The Subtle Art of Building a $100k - $1M Creator Business | Mark Manson

For any creator listening, would you rather have a comfortable mid to low 6 figures a year, or would you rather work your ass off, be stressed all the time, and make $1 million or $2 million a year? And death is in the middle. What I've noticed is I think a lot of creators don't have— He was just a guy with a blog, but when he told the world to stop giving a fuck, 20 million people listened.

So what are the biggest things as you went in 18 months from basically nothing on YouTube to 1 million subscribers?

Like, if you go back and look at the biggest YouTube videos from like 2018, they feel unwatchable now. If we're not improving 10% every year, we're losing. New entrepreneurs think it's the idea that's going to make the business work. I think it's the same thing with creators. It's like even if you do come up with a really good idea, somebody is going to rip it off in a week. So what makes you unique?

What do you notice in the people who endure versus those who fizzle out? The thing that blew up your audience was actually got a 2-year trend.

The trend recedes, suddenly your revenue drops by half. So if you build an audience, one of your top priorities should be—

Something you've talked about is how there's an ideal size to a creator business and there's actually some, some traps that you can fall into.

Right.

And so maybe talk about what, what does it look like at, you know, I was going to say a small size, but we're talking, you you know, a million or several million a year in revenue, which isn't that small.

Potentially, yeah.

But yeah, what are the two ends of the spectrum that you think about when it comes to size of a creator business?

What I've noticed over the years is there's kind of two optimal points. One is super lean, you can call it like the minimal. And then the other optimal point is we'll call it maximal, right? The minimum, like the super lean creator business, I think it's generally like one really good revenue stream. And it's probably a team of between 1 to 4 people, and you're basically just milking that one revenue stream really strongly. It's high margins, but because it's only one revenue stream, there's probably— there's usually almost always a low ceiling on it, like maybe low 7 figures, kind of like as big as it gets. But you're like a team of 3 people, right? You probably have one major platform that you're focused on. Things are relatively simple and it's a good life. It's a great way to make a living, right? I think the other optimal point is when you have— when you're doing multiple revenue streams extremely well. So you're doing really well with brand sponsorships on YouTube and podcast and you've got merch lines and you've got backend products and you're doing live events. That requires, like, a team of probably 15, 20, 25 people. But that's a big— that's like an 8-figure business, right? And death is in the middle. Like, what I've noticed is a lot of creators, when they blow up and they hit that kind of first stage minimal viable creator business, life's good. But then, you know, it's just human nature. You always want more. You see the next guy, you know, you see MrBeast, you're like, I want to do that. And so you start hiring people and then you're like, let's launch t-shirts, let's launch, let's do a meetup, let's do a live event, let's do a seminar. And next thing you know, you've got 15, 20 people. But if you don't, it's a completely different skill set on the other side of that chasm. It's, it's less about the creative. It's more about organizational skills, management skills. Building the right team. You're a business person, essentially. And I think a lot of creators don't have the same aptitude or the same desire to essentially be a CEO.

Right.

And so they get lost in the middle. They start, they hire 6 or 7 or 8 people. They're like, oh my God, this is so much work. The first thing we tried didn't work. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm spending all my money. And they just get kind of stuck. And then the gravitational pull pulls them back to that kind of original minimal small business.

People assume that more is better.

Yeah.

Bigger is better. And that that's a linear path in some way. So if I had— it was making $1 million a year and I had 3 employees, it's a pretty great business.

Yeah.

Like, let's assume that if you're really spending a bunch across ads, your team, all of that, all in, the business is costing $500,000 a year and you're pocketing $500,000 a year and like, and yet it's not all on your shoulders, right? You can, when you go on vacation, the Instagram Reels still go out, the customer support emails get answered and the community stays lively.

Yeah.

Right? And so then we go from there and say like, okay, well maybe 10 people in $2 million is a good thing. Yeah. Or 12 people in 3, you know, or like up from there. And not realizing that that's where so many problems come, which is what you're getting at. But then the other thing is that we assume that revenue will keep growing at the same rate.

Right.

So if I went from $250,000 to $500,000 to $1 million, then the next year I assume that I'm going to go to $2 million.

Right.

Even though that it's like, well, I doubled last year, let me double this year. And we don't look at it from the fundamentals of saying, What is actually going to double? Is your email list going to double?

Yeah.

Is your conversion rate going to double? You know, this new product that you come out with, you know, where we assume like we're launching the same course over and over again, that that's going to sell that many more copies. And often it sells less because you've saturated.

