Speaker 1: Hello, lovely neighborhood. I hope you're having a wonderful start
Speaker 1: to the year. As you know, we're taking a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks break from the show to recover from the
Speaker 1: madness of twenty twenty, but also to implement one of
Speaker 1: the biggest lessons we had from last year, which is
Speaker 1: to every now and then take a moment to step back,
Speaker 1: take a bird's eye view, and just have a look
Speaker 1: at what's working, what isn't working, what you want more of,
Speaker 1: what you want less of in the podcast, but of
Speaker 1: course in life as well, and in that process, if
Speaker 1: you haven't already seen on the Facebook group, I've made
Speaker 1: a little serve YEA to make sure that I'm including
Speaker 1: as much yaghborhood feedback as I can as well while
Speaker 1: we plan out what's to come for this year on
Speaker 1: the show.
Speaker 2: There couldn't be.
Speaker 1: Anything more important than your feedback and suggestions to make
Speaker 1: sure that I'm putting exactly the ya in your ears
Speaker 1: every week that you actually want and need. So I'll
Speaker 1: pop the link in the show notes, and in the meantime,
Speaker 1: I'm releasing a couple of our crowd favorites from the
Speaker 1: last year in case you met any of them so
Speaker 1: that you still have some yea to catch up on.
Speaker 1: Ignore some of the time specific references, but otherwise most
Speaker 1: of them are pretty evergreen. So I hope you enjoy
Speaker 1: as much as I did.
Speaker 3: There is no conventional path, or like the conventional path
Speaker 3: is actually the unconventional path. Right, You will stop worrying
Speaker 3: so much what people think about you when you realize
Speaker 3: how seldom they do.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Seize the Yay Podcast.
Speaker 4: Busy and happy are not the same thing. We too
Speaker 4: rarely question what makes the heart seeing. We work, then
Speaker 4: we rest, but rarely we play and often don't realize
Speaker 4: there's more than one way. So this is a platform
Speaker 4: to hear and explore the stories of.
Speaker 2: Those who found lives They adore the good, bad and ugly.
Speaker 1: The best and worst day will bear all the facets
Speaker 1: of seizing your yea. I'm Sarah Davidson or a spoonful
Speaker 1: of Sarah, a lawyer turned funentrepreneur who swapped the suits
Speaker 1: and heels to co found matcha Maiden and matcha Milk Bar.
Speaker 1: Sez the Ya is a series of conversations on finding
Speaker 1: a life you love and exploring self doubt, challenge, joy,
Speaker 1: and fulfillment.
Speaker 4: Along the way.
Speaker 1: I'm one hundred percent sure some of you will be
Speaker 1: eye rolling at me when I say that this is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite chats to date, but I think
Speaker 1: you might agree once you actually have a listen. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have to cut myself short in this intro because
Speaker 1: there is so much I could say about why Mark
Speaker 1: Manson is one of my favorite people in the world,
Speaker 1: but the episode itself makes it clearer than I could hear.
Speaker 1: Best known as the author of groundbreaking New York Times
Speaker 1: bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I
Speaker 1: once mistook Mark's refreshingly anti self help approach to life
Speaker 1: to be the opposite of seizing the a. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's not that he thinks we should give no fucks
Speaker 1: at all, but choose our fucks more carefully, and it's
Speaker 1: no surprise that he's witty. No bullshit delivery has taken
Speaker 1: the world by storm. Like all our guests, however, mars
Speaker 1: Waytya has been anything but predictable, going from feeling misplaced
Speaker 1: in his Texan hometown, getting a complete ego breakdown at
Speaker 1: music school, starting his working life as a pickup artist,
Speaker 1: or before becoming an author, was even on the table,
Speaker 1: and yet he's now sold over ten million books, changed
Speaker 1: millions of lives, and has been trusted with writing the
Speaker 1: autobiography and first ever full account of the life of
Speaker 1: Will Smith. Mark is a personality of so many contrasts
Speaker 1: and facets, and is open about every single one of them,
Speaker 1: including way more than I probably needed to know about
Speaker 1: his bodily functions. I dare you to listen without laughing,
Speaker 1: so you can definitely tell we've both lost our marbles
Speaker 1: more than a few times. In between the hilarity, though,
Speaker 1: there are so many deep, insightful reflections on life that
Speaker 1: I hope are as groundbreaking to you as they were
Speaker 1: to me. Mark Manson, Welcome to CZA.
Speaker 3: It's good to be here.
Speaker 1: I am so so delighted to have you here after
Speaker 1: our chat a couple of weeks ago. It's so nice
Speaker 1: to see you again with a microphone. I'm blown away.
Speaker 3: Of course. Of course I always come prepare.
Speaker 1: So professional, yes, so I usually start with a little
Speaker 1: icebreaker for every episode, but I've added another one recently,
Speaker 1: which is just to ask how you are, because I
Speaker 1: think in this crazy, crazy, weird hurricane that twenty twenty
Speaker 1: has turned out to be connecting with other humans and
Speaker 1: just touching base on.
Speaker 3: How Yeah it is important.
Speaker 2: So how are you going over in New York?
Speaker 3: So you know, this isn't the answer you're supposed to give,
Speaker 3: but like, I'm fucking great. This is really I would
Speaker 3: like the first month was really rough, and there was
Speaker 3: a lot of it. It was like emotionally stressful and
Speaker 3: physically stressful, and I missed my friends and everything. But
Speaker 3: I'd say by by month two, I settled into this
Speaker 3: group and I've just been so healthy and so productive,
Speaker 3: and my wife and I are getting along great. I mean,
Speaker 3: I still miss my friends, but I talked to him
Speaker 3: on the phone and on Zoom and everything. But like
Speaker 3: things have been pretty awesome. So like to the point
Speaker 3: where my wife like, so New York is technically opening
Speaker 3: up this week, and my wife and I were like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to go out? Do you want to go?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I don't want to Like why would we go out?
Speaker 3: This is crazy? Like let's just just keep it going.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I feel that so much.
Speaker 1: We've been exactly the same, Like that initial transition into
Speaker 1: a new routine with sort of like you get a
Speaker 1: little claustrophobic and then worried about uncertainty and like what's
Speaker 1: going to happen, And then you just fall into acceptance
Speaker 1: and realize you can just be the introvert that you.
Speaker 2: Kind of always were.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just be super antisocial and you don't need an
Speaker 1: excuse anymore. I'm like, this is amazing. It's just what
Speaker 1: I always wanted to do. Anyway.
Speaker 3: It's and it's so easy to turn things down, to
Speaker 3: say no to things, like it's great. It's just all
Speaker 3: of that kind of like obnoxious. You know, I don't know,
Speaker 3: like the happy hours that you don't really want to
Speaker 3: go to but so and so invited you, and you've
Speaker 3: turned down the last two things. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: you don't have to worry about that stuff anymore. Like
Speaker 3: it's like I'm not seeing anybody, so not even a question. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also ready you wrote that your time and agency
Speaker 1: has completely gone. I was like, yeah, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 1: Everything's just moved into this kind of like weird vortex
Speaker 1: of just chill at home and I'm like, I love
Speaker 1: not knowing what day it is. Yeah, it's like school holidays.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I mean weekends, Like every day is kind
Speaker 3: of a weekend, but not like I'll work through one
Speaker 3: weekend depending on what I'm doing, and then I'll take
Speaker 3: like a random Thursday off and like just like completely
Speaker 3: guilt free. Whatever.
Speaker 1: It took this for us to take advantage of the
Speaker 1: life structure that we have already, Like we already don't
Speaker 1: have a nine to five, and we already were able
Speaker 1: to go guilt free and allow ourselves to rejig our
Speaker 1: work over weekends and take you know, swat weekends for weekdays.
Speaker 1: But we didn't do it before because it was like
Speaker 1: this weird social construct of like guilt that you shouldn't
Speaker 1: do that. But I'm like, I left corporate to do that,
Speaker 1: and then I haven't allowed myself to do that.
Speaker 3: It's so weird. Yeah, I've always felt like in the past,
Speaker 3: when I've tried to do that, it's been hard because
Speaker 3: a lot of my friends and family are in the
Speaker 3: corporate world. A lot of the people I work with
Speaker 3: are in the corporate do the Monday and Friday nine
Speaker 3: to five, you know, my agent and my publishers and
Speaker 3: all that. So it's like to kind of be optimal,
Speaker 3: you kind of have to at.
Speaker 2: Least align with them a little bit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like be with them like around like ninety percent
Speaker 3: of the time. But now it's just like who cares whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean if you weren't giving fucks before, you're
Speaker 1: definitely not giving them now, which is amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh no, it's I mean it's weird in that way, right,
Speaker 3: and that it's I think on an individual level, it's
Speaker 3: been very clarifying for people in terms of like what
Speaker 3: you actually value in your life and what is actually
Speaker 3: a good use of time. And that's great, like that's
Speaker 3: a great feeling. But then on a social level, it's
Speaker 3: absolutely disastrous on a lot of different dimensions at the
Speaker 3: same time. So it's this weird dichotomy going on where
Speaker 3: it's like, well, this is strangely, I don't know, like
Speaker 3: like a growth moment as an individual, but you know, socially,
Speaker 3: just shit has said in the fan.
Speaker 2: Shit is definitely hitting the fan.
Speaker 1: And that leads really nicely to the actual first icebreaker
Speaker 1: for every every episode, which is just asking people what
Speaker 1: the most down to a thing is about them and
Speaker 1: cutting straight through the glossy surface that I think the
Speaker 1: digital world allows us to create around our identity, or
Speaker 1: not even to create, but just it's it's hard to
Speaker 1: really cut through and show the real relatable stuff. But
Speaker 1: I think you were so good at it, even the
Speaker 1: fact that fuck came out in like the first three
Speaker 1: words of what you said.
Speaker 3: I mean, do you really want the most down there
Speaker 3: things about me?
Speaker 2: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Like the grittier and the weirder the better. That's what
Speaker 1: this show is all about.
Speaker 3: So I'm a very gassy person. Yes, incredibly. My feet
Speaker 3: don't sweat. So what I always tell my wife, I
Speaker 3: always tell my wife. You guys, think the good with
Speaker 3: the bad, you know, like my feet never smell. That's amazing,
Speaker 3: you know, depending on what I yeah, depending on what
Speaker 3: I ate. You know, it's some nights better than others.
