Inside Mark Manson's $2,500,000 Creator Business | Full Breakdown

I was broke, unemployed. I was like, cool, let me try this. I was getting like 20 or 30,000 readers a month. And then by 2015, it was 2 million a month.

How many copies has Subtle Art sold at this point?

Subtle Art is somewhere around 16 to 17 million.

Oh, wow.

Over the next 5 years, I wrote 4 books, did a feature film, did a couple TV deals. And then 2 things happened. I was more stressed than ever and completely miserable. And then the second thing that happened was the pandemic. MrBeast is blowing up and Casey Neistat's doing his thing. And I just came out of Hollywood and saw how fucked up and broke everybody Universal's marketing strategy was essentially just my Instagram account. What are, what are you here for? Right? I was like, man, I want to go back to the internet. What I ended up with was a business that was like way out of date. We need to like redo everything. We have a lot of ideas around automated interactivity, almost kind of like a choose your own adventure style, but like instead of an adventure, it's like catered to whatever your specific issue is. If this works, I think it will 5 to 10 million a year in revenue is, is easy. This is something I'd like to really get across to creators as well.

You've seen a lot of waves of the creator economy long before it was called the creator economy and just, and have been building iterations of this business.

Totally. For a long time. Totally. So I'll give you like the very quick, like 3-minute summary of my career. And also kind of like the strategic phases. And so early on, I started my first blog in 2007. It was kind of on a lark. I didn't take it super seriously. I read 4-Hour Workweek in January of 2008. I was broke, unemployed. I was like, cool, let me try this.

Yeah.

And eventually managed, you know, started a bunch of websites, tried a bunch of blogs. Long story short, I eventually by 2010 I managed to build a very meager career as a blogger slash dating coach, and I was writing about primarily about dating and relationships that eventually pivoted into self-help in general. By 2013, the blog blew up, had millions of readers.

What made the blog blow up in 2013?

It was a combination of two things. Strategically, the biggest thing— so the news we were talking about The days before, the dark days before the newsfeed. So Facebook launched the newsfeed, I believe in 2011. And in hindsight, I think I just noticed before most people the viral power of the newsfeed. I noticed that if you had a really good, 'cause by that time I had studied copywriting and I was like, you know, I bet if you have a really good headline and a really interesting image, Facebook will just share this like all over the place.

[Speaker:NATHAN_BARRY] Yeah, 'cause for the first time you have real distribution beyond your friend group or immediate followers.

Back in the day, back in the early days of blogs, you had to rely on other bloggers linking to you.

Yep. Or Reddit or Digg.

Yes. Which was just a nightmare. Like it was, it was really, it was more about relationship building than anything else. So when the newsfeed came out, I realized, I think I realized the potential before most and I started really writing articles that were kind of optimized to go viral on Facebook. You know, self-help is generally— it's a very mainstream niche and it's like widely applicable. Around the same time, and this was not— I didn't put these two things together, but coincidentally around the same time, I was hitting a point in my like dating advice career where I realized that like 99% of dating advice is just life advice. It's just like, get your shit together.

And more people will want to be in a relationship with you.

Yeah. Like just like stop being awkward, get some confidence. Deal with your emotional issues. Like, that's, that's it. That is basically the dating advice that works. So I was pivoting to a more general self-help content in around the same time. And as I did that, I started focusing more on, you know, how do I get this stuff to travel on social media? How can I get shared more on Facebook? And the combination of those two things, I think I went probably like early 2011. I think I had maybe I was getting like 20 or 30,000 readers a month. And then by 2013, it was $1 million a month. Oh, wow. And then by 2015, it was $2 million a month. So just this insane exponential growth. And from there I got my first book deal, which eventually became "The Subtler Art of Not Giving a Fuck," became a huge bestseller and launched my publishing career. Now, the thing to note about this period, and I would say kind of the 2010s in general, is that the creator economy as we understand it today still didn't really exist. Like the roadmap back then was, if you can get famous enough on the internet, then maybe you can get a book deal or a TV deal or an album made or something, right? Like that was what everybody was trying to do. It's like, just get enough of an audience that a publisher or a studio or a record label will actually pay attention to you.

Yeah. A way to get past the traditional gatekeepers.

Yes, exactly. You were essentially market testing your art as a way to get your foot in the door. And so that's what I did. And it opened all the doors to the traditional media space. I wrote 4 books over the next 5 years. I wrote 4 books, I did a feature film, I did a couple TV deals that never got made. And for a number of years I did global speaking tours, like the whole shebang. And for many years I kind of, I was like, okay, cool, this is my career now. I'm like a best-selling author and gonna work in media and hopefully, get another movie made or something. And, uh, and, and then two things happened. The first thing was, is I was more stressed than ever and completely miserable. Uh, and then the second thing that happened was the pandemic. And I really think the pandemic, like, kind of permanently altered the trajectory of, of, of what we call the creator economy now. Like, it just it accelerated the move of everything away from traditional media into new and online media.

And well, because I mean, during that time, traditional media started showing up like creators.

Yes.

Right. They're, you know, all the, all the, the clickbait, the hooks, the hooks. But even like the production quality went to like, oh, this is actually worse than, you know, because no one had a home studio like this.

Yes.

And so they're like, all right, I'm now watching this talk show. Are you using Zoom?

Yeah, right? Like, it's like their iPhone. Drew Barrymore's got her iPhone out, you know? Like, yeah, it's, it's, um, in hindsight, it really accelerated this space in a really incredible way. I hit a point around 2021, '22, all my deals were up. It was like the first time in 5 or 6 years I wasn't working on a project. I'd basically been neglecting my online business for— I had essentially handed it over to my team to run for like the last 5 or 6 years, and they did a good job of maintaining it, but I wasn't keeping up with all the developments online, and I wasn't on all the platforms, and I wasn't doing video and all that stuff. And so in this period in '21 and '22, I like took some time off and I was like, you know, I really miss the online stuff. And the creator space was like all these Amazing people were blowing up around that time and it just seemed like it was getting way more serious and there was way more opportunity. And I actually started to feel, I was a little bit disenchanted with my traditional media experiences. Like I had worked enough with production companies and studios and stuff to realize like they don't know what the fuck they're doing. And actually if you go read financial news, like they're all losing money. And right. And meanwhile, I look and it's like MrBeast is blowing up and Casey Neistat's doing his thing and like all these amazing things are all these newsletters are taking off. And I was like, man, I want to go back to the internet. Like, this is, this is for real now. So in '22, I came back, basically spent the last 2 years just trying to kind of play catch up and get my brand kind of up to par with like what a big online brand is today. And then I think really just the last 6 months is kind of the first time that we're looking ahead to the next 5 years and like, okay, what's the next step? What's like the next big exciting thing that we can do? So yeah, I'm excited. I'm like, I'm having more fun than ever.