I was just going to say, it's not even, it's not even the assumption that it's going to continue to grow. Sometimes we don't even realize like, oh, we might have just caught, like this might have just been a moment, right? That I caught perfectly, and 2 years from now the moment's gonna be gone and nobody wants to buy this anymore. And that's another trap that I see all the time. You know, creators, they have the moment. They're, like, part of the zeitgeist. They blow up, build a huge audience, but they don't step back and think, "OK, is this a sustainable— Am I providing sustainable value? Is this something that 10 years from now these people are still gonna wanna watch?" and learn and see and, you know, buy the t-shirt or the hoodie or whatever? Or is this just a moment, right? And I think a lot of— I have seen that a lot of people overestimate how sustainable their business is. I mean, the most obvious example is like something like the Hot Tua girl, right? Like she's making bank right now. She also seems smart and knowing that this isn't going to last. Like this is probably her 15 minutes. She's cashing in big. She's like launching a product.

Now to be clear, she named her company 16 Minutes.

So yeah, there you go. Specifically about that. There you go. So that's like perfect. Like she clearly, she's very aware of the moment she's in. But I think in her case, like it's pretty obvious. Like it's a meme that went viral and she's riding off the back of that wave. But I've seen it too. I mean, there's anything from, there are certain, topics that trend for multiple years, you know, that we— something like baking sourdough bread was huge in 2020 and 2021. I imagine whoever is monetizing that vertical, like, their revenue has dropped like 80% in the last 3 years, right? But you don't—

if you—

when you initially catch that wave, you're just so excited to be on the wave that you don't think about that. Yeah.

So you have to think about what macro trends have you attached yourself to?

Yeah.

And what's going to happen with that? And then your ability to capture and sustain the market within that. Now, the sourdough bread is an example. There's a creator on Kit who that is his niche that I'm thinking about, and he's done a really good job of bringing people to his email list, to his core audience. And I don't know the numbers. I would guess his audience isn't growing at the same rate.

Yeah.

But from some things that we've done with him, I think a case study we did on him, it was one of those things where he's built this, he's taken the people that he captured in that wave and now he's built this like really sustainable business off of it instead of thinking like, oh, it's going to double the next year, that sort of thing, you know? And, you know, I'm guessing now he's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and has built a great business, but not, you know, he didn't try to scale it to the multiple millions.

Yeah. And I actually think what the Hot Tua girl is doing is smart. I saw she just launched a podcast.

Yeah.

Which what she's probably doing, she's like, okay, I have all this attention. I need to build a relationship, right? Because I'm not going to have this attention very soon for very long. And but if I can build a relationship with tens of thousands of these people, then I can build a business off of it. Like I can actually have a career. So there's like a second step that it's not just blowing up and building the audience. You then have to build the relationship with the audience to make sure that they stick with you when the trend or the exciting thing that blew up for you is no longer cool.

Well, and I think choosing the format that fits your personality and all of that, like something that she has going for her is, you know, with her accent and the way that she talks, she's like charming and endearing and like, you just kind of want her to succeed more so than a bunch of other, like, viral moments. And so a podcast is something, is a format that lends itself well. Like, if she was saying, like, I'm gonna start a blog, we'd be like, okay.

What? Yeah.

You know, but she's like, she chose the medium that's gonna help build that relationship. Now we'll see if there's substance to it long term or how it goes. I think that's a good way to go. I want to go back to the death in the middle, though, because you and I could probably list off 10 people or more that we know, either tangentially or friends of ours who have hit some level of plateau.

Yeah.

You know, and then had to scale back teams or just found they didn't enjoy it anymore of like, actually, this is having $2 million a year in payroll. And a, like, a product that I have to keep selling that doesn't recur in some way is actually really stressful. And I don't like this.

Yeah, it's— it really raises that difficult question of, like, would you rather have a comfortable mid to low six figures a year or would you rather work your ass off, be stressed all the time, feel overwhelmed, have all these demands and make $1 million or $2 million a year. You know, is it really— is the juice really worth the squeeze? And I think for most people it's easy. I really admire people who are able to spot that trap and like not go there, right? Because I think for most of us, like, no, you got to go make the $2 million first to realize that you fucking hate your life and you want to fire half your team and scale back. Like, that seems to be like the standard process. The lifestyle business, I think, is probably the optimal point for most people. Like, the only people that I think probably should try to cross that chasm is if you really love business.

Right.

Like, if you love the business side, if you love hiring people and managing and strategizing and figuring out, you know, negotiating deals and stuff. Yeah.

One thing I'm thinking about is Tyler Cowen has this idea, this question that he asks of what's the production function of, you know, you as an individual. And something that I notice is that a lot of people have, find something that works. Let's say it's, they're writing on LinkedIn, right? And that they figure this out and that just works really well. And then they listen to a podcast like this. Someone is on talking about like Instagram growth is the secret. And they're like, I gotta do short-form video.

