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As the CEO of Kit, Nathan Barry has a front row seat to what’s working in the most successful creator businesses.
On The Nathan Barry Show, he interviews top creators and dives into the inner workings of their businesses in his live coaching sessions.
You get unique insight into how creator businesses work and what you can do to increase results in your own business.
One of the things Nathan is passionate about is helping you create leverage.
Creator Flywheels let you create many copies of yourself so you don’t get bogged down with the little things in your business. Flywheels will help you reach a place where you can focus on revenue instead of busywork.
Tune in weekly for new episodes with ideas and tips for growing your business. You’ll hear discussions around building an audience, earning a living as a creator, and Nathan’s insights on scaling a software company to $100M.
Learn how to get more results with less effort and:
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[00:00:00] Mark Manson: I was broke, unemployed. I was like, cool, let me try this. I was getting like 20 or 30, 000 readers a month. And then by 2015, it was 2 million a month.
[00:00:08] Nathan Barry: How many copies has Subtle Art sold at this point?
[00:00:10] Mark Manson: Subtle Art is somewhere around 16 to 17 million. Oh wow. Over the next five years, I wrote four books, did a feature film, did a couple TV deals, and then two things happened.
[00:00:19] Mark Manson: I was More stressed than ever and completely miserable. And then the second thing that happened was the pandemic. Mr. Beast is blowing up and Casey Neistat's doing his thing. And I just came out of Hollywood and saw how fucked up and broke. Everybody is. Universal's marketing strategy was essentially just my Instagram account.
[00:00:36] Mark Manson: What are, what are you here for? Right? I was like, man, I want to go back to the internet. What I ended up with was a business that was like way out of date. We need to like redo everything. We have a lot of ideas around automated interactivity, almost kind of like a choose your own adventure style, but like instead of an adventure, it's like catered to whatever your specific issue is.
[00:00:56] Mark Manson: If this works, I think it will 5 to 10 million a year in revenues. is easy. This is something I'd like to really get across the creators as well.
[00:01:10] Nathan Barry: Do you've seen a lot of waves of the creator economy long before it was called the creator economy and just to, and have been building iterations of this business for a long time. Totally.
[00:01:20] Mark Manson: So I'll give it like the very quick, like three minutes summary of my career and also kind of like the strategic phases.
[00:01:27] Mark Manson: And, um, so early on, I started my first blog in 2007. It was kind of on a lark. I didn't take it super seriously. I read four hour work week. in January of 2008. Uh, I was broke, unemployed. I was like, cool, let me try this. Yep. And eventually managed, you know, started a bunch of websites, tried a bunch of blogs, long story short.
[00:01:50] Mark Manson: I eventually by 2010 I managed to build a very meager career as a blogger, uh, slash dating coach. And I was writing about primarily about dating and relationships that eventually pivoted into self help in general. By 2013, the blog blew up, uh, had millions of readers. What made
[00:02:10] Nathan Barry: the blog blow up in 2013?
[00:02:13] Mark Manson: It was a combination of two things. Strategically, the biggest thing. So the news feed, we were talking about the days before, the dark days before the news feed. So Facebook launched the news feed, I believe in 2011. Okay. And in hindsight, I think I just noticed before most people, the viral power of the news feed.
[00:02:32] Mark Manson: I noticed that if you had a really good, because by that time I had studied copywriting. And I was like, you know, I bet if you. Have a really good headline and a really interesting image. Facebook will just share this like all over the place. Yeah,
[00:02:44] Nathan Barry: because for the first time you have real distribution beyond your friend group or immediate followers.
[00:02:50] Mark Manson: Back in the day, back in the early days of blogs, you had to rely on other bloggers linking to you. Yep, or Reddit or
[00:02:56] Nathan Barry: Dig.
[00:02:56] Mark Manson: Yes. Uh, which was just a nightmare, like it was, it was really, it was more about relationship building than anything else. So when the newsfeed came out, I realized, I think I realized the potential before most and I started really writing articles that were kind of optimized to, to go viral on Facebook.
[00:03:16] Mark Manson: You know, self help is generally, it's a very mainstream niche and it's, it's like widely applicable. Applicable around the same time and this was not I didn't put these two things together But coincidentally around the same time I was hitting a point in my like dating advice career where I realized that like 99 percent of dating advice is just life advice.
[00:03:36] Mark Manson: It's just like get your shit together
[00:03:41] Mark Manson: Yeah, like just like stop being awkward get some confidence deal with your emotional issues. You're like, that's, that's it. That is basically the dating advice that works. So I was pivoting to a more general self help content in, uh, around the same time. And as I did that, I started focusing more on, you know, how do I get this stuff to travel on social media?
[00:04:01] Mark Manson: How can I get shared more on Facebook and the combination of those two things? I think I went probably like early 2011. I think I had maybe I was getting like 20 or 30, 000 readers a month, and then by 2013, it was a million a month. Oh, wow. And then by 2015, it was two million a month. So, just this insane exponential growth.
[00:04:22] Mark Manson: And from there, I got my first book deal, which eventually became The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, became a huge bestseller, and launched my publishing career. Now, the thing to note about this period, and I would say kind of the 2010s in general, is that the creator economy, as we understand it today, still didn't really exist.
[00:04:41] Mark Manson: Like, the roadmap back then was, if you can get famous enough on the internet Then maybe you can get a book deal or a TV deal or, or an album made or something, right? Like that was what everybody was trying to do. It's like, just get enough of an audience that a publisher or a studio or a record label will actually pay attention to you.
[00:04:59] Mark Manson: Yeah.
[00:04:59] Nathan Barry: A way to get past the traditional gatekeepers. Yes,
[00:05:02] Mark Manson: exactly. You're essentially market testing your art, um, as a way to, And so that's what I did. And it opened all the doors to the traditional media space. Um, I wrote four books. Over the next five years, I wrote four books. Uh, I did a feature film. Uh, I did a couple TV deals that never got made.
[00:05:23] Mark Manson: Um, and, um, For a number of years, I did global speaking tours, like the whole shebang and for many years, I kind of, I was like, okay, cool. This is, this is my career now. I'm like a selling author and, um, going to work in media and hopefully get another movie made or something. And, uh, and, and then, you know, Two things happened.
[00:05:42] Mark Manson: The first thing was, is I was more stressed than ever and completely miserable. Uh, and then the second thing that happened was the pandemic. And I really think the pandemic like kind of permanently altered the trajectory of, of what we call the creator economy now. Like it just, it accelerated the move of everything away from traditional media into new and online media.
[00:06:10] Mark Manson: And well,
[00:06:11] Nathan Barry: cause I mean, during that time, traditional media. Started showing up like creators. Yes, right. There, you know, all the, all the, the clickbait, but even the, like the production quality went to like, Oh, this is actually worse than, you know, cause no one had a home studio like this. Yes. And so they're like, all right, I'm now watching this talk show.
[00:06:33] Nathan Barry: Are you using zoom?
[00:06:37] Mark Manson: It's like their iPhone. Drew Barrymore's got her iPhone out, you know, like, yeah, it's, it's, um, in hindsight, It really accelerated this space in a really incredible way. I hit a point around 2021, 22, all my deals were up. It was like the first time in five or six years, I wasn't working on a project.
