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

Transcript

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

• 0:00
  I want to be a better person. I want to be more confident, more successful. I want to make a bunch of money.
• 0:04
  I want to have a great relationship. But you go to the self-help section,
• 0:07
  and I just want to puke over everything. So I felt like there's got to be something here.
• 0:10
  All of the advice is recycling. We're all saying stuff that's been said for two thousand years.
• 0:14
  What changes is the packaging and the delivery mechanism?
• 0:17
  What happens when brutal honesty becomes a global philosophy?
• 0:20
  Mark Manson is the best-selling author who challenged the entire self-help industry
• 0:24
  with a radically different idea. Stop chasing positivity and start embracing
• 0:29
  what actually matters. What self-help lacks. You need to have something bigger than yourself.
• 0:33
  I'll help you make more money. Be more successful. Be happier.
• 0:36
  But there's no why. It's just like stuff. If you solve isolation, the loneliness,
• 0:40
  the lack of community, that solves a lot of other issues on its own.
• 0:43
  The biggest lesson you really need to learn how to give up options.
• 0:47
  I'm writing brutally honest essays on the internet to becoming one of the most
• 0:51
  influential voices in modern personal development.
• 0:54
  Mark's work forces us to confront the questions we'd rather ignore.
• 0:57
  Find things that are worth committing to and then really commit to them.
• 1:01
  You have to be able to listen to yourself of the things that you really don't want to do
• 1:06
  and the things that are exciting and light you up.
• 1:08
  You need to be able to say no to stuff and not feel conflicted about that.
• 1:11
  The only rule is do what works for you. Everything else is a suggestion.
• 1:15
  Mark, I'm happier here. Good to be here.
• 1:27
  It's very, very good to finally stand and do this.
• 1:30
  So I was listening to a couple of pods before we started.
• 1:33
  And I've heard you refer to yourself as the self-hating self-help guru.
• 1:38
  Why do you call yourself that?
• 1:40
  I jokingly call myself the self-hating self-help guru
• 1:45
  because I hate the fact that I'm a self-help guru.
• 1:48
  This is the funny paradox of my brand is that I make self-help for people who hate self-help.
• 1:56
  I'm the guy that if you can't stand the secret and all the woo-woo opera stuff,
• 2:03
  you probably land on me.
• 2:05
  So it's just a little bit tongue-in-cheek of.
• 2:10
  So then the obvious question is how do you find yourself in the self-help space
• 2:15
  when you hate it so much?
• 2:16
  Because I think actually I resonate with a lot of your content.
• 2:20
  And I actually have a lot of issue with the self-help space.
• 2:25
  But I've actually found myself drifting closer to it,
• 2:27
  even though my content started with very entrepreneurship and very tactical stuff.
• 2:32
  But now it's migrated into a lot of mindset things,
• 2:34
  which I think are very valuable and actually very important.
• 2:37
  And I was interviewing, I'll tell you a quick story,
• 2:39
  but I was interviewing Gary Vee.
• 2:40
  Yeah.
• 2:41
  And I was, majority of the podcast was like mindset stuff.
• 2:44
  And I gave him some super easy, you know,
• 2:47
  like these questions.
• 2:48
  You can just not get to the park.
• 2:49
  I was talking like sub-stack and like live streaming and all this shit he's really into right now.
• 2:52
  And he kind of like glossed over these questions and I'm like,
• 2:55
  and I asked him like, why didn't you like go deep?
• 2:56
  He says, you're shit.
• 2:57
  He's like, because none of that matters.
• 2:59
  Like if they get the mindset stuff right, they can figure out everything else.
• 3:01
  You can Google everything else.
• 3:03
  So mindset's important.
• 3:05
  But how do you stop yourself from becoming this self-help caricature almost?
• 3:12
  It's just naval gazing all day, wondering what it's all for.
• 3:15
  Yeah, it's definitely an occupational hazard.
• 3:21
  You know, it's funny because when I was,
• 3:23
  I kind of stumbled into this career.
• 3:25
  I was the same.
• 3:26
  I actually, my first online businesses that I was trying to start had nothing to do with self-help.
• 3:31
  And I ended up kind of blogging about this stuff on the side because I was in the same boat.
• 3:39
  I'm like, I've read all these cheesy books.
• 3:42
  I want to be a better person.
• 3:44
  I want to be more confident.
• 3:45
  I want to be more successful.
• 3:46
  I want to be more resilient.
• 3:49
  I want to make a bunch of money.
• 3:50
  I want to have a great relationship, right?
• 3:51
  But you go to the self-help section and I just want to puke over everything.
• 3:55
  So I felt like there's got to be something here.
• 3:58
  Like there's got to be a non-fufi cheesy way of approaching this,
• 4:03
  like a more scientifically grounded way, a more practical reality-based way.
• 4:10
  I was kind of exploring that myself on the side.
• 4:13
  And as often happens in business,
• 4:14
  is like the side project becomes the thing.
• 4:17
  And the thing fails miserably.
• 4:19
  So that started.
• 4:22
  It turned out that there were millions of people out there that were in the same boat
• 4:25
  as you and I.
• 4:26
  And so that's that's when I really started getting traction in the early 2010s
• 4:30
  and everything took off.
• 4:31
  Because what you're doing is you're bridging a gap between like highly academic,
• 4:36
  but also speaking to people and helping them come up with ideas that will actually impact their life.
• 4:40
  And that's actually always been the gap, right?
• 4:43
  Like you can always go to a therapist or you can always re-like PubMed peer-reviewed research
• 4:48
  on what the habits are going to be or the mindset or the tools and tactics.
• 4:51
  But I feel like content that speaks to people that is still highly actionable
• 4:56
  and grounded in evidence-based reality, whatever it is.
• 5:00
  I feel like that you don't get a lot of that online.
• 5:02
  Yeah. And it's, and especially back then, you really didn't.
• 5:06
  You even doing this in like 20, 20 years?
• 5:08
  I started blogging in 2008.
• 5:11
  So yeah, almost 18 years.
• 5:13
  Yeah.
• 5:14
  Thanks for that.
• 5:17
  Thank you. I've been doing this a lot.
• 5:19
  I definitely, I feel like a dinosaur in this space.
• 5:21
  It's funny, like, sometimes now I meet these like young creators and YouTubers and stuff.
• 5:26
  And they're like talking about how they were in high school in like 2015.
• 5:30
  And I'm like, oh, I had been blogging for seven years already.
• 5:36
  But you know, it's like, I think with hindsight looking back, it was,
• 5:42
  it was just an underserved market, right?
• 5:44
  It was, if you go back pre-internet or back to like the 90s,
• 5:48
  you know, self-help was really, it was, I guess,
• 5:51
  targeted more towards a specific type of person.
• 5:54
  It was, I mean, I remember when I was growing up,
• 5:58
  a self-help seminar or even therapy.
• 6:00
  Like it was a little bit shameful.
• 6:03
  You're a little bit embarrassed to be doing it.
• 6:05
  And people would kind of like look down on you a little bit.
• 6:10
  And I think by the time I became an adult, you know,
• 6:13
  our generation grew up, there was a little bit of this tension of like, okay,
• 6:17
  it's totally normal and fine to want to know how to improve yourself.
• 6:20
  I think that's a very natural inclination.
• 6:24
  But there's got to be a way that's like to do it that's not embarrassing, right?
• 6:28
  And so I think ultimately what what I did and I think, you know, there's kind of a group of
• 6:34
  guys and women from kind of that same time period, we all kind of came up together.
• 6:38
  So there's like me, James Clear, Ryan Holiday, Gretchen Rubin.
• 6:42
  We were all blogging around the same time.
• 6:43
  Tim Ferris, Rameet Sadie.
• 6:45
  Like I think we all kind of stumbled into the same thing,
• 6:48
  which is like, what's a practical non-cringy way to do this?
• 6:52
  That's actually based on evidence that's just super practical that like,
• 6:57
  people aren't going to make fun of you if they see you holding the book.
• 7:00
  And yeah, it was, at the time, it was an explosive market because it just nobody was serving it.
• 7:07
  So when you serve that market originally, I'm sure that it was a little bit easier than it is,
• 7:12
  especially now today.
• 7:13
  Oh, yeah.
• 7:15
  Content that hits now is so full of hyperbole and just clickbait.
• 7:22
  And like I feel like it's really hard to get content to hit that isn't just absurdly packaged.
• 7:29
  Right.
• 7:31
  So what, you know, I mean, you have an existing audience, so you obviously have a little bit of
• 7:35
  leverage there, but even yourself who hasn't just like, how do you package your content,
• 7:39
  yourself, help, stuff so that you still get good ideas to people that actually help them
• 7:42
  without falling into the trap of saying the most audacious, ridiculous shit that obviously is,
• 7:49
  it's only self-serving at that point when you really, really, really go off.
• 7:53
  How do you, how do you do that?
• 7:54
  The game has changed so much today.
• 7:58
  Things are very crowded.
• 8:00
  It's actually really funny.
• 8:02
  Like I can, I can go on my Instagram and just start scrolling.
• 8:07
  I would say the biggest problem in my market is that any idea that you have that is good,
• 8:12
  like any kind of profound or impactful sentence or paragraph or quote or whatever.
• 8:19
  As soon as it blows up, 50 other people are going to post the same thing.
• 8:22
  And so it's, it's like, it immediately gets, the virality just gets snuffed out in the cradle
• 8:28
  because it's people are so on top of everything and everything gets replicated so quickly.
• 8:34
  And so I was like on my Instagram, even this morning and I can scroll through my Instagram
• 8:38
  and it's, it used to upset me.
• 8:41
  Now I've just kind of accepted that this is just the name of the game.
• 8:44
  But you know, it's half the stuff I see.
• 8:48
  I'm like, oh, I wrote that.
• 8:50
  I posted something about that in 2018.
• 8:52
  Oh, I had an article about that in 2016.
• 8:55
  Oh, I did a video about that on 2021.
• 8:57
  You know, and it's just, everything's gotten recycled so much.
• 9:00
  So my market and I think most markets, at least online markets are kind of going this direction.
• 9:07
  You know, when everything becomes saturated,
• 9:09
  when everything is so easily replicable or so easily replicated,
• 9:14
  really the only mode that you start to have is brand and really understanding who you're serving,
• 9:23
  what is not just the demographic that you're serving, but like the psychographic,
• 9:26
  you know, what are the person's values?
• 9:28
  What's their personality?
• 9:30
  What are the other things that they're into?
• 9:33
  And then really just accentuating your brand to like,
• 9:38
  serve that person because at least in the self-help market,
• 9:42
  all of the advice is recycled.
• 9:44
  I mean, we're all saying stuff that's been said for 2000 years.
• 9:46
  Like there's not really any new ideas in this, in this space.
• 9:50
  What changes is the packaging and the delivery mechanism.
• 9:54
  So again, so for the person you're speaking to now,
• 9:56
  what is the problem that they're dealing with, they're wrestling with?
• 9:59
  And like, how do you actually, like, what do you bring to them that would be different than,
• 10:04
  I mean, I can name other creators.
• 10:05
  I mean, Lewis House has a flavor now, Dan Coe has his own flavor.
• 10:09
  Mel Robbins is more like a true self-help kind of person.
• 10:13
  Less, I think, I think less gritty than you.
• 10:17
  I don't even also describe it.
• 10:18
  But yeah, how do you speak to people?
• 10:20
  Because I feel like your brand has a ton of longevity in it.
• 10:23
  I would say I'm the kind of the gritty,
• 10:27
  realistic, slightly cynical version of self-help.
• 10:31
  And what I particularly help people focus on is understanding their values,
• 10:36
  understanding, you know, the whole give a fuck thing.
• 10:39
  It's really just code for what are your values?
• 10:42
  What are you prioritizing?
• 10:43
  What are you making the most, what are you optimizing for in your life?
• 10:49
  And most people haven't thought very deeply about that.
• 10:51
  They just do things and then re-evaluate years after the fact.
• 10:57
  And so a lot of my work is just trying to help people sit down, think deeply,
• 11:02
  what am I optimizing for?
• 11:03
  What am I prioritizing?
• 11:05
  Is this a good thing?
• 11:06
  Is this bringing like good problems and challenges into my life?
• 11:10
  Or am I making myself miserable?
• 11:12
  And just the nature of that sort of, I guess,
• 11:16
  brand promise, it is a very gritty, raw, vulnerable thing.
• 11:22
  You know, it's like forcing people to sit down and I was going to say,
• 11:25
  do they appreciate that?
• 11:27
  Yes.
• 11:27
  Yeah, it's kind of a tough love sort of thing.
• 11:31
  I would say I have a very kind of tough love relationship with my audience of like kind of a
• 11:35
  like a wise older brother who's like calling you out on your bullshit.
• 11:38
  Do you feel like that's because there is so much bullshit in the self-help industry that
• 11:42
  people gravitate towards more of a real sort of raw?
• 11:46
  I think the people who come to me do.