That's awesome.

This is home.

And like before the book came out and all that, what kind of revenue were you doing?

We were doing— so I sold online courses and I still did coaching and consulting at the time. So I think I actually, the year before the book came out, I think I did like $400K or $500K maybe.

Yeah.

I remember actually being pissed when the first royalty check came because I wanted to be a millionaire before. I didn't want the book to be the reason I became a millionaire. I was like this close and And we describe a millionaire as like invest—

like net worth, invested assets, or revenue from the business? How are you?

Net worth. Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. And so I was like, I was at like $850K net worth.

And you wanted the business to push it up.

And then like a $2 million royalty check showed up and I was like, goddamn it, I was so close.

What's the identity thing that comes from— nothing coming from the business versus the book?

Well, so here's— well, here's the funny thing, and I don't want to get too far off on the tangent, but And it took me a long time to realize this, but like the book is by far the most successful thing I've ever done. And it is very good chance it's the most successful thing I ever will do. I'm more proud of the business. It took me a long time to realize that, that I'm like, I'm more proud of the business and I actually, I'm probably a better writer than I am a businessman, but I think I enjoy business more than I enjoy writing. Yeah.

Okay. So the business is making $400,000, $500,000 a year somewhere.

Yeah. Mid-six figures. Yeah.

And then the book. What effect did the book have on the business revenue?

It was just an absurd tailwind. So at the time we were selling like a suite of courses. We still sell a suite of courses. Basically revenue tripled or quadrupled over the next couple years. Wow.

Not including book royalties.

Yeah, not including book royalties. So we probably, like, let's just say we went from like, half a million a year to like 2, 2.5 million a year, something like that over the next few years.

Yeah. Did you end up like scaling the team a bunch? Like, did you?

No, no. So I basically just handed— we'll come back to this too, because this is— this ended up biting me in the ass. But I basically, I signed a bunch of book deals in 2017. So I did a— I signed a 2-book deal with HarperCollins, my publisher, to do follow-ups for Subtle Art. And then I signed a big contract to do Will Smith's book.

Yep.

And I did also did a large project with, with Audible. And I basically went to my team and I was like, look guys, I'm basically not available anymore. Um, so I can give you, I'll write one article a month and I'll give you that and you guys run everything. And they did a great job. Like they, They took what we had and they maintained it and they improved it and they iterated on it and they like set up all the processes and stuff. Like, they're awesome. The problem was, is that there was no like long-term strategic outlook in pivoting because that's like what I did. And, and I wasn't— I was absent. I wasn't around. So what we ended up with, I mean, the three of us all made a bunch of money, but by 2020, 2021, what I ended up with was a business that was like way out of date. Yeah, it was like a business that was optimized for 2016, but it at this now it was 2022 and I'm like, oh fuck, we need to like literally redo everything from top to bottom. And that's essentially what I've been doing the past 2 years.

Okay. So in the— you have these different deals and projects coming together and and all of this building up, I guess what made you then turn and dive into YouTube? Because that's not like video is not your thing. I actually remember when this was, maybe 2019. Yeah. You came up and spoke at Craft and Commerce.

Yeah.

And it was interesting to watch because Casey Neistat had keynoted the year before.

Mm-hmm.

And I think Casey got mobbed at the Boise airport, like just as he's trying, like he's even trying to just get in the car.

Right, right.

And people are like, Casey?

Yeah, yeah.

You know, like they're starting to chase him down. You gave the closing talk and you attended the entire conference.

Yeah.

Like, and there are people who I think had conversations with you and then you're on stage later and they're like, that's Mark Manson? Right, because authors have this thing.

Right.

I think of you, James Clear, others where you're like, how many people like open that book jacket and be like, so that's what this guy looks like, you know? Yeah. But then as you make this pivot into YouTube, it's, you know, a very image, visual forward sense. And so, like, James and I were talking, I guess, a couple weeks ago, and he was like, yeah, I'm never, never touching video. Because he wants that, like, the name recognition and the—

I mean, being a famous author is kind of like the perfect amount of fame because people love you for your ideas, they love you for your brain, but they have no idea what you look like. You can go to any restaurant and hang out in any bar and nobody will ever bother you. But if you ever want that, like, ego boost, you can just, like, pull it out at a party and like, oh yeah, by the way, I wrote this book and everybody's like, oh my God, I've read that. Yeah, exactly. The YouTube thing, it's a great question. It was two-sided. One, there's a business side and there's a personal side. The, the personal side is I came out of that stretch of, you know, 4 books, movie, all that stuff. I was severely burnt out, very burnt out. And a huge part of that was just overworking. But in hindsight, what I realized too is that I didn't love not being the boss. Like, it's such a different experience. And this is something I'd like to really get across to creators as well. Especially out here in LA, I run across so many YouTubers, like their big, biggest dream is to like get a TV deal, like turn their YouTube channel into a TV show or something. And I'm just like, ooh. You're not in charge anymore. Yeah, yeah. First of all, you're gonna reach fewer people. You're gonna have less creative control. It's gonna take twice as long to produce. You're gonna make half as much money. Are you sure you wanna do this? Like, it's, I don't think creators understand, like, there's such a, uh, prestige around traditional media of being able to say, like, I have a TV show, that they don't realize how sucky the process is.

So you get this one win, which is primarily— probably maybe it's two wins. You get an ego win and you get a reputation win.

Yes.

That you could parlay into other things. Like, going back to 4-Hour Workweek, like, Tim writing about like, oh, guest lecturer at Princeton.

Yes.

Right. Getting that line in your bio.

Yeah.

Not useful in itself, but parlayed into other things is very useful.

Yeah.

So you have those two wins and you're basically saying in these other 8 categories, it's worse.

Yeah. I'll just give you an example. I mean, so one of the big— and this gets into the business motivation for YouTube, but so I did a feature film, we shot it in 2011. It's, it's a simple— it's a documentary, right? Oh yeah, sorry, 2021. Yeah, um, it, it's a simple documentary, you know, low budget, um, went straight to all the streamers. And I could have produced that film myself. I could have gone out and hired the people myself. I, I could have produced it, uh, probably for like a quarter.

Hmm.