[00:06:57] Mark Manson: I'd basically been neglecting my. online business for, I essentially handed it over to my team to run for like the last five or six years. And they did a good job of maintaining it, but I wasn't keeping up with all the developments online. And I wasn't on all the platforms and I wasn't doing video and all that stuff.
[00:07:14] Mark Manson: And so in this period in 21 and 22, I, I like took some time off and I was like, you know, I really miss the online stuff. And the, the creator space was like all these, amazing people were blowing up around that time and it just seemed like it was getting way more serious and there was way more opportunity and And I actually started to feel I was a little bit, I was a little bit, uh, disenchanted with my traditional media experiences.
[00:07:40] Mark Manson: Like I, I had worked enough with production companies and studios and stuff to realize that like, they don't know what the fuck they're doing. And, and actually if you go read financial news, like, They're all losing money and, uh, and meanwhile I look and it's like Mr. Beast is blowing up and Casey Neistat's doing his thing and, and like all these amazing things are, are all these newsletters are taking off and I was like, man, I want to go back to the internet.
[00:08:04] Mark Manson: Like this is, this is for real now. So in 22 I came back, basically spent the last two years just trying to kind of play catch up and get my brand kind of up, up to par. What a big online brand is today. And then I think really just the last six months is kind of the first time that we're looking ahead to the next five years and like, okay, what's the next step?
[00:08:29] Mark Manson: What's like the next big exciting thing that we can do. So yeah, I'm excited. I'm like, I'm having more fun than ever. That's awesome. This, this is, this is home.
[00:08:39] Nathan Barry: And like before the book came out and all that, what kind of revenue were you doing?
[00:08:42] Mark Manson: Um, we were doing, so I sold online courses and I still did coaching and consulting at the time.
[00:08:48] Mark Manson: So I think I actually, uh, the year before the book came out, I think I did like 400k or Okay, 500k maybe. Yeah, I remember actually being pissed when the first royalty check came because I wanted to be a millionaire before I didn't want the book to be the reason I became a millionaire. I was like this close
[00:09:08] Nathan Barry: and Yeah, and we just have a millionaire as like invest like net worth invested assets or revenue from the business.
[00:09:15] Nathan Barry: How are you net worth?
[00:09:16] Mark Manson: Yeah, okay. Yeah And so I was like, I was at like 850 K network and you wanted the business to push it. And then like a 2 million royalty check showed up and I was like, God damn it. It was so close. What's the identity thing that comes from nothing coming from the business versus the book?
[00:09:32] Mark Manson: Well, so here's, well, here's the funny thing. And I don't want to get too far off on the tangent, but, um, and it took me a long time to realize this, but like the book is by far the most successful thing I've ever done. And, uh, Very good chance. It's the most successful thing I ever will do. I'm more proud of the business It took me a long time to realize that then I'm like I'm more proud of the business and I actually I'm probably a better Writer than I am a businessman, but I think I enjoy business more than I enjoy writing.
[00:09:59] Mark Manson: Yeah,
[00:10:00] Nathan Barry: okay, so The business is making four hundred thousand five hundred thousand a year somewhere. Yeah, I made six figures. Yeah And then then the book What effect did the book have on the business revenue? It's just an absurd
[00:10:12] Mark Manson: tailwind. So at the time we were selling like a suite of courses, we still sell a suite of courses.
[00:10:17] Mark Manson: Basically, revenue tripled or quadrupled over the next couple of years. Wow. Not including book royalties. Yeah, not including book royalties. So we, we probably like, let's just say we went from like, um, half a million a year to like two, two and a half million a year, something like that over the next few years.
[00:10:36] Mark Manson: Yeah. Did you end up? like scaling the team a bunch? Like, did you? No, no. So I, I, I basically just handed, we'll come back to this too, because this is, this ended up biting me in the ass, but I basically, uh, I signed a bunch of book deals in 2017. So I did a, I signed a two book deal with Harper Collins, my followups for subtle art.
[00:11:01] Mark Manson: And then I signed a, uh, a contract to do Will Smith's book. Yep. And, and, and, And I did, also did a large project with, with Audible and I basically went to my team and I was like, look guys, I'm basically not available anymore. Um, so I can give you, I'll write one article a month and I'll give you that and you guys run everything.
[00:11:21] Mark Manson: And they did a great job. Like they, they took what we had and they maintained it and they improved it and they iterated on it and they like set up all the processes and stuff like they're awesome. The problem was, is that there was no like long term strategic. Outlook and pivoting because that's like what I did and and I wasn't I was absent.
[00:11:44] Mark Manson: I wasn't around so what we ended up with I mean the three of us all made a bunch of money, but um By 2020 2021 what I ended up with was a business that was like way out of date
[00:11:57] Nathan Barry: Yeah,
[00:11:58] Mark Manson: it was like a business that was optimized for 2016 But at this, now it was 2022 and I'm like, Oh fuck, we need to like literally redo everything from top to bottom.
[00:12:09] Mark Manson: And that's essentially what I've been doing the past two years. Okay. So in
[00:12:13] Nathan Barry: the, you have these different deals and projects coming together, uh, and, and all of this building up, I guess what made you then turn and dive into YouTube? Cause that's not. Like video is not your thing. I actually remember when this was maybe 2019.
[00:12:29] Nathan Barry: Yeah, you came up and spoke at craft and commerce Yeah, and it was interesting to watch because the Casey Neistat had keynoted the year before. Mm hmm And I think Casey got mobbed at the Boise Airport Like just as he's trying like he's even trying to just get in the car, right? Right and people are like Casey Yeah, you know like they're starting to chase him down.
[00:12:49] Nathan Barry: You gave the closing talk and you attended the entire conference Yeah, like And there were people who were, I think, had conversations with you and then you're on stage later and they're like, that's Mark Ransom because authors have this thing, right? I think of you, James Clear, others where you're like, how many people like open that book jacket and be like, so that's what this guy looks like, you know?
[00:13:11] Nathan Barry: Yeah. But then as you make this, this pivot into YouTube, it's, you know, a very, uh, image visual forward, forward sense. Like, James and I were talking, um, I guess a couple weeks ago, and he was like, yeah, I'm never, never touching video. Yeah. Because he wants that, like, the name recognition and
[00:13:32] Mark Manson: the I mean, being a famous author is, is kind of like the perfect amount of fame.
[00:13:38] Mark Manson: Because you, you, people love you for your ideas, they love you for your brain. But they have no idea what you look like you can go to any restaurant and hang out in any bar And nobody will ever bother you But if you ever want that like ego boost you can just like pull it out at a party and like oh, yeah By the way, I wrote this book and everybody's like, oh my god Exactly the YouTube thing.
[00:14:00] Mark Manson: It's a great question. It was Two sided one. There's a business side and there's a personal side. The, the personal side is I, I came out of that, that stretch of, you know, four books, movie, all that stuff. all that stuff. I was severely burnt out, very burnt out. And at the, a huge part of that was just overworking.
[00:14:22] Mark Manson: But in hindsight, what I realized too, is that, um, I didn't love not being the boss. Like I, it's such a different, Experience and this is this is something I'd like to really get across the creators as well, especially out here in LA I run across so many youtubers like their big biggest dream is like get a TV deal Like turn their YouTube channel into a TV show or something and I'm just like Yeah, yeah, first of all, you're gonna you're gonna reach for your people you can have less creative control It's gonna take twice as long to produce You're going to make half as much money.