Speaker 2: I mean, you balance right out, Like that's the.
Speaker 1: Definition of balance, right, You're just total compromise walking.
Speaker 2: I love that.
Speaker 1: And you know what, I think so many people's answer
Speaker 1: to that question, like real answer is that.
Speaker 2: They're really gassy.
Speaker 1: You are the first person that just went there, and
Speaker 1: I love that you You've You've probably opened the floodgates
Speaker 1: now to every other person.
Speaker 3: I think I think you should just change the icebreaker
Speaker 3: from now on to how gassy are you? Yeah, scale.
Speaker 2: On a scale of one to Mark Manson, like where
Speaker 2: do you sit? What a great start.
Speaker 1: So the very first section is your Way ta, which
Speaker 1: is I sort of try and show the fact that
Speaker 1: every pathway is nonlinear. You can end up anywhere that
Speaker 1: you aspire to end up. And you know, the quote
Speaker 1: that I always use for this section is you don't
Speaker 1: have to see the whole staircase to take the first step.
Speaker 1: And I use people's stories in the Rollercoaster of how
Speaker 1: many different directions they went in and how many different
Speaker 1: places they've been to show that, Yeah, at any one time,
Speaker 1: you can change your life, and you can come from
Speaker 1: all sorts of different backgrounds, all the way back to childhood.
Speaker 1: And I love going through the decisions that you made
Speaker 1: at each stage. So take us back to the very beginning,
Speaker 1: Young Mark in Austin, Texas, which I've heard you say
Speaker 1: you didn't really get along with, which actually doesn't surprise
Speaker 1: me in any way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you know, Austin is like the the
Speaker 3: hot spot these days, like it's people love it here
Speaker 3: in the US. Everybody's moving there. But what I always
Speaker 3: have to explain to people, I mean, Austin's a very
Speaker 3: cool place. Now, it's a lot of fun but when
Speaker 3: I was a kid back in the eighties, it was
Speaker 3: tax you know, like it wasn't really like it was
Speaker 3: the cool part of Austin was like, you know, four
Speaker 3: square blocks downtown and like everything outside of that, you're
Speaker 3: in Bubba Country. And uh, it's so. I grew up
Speaker 3: in Bubba Country, you know, like in the suburbs way
Speaker 3: out outside of Austin, and I went to schools that
Speaker 3: taught us how to ride horses and square dance, and
Speaker 3: I didn't learn you know, I was taught that like
Speaker 3: the Civil War wasn't about slavery, like all this shit
Speaker 3: like that I went to I had. I went to
Speaker 3: church three times a week, so it was like Bible
Speaker 3: Belt Southern United States. And yeah, that's not me, it's
Speaker 3: it's probably I won't take people very long to figure
Speaker 3: out that the guy with fuck on the cover of
Speaker 3: his book isn't really into the Bible Belt.
Speaker 1: I mean that in itself is already such an indicator
Speaker 1: that you can outgrow your beginnings in any.
Speaker 2: Direction that you want. I mean, amazing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So you know, I'm always care of you know what,
Speaker 3: I'm careful talking about my childhood because it was so
Speaker 3: blessed and privileged in so many ways, you know, like
Speaker 3: my my father was very successful, had a nice house,
Speaker 3: lived in a nice neighborhood. Everything was very safe, so
Speaker 3: you know, in terms of like on the lower in
Speaker 3: terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like the lower levels
Speaker 3: in my childhood were always taken care of. You know,
Speaker 3: there wasn't violence or abuse or anything like that. It
Speaker 3: was the higher levels that were a problem. You know.
Speaker 3: I just I didn't relate. I was the angsty fourteen
Speaker 3: year old with greasy hair and a Marilyn Manson T
Speaker 3: shirt who like listened to Metallica, you know, and read,
Speaker 3: you know, it was really into reading philosophy, and so
Speaker 3: it just I just didn't fit in, you know. And
Speaker 3: it's as soon as I got to that age, you know,
Speaker 3: got to adolescence where you start the brain starts to
Speaker 3: develop into those higher Maso's higher needs in his hierarchy,
Speaker 3: it was a lot of social isolation and unhappiness. So
Speaker 3: very happy childhood, very angsty and angry adolescents. And I
Speaker 3: decided at a very young age that these people are
Speaker 3: all full of shit. I don't believe a single thing
Speaker 3: that I've been taught about the world, about life about anything.
Speaker 3: You know, it kind of helped that the Internet came around,
Speaker 3: you know, around around this time too, and so I
Speaker 3: just decided, you know, I'm going to start at square one.
Speaker 3: I'm going to figure things out myself. So went to
Speaker 3: the library, checked out books on Buddhism and Hinduism and
Speaker 3: philosophy and spirituality and meditation and all these things, and
Speaker 3: just started kind of exploring knowledge in general on my own.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, that is so fascinating. And you know,
Speaker 1: I think there are so many people actually who from
Speaker 1: very very early on, like before really even makes sense,
Speaker 1: felt at odds with their early early environment. And I
Speaker 1: think so sometimes we think that you're always going to
Speaker 1: be a product of your environment, but absolutely not. I
Speaker 1: think from very early on, you know, when you start
Speaker 1: to question and you can feel like you don't belong
Speaker 1: where you are, And I love that you went straight
Speaker 1: to like, how can I find out more what bigger
Speaker 1: world is out there for me? You don't have to
Speaker 1: be constrained by where you start off, and that's in childhood,
Speaker 1: but in any other stage that you go along, you
Speaker 1: can any time decide that you don't fit and you'll
Speaker 1: find the next best place for you, So I love
Speaker 1: that you then, once the Internet was discovered, sort of
Speaker 1: became a little bit of an online gamer and became
Speaker 1: a little bit rebellious. I'm just not surprising that you
Speaker 1: had a bit of a rebellious phase with you know,
Speaker 1: psychedelics and like a bit of a colorful childhood there.
Speaker 2: How did you then work your.
Speaker 1: Way into a degree in international business and what led
Speaker 1: you to think that that might be the next best
Speaker 1: pathway for you.
Speaker 3: That's a good question. I kind of wonder what the
Speaker 3: hell I was doing myself, not.
Speaker 2: To sa psychedelics obviously.
Speaker 3: Well, I originally went to school for music, you know.
Speaker 3: The thing that really yeah, the thing that really got
Speaker 3: me through adolescents was music, playing listening music. I got
Speaker 3: pretty good at guitar, so that like won me some
Speaker 3: points with my peers. It was kind of the center
Speaker 3: of my social identity as an adolescent. It's what I depended.
Speaker 3: It's how I got my self esteem, It's how I
Speaker 3: got approval from other kids, It's how it was how
Speaker 3: I was known by everybody at my schools. I was
Speaker 3: the guitar guy, and so it just kind of was
Speaker 3: logical that I should go to music school. Funny thing.
Speaker 3: You get the music school and suddenly you're in a
Speaker 3: situation where every single person in the room is as
Speaker 3: good as you, if not better than you. So you
Speaker 3: go from a situation where it's like, I'm by far
Speaker 3: the best guitarist in my high school, and it's what
Speaker 3: everybody is like, Oh my god, Mark is so good,
Speaker 3: he's so he's so talented, he's so cool. And then
Speaker 3: I go to this other environment where it's like everybody's
Speaker 3: a badass and I actually, as a freshman, I kind
Speaker 3: of sucked compared to them.
Speaker 1: Low level badass, Yeah, entry level for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So music school was actually I would describe it
Speaker 3: as a healthy experience of ego destruction and that everything
Speaker 3: that I kind of depended on for my my personal
Speaker 3: validation and self esteem just got obliterated within like six months.
Speaker 3: And it was a very difficult thing to grapple with.
Speaker 3: But I think coming out of that and realizing like
Speaker 3: you're okay, you know, you're good at other things, and
Speaker 3: people like you for other reasons, and you you know
Speaker 3: you can do other things, it's a I think that's
Speaker 3: a very important experience that we all need to have
Speaker 3: when we're young or at some point in our lives,
Speaker 3: but preferably when we're young, to know that we can,
Speaker 3: to know that we could kind of survive that, you know.
Speaker 3: So then I transferred out of music school to I
Speaker 3: guess what you call it a normal university, and and
Speaker 3: I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do.
Speaker 3: And I started out business and I got about halfway
Speaker 3: through a business degree. My dad is a business owner,
Speaker 3: an entrepreneur, He owns his own company. So I would
Speaker 3: go to school for business at UNI, and then I
Speaker 3: would work the summers at my dad's company. I would
Speaker 3: work on the factory floor and just hang out with
Speaker 3: him and ask him questions about the business. And after
Speaker 3: two years of that, I realized that I was learning
Speaker 3: like five times as much talking to my dad during
Speaker 3: the summer than I was from the actual business classes
Speaker 3: I was taking and paying all this money for.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine you having that much patience for that.
Speaker 1: I can imagine you just being like, this system doesn't work.
Speaker 3: I mean, I loved college because I mean I just
Speaker 3: partied all the time, you know. So I found class
Speaker 3: easy because it was self directed, so it was like
Speaker 3: I could study on my own time. And then, you know,
Speaker 3: I had. My dad is like kind of a badass
Speaker 3: of what he does, so I would I would take
Speaker 3: like an accounting class or or whatever. And I'm like
Speaker 3: in there, I'm like, yeah, this is Dad told me
Speaker 3: about this like a year ago, you know, like why
Speaker 3: I don't need to study this? So I go drink
Speaker 3: every night and it was great. It was the time
Speaker 3: of my life.
Speaker 1: Do you know something that I love so much about you?
Speaker 1: I loved it about your book, and it has been
Speaker 1: amazing to discover that you are exactly like that in person,
Speaker 1: That you are incredibly self aware in a way that
Speaker 1: belies your use of profanities, in the way that you
Speaker 1: describe things. There's been like there's so much self reflection
Speaker 1: on social constructs and our identity and the deconstruction of
Speaker 1: ego and all these things that are so advanced in
Speaker 1: self reflection that you don't expect would come from someone
Speaker 1: who described themself once as a sexless neophyte.