You know?

And so they stop doing the thing that's working well or the, or they start to spread themselves out and they, you know, that's how you end up in all these different channels. Or you assume, hey, I built a million-dollar-a-year business writing on LinkedIn.

Right.

If I can get to 100,000 followers on Instagram, that will add another million dollars a year. And pretty soon you lose the core production function, which might have been the 2 hours every morning that you spend like writing and your process. You know, it's like I consume this information, I distill it down in my art form.

Totally.

And I distribute it in this way. And we just repeat that over and over and over again and it compounds. Yeah. And then as you expand to other channels, like you stop doing all of those things and it falls apart.

And not only that, but— and again, I can think of so many people this is true with— they'll go build that Instagram and they get that 100,000 followers on Instagram. And they realize that their followers on Instagram convert 50 times worse than the followers on LinkedIn.

That makes sense.

Yeah. And it's— and that's completely normal. It's like in my business, a follower on different platforms is valued completely differently. Like I have friends, like I'll say, he won't mind. He's also a Kit customer. So, Dan Go. Yeah. 90% of his business comes through Twitter or X. Like he and I have talked about it before. Basically none of my customers come through Twitter or X. And so like I've talked to him before and he's like, hey man, I can help you like grow on Twitter. And like if you start doing this and I'm like, yeah dude, I appreciate that. But like I kind of don't give a shit because like nobody on Twitter buys anything. And he's like, really? Like all my customers come from Twitter. So it's different for every brand. It's different for every business. And I think it's really, It's important to understand that and just know that, like, where, where are your customers? Because I think, like, being multi-platform is, is good, I guess, but it's— I see it as kind of like an ecosystem. Each platform kind of plays a role, you know, everything's a little bit there. It's like each one serves— each audience serves a different purpose within my business. Yeah. And, and for me, it's like the Twitter followers, it's they're not my customers. It's a place that I can engage with like thoughtful, smart, successful people.

Essentially, it's very good for that. I want to get into the different roles that the platforms play, but maybe we'll take a little bit of a step back and, and, and just give the, the high-level version of, you know, how you got to be the established— can I call you the old man in the creator world?

I feel that way. I totally feel that way, man. I get—

so what are you, all of 40 now?

I know I'm only 40, but it's so funny. Like, I get invited to Since I moved to LA, I'll like, I'll go, I'll go out to like some dinners and stuff with creators. We're getting invited like meetups and stuff, and I'm always the oldest person in the room. There have been multiple YouTubers, especially like there have been multiple YouTubers that I started my business when they were in elementary school, right? And they're just like, whoa. I'm like, let me tell you about the days before there was a newsfeed, and they're like, whoa. No, actually that doesn't happen. But they're just like— they're like, they're like, yeah, whatever, old man.

But the point is, you've seen a lot of waves of the creator economy long before it was called the creator economy and have been building iterations of this business totally for a long time.

Totally. Yeah.

So what are the biggest things as you went from— I mean, did it take you 18 months, 2 years to go basically nothing on YouTube to 1 million subscribers? Granted, you have a big audience.

Places. I mean, the beauty is that the book is a tailwind everywhere, right? So, um, I think we hit— I launched the channel, you know, I had a few simple videos. I did some during the pandemic. So I think when I—

everybody's got that YouTube channel that's like, you know, it's fine.

Yeah, but it's not—

I'm not serious about it.

So I think we— I started with a couple hundred thousand subs, and, um, I think we hit a million in about a year, and then now we're at like 2.5. I feel like we're just now figuring it out. Like, actually, we've got— I just saw a cut this morning of one of the videos that we're putting out this fall, and it's the first time I've seen a cut and I'm like, "That's it. That's what we need to be." What's different? It's— So the— Again, this is gonna sound sick, but for me, this was, like, fun, right? It's the same process that every creator goes through when they're starting out, right? Like, the first, like, 20 things you make are just bad. And then there's this whole process of figuring out why they're bad. And then you get better at some things and you have some new ideas and you're like, "Oh, this is gonna be the big thing that blows up." And you try that and you put all the— you put 3 months of work into it and you try it and you put it out and, like, nobody cares. So I had to go through that whole process again. And a big part of that is just me learning the skill set, like learning video production, understanding basic things like lighting, framing, cameras, being good on camera, being— speaking well. Script writing is different than other forms of writing. So like that took a while to get better at. And then, With video in particular, like, you need a big team. So it's hiring the right people, finding the right editors, getting a good producer. That whole process took like a year and a half, probably.

If you were to break down one of your videos that really worked well and then see, like, yeah, maybe explain the video and then what went into the concepting. And sure, you know, if you're trying to replicate it, how you would go about that.