[00:14:58] Mark Manson: Are you sure you want to do this? Like I, it's, I don't think creators understand, like there's such a, uh, uh, prestige around traditional media of being able to say like, I have a TV show that they don't realize how sucky the process is.
[00:15:13] Nathan Barry: So you get this one win, which is primarily probably, maybe it's two wins.
[00:15:19] Nathan Barry: You get an ego win and you get a reputation win that you could parlay into other things. Um, like going back to four hour work week, like. Tim writing about like, oh, guest lecturer at Princeton. Yes, right. Getting that line in your bio. Yeah, not useful in itself But parlayed into other things is very useful.
[00:15:38] Nathan Barry: So you have those two wins and you're basically saying in these other eight categories
[00:15:42] Mark Manson: Yeah, it's worse. Yeah, I'll just give you an example I mean so one of the big and this gets into the business motivation for YouTube But so I did a feature film we shot it in 2011. It's it's a simple. It's a documentary I had one Right.
[00:15:56] Mark Manson: Oh, yeah. Sorry. 2021.
[00:15:57] Nathan Barry: Yeah.
[00:15:57] Mark Manson: Um, it, it's a simple documentary, you know, low budget, um, went straight to all the streamers and I could have produced that film myself. I could have gone out and hired the people myself. I could have produced it, uh, probably for like a quarter of what they spent on it and gotten basically the same result.
[00:16:25] Mark Manson: Could have distributed it probably to more people. When it came time to actually launch the film, I was pretty upset to realize that Universal's marketing strategy was essentially just my Instagram account. And I was like, I was like, if your whole strategy is my Instagram account, like What are, what are you here for?
[00:16:46] Mark Manson: Right? Like, um, So it was, I was so disillusioned with that whole process of, of just how needlessly expensive it was, how much red tape there was, how long it took, how many approvals it had to go through. And then on top of that, even when it was finished, Every single country and territory, they had to negotiate a different deal.
[00:17:08] Mark Manson: So there are countries that it went, it went to Netflix and it was in the top ten and everything and it did really well. And then other countries where it's not on anything. And so when I announced it was coming out, I got like, Hundreds of emails from people being like, I can't find it anywhere. It's not on Netflix.
[00:17:25] Mark Manson: It's not on Hulu. It's not on Apple. Right. And I'm like, well, what country are you in? They're like, I'm in Italy. And I'm like, God damn it. Like, you know, and then you got like email universal and they're like, Oh yeah, it's not out in Italy yet. I'm like, what the fuck?
[00:17:41] Mark Manson: I'm like, come on, like, just, let's just put it on YouTube and charge five bucks. Like how hard is this? So that was my frustrations around. That was, uh, was part of it as well. But back to the personal thing, I was very burnt out. Um, and I realized like, I want to come back to the internet. I want to run my own thing.
[00:17:57] Mark Manson: I like being in charge, but I wanted, I want to do something new. I want like a new challenge. I don't want to, like, I felt like there wasn't like from a personal challenge point of view, there wasn't anywhere else to go with writing. Um, like any book I write is not going to perform as well as the ones I've done already.
[00:18:20] Mark Manson: Yeah. Um, starting a blog in 2022, like who the fuck does that, right? Like it's, it's, it blogs are like little niche businesses. They, they don't have the same cultural clout that they had 15 years ago. So I'm like, what's something that's like new and exciting and difficult. And I can be a newbie again, and I can fuck up and make all the mistakes and learn and have that excitement of like learning and growing and getting better and everything.
[00:18:47] Mark Manson: And, and to me, that was YouTube. And then you throw on top of that, uh, I think YouTube is just It's the best platform in terms of audience building in the 2020s. Um, I think it's the most long term potential. And I just came out of Hollywood and saw how fucked up and, and broke everybody is. And I'm like, well, they're probably not going to be around for much longer.
[00:19:10] Mark Manson: So let's hop on the train that is going to be around. So the, the plan became like, okay, let's start doing video. Let's just get excellent and world class at that and still trying to get there. It's been a work in progress.
[00:19:25] Nathan Barry: So I want to know the inner workings of your business today and then where you're going long term.
[00:19:31] Nathan Barry: Because you and I were exchanging emails nine, ten months ago, something like that. And you're like, I'm not sure where I'm headed with this. Like I'm trying to figure out, you know, what's, what's the next step function in the business. Yeah. And we're talking today and you're like, yeah, I think, you know, there's still things to figure out, but I, I know where we're headed.
[00:19:48] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Maybe let's start with the breakdown of the business today and where revenue comes from and the team,
[00:19:56] Mark Manson: I guess we'll
[00:19:56] Nathan Barry: start with
[00:19:56] Mark Manson: revenue. So, so as I mentioned in part one, we have this. Old product from like 2015, 2016, a suite of courses on my website. Um, woefully out of date. We're currently, we're in the process of updating that.
[00:20:11] Mark Manson: We'll talk about that in a little bit. Um, at its peak, that had, I think, maybe 25, 000 paying subscribers. Um, I think today it's probably half that at most. Um, we haven't kept up with it the last few years and it's, there's just been, people don't go to websites anymore. So there's been a pretty steady attrition of that.
[00:20:36] Mark Manson: But that probably, probably makes up three quarters of a million to a million per year. Yeah. Um, and then other than that, we do brand deals and sponsors on podcast, YouTube, and newsletter. I think newsletter we're doing probably 400, 500k a year, and then, um, Podcast is about three quarters of a million a year, 800 K a year.
[00:21:02] Mark Manson: And then YouTube is probably another three to 400 K. So if you lump all that together, that's what, like 1. 5.
[00:21:09] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Somewhere in there somewhere. And is that on YouTube? Is that both AdSense and in brands and brand brand deals? Yeah. Um,
[00:21:16] Mark Manson: so we're overall, we're probably around two, two and a half million. I do still do a little bit of speaking, but that's probably like low six figures of revenue.
[00:21:25] Mark Manson: Yeah. I don't do a whole lot of that. Um, so we're probably, yeah, like two, two and a half million. I'm very aware that like we're quite under monetized at the moment, given the size of the audience and the maturity of the audience, like how long we've My relationship has been with the audience and that's one of the things that we're like currently redoing So I mentioned on the part one that the past two years has just been like redoing the business top to bottom The first part of that was was relaunching the newsletter, which I'm really happy with where the newsletter is at We simplified it a bunch built processes around it Like just made it like very just very simple easy, but high quality content each week.
[00:22:09] Mark Manson: I'm super happy with You Uh, how that's played out. Like, I couldn't be happier with the newsletter. Our engagement metrics are great. Um, and it's, it is, it is relatively low lift. So, I'm, I'm very, the newsletter is in a great spot. Don't, it's, as you know, it's the lifeblood of any creator business, so it's like we don't, don't need to touch or mess with that.
[00:22:34] Mark Manson: Right. So the, the plan, one of the things I realized when I came back, was that Is I was like, okay, the, the world has changed the end of my industry has changed. The creator economy in general has changed quite a bit. My audience has changed. I've changed. I realized I'm like, I need to, before I can relaunch my backend and relaunch my product and put something out there that's more modern and optimized and I've put a lot more thought and effort into, I was like, I need to spend a couple of years making content again and kind of like, It's going to sound cheesy, but like rediscover who I am.