Speaker 2: Like you're such.
Speaker 1: A person of contrast. But I think that's why the
Speaker 1: cutthrough of where you ended up has been so strong,
Speaker 1: because you don't come at it from this weird, like
Speaker 1: you know, philosophical academic basis. You come from this like
Speaker 1: really grounded sense of real life experience, like yeah, I
Speaker 1: was magneicalm Maloudie, super smart, but also like drinking my
Speaker 1: way through college.
Speaker 2: Amazing. I love that about you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny because I think the contrast, the contrast
Speaker 3: you're describing about my personality. It's something that I notice.
Speaker 3: So my books do, I mean, they do well in
Speaker 3: the United States. They do really well in the United States,
Speaker 3: but they did like and everywhere, but Australia and Canada
Speaker 3: in particular. Like, it's funny when I talk to people
Speaker 3: and audiences and journalists and stuff from Australia and Canada,
Speaker 3: it's like there's an appreciation for that, Whereas when I
Speaker 3: talk to people and journalists and things like that in
Speaker 3: the United States and in Britain, there's kind of like
Speaker 3: a so what's going on? Who? Like they're suspicion. They're like,
Speaker 3: you're not for real, right, Like you're just pulling one
Speaker 3: over on us, Like you can't actually be like this,
Speaker 3: Like you're either really smart and pretending to be a
Speaker 3: cool guy, or you're actually a cool guy who's pretending
Speaker 3: to be smart, Like you can't be both at the
Speaker 3: same time. It's like I go to Australia and I
Speaker 3: just feel like it just feels like a party, Like
Speaker 3: it just feels like.
Speaker 2: We're your people, right, Like we get that. That's all
Speaker 2: of us in college.
Speaker 3: I love of you guys. Yeah, totally, yeah, you get it. Anyway,
Speaker 3: It's a tangent.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love tangents.
Speaker 1: This whole show is a tangent basically, which is why
Speaker 1: it's my favorite thing. There's like a loose structure and
Speaker 1: then it's like, oh, you're bladder and Bell tell me more.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I think another thing that's so interesting
Speaker 1: about you, and probably why people are slightly suspicious, is
Speaker 1: because we're so used to this conventional idea of career
Speaker 1: pathways and self discovery and yours just doesn't fit into
Speaker 1: those conventions. But most people do, and that's why it's
Speaker 1: so relatable, and you're really bringing to the forefront of
Speaker 1: our attention the idea that you can become an author
Speaker 1: without going to writing school and thinking that you're going
Speaker 1: to be a writer and having books in your library
Speaker 1: when you're five. Like, I love that you have proven
Speaker 1: that you don't have to decide to kind of late
Speaker 1: after a whole career as a pickup artist.
Speaker 3: What Oh god, I didn't realize you're gonna bring that up.
Speaker 1: Of course, that's like, oh god, big section for what
Speaker 1: is it?
Speaker 2: Entropy was your game? And a yeah, yeah, yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: like that's coming out.
Speaker 3: Oh god. No. Well, so here's the funny thing. So
Speaker 3: I decided in UNI or I might as well just
Speaker 3: take the classes. I like, like, here's the funny thing.
Speaker 3: You actually just mentioned it about there is no conventional path,
Speaker 3: or like the conventional path is actually the unconventional path, right,
Speaker 3: it's most people actually don't follow the conventional path. One
Speaker 3: thing that music school taught me, and it's definitely true
Speaker 3: with writing, and I think it's true with business as well,
Speaker 3: is that when I got to music school, it was
Speaker 3: so clear, like you could kind of do the math
Speaker 3: and figure out that like, okay, out of say one
Speaker 3: hundred kids in my class in music school, there's really
Speaker 3: only room in the music industry for maybe like a
Speaker 3: dozen of us. Like it's the type of industry that
Speaker 3: either you make it or you don't, and if you
Speaker 3: make it, you get all the gigs, and if you don't,
Speaker 3: you get none of them. And what I realized, like
Speaker 3: the reason I left is because it was just so
Speaker 3: clear within the first year that it's like, Okay, those
Speaker 3: ten guys and girls are going to make it and
Speaker 3: the rest of us are going to fight for the scraps.
Speaker 3: And I realize I'm like, Okay, those ten guys and girls,
Speaker 3: they don't actually have to be here. They're so good
Speaker 3: that they could go be professionals right now. They're just
Speaker 3: here to get the piece of paper. So I kind
Speaker 3: of I think most things are like that. It's like,
Speaker 3: if you're if you're really good at business, or have
Speaker 3: an aptitude for it, or have a passion for it,
Speaker 3: you don't need business school. Like the business school. It's
Speaker 3: just it's a formality, it's a it's a it's a
Speaker 3: credential to show people who are skeptical of you. And
Speaker 3: that's kind of what I realized too with Like with
Speaker 3: my dad, I'm like, oh, I don't actually need my
Speaker 3: business classes if I'm ever going to start a business,
Speaker 3: like I just need to find really smart people and
Speaker 3: ask them smart questions, you know. And it's definitely true
Speaker 3: with writing. Most people who go to school for writing
Speaker 3: don't become authors. It's a very unpleasant secret of writing
Speaker 3: schools and writing programs it's just that none of them
Speaker 3: become authors. It's and all the authors they never planned
Speaker 3: on writing like it just well a lot of them do,
Speaker 3: but like a lot of it's not like a thing
Speaker 3: that they studied necessarily.
Speaker 2: That's such a good point.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a I kind of describe my law
Speaker 1: degree as a really really expensive, long winded way of
Speaker 1: biding my time to kind of get the piece of paper,
Speaker 1: have an amazing backup plan, like I always have a
Speaker 1: wonderful plan B. And the first three years where I
Speaker 1: did work in corporate was that there's something to be
Speaker 1: said for the fact that you don't necessarily need it.
Speaker 1: I definitely didn't for what I do now, But I
Speaker 1: couldn't have started what I do now when I graduated UNI.
Speaker 1: I was just too young. I had no idea what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. And again, you needed to go
Speaker 1: through a whole career before you got to where you
Speaker 1: are now. And it's not that like you can't have
Speaker 1: skipped that to get to where you are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: Like, even though you didn't need that to get to
Speaker 1: where you are now, technically you could have started writing earlier,
Speaker 1: but the time that that allowed you like, there's a
Speaker 1: reason why a lot of us do degrees we don't
Speaker 1: end up using. It's not that we you know, they
Speaker 1: were never a waste. It's just that sometimes you need
Speaker 1: to mature and like get out in the world and
Speaker 1: figure out who you are before you know what the
Speaker 1: thing is that you're going to be successful in.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Absolutely, it's a constantly evolving process of trying something out,
Speaker 3: seeing how it feels, and then deviating. And what's amazing too,
Speaker 3: is not only do you have to do that to
Speaker 3: kind of get to where you're really happy and satisfied,
Speaker 3: but even once you've found that spot where you're happy
Speaker 3: and satisfied, the spot moves, you know. So it's like
Speaker 3: the things that I loved about my job five years ago,
Speaker 3: I don't necessarily love them as much today. There's other
Speaker 3: things that I love today, you know. And so there's
Speaker 3: like a constant flexibility that you kind of need to
Speaker 3: develop within yourself.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, that's the best SoundBite I ever could
Speaker 2: have gotten from you. I'm like, Okay, we can finish now.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. All right, good night bye.
Speaker 1: The last chapter of my book is actually the big
Speaker 1: quote on it is yay is a journey, not a destination.
Speaker 2: And that's so true.
Speaker 1: Everything in our life is geared towards this idea that
Speaker 1: there's this static point of like, yes, I made it,
Speaker 1: but actually the point it's like constantly evolving your comfort zone.
Speaker 1: You step out of it, it catches up to you, step
Speaker 1: out of it catches up to you. So I think
Speaker 1: if we see our way to ya is evolving in
Speaker 1: chapters rather than like just this one static journey, you
Speaker 1: understand the process better, you embrace it more, and then
Speaker 1: you do stay more open minded to like, this happiness
Speaker 1: right now might not be where I am in five
Speaker 1: years totally, which leads amazingly to your trendition from international
Speaker 1: business magnetum Lauder graduate to discovering the Game, which if
Speaker 1: no one has heard of this book, like there's a
Speaker 1: whole thing around the game, read about it. It will
Speaker 1: explain to you why Mark entered what is actually a
Speaker 1: full community. And then transitioning in twenty ten from out
Speaker 1: of the community, from pick up artistry to civilian life and.
Speaker 2: Then onto onto authorship.
Speaker 1: Are you regretting that you commit a lot of your
Speaker 1: thoughts at certain times in your life to writing, because
Speaker 1: I've found a lot of great material.
Speaker 3: Oh well, you definitely did your research. You know, the
Speaker 3: pick up artist thing. It's so funny to talk about
Speaker 3: that today because it doesn't really exist anymore. Like, well,
Speaker 3: I'll explain why, but I guess first to give people
Speaker 3: a little bit of background on like what it was.
Speaker 3: So basically pick up ours community was back in the
Speaker 3: early two thousands when social media first started, and forums
Speaker 3: and Reddit and all this stuff was just coming online. Realize,
Speaker 3: like there are certain communities that were maybe a little
Speaker 3: bit taboo, like things that were too taboo to talk
Speaker 3: about that in person or the former group in person,
Speaker 3: that for some reason online it became comfortable, Like you know,
Speaker 3: thoughts that you had that maybe you didn't want to
Speaker 3: like say out loud to people in a room, you
Speaker 3: could go online anonymously and post somewhere and find out
Speaker 3: that wait, wait, you know, there's tons of other people
Speaker 3: who feel this way. And I think one of those
Speaker 3: was men who were very insecure around their sexuality, around
Speaker 3: their dating lives, around their ability to attract women, to
Speaker 3: be attractive to women. They it's it's something that men
Speaker 3: we don't It never feels appropriate to actually talk about
Speaker 3: that to our guy friends because our guy friends would
Speaker 3: like make fun of us and tell.
Speaker 1: Us or like you look like and your gassiness is
Speaker 1: just it's you know, it's a deal breaker, really exactly.
