good to, to finally sit down, do this. So I was listening to a couple pods before we, we started and I've heard you refer to yourself as the self hating self help guru. Why do you call yourself that?

[Mark Manson]

I, I jokingly call myself the self hating self help guru because I kind of hate the fact that I'm a self help guru. Like this is the, this is the funny paradox of my brand is that I, I base, I like, I make self help for people who hate self help. Like I'm the guy that like if you can't stand the secret and you know all the woo, woo, Oprah stuff you, you probably land on me. So it's, it's just a little bit of tongue in cheek of.

[Scott Clary]

So then the obvious question is, you know, how do you find yourself in the self help space when you hate it so much? Because I think actually I resonate with a lot of your content and, and I actually have a lot of issue with the self help space, but I've actually found myself drifting closer to it. Even though my content started with very entrepreneurship and very tactical stuff. But now it's migrated into a lot of mindset things which I think are very valuable and actually very important. And I was interviewing. I'll tell you a quick story, but I was interviewing Gary Vee.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And I was. Majority of the podcast was like mindset stuff. And I gave him some like, super easy, you know, like these questions you could just knock out of the park. I was talking about like substack and like live streaming and all the. He's really into right now. And he kind of like glossed over these questions and I'm like. And I asked him like, why didn't you like, go deep, like, this is your shit. He's like, because none of that matters. Like, if they get the mindset stuff right, they can figure out everything else. You can Google everything else. So mindset's important, but how do you stop yourself from becoming this, this, this self help caricature?

[Mark Manson]

Almost just navel gazing all day, wondering what it's all for. Yeah, it, it's definitely an occupational hazard. You know, it's funny because when I was. I kind of stumbled into this career, I was the same. I actually, my first online businesses that I was trying to start had nothing to do with self help. And I ended up kind of blogging about this stuff on the side because I was in the same boat. I'm like, I've read all these cheesy books. I want to be a better person. I want to be more confident, I want to be more successful, I want to be more resilient. I want to make a bunch of money. I want to have a great relationship. Right. But it's. You go to the self help section. I just want to puke over everything. So I felt like there's got to be something here. Like there's got to be a non foofy cheesy way of approaching this. Like a more scientifically grounded way, a more practical, reality based way. And so I was kind of exploring that myself on the side. And as often happens in business is like the side project becomes the thing and the thing fails miserably. So that start, it turned out that there were millions of people out there that were in the same boat as you and I. And so that's, that's when I really started getting traction in the early 2010s and everything took off.

[Scott Clary]

Because what you're doing is you're bridging a gap between like highly academic but also speaking to people and, and helping them come up with ideas that will actually impact their life. And that's actually always been the gap. Yeah, right there. Like you can always go to a therapist or you can always read like PubMed peer reviewed research on what the habits are going to be or the mindset or the tools and tactics. But I feel like content that speaks to people, that is still highly actionable and grounded in evidence based reality, whatever it is. I feel like that you don't get a lot of that online. Yeah.

[Mark Manson]

And it's, and especially back then you really didn't.

[Scott Clary]

You've been doing this in like 20, 20 years.

[Mark Manson]

I started blogging in 2008 so yeah, almost 18 years. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you. I, I've this a lot. I definitely, I feel like a dinosaur in this space. It's funny like that sometimes now I meet these like young creators and YouTubers and stuff and, and they, they're like talking about how they were in high school in like 2015 and I'm like oh, I had been blogging for seven years already. But you know, it's like I think with hindsight looking back, it was, it was just an underserved market.

[Scott Clary]

Right.

[Mark Manson]

Like it, it was if you go back pre Internet or back to like the 90s, you know, self help was really, it was I guess targeted more towards a specific type of person. It was, I mean I remember when I was growing up a self help seminar or even therapy, like it was a little bit shameful. You were a little bit embarrassed to be doing it and people would kind of like look down on you a little bit. And I think by the time I became an adult, you know, our generation grew up, there was a little bit of this tension of like, okay, it's totally normal and fine to want to know how to improve yourself. I think that's a very natural inclination. But there's got to be a way that's like to do it that's not embarrassing. Right. And so I think ultimately what I did and I think there's kind of a group of guys and women from kind of that same time period. We all kind of came up together. So like me, James Clear, Ryan Holiday, Gretchen Rubin, we were all blogging around the same time. Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, I think we all kind of stumbled into the same thing which is like what's a practical non cringy way to do this? That's actually based on evidence. That's just super Practical that people aren't going to make fun of you if they see you holding the book. And yeah, at the time it was an explosive market because nobody was serving it.

[Scott Clary]

So when you serve that market originally, I'm sure that it was a little bit easier than it is, especially now, today.

[Mark Manson]

Oh yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Content that hits now is, is, is so, is so full of hyperbole and just clickbait and, and like I feel like it's really hard to get content to hit that isn't just absurdly packaged. Right. So what, you know, I mean you have an existing audience so you obviously have a little bit of leverage there. But even yourself, who hasn't, like, how do you package your content, your self help stuff so that you still get good ideas to people that actually help them without falling into the trap of saying the most audacious, ridiculous shit that obviously is. It's only self serving at that point when you really, really, really go off. How do you, how do you do that?

[Mark Manson]

The game has changed so much today. Things are very crowded. It's actually really funny. Like I can go on my Instagram and, and just start scrolling. I would say the biggest problem in my market is that any idea that you have that is good, like any kind of profound or impactful sentence or paragraph or quote or whatever, as soon as it blows up, 50 other people are gonna post the same thing. And so it's like it immediately get. The virality just gets snuffed out in the cradle because people are so on top of everything and everything gets replicated so quickly. And so I was like on my Instagram even, even this morning and I can scroll through my Instagram and it used to upset me. Now I've just kind of accepted that this is just the name of the game. But it's half the stuff I see. I'm like, oh, I wrote that, I posted something about that in 2018. Oh, I had an article about that in 2016. Oh, I did a video about that on 2021. And it's just everything's gotten recycled so much. So my market, and I think most markets, at least online markets are kind of going this direction. You know, when everything becomes saturated, when everything is so easily replicable or so easily replicated, really the only moat that you start to have is brand and really understanding who you're serving. What is not just the demographic that you're serving, but like the psychographic, you know, what are the person's values, what's their personality, what are the other things that they're into and then really just accentuating your brand to like serve that person. Because at least in the self help market, all of the advice is recycled. I mean, we're all saying stuff that's been said for 2,000 years. Like there's, there's not really any new ideas in this, in this space. What changes is the packaging and the delivery mechanism.

[Scott Clary]

So again, so for the person you're speaking to now, what is the problem that they're dealing with, they're wrestling with and like, how do you, how do you actually, like, what do you bring to them that would be different than, I mean, I can name other creators. I mean, Lewis Howes has a flavor now. Dan Co has his own flavor of. Mel Robbins is more like a true self help kind of person. Less, I think, I think less gritty than you. I don't even know how to describe it, but yeah, how do you speak to people? Because I feel like your brand has a ton of longevity in it.

[Mark Manson]

I would say I'm the kind of the gritty, realistic, slightly cynical version of self help. And what I particularly help people focus on is understanding their values, understanding the whole give a fuck thing. It's really just code for what are your values? What are you prioritizing? What are you making the most? What are you optimizing for in your life? And most people haven't thought very deeply about that. They just do things and then reevaluate years after the fact. And so a lot of my work is just trying to help people sit down, think deeply. What am I optimizing for? What am I prioritizing? Is this a good thing? Is this bringing good problems and challenges into my life? Or am I making myself miserable? And just the nature of that sort of, I guess, brand promise, um, it is a very gritty, raw, vulnerable thing. You know, it's like forcing people to sit down. And I was going to say, do they appreciate that? Yes. Yeah, it's, it's kind of a tough love sort of thing. I would say I have a very kind of tough love relationship with my audience of like, kind of a, like a wise older brother who's like calling you out on your bullshit.

[Scott Clary]

Do you feel like that's because there is so much bullshit in the self help industry that people gravitate towards more of a real sort of raw.

[Mark Manson]

I think the people who come to me do so. I mean, I hear what you just said at the top of the show. Like I hear that all the time from my audience of people saying like, I hate every self help book. But I love jurors. And so that is very much like kind of my customer avatar. Right? It's like, okay, this person is. They're a little bit cynical. They're maybe a little bit. They're skeptical, they're hard to convince. But like, they do think deeply and they do care about improving themselves.