[00:23:11] Mark Manson: Rediscover who the audience is. Like, things have changed a lot, right? So I knew that I was going to need a process of a couple years to start doing video, launch a podcast. Um, try out some new ideas, some new content forms, find my footing again. And then once I kind of figured that out, then, then I could kind of go back to the back end and be like, okay, let's, let's put something together that's like really premium and that people love and that we know like the audience is going to really be excited about.
[00:23:40] Mark Manson: So that process has been happening in the past. Year and a half. We are just now in the early stages of rebuilding the back end of like building the new back end product That will probably take another year My plan originally was like I understood I'm like I'm gonna have to if I if I get in the video Content you just have to hire people.
[00:24:05] Mark Manson: There's no way around it. It costs a lot of money Yep, and if I want to do like a really big premium backend product, I'm also going to have to hire people. So I was like, I'm going to have my, my team size is going to go up, but there's going to be kind of this, this gap of revenue because my old product is diminishing in revenue and I'm not gonna have a new product for like two years.
[00:24:27] Mark Manson: So I need to like, Cover that gap and the plan was to do brand sponsorships to kind of like bridge that gap And then once I launched my my new back end, I could kind of evaluate like okay How many brands do I want to work with do I want to keep doing ads though? I don't want to do ads and I you know, I could kind of like mix and match and figure out what I wanted So that's what we've been doing The brand play, like, it hasn't worked out as much, as well as I thought.
[00:24:58] Mark Manson: I mean, this isn't gonna surprise anybody. Ads fucking suck. Like, nobody likes doing ads. My audience, the audience, no audience likes ads. I've just noticed, too, that it's, aside from it just not being fun, not being fun for me, fun for the team, fun for the audience, there's a lot of behind the scenes headaches.
[00:25:20] Mark Manson: I go, I know you're aware of this, but there's like approvals. Oh my God. Copy. Copy. Hold on. Our
[00:25:27] Nathan Barry: tracking link should actually be this.
[00:25:29] Mark Manson: Right. Like the landing page is wrong or like, you know, somebody's calendar got mixed up and we sent out the promotion a week early or a week late or, you know, like it, there's like a constant administrative headache that happens on the back end.
[00:25:44] Mark Manson: And also some brands are. Easy to work with some brands are not easy to work with some products are great Some products kind of aren't great and then sometimes even when you have a great brand and a great product Sometimes the audience doesn't like it, right? It doesn't convert and and they don't like hearing about it So it's just been a huge pain in the ass and I've actually hit Place recently actually really since we kind of finally figured out what the back end product is gonna be I'm actually curious to hear your take on this But yeah, I'm like I got all this book money like I got money right I can my business can lose money for a year Right?
[00:26:24] Mark Manson: Like, if I think we're gonna get to a place where, I know it's risky, but like, like, if the choice is do a bunch of brand deals that I'm not excited about, that add a ton of overhead to the team, that the team's not excited about, that the audience isn't excited about, to essentially just make, like, make enough money to keep payroll going until we, like, launch, you know, all the back end stuff, or if I just eat that for a year, essentially see it as like a, an investment.
[00:26:52] Mark Manson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know.
[00:26:55] Nathan Barry: Oh, yeah. I have so many thoughts on this. Yeah,
[00:26:57] Mark Manson: so It's it's been a weird thing where I'm like in this place where I'm like Do I intentionally make less money over the next year or two to set myself up better because then it's like if we don't if all of our Content products if the YouTube channel and the podcast and everything if they don't have ads then we can integrate our own Product promotions right the ads for your own things will do quite well seamlessly and like aggressively, right?
[00:27:25] Mark Manson: So
[00:27:25] Nathan Barry: and the ad read for it should be pretty good. Yeah, exactly.
[00:27:28] Mark Manson: Exactly Like I believe in this product, right? And it's like and the other thing too is like because some of the ideas that we have around Promoting the new back end products is like it we want to you know We don't just want to like do ad reads.
[00:27:39] Mark Manson: We want to like actually integrate it into the content, right? So like take one of the community members from the back end product and like feature their story on the podcast as a way to promote the back end product. But, and then this is the breakthrough that they
[00:27:53] Nathan Barry: had.
[00:27:54] Mark Manson: Yeah,
[00:27:54] Nathan Barry: exactly. Exactly. But even a very simple integration, I think of, uh, for me, it's 80s.
[00:28:00] Nathan Barry: Netflix show yeah, right and you know as he's working with couples Yeah through these things right then he's like, here's the journal. Yes sliding across the table
[00:28:12] Mark Manson: Totally
[00:28:13] Nathan Barry: us book nerds are looking at me like oh, yeah, and that journal is in fact number four on Amazon
[00:28:21] Mark Manson: But then I you know, so it's like if I but if I have like four podcast sponsors that week how it fits in Yeah, like whoever gets Slotted after my promotion for my own shit is probably gonna complain and be like, you know, we'll.
[00:28:34] Mark Manson: Yeah, whatever. So that's what I'm like wrestling with
[00:28:38] Nathan Barry: that
[00:28:38] Mark Manson: question
[00:28:38] Nathan Barry: at the moment. Okay. I have a bunch of thoughts on this three things I want to dive into One is the book money. We should touch on that a little bit to the extent that you you want to Second is thinking of taking the pressure off of sponsorships Yes And what it means and then third is I want to get into What it would it mean to build out these back end products in like a quarter of the timeline?
[00:28:59] Nathan Barry: That you're talking about. Oh boy. Uh. I'm sweating. You know,
[00:29:04] Mark Manson: sweating just thinking about that last one. Thought exercise. Uh. And, and then we, probably the last one is, is having fun. Means I would sleep on the floor of this studio. You know, the carpets are really comfy. Yeah, yeah. Your wife's like. I don't like Nathan.
[00:29:22] Mark Manson: Get out of here. Don't talk to the team on your way out either.
[00:29:25] Nathan Barry: So first diving into the book money, um, because you have this thriving business. Yes. Uh, how many copies does it has? Subtle art sold at this point.
[00:29:35] Mark Manson: Subtle art is somewhere around 16 to 17 million. And then the other two books, all the books together, it's around 20 million.
[00:29:43] Mark Manson: Around 20 million. Yeah.
[00:29:44] Nathan Barry: Can we assume 2 a copy? Sure. Directionally correct? Sure, yeah. Uh, one thing that I'm curious about is, what does the long tail of those book sales look like? Is it, are they continuing to compound and sell really well, or? Uh, has it peaked and it's all hit, tapered off? It's definitely peaked, but like the, the
[00:30:04] Mark Manson: back end.
[00:30:06] Mark Manson: It's a, it's a nice, more gentle slope. I mean, someone was on the New York Times list like, A week or two ago. Yeah. And it's been out for eight years.
[00:30:13] Nathan Barry: So like. We're doing alright.
[00:30:16] Mark Manson: Yeah. It's still doing well. Yeah. Yeah. And I, to clarify for listeners and to you as well, I do not count book royalties in, in the business revenue.