Speaker 3: Maybe if you're less gassy mind.
Speaker 1: Maybe you should say it gestion specialist. Maybe that's where
Speaker 1: things will really change for you for the better.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this community emerged of all these guys who
Speaker 3: are like, yeah, like girls don't like me, I don't
Speaker 3: know how to get a date, I'm single, and I'm
Speaker 3: miserable and blah blah blah. And it was kind of
Speaker 3: the first time ever that men felt comfortable to come
Speaker 3: together in groups and have these conversations, which I think
Speaker 3: is a great thing. I still think it's a great thing.
Speaker 3: The problem is is that, you know, as anybody who's
Speaker 3: used the Internet knows, there are a lot of shitty
Speaker 3: people out there. And pretty soon a large segment of
Speaker 3: the community became dominated by people by men who were
Speaker 3: very manipulative, had a lot of like sleazy tactics and
Speaker 3: tricks things to say the women, like trick them into
Speaker 3: like coming on a date with them or whatever. So
Speaker 3: there was a huge book in two thousand and five
Speaker 3: called The Game, which kind of described this whole community
Speaker 3: and a lot of these tactics and tricks and blah
Speaker 3: blah blah. I read that as a as a student
Speaker 3: at UNI, you know, in between my cag parties and.
Speaker 2: Important, right, like really important.
Speaker 3: That was blown away. And it was funny because the
Speaker 3: advice in the book itself was terrible, like it's just
Speaker 3: the cheesiest, sleaziest stuff. Like within a week, I'm like,
Speaker 3: this is awful. I'm never gonna say this again. But
Speaker 3: I found I got online, and I found that there
Speaker 3: was a whole you know, this whole community of men
Speaker 3: and they're sharing it and there's a lot of there's
Speaker 3: a very wide variety of perspectives in that community of
Speaker 3: a lot of guys, you know, wanted to have more
Speaker 3: integrity and be honest about what they were trying to do,
Speaker 3: and a lot of men were like very sleazy and whatever.
Speaker 3: So jump ahead, like a couple of years. I get
Speaker 3: out of school, and the economies in the toilets two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, biggest recession and like ever worst job
Speaker 3: market ever, and I have no idea what I'm gonna do,
Speaker 3: And so I started doing like freelance web design and
Speaker 3: marketing work and stuff like that and just to make
Speaker 3: a few bucks. And I read Tim Ferriss for our
Speaker 3: work Week and he was talking about like, you know, oh,
Speaker 3: you just set up a site, you automate it, and
Speaker 3: you go live in Argentina and have a great time.
Speaker 3: I'm like, like, shit, it's that easy. Let me do that,
Speaker 3: you know. And so yeah, it's fine. I tried to
Speaker 3: start setting up these businesses and of course, you know,
Speaker 3: i'd work like you know for a month straight and
Speaker 3: uh and make like twenty dollars or something, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: this is I'm going.
Speaker 2: To make it to Argentina. Damn.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly exactly. So like this went on for like
Speaker 3: a year of just me struggling, building sites, trying different
Speaker 3: stuff out, trying affiliate marketing, trying like e commerce, try
Speaker 3: and drop shipping, like all this different stuff. And it's
Speaker 3: like I'm making you know, one hundred bucks here, twenty dollars,
Speaker 3: their pennies here, rolling in it. Basically yeah right, I'm
Speaker 3: just killing it dozens of dollars. And I was living
Speaker 3: on a friend's couch and I had started a personal
Speaker 3: blog like a year ago, and I had just been
Speaker 3: writing about my personal life just like person like personal
Speaker 3: blogs were super popular at that time, and you know,
Speaker 3: people would just kind of journal online, and I was
Speaker 3: writing about my personal life, which primarily consisted of going
Speaker 3: the bars and clubs and going on dates, and it
Speaker 3: just started to kind of organically attract readers. So it
Speaker 3: started out was just my guy friends in Boston, and
Speaker 3: then maybe three or four months later, some guys started
Speaker 3: showing up on it that I had never met before,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, oh, that's weird, you know. And then
Speaker 3: a year goes by and now I'm getting like one
Speaker 3: hundred people reading in a day, and it's starting to
Speaker 3: get shared on pickup artist forums and stuff. You know,
Speaker 3: it's like I had a crazy party or I hooked
Speaker 3: up with this girl and had this great night, and
Speaker 3: it's like suddenly it's getting shared on these forums and stuff.
Speaker 3: And so I was like, you know what, like got
Speaker 3: to do something, you know. So I started trying to
Speaker 3: monetize it, and I never really thought of it as
Speaker 3: a career. I was just like, Oh, let me do
Speaker 3: this dating thing so I can make enough money so
Speaker 3: I can go to Argentina's still the work, that's still
Speaker 3: the goal. I don't actually want to like work on
Speaker 3: this thing, like you know, and next thing I know,
Speaker 3: I'm I'm getting guys at like offering the pay me
Speaker 3: to like go out with them. You know, They're like, hey,
Speaker 3: come out with me and talk to girls and introduce
Speaker 3: them to me, and I'll like give you like five
Speaker 3: hundred bucks you hit them, Yeah, exactly. And so I
Speaker 3: was completely broken. I'm like that sounds awesome, Like you know,
Speaker 3: a broke, single twenty four year old, that's like literally
Speaker 3: the best proposition. Like here's five hundred dollars go hit
Speaker 3: on girls.
Speaker 1: I mean, like we said the dream, it evolves right
Speaker 1: like that was the dream then that was a contextual
Speaker 1: dream era appropriate.
Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely, So I'm like this, Wow, this is amazing.
Speaker 3: So I start doing this thing and start learning how
Speaker 3: to kind of market myself or whatever. And this goes on,
Speaker 3: you know, and so I'm scraping by I can finally
Speaker 3: like pay some rent. I'd say it. Like a year
Speaker 3: or two later, I started I started to realize something,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, guys would come to me and
Speaker 3: they'd ask all these questions, you know, they'd say like
Speaker 3: what do I say on a first date? Like or
Speaker 3: how to like if a woman doesn't text me? Back
Speaker 3: what do I do? And they're like very surface level questions,
Speaker 3: And at first I would just give very surface level
Speaker 3: answers like oh, say this, do that whatever. But then
Speaker 3: I started to realize that, like, actually, most of these
Speaker 3: these men were like coming to me and like reading
Speaker 3: my blog and emailing me the real issues they have,
Speaker 3: emotional problems, Like it's not the big problem of your
Speaker 3: dating life. Isn't that you don't know where to take
Speaker 3: a girl on a first date. Like the big problem
Speaker 3: is that you're like so insecure that you think this
Speaker 3: is like a big deal. This is like a deal
Speaker 3: breaker or something. You know, if you don't pick the
Speaker 3: right ice cream.
Speaker 1: Shop, like you're the common genoma or I'm sorry to say, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like women are fine. There's like three point
Speaker 3: five billion of them, so if you can't find the right.
Speaker 1: One, like yeah, like it's you, it's probably you.
Speaker 3: So I started getting into psychology, and this kind of
Speaker 3: you know, this kind of dovetailed with a lot of
Speaker 3: like the reading I had done for fun when I
Speaker 3: was like, I read a lot of psychology and philosophy
Speaker 3: and stuff like that when I was an adolescent, and
Speaker 3: so I really got into it. I really got curious,
Speaker 3: both for you know, my clients and readers, but also
Speaker 3: for myself. Like I started discovering all sorts of crap
Speaker 3: about my like shit, I had mommy issues, and I
Speaker 3: was objectifying women and like, and so I'm discovering all
Speaker 3: this stuff and I'm like, man, I got to write
Speaker 3: an article about that. And so and then I would
Speaker 3: write an article and it would take off and get
Speaker 3: more readers and they'd ask me more questions, and then
Speaker 3: I'd go research and discover more stuff and have another epiphany,
Speaker 3: and then you know, it was just kind of the
Speaker 3: cycle that happened. And then I guess, like the last
Speaker 3: big pivot, so I kind of I ended up. I
Speaker 3: realized that the pickup artist thing was. I was like, man,
Speaker 3: this is sinking ship. I could tell very early on,
Speaker 3: I'd say, like two thousand and nine, twenty ten. I
Speaker 3: realized this thing is going in two directions because there's basically,
Speaker 3: there are men who are into this because they recognize
Speaker 3: that they're responsible, that it's them who have the problem,
Speaker 3: and it's them who need to fix their behavior. And
Speaker 3: then there was a smaller subset of men who refuse
Speaker 3: to take that responsibility, and they prefer to blame women,
Speaker 3: to blame feminism, to blame politics, to blame you know, economics, whatever,
Speaker 3: you know, And they started to become very political and
Speaker 3: very sexist, and I could see that divergence happening of
Speaker 3: like most of this is getting healthier, but there's a
Speaker 3: significant minority that this is going towards a very dark place.
Speaker 3: And I think that's kind of what's happened today is
Speaker 3: today you have there's now a lot of very healthy
Speaker 3: men's dating advice out there, but then you also have
Speaker 3: these like in cell communities and men go their own
Speaker 3: way communities and red pill communities where it's incredibly misogynistic
Speaker 3: and anti social and like just dark, miserable shit. So
Speaker 3: I was like, I got to get out of this.
Speaker 3: And originally I rebranded my site and my business to
Speaker 3: a just a men's lifestyle and personal development site. It
Speaker 3: was called post Masculine, and I kind of was very open.
Speaker 3: I'm like, look, it's I'm no longer just talking about
Speaker 3: relationships and dating. I'm talking about career, emotional issues, family issues,
Speaker 3: self esteem issues, et cetera. Especially because there's not a
Speaker 3: lot there was not a lot of content like that
Speaker 3: for men at the time, and then something completely unexpected happened,
Speaker 3: which was that tons of women started reading the site,
Speaker 3: and by twenty twelve, I discovered that it was like
Speaker 3: the thirty percent of my readers were women.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: And they started emailing me. They're like, I love this article.
Speaker 3: Can you write one for women? And I was like, well, actually,
Speaker 3: you know you can. Just the advice is the same,
Speaker 3: just change the pronoun basically. And then I realized that
Speaker 3: I said that about enough articles that I'm like, wait
Speaker 3: a second, Like the hell am I doing writing a
Speaker 3: men's site. I should just be writing this for everybody.