Okay, well, so the original thesis When I— so when I start, I'll just give you like a brief timeline of like my YouTube strategy.

It sounds good.

My original— when I start, when I decided, okay, I'm gonna focus really hard on YouTube, I had a couple, a couple quick wins. But I honestly, in hindsight, I think a lot of that was just people were excited. Mark Manson's on YouTube, right? So there were, there were a handful of videos that got 2 or 3 million views, and— but I think a lot of that there was just a big tailwind of, like, awareness that was happening. I realized very early on, and this was, like, late '22, early '23, the talking head format, which is essentially, for people who don't know, it's like the guy sitting at a desk explaining something to you. The talking head format was already becoming extremely saturated. And you could see that, like, if Ali Abdaal put up a video that did really well, within 2 weeks, 4 other channels had videos with basically the same title and similar intro and, you know, just a slightly edited script, right?

So much YouTube advice is find what works.

Yep.

Copy that.

And I started to notice the same thing with me, too. Like, a couple of videos that blew up for me, within a month, this other channel's basically got the same title, same— almost the same thumbnail, slightly changed intro, and he's saying the same thing, and it's one of the best performers on his channel. And I'm like, okay, this fucking sucks. This is not gonna last, right? Like, there's no— you can— it's not hard to see that what the endgame of that is, is that you're just gonna burn not your own audience, but the entire talking head video audience is gonna get burnt out within a few years because they're just gonna start seeing the same thing over and over and over on every single channel. So I'm like, okay, Step 1 is to get out of talking heads. Figure out what is the new format that I can do that feels new and fresh and innovative and is not easily replicable. Like, what is a video format that if I go do it and it blows up and gets 5 million views, all the other YouTubers look at it and be like, "Oh, man, I can't do that." "That's too hard." "Yeah, I can't do that." Yeah.

What makes them feel excited and then discouraged?

Yes, exactly. Like, how do we break their hearts? But, I mean, there is a really important, really, really important principle in here for, for any creator listening is that if what you're doing is easily replicable, it's not a long-term business, period. You're going to get competed out because it's, it's— you have to find something that you can do that is really, really hard for other people to do. And like you mentioned Casey Neistat earlier, like he is such an amazing filmmaker. Like the, the content of a Casey Neistat video is almost shockingly banal. Like, it's like him going and getting lunch and then telling you about his run. And anybody else on Earth, I would be bored and I would click off in 20 seconds. But his— it is shot so well. The editing is so crisp. It's like so stylistic and everything that it's like, yeah, that's a Casey Neistat video and nobody's ever gonna replicate that. And if you manage to, everybody would be like, "Oh, you just ripped off Casey Neistat," right? So it's like you want to find that thing. And— but that's like a long process. So I started looking at like, okay, what are some things that I can do or some resources or advantages that I have that other people can't? And I actually went way back. I was like, you know, I used to coach people. I used to coach people through anxiety and I used to help people with their relationship problems and emotional issues and whatever. And I was like, there's all these self-help people on YouTube But nobody's actually talking to people, right? Nobody's actually like bringing somebody in and like putting them through some exercises, asking them questions and like showing the result. So we tried that and mixed result. It was, it was basically like 10 times more difficult to shoot than we expected. And then the result was I think we did 5 videos of that format and I think 2 did really well, 2 did okay, and then 1 bombed. And— but I was, like, spending probably $15,000, $20,000 per shoot. It was like 3 to 4 months of production for each video. And I'm like, we're basically getting, like, slightly— but, like, basically the same result as just me sitting at a desk. So, like, it's really hard to justify this.

So, like, what's an example of one of those videos?

Uh, so we took a woman who had suffered with social anxiety her entire life, Um, and at certain points it had been crippling. And in the very beginning of the video, I take her to a mall and I'm like, "Just go ask that guy sitting at the table where he's from." And she, like— Couldn't do it. And by the end, we got her to give an improvised speech in front of 50 people for 10 minutes.

That makes me nervous.