[00:30:25] Mark Manson: Yeah. And never have. So I've always made a point to keep the business profitable on its own terms. Yeah. Um, this would be the first time ever that I'm essentially using book royalty money Um, bridge us through, yeah,
[00:30:42] Nathan Barry: like inexpensive period. Yeah. That makes sense. What do you think about in, like, what does that bring up as you think of, are there fears around that of putting money in there?
[00:30:54] Nathan Barry: Is there some slippery slope that's going to happen where it's like, Oh, now that you know, you've pierced this corporate veil now, like. You're just gonna be throwing hundreds of thousands of dollars into
[00:31:02] Mark Manson: this?
[00:31:03] Nathan Barry: Yes.
[00:31:04] Mark Manson: So, there's, uh, there's some irrational fears, and some rational fears, I think. Um, I'll start with the irrational ones.
[00:31:11] Mark Manson: I think, as somebody like you, who bootstrapped, um, I took a lot of care and a lot of pride for, for, for you. A lot of years to never spend more than what was coming in right and because there was for most my career That was not an option. It was just simply not available, right?
[00:31:31] Nathan Barry: More than that means credit card debt.
[00:31:32] Mark Manson: Exactly. Exactly So I always went through pains to do that and and I guess there's a little bit of pride around that so so the fact that like there's It's one of those things that it, it's so ingrained in me that it, it took me a while to even consider that this is a possibility. Um, and then once I considered it, I was like, oh yeah, duh.
[00:31:55] Mark Manson: Like this is, there's of course like you can take a loss for a year, a year and a half, and then be in a better place two years from now, right? So, um, so that's kinda the irrational side of it. It just feels very uncomfortable. 'cause I've never, I think financially, I've always been a little bit conservative.
[00:32:12] Mark Manson: Uh, I think the rational fear is just. Um, if we do this and it doesn't work, you know, let's say we launch the backend thing and it like flops or whatever, um, it puts the business in a really ugly spot, right? Um, where it's essentially like, okay, either I need to like aggressively go back to brand sponsorships, um, or I need to let people go.
[00:32:35] Mark Manson: And both of those things feel really bad.
[00:32:38] Nathan Barry: So you don't want to get yourself in a situation where that could be a possibility. Yeah. There's something I noticed with creators. Probably all business owners, I just hang out with creators more, is the, when things are held really tightly and like, this has to work.
[00:32:54] Nathan Barry: It often puts a bunch of pressure on it, and when something is sold to an audience, They can, can feel that. They sense that,
[00:33:01] Mark Manson: yeah. It's
[00:33:01] Nathan Barry: like when you're riding a horse or something, it's like, hey, the horse can sense your fear. Yeah, yeah. You know, and you're like, chill the fuck out. Totally, totally. Um, and so, yeah, that's a really, um, Interesting thing to be aware of like it's the people that it feels like where they're like, oh I don't really need this to work right that the audience can sense that and be like, oh You're just doing this for the love of it.
[00:33:22] Nathan Barry: And yeah You know, it ends up driving more and more
[00:33:26] Mark Manson: sales I it's I mean this is this gets a little bit broader and more philosophical But i'm also in a place where i'm doing this because it's fun. Yeah, like it's i'm i'm I'm at this point i'm here because I just love being here Building a creator business and and it's like if I didn't want to work again.
[00:33:45] Mark Manson: I don't have to it's easy on me Right, like I'll be fine You know if I need to put 500k into the business to see us through the next couple years And get this thing out and then it doesn't work I'll be fine. It just puts it, it just, it puts the business in a bad spot, right? So it's riskier. Um, messes with the
[00:34:05] Nathan Barry: fundamentals.
[00:34:07] Mark Manson: Yeah. But then it, it also raises the question cause it's to that point of I'm doing this cause it's fun. When I started, when I came back and I started working again, One of the, because of the intense burnout I experienced from 2016 after this, that run of four books and a movie, uh, I made an agreement with myself, which is you don't have to do anything that's not fun again.
[00:34:30] Mark Manson: So don't do anything that's not fun, right? So it's like if I'm, if I end up, if I do end up in a place where I've built a business that is completely dependent on running a shitload of ads to a bunch of brands, I don't give a, give a damn about like, That's not fun. That, that, that feels like failure, right?
[00:34:49] Mark Manson: So to me, it feels like I kind of have to go for it. And I've talked to some people on the team and they're like, they're in for it. It's, I actually expected them to be way more hesitant and worried about it. Cause I'm like, Hey guys, this is going to be risky. And if it doesn't work, like, right. It's going to put, You guys in a tough spot and to my surprise the team has been like no fuck the ads They're like, let's do it.
[00:35:13] Mark Manson: Let's make an amazing product.
[00:35:14] Nathan Barry: Okay Well, so let's talk about what goes into making an amazing product Yeah, because you you've talked about timelines of a year or multiple years, right? So what what does that process look like you
[00:35:25] Mark Manson: I I approach I'm approaching it very similar to I'd like to talk about YouTube at some point as well, but, um, you know, looking at, you know, 10 years ago, online courses were relatively novel.
[00:35:37] Mark Manson: Now they're like dime a dozen. They're everywhere, similar to YouTube channels, like they're all kind of the same, you know, so in my space, which is personal development, for the most part, you're, you're, you're kind of limited to educational products. So I've been asking myself, like, what is a way to elevate?
[00:35:55] Mark Manson: a personal development, educational product, like beyond just like, okay, here's 10 lessons. You get a video and an exercise, you know, like everybody's already done that a bunch of times. So like, what, what brings it up to another level? And so we have a lot of ideas around, uh, kind of automated interactivity.
[00:36:13] Mark Manson: Um, almost kind of like a choose your own adventure style, but like instead of an adventure, it's like catered to whatever your specific issue is. So it feels, yeah. I think between just like the breadth of knowledge that I have over the amount of years and then like leveraging some automation and some AI, like we can make it feel very personalized for each individual user.
[00:36:37] Mark Manson: Like two users could take the same, we'll call it a course,
[00:36:42] Nathan Barry: and
[00:36:43] Mark Manson: have completely different experiences. And even the same user could take it twice and get completely different experiences both times. Like that's the goal. And I think, I think I know how to do it, but it will take a while. The development will take much longer than a normal course.
[00:36:58] Nathan Barry: You can't just say, Hey, we're going to spend two weeks and outline the content, two weeks to shoot it and we're done.
[00:37:03] Mark Manson: Exactly. And then on the backside of that, I really, really, really, I'm a big, believer long term in community And what i've noticed at this point at this stage of my career is like a lot of my fans have been around for a long Time and yeah, and they kind of crave meeting other fans or like like minded people.
[00:37:22] Mark Manson: And so I love the idea of Really building a community and then integrating that the same way we kind of integrate the community into the newsletter Finding ways to integrate them into the YouTube channel, into like, so it's like any, anywhere I go to shoot a YouTube video, we invite out all the community members for meetup and to be part of the video, right?
[00:37:45] Mark Manson: You know, find ways to integrate into the podcast, stuff like that. So like, I, I'm really excited around a lot of ideas like that. So like, that's kind of the vision at the moment. Yeah. I like
[00:37:53] Nathan Barry: where that's headed. And again, I just keep seeing the flywheels and what you're doing and the integration between it.
[00:37:59] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. Even as you're talking about it, I still reject the idea that this is like a multi year project. Maybe it's
[00:38:05] Mark Manson: You're gonna I'm
[00:38:07] Nathan Barry: gonna push on that one a little bit. I'm gonna be sleeping on the floor. I can already tell. Now, part of it, like, you always have to think about what are your constraints.