Speaker 3: And so that was the kind of the final pivot
Speaker 3: to my current career today, which is just personal development, blogger, author,
Speaker 3: web brand, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, you are the most self deprecating person
Speaker 2: in the.
Speaker 1: Entire world, just like, you know, like a blogger, like
Speaker 1: not like a ten million books sold New York Times
Speaker 1: bestselling author, Like no, I'm just like a little internet man.
Speaker 1: Like it's fine, but isn't that Like it just blows
Speaker 1: up my mind. This is my favorite thing about this
Speaker 1: show is reminding everyone exactly what you just said that
Speaker 1: at any point right up until the final pivot. You
Speaker 1: had no idea what the next pivot was going to be,
Speaker 1: which is the people we all know you for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and people would kind of encounter you at this chapter
Speaker 1: of your life and think, ah, you know, he went
Speaker 1: to journalism school his whole life. He knew he was
Speaker 1: going to be an author, and him moves with all
Speaker 1: the right people, and he like had direction and certainty.
Speaker 1: But like, you had no idea up until the very
Speaker 1: blog post that you know that had the title of
Speaker 1: your first book. Yeah, that then made you realize this
Speaker 1: is a book. I'm an author. Like, I don't even
Speaker 1: think you would have realized you were an author until
Speaker 1: sort of after that it happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I didn't consciously decide that I wanted to be
Speaker 3: an author, like I wanted my career to be as
Speaker 3: an author. I decided that, I think when I was
Speaker 3: twenty seven or twenty eight. And it's funny because I mean,
Speaker 3: you're right, Like I get emails all the time from
Speaker 3: kids and UNI students and stuff. You know, they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm twenty I'm only twenty years old, or I'm twenty
Speaker 3: years old and I haven't taken any writing classes, but
Speaker 3: I really want to be an author, like you know,
Speaker 3: like I don't know what I want to do? Is
Speaker 3: it too late? And I'm like, are you kidding me?
Speaker 3: Like I was almost thirty and I'm like still like hmm,
Speaker 3: is this what I want to do? Like I'm not sure,
Speaker 3: you know, And it's It wasn't until I was I
Speaker 3: was twenty seven. I wrote I self published a dating
Speaker 3: advice book in twenty eleven, and the process of writing that,
Speaker 3: in the reception of that was so positive and enjoyable
Speaker 3: for me that I was like, Wow, I can actually
Speaker 3: do like I could actually be a published author, Like
Speaker 3: I could actually be a best selling author. And that
Speaker 3: was when I was twenty seven.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1: And then Fernanda married you, which is a miracle given
Speaker 1: everything I've had so far. But I love that, you know,
Speaker 1: you very much closed one chapter sort of in this
Speaker 1: evolution and then opened this whole new chapter to becoming.
Speaker 1: Rather than the focus being on relation is like a
Speaker 1: relational focused, it became just a lifestyle and you found
Speaker 1: I kind of see a lot of these stories where
Speaker 1: it takes someone so many evolutions to just find their linchpin,
Speaker 1: like their things, Yeah, that's their signature. But then once
Speaker 1: you find it, everything becomes about that, and in reflection,
Speaker 1: everything was actually about that, and I love that. Then
Speaker 1: sort of as you stumbled upon this theme and wrote
Speaker 1: a blog post that then became the book that sort
Speaker 1: of propelled you onto the scene from I don't know
Speaker 1: if I want to be an author to Oh my God,
Speaker 1: I've had like one hundred and seventy nine weeks on
Speaker 1: the top of the New York Times bestseller list, Like
Speaker 1: whatever it's You've become this counterpoint to bullshit, disruptor to
Speaker 1: the self help industry that's completely shaken up everything, but
Speaker 1: without planning it, Like I just love that things can
Speaker 1: unravel in ways that you never expected in writing the
Speaker 1: book and sort of having a bit of evidence that
Speaker 1: this is really where the gap was in this cut
Speaker 1: through realist really open, kind of shocking, like using swear words.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm sure you in all you're reading you
Speaker 1: saw that there's a very soft attitude generally to self help,
Speaker 1: like very embracing and nurturing, and you're just like realist
Speaker 1: cut through, You're not special, blah blah blah. Like it's
Speaker 1: obviously been received so well because people need that realist
Speaker 1: approach to be able to have revelations and sort of
Speaker 1: move forward, what did you think would be the best
Speaker 1: case scenario? And then when it actually ended up exploding,
Speaker 1: when did you go, oh my god, I'm successful, Like
Speaker 1: when did that hit?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the thing.
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting because I think I would say it
Speaker 3: was around twenty thirteen or twenty fourteen that I really
Speaker 3: stumbled upon. I guess this kind of idea of like
Speaker 3: anti self help, or I like to think it was
Speaker 3: like negative self help, you know, so it's, you know,
Speaker 3: stop trying to feel good all the time, stop thinking
Speaker 3: positive all the time, Like life fucking sucks. You know,
Speaker 3: bad things happen to good people. You're going to survive,
Speaker 3: you know. It's it's all about the meaning that you
Speaker 3: make from the moment. And I started kind of writing
Speaker 3: that style, that cutting style around twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: and the blog exploded. The blog was up to I
Speaker 3: think to this day, the biggest blog traffic year I've
Speaker 3: ever had was twenty fourteen, and it was almost two
Speaker 3: and a half million people a month on average. It
Speaker 3: was mighty like it was it was like a monster,
Speaker 3: just monster amounts of traffic. So I kind of I
Speaker 3: knew it was going to do well. Like I knew
Speaker 3: if I could put a book out with that message
Speaker 3: and package it well and explain it well and put
Speaker 3: good stories into it, I knew it would do well.
Speaker 3: And my goal was I just I want to be
Speaker 3: a New York Times bestselling author. I'd like to do
Speaker 3: like a book tour, you know. I guess like a
Speaker 3: stretch goal was sell a million books at some point
Speaker 3: in my career. You know, it's like if you maybe
Speaker 3: when I'm like got six books under my belt, if
Speaker 3: you add up all those numbers, it'll total over a
Speaker 3: million books. Like that was kind of that was kind
Speaker 3: of what I was shooting for, and in subtle art
Speaker 3: just smashed every single one of those dreams within like
Speaker 3: four months, which is crazy because it's it's on the
Speaker 3: one hand, it's amazing. On the other hand, your brain
Speaker 3: is kind of like, no, it wasn't supposed to go
Speaker 3: this way, like this is not we weren't ready. I'm
Speaker 3: not ready exactly, Like this is supposed to be like
Speaker 3: a long gradual trajectory. You weren't supposed to go straight
Speaker 3: to the summit. And so it actually took about a
Speaker 3: year for me to just kind of like mentally adjust
Speaker 3: to what was happening. And it was very disorienting. And
Speaker 3: it's a weird thing to talk about, because you know,
Speaker 3: nobody wants to hear the guy who you know, sold
Speaker 3: ten million books talk about how difficult disorienting it was.
Speaker 3: But it was a fascinating lesson for me because it
Speaker 3: showed me that, like, you know, we all know that
Speaker 3: large unexpected negative events can have can cause a lot
Speaker 3: of psychological stress. We don't really realize that large unexpected
Speaker 3: positive events can have the same effect on us. We
Speaker 3: don't really talk about that, like you're not really supposed
Speaker 3: to talk about that. It's been interesting because as I've
Speaker 3: gotten to know a number of like very successful people
Speaker 3: over the last few years, I've found that like a
Speaker 3: lot of them have had a similar kind of experience
Speaker 3: that where they it's just completely disorienting and they actually
Speaker 3: become like a little bit lost and depressed for a
Speaker 3: little while because they're like, wait, this wasn't supposed to
Speaker 3: actually happen, right, Like what am I supposed to hope
Speaker 3: for dream for it? You know, Like it's like the
Speaker 3: dog you've caught the car, he just kind of sits there,
Speaker 3: like now what right, which.
Speaker 1: Is like exactly why I think this, Like my personal
Speaker 1: chase for success as a thing really evolved towards this
Speaker 1: more sees the YA philosophy, like chasing the fulfillment and
Speaker 1: the joy, because there is a bit of an existential
Speaker 1: crisis around success if you're too wrapped up in that
Speaker 1: being what your goal is and that being your like
Speaker 1: the totality of what your identity is wrapped around in,
Speaker 1: because then when you get it or you far exceed it,
Speaker 1: it does cause this strange like I'll never be able
Speaker 1: to hit that again, like what is my purpose?
Speaker 2: What are my goals?
Speaker 1: And it is a really disorientating concept that leads us all,
Speaker 1: I think, down quite a new ual and disorientating pathways
Speaker 1: when either we get it or we don't get it,
Speaker 1: or we have it too much or too little, Like
Speaker 1: it's a very subtle balance, which is why I've really
Speaker 1: tried to like obviously still have that as a marker,
Speaker 1: but yeah, aim for different metrics, like the metrics that
Speaker 1: are less fluctuating, because then I'm more balanced and less
Speaker 1: like of a head fuck all.
Speaker 3: The time totally well, And the irony is that like
Speaker 3: everything you just like everything, you just said is described
Speaker 3: in this in Subtle Art like it's I needed my
Speaker 3: own advice. Basically, it's the solution of my problem was
Speaker 3: my own advice. But you know, one of the things
Speaker 3: I discovered during that period too is and I think
Speaker 3: a lot of it. I think a lot of the
Speaker 3: reason it kind of messed with me was because coming
Speaker 3: from the like blogging and internet marketing and everything, like,
Speaker 3: you get very attached to kind of this incremental growth, right,
Speaker 3: and it's probably similar with podcasting. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: this year or twenty nineteen was x percentage better than
Speaker 3: twenty eight and twenty eighteen was X percentage better in
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, and twenty twenty is going to be ex
Speaker 3: percentage better in twenty nineteen. Like you kind of get
Speaker 3: you get hooked on that, like you know, slow but
Speaker 3: steady growth that happens, and it's a lot of fun
Speaker 3: to watch, it's a lot of fun to experience. It's
Speaker 3: a lot of fun to challenge yourself to always like
Speaker 3: get that next leg up, that next step on the staircase,
Speaker 3: so to speak. And you know, when Subtle Art just
Speaker 3: went vertical, basically I realized, like there's no there's no
Speaker 3: step above this one, Like it's only down from here.