[Scott Clary]

Do you think that I would say traditional self help that isn't as gritty? Do you think that it actually benefits people or does it hurt them in some way?

[Mark Manson]

I would say it's net positive. It's a mixed bag. And I would say there are better and worse actors than others. I would also, I would argue that a lot of traditional self help, it's. When it does help, it's helping kind of superficially. Right. It's like a little morning pep talk. It's a little like, you know, you can do it, I believe in you type thing, which is like, it's a high, you know, it makes you feel good for an hour or an afternoon or maybe gives you a little bit of confidence for, you know, a big meeting or something. But a day or two later, you're still going to be the same person with the same insecurities because you haven't

[Scott Clary]

gone like, below the surface. Right?

[Mark Manson]

Right. It's a lot of band Aid solutions, I would argue. And then in some cases, I would say, I would say they. The band Aid solutions are taken to such an extent that it does start to become harmful. Like, it kind of encourages people to embrace delusional thinking or.

[Scott Clary]

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[Mark Manson]

Yep.

[Scott Clary]

But I don't think it's filled it very well. I agree. And I think you can have regardless of whether or not you're religious. I think at least there was a little bit more process or a little bit more. What's the word I'm thinking of. There was more structure and more thought put towards a religion, whereas self help is kind of just like people shooting from the hip. And I think that that probably wasn't the best replacement for like organized religion. But you. So you were talking, you're from la, right? And everybody is subscribing to something, whether or not it's self help or astrology or journaling or meditation or sound, whatever it is.

[Mark Manson]

I love, I love this topic. I'm like, I'm so. I'm like getting rabid over here. So, yes, I 100% agree with what you're saying and I would like to take it even further. So I started noticing a ways back. I mean, it's just like, get online and watch a video of a Tony Robbins seminar. It's like a church revival. Did you grow up religious?

[Scott Clary]

Not really. It was like the Christmas presents. That's pretty much it.

[Mark Manson]

So I grew up very religious and I grew up in the Bible Belt in Texas. And so we used to go to these like evangelical revival services, right. And it's. These would be like three, four hour church services. They'd have music, they'd have singing, and they'd have like some super charismatic guy on stage who's like sweating his balls off and screaming to you about Jesus and the power of the love. And it just like, it would just emotionally wear you down and then you. There would kind of be this like euphoric, like fever pitch that would happen in the audience after a certain amount of time. And it felt incredibly powerful and profound. And it's funny because I remember like one of the first times I saw a video of a Tony Robbins seminar, I was like, oh, it's a church revival. Like, it's the exact same shit. He's running the playbook to a T and he's got the music, he's got the dancing, he's got the singing. And then, you know, and then he like kind of like just builds and builds this. He locks people in a room for eight hours and then he just builds this emotion. Next thing you know, people are in tears, they're crying, they're saying they're saved, all this stuff. So I've had this kind of like there's, I felt like there's a little bit of a parallel between self help and religion for a long time. It's funny because as I've gone through my career and I've really dug into the psychological research and really started to kind of understand, you know, human happiness and flourishing and stuff like on a very deep level. I think the thing that self help misses or what self help lacks, like the common denominator that you consistently come back to in human psychology of like what drives psychological well being is that you need to have something bigger than yourself. And this is, I think this is the core piece that you, you were alluding to when you, when you were describing like why self help feels kind of loose and aimless is that self help will tell you, I'll help you make more money, I'll help you have a better marriage, I'll help you be more successful, I'll help you be happier. But there's no why. It's just like stuff, I'll give you more, give me money and I'll give you, I'll give you good stuff. And, and there's no, there's nothing in like ultimately humans need something larger than themselves to believe in, to give themselves to, to really drive that sustaining long term happiness. And I've kind of come, I'm, I'm atheist. I joke on my podcast that I'm like the most pro religion atheist that you'll ever meet. Because it's like, I now get it. I'm like, that's that thing that self help is missing is that faith in something larger than yourself. It's that faith in God or Jesus or Muhammad or whatever your religion is. And that is what makes all the other stuff feel meaningful and feel a sense of purpose. And then that's where you get all of the positive, sustainable, long term outcomes. So I agree with you. I don't think self help can replace religion.

[Scott Clary]

No, I don't think it can. But I think people are trying to make it a thing to replace religion and then this is the issue. So if you have. So I spoke from the perspective of the self help creator and how if they're being, you know, if they're, if they're, if they're just putting out viral content, then that's just self serving for them. But also if you're subscribing to self help as opposed to religion, then all these different things you're trying to fix in your life, your marriage, your finances, you want to lose weight and be healthy yourself. It's also self serving because you're just doing it for yourself. Just doing it for yourself. Yeah, which I, I guess there could be some longevity in that, but I feel like after a while it's very hard to just do things just for, like, if I was going to just do this podcast just for me, I feel like I would get burned out after a while. Like, there's other reasons why I like doing this. Because trust, you know this, you're a creator. There's much other easier ways to make money than podcasting. But I genuinely enjoy this. And it's, you know, I've, I've been able to build my life where I can walk five feet from my house and record an interview and I meet cool people and then I get to, you know, afford a nice life for myself and my, you know, my fiance and hopefully my kids someday. And like, I enjoy this a lot. And then also I feel very good because like, we have great conversations, hopefully we help people on the other side of this. So a lot of benefit to this. But it's definitely not just for me because a lot of ways for me to make money, earn a living that are not just podcasting. But I think that when you just focus on goals that are entirely self serving, you can start off with great intentions, but I think it's really hard to continue them long term.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, it becomes a sort of treadmill. Right. Because it's like, okay, I want more money. And then you get more money and you're like, okay, now what? And then it was like, well, I want to lose weight and then you lose weight and it's like, okay, now what?

[Scott Clary]

But if you're doing it so you can like play with your kids, that

[Mark Manson]

sustains you right across decades. So yeah, it is. That deeper source of meaning is, I believe, the missing piece.

[Scott Clary]

It's also funny because you mentioned. So the religion I grew up with, it's very popular in Canada, is Roman Catholic. It doesn't really have a great rep anymore, but that's how most, most Christians in Canada have Roman Catholic versus in the US Something I've noticed is, is Christianity is more like and Roman Catholic for, for context. Is like beautiful church. Like priests with like, nice robes. Yeah. They read a couple sermons and whatnot, but it's not like, like down here where it's like a rock show.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So now I feel like religion is trying to become more self help because they feel like they're losing ground and footing to, to the self help gurus of the world.

[Mark Manson]

I would argue religion is the original self help. Like, it's. People used to go to church to get this information. Like all the crap that I'm posting on Instagram, like, it's like, it's not. It's the Stoics, it's Jesus, it's Buddha, it's like, it's all back there. Right. This has all been around for thousands of years. And so I think the church was the original self help seminar. It's where you. Yeah. You went to pray and, you know, learn about Jesus and whatnot. But, like, that's also where you got your life advice. Like, you would go to the minister or the, or the, the preacher. The original marriage counselor was preachers.

[Scott Clary]

That's true. So now Fast forward to 2026. Society is, is more secular. People are subscribing to these, these self help gurus. Do you think that I kind of asked you this a little bit already, but I want you to go deeper. Do you think that society is healthy, is happy? Because I don't feel like. I don't feel like in general we are. I feel like, I mean, I'll. I'll even read you a tweet that you put out a couple days ago in a second. But I feel like we have access to more information than ever before, both self help mindset and tactical. We have access to so many influencers and thought leaders. We have access to anything we want to. Yet we're more depressed and full of anxiety and stress than ever before. But the tweet you put out, I was like, I went to Claude. I was like, find the highest performing tweet because I want to see, like, what resonated with people. And it was. It's shocking how many educated millennials I know had insane runs in their 20s and 30s and are now completely lost and broken in their 40s. I think a lot of my generation chose unconventional, sexy lifestyles in their 20s, not really not realizing that it would deprive them from developing many of the soft skills and commitments required to thrive and function in middle age and beyond. In other words, they optimize for their Instagram feeds rather than their actual lived experience. And now they are Silently paying a deep price. And that was like one of the most engaged with tweets recently. And you're speaking about a very specific circumstance where people, like, didn't focus on career or meaning or family or whatever connections.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

But do you feel in general just like with all of the access to information and opportunity and people and ideas that could help them, people are still more lost than ever.