[00:38:14] Nathan Barry: Yeah, yeah. Right? And one of your constraints is this has to be fun. Yes. Right? Because otherwise, why are we doing this? Totally. Um, and then another is it has to be really, really high quality because we're replacing something that already exists. If we wanted, uh, you know, good for the time, mediocre for now, we, we have that already.
[00:38:34] Nathan Barry: Um, do you have constraints around your time? Yeah. Like, I don't get the feeling that you're like, Hey, let's work on this for 70 hours a week for a month or three months. No. Um, and then there's some constraint around money, right? Where you're saying, Hey, I'm willing to invest in this. Uh, and one thing that I would point out is.
[00:38:54] Nathan Barry: There's a difference between like investing for an outcome, like, Hey, 200, 000 is going to get me this outcome. And I'm going to front that versus like, Hey, I'm going to front 50, 000 a month, maybe in perpetuity. And that's scarier, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is scary. Um, and so you could tie money to a specific thing without it destabilizing the business.
[00:39:14] Nathan Barry: My
[00:39:14] Mark Manson: wife framed it really well for me recently when I was talking to her about this. She said, she was like, imagine it's not you. Imagine it's another person. In your situation, and they came to you and asked you to invest the money. Would you think it's a good investment? And I was like, wow, that's a really good way to think about it.
[00:39:36] Mark Manson: And, and I do, I do think it would be a good investment. Like, I, I, it's the sort of thing if, like, if this works, I think it will, five to ten million a year in revenue is, is easy. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you have the
[00:39:48] Nathan Barry: audience size for it. For it. And so it's, you know, then you have the product quality.
[00:39:53] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And then the funnel and the marketing to connect those two. Yep. If the bottleneck is not wanting to have, not wanting to have to invest the outside money. Mm hmm. Then the way that I would solve for that is I would be figuring out what is the six month version of this? Mm hmm. That's going to be making 400, 000 a month that kind of thing 500, 000 month that we could do a meaningful launch to then build the next Versions of it.
[00:40:17] Nathan Barry: I see way too many people maybe it's it's the thing that you didn't do with the YouTube channel Right? Where you didn't like wait till it was perfect. You had the perfect idea and then launch it and you started iterating towards it and then you found it. And so I, I want to make sure that on the, you know, the, the content and the course and the company you're building that you're iterating, not just from a like behind the scenes with our little test group, but you're iterating all the way in.
[00:40:41] Nathan Barry: So we've,
[00:40:42] Mark Manson: we've talked about doing a soft launch to current customers, uh, former customers and then like probably. We'll probably segment the most engaged newsletter subscribers or something and like do kind of a soft launch to maybe a few hundred thousand people or something Um, and I think right now the most recent timeline, it's funny people on the team disagree There's like a debate.
[00:41:08] Mark Manson: Uh, I think we could do it by Q2 next year Some people on the team are like Q3 is aggressive probably Q4 You know, other people are like, what are you talking about? This will take like a month and I'm like, uh,
[00:41:25] Nathan Barry: I'd be friends with those people. That's why soon your team and my team
[00:41:30] Mark Manson: will hate me. Yeah.
[00:41:31] Mark Manson: Right. Uh, realistically speaking, I, so if I had no other commitments, I do think we could probably get a soft launch out in, in a similar timeframe that you're saying. Um, unfortunately I have a. Speaking to her in Australia coming up. Right. We're doing a couple YouTube shoots down there. We've got the holidays coming up We've got podcast shoots.
[00:42:00] Mark Manson: Yeah, a
[00:42:00] Nathan Barry: bunch of other commitments. Yeah,
[00:42:01] Mark Manson: so It's realistically I think I personally think I think we could get kind of a beta launch By beginning the next summer.
[00:42:11] Nathan Barry: Yeah,
[00:42:11] Mark Manson: which is roughly six months from now Eight months from now, we're, what month is it? So
[00:42:20] Nathan Barry: probably yeah, uh, six to eight months from now.
[00:42:22] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, if I can keep going with the unsolicited Please please. I would want to do two changes. Okay one think about everything in terms of first principles of what Actually, what work exactly has to be done? This is like Elon Musk launching rockets. Yeah. Where he's like, why does a rocket cost, you know, whatever, a hundred million dollars?
[00:42:45] Nathan Barry: And like, well, you know, all this and he's like, okay, but the metal for this part, this, you know, all these things, like the component parts add up to like 3 million bucks. So where's the other 97 million? And I think the same is true in a lot of projects where people speculate of, okay, what it might take or all of that.
[00:43:02] Nathan Barry: Um, and the thing that helps, especially with the team, everybody understanding a clarity and it is might extend the timeline significantly or shorten it, you don't know, right. But is listing out. Everything that goes into it. Um, and just getting very specific. Yeah. And then the other thing is if you want a team to execute efficiently, you should talk in terms of weeks, not months or quarters.
[00:43:25] Nathan Barry: Okay. Cause then if you, if you assign things like days, it's always lame when someone's like, okay, well I'm going to work on this part for two days and that one for four. And it's like, You don't know. Yeah, you have no idea. You know? Like days and hours, we're going to be off by a lot, but weeks you can be directionally correct.
[00:43:42] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And, and it's a granular enough unit of time that it's not like months or quarters, like, okay, well we'll spend, you know, January and February on this and right. And on from there. And I've found that when you do like the giant whiteboard session or the really detailed Notion task list. And you're doing it in those terms of first principles, what's the exact work that needs to be done and then mapping it to weeks.
[00:44:06] Nathan Barry: Then everybody gets on the same page and you get to, you get from this like hypothetical like. You know, how would this go? Yeah into very specific things And then when you take the task list and put in like who's actually Needs all yeah, then you might find that like oh when you're in Australia, there's like two other team members who are like actually I could be doing these other things.
[00:44:32] Mark Manson: Right. I wish my operations person was in the room right now. Uh, it, it's funny cause this has come up. Cause again, like I said, the, the different people on the team have like completely different perceptions of how long this is going to take. And, and, uh, some of the people who think it's going to take longer, like, so like my operations person, she's like, she showed me a timeline a day or two ago.
[00:44:53] Nathan Barry: Yeah.
[00:44:53] Mark Manson: And it, it showed like, Basically a year from now right for a soft launch. I put it out I was like I was like well these three things are done by different people so they can be done simultaneously Right and but I think what you're saying, it's probably like create categories like what are the technical tasks that need to be done?
[00:45:13] Mark Manson: What are what's the content tasks that need to be done? What are the marketing tasks that need to be done list them all out? Assign them to people mark how many weeks it would take and then those those three cat like assuming I mean, they are all different people. They can all be done simultaneously So then probably end up with shorter time than you think so
[00:45:34] Nathan Barry: Yeah, and the other thing you could do is assign a confidence level to each thing.
[00:45:38] Mark Manson: Yeah,
[00:45:38] Nathan Barry: when we're doing software development This is really important. Yeah, because often we're like, okay, we're gonna build this and we think it's gonna take, you know This one person four weeks. What's our confidence level on that?
[00:45:48] Mark Manson: Right?