Yes. And she's written, I can do it. And she fucking did it. And she was like in tears. And it was, it was incredible. It was absolutely incredible. Unfortunately, like, the interesting thing about those videos is like going into it, I was like really nervous of like, okay, can I actually coach these people and get some sort of result? That part ended up not being very hard because we had so many applications that we could like really vet people beforehand and I could kind of find the person of like, okay, she seems like ready and coachable and like it won't be hard to get a result. It was the actual video production that was so fucking hard. I'm like, "It's actually really hard to go—" Like, "It's hard to go in a mall and get a good shot. It's, like, really fucking complicated." So I completely underestimated that side of it. Um, so we shelved that. Towards the end of it, we were doing one of those videos. It was gonna require me having to go to Korea. Don't ask. Um, And I remember talking to my producer, and I was like, "The story of this video kinda needs me to go to Korea with her, but fuck, Korea's really far. It's so expensive. How do we justify this?" And he was like, "Well, what if we do another video while we're there?" And I was like, "That's not a bad idea." And we had talked internally about kind of an Anthony Bourdain-style Mark goes to another country and looks at mental health issues around that country. And Korea had the— has the highest suicide rate in the world. So I was like, we could do a video on the suicide epidemic, the mental health crisis in Korea. And I was like, you know, my books did really well in Korea. I could probably reach out to my publisher and get interviews, get on TV shows and get interviews with like celebrity psychologists and all this stuff. So we did all that and we put that video together. It was 5 times easier than the coaching videos and it just immediately blew up. And, and like the qualitative response to the video was just like, this is amazing. There's nothing like this. Oh my God, you need to do more of these, all this stuff. So this summer we went and shot 4 more of those in different countries. And so we're, we're launching that in the fall. And that's basically going to become the new YouTube format is kind of an investigation into the intersection of mental health and culture around the world, like Why does Hungary have more alcoholics than any other country in the world? Like, what is it about their history, their culture, their economic situation? Like, what drives that? And so we, we went to Budapest and we shot for 4 days, and like, that video is gonna be coming out. So super excited about it. It took a long time to get here, but the video is like— the video, the cut I saw this morning was one we did in Portugal, and, and I watched the first 5 minutes and I was like, Finally, we found it. We found it. Like, this is it. This is what we're supposed to be doing. When it—

I mean, even as I think about it through the lens of what is totally unique, what plays to your strengths that others can't replicate, you know, the, the coaching someone through social anxiety, there's— it requires skill, but there's 10,000, 100,000 people that have that skill. Yeah, right. That could, could do that in some way. But then as you get into things of like the— you have a background in travel already, right? And doing a lot of location independent things from the beginning, it leverages the book. Yeah. In a great way because you're like, oh, I can get, you know, you can use these clips of you on TV in Korea asking, which we did.

Yeah. Which is— it's such a hack. It's such a hack because it's anybody I want to interview in any of these countries, I can get the interview. If I want to do a meetup with fans, send an email and it's done, right? Like, it's— it— yeah, so it really— that ended up being— like, you're dead on. That ended up being the secret sauce, is like, I have access that other people don't have access. And as you said, um, you know, I lived abroad for 7 years. I was a digital nomad for 7 years, and my career, all the books and the movie and everything, it took me abroad, right, to dozens and dozens of countries. I, like, I've promoted books in, like, 20 different countries. I've, like, promoted a movie in multiple different countries. So it's like I have exposure to these cultures, and I've already seen how my Korean fans are different from my Australian fans and thought about why that is, right? So it, like, fits kind of perfectly. But it's, it's funny because you still have to stumble for a year, spend a bunch of time and money to like get to that point, to find the thing that in hindsight it seems obvious.

Yeah, because you, you want it to be like you sit down at the spreadsheet or with the journal in the coffee shop. Yeah, if I just think on this problem long enough, I will come to that, that perfect fit. Yeah. Yeah. And it comes from you might get 20% of the way there. Yes. You know, and find the thread that you need to keep pulling to get there. Now, a lot of people could be listening and saying like, okay, sure. Like we found what if I had sold, I don't know, what, 20 million copies of a book or that sort of thing, you know, then I would play to those strengths as well. So I think what I want to dive into is the, like, if we were to help creators find those strengths, like I'm thinking about what I have access to that others don't. Right. You know, I like, despite building a more behind-the-scenes individual brand, you know, it's just like I can text you and James and so many others and be like, hey, what's working here? What's, you know, like I have this, this lens. And so, you know, like I could make a show that is entirely like what's working behind the scenes to build creative businesses. And that's like something that I could take an angle on it that puts me in, like, a 0.1% or less of creators that could do that. But if you're thinking about other creators, how would you go about, you know, coaching someone onto finding their really unique angle?