Of what they spent on it and gotten basically the same result and could have distributed it probably to more people. When it came time to actually launch the film, I was pretty upset to realize that Universal's marketing strategy was essentially just my Instagram account. And I was like, I was like, if your whole strategy is my Instagram account, like, What are, what are you here for? Right? Like, so it was, I was so disillusioned with that whole process of, of just how needlessly expensive it was, how much red tape there was, how long it took, how many approvals it had to go through. And then on top of that, even when it was finished, every single country and territory, they had to negotiate a different deal. So there are countries that it went, it went to Netflix and it was in the top 10 and everything and it did really well. And then other countries where it's not on anything. And so when I announced it was coming out, I got like hundreds of emails from people being like, I can't find it anywhere. It's not on Netflix, it's not on Hulu, it's not on Apple, right? And I'm like, well, what country are you in? They're like, I'm in Italy. I'm like, goddamn it. Like, you know, and they kind of like email Universal and they're like, oh yeah, it's not out in Italy yet. I'm like, what the fuck? Let me explain to you how the internet works.

I'm like, come on.

Yeah, like just, let's just put it on YouTube and charge $5. Like how hard is this? So that was my frustrations around that was part of it as well. But back to the personal thing, I was very burnt out and I realized like I wanna come back to the internet. I wanna run my own thing. I like being in charge, but I wanna do something new. I want like a new challenge. I don't wanna, like I felt like there wasn't, like from a personal challenge point of view, there wasn't anywhere else to go with writing. Like any book I write is not gonna perform as well as the ones I've done already. Starting a blog in 2022, like who the fuck does that, right? Like it's, blogs are like little niche businesses. They don't have the same cultural clout that they had 15 years ago. So I'm like, what's something that's like new and exciting and difficult and I can be, I can fuck up and make all the mistakes and learn and have that excitement of like learning and growing and getting better and everything. And to me that was YouTube. And then you throw on top of that, I think YouTube is just, it's the best platform in terms of audience building in the 2020s. I think it has the most long-term potential. And I just came outta Hollywood and saw how fucked up and broke everybody is. And I'm like, well, they're probably not gonna be around forever. For much longer. So let's hop on the train that is going to be around. So the plan became like, okay, let's start doing video and let's just get excellent and world-class at that. And still trying to get there. It's been a work in progress.

So I want to know the inner workings of your business today and then where you're going long-term, because you and I were exchanging emails 9, 10 months ago, something like that. And you're like, I'm not sure where I'm headed with this. Like, I'm trying to figure out, you know, what's, what's the next step function in the business.

Yeah.

And we're talking today and you're like, yeah, I think, you know, there's still things to figure out, but I know where we're headed.

Yeah.

Maybe let's start with the breakdown of the business today and where revenue comes from and the team.

I guess we'll start with revenue. So as I mentioned in part one, we have this old product from like 2015, 2016, a suite of courses on my website, woefully out of date. We're currently, we're in the process of updating that. We'll talk about that in a little bit. At its peak, that had, I think, maybe 25,000 paying subscribers. I think today it's probably half that at most. We haven't kept up with it the last few years and it's, there's just been, people don't go to websites anymore. So there's been a pretty steady attrition of that, but that probably, probably makes up 3/4 of a million to a million per year. And then other than that, we do brand deals and sponsors on podcasts, YouTube, and newsletter. I think newsletter we're doing probably $400,000 to $500,000 a year. And then podcast is about 3/4 of a million a year, $800,000 a year. And then YouTube is probably another $300,000 to $400,000. So if you lump all that together, that's what, like $1.5 million?

Yeah, somewhere in there.

Somewhere in there.

And is that on YouTube, is that both AdSense and? And brands, yeah. And brand.

Brand deals, yeah. So we're overall, we're probably around $2, $2.5 million a year. I do still do a little bit of speaking, but that's probably like low six figures of revenue.

Yeah.

I don't do a whole lot of that. So we're probably, yeah, like $2, $2.5 million. I'm very aware that like we're quite under-monetized at the moment given the size of the audience and the maturity of the, like how long my relationship has been with the audience. And that's one of the things that we're like currently redoing. So I mentioned on the part one that The past 2 years has just been like redoing the business top to bottom. The first part of that was relaunching the newsletter, which I'm really happy with where the newsletter's at. We simplified it a bunch, built processes around it, like just made it like very, just very simple, easy, but high quality content each week. I'm super happy with how that's played out. I couldn't be happier with the newsletter. Our engagement metrics are great and it is relatively low lift. So I'm very, the newsletter is in a great spot. Don't, it's, as you know, it's the lifeblood of any creator business. So it's like we don't need to touch or mess with that. So the plan, one of the things I realized when I came back is I was like, okay, The world has changed. My industry has changed. The creator economy in general has changed quite a bit. My audience has changed. I've changed. I realize that I'm like, I need to, before I can relaunch my backend and relaunch my product and put something out there that's more modern and optimized and I've put a lot more thought and effort into, I was like, I need to spend a couple years making content again and kind of like, it's gonna sound cheesy, but like rediscover who I am.

Yeah.

Rediscover who the audience is. Like things have changed a lot, right? So I knew that I was gonna need a process of a couple years to start doing video, launch a podcast, try out some new ideas, some new content forms, find my footing again. And then once I kind of figured that out, then I could kind of go back to the backend and be like, okay, let's put something together that's like really premium and that people love. That we know, like, the audience is going to really be excited about. So that process has been happening the past year and a half. We are just now in the early stages of rebuilding the backend of, like, building the new backend product. Um, that will probably take another year. Um, my plan originally was like, I understood, I'm like, I'm going to have to, if I, if I get into video content, you just have to hire people. There's no way around it. It costs a lot of money. And if I want to do like a really high-quality premium backend product, I'm also going to have to hire people. So I was like, I'm going to have my, my team size is going to go up, but there's going to be kind of this, this gap of revenue because my old product is diminishing in revenue and I'm not going to have a new product for like 2 years. So I need to like cover that gap. And the plan was to do brand sponsorships to kind of like bridge that gap. And then once I launched my new backend, I could kind of evaluate like, okay, how many brands do I want to work with? Do I want to keep doing ads? Do I not want to do ads? And I, you know, I could kind of like mix and match and figure out what I wanted. So that's what we've been doing. The brand play, like, It hasn't worked out as well as I thought. I mean, this isn't gonna surprise anybody. Ads fucking suck. Like, nobody likes doing ads. No audience likes ads. I've just noticed too that it's, aside from it just not being fun, not being fun for me, fun for the team, fun for the audience, there's a lot of behind-the-scenes headaches that go on. I know you're aware of this, but there's like—

Approvals.

Oh my God.

Copy. Copy. Tracking link should actually be this, right?