[Mark Manson]

So I feel like there's kind of two questions there. I'll take the big macro kind of philosophical question of just like, are things better, Are people happier or are things worse? I think it's one of those nuanced things where it's yes and no. I think things are better. I think it is just objectively speaking, we live in the best time to be alive. But I think what has happened is, I think most of human history there was real physical danger, there was real physical scarcity. And now what we have traded that for. Now there is no physical danger or physical scarcity for the vast majority of us, but we've traded that now for kind of existential scarcity.

[Scott Clary]

Right.

[Mark Manson]

So it's like, okay, I have access to any. I can become anybody I want. I am safe. All my needs are met.

[Scott Clary]

But.

[Mark Manson]

But now that abundance of opportunity creates this other problem, which is like a psychological scarcity of like, oh my God, I don't know what to do. Because if I any choice, if it's wrong, I blow up all these other opportunities. Right? And so people just get paralyzed and freaked out. So it's very much like hashtag, high quality problems, but it's still a problem, you know, like people are, you know. But I think that's, that's why you see this interesting correlation, which is that as countries economically develop, their happiness scores go up, but their anxiety scores go up as well. And so you get happier, ultimately safer, more well adjusted people who are worrying all the time. And it makes sense, right, because when you have a great life, you have a lot to lose. It's like the subsistence farmer in the middle of India.

[Scott Clary]

But why do we think we're going to lose it? Like, like you, basically you're saying that like Maslow's hierarchy of needs is, is. Is incorrect.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, it. I don't know if it's incorrect. I just think it's. It's a different type of anxiety. And it's. I think it's a more philosophical anxiety. You know, like if you, if you go back 100 years, the vast majority of people were just trying to make sure they had enough food to eat at the end of the month, they want to make sure their kid wasn't going to die of tuberculosis or whatever plague was going on at the time. Today, we don't have those things to worry about, but the mind needs things to worry about, and we have access to so much information that we start having these very broad philosophical anxieties about, am I doing the right thing? Am I working hard enough? Should I work less? Should I change careers? Should I spend more time with my family? Should I spend less time with my family? Like, it's. These are all, like, luxury problems, but they are problems. And. And you can. You can literally drive yourself crazy worrying about them if you let yourself.

[Scott Clary]

So that particular tweet that is speaking to an. An audience that is just discovering these problems for a first time because they never really put thought towards what they were pursuing in life.

[Mark Manson]

So that tweet specifically, that actually emerged from a really long conversation I had with my wife. I think what we're noticing, and I'll include myself in this to some extent, I'm starting to notice that midlife crises are hitting millennials extremely hard. Very, very hard. Much harder than, I think, previous generations. And what I'm noticing is the people I know in my life that are kind of getting hit with this. If you go back to our parents generation, they'd have a midlife crisis. Dad would get a corporate job, and mom would volunteer at the local school. And then they get to 40, and it's like, okay, well, they've got the house and the kids are grown up. What do I do next? And then you kind of have this crisis around, like, oh, is this it? We did all the things today because the millennials grew up with so much more opportunity and so many different options of lifestyles. You know, you could go live abroad, you could start a business, you could work remotely. You could, you know, split time between two cities. You've got, like, people in unconventional relationships and throuples and, like, all sorts of things going on. And what I've noticed is that a lot of people chose a certain lifestyle. Maybe it's like starting an E commerce business in their 20s and living in Thailand half the year. And when you're 20, that's super sexy and exciting. But what you don't realize you're giving up is you're not building community, you're not building strong relationships, you're not building a network. You're not in the room when big industry things are happening. And so they get to 40 and they're kind of stuck. I'LL give you another example. I had a friend who started trading stocks in college, and he. He was very, very good at it very quickly. And by 27, 28, you know, he was multimillionaire. And out of our group of friends, like, he was the baller. Like, everybody was like, we're gonna hang out with that guy. Like, we're. We're spending the weekend with that guy because he was just balling out. He was the coolest dude. But it's funny because it's like, now we're in our 40s, and he's still very wealthy, but, like, he's never had a job. He's never worked with anybody. He's kind of unemployable. He doesn't really have a network. He's stressed out all the time, right? Because it's trading, so it's just financial trading. You're just constantly on your phone, refreshing and freaking out over.

[Scott Clary]

I can go for breakfast with these guys. They bring their laptop. I know the kind.

[Mark Manson]

He's been basically stressed for 20 years straight. He's built no community, no connections. And yeah, sure, he's got money, but at 40, he's not fuck you, rich anymore. It's like, a lot of us have done really well in our 40s, so it's not as impressed. But he hasn't built out these other parts of his life, and he's really struggling. So it's been interesting to watch a lot of people kind of in those situations and kind of reference the religious thing again. I think what I see lacking in our generation is that sense of community. Right. The conversation I had with my wife and I have had quite a bit is, like, we're not religious, so we don't go to church. We don't have kids, so we don't have schools and our other parents to hang out with. And we travel all the time for our job, so we're never around. And so we just. We're in our 40s, and we're like. We have lots of friends in, like, 18 different cities, but we have no community. Like, we can't. There's nobody. We can just, like, randomly go knock on their door and, like, hang out and, you know, have a beer with or, you know, invite a few random people over for a spontaneous barbecue or something. Like, it just doesn't happen in our lives.

[Scott Clary]

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[Mark Manson]

I, I mean it can't be good. I, I honestly think you know a lot of the, there's a lot of noise that's made about the mental health crisis and, and especially Gen Z. I honestly think that if, if you solve this problem, you know, the, the isolation, the loneliness, the lack of community, I, to me that feels like the 80, 20 of the situation. You know everybody talks about social media, everybody talks about like the phones and all this stuff, news, 24 hours news, doom scrolling all this stuff. To me it's just like if you have enough face to face interaction in your life, if you have like a good cohort of people that you can rely on in your personal life, that, that just that, that that solves a lot of other issues on its own.

[Scott Clary]

How do you build a life worth living? And I, and I, and I asked that as like a very broad open ended because we're talking about community, we're talking about finding purpose, we're talking about not having this like massive midlife crisis but even somebody who researches this for a living, you have had like these, not, I don't want to call it midlife crisis but like you've had these like definitely midlife crisis, we'll call it reinventions. To call it reinventions of yourself even, even after you've found success. I mean like even now like what you're working on with your app. Like you, you reinvented yourself, you were an author and you found that you sort of accidentally took on the identity of an author because it was successful and then you found that that wasn't like the most fulfilling thing. So my point being somebody who researches this stuff for a living still falls into these traps, what hope is there for the rest of us?

[Mark Manson]

I think the biggest lesson that I, I have taken in my life is that you really need to learn how to give up options. You need to find things that are worth committing to and then really commit to them. And I don't mean this, I'll use dating just because it's a nice analogy for how this can applies to pretty much everything, in my opinion. Right. So it's a common problem you see these days is people are on the apps. There is a perception that there's kind of this endless supply of potential partners. And so that gives you this mindset. Every date you go into, as soon as they do anything awkward or slightly off putting, you're like, oh, next. Right. Because there's just this endless supply of alternatives. And I think that's the trap of modern life. You can apply that to business. It's the same trap. You can apply that to lifestyle choices. It's the same trap. There's an illusion of endless optionality pretty much everywhere, which is preventing people from being able to commit, to choose something, commit, really invest themselves in it. Because it's, it's that investment in something, giving your life over to something, rejecting the alternatives, that's where the meaning is found and that's where like the satisfaction is found. And I just think it's, it's.

[Scott Clary]

Well, no. So I'll, I'll frame it because that's smart. But two true, two things can be true at the same time. Right. Because you have adopted identities in your life that you no longer want to associate with.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

So, and we're not talking about like the more destructive ones previous to like your author life when you were still drinking. I'm talking about like being an author is a very healthy identity to adopt. And you went all in on that. So the, the duality is, or the two truths that can exist simultaneously is you to go all in on something and reject all other options. But at the same time, then you have to figure out when that season of your life is over.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

And to move on to something else. So both of these, that's the tough part. Both things have. You have to be able to think through both ideas.