I think it can come from a number of different things. It can come from personality. Mm-hmm. It can come from just a— Being incredibly skilled in one area, being disproportionately experienced in one area. You know, generally when I look at any really successful creator, there's some— there's, like, some aspect about them that is just so disproportionate compared to most people, you know? It's either they're insanely charismatic or they're extremely analytical and well-spoken, or they just have this absurd talent editing, you know, it's, it's finding whatever, you know, one of the questions I ask people a lot is like, what, what comes easily to you but other people complain about? Like, what's the thing that other people complain about and you like don't understand what they're complaining? You're like, well, yeah, like, that was true with me with, with blogging. Like, I would go to these conferences and everybody would come up, like, all these people would come up to me and they're like, man, you, you publish like '10-page articles multiple times a week. Like, how do you do that? How much do you write?' And I was like, 'I don't know. Like, I don't really think about it.' You know, I was like, 'How much do you write?' And they're like, 'Oh, I'm trying to like, you know, I'm trying to get like one blog post out a week and it's only like a page or two.' And I'm like, 'Really?' Like, I just didn't understand. I'm like, 'Why is that hard for you?' You know, and then it took me a couple of years to realize like, because this is, you know, when I started my career, I'm like, 'Oh, I'm going to build an e-commerce business and I'm going to do coaching and consulting and all this stuff.' And I got a couple years in, I'm like, well, no, I'm not great at all that stuff. I'm great at writing apparently. Like, this is my advantage. Um, so it— one of it is just what comes naturally to you, what comes easily to you. What do you have? Just like, I think you see with like a lot of the chess creators, right? Like, it's a lot of them, it was probably this weird thing that their parents forced them to do. Like, if you look at like the Botez sisters or something, it's like their parents are making them go to chess lessons when they're 4 years old, and probably for most of their young life they're like, I gotta do the chess thing again, and the kids at school are making fun of them and stuff. And then it's like, oh, actually, the fact that you've been playing chess since you were 4 is a superpower, because now you're, like, a world-class chess player, and you can build this amazing audience and, like, do all this cool stuff. So it's find the thing that is just really disproportionate about you that other people— again, it comes back to, like, other people can't easily replicate. Yeah, yeah, that's interesting.

And getting into the, the skills, connections, all of those things, you could list out, you know, 6 or 8 categories and see, okay, rate yourself in these categories. What comes easily to you? What's, what's really, really hard? And you can weave something that is custom fit to you.

Yeah. And what I found is, I think, and I, I definitely did this too, I think creators really overestimate the value of the ideas. Yeah. It's actually similar in business as well. It's like new entrepreneurs think it's the idea that's, that's like, it's gonna make the business work. And it's, I think it's the same thing with creators. Like, there's nothing, there's nothing special about— even if you do come up with a really good idea, somebody's gonna rip it off in a week. So what makes you unique? What makes your spin on it unique? Like, how are you approaching it? In a way that's completely different than anybody else and can be immediately identifiable as you, right? When I was starting out, when my blog started blowing up, I kind of went through this period where I'm like, well, I just have all these great ideas. Like, clearly I'm just like really fucking smart and like nobody can stand up to the power of my brain. And then I realized, I'm like, no, it's essentially like at the time, the self-help market was very touchy-feely, woo-woo, you know, you're amazing, everybody's gonna love you, just believe in yourself, Nathan, it's gonna be okay. You know, like that was, and I was the guy who was like, hey, go fuck yourself, you know, you're not that important, life's gonna go on. Like that helped me differentiate myself. There was nothing special about the ideas. What was special was just like, kind of my abrasive personality around it.

Yeah, you— it wasn't like this, this soft bubble coming around you. It was just like this, this hard truth. Uh, one thing that I want to talk about more a little bit is the longevity of what it takes to endure in the creator economy for, you know, 10 years or more. A lot of people are looking like 2 or 3 years out, and then, you know, you and I are looking at this and be like, we're gonna be doing some version of what we're doing now for another decade at least. Yeah. And so what Like, what do you notice in the people who endure versus those who fizzle out?

I think the— once you've built an audience, the only way— it's kind of— there are a lot of ways you can fuck it up, but 90% of the time it's because you fucked it up. Let me try to go through them. The first and most obvious one, we can call it burnout. I would also say in a lot of cases it's people don't realize what they're signing up for. Like, it's when you become somewhat famous, when your face becomes recognizable to millions of people, a lot of people really don't like that, the experience. And I think that's fine. I think it's okay to think you want something, and when you get it, you're like, oh, actually, I don't want this. So I see that quite a bit, that people, they put all the work in, they build the brand, and then once they get there, they discover it actually makes them very unhappy. And so that's one category category, and I think that's probably, like, the most justifiable category, to just kind of blow up your own business and go away and do something else. I would say audience capture is something that I've seen a lot of creators succumb to, which is you always have to be careful. You know, you want to give your audience what they want, but you also don't want to give them everything they want, because then you lose yourself. And you start just becoming a hack who's like reflecting back to people whatever they want to see. And the thing about the internet is that the loudest engagement comes from the craziest people. So if you're always just trying to reflect back to your audience what they want to hear, what you don't realize is that you're reflecting, you're turning into the crazy minority of your audience and you're ignoring the silent, like sane majority. And the silent sane majority is what actually pays the bills and is gonna keep you around forever. Watched so many creators go down that— a lot of podcasters go down that path. Um, I've seen people scale too fast. Um, you know, it's— they hit it big, they have a windfall, they go out and hire— I mean, we were talking about Matt D'Avella. Uh, he posted a video about this. You know, it's like, you— things blow up, you start making a bunch of money, and you're like, "Well, what do I do next? Well, I guess I hire people." "All right, let's hire— go hire a bunch of people. Let's do more videos." And then they don't— realize that as you scale, the complexity and the challenges scale as well proportionally. And, uh, and then you can end up in a situation where either you don't want to manage those people, or, um, the, the thing that blew— like, the thing that blew up your audience was actually just like a 2-year trend, and the trend recedes, and suddenly your revenue drops by half, and Now you have a team of 10 people and you're, like, making zero profit. So I see that happen a lot as well. Um, the lack of diversification. Um, any of these platforms can change their algorithm at any point. Uh, they can shadow ban you, they can cancel you, like, justified or unjustified. Seen it happen a million times. It's like, if you build an audience, one of your top priorities should be immediately getting that audience to a newsletter. Because if Meta or Google or TikTok comes out tomorrow with a completely new algorithm and your engagement drops 80%, you're fucked otherwise. And I, again, I've seen that 100 times. I've seen so many times.