Like the landing page is wrong or like, you know, somebody's calendar got mixed up and we sent out the promotion a week early or a week late or, you know, like it— there's like a constant administrative headache that happens on the back end. And also some brands are easy to work with, some brands are not easy to work with, some products are great, some products kind of aren't great. And then sometimes even when you have a great brand and a great product, sometimes the audience doesn't like it, right? It doesn't convert and they don't like hearing about it. So it's just been a huge pain in the ass. And I've actually hit a place recently, actually, really since we kind of finally figured out what the backend product is going to be. I'm actually curious to hear your take on this, but I'm like, I got all this book money. Like, I got money, right? I can— my business can lose money for a year, right? Like, if I think we're gonna get to a place where— I know it's risky, but like, like, if the choice is do a bunch of brand deals that I'm not excited about, that add a ton of overhead to the team, that the team's not excited about, that the audience isn't excited about, to essentially just make, like, make enough money to keep payroll going until we, like, launch all the backend stuff, or if I just eat that for a year, essentially see it as like an investment, like, you know.

Oh yeah, I have so many thoughts on this.

Yeah. So it's, it's been a weird thing where I'm like in this place where I'm like, do I intentionally make less money over the next year or two to set myself up better? Because then it's like, if we don't, if all of our content products, if the YouTube channel and the podcast and everything, if they don't have ads, then we can integrate our own product promotions, right? The ads for your own things will do quite well, seamlessly and like aggressively, right?

So, and the ad read for it should be pretty good.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's like, I believe in this product, right? And it's like, and the other thing too is like, because some of the ideas that we have around promoting the new backend products is like, we want to We don't just want to like do ad reads. We want to like actually integrate it into the content, right? So like take one of the community members from the backend product and like feature their story on the podcast as a way to promote the backend product.

But and then this is the breakthrough that they had.

Exactly. Exactly.

But even a very simple integration, I think of Ramit Sethi's Netflix show. Yeah, right. And, you know, as he's working with couples through these things, right, then he's like, here's the journal.

Yes.

Is sliding across. On the table, you know, and like, totally, us book nerds are looking and being like, oh yeah, and that journal is in fact number 4 on Amazon.

Yeah, what a coincidence. Yeah, but then I, you know, so it's like, if I, but if I have like 4 podcast sponsors that week, how it fits in. Yeah, like whoever gets slotted after my promotion for my own shit is probably gonna complain and be like, you know, well, yeah, whatever. So That's what I'm like wrestling with that question at the moment.

Okay. I have a bunch of thoughts on this. Uh, 3 things I want to dive into. Uh, one is the book money. We should touch on that a little bit to the extent that you want to. Second is thinking of taking the pressure off of sponsorships and what it means. And then third is I want to get into what would it mean to build out these backend products in like a quarter of the timeline that you're talking about? Oh boy.

Sweating, sweating, just thinking about that last thought exercise.

And then probably the last one is—

Means I would sleep on the floor of this studio.

Yeah, exactly. You know, the carpet seems really comfy.

Yeah, yeah.

Your wife's like, I don't like Nathan Barry.

No, you're— get out of here.

Yeah, exactly.

Don't talk to the team on your way out either.

So first, diving into the book Money, because you have this thriving business.

Yes.

How many copies has Subtle Art sold at this point?

Subtle Art is somewhere around $16 to $17 million. And then the other two books, all the books together, it's around $20 million.

Around $20 million.

Yeah.

Can we assume $2 a copy?

Sure.

If we're directionally correct?

Sure. Yeah.

Uh, one thing that I'm curious about is what does the long tail of those book sales look like? Is it, are they continuing to compound and sell really well or Uh, has it peaked and it's all tapered off?

It's definitely peaked, but like the, the back end, it's a, it's a nice— I mean, Salon was on the New York Times list like a week or two ago.

Yeah.

And it's been out for 8 years. So like, we're doing all right.

Yeah.

It's still doing well.

Yeah.

Yeah. I do— to clarify for listeners and to you as well, I do not count book royalties in, in the business revenue.

Yeah.

And never have. So I've always made a point to keep the business profitable on its own terms.

Yeah, that makes sense.

This would be the first time ever that I'm essentially using book royalty money to bridge us through like an expensive period.

Yeah, that makes sense. What do you think about in, like, what does that bring up as you think of, are there fears around that of? Putting money in there? Is there some slippery slope that's going to happen where it's like, oh, now that, you know, you've pierced this corporate veil, now like you're just going to be throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars? Yes. Into this.

So there's, there's some irrational fears and some rational fears.

Yeah.

I think I'll start with the irrational ones. I think as somebody like you who bootstrapped, I took a lot of care and a lot of pride for a lot of years to never spend more than what was coming in.

Right.

And because there was, for most of my career, that was not an option. Like, that was just simply not available.

Right. More than that means credit card debt.

Exactly. Exactly. So I always went through pains to do that. And, and I guess there's a little bit of pride around that. So, so the fact that, like, there's— it's one of those things that it's so ingrained in me that it took me a while to even consider that this is an a possibility. And then once I considered it, I was like, oh yeah, duh. Like, this is— there's— of course, like, you can take a loss for a year, year and a half, and then be in a better place 2 years from now, right? So, so that's kind of the irrational side of it. It just feels very uncomfortable because I've never— I think financially I've always been a little bit conservative. I think the rational fear is just if we do this and it doesn't work, you know, let's say we launch the backend thing and it like flops or whatever, it puts the business in a really ugly spot. Right. Where it's essentially like, okay, either I need to like aggressively go back to brand sponsorships, or I need to let people go. And both of those things feel really bad.

So you don't want to get yourself in a situation where that could be a possibility.

Yeah.

There's something that I noticed with creators, probably all business owners, I just hang out with creators more, is when things are held really tightly and like this has to work, it often puts a bunch of pressure on it. And when something is sold to an audience, they can feel that.

They sense that, yeah.

It's like when you're riding a horse or something, it's like, hey, the horse can sense your fear. You know, and you're like, chill the fuck out.

Totally, totally.

And so yeah, that's a really interesting thing to be aware of. Like it's the people that it feels like where they're like, oh, I don't really need this to work.

Right.

That the audience can sense that and be like, oh, you're just doing this for the love of it. And yeah, you know, it ends up driving more and more sales.

I mean, this gets a little bit broader and more philosophical, but I'm also in a place where I'm doing this because it's fun.

Yeah.

Like, it's— I'm, I'm, I'm at this point, I'm here because I just love building a creator business. And, and it's like, if I didn't want to work again, I don't have to. It's easy on me, right? Like, I'll be fine. You know, if I need to put $500K into the business to see us through the next couple of years and get this thing out and then it doesn't work, I'll be fine. It just puts it just it puts the business in a bad spot, right? So it's riskier.

[Speaker:NATHAN_BARRY] Yeah, messes with the fundamentals.