• 11:48
  So I mean, I hear what you just said at the top of the show,
• 11:50
  like I hear that all the time for my audience of people saying like,
• 11:54
  I hate every self-help book, but I love Jers.
• 11:59
  And so that is very much like kind of my customer avatar, right?
• 12:03
  It's like, okay, this person is, they're a little bit cynical.
• 12:07
  They're maybe a little bit, they're skeptical, they're hard to convince,
• 12:10
  but like they do think deeply and they do care about improving themselves.
• 12:14
  Do you think that I would say traditional self-help that isn't as gritty?
• 12:20
  Do you think that it actually benefits people or does it hurt them in some way?
• 12:23
  I would say it's net positive.
• 12:25
  It's a mixed bag and I would say they're better and worse actors than others.
• 12:31
  I would also, I would argue that a lot of traditional self-help,
• 12:36
  it's when it does help, it's helping kind of superficially, right?
• 12:41
  It's like a little morning pep talk.
• 12:42
  It's a little like, you know, you can do it.
• 12:45
  I believe in you type thing, which is like, it's a high.
• 12:49
  You know, it makes you feel good for an hour or an afternoon,
• 12:52
  or maybe gives you a little bit of confidence for, you know,
• 12:55
  a big meeting or something, but a day or two later,
• 12:59
  you're still going to be the same person with the same insecurities.
• 13:02
  Because you haven't gone like below the surface.
• 13:04
  Right. Right.
• 13:05
  It's a lot of band-aid solutions, I would argue.
• 13:08
  And then in some cases, I would say the band-aid solutions
• 13:13
  are taken to such an extent that it does start to become harmful.
• 13:17
  Like it kind of encourages people to embrace delusional thinking
• 13:23
  or narcissistic thinking.
• 13:24
  I've always thought that self-help and some other,
• 13:28
  I don't know, practices, categories that you look to
• 13:38
  as almost as a band-aid for fixing your own life.
• 13:41
  Like you're looking to self-help in a way like if my life isn't perfect,
• 13:46
  I'm going to go listen to somebody, apply some strategy,
• 13:48
  and maybe that's the thing that I'm missing.
• 13:50
  I've always thought that the reason why self-help has become so popular
• 13:55
  is because we don't have as much religion in society.
• 13:58
  And it's filled this gap, but I don't think it's filled it very well.
• 14:03
  I agree.
• 14:04
  And I think you can have regardless of whether or not
• 14:08
  your religious, I think at least there was a little bit more
• 14:13
  process or a little bit more what's the word I'm thinking of.
• 14:17
  There is more structure and more thought put towards a religion
• 14:22
  whereas self-help is kind of just like people shooting from the hip.
• 14:25
  And I think that that probably wasn't the best replacement
• 14:28
  for like organized religion.
• 14:30
  So you were talking, you're from LA.
• 14:33
  Right.
• 14:33
  And everybody is subscribing to something,
• 14:35
  whether or not it's self-help or astrology or journaling or meditation or
• 14:40
  sound, whatever it is.
• 14:41
  I love this topic.
• 14:43
  I'm like I'm so I'm like getting rabid over here.
• 14:46
  So yes, I 100% agree with what you're saying
• 14:51
  and I would like to take it even further.
• 14:53
  So I started noticing a ways back.
• 14:57
  I mean it's just like get online and watch a
• 15:00
  video of a Tony Robbins seminar.
• 15:02
  It's like a church revival.
• 15:03
  Did you grow up religious?
• 15:04
  Not really.
• 15:05
  Like it was like the Christmas presents.
• 15:09
  That's pretty much it.
• 15:09
  So I grew up very religious and I grew up in the bible belt in Texas.
• 15:14
  And so we used to go to these like evangelical revival services.
• 15:20
  Right.
• 15:20
  And it's these would be like three, four hour church services.
• 15:24
  They'd have music.
• 15:25
  They'd have singing.
• 15:27
  And they'd have like some super charismatic guy on stage
• 15:30
  who's like sweating his balls off and screaming
• 15:33
  the you about Jesus and the power of the love.
• 15:35
  And it just like it would just emotionally
• 15:39
  wear you down.
• 15:40
  And then you there would kind of be this like euphoric
• 15:43
  like fever pitch that would happen in the audience
• 15:46
  after a certain amount of time.
• 15:47
  And it felt incredibly powerful and profound.
• 15:51
  And it's funny because I remember like one of the first times I saw
• 15:55
  a video of a Tony Robbins seminar.
• 15:56
  I was like, oh, it's a church revival.
• 15:58
  Like it's the exact same shit.
• 16:00
  It like he's running the playbook to a tee.
• 16:04
  And he's got the music.
• 16:05
  He's got the dancing.
• 16:06
  He's got the singing.
• 16:07
  And then you know, and then he like kind of like just build
• 16:10
  and builds this.
• 16:10
  He locks people in a room for eight hours.
• 16:13
  And then he just builds this emotion.
• 16:14
  And next thing you know, people are in tears.
• 16:16
  They're crying.
• 16:17
  They're saying they're saved.
• 16:18
  All this stuff.
• 16:18
  So I've had this kind of like there's I felt like there's
• 16:21
  a little bit of a parallel between self-help
• 16:23
  and religion for a long time.
• 16:25
  It's funny because as I've gone through my career
• 16:27
  and I've really dug into the psychological research
• 16:31
  and really started to kind of understand, you know,
• 16:33
  human happiness and flourishing and stuff.
• 16:35
  And like on a very deep level,
• 16:36
  I think the thing that self-help misses
• 16:39
  or what self-help lacks, like the common denominator
• 16:42
  that you consistently come back to in human psychology
• 16:45
  of like what drives psychological well-being
• 16:48
  is that you need to have something bigger than yourself.
• 16:50
  And this is I think this is the core piece
• 16:53
  that you were alluding to when you when you were describing
• 16:56
  like why self-help feels kind of loose and aimless
• 16:59
  is that self-help will tell you I'll help you make more money.
• 17:03
  I'll help you have a better marriage.
• 17:04
  I'll help you be more successful.
• 17:06
  I'll help you be happier.
• 17:07
  But there's no why.
• 17:08
  It's just like stuff.
• 17:10
  I'll give you more.
• 17:11
  Give me money and I'll give you I'll give you good stuff.
• 17:14
  And there's no there's nothing
• 17:16
  and like ultimately humans need something
• 17:19
  larger than themselves to believe in,
• 17:21
  to give themselves to, to really drive
• 17:25
  that sustaining long-term happiness.
• 17:27
  And I've kind of come I'm atheist.
• 17:31
  I joke on my podcast that I'm like
• 17:33
  the most pro-religion atheist that you'll ever meet
• 17:36
  because it's like I now get it.
• 17:38
  I'm like that's that thing that self-help is missing
• 17:41
  is that faith in something larger than yourself.
• 17:43
  It's that faith in God or Jesus or Muhammad
• 17:45
  or whatever your religion is.
• 17:48
  And and that is what makes all the other stuff
• 17:52
  feel meaningful and feel a sense of purpose.
• 17:56
  And then that's where you get all of like
• 17:58
  the positive long sustainable long-term outcomes.
• 18:01
  So I agree with you.
• 18:01
  I don't think self-help can replace religion.
• 18:03
  No, I don't think you can,
• 18:04
  but I think people are trying to make it
• 18:05
  a thing to replace religion.
• 18:07
  And then this is the issue.
• 18:08
  So if you have, so I spoke from the perspective
• 18:11
  of the self-help creator and how
• 18:15
  if they're being, you know,
• 18:17
  if they're just putting out viral content
• 18:20
  then there's just self-serving for them.
• 18:22
  But also if you're subscribing to self-help
• 18:25
  as opposed to religion,
• 18:26
  then all these different things you're trying to fix
• 18:28
  in your life, your marriage, your finances,
• 18:30
  you want to lose weight and be healthy.
• 18:33
  Yourself, it's also self-serving
• 18:35
  because you're just doing it for yourself.
• 18:36
  Just doing it for yourself.
• 18:38
  Yeah.
• 18:38
  Which I guess there could be some longevity in that.
• 18:40
  But I feel like after a while it's very hard
• 18:42
  to just do things just for you.
• 18:43
  Like if I was going to just do this podcast,
• 18:46
  just for me, I feel like I would get burned out after a while.
• 18:49
  Like there's other reasons why I like doing this.
• 18:51
  Because trust, you know this, you're created.
• 18:53
  There's much other easier ways to make money
• 18:56
  than podcasting.
• 18:57
  But I genuinely enjoy this.
• 18:58
  And it's, you know, I've been able to build my life
• 19:01
  where I can walk five feet from my house
• 19:03
  and record an interview and I meet cool people.
• 19:05
  And then I get to, you know,
• 19:06
  afford a nice life for myself and my, you know,
• 19:08
  my fiancee and hopefully my kids someday.
• 19:10
  And like I enjoy this a lot.
• 19:11
  And then also I feel very good because
• 19:13
  that we have great conversations.
• 19:15
  Hopefully we help people on the other side of this.
• 19:17
  So a lot of benefits at this.
• 19:18
  But it's definitely not just for me.
• 19:20
  Because a lot of ways for me to make money
• 19:21
  or in a living that are not just podcasting.
• 19:23
  But I think that when you just focus on goals
• 19:26
  that are entirely self-serving,
• 19:28
  you can start off with great intentions.
• 19:29
  But I think it's really hard to continue them long term.
• 19:31
  Yeah, it becomes a sort of treadmill, right?
• 19:34
  Because it's like, okay, I want more money.
• 19:36
  And then you get more money and you're like,
• 19:37
  okay, now what?
• 19:37
  And then there's like, well, I want to lose weight.
• 19:39
  And then you lose weight.
• 19:40
  And it's like, okay, now what?
• 19:41
  But if you're doing it so you can like play with your kids.
• 19:43
  That sustains you, right?
• 19:45
  Across decades.
• 19:46
  So yeah, it is that deeper source of meaning
• 19:50
  is I believe the missing piece.
• 19:53
  It's also funny because you mentioned the,
• 19:55
  so the religion I grew up with,
• 19:57
  it's very popular in Canada is Roman Catholic.
• 20:00
  It doesn't really have a great rep anymore.
• 20:02
  But that's how most, most Christians
• 20:04
  in Canada of Roman Catholic versus in the US,
• 20:08
  something I've noticed is Christianity is more like,
• 20:11
  and Roman Catholic for context is like beautiful church,
• 20:16
  like a priest with like nice robes.
• 20:19
  Yeah, they read a couple sermons and whatnot,
• 20:22
  but it's not like down here where it's like a rock show.
• 20:26
  Yeah.
• 20:27
  So now I feel like religion is trying to become more self-help
• 20:31
  because they feel like they're losing ground
• 20:33
  and footing to the self-help gurus of the world.
• 20:37
  I would argue religion is the original self-help.
• 20:40
  Like it's people used to go to church to get this information,
• 20:44
  like all the crap that I'm posting on Instagram,
• 20:46
  like it's not, it's the Stoics, it's Jesus, it's Buddha,
• 20:54
  it's like it's all back there, right?
• 20:57
  This has all been around for thousands of years.
• 20:59
  And so I think the church was the original self-help seminar.
• 21:03
  It's where you, yeah, you went to pray
• 21:05
  and learn about Jesus and whatnot,
• 21:09
  but that's also where you got your life advice.
• 21:12
  Like you would go to the minister or the preacher,
• 21:15
  the original marriage counselor was preachers.
• 21:18
  That's true.
• 21:18
  So now, fast forward to 2026, society is more secular.
• 21:24
  People are subscribing to these self-help gurus.
• 21:28
  Do you think that I kind of asked you this a little bit already,
• 21:31
  but I want you to go deeper?
• 21:32
  Do you think that society is healthy, is happy?
• 21:36
  Because I don't feel like, I don't feel like,
• 21:39
  in general, we are, I feel like,
• 21:41
  I mean, I'll even read you a tweet
• 21:43
  that you put out a couple of days ago in a second,
• 21:46
  but I feel like we have access to more information
• 21:49
  than ever before, both self-help mindset and tactical.
• 21:54
  We have access to so many influencers and thought leaders.
• 21:57
  We have access to anything we want to,
• 21:59
  get more depressed and full of anxiety and stress
• 22:02
  than ever before, but the tweet you put out,
• 22:05
  I was like, I went to cloud,
• 22:06
  I was like, find the highest performing tweet
• 22:08
  because I want to see like what resonated with people.
• 22:11
  And it was, it's shocking how many educated millennials
• 22:13
  I know had insane runs in their 20s and 30s
• 22:15
  and are now completely lost and broken in their 40s.
• 22:18
  I think a lot of my generation shows unconventional
• 22:21
  sexy lifestyles in their 20s, not realizing
• 22:25
  that it would deprive them from developing many of the soft skills
• 22:27
  and commitments required to thrive and function
• 22:29
  in middle-aged and beyond.
• 22:30
  In other words, they optimize for their Instagram feeds
• 22:32
  rather than their actual lived experience.