[Mark Manson]

Things evolve and change and it's, you know, for most of my young life, I wanted to be an author. That was my dream. I wanted to be a big bestseller, all this stuff. It happened, did the whole author thing, wrote a bunch of big books and toured and did a movie and all the stuff that authors hope to do and realized that I actually didn't love it as much as just Being kind of the scrappy online entrepreneur, content guy. And that was an extremely difficult thing to discover and admit to myself. But it is, I guess, the. That's what's so hard about this. And this kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier, just about the existential anxiety of a few generations ago. People really only got one or two good opportunities throughout their lives, and so it was kind of easy to just be like, all right, this is my shot. Let's go for it. Whereas in today's day and age, especially if you develop some good skills, right, if you're just a killer copywriter or killer at sales or an amazing software engineer, there's like infinite number of things that you could go do and probably be successful at. And that infinite opportunity, not only can it be crippling, kind of broader, philosophically speaking, but even in the moment, you run this risk of just shiny object syndrome, of constantly being distracted of, like, well, why don't we do this? Or why don't we start, like, why don't we spin that out and make that a separate product?

[Scott Clary]

And, you know, you could be successful at all these things too, right?

[Mark Manson]

And you, you have to, like, keep, like, hitting your. Stop it. Stop. Stop doing that. You know, focus on the main thing. Make the main thing the main thing.

[Scott Clary]

When you have all these options, what's your best advice for choosing which one to go all in on? Because we know that we have to go all in on one thing. You're going to make a bet on one thing. You have five different options. You're a highly competent polymath. You can make any of these things work. Is it the thing that lights you up, that gives you the most energy? You got to figure out your North Star, like, what's the cliche? But is actually the most important cliche that really true?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. In my opinion, it's. Ask yourself, which problems do you enjoy having? Because there are lots of things that you. You will love them when they're working, but you will absolutely hate them when they're not working. And what you want to look for is the. The things that even when they're not working, you're still kind of enjoying it.

[Scott Clary]

What was the thing. So looking back at your own story, what was the thing that caused you to move away from being an author? And then now you. You founded Purpose and you've. You built an app, and that's sort of like the next stage, and you're obviously, you have your podcast and, like, you're more content, so you made a shift Tell your own story so people can see how you evaluate, like your decision tree for how to carve out a life. Because I think that will be helpful for people too.

[Mark Manson]

So, as I mentioned, started blogging super early. I built up the blog in the early 2010s to a few million readers. We were doing some online courses, some ebooks, things like that. Had a nice little business going, probably making 150, 200k a year, just me and an employee. So nice. A nice little lifestyle business. And then the book deal came along. And it's funny because that book deal came along and like, nobody really expected, including myself, nobody really expected it to like take off that way. You know, in my head I was like, oh, great, this book will like, give me some credibility so I can continue scaling my blog.

[Scott Clary]

Why did you not think it was

[Mark Manson]

gonna, man, back then? It's, it's, it's funny.

[Scott Clary]

It.

[Mark Manson]

The giving a blogger a book deal back then was still kind of like a ridiculous thing. In fact, my agent was one of the first literary agents who actually went online and would find people who went viral and try to find if there was a book deal there. Now it's the basic blueprint, the audience. Yeah, it's actually the only way to get a book deal now is to go viral online for first. So at the time I was just like, okay, cool. A book will help me build credibility, build some audience, make some money. The book just went absolutely supernova. Just massive, massive smash hit. And suddenly all of these new opportunities were showing up. So massive multimillion dollar, multi book deal. Audible wanted to do this big project with me. Film and TV deals started coming down the pipe pipeline and the Will Smith book happened. And so I just started, I mean, I just started saying yes to everything because it's, it's just everything's new, the numbers are huge. And I'm like, I don't know, this might be my five minutes.

[Scott Clary]

So like, go into it, lean into it.

[Mark Manson]

Just. I was young, I didn't have kids, so I'm like, let's just say yes to everything. And, and so I went really hard on it and essentially burnt myself out. And by 2021, everything was done, all the books were done, the movie was done, the Will Smith book was done. And I was so burnt out. I was like, I need to take a few months off just to kind of like recharge and think about what's next. And that three months off turned into six months, slowly became like almost seven, eight months. And I realized that somewhere I Had really steered wrong because the thought of writing another book made me want to puke. I wasn't really excited about my business. I was like, am I just going to start. Am I just going to start a new career? What am I going to do? I made an agreement with myself, which is like, look, man, you made a bunch of money, so there's no reason to do anything unless you are. Are genuinely excited to do it. And I think that's one of the hardest things to learn when you're on the other side of a massive financial success. It's like pre financial success. Money is the scorecard for everything. You just do the thing that gets you more money. There's a certain number that everybody hits where it's like, money doesn't make sense as a scorecard anymore. Your time and your excitement needs to become the scorecard. And so that period I really took as reorienting my brain. So I made an agreement with myself. Is like, going forward, I don't do anything unless I'm excited about it. And I slowly started going back to work, But I really only did things that were fun and interesting. So I started messing around with video content, and I got kind of excited about YouTube. So I started making YouTube videos. And my first, like, three or four were absolutely awful. I had no idea what I was doing, but I kind of liked that. I was like, this is fun. Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

This is friction. It's.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, yeah. Like, it's. It reminded me of my, like, early blogging days. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like, figuring out a new format and, like, coming up with ideas. I'm like, okay, this is cool. And that started scaling, and I went out and hired a video team, and then we launched a podcast, and then that started scaling. And within a year, a year and a half, I'm like, I have absolutely no interest in writing another book. I'm having so much fun building out this media team. And the other exciting thing too is that by this time, this was like 2023, 2024. I was like, the creator space had changed so much. There actually is so much financial opportunity now making content online that it's. It's actually, it might not be worth me writing a book. So I started scaling that business, and that was going super well. And then about a year ago, I started, you know, because most of our monetization is just like, ads and sponsorships and things like that, I started looking at them like, there's got to be an opportunity to like, like, parlay this distribution into something with equity Right.

[Scott Clary]

That is, by the way, the future of the creator economy is that.

[Mark Manson]

Totally.

[Scott Clary]

100% totally.

[Mark Manson]

So I started looking at startups that I could, like, partner with that were, like, really well aligned with what I talk about. And I started having some conversations with founders of like, okay, maybe I come in as like a partner or a co founder and like, you know, I'll be the distribution arm and I'll, like, advise on product and growth and everything. And had had a few conversations that, like, went pretty far, but nothing got over the finish line. There was, like, always a complication, whether it was the cap table was a total mess or the founders, like, didn't want to give up control of something, like brand control, you know. And so eventually I was like, I should just start my own. And I. I met my co founder about a year ago, a little more than a year ago, at a poker game. His name's Raj. He's done. I was really interested in kind of AI for mental health. And he's been doing AI products since pre chatgpt. And so he and I got started talking about it and he was like, look, man, my Last company was 200 employees before I exited. I can build anything. I'll build a team, I'll build software, I can build anything. Just tell me what to build. And so we partnered up and we launched prps about three or four months ago. And it's a AI personal growth coach. It's designed to, like, challenge you, point out blind spots, challenge assumptions, really push you on the things that you say you care about, but you're not doing.

[Scott Clary]

So, like your content.

[Mark Manson]

Yes, exactly. A little bit. A little bit of, like, tough love.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Mark Manson]

And it's been great. I mean, it's like, like we had a killer launch and, and just like, pretty insane growth through the early this year.

[Scott Clary]

Pretty good reinvention. I'm going to ask you about. I'm going to ask you about AI and mental health in a second. But just to finish that last thought. For people that are listening, for people that are any of the people we spoke about, especially people that saw that tweet and are like, this is me. I feel lost and I feel confused and I'm having this midlife crisis. So what you just went through was a reinvention of. Of who you were and your identity. What is your best advice for somebody to gracefully go through a reinvention like you did successfully without blowing up their life?