[Speaker:ARTHUR_BROOKS] Yeah, but then it also raises the question, 'cause it's to that point of I'm doing this 'cause it's fun. When I started, when I came back and I started working again, one of the, because of the intense burnout I experienced from 2016, after that run of 4 books and a movie, I made an agreement with myself, which is you don't have to do anything that's not fun again, so don't do anything that's not fun, right? So it's like if I end up, if I do end up in a place where I've built a business that is completely dependent on running a shitload of ads to a bunch of brands that I don't give a damn about, like that's not fun. That feels like failure, right? So to me it feels like I kind of have to go for it. And I've talked to some people on the team and they're like, they're in for it. I actually expected, them to be way more hesitant and worried about it. 'Cause I'm like, hey guys, this is gonna be risky. And if it doesn't work, like, it's gonna put you guys in a tough spot. And to my surprise, the team has been like, no, fuck the ads. They're like, let's do it. Let's make an amazing product. And I'm like, okay.

Well, so let's talk about what goes into making an amazing product. 'Cause you've talked about timelines of a year or multiple years. So what does that process look like to you?

I'm approaching it very similar to— I'd like to talk about YouTube at some point as well, but, you know, looking at, you know, 10 years ago, online courses were relatively novel. Now they're like dime a dozen. They're everywhere, similar to YouTube channels. Like they're all kind of the same, you know? So in my space, which is personal development, for the most part, you're kind of limited to educational products. So I've been asking myself, like, what is a way to elevate a personal development educational product? Like, beyond just like, okay, here's 10 lessons, you get a video and an exercise, you know, like, everybody's already done that a bunch of times. So like, what, what brings it up to another level? And so we have a lot of ideas around kind of automated interactivity, almost kind of like a choose your own adventure style. But like, instead of an adventure, it's like, catered to whatever your specific issue is. So it feels, I think, between just the breadth of knowledge that I have over the amount of years and then leveraging some automation and some AI, we can make it feel very personalized for each individual user. Two users could take the same, we'll call it a course, and have completely different experiences. And even the same user could take it twice and get completely different experiences both times. Like, that's the goal. And I think, I think I know how to do it, but it will take a while. The development will take much longer than a normal course.

You can't just say, hey, we're going to spend 2 weeks and outline the content, another 2 weeks to shoot it, and we're done.

Exactly. And then on the backside of that, I really, really, really, I'm a big believer long-term in community. And what I've noticed at this point, at this stage of my career, is like a lot of my fans have been around for a long time and they kind of crave meeting other fans or like-minded people. And so I love the idea of really building a community and then integrating that the same way we kind of integrate the community into the newsletter, finding ways to integrate them into the YouTube channel. So it's like anywhere I go to shoot a YouTube video, we invite out all the community members for a meetup and to be part of the video, right? You know, find ways to integrate into the podcast, stuff like that. So like, I'm really excited around a lot of ideas like that. So like, that's kind of the vision at the moment.

Yeah, I like where that's headed. And again, I just keep seeing the flywheels and what you're doing and the integration between it. Even as you're talking about it, I still project the idea that this is like a multi-year project.

Maybe it's— you're gonna— I'm gonna push on that one a little bit.

I'm gonna be sleeping on the floor.

I can already tell.

Now, part of it, like, you always have to think about what are your constraints. Yeah, yeah. Right? And one of your constraints is this has to be fun. Yes. Right? Because otherwise, why are we doing this?

Totally.

Um, and then another is it has to be really, really high quality. Yes. Because we're replacing something that already exists. If we wanted, uh, you know, good for the time, mediocre for now.

Right.

We, we have that already. Um, you have constraints around your time. Yeah, like I don't get the feeling that you're like, hey, let's work on this for 70 hours a week for a month or 3 months.

No.

And then there's some constraint around money, right? Where you're saying, hey, I'm willing to invest in this. And one thing that I would point out is you— there's a difference between like investing for an outcome, like, hey, $200,000 is going to get me this outcome and I'm going to front that versus like, hey, I'm going to front $50,000 a month Maybe in perpetuity.

And that's scarier, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is scarier.

And so you could tie money to a specific thing without it destabilizing the business.

My wife framed it really well for me recently when I was talking to her about this. She said, she was like, imagine it's not you. Imagine it's another person in your situation and they came to you and asked you to invest the money. Would you think it's a good investment? And I was like, wow, that's a really good way to think about it. And I do, I do think it would be a good investment. Like, it's the sort of thing, like if this works, I think it will, $5 to $10 million a year in revenue is easy. Makes sense. Yeah.

Yeah, you have the audience size for it. And so it's, you know, then you have the product quality and then the funnel and the marketing to connect those two. If the bottleneck is not wanting to have, not wanting to have to invest the outside money, then the way that I would solve for that is I would be figuring out what is the 6-month version of this that's going to be making $400,000 a month, that kind of thing, $500,000 a month that we could do a meaningful launch to then build the next versions of it. I see way too many people. Maybe it's, it's the thing that you didn't do with the YouTube channel, right? You didn't like wait till it was perfect. You had the perfect idea and then launched in. You started iterating towards it. Yeah. And then you found it. And so I want to make sure that on the, you know, the content and the course and the— Yeah. That you're building, that you're iterating not just from a like behind the scenes with their little test group.

Yes, yes, yes.

But you're iterating all the way in with the customers.

So we've talked about doing a soft launch to current customers, former customers, and then like probably, we'll probably segment the most engaged newsletter subscribers or something. Yeah. Do kind of a soft launch to maybe a few hundred thousand people or something. And I think right now the most recent timeline— it's funny, people on the team disagree. There's like a debate. I think we could do it by Q2 next year. Some people on the team are like, Q3 is aggressive, probably Q4. You know, other people are like, what are you talking about? This will take like a month. And I'm like, I'd be friends with those people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's why soon your team and my team will hate me.

Yeah, right. Uh, realistically speaking, I— so if I had no other commitments, yeah, I do think we could probably get a soft launch out in, in a similar timeframe that you were saying. Um, unfortunately I have a speaking tour in Australia coming up, right? We're doing a couple of YouTube shoots down there. We've got the holidays coming up. Um, we've got podcast shoots.

Yep. A bunch of other commitments.

Yeah. So it's realistically, I think I personally think, I think we could get kind of a beta launch by beginning of next summer.

Yeah.

Which is roughly 6, 8 months from now. We're, what month is it?

October.

It's October.

October 2nd right now.

Yeah. So probably, yeah. Uh, 6 to 8 months from now. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. If I can keep going with the unsolicited feedback.

Sure. Please. Please.

I would want to do two changes.

Okay.

One, think about everything in terms of first principles of what actual— what work exactly has to be done. This is like Elon Musk launching rockets.