• 22:34
  And now they are silently paying a deep price.
• 22:36
  And that was like one of the most engaged
• 22:38
  with tweets recently.
• 22:40
  And you're speaking about a very specific circumstance
• 22:42
  where people like didn't focus on career or meaning
• 22:44
  or fame or whatever.
• 22:45
  Connections, yeah.
• 22:47
  But do you feel in general just like
• 22:48
  with all of the access to information and opportunity
• 22:51
  and people and ideas that could help them,
• 22:53
  people are still more lost than ever?
• 22:55
  So I feel like there's kind of two questions there.
• 22:57
  I'll take the big macro kind of philosophical question
• 23:00
  of just like are things better or are people happier
• 23:03
  or are things worse.
• 23:05
  I think it's one of those nuance things
• 23:07
  where it's yes and no.
• 23:10
  I think things are better.
• 23:11
  Like I think it is just objectively speaking,
• 23:14
  we live in the best time to be alive.
• 23:16
  But I think what has happened is I think most of human history
• 23:20
  there was real physical danger.
• 23:23
  There was real physical scarcity.
• 23:27
  And now what we have traded that for,
• 23:29
  now there is no physical danger of physical scarcity
• 23:31
  for the vast majority of us.
• 23:33
  But we've traded that now for existential scarcity.
• 23:39
  So it's like, okay, I have access to any,
• 23:42
  I can become anybody I want.
• 23:43
  I am safe, all my needs are met.
• 23:46
  But now that abundance of opportunity
• 23:49
  creates this other problem,
• 23:51
  which is like a psychological scarcity of like,
• 23:54
  oh my God, I don't know what to do.
• 23:56
  Because if I, any choice, if it's wrong,
• 23:59
  I like blow up all these other opportunities, right?
• 24:01
  And so people just get paralyzed and freaked out.
• 24:04
  So it's, it's very much like Hashag,
• 24:07
  high quality problems, but it's still a problem, you know?
• 24:10
  Like people are, you know, but I think that's,
• 24:13
  that's why you see this interesting correlation,
• 24:14
  which is that as countries economically develop,
• 24:19
  they're happy, the scores go up,
• 24:20
  but their anxiety scores go up as well.
• 24:23
  And so you get these, you get like,
• 24:25
  happier ultimately like,
• 24:28
  safer, more well-adjusted people
• 24:30
  who are worrying all the time.
• 24:33
  Because, and it makes sense, right?
• 24:34
  Because when you have a great life,
• 24:38
  you have a lot to lose, you know?
• 24:40
  It's like the subsistence farmer in the middle of India,
• 24:43
  but why do we think we're gonna lose it?
• 24:46
  Like you basically, you're saying that like,
• 24:47
  Maslow's hierarchy of needs is, is incorrect.
• 24:51
  Yeah.
• 24:52
  Hey, I don't know if it's incorrect.
• 24:54
  I just think it's, it's a different type of anxiety.
• 24:58
  And it's, I think it's a more philosophical anxiety.
• 25:02
  You know, like if you, if you go back a hundred years,
• 25:04
  the vast majority of people were just trying to make sure
• 25:06
  they had enough food to eat at the end of the month.
• 25:09
  They want to make sure their kid wasn't gonna die
• 25:11
  of tuberculosis or whatever, you know,
• 25:14
  whatever plague was going on at the time.
• 25:18
  You know, today we don't have those things to worry about,
• 25:21
  but the mind needs things to worry about.
• 25:23
  And we have access to so much information
• 25:26
  that we, we start having these like very broad
• 25:31
  philosophical anxieties about, am I doing the right thing?
• 25:35
  Am I working hard enough?
• 25:36
  Should I work less?
• 25:37
  Am I, should I change careers?
• 25:38
  Should I spend more time with my family?
• 25:40
  Should I spend less time with my family?
• 25:41
  Like these are all like luxury problems,
• 25:45
  but they are problems.
• 25:47
  And you can, you can literally drive yourself crazy
• 25:51
  worrying about them if you let yourself.
• 25:53
  So that particular tweet, that is speaking to an audience
• 25:58
  that is just discovering these problems for the first time
• 26:00
  because they never really put thought
• 26:02
  towards what they were pursuing in life.
• 26:04
  So that tweet specifically, that actually emerged
• 26:07
  from a really long conversation I had with my wife.
• 26:12
  I think what we're noticing, and I'll include myself
• 26:16
  in this to, to, to some extent, I'm starting to notice
• 26:21
  that midlife crises are hitting millennials extremely hard.
• 26:26
  Like very, very hard, much harder than I think
• 26:29
  previous generations.
• 26:31
  And, and what I, what I'm noticing is like the,
• 26:34
  the people I know in my life that are kind of getting hit
• 26:36
  with this, you know, if you go back
• 26:39
  to like our parents' generation, they'd have a midlife
• 26:42
  right, you know, they, dad would get a corporate job.
• 26:45
  And mom would like volunteer at the local school
• 26:49
  and then they get to 40 and it's like, okay,
• 26:51
  well, they've got the house and the kids are grown up.
• 26:54
  What do I do next?
• 26:55
  And then you, you know, you kind of have this crisis
• 26:57
  around like, oh, is this it?
• 26:58
  We did all the things.
• 27:00
  Today, because the millennials grew up
• 27:04
  with so much more opportunity and so many different options
• 27:07
  of lifestyles, you know, you could go live abroad,
• 27:09
  you could start a business, you could work remotely,
• 27:11
  you could, you know, split time between two cities,
• 27:15
  you've got like people in unconventional relationships
• 27:20
  and thruples and like all sorts of things going on.
• 27:22
  And what I've noticed is that a lot of people
• 27:28
  chose a certain lifestyle.
• 27:29
  Maybe it's like starting an e-commerce business
• 27:31
  in their 20s and living in Thailand half the year.
• 27:35
  And when you're 20, that's super sexy and exciting.
• 27:39
  But what you don't realize you're giving up
• 27:41
  is you're not building community,
• 27:43
  you're not building strong relationships,
• 27:45
  you're not building a network, you're not in the room
• 27:49
  when like the industry things are happening.
• 27:52
  And so they get to 40 and they're kind of like stock.
• 27:55
  I'll give you another example.
• 27:56
  I had a friend who started trading stocks in college
• 28:00
  and he was very, very good at it very quickly.
• 28:05
  And by 27, 28, you know, he was multimillionaire.
• 28:10
  And out of our group of friends, like he was the baller,
• 28:13
  like everybody was like, we're gonna hang out with that guy.
• 28:15
  Like we're spending the weekend with that guy
• 28:18
  cause he was just ballin' out, he was the coolest dude.
• 28:21
  But it's funny cause it's like now we're in our 40s
• 28:25
  and he's still very wealthy, but like he's never had a job,
• 28:29
  he's never worked with anybody, he's kind of unemployable.
• 28:33
  He doesn't really have a network.
• 28:35
  Like he's stressed out all the time, right?
• 28:38
  Cause it's trading, you know, so it's just financial trading.
• 28:42
  Like you're just constantly on your phone refreshing
• 28:44
  and freaking out of our stuff.
• 28:46
  Like I can go for like breakfast with these guys
• 28:48
  and bring their laptop.
• 28:48
  I know the kind.
• 28:50
  So he's been basically stressed for 20 years straight.
• 28:53
  He's built no community, no connections.
• 28:58
  And yeah, sure, he's got money.
• 28:59
  But like at 40, like he's not fuck you rich anymore.
• 29:03
  You know, it's like a lot of us have done really well
• 29:05
  in our 40s, so it's like it's not as impressed
• 29:08
  but he hasn't built out these other parts of his life
• 29:11
  and he's really struggling.
• 29:13
  And it's, so it's been interesting to watch a lot of people
• 29:17
  kind of in those situations.
• 29:19
  And it kind of referenced a religious thing again.
• 29:23
  I think what I see lacking in our generation
• 29:27
  is that sense of community, right?
• 29:30
  Like the conversation I had with my wife
• 29:32
  and I have had quite a bit is like, we're not religious
• 29:36
  so we don't go to church.
• 29:37
  We don't have kids, so we don't have schools
• 29:40
  and our, you know, other parents to hang out with.
• 29:44
  And we travel all the time for our job.
• 29:46
  So we're like never around, you know?
• 29:48
  And so we just, we're in our 40s
• 29:50
  and we're like, we have lots of friends
• 29:52
  in like 18 different cities, but we have no community.
• 29:56
  Like we can't, there's nobody,
• 29:58
  we can just like randomly go knock on their door
• 30:00
  and like hang out and, you know, have a beer with or,
• 30:04
  you know, invite a few random people
• 30:06
  over for spontaneous barbecue or something.
• 30:08
  Like it just doesn't happen in our lives.
• 30:10
  Quick question.
• 30:11
  What's your go to when you got 10 minutes
• 30:13
  before a meeting or a workout?
• 30:15
  For me, it just used to be whatever I could grab,
• 30:17
  which usually meant skipping meals entirely
• 30:19
  or just grabbing something that left me crashing
• 30:22
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• 30:40
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• 32:45
  I think that everything you're sort of highlighting
• 32:48
  that your trader friends dealing with,
• 32:50
  even some of the stuff that you're dealing with,
• 32:52
  like lack of community in your life,
• 32:55
  I feel like that's gonna hit younger generations even harder.
• 32:59
  Because now they're growing up isolated
• 33:01
  and they're growing up subscribing to people
• 33:04
  who are pitching them this idea of work online,
• 33:07
  work anywhere in the world.
• 33:08
  And that's okay, but to your point,
• 33:11
  there's gonna be a lot lacking in their life.
• 33:14
  Yeah, I wonder what that does for the mental health
• 33:16
  and well-being of a younger generation.
• 33:19
  I mean, it can't be good.
• 33:21
  I honestly think a lot of the,
• 33:25
  there's a lot of noise that's made about the mental health
• 33:27
  crisis and especially Gen Z.
• 33:30
  I honestly think that if you solve this problem,
• 33:33
  the isolation, the loneliness, the lack of community,
• 33:38
  to me that feels like the 80, 20 of the situation.
• 33:41
  Everybody talks about social media,
• 33:43
  everybody talks about like the phones and all this stuff,
• 33:48
  news, 24 hours of news, doom scrolling, all this stuff.
• 33:52
  To me, it's just like if you have enough face-to-face
• 33:56
  interaction in your life,
• 33:57
  if you have like a good cohort of people
• 34:00
  that you can rely on in your personal life,
• 34:05
  that solves a lot of other issues on its own.
• 34:10
  How do you build a life worth living?
• 34:12
  And I ask that is like a very broad open-ended
• 34:16
  because we're talking about community,
• 34:18
  we're talking about finding purpose,
• 34:19
  we're talking about having this like massive mid-life crisis.
• 34:24
  But even somebody who researches this for a living,
• 34:29
  you have had like these,
• 34:32
  I don't want to call it mid-life crisis,
• 34:34
  but like you've had these like
• 34:35
  definitely mid-life crisis,
• 34:36
  re-inventions, the nicer way to call it,
• 34:39
  re-inventions of yourself.
• 34:40
  Even after you've found success,
• 34:42
  I mean like even now like what you're working on with your app,
• 34:46
  like you reinvented yourself, you were an author
• 34:49
  and you found that you sort of accidentally took
• 34:52
  on the identity of an author because it was successful
• 34:55
  and then you found that that wasn't like
• 34:56
  the most fulfilling thing.
• 34:59
  So my point being,
• 35:01
  somebody who researches this stuff for a living
• 35:04
  still falls into these traps.
• 35:07
  What hope is there for the rest of us,
• 35:10
  I think the biggest lesson that I have taken in my life
• 35:16
  is that you really need to learn how to give up options.
• 35:22
  You need to find things that are worth committing to
• 35:27
  and then really commit to them.
• 35:29
  And I don't mean this,
• 35:31
  I'll use dating just because it's a nice analogy
• 35:34
  for how this can apply to pretty much everything
• 35:38
  in my opinion, right?
• 35:39
  So it's a common problem you see these days
• 35:42
  is people are on the apps.
• 35:44
  There is a perception that there's kind of this
• 35:46
  endless supply of potential partners.
• 35:48
  And so that gives you this mindset every date you go into,
• 35:53
  as soon as they do anything awkward
• 35:55
  or slightly off-putting, you're like,
• 35:57
  oh, next, right?
• 35:59
  Cause there's just this endless supply of alternatives.
• 36:02
  And I think that's the trap of modern life.
• 36:06
  Like if you can apply that to business,
• 36:08
  it's the same trap, you can apply that to lifestyle choices.
• 36:13
  It's the same trap.
• 36:13
  It's like there's an illusion of endless optionality
• 36:18
  pretty much everywhere,
• 36:20
  which is preventing people from being able to commit,
• 36:24
  to choose something commit, really invest themselves in it
• 36:26
  because it's that investment and something
• 36:29
  giving your life over to something, rejecting the alternatives.