[Mark Manson]

It's a great question. I think the most important piece is you have to be able to listen to Yourself and be honest with yourself of the things that you really don't wanna do and the things that are exciting and light you up. Because when you're in that spot where you wanna reinvent yourself, really what you're doing is you're looking for new things to prioritize or new things to optimize for, take really seriously. And I think the most important variable in that decision is what lights you up. Right. Like what are the challenges that you enjoy having? And I think that takes a lot of experimentation. It's two sided. On one side you need to be willing to experiment with things while kind of fall in your face a little bit, maybe be a little embarrassed. On the other side you need to be able to say no to stuff that you're done with and not feel conflicted about that. So for me it was like I canceled a very large book deal because I was just like, guys, I'm not writing another book until I'm excited to write a book. It's not good for anybody if I just half ass a book that I started saying no to pretty much all speaking engagements because it just, I found they drained me and it's not my favorite thing to do. So it's just start cutting out the things that are not exciting. And then really like honestly look at yourself and ask yourself like what feels exciting in this moment? Like where does my curiosity naturally go?

[Scott Clary]

I like that. I think that also people have to trust themselves because they always know the answer, it's in there. But they listen to the agent, the, the friend, the social media, whatever. They listen to everything but themselves. And then they end up living this life that is completely out of alignment and inauthentic to themselves. And then they end up depressing.

[Mark Manson]

Yep.

[Scott Clary]

So when you built out, when you built out purpose, obviously AI is huge right now. Even before we press record, we were kind of just talking about how there's this huge market because people are, as we've really discussed, lonely, sad, depressed, high anxiety. And AI seems to be this outlet because I've seen stories in the news about people use building relationships with AI. People have built romantic relationships with AI. They're coming to AI with all their, their problems. Life advice. I mean there's like memes about I'd rather give, you know, like my wife my phone and let her see my chat GPT search history like these. So obviously people are looking for answers as they were with self help, as they were with religion. And then there's really sad cases where people have built these really screwed up Relationships with AI looking for help, and they end up killing themselves or doing something really bad. So this is new technology. People don't really know how to handle it, but it can be used for good, and it's not like it's being used maliciously like chatgpt. Claude Perplexity. They're not malicious tools, but they're not built to handle the complexity or the nuance of the human mind. So what is Purpose actually doing that these other ones are not doing?

[Mark Manson]

It's a great question. So the, I mean, the first thing that kind of landed on my radar, there was a survey, I think it was in Harvard Business Review early last year, of like, what. What are people actually using ChatGPT for? And I think it was like the number three use case was for personal life, questions, advice, therapy, that sort of thing. So it's like. And in terms of like, scale, that would put it well north of 100 million people, or like using it on a daily or on a weekly or monthly basis for those use cases. And meanwhile, I'm like going to ChatGPT, I'm kind of testing it, asking it some questions, and I'm like, anything I say to it, it's like, oh, that's great, you're amazing.

[Scott Clary]

You know, it's like this, this gaslighting

[Mark Manson]

sycophantic, like it's just like zero critical thought. Everything you do is amazing. Everything. It's like, you know, you could tell it, I just ran over a child with a bus and I'm running away from the cops. What should I do? And it's like, you know, we all make mistakes.

[Scott Clary]

It's so bad. It's so bad. But people, people are like, trusting life decisions.

[Mark Manson]

Yes, yes. And so, and, and I, honestly, I think a lot of the problematic use cases stem from that, right? Because if you look at like, AI psychosis, for example, like people who are predisposed to a psychotic break, like, literally what's happening to them is they are losing grounding with reality. Like their, their sense of what is real and what's not is, is getting very loose. And generally with those people, like, they need, they need friction and they need negative feedback to like, bring them back to earth, right? It's like, no, no, no, you're not the Queen of England. You're blow and you need to go clean the garage, right? And so if you have a tool or a device that is just constantly validating, constantly agreeing, constantly adapting your frame of reference and your view of reality of things, you can see how somebody like that could get into a spiral where they start believing.

[Scott Clary]

A lot of very smart people, I've

[Mark Manson]

heard, yeah, very delusional things, very like out there type things. And it's so I see that as the core issue. So when we were developing purpose, like the very first thing we focused on is we need to make it disagreeable. We need to make it so it's willing to challenge you and call you out on things. So like the whole onboarding sequence right now, it's like the first thing you do in the app is you do an assessment that is designed to point out your blind spots. So like the very first kind of assessment that the AI gets about you is like, these are probably, this is your personality and these are probably your blind spots. These are the things that you are either not acting on and you should or the things that you probably don't realize you believe that are hurting you. And then from there it's like

[Scott Clary]

there

[Mark Manson]

is a place for kind of emotional support and validation, but it has to be backed by this kind of raw, reality based bullshit detector.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. And what do you find when people actually engage with it? What's the response? What's the reaction? This helps, obviously. This helps people. Are they honest with it?

[Mark Manson]

Yes. So that's the interesting thing. A lot of our beta testers, when we started interviewing them, because one of our concerns was like, are people going to share with an AI what they would share with a therapist or a coach or a close family member or something? And what was interesting is that people, first of all, people didn't really have many hesitations about sharing personal issues. But what was interesting that came up a lot is that people said, you know, there's a lot of small issues in my life that I don't bring up in therapy because I feel like, like it's just a waste. Like therapy's so expensive that it's like a waste of time. But they bother me. But with an AI, I'll just like, you know, it's like, oh, my boyfriend loads the dishwasher incorrectly. Like, what's up with that? You know, and it's like they'll sit there and have a conversation about it and they're like, I don't feel like I'm wasting anybody's time. I love this, you know, with like these like little nagging issues that are going on in my life. So, yeah, it's some people, I would say some people come in, they talk with it for a few minutes. I'd say the most common complaint we get when people cancel is is. They're like, it's mean.

[Scott Clary]

That's so funny.

[Mark Manson]

They're like, I, I like unloaded this huge sensitive life issue and it told me that I was, you know, I'm the problem.

[Scott Clary]

And it was probably right. It was probably 100 right though.

[Mark Manson]

I know, I know. But it's. We, we, we ran a survey with our users around the beginning of the year and we gave them three options. We said, you know, how is your. It's people that have been using the app for more than a month. And we gave them three options. We said, has your experience, has it been not helpful, helpful or life changing? And 41% of people said it had been life changing already within a month. And then 46% said that it had been helpful.

[Scott Clary]

Indeed is a success story Partner now, if you're hiring, Indeed is all you need. Let me give you an example. If I needed to hire a new editor for this show, I'd go to Indeed and be super specific. Not just can you edit audio. I'd say I need someone who's edited a conversational podcast for at least three years, gets our style and knows our software. Someone who's done this before. And here's the thing with Indeed sponsored jobs, I'd get people who fit that description. I'm not digging through resumes from people who've edited one YouTube video. I'm getting actual podcast editors who know what they're doing, people who've worked on shows like ours and can prove it. That's what makes a difference. You get people who actually are what you're looking for. According to Indeed data, sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed are 90% more likely to report a higher than non sponsored jobs. And people are finding finding quality hires right now. In the minute that I've been speaking to you, companies like yours have made 27 hires on Indeed. According to Indeed Data worldwide. Spend more time interviewing candidates who check all the boxes. Less stress, less time, and more results. Now with Indeed sponsored jobs and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help you get your job the premium status it deserves@ Indeed.com Clary just go to Indeed.com Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast indeed.com Clary and conditions apply. Hiring do it the Right Way with Indeed. HubSpot is a success story partner. Now if you're looking for a new podcast, one of my favorite shows right now is Demand Decoded. If you're in the B2B marketing space, you need to be listening to this. It's hosted by the team at Blend. They are a demand gen agency. They know what they're doing. They're also part of the HubSpot Podcast Network. What I love about it is they skip all the theory and they just tell you what's actually working today. So demand gen marketing, content, LinkedIn, ads, attributes, they talk about real strategies that they are using that you can use today that are working. So if you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a business, if you're really selling anything to anyone, go search demand decoded wherever you get your podcast. I love that people are using it to solve these small little micro life problems and why that actually resonates a lot with me. I wrote a tweet. It's like one of my most viral tweets and it was about open loops. It's about open loops and having all these small little things that are top of mind that you've never really dealt with. And some of them are things like, like I have to go drop off an Amazon return at ups&I. But it's like it's compounded. So there's physical things you got to do in your life, there's there's mental things. But I think we go through life with so many of these things and it probably ties into why we have so much stress and anxiety because we have all these silly little tiny questions that mean something to us. Us about our work, our relationship, our job. We have all these tasks that we have to do and they all just compound.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And I mean purpose is not going to whatever, take your package to Amazon, but it can help you with all these little questions about your relationship and how that person acts or you know, you feel like you were disrespected by your boss, but it wasn't really that big a deal. But it helps you put these things to bed and close those loops so you're not like constantly thinking about them. And I think that just getting stuff out of your head probably helps almost as much as is it's the 80,

[Mark Manson]

20 for most things. It's funny because when you actually look at the research on therapy, so there's been a number of meta analyses over the years of researchers who are like, let's figure out what the best form of therapy is and the best approach to therapy. And so they'll collect data on literally hundreds of thousands of people, dozens of therapeutic modalities, hundreds of different therapists, and they'll run all the numbers and crunch all the data and everything comes back the Same, like exactly the same. It doesn't matter if it's CBT or ACT or REBT or like it doesn't matter if the therapist was trained at Harvard or Stanford or the University of Central Nebraska. Like it just, it's ultimately like the 8020 of therapy is that you're, you're in a room openly disclosing something that's bothering you and somebody is sitting there and empathetically listening like that. That is 80% of the result.