Yeah.

Where he's like, why does a rocket cost, you know, whatever, $100 million? And like, well, you know, all this. And he's like, okay, but the metal for this part, this, you know, all these things like The component parts add up to like $3 million. So where's the other $97 million? And I think the same is true in a lot of projects where people speculate of, okay, what it might take or all of that. And the thing that helps, especially with the team, everybody understanding clarity, and it might extend the timeline significantly or shorten it, you know, right. But is listing out every everything that goes into it. And just getting very specific.

Yeah.

And then the other thing is, if you want a team to execute efficiently, you should talk in terms of weeks, not months or quarters.

Okay.

Because then if you assign things like days, it's always lame when someone's like, okay, well, I'm going to work on this part for 2 days and that one for 4. And it's like, you don't know.

Yeah, you have no idea.

You know, like days and hours. Yeah, we're going to be off by a lot. But weeks, you can be directionally correct.

Yeah.

And it's a granular enough unit of time that it's not like months or quarters, like, okay, well, we'll spend, you know, January and February on this and on from there. And I've found that when you do like the giant whiteboard session or the, you know, really detailed Notion task list and you're doing it in those terms of first principles, what's the exact work that needs to be done? And then mapping it to weeks, then everybody gets on the same page and you get to, you get from this like hypothetical, like, you know, how would this go into very specific things. And then when you take the task list and put in like who's actually needs to be involved, then you might find that like, oh, when you're in Australia, there's like 2 other team members who are like, actually I could be doing these other things.

Right. I wish my operations person was in the room right now. It's funny because this has come up. Because again, like I said, the different people on the team have like completely different perceptions of how long this is going to take. And some of the people who think it's going to take longer, like, so like my operations person, she's like, she showed me a timeline a day or two ago.

Yeah.

And it showed like basically a year from now, right? For a soft launch. I pointed out, I was like, I was like, well, these three things are done by different people so they can be done simultaneously. Right. And but I think what you're saying is probably like create categories. Like what are the technical tasks that need to be done? What are, what's the content tasks that need to be done? What are the marketing tasks that need to be done? List them all out, assign them to people, mark how many weeks it would take. And then those, those 3 categories, like assuming, I mean, they are all different people, they can all be done simultaneously. So then you probably end up with shorter time than you think. So yeah.

And the other thing you could do is assign a confidence level to each thing.

Yeah.

When we're doing software development, this is really important.

Yeah.

Because often we're like, okay, we're going to build this and we think it's going to take, you know, this one person 4 weeks. What's our confidence level on that?

Right.

And if we're like 50%, then it's fair to assume that we're either padding that estimate by a ton or we're going to way overrun it or something else. And so then you can ask like, okay, what, what can I do in a day that would change, you know, or a week that would change that confidence level? Basically, what could I do? Whatever the estimate is.

Yeah.

What can I do in 10% of that time that would change my confidence level in my estimate from 50% to 90%?

Yeah.

And then that gets people on the same page, right? Because we're going to be talking and you're going to say like, oh, this will be easy. I'm like, no, it's going to be so hard, all of this. And if you go, hey, why don't you spend an hour and Dive in or go interview an expert on customized AI path learnings in a course and then report back. Then we're having much more of the same conversation.

So we'll definitely do that exercise. Thank you for that. Question for you though. Let's say we do that exercise and let's say it does come back. Like a year. We need a year for a soft launch and probably 18 months for a full launch, which means If we discontinue ads next year, which we're looking at, yeah, we're probably in the red a few hundred K in 2025. What are your thoughts on just eating that and living with it and seeing how it goes versus maybe extending ad? Like, that's been a conversation. It's like, well, what if we just take like our 10 favorite brands and just keep enough brands on board to like pay the bills? Not necessarily try to make a bunch of profit. Yeah. You know, like that's been an idea that we've talked about.

I think squeezing the last bit of juice out of something is really hard.

Yeah.

And so I like the idea of, you know, what's the 80/20 on ads and mapping that out and then just saying, cool, we're happy to drop this $200 grand a year in revenue or whatever it is. That's most of the work and just not worth it. There's also some of that, you know, as you kind of raise rates and you're like, I don't, You know, someone's like, I'd like to sponsor your newsletter. And you're like, sure, the rate's this. And they're like, no, how about this? And you're like, oh, I'm sorry, I think you misunderstood how this works.

Yeah, right.

Like, I don't actually care.

Yeah. Yeah.

So that's part of it. So I would go to the 80/20 on ads rather than— I'm just not a, like, huge swings type of person.

That's a guy. Yeah.

Yeah. But then the other thing is I would put the money in.

Yeah.

Like, it's just like, what would it look like if it was fun? And, you know, you just say like, I want it to, I want the, yes, I could do a cheaper version of this YouTube production. I don't want to.

Yeah.

You know? And you're like, I actually made more money from books in this amount of time, you know, or whatever it is.

That's, I'm definitely kind of mentally there at this point. I was really kind of agonizing about this maybe a week ago. And I think I'm like landing where you just said, like if I, half a million dollars is not gonna affect my life at all. I'm not doing anything else with that money.

Like, isn't the best— And you genuinely think it's a good investment.

And I do. Like, and you know, it's like the best investments in yourself. And it's also, if it doesn't work, like, I don't know, there's still other ways. There's always, in business, there's always other opportunities, right? So there's always other ways to figure things out. So I am kind of landing there.

One key thing that I would do is I would separate out the recurring expenses versus the one-time expenses. And I don't know if this is just a quirk of how I think or, you know, like I get nervous about money. Yeah, it's just how I grew up. All of those things, the rationally I should not get nervous about money at this point. I still do.

Yeah.

So in that I would say, okay, the business is funding all of these recurring expenses, but I am investing for this software build-out that's gonna be $200 grand, or this other thing. You know, we're gonna do this whole shoot. We're not doing a new shoot every month till the end of time. We're doing this whole shoot that's gonna be $100 grand, and that's what I'm funding. And then you're never like, oh, if this doesn't work out, then I can't make payroll without putting in more money. Because the business, the recurring, you know, product sales and all of that funds the business. And that's really fun. You just funded the step function.

Yeah, that feels better.

We all work in marketing, you know?

I mean, it is really funny just how it's like psychologically it's almost just reframing somebody like or something like just makes you feel better about it. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that looks like where I'm headed at the moment. Um, on the content front, I'm, I'm a huge believer in, in video and YouTube. I personally believe that YouTube is basically going to be the next cable television.

Yeah.