• 36:33
  That's where the meaning is found
• 36:35
  and that's where the satisfaction is found.
• 36:40
  And I just think it's, it's,
• 36:45
  well, no, I'll frame it because that's smart,
• 36:50
  but two things can be true at the same time, right?
• 36:53
  Because you have adopted identities in your life
• 36:59
  that you no longer want to associate with.
• 37:02
  So, and we're not talking about like the more destructive ones
• 37:06
  previous to like your author life when you were still drinking.
• 37:08
  I'm talking about like being an author
• 37:11
  is a very healthy identity to adopt
• 37:14
  and you went all in on that.
• 37:15
  So the duality is, or the two truths that can exist simultaneously
• 37:19
  is you have to go all in on something
• 37:21
  and reject all other options.
• 37:24
  But at the same time, then you have to figure
• 37:26
  when that season of your life is over.
• 37:27
  Yes.
• 37:28
  And to move on to something else.
• 37:30
  So both of these, that's the tough part.
• 37:32
  Both things have, you have to be able to think
• 37:34
  through both ideas, things have all been changed.
• 37:36
  And it's, you know, for most of my young life
• 37:40
  I wanted to be an author and that was my dream.
• 37:42
  I wanted to be big bestseller, all this stuff.
• 37:44
  It happened, did the whole author thing, right?
• 37:48
  Wrote a bunch of big books and toured and did a movie
• 37:53
  and all the stuff that authors hope to do
• 37:55
  and realized that I actually didn't love it
• 37:57
  as much as just being kind of the scrappy online entrepreneur
• 38:01
  content guy.
• 38:02
  And that was an extremely difficult thing
• 38:05
  to discover and admit to myself.
• 38:09
  But it is, I guess the, that's what's so hard about this.
• 38:14
  And this kind of comes back to what we were talking about earlier
• 38:16
  just about the existential anxiety of, you know,
• 38:22
  a few generations ago, people really only got one
• 38:25
  or two good opportunities throughout their lives.
• 38:27
  And so it was kind of easy to just be like,
• 38:30
  all right, this is my shot.
• 38:31
  Let's go for it, you know, whereas in today's day and age
• 38:34
  like, especially if you develop some good skills, right?
• 38:37
  If like if you're just a killer copywriter
• 38:39
  or killer at sales or an amazing software engineer
• 38:47
  there's like infinite number of things that you could go do
• 38:51
  and probably be successful at.
• 38:53
  And that, that infinite opportunity
• 38:56
  not only can it be crippling kind of broader
• 39:00
  philosophically speaking, but even in the moment
• 39:03
  you run this risk of just shiny objects in the room
• 39:06
  of like constantly being distracted of like,
• 39:08
  well, why don't we do this or why don't we start?
• 39:09
  Like, why don't we spend that out and make that a separate product?
• 39:12
  And you know you could be successful at all these things too.
• 39:14
  Right. And you, you have to like keep like hitting the stop it.
• 39:19
  Stop, stop doing that, you know, focus on the main thing,
• 39:22
  make the main thing the main thing.
• 39:24
  When you have all these options,
• 39:25
  what's your best advice for choosing which one to go all in on?
• 39:29
  Because we know that we have to go all in on one thing.
• 39:31
  You're going to make a bet on one thing.
• 39:34
  You have five different options.
• 39:35
  You're a highly competent polymath.
• 39:37
  You can make any of these things work.
• 39:38
  Is it the thing that lights you up that gives you the most energy?
• 39:40
  You've got to figure out your North Star like,
• 39:42
  what's the cliche, but is actually the most important cliche
• 39:44
  that is really, really true?
• 39:45
  Yeah. In my opinion, it's ask yourself,
• 39:48
  which problems do you enjoy having?
• 39:51
  Because there are lots of things that you will love them
• 39:54
  when they're working, but you will absolutely hate them
• 39:57
  when they're not working.
• 39:58
  And what you want to look for is the things
• 40:01
  that even when they're not working, you're still kind of enjoying it.
• 40:03
  What was the thing?
• 40:04
  So looking back at your own story,
• 40:07
  what was the thing that caused you to move away from being an author?
• 40:10
  And then now you, you found it purpose and you built an app
• 40:13
  and that's sort of like the next stage
• 40:14
  and you're obviously have your podcasts
• 40:16
  and like you're putting on more content.
• 40:17
  So you made a shift.
• 40:20
  Tell your own story so people can see how you evaluate
• 40:24
  like your decision tree for how to carve out a life
• 40:27
  because I think that will be helpful to people too.
• 40:29
  So as I mentioned, you know, started blogging super early.
• 40:32
  I built up the blog in the early 2010s
• 40:36
  to a few million readers who were doing some online courses,
• 40:40
  some ebooks, things like that.
• 40:42
  Had a nice little business going, you know,
• 40:44
  probably making 150, 200K a year, just me and an employee.
• 40:49
  So a nice, a nice little lifestyle business
• 40:51
  and then the book deal came along
• 40:53
  and it's funny because that book deal came along
• 40:54
  and like nobody really expected, including myself.
• 40:57
  Nobody really expected it to like take off that way.
• 41:00
  You know, in my head, I was like, oh, great.
• 41:02
  This book will like give me some credibility
• 41:04
  so I can continue scaling my blog.
• 41:05
  Why did you not think it was gonna man back then?
• 41:08
  It's funny, giving a blogger a book deal back then
• 41:14
  was still kind of like a ridiculous thing.
• 41:16
  Like it, in fact, my agent was one of the first literary agents
• 41:21
  who actually went online and like would find people
• 41:24
  who went viral and try to like find if there was a book deal there.
• 41:30
  Now it's like the basic blueprint, you know,
• 41:33
  it's like the audience.
• 41:34
  Yeah, it's actually the only way to get a book deal.
• 41:36
  Now is to go viral online first.
• 41:40
  So at the time, I was just like, okay, cool.
• 41:42
  You know, a book will help me build credibility,
• 41:45
  build some audience, make some money.
• 41:47
  The book just went absolutely supernova,
• 41:50
  just massive, massive smash hit.
• 41:52
  And suddenly all of these new opportunities were showing up.
• 41:55
  So massive, multi-million dollar,
• 41:59
  multi-book deal, Audible wanted to do this big project
• 42:03
  with me, film and TV deals started coming down the pipeline
• 42:08
  and the Will Smith book happened.
• 42:12
  And so I just started, I mean, I just started saying yes
• 42:15
  to everything because it's just everything's new.
• 42:18
  The numbers are huge and I'm like,
• 42:20
  I don't know, this might be my five minutes.
• 42:21
  So like, it's going to it lean into it.
• 42:24
  Just I was young, I didn't have kids.
• 42:26
  So I'm like, let's just say yes to everything.
• 42:28
  And so I went really hard on it
• 42:31
  and essentially burnt myself out.
• 42:34
  And by 2021, everything was done.
• 42:38
  All the books were done, all the product,
• 42:39
  the movie was done, the Will Smith book was done.
• 42:43
  And I was so burnt out, I was like,
• 42:45
  I need to take a few months off.
• 42:47
  Just kind of like recharge and think about what's next.
• 42:50
  And I, that three months off, turned into six months,
• 42:55
  slowly became like almost seven, eight months.
• 42:58
  And I realized that like,
• 43:02
  somewhere I had really steered wrong
• 43:04
  because I just, the thought of writing another book
• 43:08
  made me want to puke.
• 43:11
  I didn't, wasn't really excited about my business.
• 43:14
  I was like, am I just going to start,
• 43:15
  am I just going to start a new career?
• 43:16
  Like, what am I going to do, right?
• 43:18
  And so I made an agreement with myself,
• 43:20
  which is like, look man, you made a bunch of money.
• 43:22
  So like, there's no reason to do anything
• 43:24
  unless you are genuinely excited to do it.
• 43:28
  And I think that's one of the hardest things to learn
• 43:31
  when you're on the other side of a massive financial success.
• 43:35
  It's like pre-financial success.
• 43:38
  Money is the scorecard for everything, right?
• 43:41
  You just do the thing that gets you more money.
• 43:43
  There's a certain number that everybody hits
• 43:46
  where it's like, money doesn't make sense
• 43:48
  as a scorecard anymore.
• 43:49
  Your time and your excitement
• 43:52
  needs to become the scorecard.
• 43:54
  And so that period I really took
• 43:57
  is like, reorienting my brain.
• 43:59
  So I made an agreement with myself
• 44:00
  is like, going forward, I don't do anything
• 44:03
  unless I'm excited about it.
• 44:05
  And I slowly started going back to work,
• 44:09
  but I really only did things that were fun and interesting.
• 44:14
  So I started messing around with video content.
• 44:17
  And I got kind of excited about YouTube.
• 44:19
  So I started making YouTube videos.
• 44:21
  And my first three or four were absolutely awful.
• 44:24
  I had no idea what I was doing.
• 44:27
  But I kind of liked that.
• 44:28
  I was like, this is fun.
• 44:29
  Yeah, this is friction, it's yeah.
• 44:32
  It reminded me of my early blogging days.
• 44:34
  And I'm like, oh yeah, figuring out a new format
• 44:37
  and coming up with ideas.
• 44:38
  I'm like, okay, this is cool.
• 44:40
  And that started scaling.
• 44:42
  And I went out and hired a video team
• 44:45
  and then we launched a podcast.
• 44:46
  And then that started scaling.
• 44:48
  And within a year, you're in a half.
• 44:50
  I'm like, I have absolutely no interest
• 44:53
  in writing another book.
• 44:54
  I'm having so much fun building out this media team.
• 44:59
  And the other exciting thing too
• 45:00
  is that by this time, this was like 2023, 2024.
• 45:03
  I was like, the creator space had changed so much.
• 45:06
  Like it's, you can, there actually is
• 45:09
  so much financial opportunity now,
• 45:12
  making content online that it's actually,
• 45:16
  it might not be worth me writing a book.
• 45:20
  So I started scaling that business
• 45:22
  and that was going super well.
• 45:25
  And then about a year ago,
• 45:27
  I started, you know,
• 45:30
  because most of our monetization is just like ads
• 45:32
  and sponsorships and things like that.
• 45:35
  I started looking at, I'm like,
• 45:36
  there's got to be an opportunity
• 45:37
  to like, parlay this distribution
• 45:40
  into something with equity, right?
• 45:43
  That is, by the way,
• 45:43
  the future of the creator economy is that?
• 45:46
  Totally, 100%.
• 45:47
  Totally.
• 45:48
  So I started looking at startups
• 45:49
  that I could like partner with
• 45:51
  that were like really well aligned with what I talk about.
• 45:54
  And I started having some conversations with founders
• 45:57
  of like, okay, maybe I come in as like a partner
• 45:59
  or a co-founder and like, you know,
• 46:01
  I'll be the distribution arm
• 46:02
  and I'll like advise on product and growth and everything.
• 46:07
  And I had had a few conversations that went pretty far
• 46:10
  but nothing got over the finish line.
• 46:11
  There was like always a complication
• 46:13
  whether it was the cap table was a total mess
• 46:15
  or the founders like didn't want to give up control
• 46:19
  of something like brand control, you know.
• 46:24
  And so eventually I was like,
• 46:26
  I should just start my own.
• 46:29
  And I met my co-founder about a year ago,
• 46:33
  a little more than a year ago in a poker game.
• 46:35
  His name's Raj, he's done.
• 46:37
  I was really interested in kind of AI for mental health
• 46:39
  and he's been doing AI products since pre-chat GPT.
• 46:44
  And so he and I got started talking about it
• 46:47
  and he was like, look man, I like, you know,
• 46:51
  my last company was 200 employees before I exited.
• 46:54
  Like I can build anything, you know,
• 46:56
  I'll build the team, I'll build software,
• 46:58
  like I can build anything, just tell me what to build.
• 47:00
  And so we partnered up and we launched purpose
• 47:05
  about three or four months ago.
• 47:08
  And it's an AI personal growth coach.
• 47:10
  It's designed to like challenge you,
• 47:13
  point out blind spots, challenge assumptions,
• 47:15
  really push you on the things that you say you care about
• 47:18
  but you're not doing.
• 47:19
  So it's your content.
• 47:21
  Exactly, a little bit of a little bit of like tough love.
• 47:23
  Yeah.
• 47:25
  And it's been great.
• 47:25
  I mean, it's like we had a killer launch
• 47:28
  and just like pretty insane growth through the early,
• 47:31
  pretty good reinvention.
• 47:33
  I'm going to ask you about AI and mental health
• 47:35
  in a second, but just to finish that last thought
• 47:38
  for people that are listening,
• 47:39
  for people that are any of the people we spoke about,
• 47:42
  especially people that saw that tweet
• 47:45
  and are like, this is me, I feel lost
• 47:48
  and I feel confused and I'm having this midlife crisis.
• 47:51
  So what you just went through was a reinvention
• 47:53
  of who you were and your identity.