It's the people who really thrived on Twitter and then X are the ones that built their audience there and simultaneously on email. Yes. And then now that X throttles links so, so much. Yeah. You know, and outright bans Substack, right? It's like, you never know when the, you know.

So much for free speech. Yeah, exactly.

But then, you know, as these things happen, then it's totally different scenario. And so I know people who have hundreds of thousands of followers on X and don't really have a business because they can no longer get those followers to another platform. Yeah. Or those followers don't exist on X anymore. But then I also know people like Dan Goh and plenty of others who are like, what are you talking about? This is great. Yeah, I have 100,000 people on my Kit newsletter and 200,000 people on X, and it means that I can hit the same people two different ways, right? Like short-form wisdom, quick hits on X, the long-form newsletter. People cross-link between them and they're like, this is a thriving ecosystem. Yeah, because they're diversified. Totally. And they did it early before they— the algorithm cracked down on, on, you know, cross-linking.

Yeah. And then one of the things I'm really proud of that I think is paying off quite a bit is we built into the newsletter an invitation for— so like I give a— I'll ask people a question and then offer like a challenge for the week. And then I tell people, email me back, reply to this email and let me know "how this went for you this week. So, you know, today try practicing gratitude first thing in the morning, whatever, this week, and then let me know how it went." And so we'll get a few hundred people replying saying like, "Oh my God, I tried this and this is what happened." And, you know, so we get all these stories. But as you know, that's like really good for engagement. Like the email servers like love that. So it's good both for the community and for deliverability. Do you feature any of those stories? Yes. So every email we feature 2 to 3 of those stories and occasionally we'll have a reader question that I answer. So it's like fostering this— the content flywheel on that is really strong.

Yeah. And it fits very closely. Yes. I've seen people do this with, you know, asking, hey, what's your biggest frustration learning this skill or, you know, in the niche that we're talking about? And, you know, hit reply and let me know. And then I will write, you know, my next essay about that or I'll pull from the backlog. But I like yours because it's even— it's really lightweight. Yes. And then people see their, their name listed. What's the quote of— now it's a famous copywriter talking about like everyone's favorite word is their own name.

Of course. Yeah.

And so it's just, you know, like printing their names in the newspaper, all of that. That's what you're doing.

It also feeds into the marketing as well because— so newsletter is called Your Next Breakthrough and we call them breakthroughs. So we're like, if you have a breakthrough, email us back and let us know. And then my newsletter manager, she goes through all the emails each week and she'll pull like the best 5 or 10 and show them to me. And then I'll pick, pick the ones that we want to feature. But we built like a little script that tracks all of the breakthrough replies that we get. And so we keep a running count. We keep a count both per newsletter and for the entire newsletter as a whole. And so like we hit 10,000 breakthroughs maybe like 6 months ago. And so we did, we put together like a big PDF and sent it to everybody for free and we're like, you know, kind of celebrating it as a community and everything. But if you go to my website, if you look at the opt-in, like the opt-in page, it is that counter. It's like 12,423 people have had breakthroughs Will you be the next one? Yeah. Yeah. Sign up here.