Um, and I do think there's a little bit of a, a land grab opportunity at the moment. One of the things I find very interesting about YouTube is like, if you look at, uh, the demographics of YouTube users, below, say, 25, it's just absurd. It's like 98% of people under 25 are on YouTube. It's where they spend most of their time. It's where they get most of their media consumption, everything. And then you look over 25, it's like, oh, it's just this fun thing people do occasionally. So the question I've been asking is like, what happens when all those people under 25 are 25 to 35, right? Like, yeah, in 10 years, this is basically going to be the largest media platform in the world.

And it's where my kids They are 12, 10, and 5. And they will— the— my older two, you know, they're like, can we watch YouTube?

Yeah.

And I'm like, yes, these channels, like these things. But I'm like, can't you find something on Disney+ that you want to watch? And they're like, no, no, not at all. Zero interest.

You know, I was, uh, I was— I heard an interview of, you know, the comedian Andrew Schultz. He was talking about, uh, because he like bought back a couple of his comedy specials and put them out himself on YouTube and Uh, he was saying how he was at Thanksgiving and he wanted to watch the football game. And so he told his, like, nephew— his nephew was like 8 years old or something— he said, hey, can you go turn on the football game? And his nephew was like, sure, what channel is it on? And he was like, CBS. And he said the nephew pulled up YouTube and typed in CBS and was like really upset because he couldn't find the football game. He was like really sad. He was like, I've looked everywhere, I can't find it. And No, it's actually not.

It's on cable.

Yeah, yeah. Andrew was like, what are you doing?

But yeah, like, you think about people make business decisions based on the demographics today.

Yeah, right.

And say like, okay, this much is on YouTube when versus— or like, of consumption is in each place.

Yeah.

And it's like, well, think about what happens when When we all die.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When we're all old and irrelevant, um, it— so my sense is I feel like there's a little bit of a land grab opportunity in terms of, um, like, I— the question I ask myself is what if there was a YouTube channel of the production quality of that of like Netflix or HBO, right? Because I've seen enough of traditional media and talked to enough people in this town to know for a fact that most of the stuff that gets produced on Netflix and HBO could be produced for 10% of the cost if you don't have all the overhead and red tape and bullshit that Hollywood has, right?

So you're looking at who is actually doing the writing behind the cameras, doing the editing and all of that, and you're like, I can go hire all of those people, right? Those are actually freelancers, like people that I'm familiar with working with in—

Yes, in— Yes, correct. And I feel like we're— there's a— there's actually a very interesting arbitrage opportunity at the moment where YouTubers don't quite have enough money to do that. Right. So it's like, let's say a typical, like, documentary series on Netflix costs, I don't know, $5 to $10 million. Okay. You could probably make it for $1 million. Um, like, unless you're MrBeast, you don't have the money to do that. And, uh, or you don't know, have the managerial skills or the business skills to like go put that team together and make it happen, right? But I do feel like the first people who are able to do that, like, there's just going to be incredible upside over the long run. Like, if you build, if you build a really prestigious brand on YouTube, I think that's gonna compound and travel further. I also think there's probably some, like, economies of scale stuff that can happen. Like, video's so expensive and it's so resource-intensive. It's not like blogging, it's not like podcasting. Like, podcasting, you can buy a mic for $100 and—

Yeah, $500 and we're doing it.

Set up an iPhone and, like, you've got a podcast. But, like, where YouTube is gonna be very soon is, like you probably need at least a few thousand dollars worth of camera equipment and a few thousand dollars worth of editing. Like the days of just vlogging in your bedroom are, they're not gone, but I don't think that's gonna be, that's not where most of the views are gonna be. Or it's already, that's not where the views are. And I think it's just gonna diminish even further. I think I'm really thinking a lot about like what is the future of online video content gonna look like? And I think it's gonna look like a, more efficient, less rigid form of essentially television production. And I think if you are one of the first people there and you build those teams and you build those brands, you'll be in a very strong business position to invest in other creators and brands to get them the same machinery. You know, say, hey, you're really talented, you've got some great videos. Like, I've got the team, I got the resources, I got the studio with all the equipment. Let's like actually turn your channel into like a TV production quality show. You'll make 10 times as much money and then I'll take 20% of it or 40% of it or whatever.

One thing that I'm thinking about is, you know, in the first episode we did, we were talking about like sort of this barbell of team size and all of that. And there's like death in the middle. You can build a minimal business that's highly profitable or maximal business that has a big team and real scale. And And the in-between, there's death. There's a different barbell or spectrum that I'm seeing here where it's sort of like there's the scrappy, we're just doing our own thing, you know, traditional creator production model. And then there's like film TV show.

Call it the MrBeast model, right? Just like tons of money, studio equipment.

But in the middle, Yeah, you can absolutely create things that have the same distribution reach of TV, do it at a fraction of the cost, but it's a different mindset that you show up with. And that's really the differentiator is the production quality there.

I have, you know, we joke about me being an old timer. One of the things, I've been meeting a lot of YouTubers last year, and one of the things that has been both shocking to me both in a negative and in a positive sense, is the disparity between the size of some of these audiences. And I don't, I'm not trying to be insulting, but just like the lack of sophistication, business knowledge. Like a lot of these guys, they're like 22. They've never run anything before. They never had a job before. They didn't go to college, you know? And they like, like they're making millions of dollars. They have like 10 million subscribers. Like I had a guy ask me how to, like how to find a tax accountant. I'm like, dude, you have like 15 million subs. Like what are you doing? Like how do you, how have you not figured this out? You know, it's, it's pretty crazy. And so I see that as a huge opportunity. Like there's, there's so, so much attention on this platform. And it's not being leveraged properly at all. I really think MrBeast is kind of like the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, he's just the first of many, and he might not even last given how things are going right now. That's a whole can of worms.

That's a whole can of worms.

We'll leave that one closed for the moment. No, MrBeast will last. But like, I mean, it's— he's a perfect example, right? Like, it's, it's people within the YouTube world have known forever that, like, his organization is a mess. And, yeah, there's all sorts of labor issues and that have been going on for a long time. But it wasn't until he got, you know, an Amazon deal that, like, that stuff actually becomes an issue. But it's— that's YouTube in a nutshell. Like, it's— everybody's riding this wave, uh, and, and building the boat at as they ride it and hoping that it's like built in time before it crashes. Right. You know, so I'm hoping to be somebody who can show up with a fully made boat.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so we fast forward to, say, 2 years from now.

Yeah.

What does the business look like that you're imagining?

So the business I'm imagining, the YouTube channel is a high-quality documentary style high production value show, essentially, that's built a very strong brand and audience native on YouTube. The newsletters continue to grow and continued as is. Podcast has continued. You know, I see podcast mostly as optimizing for engagement and relationship. So I see that, you know, the YouTube channel is what drives growth, audience growth and awareness. Podcast and newsletter drive engagement relationship, and then the everything eventually flows to the backend product, the community and everything. And that's where the monetization happens. That's how I see it right now.