Speaker 2: You know, you packed way too early. You just paid.
Speaker 3: Exactly like I was thirty two, and I was thirty two,
Speaker 3: and I realized, I'm like, this is literally the most
Speaker 3: successful thing I'm ever going to do, like from an
Speaker 3: external metric point of view, like this is the biggest
Speaker 3: thing I'm ever going to do in my career, almost guaranteed.
Speaker 3: And it really messed with me. It like really really
Speaker 3: mess with me because it's I think I didn't realize
Speaker 3: how attached I was to that incremental like being better
Speaker 3: than I was last year, you know, and I realized,
Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, I need to find a different way
Speaker 3: to measure this. I need to find a different way
Speaker 3: to evaluate my career and evaluate like what I'm doing
Speaker 3: with my career. And so yeah, it took it. That
Speaker 3: was like a probably a six month process to kind
Speaker 3: of work through all that mentally and emotionally.
Speaker 1: And it is interesting that your book is exactly the
Speaker 1: book that you probably did need to go back to
Speaker 1: to just remind yourself that you already knew all the
Speaker 1: things you.
Speaker 2: Needed to know to have that shift. They just took
Speaker 2: on a new.
Speaker 1: Meaning because I mean, I don't want to reveal too
Speaker 1: much about the book because I want people to go
Speaker 1: and read it if they haven't, so I've love concentrating
Speaker 1: more on the story. But just to touch briefly, it's
Speaker 1: such when I first saw the title, I didn't read
Speaker 1: it for a long time because I thought it was
Speaker 1: anti Yay and it was anti like joy and the
Speaker 1: self help books that I kind of resonate with in
Speaker 1: that fluffy, warm kind of way. But it's actually not
Speaker 1: that at all, Like, even though they're a chapters like
Speaker 1: You're not special, and you know self help books tell
Speaker 1: you to believe in yourself, I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: not to like it. Sounds counterintuitive, but it's actually what
Speaker 1: I realized over the course of reading it. Because it
Speaker 1: was like irrepressible, like this orange cover like in my
Speaker 1: face in every airport. I just couldn not read it.
Speaker 1: It was actually not about giving no fucks. It was
Speaker 1: just about choosing where you put them, which is like
Speaker 1: the most important lesson anyone could learn is no one's
Speaker 1: meant to not care. But we cared too much in
Speaker 1: too many directions and in too many of the wrong directions.
Speaker 1: But if you bring it all back to just simple
Speaker 1: cut through no bullshit. That's where things start to fall
Speaker 1: into place, and I just, yeah, I didn't expect to
Speaker 1: love the book so much, and I understand why it
Speaker 1: became such a big thing, and that why you have
Speaker 1: become such a big thing, because you do you discuss
Speaker 1: things like the existential crisis of success that people don't
Speaker 1: talk about. Yeah, it's not normalizing stuff that no one
Speaker 1: wants to say out loud because it doesn't sound positive,
Speaker 1: but actually it really is.
Speaker 3: Well it's I've kind of built my career on those conversations.
Speaker 3: Like one of the things I honestly asked myself anytime
Speaker 3: I am going to do another book or a blog
Speaker 3: post or whatever, I asked myself, I say, like, what
Speaker 3: what needs to be said and nobody's saying it. I
Speaker 3: want to be the one who says that. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: that's kind of like my guiding principle and a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff I do. I did it with the
Speaker 3: pickup artist stuff. You know, It's like the thing that
Speaker 3: needed to be said in the pickup artist community was guys,
Speaker 3: you're emotionally fucked up and you're denial about it. And
Speaker 3: by the way, like we need to have a real
Speaker 3: like ethical discussion about what's going on here, you know.
Speaker 3: And I decided in twenty ten, I'm like, all right,
Speaker 3: well I'm out of I'm leaving this industry regardless. So
Speaker 3: I wrote my dating book is kind of like this
Speaker 3: is what needs to be said, and it became I mean,
Speaker 3: it's still the best selling men's dating book, and you know,
Speaker 3: and then I did that in self help as well, like, okay,
Speaker 3: what needs to be said in the self help industry,
Speaker 3: it's not being said. It was like, well, pain's fucking normal. Actually,
Speaker 3: Like it's probably not because your mom didn't hug you,
Speaker 3: or your dad, you know, didn't call you when you
Speaker 3: left home. It's life is just fucking hard, all right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Sometimes sometimes you deciding that this pain is is a
Speaker 3: big deal is or deciding that the pain is a
Speaker 3: problem is actually the problem.
Speaker 1: It's it's And I think that's so wonderful because where
Speaker 1: a lot of the conventional self help theories fall down
Speaker 1: is when shit hits the fan, they just don't have
Speaker 1: an answer, they just don't address it. And I think
Speaker 1: that realist approach is actually acknowledging the shit bits is
Speaker 1: how you get to the good bit, Like the ability
Speaker 1: to tie that process, tie pain into joy is what
Speaker 1: stands out so much. But I also love that your
Speaker 1: sort of you know you said before like I peaked
Speaker 1: with the first book blah blah blah, and nothing ever
Speaker 1: could after that could possibly come in another amazing development
Speaker 1: that you never could could have thought what was happening.
Speaker 1: You've not only written Everything is Fucked just before the
Speaker 1: world actually became fucked and needed every single lesson in
Speaker 1: that book. Your autobiography is coming out with Will Smith?
Speaker 2: What explain.
Speaker 3: Will contacted me?
Speaker 1: Will's wanted Wait wait wait wait, wait wait wait, I
Speaker 1: don't like to interrupt, but like Will contacted.
Speaker 3: You, Okay, not Will himself.
Speaker 1: Know, but no, no, no no, but it came from
Speaker 1: his side. It came from his side.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I mean I wish people could see.
Speaker 3: You're like literally cheering in your bedroom.
Speaker 2: I'm so excited.
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like you know, this kid from Austin
Speaker 1: who like you know, chased Will Smith's team for like
Speaker 1: five years because you wanted him to be the guard
Speaker 1: on the project.
Speaker 2: It was he came to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I never I never expected to do a
Speaker 3: project like this, and uh it was funny actually because
Speaker 3: my agent contacted me. There were a number of different
Speaker 3: like a lot of different opportunities came up after subtle
Speaker 3: art became like I got offers for TV shows and
Speaker 3: reality shows and you know, a lot of stuff. We
Speaker 3: turned down a lot of stuff. And I told my agent,
Speaker 3: I'm like, look like I'm not. I don't need to
Speaker 3: like squeeze every dollar out of this thing, like I
Speaker 3: I want to, like I want to I want to
Speaker 3: be able to sleep at night, and I want to
Speaker 3: be writing and like enjoy my life, like twenty thirty
Speaker 3: years from the house. So like, I don't. I'm young.
Speaker 3: I don't need to like squeeze every penny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my twelve pennies. There's more than twelve pennies. Now,
Speaker 1: I've built up a few mole in my collection.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's more than a couple dozen dollars. So
Speaker 3: we were shooting down a lot of stuff. And then
Speaker 3: one day my agent called me and she's like, hypothetically speaking,
Speaker 3: which an agent talk is. This is not hypothetical at all,
Speaker 3: but I just want to see what your action is.
Speaker 3: She said, hypothetically speaking, how would you feel about working
Speaker 3: with a celebrity on their book? And I said, probably not,
Speaker 3: but it would really it would depend who the person is,
Speaker 3: and it would depend why they want to do the book.
Speaker 3: I said, it would have to be like an a lister,
Speaker 3: like somebody really big and no, I'm serious, like.
Speaker 2: No, I totally, I'm totally appreciate.
Speaker 3: It, you know, like no offense to like Kevin Bacon
Speaker 3: or whatever. But he's a great guy. He's a great guy.
Speaker 3: He's a great actor. But it's like, yeah, dude, like
Speaker 3: there are a million ghost writers out there you can
Speaker 3: hire for you know, ten K or whatever.
Speaker 1: So Kevin Bacon, if you're listening, I'm really sorry. I
Speaker 1: didn't know who was.
Speaker 3: Nothing personal. It's just the first kind of you.
Speaker 1: Know, like a minus grade, you know, b grade, semi
Speaker 1: kind of on the CUSP celebrity.
Speaker 3: And I came to bright like if like Gary Sinisee
Speaker 3: reached out, I'd be like, I'd be like, oh, you're
Speaker 3: the villain from that one? What was that movie? And
Speaker 3: then I would I'd be like, oh, I guess I
Speaker 3: shouldn't take the project.
Speaker 1: I'm just taking notes so that if Gary asks me,
Speaker 1: I'll say, on behalf of Mark Madson.
Speaker 2: Just cause you don't want to.
Speaker 3: This is how you respond yeah, you're that guy from
Speaker 3: that one flick.
Speaker 2: That Yeah.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Yeah, so I told my agent, I'm like,
Speaker 3: look like, it have to be somebody big. It have
Speaker 3: to be somebody really big, and they would have to
Speaker 3: want to do it for the right reasons, like I celebrity.
Speaker 3: In the publishing world, celebrities actually have a little bit
Speaker 3: of a bad reputation because they cost publishers tons and
Speaker 3: tons of money to do the book, and most of
Speaker 3: them don't actually want to work on it. They don't
Speaker 3: want to think about it, they don't want to share anything,
Speaker 3: you know, they could potentially be damaging or controversial. It's
Speaker 3: basically a trophy that they want, you know, Like they're like,
Speaker 3: give me my own book so I can put it
Speaker 3: on my shelf and tell people I have a book.
Speaker 2: You just call it how it is.
Speaker 3: And by the way, give me millions of dollars and
Speaker 3: you're never going to make a profit.
Speaker 1: So it's like it's a great proposition for you. Really,
Speaker 1: I mean, how can how else can I give you
Speaker 1: the selling points?
Speaker 3: Yet publishers line up by the fucking dozens does there?