[Scott Clary]

That's so interesting. So, so giving somebody a tool that allows them to do that for a fraction of the price of just hiring a full time therapist.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly.

[Scott Clary]

So it's a lot of good.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And it's even, even if AI isn't as good as therapy. And right now it's probably, it's like, I think it will catch up very soon, but it's still not there. The fact that it's available 24 7. The fact that if you're laying awake in bed worrying about a big meeting you've got tomorrow or a fight you had with your wife or whatever, you can pull it out anytime. And the statistics around just the under supply of mental health professionals. So I think it's for, for every professional therapist, counselor or Coach, there are 1600 people that struggle with anxiety or depression who don't have access to one. Right. So the ratio of supply to demand is like 1600 to 1. But it takes so much time to get certified and go through school and get an office set up and get clients and everything. Like there's just not enough people.

[Scott Clary]

Well, I was gonna say, I think you've tapped into something even deeper than you realize because. Okay, so first of all, you do live in la.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Where, where self help is like the de facto mode.

[Mark Manson]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

I think in a lot of other parts of the US and the world, people are embarrassed and, and feel shame around asking for help. I, I think that's why people subscribe to self help books and podcasts and youtubes and whatever and why people talk to chat GPT. So my point is created this sort of super safe psychological space for people to ask these questions where normally they would feel like, oh, especially with guys. Yes, especially with guys. 100 again in LA. I think more, more than the average guys. More than average in like, you know, middle, middle America are probably going to therapists. But guys in middle America probably have just as many issues, concerns. But maybe they don't feel like therapy is like, you know, masculine, whatever the, whatever the stereotype is. But this creates a Space for them to ask questions where normally they would feel embarrassed.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, and we've gotten a lot of data back that there's. Yeah, there's a shyness about it and that that is a huge use case. Actually, some of the earliest feedback we got after we launched is a lot of users emailed in and they said, can you make sure you automatically log me out every time I leave the app? Like, can you have a setting so that I'm logged out automatically? And it turned out when we asked them why, it's because they share phones with spouses or family members. It's because it's like they share a room with somebody. They're so paranoid that somebody else is going to open their phone and click on the app and see their conversations, that it's like, so privacy is a huge, huge piece of what we do. I mean, we always took it seriously. But then as soon as we started launching, once we got the pre launch and we started hearing back from people, we were like, okay, needs to be super private.

[Scott Clary]

Do you have an idea why people are shy about self development, personal improvement, getting help with their problems?

[Mark Manson]

I think a lot of people see it as an admission of failure or defeat, admitting that they're flawed in some way. I mean, the irony is that the only reason that it feels that way is because it's like, we're all failing Alien. We're all a mess. Yeah, it's just that, like, you know, there's some places in the world that are like, people pretend like they're not more than others. And so I feel like there's kind of a sense of shame around it. And the other thing I've noticed too is I think there's also a little bit of a similar dynamic going on with just AI in general. It was funny because it, it's when I started posting some AI content last year, kind of in prep for the launch to kind of warm my audience up to it, and I got so many hate comments. So many people like, oh my God, AI. It's such a scam. I can't believe you're talking about this. This is a joke. And sure enough, I think there was a recent survey that found that people in the US the approval rating of AI in general was like, like on par with like Congress or something. Like, it's, it's like, it's like people just like have a really negative view of it and. But then it's funny because I feel like, I feel like it's in public, everybody's like talking trash about AI. And then in private, everybody's buying and using it because it's the. I mean, I was telling you before the show, like, the conversion numbers on this has been, like, bonkers. Like, absolutely bonkers. It's converted my audience, like, better than I think anything I've ever promoted. Like, just the demand is insatiable.

[Scott Clary]

So demand is there. People just don't, like, publicly admitting to the fact that they're using AI.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. Or getting help.

[Scott Clary]

Or getting help. So you have two things. Two things that. Are people uncomfortable. That are. That are. Are uncomfortable for people to talk about. Yeah, I think that I. Listen. I think that both. Like, I want to talk just a little bit about content creation, and this is actually a really great segue because I think that even. And content creators in particular, and everybody. Like, I just saw a post from Alex Hormozi saying, I don't think I'll ever use EM dashes ever again. Just God forbid somebody thinks that I used AI to write this. So there is a lot of shame. And I think that with any new technology, there's almost this. I don't know, there's this, like, old guard that wants to protect the way things are done, the. The right way, even though, like, right is so subjective. And I feel like. Like, I don't quite understand the narrative around AI. I think it's changing. I think that it was very negative, and now it's getting less negative because for me, it's just like another tool. It's just another great tool. It helps with research. Now I don't have to spend, you know, 10 hours listening to podcasts, or I don't have to hire somebody to do research for me, or, God forbid, if I'm doing it myself. Now I can just put a whole bunch of, you know, podcast transcripts. I can put a book into Claude, and I like Claude better than chat GPT. And it helps me with all the research and the prep work. Like, I'm still creating the content myself, but it's optimizing the process. Do you feel like more creators just have to get on board with it?

[Mark Manson]

I think it's inevitable. I just think it's funny, I was having this. Having a conversation with my book agent a couple weeks ago, and she was asking me about AI, and I'm like, yeah, we're using it all the time.

[Scott Clary]

Right.

[Mark Manson]

And it's similar to you. Like, on our podcast, we cut our research per episode. We cut it down probably at this point, 80%. 80 to 90%. It used to take us multiple weeks to research an episode now it takes three to four days. So I was talking to her and I was kind of explaining this stuff and she was like, well, what about writing? And I'm like, well, sometimes if I need a bad first draft of something that saves time, so if Claude can generate a good one, I'll use it or outlining, coming up with like intros or opening line for something.

[Scott Clary]

Proofing stuff.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. And so I was kind of explaining all this stuff to her and she was like, oh man. Yeah, if we have meetings with publishers, like, don't tell them this. And I was like, really? And she was like, yeah, it's, you know, in, in kind of that old New York media industry. She's like, yeah, it's like a, it's like a bad, it's like a four letter word. Like people, people, they talk, talk bad about it. They talk down about it. Like it's only mentioned in, in, in terms of like how horrible it is and absolutely nobody would ever admit to using it. And I, I just, I heard that and I was like, wow, good luck.

[Scott Clary]

Well, because I think people that are talking bad about it, they're trying to protect their jobs for sure. But I mean like that.

[Mark Manson]

But what they don't get is that like they would become five times more effective at their jobs if they learned how to use it. I, so I just think, I think it's inevitable that like, like everybody who is not using it is going to get lapped by people who are using it for sure. And I'm already seeing that in my own team. You know, we've got people who are using it all the time and we've got people who are kind of dragging their feet and picking it up and learning how to use it. And it's very noticeable. I'll just say

[Scott Clary]

my thoughts on AI and content creation is the slop that you see and sort of like the stuff that prompts all the negative reaction to it is when people use it for the output, not the process.

[Mark Manson]

Yes, I agree.