• 47:55
  What is your best advice for somebody
• 47:57
  to gracefully go through a reinvention
• 47:59
  like you did successfully without blowing up their life?
• 48:03
  That's a great question.
• 48:04
  I think the most important piece is you have to be able
• 48:10
  to listen to yourself and like be honest with yourself
• 48:14
  of the things that you really don't wanna do
• 48:16
  and the things that are exciting and light you up
• 48:19
  because like when you're in that spot
• 48:21
  where you wanna reinvent yourself,
• 48:23
  really what you're doing is you're looking
• 48:25
  for new things to prioritize or new things
• 48:27
  to optimize for, take really seriously.
• 48:31
  And I think the most important variable in that decision
• 48:35
  is what feels, what light to up, right?
• 48:39
  Like what are the challenges that you enjoy having?
• 48:43
  And I think that takes a lot of experimentation.
• 48:45
  It's two-sided.
• 48:46
  On one side, you need to be willing to experiment with things,
• 48:49
  what kind of fall on your face a little bit,
• 48:51
  maybe be a little embarrassed.
• 48:54
  On the other side, you need to be able to say no to stuff
• 48:58
  and that you're done with and not feel conflicted about that.
• 49:02
  So for me, it was like, I canceled a very large book deal
• 49:07
  because I was just like, guys, I'm not writing another book
• 49:09
  until I'm excited to write a book.
• 49:11
  It's not good for anybody if I just half-ass a book.
• 49:16
  I started saying no to pretty much all speaking engagements
• 49:18
  because I found they drained me
• 49:20
  and it's not my favorite thing to do.
• 49:23
  So it's just start cutting out the things
• 49:25
  that are not exciting and then really honestly look at yourself
• 49:31
  and ask yourself, what feels exciting in this moment?
• 49:35
  What is my curiosity naturally go?
• 49:39
  I think that also people have to trust themselves
• 49:42
  because they always know the answer.
• 49:43
  It's in there, but they listen to the agent,
• 49:47
  the friend, the social media, whatever.
• 49:51
  They listen to everything but themselves
• 49:53
  and then they end up living this life
• 49:54
  that is completely out of alignment
• 49:55
  and inauthentic to themselves
• 49:56
  and then they end up depressing.
• 49:57
  Yep.
• 49:58
  So when you built up purpose, obviously AI is huge right now.
• 50:06
  Even before we press record,
• 50:08
  we were kind of just talking about how there's this huge market
• 50:12
  because people are, as we've really discussed,
• 50:15
  lonely, sad, depressed, high anxiety
• 50:18
  and AI seems to be this outlet
• 50:20
  because I've seen stories in the news
• 50:21
  about people building relationships with AI.
• 50:26
  People have built romantic relationships with AI.
• 50:28
  They're coming to AI with all their problems, life advice.
• 50:32
  I mean, there's like memes about,
• 50:34
  I'd rather give like my wife, my phone
• 50:36
  and let her see my chat GPT search history like.
• 50:39
  So obviously people are looking for answers
• 50:42
  as they were with self-help, as they were with religion
• 50:45
  and then there's really sad cases
• 50:47
  where people have built these really screwed up relationships
• 50:51
  with AI looking for help and end up killing themselves
• 50:54
  or doing something really bad.
• 50:56
  So this is new technology.
• 50:59
  People don't really know how to handle it
• 51:01
  but it can be used for good
• 51:02
  and it's not like it's being used maliciously.
• 51:05
  Like chat GPT clawed for complexity gr-
• 51:07
  they're not malicious tools
• 51:08
  but they're not built to handle the complexity
• 51:11
  or the nuance of the human mind.
• 51:13
  So what is purpose like actually doing
• 51:15
  that these other ones are not doing?
• 51:17
  It's a great question.
• 51:18
  So the, I mean, the first thing that kind of landed
• 51:21
  on my radar, there was a survey,
• 51:24
  I think it was in Harbor Business Review,
• 51:25
  early last year of like what are people actually using
• 51:31
  chat GPT for?
• 51:32
  And I think it was like the number three use case
• 51:35
  was for personal life questions,
• 51:37
  advice, therapy, that sort of thing.
• 51:40
  So it's like, and in terms of like scale,
• 51:43
  that would put it well north of 100 million people
• 51:46
  or like using it on a daily
• 51:47
  or on a weekly or monthly basis for those use cases.
• 51:51
  And meanwhile, I'm like going to chat GPT,
• 51:53
  I'm kind of testing it, asking it some questions
• 51:56
  and I'm like anything I say to it, it's like,
• 51:59
  oh, that's great, you're amazing.
• 52:02
  You know, it's like this gaslighting sycophantic
• 52:05
  like it's just like zero critical thought.
• 52:08
  Everything you do is amazing.
• 52:10
  Every, it's like, you know, you could tell it,
• 52:12
  I just ran over a child with a bus
• 52:14
  and I'm running away from the cops.
• 52:15
  What should I do?
• 52:16
  And it's like, you know, we all make mistakes.
• 52:20
  It's so bad.
• 52:21
  It's so bad.
• 52:22
  But people are like trusting life decisions.
• 52:25
  Yes, yes.
• 52:26
  And so, and I honestly, I think a lot
• 52:28
  of the problematic use cases stem from that, right?
• 52:31
  Because if you look at like AI psychosis for example,
• 52:34
  like people who are predisposed to a psychotic break,
• 52:38
  like literally what's happening to them
• 52:40
  is they are losing grounding with reality.
• 52:43
  Like they're, they're sense of what is real
• 52:46
  and what's not is getting very loose.
• 52:49
  And generally with those people, like they need,
• 52:53
  they need friction and they need negative feedback
• 52:56
  to like bring them back to earth, right?
• 52:57
  It's like, no, no, no, no, you're not the queen of England.
• 53:00
  You're, you're Joe Blow and you need,
• 53:03
  and you need to go clean the garage, right?
• 53:04
  And, and so if you have a tool or device
• 53:09
  that is just constantly validating, constantly agreeing,
• 53:12
  constantly adapting your frame of reference
• 53:14
  and your view of reality of things,
• 53:18
  you can see how somebody like that could get into a spiral
• 53:21
  where they start believing a lot of very smart people.
• 53:23
  I've heard, yeah, very delusional things,
• 53:25
  very like out there type things.
• 53:29
  And it's, so I see that as the core issue.
• 53:32
  So when we were developing purpose,
• 53:34
  like the very first thing we focused on
• 53:37
  is we need to make it disagreeable.
• 53:39
  We need it, we need to make it so that it's willing
• 53:42
  to challenge you and call you out on things.
• 53:45
  So like the whole onboarding sequence right now,
• 53:48
  it's like the first thing you do in the app
• 53:50
  is you do an assessment that is designed
• 53:53
  to point out your blind spots.
• 53:54
  So like the very first kind of assessment
• 53:57
  that the AI gets about you is like,
• 54:00
  these are probably, this is your personality
• 54:02
  and these are probably your blind spots.
• 54:04
  These are the things that you are either not acting on
• 54:07
  and you should or the things that you probably don't realize
• 54:13
  you believe that are hurting you.
• 54:17
  And then from there, it's like there is a place
• 54:22
  for kind of emotional support and validation,
• 54:24
  but it has to be backed by this like kind of raw reality
• 54:28
  based bullshit detector.
• 54:32
  Yeah.
• 54:33
  And what do you find when people actually engage with it?
• 54:37
  Like what's the response?
• 54:38
  What's the reaction?
• 54:39
  Like does this helps?
• 54:41
  Obviously this helps people.
• 54:42
  Are they honest with it?
• 54:44
  Yes.
• 54:45
  So that's the interesting thing.
• 54:46
  A lot of our beta testers,
• 54:47
  when we started interviewing them,
• 54:51
  because one of our concerns was like,
• 54:52
  you know, are people gonna share with an AI?
• 54:54
  Like what they would share with like a therapist
• 54:55
  or a coach or a close family member or something?
• 54:59
  And what was interesting is that people, first of all,
• 55:02
  people didn't really have many hesitations
• 55:04
  about sharing personal issues.
• 55:06
  But what was interesting that came up a lot
• 55:08
  is that people said, you know,
• 55:09
  there's a lot of small issues in my life
• 55:12
  that I don't bring up in therapy
• 55:14
  because I feel like it's just a waste,
• 55:17
  like therapy is so expensive that it's like a waste of time.
• 55:21
  But they bother me, but with an AI,
• 55:24
  I'll just like, you know, it's like,
• 55:26
  oh, my boyfriend loads the dishwasher incorrectly.
• 55:29
  Like what's up with that?
• 55:30
  You know, and it's like,
• 55:31
  they'll sit there and have a conversation about it.
• 55:33
  And they're like, I don't feel like I'm wasting
• 55:34
  anybody's time.
• 55:35
  I love this.
• 55:36
  You know, with like these like little nagging issues
• 55:39
  that are going on in my life.
• 55:41
  So yeah, it's some people, I would say some people come in,
• 55:45
  they talk with it for a few minutes.
• 55:47
  I'd say the most common complaint we get
• 55:49
  when people cancel is, is there like, it's mean?
• 55:53
  That's so funny.
• 55:56
  They're like, I like unloaded this huge sensitive life
• 56:00
  issue and it told me that I was, you know,
• 56:02
  I'm the problem, but it was probably right.
• 56:04
  It was probably 100% right though.
• 56:06
  I know, I know.
• 56:09
  But it's, we ran a survey with our users
• 56:13
  around the beginning of the year.
• 56:15
  And we gave them three options.
• 56:16
  We said, you know, how is your,
• 56:17
  it's people that have been using the app
• 56:19
  for more than a month and we gave them three options.
• 56:21
  We said, as your experience,
• 56:23
  has it been not helpful, helpful or life changing?
• 56:26
  And 41% of people said it had been life changing already
• 56:30
  within a month.
• 56:31
  And then 46% said that it had been helpful.
• 56:34
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• 57:43
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• 57:47
  hiring do it the right way with indeed.
• 57:49
  HubSpot is a success story partner.
• 57:51
  Now, if you're looking for a new podcast,
• 57:52
  one of my favorite shows right now is demand to code it.
• 57:55
  If you're in the B2B marketing space,
• 57:56
  you need to be listening to this.
• 57:57
  It's hosted by the team at Blent.
• 57:59
  They are a demand gen agency.
• 58:01
  They know what they're doing.
• 58:01
  They're also part of the HubSpot podcast network.
• 58:03
  What I love about it is they skip all the theory
• 58:06
  and they just tell you what's actually working today.
• 58:08
  So demand gen, marketing, content,
• 58:10
  LinkedIn ads, attribution.
• 58:12
  They talk about real strategies that they are using.
• 58:14
  They you can use today that are working.
• 58:16
  So if you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a business,
• 58:18
  if you're really selling anything to anyone,
• 58:20
  go search demand decoded wherever you get your podcast.
• 58:23
  I love that people are using it to solve
• 58:25
  these small little micro life problems.
• 58:28
  And why that actually resonates a lot with me.
• 58:30
  I wrote a tweet.
• 58:32
  It's like one of my most viral tweets
• 58:34
  and it was about open loops.
• 58:36
  It's about open loops and having all these small little things
• 58:39
  that are top of mind that you've never really dealt with.
• 58:41
  And some of them are things like,
• 58:43
  I have to go drop off an Amazon return at UPS.
• 58:47
  But it's like it's compounded.
• 58:49
  So there's physical things you've got to do in your life.
• 58:51
  There's there's mental things.
• 58:52
  But I think we go through life with so many of these things.
• 58:55
  And it probably ties into why we have so much stress and anxiety.
• 58:59
  Because we have all these silly little tiny questions
• 59:02
  that mean something to us about our work,
• 59:06
  our relationship, our job.
• 59:07
  We have all these tasks that we have to do.
• 59:09
  And they all just compound.
• 59:10
  And I mean, purpose is not going to,
• 59:12
  whatever, take your package to Amazon.
• 59:14
  But it can help you with all these little questions
• 59:17
  about your relationship and how that person acts.
• 59:20
  Or you feel like you were disrespected by your boss,
• 59:23
  but it wasn't really that big of a deal.
• 59:24
  But it helps you put these things to bed
• 59:27
  and close those loops.
• 59:29
  So you're not like constantly thinking about them.
• 59:31
  And I think that just getting stuff out of your head
• 59:34
  probably helps almost as much as,
• 59:36
  it's the 80, 20 for most things.
• 59:39
  It's funny because when you actually look
• 59:41
  at the research on therapy.
• 59:43
  So there's been a number of like meta-analyses
• 59:45
  over the years of researchers who are like,
• 59:48
  let's figure out what the best form of therapy is
• 59:52
  and like the best approach to therapy.
• 59:53
  And so though they'll collect data
• 59:56
  on literally hundreds of thousands of people,
• 59:58
  dozens of therapeutic modalities,
• 1:00:00
  hundreds of different therapists,
• 1:00:02
  and they'll run all the numbers and crunch all the data
• 1:00:05
  and everything comes back the same.