Speaker 3: So go figure. But it's you know, ninety percent of
Speaker 3: celebrity books you know, it's it's their nightmare to get done,
Speaker 3: and the celebrities don't really cooperate anything, you know, so
Speaker 3: they have it's actually these books have kind of a
Speaker 3: bad reputation in the industry. So I was my agent
Speaker 3: warned me of all this stuff, and and so I
Speaker 3: met with a bunch of Will's people, a couple of
Speaker 3: people on his team, his manager, went through this whole
Speaker 3: kind of bizarre interview process where they asked me, like
Speaker 3: they totally asked me all the questions you're not supposed
Speaker 3: to ask in a job, like who did you vote
Speaker 3: for at the last presidential election? How do you feel
Speaker 3: about Muslims? Like what's your relationship, you know with black people?
Speaker 3: Like things like that, which I totally respect. Like it's
Speaker 3: it's the type of thing that would never happen in
Speaker 3: the corporate world because you get sued out of your mind.
Speaker 3: But I mean, if you're Will Smith and you're you're
Speaker 3: a gatekeeper for Will Smith and you're looking to hire
Speaker 3: a guy to like deal with intimate details of his
Speaker 3: personal life, like you got to make sure the values
Speaker 3: line up and that it's it's gonna be a good fit.
Speaker 3: So so it was super interesting going through all that,
Speaker 3: and then finally they're like, okay, cool. So the next
Speaker 3: step is for you to meet Will and they're like, well,
Speaker 3: we'll keep you posted. And it was so bizarre. I
Speaker 3: don't know if they did this on per Like I
Speaker 3: don't know them just kind of stringing me along, like
Speaker 3: testing me to see if I was gonna be a
Speaker 3: prima donna and like freak out and be like, I'm
Speaker 3: a very important author. Time is valuable, like i'd be,
Speaker 3: so this is what would happen. I'd be hanging out.
Speaker 3: So I I had a meeting with their people in
Speaker 3: la and like I think October of twenty seventeen, Like cool,
Speaker 3: So we're gonna we're gonna get you some time with Will.
Speaker 3: We're gonna like fly you out and you're gonna spend
Speaker 3: time with Will and see how you guys get along.
Speaker 3: I'm like, okay, cool, we'll be in touch. Like so,
Speaker 3: about a month later, I get an email out of
Speaker 3: the blue. They're like, so, Will would like to see you.
Speaker 3: Are you available? You know it'd be like a Thursday night.
Speaker 3: I get this email They're like, are you available on
Speaker 3: Saturday to go to London? And I'm like okay, sure,
Speaker 3: what is Yeah? Fuck it, Like, I'll just I'll clear
Speaker 3: my weekend, I'll cancel everything. I'm going to London. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna hang out with Will Smith. Sweet, you know. And
Speaker 3: then twenty four hours later, I get an email, Like
Speaker 3: Friday night, I get an email and they're like, sorry,
Speaker 3: it's off. We'll keep you posted.
Speaker 2: So this is they read the game.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, they're totally getting me hooked. Yeah, you're totally right.
Speaker 3: You're right.
Speaker 2: You should have seen this coming, aiming me.
Speaker 3: Every step of the way. So this happens, you know,
Speaker 3: and then like another month goes by, and then I
Speaker 3: get this email and they're like, you know, it's a
Speaker 3: Tuesday night and they're like, Will's gonna be in Miami.
Speaker 3: Can you leave tomorrow? And I'm like I look at
Speaker 3: my calendar. I'm like no, I have like three important
Speaker 3: things to do this later this week. I have like
Speaker 3: meetings and friends in town and staying with me and
Speaker 3: like all this stuff. I'm like, no, I can't, Like,
Speaker 3: can't you guys give me like a week notice or something.
Speaker 3: I didn't say any of that. I'm like, you know, sorry,
Speaker 3: not available. So anyway, this goes on. This happens like
Speaker 3: three or four times. And then finally and I actually
Speaker 3: got to the point where I'm like, you know what,
Speaker 3: this is probably never going to happen, but whatever, it's
Speaker 3: fun to think about.
Speaker 2: That's fun.
Speaker 1: Ma, You're not special. I mean, just rad your own book, please.
Speaker 3: And so February of the next year, get the same
Speaker 3: kind of email. It's like a Monday morning, you know,
Speaker 3: They're like, are you available to go to Georgia tomorrow?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, yeah, I actually don't have a whole
Speaker 3: lot going on this week. I can move, I can
Speaker 3: move stuff whatever. Sure enough, ticket comes through, end up
Speaker 3: on a plane land. Next thing I know, I'm like
Speaker 3: on set on an Angle film, like hanging out watching
Speaker 3: them shoot action scenes like Will Smith's like ten feet
Speaker 3: away from I'm like, what the fuck is going on here?
Speaker 3: Like this is insane? What wait, hold on a second,
Speaker 3: this is actually fucking happening.
Speaker 2: Worth the wait, yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: And then and then once we actually got in a
Speaker 3: room together. I mean, what I've since discovered is that
Speaker 3: Will is just like literally the busiest human on the planeff.
Speaker 3: His schedule is absurd, Like he does more in a
Speaker 3: day than like most people do in a week. And
Speaker 3: but yeah. Once we finally got in a room together
Speaker 3: for a couple of hours, It's yeah, we hit it off.
Speaker 3: He told me flat out, you know. I told him,
Speaker 3: I said, look, the only way it really works for
Speaker 3: me to do this book, like, the only way I
Speaker 3: can be excited, you know, I shouldn't do this book
Speaker 3: and it's your life. Whoever writes it should be excited, right,
Speaker 3: And I told him, I said, the only way I'm
Speaker 3: going to be excited to do this is this needs
Speaker 3: to be like there needs to be some sort of
Speaker 3: cause or motivation beyond I'm Will Smith, and I want
Speaker 3: to have an autobiography, you know, if you just want
Speaker 3: somebody to document your life, Like there are a lot
Speaker 3: of really good writers who can do that. And he said,
Speaker 3: He's like, no, Actually, I went through a lot of
Speaker 3: trouble in my marriage. My father just passed away. He
Speaker 3: had a little bit of a midlife crisis. He's like,
Speaker 3: I've I've had like a very big transformation over the
Speaker 3: last five years. Like my worldview is completely changed, and
Speaker 3: I screwed a lot of things up in my life.
Speaker 3: And people don't know that about me. People don't know
Speaker 3: who I really am. Like I've had to keep my
Speaker 3: image so perfect for so many years because I was
Speaker 3: in the spotlight that I people don't actually know what
Speaker 3: I've gone through, what I've been through, and so I
Speaker 3: want this book to be able to share that with
Speaker 3: people for the first time. And so I was like, fuck, dude,
Speaker 3: I'm in if that's why you want this, Like I'm in,
Speaker 3: and he's I mean, Will's great, Like I'm nothing but
Speaker 3: amazing things to say about him, and he is. I
Speaker 3: just finished the draft last week. We actually postponed this
Speaker 3: interview because I was thank you because I was.
Speaker 2: Like, oh my god, I think may.
Speaker 3: Freaking out, like try to finish this draft. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's uh. I think people are going to be
Speaker 3: blown away by how candid the book is and how
Speaker 3: how many life lessons there are from it. You know.
Speaker 3: One of the first things he told me when we
Speaker 3: sat down is he said, when I was nine years old,
Speaker 3: I watched my father beat my mother so hard that
Speaker 3: she vomited blood. And I decided that night that I
Speaker 3: needed to be in charge of the family so that
Speaker 3: this never happened again. He was nine years old, and
Speaker 3: then he like went and fucking did it. And I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm in, I'm in, I'm in. I will write that story.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 1: Though, but seriously, Mark, like to like, who would have
Speaker 1: thought this pooch from Texas, who didn't even know that
Speaker 1: he wanted to be a writer, would be trusted with
Speaker 1: the first ever account of Will Smith's most intimate revelations
Speaker 1: about his life, Like I cannot actually process it's and
Speaker 1: I'm not even intimately involved, like the the jump is just.
Speaker 3: It took me like a year process, Like, I dude,
Speaker 3: I lost my virginity watching No, this is true story.
Speaker 3: I lost my virginity watching Men in Black. True story.
Speaker 3: I invited my girlfriend over to watch Men in Black
Speaker 3: and then we like totally lost my virginity. I told
Speaker 3: Will that he thought it was hilarious, but.
Speaker 1: I love that you were, Like, here's Will Smith as
Speaker 1: a taster, Like, get excited.
Speaker 2: This is the Warmer Upper.
Speaker 1: It's Will Smith being like a bowler, and I can't
Speaker 1: believe as well, even.
Speaker 2: More amazing to me full circle.
Speaker 1: That he's actually Hitch. You are writing the book of Hitch.
Speaker 3: What is this? Like, No, it's it's it's just a
Speaker 3: mind fuck in like eight different ways. And it's it's
Speaker 3: weird because you know, I mean we everybody in our generation.
Speaker 3: We grew up watching him, Like everybody watched Will's Smith,
Speaker 3: Like watch Will Smith movies, watch Fresh Prince of bel Air.
Speaker 2: Did you fan girl, please tell me you fangirled?
Speaker 3: I did? I mean I was they like him, and
Speaker 3: his people told me later that I was pretty good,
Speaker 3: like I can be pretty stoic, like they said, I
Speaker 3: didn't really show it. I was like the whole first day,
Speaker 3: I was like freaking out.
Speaker 1: I mean, if anyone's going to make your feet sweat,
Speaker 1: it would be Will Smith.
Speaker 3: Like a rather full circle, well done.
Speaker 1: Oh well, oh my gosh, I've like literally talked to
Speaker 1: your ear off and like skipped two whole sections because
Speaker 1: that was the best tangent ever.
Speaker 2: But I should let you go. It's late at night
Speaker 2: for you.
Speaker 1: But I would like to wrap up with just a
Speaker 1: couple of last questions that kind of bookend, along with
Speaker 1: the sweaty fat thing bookend.
Speaker 2: The.
Speaker 3: You're not going to beat the sweaty feet book.
Speaker 2: No, you're right, I mean, but the Gassi.