[Scott Clary]

Now that's going to be interesting when it gets good enough that it's going to write better than a human. I don't think we're there yet, but it's getting very, very, very close. But even when I use it to help me generate ideas, like with Claude, I've put like hundreds of hours of me speaking of me podcasting and I've built, built a project around myself so it knows where I was born, who my parents are, what they did for a living. It knows what, what Gina does for like, she. It knows everything about me. So now when I ask it to help me formulate an idea or to proofread like, it. It. It's me. Yeah, it is quite literally me.

[Mark Manson]

We. We have a. I built a project in. In our Team Claude account. I. I call it the markification tool tool. And so it's basically just a project. It has samples of all my writing from every different format from YouTube scripts to books to tweets to articles to whatever. And it's basically the whole point of the tool is anybody on the team that needs to make a sentence. Let's say somebody's doing an Instagram caption or they need a CTA for an ad in a newsletter or something and I'm not around or I'm busy or something. It's like, just drop it in the markification tool and it's probably going to get it like 95.

[Scott Clary]

What is that? A couple of swear words?

[Mark Manson]

Add an F bomber too?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, no, that's. That's. That's so smart. I think so. I think creators have to. I think all the best creators, even if they don't admit it, they are. They're just waiting. HubSpot is a success story, partner. Now, if you like the show, you need to check out the Hustle Daily Show. It's hosted by Juliet Bennett, Ryla Rob littrust, Ben Berkley and Mark Dent. It's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast network. They break down the wildest stories in business and tech. Everything from billion dollar industries hiding in plain sight to the real impact AI is having on jobs right now. It's quick, it's smart, it's never boring, and it's daily. Listen to the Hustle Daily show wherever you get your podcasts for like the popular opinion to shift. But everybody's using it to some degree.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Talk to me about your. So, you know, we spoke about reinvention from author to. To co founder and founder and tech entrepreneur. The other reinvention was from author to podcaster, content creator. So obviously you like to create. You don't just. You don't just want to be just a founder. How did solved happen? Because that. You killed another podcast a couple months ago. I can't. What was that one?

[Mark Manson]

It was the subtle art. Not giving a podcast that was.

[Scott Clary]

It was actually branded as subtle art. Okay, so why did you kill that and replace it with subtle?

[Mark Manson]

We. So we launched subtle art that was just kind of like we should have a podcast and we didn't know what else to Call it so might as well call it the name of the super popular book to like get that audience going. The short answer is that my. Our space, especially podcasts and the self help space are so. They all sound the same. They're all. They're interviewing the same people. They're like, like, they've got the same titles, they're hitting the same talking points. They're all like 50 to 120 minutes long or, sorry, an hour and 20 minutes long. And it was funny. We would land a guest. I remember there was one time Cal Newport came to town because he had a new book coming out. And he came to my house directly from Rich Roll's house, and he was going to Huberman's house directly after my house. And so just doing a tour. Just doing a tour. And. And I'm just like, oh man, what are we doing? Like, because we're all, we're all, we're. We're all gonna put out the episode on the same week and he's gonna say the same thing in all of them, right? So I was just like, I gotta get out of it. Like, especially because a lot of these guys, you know, like, Rich has been doing this for 10 plus years. Lewis Howells has been doing this for 10, 15 years. Right? So I'm like, I'm not going to out compete these guys at what they already do.

[Scott Clary]

Dude, it's tough. It's tough. Like, I've built this from scrap, but I mean, like, I've been doing this for almost seven years now and I found the X factor is. Is you.

[Mark Manson]

Yes. Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So your personality.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I think you have to like, understand what your kind of hidden superpower is and then just lean way into that. And so on my team, we started talking about like, okay, how first, first of all, how can we stop doing what everybody else is doing and find a different format or something else? But also, what do we think we're actually better than everybody else at? And then how do we lean into that? And the conclusion we came to is just that Drew and I. Drew's my producer and he's my co host. We've been working together for almost 15 years. He was my original research assistant way back in 20, 2013. And the conclusion we came to is A, we have really good chemistry and we have this massive backlog of knowledge that we've surfaced together through just working together for so many years. But B, we really felt like we could kind of research anybody else in our space under the table. We felt like we were more informed on the academic research than most people. We had a better understanding of like, different results and different traits and personality and how it differs from states and all this stuff. And so we're like, we should just go super, super deep on a single topic and remove all the ambiguity from that topic. Because I think one of the biggest complaints in the self help space is that you'll listen to say like Diary of a CEO on Monday and he'll tell you that something's horrible and it's going to kill you. And then on Wednesday, another guest comes on and says it's the best thing in the world. And like, so people are just like, what's true? I don't know. All these guests are contradicting each other. So we're like, we're going to remove all the ambiguity. We're going to get the bottom of everything. We're going to be very nuanced and we're going to call it solved so that it's like, if you listen to this episode, you, you, you're not going to have to listen to anything else.

[Scott Clary]

So not just opinions, but like, we're going to go deeper than that and we're going to get to actual facts.

[Mark Manson]

We'll, we'll give you our opinions, but like, it's our opinions. It's more about the research. Like, we're going to give you a full 360 view of like, this is all of the research and thought behind this topic and what you can do about it.

[Scott Clary]

And subtle art was more just opinion based. Again, shooting from the head hip. Whatever the guest feels like talking about, we're going to let them talk about it.

[Mark Manson]

Totally.

[Scott Clary]

Is it working out? And I'm asking for myself, selfishly asking for a friend. But I'm also asking for creators who are trying to build an audience in 2026 and beyond who feel like it could be self help, it could be business, entrepreneurship, it could be whatever. They feel like their space is so, so crowded and they're just trying to find a way to carve out a niche.

[Mark Manson]

So it is working very, very well. I think we, the first, I think of the first 10 episodes, I think eight hit a million downloads. Like, it's crushing. Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And

[Mark Manson]

the downside is it's a lot of work. I would say we tripled the audience. Doubled or tripled the audience per episode, but we also doubled or tripled the work per episode. So I ended up having to hire more researchers, hired another producer, hired a marketing person for the podcast. So the team has expanded and grown kind of proportionally, but it is working. And I would say, to answer your question, I do think differentiation, this kind of comes back to that discussion of brand, right? If every market is saturated, the last most is brand is like, who are you? What do you stand for? What are you willing to give up? I actually had a. I just hired a new social media manager and I was having a conversation with her this morning and we were talking about, you know, Instagram, like my brand and like strategy for like Instagram or TikTok or whatever. And we were just talking about how optimized everything is. And we were talking about it and I was like, yeah, I almost feel like, like one way to think about brand is like choosing the ways to not be optimized, you know, like, because it's in 2026, like everything is optimized. Like everything, especially with AI and stuff, like everything is going to get super, super. Everybody's gonna have great hooks and everybody's gonna have like sick production and like awesome scripts and everything. So it's like, what are you choosing to be suboptimal on? Because that's actually. And then that needs to reflect the values of your audience.

[Scott Clary]

Audience. And usually that's just more hard work. I think, like it's testing and hard

[Mark Manson]

work in my case. Yeah, and probably, probably in yours as well. Like based on the brand of this podcast. You know, in my case, it's very much like, you know, a thorough honesty and like really intelligent, nuanced approach to a topic. But like, if you're somebody, you know, somebody like Mel Robbins, I, I honestly, I think, think she's crushing it so hard. Like her content is fine, but I think she's crushing it so hard because she has just cornered that middle aged woman audience. She's just owning it so hard. And that is the core audience of self help. So everything she does, you can see it. Everything she does from the way she looks, the way she talks, the way her intros are written, is very much catered to that avatar. And then that it is also who she is, right?

[Scott Clary]

She's that, like, she is, she speaks to herself, right?

[Mark Manson]

She's that spunky middle aged woman that, you know, you, you want to be friends with down the street. So it's like she's nailed it.

[Scott Clary]

So I also study podcasters and you're talking about sort of being you and building a mo. Your brand is your moat, which is like, these are, these are good ideas, but these are not new ideas. You can just forget them. Like, I remember hearing this from Seth Go Bowden. Speaking about like how you, you are the, you are the, you are the moat for your business. But I, I also like the idea of doing the extra research, doing the extra work because I think the bar is so low right now. Have you seen Acquired?

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I love Acquired.