[00:45:48] Nathan Barry: And if we're like 50 percent You Then it's fair to assume that we're either padding that estimate by a ton, or we're going to way overrun it or something else.
[00:45:58] Nathan Barry: And so then you can ask like, okay, what, what can I do in a day that would change, you know, or a week that would change that confidence level? Basically, what can I do? Whatever the estimate is, what can I do in 10 percent of that time that would change my confidence level in my estimate from 50 percent to 90%?
[00:46:15] Nathan Barry: And then that gets people on the same page, right? Cause we're going to be talking and. You're going to say like, Oh, this will be easy. And I'm like, no, it's going to be so hard, all of this. And if you, Hey, why don't you spend an hour and dive in or like go interview an expert on. Customized AI path learnings in a course.
[00:46:30] Nathan Barry: Yeah, and then report back then we're having much more of the same conversation
[00:46:35] Mark Manson: So we'll definitely do that exercise. Thank you for that. Yeah question for you, though Let's say we do that exercise and let's say it does come back Like a year we need a year for a soft launch and probably 18 months for a full launch Which means if we discontinue ads Next year, which we're looking at Yeah, we're probably in the red a few hundred K in 2025.
[00:47:00] Mark Manson: What are your thoughts on just eating that? Yeah. And living with it and seeing how it goes versus maybe extending ad like that's been a conversation. It's like, well, what if we just take like our 10 favorite brands and just, just keep enough brands on board to like pay the bills, not necessarily try to make a bunch of profit.
[00:47:20] Mark Manson: You know, like that's been an idea that we've talked about. I think squeezing the
[00:47:23] Nathan Barry: last bit of juice out of something is really hard. Yeah. And so I, I like the idea of, you know, what's the 80, 20 on ads, um, in mapping that out. And then just saying, cool, we're happy to drop this 200 grand a year in revenue or whatever it is.
[00:47:40] Nathan Barry: That's most of the work. And, and just not worth it. There's also something that, you know, as you kind of raise rates and you're like, I don't, you know, someone's like, I'd like to sponsor your newsletter. And you're like, sure. The rate's this. And they're like, ah, no. How about this? And you're like. Oh, I'm sorry.
[00:47:54] Nathan Barry: I think you misunderstood how this works. You know, right? Like, I don't actually care. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so that's part of it. So I would go to the 80 20 on ads, um, rather than, I'm just not a, like, huge swings, uh, type of person. That's a guy. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but then the other thing is I would put the money in. Yeah.
[00:48:16] Nathan Barry: Like. Okay. It's just like, what would it look like if it was fun? And, you know, you just say like, I want it to, I want the, yes, I could do a cheaper version of this YouTube production. I don't want to. Yeah. You know? And you're like, I actually made more money from books in this amount of time, you know, or whatever
[00:48:34] Mark Manson: it is.
[00:48:34] Mark Manson: That's cool. I'm definitely kind of mentally there at this point. I was really kind of agonizing about this maybe a week ago, and I think I'm like landing where you just said. Um, like if I, half a million dollars is not going to affect my life at all. Right. Um, I'm not doing anything else with that money.
[00:48:55] Mark Manson: And you genuinely think it's a good investment. And I do. And you know, it's like the best investments in yourself. And it's also, if it doesn't work, like, I don't know. There's, there's still other way. There's always in business. There's always other opportunities, right? So there's always other ways to figure things out.
[00:49:10] Mark Manson: And, um, so I, I am kind of landing there.
[00:49:13] Nathan Barry: One key thing that I would do is I would separate out the recurring expenses versus the one time expenses. And I don't know if this is just a quirk of how I think, or you're like, I get nervous about money. It's just how I grew up, all of those things. The rationally, I should not get nervous about money at this point.
[00:49:31] Nathan Barry: I still do. Yeah. So in that, I would say, okay, the business is funding all of these recurring expenses. Uh, but I am investing for this software build out. That's going to be 200 grand or this other thing. You know, we're going to do this whole shoot. We're not doing a new shoot every month till the end of time.
[00:49:51] Nathan Barry: Right, right. We're doing this whole shoot that's going to be a hundred grand. Yeah. And that's what I'm funding. And then you're never like, oh, if this doesn't work out, then I can't make payroll without putting in more money. Right. Because the business the recurring, um, you know product sales and all of that funds the business and that's really fun You just funded the step function.
[00:50:13] Nathan Barry: Yeah, that feels better We all work in marketing, you know, I mean
[00:50:17] Mark Manson: it is really funny. Just now it's like psychologically Yeah, it's almost just reframing somebody like just or something like just makes you feel better about it. But yeah, yeah Yeah, so that that looks like where I'm headed at the moment on the content front I'm, I'm a huge believer in, in video and YouTube.
[00:50:37] Mark Manson: I personally believe that YouTube is basically going to be the next cable television.
[00:50:43] Nathan Barry: Yeah.
[00:50:43] Mark Manson: Um, and I do think there's a little bit of a, a land grab app opportunity at the moment. One of the things I find very interesting about YouTube is like if you look at, uh, the demographics of YouTube users below say 25, it's just absurd.
[00:51:00] Mark Manson: It's like 98 percent of people under 25 are on YouTube. It's where they spend most of their time. It's where they get most of their media consumption and everything. And then you look over 25, it's like, oh, it's just this fun thing people do occasionally. Right. So the question I've been asking is like, what happens when all those people under 25 are 25 to 35?
[00:51:18] Mark Manson: Right? Yeah. Like in 10 years, this is basically going to be the, the largest media platform in the world. And it's worth, well, my
[00:51:25] Nathan Barry: kids, they are 12, 10, and five mm-Hmm. . And they. My older two, you know, they're like, can we watch YouTube? And I'm like, yes, these channels, like these things, but I'm like, can't you find somebody at Disney plus that you want to watch?
[00:51:40] Nathan Barry: And they're like, no, no, not at all. Zero interest.
[00:51:44] Mark Manson: I was, uh, I was, I heard a interview of, you know, the comedian, Andrew Schultz. He was talking about, uh, cause he like bought back a couple of his comedy specials and put them out himself on YouTube. And, uh, he was saying how he was at Thanksgiving. And he wanted to watch the football game.
[00:52:02] Mark Manson: And so he told his nephew, his nephew was like 8 years old or something, and he said, hey, can you go turn on the football game? And his nephew was like, sure, what channel is it on? And he was like, CBS. And he said the nephew pulled up YouTube and typed in CBS and was like really upset because he couldn't find the football game.
[00:52:19] Mark Manson: He was like really sad. He was like, I've looked everywhere, I can't find it. No, it's actually, it's on cable. Yeah, yeah, Andrew was like, What are you doing?
[00:52:32] Nathan Barry: But yeah, like you think about people make business decisions based on the demographics today. Yeah. Right. And say like, okay, this much is on YouTube versus or like of consumption. is in each place. Yeah. And it's like, well, think about what happens when, when we all die. Yeah.
[00:52:54] Mark Manson: When we're all old and irrelevant.
[00:52:55] Mark Manson: Um, it, so my, my sense is I feel like there's a little bit of a land grab opportunity in terms of, um, like I, the question I asked myself is what if there was a YouTube channel of the production quality of that, of like Netflix or HBO, right? Because I've. seen enough of traditional media and talked to enough people in this town to know for a fact that most of the stuff that gets Produced on Netflix and HBO could be produced for 10 percent of the cost if you don't have all the overhead and red tape and bullshit That Hollywood has right?