Yeah, that's awesome. Have you ever seen Walt Disney's sketch of— Yes. Like how Disneyland, you know, not Disneyland, the whole Disney. Yes. All of Disney, the IP licensing, everything. As you were talking, like, I imagine a sketch like that for your business where there's— everything is so intertwined. Like, first you're serving the same audience. A lot of creators do this thing where they're like, here's this audience and then I actually have this passion over here and so I'm going to go do that. And you're like, there's like a 4% audience overlap.

But yeah, sure, that's a good idea.

So you have, you know, 100% audience overlap. And then you have like the integrations between the different channels are so strong where the content for the newsletter is helping to write itself because of the breakthroughs that people are having.

Exactly.

And you know, you're using the newsletter to get people to like to tell them about meetups. They're showing up, they're in the YouTube channel.

Right, they're in a YouTube video, which then they go see, they show it to all their friends and you know, and it's we've actually internally, we've started talking about it as building an ecosystem, which is, it's similar to the Disney thing, right? Like it's, um, there's an entry point, which is primarily through you. And part of that ecosystem is understanding that each platform does something better than the others, right? Like YouTube is amazing for discovery. Uh, it's not great for monetization. Podcasts are great for monetization and engagement. but they're not great for discovery. You know, newsletters are amazing for relationship building, but it's—

and pushing content on your terms.

Yes. And, uh, so it's like everything has a role to play. Um, like nothing is, is it, it's almost like, it's like, it's like a division of labor between all the different platforms. Like that's kind of the vision I have. Um, but the, the two core the two big pieces, you know, the newsletter I feel like is already there. The podcast is very close. The two big pieces that need to— and they're arguably the two most important ones— is like getting the YouTube channel there, which I think we'll get there next year.

Yep.

And then just making sure this product's like, yeah, fucking rock solid. Yeah. Yeah.

Another way that I've heard it, John Durant, who's a really great investor in the consumer product space and all of that, he talked about it as like the different divisions in the military. Each one has a different, you know, the Air Force says, yeah, you don't go and invade a country or, you know, like with only an army.

Yes.

You need the air support. You need all of these things.

Totally.

But then as you're talking about dividing up or like mapping out your business, what I get really excited about that when we think about longevity is the ideas that come up where you're talking to another creator or something comes up and you're like, oh, that's really taking off.

Yeah.

And you have that tendency to be like, and now we're going to be posting on LinkedIn or, you know, we're all in on TikTok now.

Yeah.

You can take that and overlay it in your business, like in this whole ecosystem and go, oh, that slots in right here perfectly.

Yeah.

Or more likely, oh yeah, that doesn't fit. That goes in the idea bin.

Totally.

You know, and the idea bin is either filed away or, or it's the circular bin, like the trash can.

I mean, it's, it's also the ecosystem model is incredibly antifragile and resilient, right? Because it's like if tomorrow, I don't know, let's say TikTok gets banned or I don't know, not to scare you, but like let's say the US government or the EU passes some crazy email regulation. Yeah, yeah. Which just like completely fucks the newsletter business, right? Because we are, the audience is distributed across so many platforms and is engaged on so many platforms. We're in a position we can pivot. Like, it's not gonna wreck us. So like, and to me, that kind of feels like an end, that it's an end-stage creator business, right? Like, I sometimes think of it as like a beginner creator business is like usually one platform, one monetization. Then you go through this middle period where it's like usually one platform, multiple monetizations. And then eventually you end up at like multi-platform, multi-monetizations, right?

So yeah, it's exciting to see. I just have to ask, how did the Will Smith, uh, book and all of that come together?

Uh, it was— I mean, it was cool that his team reached out.

It's a great book.

Thanks. Thank you, thank you. Um, it— his team reached out. They were— he had wanted to do a book for a while, and, and they were contacting authors and kind of putting them through a vetting process and everything, and went through like a hilarious amount of interviews with his team and managers and stuff. Uh, did like multiple phone interviews, did an in-person interview out here in LA. And finally, after like 6 months of calls and talks and interviews and stuff, I got a chance to fly out and meet him in person. And they kind of said, they're like, we're just— you're just gonna spend a couple days with him and you guys can chat and, you know, it's just to see how you get along.

Okay.

And no pressure. Yeah, right.

You're back to dating life.

Yeah, I know. It was like, okay, sure. But he and I really hit it off. I think the reason it worked is— there's two reasons why it worked. One is he and I, he and I are similar in that we both bond through humor. So my— like, anytime I'm kind of in an uncomfortable situation or nervous or unsure of myself or whatever, my like default reaction is to make a joke. And he's the same way. And so like he just, he like loves connecting with people through humor. And so honestly, like for like 2 days we just like fucking joked around and just like laughed a ton. And I think that, I think he liked that a lot. And then once we started talking about what he wanted and what the book was and everything, I think it, The fact that I was clearly just very nonjudgmental, like, I really don't give a shit who you are. Like, I just wanna write your life. Like, it's cool you're famous and everything, but like, I wanna tell a good story. And then I think he and I, our skill sets complemented each other really well. Like, he's very, he can tell an amazing story, but he struggles with like the big picture, like organizing, like, okay, what should chapter 4 be and how should it lead into chapter 5? And what's the main theme of like the first half of the book and that's the stuff that I love. So it was a really nice marriage of what he could already bring to the table and then what I could like, you know, help him out with. And honestly, like that project was just fun. It was just a ton of fun. He's great. He and I got along really well. His story's incredible. And he put a lot, a lot of people don't know, he put a lot of work in that book. It was funny when, when we started, my agent told me, she was like, by the way, just to set expectations, uh, when it comes to celebrity books, if they read it, that's a win. That's a win. Like, if they look at a draft, you're ahead. And I was like, wow, okay. Um, but no, he was, he was involved. Like, he was very involved with the outlining. He was, uh, he had a lot of like thoughts and strong feelings about like which stories should, should make it into the book and where they should be placed. And, um, he did a full revision. So the way I— we did the outline together, I did the first draft, and then he did a full revision on my first draft, and then we did a couple rounds.

Yeah, very involved.

So he was very involved.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, yeah. I think that shows in the book when, when you have that back and forth between two authors.

It's like, I can't sound like him, right? So there are whole sections in the book that like he just brought to life with his personality and everything. So yeah, I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Yeah, that's awesome. We could talk about all things creator business for a very long time.

We already have.

So we'll leave it there for now. But Mark, thanks so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me, man. This was fun. I love it.

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