[Scott Clary]

And they put in like a month of research for like one episode.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So I. It's like building a brand around you, testing all the time. Don't being married to what worked even six months ago. I think is a very important idea. Always like testing new stuff but then like just going the extra mile with your content. I think these are different ways to stand out.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah. One of the conversations we've been having a lot internally is what's irreplicable, like what is almost impossible to replicate. Because again what we're noticing, right. Is like any pithy quote or like brilliant post. Right. Anything that goes viral, it's just going to get copied by 100 people people tomorrow. Even like a killer guest. Right. Any other podcast can go get that guest. So it's like what are things that we can do that are really, really hard for other people to replicate? And so in our case, doing a four and a half hour episode on Procrastination and what is the science?

[Scott Clary]

This is actually almost how Huberman differentiated himself to a degree too.

[Mark Manson]

Exactly, exactly. And, and our two kind of like we modeled ourselves off of Huberman and Acquired. Those were like kind of our two north stars of like what would a art like a self help version of Acquired look like?

[Scott Clary]

Have you noticed that episodes where it's not even guest focused, but sort of like mark focused, like just doing solo stuff. Do those outperform the guests? Because I've noticed that from mine. So I've, I've started doing solo stuff.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And obviously we do the guest interviews, but the solo stuff gets all the replies, gets high retention. Instead of like you know, 60 to 70%, it's like, it's like 110% people are listening to it more than once. So I've noticed that like Scott is a differentiator because I can. You're going to go on 20 different podcasts.

[Mark Manson]

This is not my first podcast today.

[Scott Clary]

Exactly. You're going to go on 20 different ones. So how do I differentiate with like my audience? Audience? And it's a little bit about how I'll chat with you and some of the stuff that I believe in that'll bring to the conversation. Hopefully this isn't. I know it's probably very similar to most, but hopefully I brought in like a few different things. I don't know.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, of course.

[Scott Clary]

But I mean, the point is, it's that plus can they get more access to me in. And I think that I was just curious if you found that solo stuff does that well for you.

[Mark Manson]

So this is. This is one reason why we stopped doing guests is in the subtle art podcast. So we would go 50, 50. We would go every other episode. So one episode would just be Drew and I and then the next episode would be me and a guest. And it was interesting because if you looked at the average across say like 50 episodes, episodes with just Drew and I outperformed the episodes with the guest. But there is a caveat to that, which is that if out of like the top five best performing episodes that we ever did, like four of them were guest episodes. So the guests had like much wider deltas in terms of results, but the average was just doing it ourselves.

[Scott Clary]

Last idea I want to talk about, because you have a really strong opinion on this and I thought it was interesting. You do not like when people build a parasocial relationship, which I thought was interesting, because the goal of a creator should be, from my understanding of what a parasocial relationship is, where somebody believes they know you without ever having met you. Unless you define it differently, the goal of a creator should be to create that. Is that not correct?

[Mark Manson]

This. You are identifying a core tension inside of my business and my brand so that, yes, in a vacuum, yes, that is correct. In my case, a core part of my philosophy is agency. Right. One of the reasons I never push my personal values on the people is because that would rob them of the meaning that they get from discovering their own values and pursuing their own values. If you're pursuing somebody else's values, then then they're not really your values. You just value that person. So a huge part, I feel like if you need me to tell you how to live, this comes back to we're coming full circle. This is the self hating part of the self help guru. It's like if you need me to tell you how to live, then that's the problem in and of itself is you need to live for yourself first and foremost. And you can take my words as advice, you can take it as maybe a data point. But if you feel like you have a relationship with me, which you don't, and if you feel like anything I say is what you should go do, it's probably not. That is the fundamental problem.

[Scott Clary]

It's interesting. It's very interesting. Say, because Your success.

[Mark Manson]

Right.

[Scott Clary]

It just, it just, it just amplifies when you build that stronger parasocial. And some of the people we've spoken about on this podcast are incredibly good at building these parasocial relationships. Yes, they are. Because I think the, the, the view they take, not that it's right or wrong, is probably you don't have a framework to live your life. So hopefully if you emulate mine, your life's going to be significantly better.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, and I think, but that could

[Scott Clary]

be a short term.

[Mark Manson]

Well, and I think it like a lot of these people kind of occupy. You know, I referred to myself earlier as like, I'm kind of like the, the big brother who's like giving you tough love. Like that's not accidental. Like I really do think a lot of people in my space kind of occupy a role that people wish they had in their lives, but they don't. Like, I imagine a lot people of, of the younger women in Mel Robbins audience, she's probably the mom they wish they had. For a lot of the middle aged women, she's probably the sister they wish they had. So you run into that a lot. And I think in this market in particular, it's kind of dangerous territory because you are dealing with vulnerable people. But unfortunately it's also a very strategic part of the marketing calculus. Tony Robbins is such a fucking fascinating guy. Guy, the way he blew up is so brilliant, which is that he was in the early 80s, he was just a very small kind of local seminar leader I think down in San Diego. But what he discovered is that cable TV came online in 1980. And at the time, this is hard to imagine today, but there was not enough content in the world to fill all the cable TV channels, channels 24 hours. So you had all these new cable TV channels that would just go dark at like 9pm and they had nothing to show until like 9am the next morning. So you had all this dead air just like existing on the airwaves. And so Tony came along and well, he wasn't the first but like that's what these are when infomercials started popping up. And so Tony came along and he was like, well, who are the people that are sitting there staring at their static on their TV at like midnight by themselves? It's probably like really depressed people. Like these are my customers and clients 100%. So he just started buying all this dead air in the middle of the night to start marketing his seminars. And it's like that's exactly when depressed and anxious people were like stuck awake with nothing to do. So it's absolutely brilliant. Right. And, but it's a case of like, it's the, it's an example of kind of the moral hazard of this industry and that like sometimes the most effective way to market to people undermines their ability to improve.

[Scott Clary]

I think that, you know, we spoke about a couple ideas about this self help industry and I'm going to close with one last question just to understand sort of what you think is still broken in this industry. Just to take it home. But I wish more self help people, and this is something I think about too, understood the responsibility of their content. Because we spoke about ideas like speaking to, you know, depressed, anxious people that are in sort of a bad place in their life. We spoke about self help replacing religion.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Spoke about building with, you know, these parasocial relationships and implanting your own belief system in people's minds. Like they're heavy ass ideas.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

But I don't know if the average content creator really thinks about the responsibility they have when they build an audience.

[Mark Manson]

I don't either. And I would say that is the biggest problem in this industry is there's a lack of integrity among a lot of the biggest players. Not all. Like, some of them are great, some of them are kind of in a gray area. And then I'd say there's kind of a few bad apples. But, but you are dealing with very deeply vulnerable people and there is a lot of moral weight that comes with that. And I think it's incumbent on everybody to keep that front of mind all the time. That's one of the things in my company's values, number one, is integrity first. And I said we always have to remember that people on the other end of this are very, many of them are in a very vulnerable place. And, and it can be easy for us to take advantage of them or steer them in the wrong direction. So we need to take that very, very seriously. But the other aspect that I would add onto it as well is a little bit more of a philosophical thing. I guess I'm very Aristotlean in that. Aristotle believed that human flourishing was really boiled down to living with integrity. He called it the virtuous life. But it's essentially like the more integrity you have within yourself, the more moral upstanding you are, the more everything else is going to work itself out and you're just going to feel good about things. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And so it's like, ironically, I do think one of the best pieces of self help advice is to have integrity.

[Scott Clary]

That's a very good piece of advice.

[Mark Manson]

Right? It's like stand by your word. Like don't, you know, don't cause unnecessary drama. Like don't lie to people. Don't cheat on things. Like don't, you know, hide from yourself, don't hide from reality. I think these are just like very basic pieces of life advice. And so I also just feel like there's a responsibility in terms of embodying those traits in the space that's important.

[Scott Clary]

So just give one last piece of advice or like some, some words of wisdom to somebody who obviously follows your content and probably somebody who follows your content. You're not the only person they follow. They're looking to all the other players in the space and they're trying to figure out who they, they resonate with. What's your sort of words of advice? If they're going on a journey, they're trying to figure out how to be happy, be fulfilled, reinvent themselves. Like what should they do the most important thing before subscribing to someone else's or of worldview and just taking a tweet and just that, becoming their entire identity.

[Mark Manson]

Yeah, I would say everything is a suggestion. Everything. The only rule is do what works for you. Everything else is a suggestion.