Find out. You know, when it's this reinforcing cycle of like, oh, I'm a part of this community that has breakthroughs. And if I want to have a sense of belonging, even, even as simple as a newsletter. Yeah. A sense of belonging as part of this audience, then I should be implementing the content so I can have my own breakthrough, which is just so different for most people who are like, that's interesting. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Or like what's happened these days is there's so many newsletters and there's so much content just in general. There's so much content that, I mean, I'm subscribed to a ton of newsletters that like, I, you know, I'll open it, my inbox in the morning and, you know, it's like a 4-page article. I'm like, I don't have time. Like, I'm tired. I'll read this later. And then of course I never go back and read it. So we really wanted to optimize for simplicity. But also like just that deliverance, that deliverance of value and the sense of community. I would say the other thing too is people don't, uh, about future competition. Like one of the things when I think back, you know, there was a whole cohort of people that I could name, and I know their names you would recognize, um, that built really successful blog businesses back in the early 2010s. And in hindsight, I think a lot of that success was just because there was a complete lack of competition. There was like no, there were no huge blogs for a lot of these niches that now, you know, billions of dollars, right? So it's like if you're the first one there and you're the first one who actually builds a really good blog and has a good course and has a good product, and that's a huge opportunity. But a lot of those people that I knew back then, they didn't realize that they were going to get competition was going to show up. And in a lot of cases, that competition, they're going to be better writers, they're going to be better video producers, they're going to be better, they're going to put together better courses. And so if you're not like— one of the things I'm always telling my team is I say every year the bar gets higher, right? Like, if we're not improving 10% every year, we're losing, you know?

Like, you can't— not keeping up with inflation. Exactly.

The inflation in this case is quality. Yes. Every year, like, the bar, like, the average quality of content online gets probably 5% to 10% better. And it's funny now, because if you go back and look at— Like, if you go back and look at the biggest YouTube videos from 2018, they feel unwatchable now. You know? Like, I actually— It's becoming a problem for me, because I have a bunch of articles that I wrote at this point 10, 12 years ago, and I go back and I'm like, This is unreadable. Like, this is— it's, it's, it's just bad. Like, I either need to like rewrite a whole segment of my archive, or I need to like start thinking about getting rid of some of this stuff because it's just the, the standards and the expectations are just so much higher.

It's a big disclaimer.

Yeah, yeah, like, I wrote this when I was 24. Like, give me a break. It's still here for like the internet. Oh man.

But yeah, it's good to look back on it and see the things that have changed. Like, James and I were hanging out a couple of weeks ago and we're talking about books and planning things and we're talking about the essay that I wrote, The Ladders of Wealth Creation, which published in 2019. So 5 years ago. And he was saying like, hey, you should revive some of those ideas. Maybe there's something in publishing there. And I was looking at it. I'm like, let me go and reread that and see if I even, you know, and I reread it. I'm like, okay, I'd write that differently. Better example here.

But Yeah, yeah, this still works. All right.

Yeah, you know, but it's weird. You both want that and you don't want it. You want to look back and be embarrassed by your work from years earlier. Yes. At the same time, you know, hoping you're not fundamentally wrong. Right, right, right.

I mean, it kills me a little bit just because I know that some of those old articles still get SEO traffic. So I'm like, there's still thousands of people that their first exposure to my work is this crappy written intro from 2012. I'm like, "Ah, it just hurts a little bit." But, um, yeah, the quality bar is just always getting higher. And if you're not— So if you're not improving, you're not— That's another thing I see a lot. Like, I notice this with YouTube in particular. Like, so many YouTubers on, like, Twitter and Discord complaining. They're like, "I'm doing the exact same thing." "I did 3 years ago, but I used to get 1 million views a video. Now I get, like, 25,000. Why did YouTube shadowban me?" And I'll go look at their channel, and I'm like, "Yeah, you've just been competed out." Like, basically what happened was you had really good content 3 years ago, but it was just a talking-head video. It was just you in your bedroom. And people noticed, and now there's probably 100 other people that made the exact same videos talking about the exact same topics in their bedrooms, And so the views are getting split off between all of you. And because you didn't evolve and improve, you're now behind. Right.

Well, Mark, I think it's fascinating to hear about longevity in the business and doing this for a very, very long time. And I love the advice that you're giving on how people should think about it as they're getting started, like this next generation of creators coming in. Thanks so much for doing that. We're going to do a part 2. Okay. We'll dive into a bunch of details on your business today. You know, how you're running the team, where you're going with it long-term, all of those things. So we'll pause for now, but where should people go to check out the YouTube channel, to follow you online?

Just my name everywhere. So markmanson.net is the website, and then on YouTube, Mark Manson, Instagram, everything, newsletter on Kit. I love it. Yeah. You got all the things.

Nice. Well, thanks, and we'll see everybody in part 2. Part too. Cool. If you enjoyed this episode, go to the YouTube channel, just search Billion Dollar Creator, and go ahead and subscribe. Make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were and also who else we should have on the show.