• 1:00:09
  Like exactly the same.
• 1:00:11
  It doesn't matter if it's CBT or ACT or R-E-B-T
• 1:00:16
  or like it doesn't matter if the therapist
• 1:00:18
  was trained at Harvard or Stanford
• 1:00:21
  or the University of Central Nebraska.
• 1:00:25
  Like it just, it's ultimately like the 80, 20 of therapy
• 1:00:30
  is that your inner room openly disclosing
• 1:00:34
  something that's bothering you
• 1:00:36
  and somebody is sitting there and empathetically listening.
• 1:00:39
  Like that is 80% of the result.
• 1:00:43
  That's so interesting.
• 1:00:44
  So giving somebody a tool that allows them to do that
• 1:00:47
  for a fraction of the price of just hiring
• 1:00:49
  a full-time therapist.
• 1:00:50
  Exactly, so it's a lot of good.
• 1:00:51
  Yeah, and even if AI isn't as good as therapy
• 1:00:55
  and right now it's probably, I think it will catch up
• 1:00:59
  very soon, but it's still not there.
• 1:01:03
  The fact that it's available 24-7,
• 1:01:05
  the fact that if you're laying away in bed,
• 1:01:08
  worrying about like a big meeting you've got tomorrow
• 1:01:10
  or a fight you had with your wife or whatever,
• 1:01:13
  you can pull it out at any time
• 1:01:15
  and the statistics around just the under-supply
• 1:01:20
  of mental health professionals.
• 1:01:21
  So I think it's for every professional
• 1:01:24
  therapist, counselor or coach,
• 1:01:28
  there are 1,600 people that struggle
• 1:01:31
  with anxiety or depression who don't have access to one, right?
• 1:01:35
  So the ratio of people,
• 1:01:37
  so the ratio of supply to demand is like 1,600 to one.
• 1:01:41
  But it's just, there's so much,
• 1:01:42
  it takes so much time to like get certified
• 1:01:45
  and you know, go through school and get an office set up
• 1:01:48
  and like, you know, get clients and everything.
• 1:01:50
  Like there's just not enough people.
• 1:01:53
  Well, I was gonna say,
• 1:01:54
  I think you've tapped into something even deeper
• 1:01:55
  than you realize because okay, so first of all,
• 1:01:57
  you do live in LA where self-help is like the de facto mode.
• 1:02:03
  I think in a lot of other parts of the US and the world,
• 1:02:08
  people are embarrassed and feel shame
• 1:02:11
  around asking for help.
• 1:02:12
  I think that's why people subscribe to self-help books
• 1:02:16
  and podcasts and YouTube and whatever
• 1:02:17
  and why people talk to chat at GPT.
• 1:02:19
  So my point is I think that you created this sort of
• 1:02:22
  super safe psychological space for people
• 1:02:24
  to ask these questions where normally they would feel like,
• 1:02:27
  oh, especially with guys, especially with guys.
• 1:02:30
  100%.
• 1:02:31
  Again, in LA, I think more than the average,
• 1:02:34
  guys more than average in like, you know, middle,
• 1:02:36
  middle America are probably going to therapists,
• 1:02:38
  but guys in middle America probably have just as many issues,
• 1:02:41
  concerns, but maybe they don't feel like therapy is like,
• 1:02:44
  you know, masculine, whatever the stereotype is,
• 1:02:48
  but this creates a space for them to ask questions
• 1:02:51
  where normally they would feel embarrassed.
• 1:02:52
  Yeah, and we've gotten a lot of data back that there's,
• 1:02:57
  yeah, there's a shyness about it
• 1:02:59
  and that that is a huge use case.
• 1:03:01
  Actually, some of the earliest feedback we got
• 1:03:03
  after we launched is a lot of users emailed in.
• 1:03:06
  They said, can you make sure you automatically log out,
• 1:03:11
  log me out every time I leave the app?
• 1:03:13
  Like, can you have a setting so that I'm logged out
• 1:03:15
  automatically?
• 1:03:16
  And it turned out, when we asked them why,
• 1:03:19
  it's because they share phones with spouses
• 1:03:22
  or family members, it's because, you know,
• 1:03:25
  it's like they share a room with somebody.
• 1:03:27
  Like, they're like so paranoid that somebody else
• 1:03:29
  is going to open their phone and click on the app
• 1:03:32
  and see their conversations that it's like, you know,
• 1:03:36
  so privacy is a huge, huge piece of what we do.
• 1:03:39
  I mean, we always took it seriously,
• 1:03:41
  but then like as soon as we started launching,
• 1:03:42
  like once we got the pre-launch
• 1:03:43
  and we started hearing back from people,
• 1:03:45
  we were like, okay, this needs to be like super private.
• 1:03:49
  Do you have an idea why people are shy about
• 1:03:51
  self-development, personal improvement,
• 1:03:54
  getting help with their problems?
• 1:03:55
  I think it's a lot of people see it
• 1:03:58
  as like an admission of failure or defeat,
• 1:04:03
  like admitting that they're flawed in some way.
• 1:04:06
  I mean, the irony is that the only reason
• 1:04:09
  that it feels that way is that, you know,
• 1:04:10
  because it's like we're all failing and...
• 1:04:13
  We're all the mess, yeah.
• 1:04:15
  It's just that like, you know, there's some places
• 1:04:18
  in the world that are like people pretend
• 1:04:20
  like they're not more than others.
• 1:04:22
  And so I feel like there's kind of a sense of shame
• 1:04:27
  around it.
• 1:04:28
  And the other thing I've noticed too is I think
• 1:04:32
  there's also a little bit of a similar dynamic going on
• 1:04:35
  with just AI in general.
• 1:04:37
  It was funny because it's, you know,
• 1:04:39
  when I started posting some AI content last year,
• 1:04:42
  kind of in prep for the launch
• 1:04:43
  to kind of warm my audience up to it.
• 1:04:46
  And I got so many hate comments, so many people like,
• 1:04:49
  oh my God, AI, it's such a scam.
• 1:04:52
  I can't believe you're talking about this.
• 1:04:54
  This is a joke.
• 1:04:54
  And yeah, and sure enough, I think there's some,
• 1:04:56
  there was like a recent survey that found that people,
• 1:05:00
  people in the US, they're like the approval rating
• 1:05:04
  of AI in general was like on par with like Congress
• 1:05:08
  or something like it's like people just like
• 1:05:11
  have a really negative view of it.
• 1:05:13
  And but then it's funny because I feel like it's in public,
• 1:05:17
  everybody's like talking trash about AI.
• 1:05:19
  And then in private, everybody's buying and using it
• 1:05:22
  because it's the, I mean, I was telling you before the show,
• 1:05:26
  like the conversion numbers on this has been like,
• 1:05:29
  bonkers, like absolutely bonkers.
• 1:05:32
  It's converted in my audience like better
• 1:05:33
  and I think anything I've ever promoted,
• 1:05:37
  like just the demand is insatiable.
• 1:05:40
  So demand is there people just don't like publicly
• 1:05:42
  admitting to the fact that they're using AI?
• 1:05:44
  Yeah, or getting help or getting help.
• 1:05:46
  So you have two things, two things that are people
• 1:05:49
  uncomfortable that are uncomfortable for people
• 1:05:52
  to talk about.
• 1:05:52
  Yeah.
• 1:05:53
  I think that I listen.
• 1:05:54
  I think that both, like I want to talk just a little bit
• 1:05:57
  about content creation.
• 1:05:59
  And this is actually a really great segue
• 1:06:01
  because I think that even content creators in particular
• 1:06:03
  and everybody, like I just saw a post from Alex Ramozi
• 1:06:07
  saying, I don't think I'll ever use M dashes ever again.
• 1:06:10
  Just God forbid somebody thinks that I used AI to write this.
• 1:06:13
  So there is a lot of shame.
• 1:06:14
  And I think that with any new technology,
• 1:06:17
  there's almost this, I don't know.
• 1:06:21
  There's this old guard that wants to protect the way things
• 1:06:23
  are done the right way, even though right is so subjective.
• 1:06:27
  And I feel like I don't quite understand
• 1:06:30
  the narrative around AI.
• 1:06:32
  I think it's changing.
• 1:06:33
  I think that it was very negative
• 1:06:34
  and now it's getting less negative.
• 1:06:37
  Because for me, it's just another tool.
• 1:06:39
  It's just another great tool.
• 1:06:40
  It helps with research.
• 1:06:41
  Now I don't have to spend 10 hours listening to the podcast.
• 1:06:45
  I don't have to hire somebody to do research for me
• 1:06:47
  or God forbid if I'm doing it myself.
• 1:06:48
  Now I can just put a whole bunch of podcasts, transcripts.
• 1:06:52
  Like I put a book into a cloud
• 1:06:53
  and I like cloud better than chat GPT.
• 1:06:55
  And it helps me with all the research and the prep work.
• 1:06:57
  Like I'm still creating the content myself,
• 1:07:00
  but it's optimizing the process.
• 1:07:03
  Do you feel like more creators
• 1:07:05
  just have to get on board with it?
• 1:07:07
  I think it's inevitable.
• 1:07:09
  I just think it's funny I was having this seven
• 1:07:12
  conversation with my book agent a couple of weeks ago
• 1:07:15
  and she was asking me about AI and I'm like,
• 1:07:17
  yeah, we're using it all the time, right?
• 1:07:19
  And it's similar to you like on our podcast,
• 1:07:21
  we cut our like our research per episode.
• 1:07:24
  We cut it down probably at this point,
• 1:07:26
  like 80, 80%, 80% and 90%.
• 1:07:29
  You know, it used to take us multiple weeks
• 1:07:31
  to research an episode.
• 1:07:32
  Now it takes, you know, three to four days.
• 1:07:33
  So I was talking to her and I was kind of explaining this stuff
• 1:07:36
  and she was like, well, what about writing?
• 1:07:37
  And I'm like, well, you know, sometimes
• 1:07:40
  if I need like a bad first draft of something,
• 1:07:42
  that saves time.
• 1:07:43
  So, you know, if Claude can generate a good one,
• 1:07:46
  I'll use it or outlining, you know,
• 1:07:48
  coming up with like intros or opening line for something.
• 1:07:52
  Well proofing, stuff proofing.
• 1:07:53
  Yeah, it's kind of explaining all this stuff to her
• 1:07:56
  and she was like, oh man, yeah.
• 1:07:58
  If we have meetings with publishers, like don't tell them this.
• 1:08:00
  And I was like, really?
• 1:08:02
  And she was like, yeah, it's, you know,
• 1:08:04
  in kind of that old New York media industry,
• 1:08:08
  she's like, yeah, it's like a, it's like a bad,
• 1:08:10
  it's like a four-letter word.
• 1:08:11
  Like people, people, they talk bad about it,
• 1:08:16
  they talk down about it, like it's only mentioned
• 1:08:18
  in terms of like how horrible it is
• 1:08:21
  and absolutely nobody would ever admit to using it.
• 1:08:24
  And I just, I heard that and I was like, wow, good luck.
• 1:08:29
  Well, because I think people that are talking bad
• 1:08:30
  about it, they're trying to protect their jobs for sure.
• 1:08:33
  But I mean, like that, but what they don't get
• 1:08:35
  is that like they would become five times more effective
• 1:08:38
  at their jobs if they learned how to use it.
• 1:08:40
  I, so I just think I think it's inevitable
• 1:08:42
  that like everybody who is not using it
• 1:08:46
  is gonna get lapped by people who are using it.
• 1:08:49
  For sure.
• 1:08:50
  And I'm already seeing that in my own team.
• 1:08:52
  You know, we've got people who are using it all the time
• 1:08:54
  and we've got people who are kind of dragging their feet
• 1:08:57
  and picking it up and learning how to use it.
• 1:08:59
  And it's very noticeable, I'll just say.
• 1:09:04
  My thoughts on AI and content creation
• 1:09:08
  is the, the slop that you see and sort of like the stuff
• 1:09:11
  that prompts all the negative reaction to it
• 1:09:14
  is when people use it for like the output and not the process.
• 1:09:17
  Yes, I agree.
• 1:09:19
  Now that's gonna be interesting when it gets good enough
• 1:09:21
  that it's gonna write better than a human.
• 1:09:23
  I don't think we're there yet,
• 1:09:24
  but it's getting very, very, very close.
• 1:09:27
  But even when I use it to help me generate ideas,
• 1:09:29
  like with Claude, I've put like hundreds of hours
• 1:09:32
  of me speaking of me podcasting
• 1:09:33
  and I've built a project around to myself.
• 1:09:37
  So it knows where I was born, who my parents are,
• 1:09:41
  what they did for a living.
• 1:09:42
  It knows what Gina does for it.
• 1:09:44
  It knows everything about me.
• 1:09:45
  So now when I ask it to help me formulate an idea
• 1:09:48
  or to prove free, it's me.
• 1:09:51
  It is quite literally me.
• 1:09:53
  We have, I built a project in our team Claude account.