Speaker 1: I mean, we should have separated those two facts to bookend,
Speaker 1: because that would have been great if anyone was banging
Speaker 1: over you. Now they'll now they'll know you're.
Speaker 2: Down to earth.
Speaker 3: They'll think twice they think, And.
Speaker 2: I admire Fernande even more now, I mean, wow, the
Speaker 2: ship that she deals with yea literally.
Speaker 1: Well, so the last section would have been playta, which
Speaker 1: is I think just the area where I'm reminded so
Speaker 1: much about in the redefinition of my metrics for measuring
Speaker 1: success in life, I've realized, or just for measuring life
Speaker 1: and its value and quality, is that no matter even
Speaker 1: if you love your job, especially if you don't, all
Speaker 1: of us need to unwrap our identity from productivity and
Speaker 1: achievement and goals and objectives and self development. I think
Speaker 1: it's especially when you're someone like us who loves to
Speaker 1: work on ourselves and have big revelations.
Speaker 2: It's hard to switch that off.
Speaker 1: But all of us, especially creative people, need something that
Speaker 1: just makes you forget what time it is.
Speaker 2: It's just for joy.
Speaker 1: That's not like I used to walk my dog and
Speaker 1: think I was resting, but I listened to a finance
Speaker 1: podcast and be like ticking over and being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I rested today. So what do you do for play
Speaker 1: to bring like your childlike sense of wonder and pass
Speaker 1: the time when you're not being sort of author, Mark Speaker,
Speaker 1: Mark blogger, Mark, you know, famous person Mark Gassie Mark, Like,
Speaker 1: what are you doing.
Speaker 4: When you're.
Speaker 1: Just like date night or just just underlinding? Can you
Speaker 1: read other people's books or does that make you like.
Speaker 3: Oh, no, I read tons, tons and it's yeah, it's
Speaker 3: I read tons And I've got a bunch of friends
Speaker 3: who are authors and I read their manuscripts and they
Speaker 3: read mind and stuff like that. Yeah, I've actually I
Speaker 3: rediscovered my my inner gamer years ago back. He's back.
Speaker 3: And you know, I kind of gave up gaming when
Speaker 3: I started my business because you just working sixteen hour days,
Speaker 3: you don't have time. And then I was traveling around
Speaker 3: the world a lot. And so when that was actually
Speaker 3: one of the things with Subtle Art that I was like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I'm going to go out and like
Speaker 3: buy a Nintendo in a PlayStation and just play a
Speaker 3: bunch of these games that I haven't had time to
Speaker 3: play in years. And so yeah, it's like I love
Speaker 3: it still. I still game like every day.
Speaker 2: That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Actually, last time we spoke with the business Ticks thing,
Speaker 1: you were like, it's like, how's I say been?
Speaker 2: You have just been like playing a lot of games.
Speaker 1: Yeap, like got rs I in my thumbs because I've
Speaker 1: been playing too much games.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty bad. With the funny like, video
Speaker 3: games have kind of become like the same way I
Speaker 3: used to party compulsively. I think I now like if
Speaker 3: I'm like stressed or having emotional problems or whatever, the
Speaker 3: first signal to me is that I'm playing way too
Speaker 3: many video games. That that's like, that's like my my,
Speaker 3: my life, the universe saying hey, Mark, there's shit. You're
Speaker 3: not paying attention to put the controller away.
Speaker 1: That's like the internet blogger metaphorical version of like punching
Speaker 1: a punching bag.
Speaker 2: But you're like, I'm going to game.
Speaker 3: The shit out of this game. I do man all
Speaker 3: the levels.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that's amazing. I mean, well done, well done.
Speaker 1: Sixteen hours a day.
Speaker 2: I would hope that you would be beating all the levels.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my wife's not very impressed.
Speaker 1: She hasn't seen you in like three weeks. So the
Speaker 1: second last question, even though you've already dished up a
Speaker 1: lot of these and now you'll wish you'd save them
Speaker 1: for last, what are three interesting things about you that
Speaker 1: don't normally come up in conversation.
Speaker 3: Fo, I speak three languages.
Speaker 2: I wrote that down.
Speaker 1: I was like, if he needs help, give him a
Speaker 1: little push. Yeah, explain how and why, because they're very
Speaker 1: different to each other.
Speaker 3: Actually, no, they're not Russian. Really. Oh no, I don't
Speaker 3: speak I don't speak Russian. Well, I speak a little
Speaker 3: bit of Russian.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, need to take that off your LinkedIn then?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, well I probably do. I'm it is kind
Speaker 3: of a lie like I I guess that's another interesting
Speaker 3: thing about me, because I lie on my LinkedIn profile.
Speaker 2: You're not above a resume pad. I love it.
Speaker 3: No, so I speak, I should say I speak three languages. Well,
Speaker 3: like I speak Spanish and Portuguese to like a high
Speaker 3: conversational low fluency Russian. I speak a little bit. Like
Speaker 3: I can go to Russia, I can order food, I
Speaker 3: can read signs, I can kind.
Speaker 2: Of like, oh that's pretty good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like I can't like have a conversation in Russian.
Speaker 1: Oh, I mean, well, then definitely take it off. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna report that afterwards.
Speaker 3: Report.
Speaker 2: Oh they're great, they're good ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that's two. Yeah, I don't know video games
Speaker 3: kind I'm trying to think of another one.
Speaker 2: Do you have pet paves or like weird sleepy habits
Speaker 2: or like a.
Speaker 3: Huge pet peeve of mine is people who eat noisily,
Speaker 3: like are you oh no? And apparently apparently there's actually
Speaker 3: a word for it, like there's uh, there's like some
Speaker 3: Greek word for it, like there's something like ten percent
Speaker 3: of the population. It's almost it's like a phobia. It's
Speaker 3: like people who smack or eat loudly, like it just
Speaker 3: it's like nails on a chalkboard. For me.
Speaker 1: It's okay, Well, I'll keep that in mind. So next
Speaker 1: time we catch up in like, you know, obviously next
Speaker 1: week when I'm in New York just hanging out at
Speaker 1: your place, I just I'll just make sure I don't
Speaker 1: eat because I'm one of them. Like I'll eat an
Speaker 1: apple and it like reverberates around nation.
Speaker 3: Live with this.
Speaker 1: I don't know what it is, though, Well, I feel
Speaker 1: like it's loud for you anyway, Yeah, so I don't actually,
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm enjoying the apple.
Speaker 3: So some people like I a good friend of mine,
Speaker 3: he like smacks really loud when he choose and he's like,
Speaker 3: I enjoy it. He's like it's satisfying, like I like
Speaker 3: like smacking when I like chewing stuffing, and I'm like, dude.
Speaker 2: That's a full sychopath.
Speaker 3: Interesting exactly, Like how do you how do you sleep
Speaker 3: at night?
Speaker 1: Seriously, how do you live with yourself? I mean you
Speaker 1: said you need to be out of sleep at night.
Speaker 1: You need to be out of Yeah, like be okay
Speaker 1: with yourself. So I'm glad you keep your chewing volume
Speaker 1: to a minimum.
Speaker 2: That's great. At least Bananda's got that as a chick.
Speaker 3: In the box exactly.
Speaker 1: And the last question seems I love quotes so much.
Speaker 1: What's your favorite quote?
Speaker 3: My favorite quote? Well, it changes quite a bit. Oh man,
Speaker 3: I got to pick one, so I'll give you two.
Speaker 3: One is comes from David Foster Wallace, and he said
Speaker 3: that you will stop worrying so much what people think
Speaker 3: about you when you realize how seldom they do.
Speaker 2: That's such a.
Speaker 3: It's it's so I love it because it's it sounds
Speaker 3: a little bit depressing on the surface, like, oh, people
Speaker 3: don't think about me, but then you just realize how
Speaker 3: you realize how liberating that is, you know, and and
Speaker 3: you also it also implies that like like an obsessive
Speaker 3: concern of what other people think about you is a
Speaker 3: very subtle form of narcissism, Like it's it's you're making
Speaker 3: everything about you, and it's like people don't care, Like honestly,
Speaker 3: people just really don't care. So we've got much better
Speaker 3: things to do than to worry about whether your presentation sucked,
Speaker 3: Like we don't care, So life goes on.
Speaker 2: That's on brand.
Speaker 3: I love it. And then the other one is it
Speaker 3: comes from Freud and he says that in hindsight, the
Speaker 3: years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, what a beautiful way to end. They
Speaker 1: are two incredibly valuable quotes. Along with everything else that
Speaker 1: you've shared and everything in your book and every article
Speaker 1: that you've published. You've done some really wonderful topical ones
Speaker 1: as well lately on uncertainty and what's going on in
Speaker 1: the world. I'm so so grateful for your time. I'm
Speaker 1: so sorry everyone us overtime.
Speaker 2: That was just like as far as conversations I've ever had.
Speaker 1: It was so much fun. Thank you so much. And
Speaker 1: I can't wait to read the next book.
Speaker 3: It's gonna be good. And I usually hate my own stuff,
Speaker 3: like like no, it's like usually at this point in
Speaker 3: the process where I just finished a draft, like I'm
Speaker 3: like curled up in a corner crying, being like I'm
Speaker 3: a fraud. Nobody's ever going to read me ever again,
Speaker 3: you know, And it's like with Will's book, I finished
Speaker 3: it and I'm like, this is awesome. This I nailed it. Yeah, No,
Speaker 3: I did so well.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait. You've come so far from self deprecating
Speaker 1: Texan pooch. Thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I mean, sometimes someone says yes and you know there's
Speaker 1: no way you'll ever be able to express how grateful
Speaker 1: you are. If you enjoyed this too, It would be
Speaker 1: amazing if you'd share your thoughts and tag at Mark
Speaker 1: Manson and myself so we can share in some of
Speaker 1: your takeaways. This was one of those chats that literally
Speaker 1: changed the way I think, as all Marx books have done.
Speaker 1: I hope you took some nuggets or even just a
Speaker 1: chuckle out of it too. Plus, oh my gosh, what
Speaker 1: a scoop on Will Smith. I can't wait to read
Speaker 1: the boo when it comes out. I'll keep you all
Speaker 1: posted in the meantime. Have an amazing week, and I
Speaker 1: hope you're seizing your yay