• 1:09:59
  I called the Markification tool.
• 1:10:02
  And so it's basically just a project.
• 1:10:04
  It has like samples of all my writing
• 1:10:06
  from every different format,
• 1:10:07
  from like YouTube scripts to books,
• 1:10:09
  to tweets, to articles, to like whatever.
• 1:10:11
  And it's basically a whole point of the tool
• 1:10:13
  is like anybody on the team that needs to make a sentence.
• 1:10:17
  Let's say somebody's doing an Instagram caption
• 1:10:19
  or they need a CTA for an ad in a newsletter or something
• 1:10:22
  and like I'm not around or I'm busy or something.
• 1:10:25
  It's like just drop it in the Markification tool
• 1:10:29
  and it's probably going to get it like 95%
• 1:10:31
  of my swear words.
• 1:10:32
  Yeah, I don't have Bomber too, yeah.
• 1:10:36
  No, that's so smart.
• 1:10:38
  I think, so I think creators have to,
• 1:10:39
  I think all the best creators,
• 1:10:41
  even if they don't admit it,
• 1:10:43
  they're just waiting for like the popular opinion
• 1:10:47
  to shift, but everybody's using it to some degree.
• 1:10:50
  Yeah, talk to me about your,
• 1:10:53
  so we spoke about reinvention from author to co-founder
• 1:10:59
  and founder and tech entrepreneur.
• 1:11:01
  The other reinvention was from author to podcasts
• 1:11:04
  or content creator.
• 1:11:06
  So obviously you like to create,
• 1:11:08
  you don't just want to be just a founder.
• 1:11:11
  How did solved happen?
• 1:11:13
  Because you killed another podcast a couple of months ago.
• 1:11:16
  I can't, what was that one?
• 1:11:17
  Who's, who's the Settle Arden?
• 1:11:19
  Not giving a fuck podcast.
• 1:11:19
  That was, it was actually branded as Settle Arden.
• 1:11:21
  Okay, so why did you kill that
• 1:11:23
  and replace it with Settle Arden?
• 1:11:24
  We, so we launched Settle Arden,
• 1:11:26
  that was just kind of like we should have a podcast
• 1:11:28
  and we didn't know what else to call it.
• 1:11:29
  So might as well call the name of the super popular book
• 1:11:32
  to like get that audience going.
• 1:11:34
  The short answer is that my, our space,
• 1:11:39
  especially the podcasts and the self-help space are,
• 1:11:43
  so they all sound the same.
• 1:11:46
  They're all, they're interviewing the same people.
• 1:11:49
  They're like, they've got the same titles.
• 1:11:52
  They're hitting the same talking points.
• 1:11:54
  They're all like 50 to 120 minutes long
• 1:11:58
  or sorry, an hour and 20 minutes long.
• 1:12:01
  And it was funny, like it was, like we would land a guest.
• 1:12:04
  Like I remember there was one time Cal Newport came to town
• 1:12:06
  because he had a new book coming out
• 1:12:08
  and he came to my house directly from Rich Roll's house
• 1:12:14
  and he was going to Huberman's house
• 1:12:17
  directly after my house.
• 1:12:18
  And so it was just doing a tour.
• 1:12:21
  He was just doing a tour and I was just like,
• 1:12:24
  oh man, what are we doing?
• 1:12:25
  Because we're all gonna put out the episode on the same week
• 1:12:30
  and he's gonna say the same thing and all of them, right?
• 1:12:33
  So I was just like, I gotta get out of it.
• 1:12:36
  Like especially because a lot of these got,
• 1:12:38
  like Rich has been doing this for 10 plus years.
• 1:12:40
  Lewis Hals has been doing this for 10, 15 years, right?
• 1:12:43
  So I'm like, I'm not gonna outcompete these guys
• 1:12:46
  at what they already do.
• 1:12:47
  Dude, it's tough.
• 1:12:49
  It's tough.
• 1:12:49
  I built this from scratch,
• 1:12:50
  but I mean, like I've been doing this
• 1:12:51
  for almost seven years now and I found the X factor is you.
• 1:12:56
  Yes, yeah.
• 1:12:57
  So your personality.
• 1:12:59
  Yeah, I think you have to like understand
• 1:13:02
  what your kind of hidden superpower is
• 1:13:05
  and then just lean way into that.
• 1:13:06
  And so on my team, we started talking about like, okay,
• 1:13:10
  how, first of all, how can we stop doing
• 1:13:12
  what everybody else is doing?
• 1:13:14
  Like find like a different format or something else.
• 1:13:17
  But also like what is it, like what do we think
• 1:13:19
  were actually better than everybody else at?
• 1:13:21
  And then how do we lean into that?
• 1:13:24
  And the conclusion we came to is just that like Drew and I
• 1:13:28
  drew my producer and he's my co-host.
• 1:13:31
  We've been working the other for almost 15 years.
• 1:13:34
  Yeah, he was my original research assistant
• 1:13:37
  like way back in like 2013.
• 1:13:40
  And you know, the conclusion we came to is like,
• 1:13:45
  A, we have really good chemistry
• 1:13:47
  and we have like this massive backlog of knowledge
• 1:13:50
  that we've surfaced together through just working together
• 1:13:53
  on for so many years.
• 1:13:55
  But B, like we felt, we really felt like we could kind of
• 1:13:58
  research anybody else in our space under the table.
• 1:14:01
  Like we, we felt like we had, we were more informed
• 1:14:04
  on the academic research than most people.
• 1:14:06
  We had a better understanding of like different results
• 1:14:09
  and you know, different traits and you know, personality
• 1:14:14
  and how it differs from like states and all this stuff.
• 1:14:17
  And so we're like, we should just go super, super deep
• 1:14:20
  on a single topic and like remove all the ambiguity
• 1:14:25
  from that topic because I think one of the biggest complaints
• 1:14:29
  in the self help space is that like, you know,
• 1:14:31
  you'll listen to say like diary of a CEO on Monday
• 1:14:37
  and he'll tell you that something's horrible
• 1:14:39
  and it's gonna kill you.
• 1:14:40
  And then on Wednesday another guest comes on
• 1:14:42
  and says it's the best thing in the world.
• 1:14:44
  So people are just like, what's true?
• 1:14:46
  I don't know, all these guests are contradicting each other.
• 1:14:49
  So we're like, we're gonna remove all the ambiguity.
• 1:14:51
  We're gonna get the bottom of everything.
• 1:14:52
  We're gonna be very nuanced and we're gonna call it solved
• 1:14:56
  so that it's like, if you listen to this episode,
• 1:14:59
  you're not gonna have to listen to anything else.
• 1:15:01
  So not just opinions, but like, we're gonna go deeper than that.
• 1:15:05
  And we're gonna get to actual facts.
• 1:15:06
  We'll give you our opinions, but like it's our opinions,
• 1:15:11
  it's more about the research.
• 1:15:13
  Like we're gonna give you a full 360 view of like,
• 1:15:15
  this is all of the research and thought behind this topic
• 1:15:20
  and what you can do about it.
• 1:15:21
  And SettleArt was more just opinion-based.
• 1:15:24
  Again, shooting from the hip, whatever the guest feels
• 1:15:27
  like talking about, we're gonna let them talk about it
• 1:15:30
  totally.
• 1:15:31
  Is it working out?
• 1:15:32
  And I'm asking for myself, selfishly asking for a friend.
• 1:15:37
  But I'm also asking for creators
• 1:15:39
  who are trying to build an audience in 2026 and beyond
• 1:15:42
  who feel like it could be self-help,
• 1:15:44
  it could be business entrepreneurship, it could be whatever.
• 1:15:46
  They feel like their space is so crowded
• 1:15:50
  and they're just trying to find a way to carve out a niche.
• 1:15:52
  So it is working very, very well.
• 1:15:55
  I think we, the first, I think of the first 10 episodes,
• 1:16:05
  I think eight hit a million downloads.
• 1:16:07
  Like it's crushing, yeah.
• 1:16:09
  And it's, the downside is it's a lot of work.
• 1:16:13
  Like we basically, I would say we tripled the audience,
• 1:16:18
  doubled or tripled the audience per episode,
• 1:16:21
  but we also like doubled or tripled the work per episode.
• 1:16:24
  So I ended up having the hire more researchers,
• 1:16:28
  hired another producer, hired a marketing person
• 1:16:31
  for the podcast.
• 1:16:32
  So the team has expanded and grown kind of proportionally,
• 1:16:36
  but it is working.
• 1:16:37
  And I would say to answer your question,
• 1:16:38
  like I do think differentiation
• 1:16:43
  is kind of comes back to that discussion of brand, right?
• 1:16:44
  Like in a market, if every market is saturated,
• 1:16:49
  like the last mode is brand is like,
• 1:16:53
  who are you, what do you stand for?
• 1:16:55
  What are you willing to give up?
• 1:16:57
  I actually had a, I just hired a new social media manager
• 1:16:59
  and I was having a conversation with her this morning
• 1:17:02
  and we were talking about, you know, Instagram,
• 1:17:05
  like my brand and like strategy for like Instagram
• 1:17:09
  or TikTok or whatever.
• 1:17:11
  And we were just talking about how optimized everything is.
• 1:17:14
  And we were talking about it and I was like,
• 1:17:16
  yeah, I almost feel like one way to think about brand
• 1:17:20
  is like choosing the ways to not be optimized, you know,
• 1:17:24
  like because it's in 2026, like everything is optimized,
• 1:17:28
  like everything, especially with AI and stuff,
• 1:17:30
  like everything is going to get super, super op,
• 1:17:32
  everybody's going to have great hooks
• 1:17:33
  and everybody's going to have like sick production
• 1:17:36
  and like awesome scripts and everything.
• 1:17:38
  So it's like, what are you choosing to be suboptimal on
• 1:17:41
  because that's actually, and then that needs
• 1:17:44
  to reflect the values of your audience.
• 1:17:46
  And usually that's just more hard work.
• 1:17:49
  I think like it's testing and hard work.
• 1:17:52
  In my case, yeah, probably in yours as well,
• 1:17:54
  like based on the brand of this podcast, you know,
• 1:17:57
  in my case, it's very much like, you know,
• 1:18:01
  a thorough honesty and like really a talented,
• 1:18:04
  intelligent nuance approach to a topic.
• 1:18:06
  But like if you're somebody, you know,
• 1:18:09
  somebody like Mel Robbins, I honestly,
• 1:18:11
  I think she's crushing it so hard.
• 1:18:14
  Like her content is fine, but I think she's crushing it so hard
• 1:18:18
  because she is just like cornered
• 1:18:19
  that middle-aged woman audience.
• 1:18:21
  Like she's just owning it so hard.
• 1:18:24
  And that is the core audience of self-help.
• 1:18:26
  So like everything she does, you can see it,
• 1:18:29
  everything she does from the way she looks,
• 1:18:32
  the way she talks, the way her intros are written,
• 1:18:34
  like is very much catered to like that avatar.
• 1:18:39
  And then it is also who she is, right?
• 1:18:41
  She's like, she speaks to herself.
• 1:18:43
  Right, she's that spunky middle-aged woman
• 1:18:45
  that you know, you want to be friends with down the street.
• 1:18:47
  So it's like, she's nailed it.
• 1:18:50
  So I also study podcasters.
• 1:18:52
  And you're talking about sort of being you
• 1:18:55
  and building your brand is your mode.
• 1:18:58
  Which is like, these are good ideas,
• 1:19:00
  but these are not new ideas.
• 1:19:01
  You can't just forget them.
• 1:19:02
  Like I remember during this from Seth Goden,
• 1:19:04
  speaking about like how you are the mode for your business.
• 1:19:08
  But I also like the idea of doing the extra research,
• 1:19:13
  doing the extra work because I think the bar is so low right now.
• 1:19:17
  Have you seen acquired?
• 1:19:19
  Yeah, I love acquired.
• 1:19:20
  And they put in like a month of research
• 1:19:22
  for like one episode.
• 1:19:24
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:19:25
  So it's like building a brand around you,
• 1:19:29
  testing all the time,
• 1:19:30
  don't be married to what worked even six months ago.
• 1:19:33
  I think it's a very important idea,
• 1:19:34
  always like testing new stuff.
• 1:19:35
  But then like just going the extra mile with your content,
• 1:19:38
  I think these are different ways to stand out.
• 1:19:40
  Yeah, one of the conversations
• 1:19:42
  we've been having a lot internally is,
• 1:19:44
  what's irreplicable?
• 1:19:46
  Like what is almost impossible to replicate?
• 1:19:49
  Because again, what we're noticing, right?
• 1:19:53
  Is like any pitty quote or like brilliant post, right?
• 1:19:59
  Anything that goes viral,
• 1:20:01
  it's just gonna get copied by 100 people tomorrow.
• 1:20:04
  Even like a killer guest, right?
• 1:20:06
  Like, you know, any other podcast can go get that guest.
• 1:20:10
  So it's like, what are things that we can do
• 1:20:13
  that are really, really hard for other people to replicate?
• 1:20:16
  And so in our case,
• 1:20:18
  doing a four and a half hour episode on procrastination
• 1:20:23
  and like, what is the science?
• 1:20:25
  And this is actually almost how
• 1:20:27
  Superman differentiated himself to a degree too.
• 1:20:29
  Exactly, exactly.
• 1:20:30
  And R2 kind of like,
• 1:20:32
  we modeled ourselves off of
• 1:20:34
  Huberman and Aquire.
• 1:20:36
  Those were like kind of our two North stars.
• 1:20:38
  Of like, what would a self hell version of Aquired look like?
• 1:20:42
  Have you noticed that episodes where it's not even guest focused,
• 1:20:46
  but sort of like Mark focused just doing solo stuff,
• 1:20:49
  do those outperform the guests?
• 1:20:51
  Because I've noticed that from mine.
• 1:20:52
  So I've started doing solo stuff.
• 1:20:55
  And obviously we do the guest interviews,
• 1:20:57
  but the solo stuff gets all the replies,
• 1:21:00
  gets higher retention instead of like, you know, 60 to 70%.
• 1:21:04
  It's like 110%.
• 1:21:06
  People are listening to it more than once.
• 1:21:08
  So I've noticed that like Scott is a differentiator
• 1:21:11
  because I can, you're gonna go on 20 different podcasts.
• 1:21:14
  This is notting my first podcast today.
• 1:21:16
  Exactly.
• 1:21:17
  You're gonna go on 20 different ones.
• 1:21:18
  So how do I differentiate with like my audience?
• 1:21:21
  And it's a little bit about how I'll chat with you
• 1:21:23
  and some of the stuff that I believe in
• 1:21:25
  that'll bring to the conversation.
• 1:21:27
  Hopefully this isn't, I know it's probably very similar to most,
• 1:21:30
  but hopefully I brought in like a few different things.
• 1:21:32
  I don't know all.
• 1:21:33
  Yeah, of course.
• 1:21:34
  But I mean, the point is it's that plus
• 1:21:36
  can they get more access to me?
• 1:21:39
  And I think that I was just curious
• 1:21:41
  if you found that solo stuff does that well for you.
• 1:21:43
  So this is one reason why we stopped doing guests
• 1:21:46
  is when in the Suttler podcast,
• 1:21:50
  so we would go 50, 50, we would go every,
• 1:21:52
  like every other episode.
• 1:21:53
  So one episode would just be Drew and I.
• 1:21:55
  And then the next episode would be me and a guest.
• 1:21:58
  And it was interesting because if you looked at the average
• 1:22:02
  across say like 50 episodes,
• 1:22:06
  episodes with just Drew and I outperformed
• 1:22:08
  the episodes with the guests,
• 1:22:09
  but there is a caveat to that,
• 1:22:12
  which is that out of like the top five best performing episodes
• 1:22:18
  that we ever did, like four of them were guest episodes.
• 1:22:21
  So the guests had like much wider deltas in terms of results,
• 1:22:26
  but the average was just doing it ourselves.
• 1:22:30
  Last idea I want to talk about,
• 1:22:32
  because you have a really strong opinion on this
• 1:22:34
  and I thought it was interesting.
• 1:22:35
  You do not like when people build a parasocial relationship,
• 1:22:41
  which I thought was interesting
• 1:22:45
  because the goal of a creator should be
• 1:22:49
  from my understanding of what a parasocial relationship is
• 1:22:52
  where somebody believes they know you
• 1:22:53
  without ever having met you
• 1:22:54
  unless you define it differently.
• 1:22:56
  The goal of a creator should be to create that.
• 1:22:59
  Is that not correct?
• 1:23:01
  This you are identifying a core tension
• 1:23:04
  inside of my business and my brand.
• 1:23:07
  So that, yes, in a vacuum, yes, that is correct.
• 1:23:13
  In my case, like a core part of my philosophy is agency,
• 1:23:19
  like one of the reasons I never push my personal values
• 1:23:25
  on the people is because it's that would rob them
• 1:23:28
  of the meaning that they get from discovering their own values
• 1:23:32
  and pursuing their own values.
• 1:23:33
  Like if you're pursuing somebody else's values,
• 1:23:36
  then they're not really your values.
• 1:23:38
  Like you just value that person.
• 1:23:40
  So a huge part, like I feel like if you need me
• 1:23:45
  to tell you how to live, like this comes back
• 1:23:48
  that we're coming full circle.
• 1:23:49
  This is the self-hating part of the self-alguru.
• 1:23:52
  It's like if you need me to tell you how to live,
• 1:23:54
  then like that's the problem in and of itself
• 1:23:57
  is you need to live for yourself first.
• 1:24:02
  And you can take my words as advice.
• 1:24:04
  You can take it as maybe a data point.
• 1:24:09
  But if you feel like you have a relationship with me,
• 1:24:14
  which you don't, and if you feel like anything I say
• 1:24:19
  is like what you should go do, it's probably not.
• 1:24:24
  That is the fundamental problem.
• 1:24:26
  It's interesting.
• 1:24:27
  It's very interesting.
• 1:24:29
  Because your success, it just amplifies
• 1:24:33
  when you build that stronger, and some of the people
• 1:24:37
  we've spoken about on this podcast are incredibly good
• 1:24:41
  at building these parasocial relationships.
• 1:24:43
  Yes, they are.
• 1:24:44
  Because I think the view they take,
• 1:24:47
  not that it's right or wrong, is probably,
• 1:24:51
  you don't have a framework to live your life.
• 1:24:53
  So hopefully if you emulate mine,
• 1:24:56
  your life's gonna be significantly better.
• 1:24:58
  Yeah, and I think, but that could be a short term.
• 1:25:00
  Well, and I think a lot of these people kind of occupy,
• 1:25:06
  I referred to myself earlier as like,
• 1:25:07
  I'm kind of like the big brother
• 1:25:10
  who's giving you tough love.
• 1:25:12
  That's not accidental.
• 1:25:13
  I really do think a lot of people in my space
• 1:25:17
  kind of occupy a role that people wish they had
• 1:25:21
  in their lives, but they don't.
• 1:25:22
  I imagine a lot of the younger women
• 1:25:25
  in Mel Robbins audience, she's probably the mom,
• 1:25:29
  they wish they had, right?
• 1:25:32
  For a lot of the middle age women,
• 1:25:33
  she's probably the sister they wish they had.
• 1:25:36
  So you run into that a lot,
• 1:25:37
  and I think in this market in particular,
• 1:25:40
  it's kind of dangerous territory
• 1:25:41
  because you are dealing with vulnerable people.
• 1:25:45
  But unfortunately, it's also like a very strategic part
• 1:25:49
  of the marketing calculus.
• 1:25:50
  Like the story, Tony Robbins is such a fucking fascinating guy.
• 1:25:54
  Like the way he blew up is so brilliant,
• 1:25:56
  which is that he was in the early 80s.
• 1:25:59
  He was just like a very small kind of local seminar leader.
• 1:26:03
  I think down in San Diego.
• 1:26:05
  And, but what he discovered is that
• 1:26:10
  cable TV came online in like 1980.
• 1:26:13
  And at the time, this is hard to imagine today,
• 1:26:16
  but there was not enough content in the world
• 1:26:18
  to fill all the cable TV channels 24 hours.
• 1:26:22
  So you had all these new cable TV channels
• 1:26:24
  that would just go dark at like 9 p.m.
• 1:26:26
  and they had nothing to show until like 9 a.m. the next morning.
• 1:26:29
  So you had all these dead air
• 1:26:31
  just like existing on the airwaves.
• 1:26:33
  And so Tony came along and he was in the first,
• 1:26:36
  but like that's what these infomercial started popping up.
• 1:26:39
  And so Tony came along and he was like,
• 1:26:40
  well, who's like who are the people
• 1:26:43
  that are sitting there staring at their static on their TV
• 1:26:46
  at like midnight by themselves?
• 1:26:49
  It's probably like really depressed people.
• 1:26:50
  Like these are my customers and clients.
• 1:26:54
  So he just started buying all this dead air
• 1:26:56
  in the middle of the night to like start marketing his seminars.
• 1:26:59
  And it's like that's exactly when the press
• 1:27:03
  that anxious people were like stuck awake,
• 1:27:05
  you know, with nothing to do.
• 1:27:07
  So it's absolutely brilliant, right?
• 1:27:09
  And it's, but it's a case of like it's the,
• 1:27:13
  it's an example of kind of the moral hazard of this industry
• 1:27:16
  and that like sometimes the most effective way
• 1:27:18
  to market the people undermines their ability to improve.
• 1:27:23
  I think that, you know, we spoke about a couple ideas
• 1:27:25
  about the self-help industry and I'm going to close
• 1:27:30
  one last question just to understand sort of
• 1:27:32
  what you think is still broken in this industry
• 1:27:35
  just to take it home, but I wish more self-help people.
• 1:27:41
  And this is something I think about too.
• 1:27:42
  Understood the responsibility of their content.
• 1:27:46
  Because we spoke about ideas like speaking to, you know,
• 1:27:50
  depressed, anxious people that are in sort of a bad place
• 1:27:53
  in their life, we spoke about self-help replacing religion,
• 1:27:57
  spoke about building with, you know,
• 1:27:58
  these parasocial relationships and implanting
• 1:28:00
  your own belief system in people's minds.
• 1:28:02
  Like, they're heavy ass ideas.
• 1:28:05
  But I don't know if the average content creator
• 1:28:08
  really thinks about the responsibility they have
• 1:28:13
  is when they build an audience.
• 1:28:14
  I don't either.
• 1:28:15
  And I would say that is the biggest problem
• 1:28:18
  in this industry is there's a lack of integrity
• 1:28:22
  among a lot of the biggest players.
• 1:28:24
  Not all, like some of them are great.
• 1:28:26
  Some of them are kind of in a gray area.
• 1:28:28
  And then I'd say there's kind of a few bad apples,
• 1:28:30
  but you are dealing with very deeply vulnerable people.
• 1:28:34
  And there is a lot of moral weight that comes with that.
• 1:28:40
  And I think it's incumbent on everybody
• 1:28:42
  to like keep that front of mind, all of that.
• 1:28:43
  That's one of the things like in my company's values,
• 1:28:47
  you know, number one is integrity first.
• 1:28:50
  And I said like we always have to remember that
• 1:28:52
  like people on the other end of this are very,
• 1:28:54
  like many of them are in a very vulnerable place.
• 1:28:57
  And it can be easy for us to take advantage of them
• 1:29:00
  or steer them in the wrong direction.
• 1:29:02
  So we like need to take that very, very seriously.
• 1:29:06
  But the other aspect that I would add onto it as well
• 1:29:08
  is like a little bit more of a philosophical thing.
• 1:29:11
  I guess I'm very Aristotelian and that like Aristotle believed
• 1:29:14
  that human flourishing was really boiled down
• 1:29:18
  to living with integrity.
• 1:29:19
  Was like he called it the virtuous life.
• 1:29:21
  But it's like essentially like the more integrity you have
• 1:29:25
  within yourself, you know, the more moral upstanding you are,
• 1:29:32
  the more everything else is gonna work itself out.
• 1:29:34
  And you're just gonna feel good about things.
• 1:29:37
  And I think there's a lot of truth to that.
• 1:29:40
  And so it's like ironically,
• 1:29:43
  I do think one of the best pieces of self-help advice
• 1:29:46
  is to have integrity, that's very good piece of advice.
• 1:29:50
  Right, it's like, you know, stand by your word.
• 1:29:52
  Like don't, you know, don't cause unnecessary drama.
• 1:29:56
  Like don't lie to people, don't cheat on things.
• 1:29:58
  Like don't, you know, hide from yourself,
• 1:30:01
  don't hide from reality.
• 1:30:03
  I think these are just like very basic pieces of life advice.
• 1:30:06
  And so I also just feel like there's a responsibility
• 1:30:10
  in terms of embodying those traits in the space.
• 1:30:15
  That's important.
• 1:30:15
  So just give one last piece of advice for like some words
• 1:30:19
  of wisdom to somebody who obviously follows your content.
• 1:30:22
  And probably somebody who follows your content,
• 1:30:26
  you're not the only person they follow.
• 1:30:28
  They're looking to all the other players in the space
• 1:30:31
  and they're trying to figure out who they resonate with.
• 1:30:35
  What's your sort of words of advice?
• 1:30:36
  If they're going on a journey,
• 1:30:38
  they're trying to figure out how to be happy,
• 1:30:40
  be fulfilled, reinvent themselves.
• 1:30:43
  Like what should they do?
• 1:30:46
  The most important thing before subscribing
• 1:30:48
  to someone else's sort of worldview
• 1:30:50
  and just taking a tweet
• 1:30:53
  and just that becoming their entire identity.
• 1:30:56
  Yeah, I would say everything is a suggestion, everything.
• 1:30:59
  The only rule is do what works for you.
• 1:31:02
  Everything else is a suggestion.