[00:53:32] Nathan Barry: So you're looking at who is actually Doing the writing behind the cameras doing the editing and all of that and you're like I can go hire all of those people Right. Those are actually Freelancers all like people that I'm familiar with working with in yes in yes, correct
[00:53:51] Mark Manson: And I feel like we're there's a there's actually a very interesting arbitrage opportunity at the moment where YouTubers don't quite have enough money to do that, right?
[00:54:01] Mark Manson: So it's like, let's say a typical like documentary series on Netflix costs, I don't know, five to 10 million. Okay. You could probably make it for 1 million. Um, like unless you're Mr. Beast, you don't have the money to do that. And, uh, or you don't know, have the managerial skills or the business skills to like go put that team together and make it happen.
[00:54:24] Mark Manson: Right. Um, But I do feel like the first people who are able to do that, like there's just going to be incredible upside over the long run. Like if you build, if you build a really prestigious brand on YouTube, uh, I think that's going to, that's going to compound and travel further. I also think there's Probably some like economies of scale stuff that can happen like video is so expensive, and it's so resource intensive It's not like blogging.
[00:54:51] Mark Manson: It's not like pocket like podcasting you can buy a mic for a hundred bucks And yep, yeah 500 bucks and set up an iPhone and like you've got a podcast but like Where YouTube is going to be very soon is? like you probably need at least a few thousand dollars worth of camera equipment and a few thousand dollars worth of editing like the days of Just vlogging in your bedroom or they're not gone, but I don't think that's gonna be
[00:55:16] Nathan Barry: yeah
[00:55:17] Mark Manson: That's not where most of the views are gonna be Um, or it's already that's not where the views are and I think it's just going to diminish even further.
[00:55:23] Mark Manson: I think I'm really thinking a lot about, um, like what is the future of online video content going to look like? And I think it's going to look like a more efficient, less rigid form of essentially television production. And I think if you are one of the first people there. And you build those teams and you build those brands, um, you'll be in a very strong business position to invest in other creators and brands to get them the same machinery.
[00:55:55] Mark Manson: Um, you know, say, Hey, you're really talented. You've got some great videos. Like I've got the team, I got the resources, I got the studio with all the equipment. Let's like actually turn your channel into like a TV production quality show. You'll make 10 times as much money and then I'll take 20 percent of it or 40 percent of it or whatever.
[00:56:11] Mark Manson: One thing that
[00:56:13] Nathan Barry: I'm thinking about is. You know, in the first episode we did, we were talking about like sort of this barbell of team size and all of that. And there's like death in the middle, you know, the minimal business, uh, that's highly profitable or maximal business that has a big team and real scale.
[00:56:30] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And the in between there's death. There's a different barbell or spectrum that I'm seeing here where it's sort of like there's the scrappy, we're just doing our own thing, you know, traditional creator production model. Yeah. And then there's like film TV show. Called the Mr. B's model, right? It's just like, yeah.
[00:56:51] Nathan Barry: Like this level. Tons of
[00:56:52] Mark Manson: money, studio equipment. But in
[00:56:54] Nathan Barry: the middle. Yeah. Yeah. You can absolutely. create things that have the same distribution of reach of, of TV, do it at a fraction of the cost, but it's a different mindset that you show up with. And that's really the differentiator. It's the production quality there.
[00:57:10] Mark Manson: I have, uh, you know, we joke about me being an old timer. One of the things, I've been meeting a lot of YouTubers last year, and one of the things that has been both shocking to me, uh, both in a negative and in a positive sense, is um, the disparity between the size of some of these audiences, and I, I, I don't, I'm not trying to be insulting, but just like the lack of, of sophistication, business knowledge.
[00:57:40] Mark Manson: Like a lot of these guys, they're like 22, they've never run anything before, they never had a job before, they didn't go to college, you know, and they, they, They're making millions of dollars. They have like 10 million subscribers. Like, I had a guy ask me how to, like, how to find a tax accountant. And I'm like, dude, you have like 15 million subs, like, what are you doing?
[00:57:59] Mark Manson: Like, how do you, how have you not figured this out? You know, it's, it's pretty crazy. And, so, I see that as a huge opportunity. Like, there's, there's so, so much attention. on this platform and it's not being leveraged properly at all. I, I really think Mr. Beast is kind of like the tip of the iceberg. He's just the first of many, and he might not even last given how things are going right now.
[00:58:28] Mark Manson: That's a whole can of worms. We'll leave that one closed for the moment. No, Mr. Beast will last, but like, I mean, it's, it's, it's, And he's a perfect example, right? Like it's, it's people within the YouTube world have known forever that like his organization is a mess and there's all sorts of labor issues and that have been going on for a long time, but it wasn't until he got.
[00:58:49] Mark Manson: you know, an Amazon deal that like that stuff actually becomes an issue, but it's, that's YouTube in a nutshell. Like it's, everybody's riding this wave, uh, in, in building the boat as they write it and hoping that it's like built in time before it crashes. Right. You know? So I'm, I'm hoping to be somebody who can show up with a fully made boat.
[00:59:15] Mark Manson: Yeah, that makes sense. Okay. So we
[00:59:17] Nathan Barry: fast forward to say two years from now, Yeah. What does the business look like that you're imagining?
[00:59:23] Mark Manson: Uh, so the business I'm imagining, um, the YouTube channel is a high quality documentary style, high production value show essentially. Um, that's built a very strong brand and audience, uh, native on YouTube.
[00:59:40] Mark Manson: The newsletters continue to grow and continued as is podcasts is continued. You know, I see podcasts mostly as optimizing for engagement and relationship. So I see that, you know, the YouTube. Channel is what drives growth, audience growth, and awareness. Podcasts and newsletter drive engagement relationship, and then the, everything eventually flows to the backend product, the community and everything.
[01:00:07] Mark Manson: And that's where the monetization happens. That's how I see it right now.
[01:00:10] Nathan Barry: Yeah. That's awesome. Have you ever seen, uh, Walt Disney's sketch of, yes, like how Disneyland you're not, not Disneyland, all of Disney, the IP licensing, everything as you were talking, like I imagine a sketch like that for your business.
[01:00:25] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Like first you're serving the same audience. A lot of creators do this thing where they're like, here's this audience and then I actually have this passion over here and so I'm going to go do that. And you're like, there's, it's like a 4 percent audience overlap, but yeah, sure. That's a good idea. Um, so you have, you know, a hundred percent audience overlap.
[01:00:47] Nathan Barry: And then you have like the integrations between the different channels, um, are so strong where the content for the newsletter is helping to write itself because of the breakthroughs that people are having. Exactly. And, you know, you're using the newsletter to get people to, like to tell them about meetups.
[01:01:05] Nathan Barry: They're showing up there in the YouTube channel. They're in a YouTube
[01:01:09] Mark Manson: video, which then they go see, they show it to all their friends. And, you know, and it's we've actually internally we've started talking about it is building an ecosystem, which is it's It's similar to the Disney thing, right? Like it's, um, there's an entry point, which is primarily for you.
[01:01:26] Mark Manson: And part of that ecosystem is understanding that each platform does something better than the others, right? Like, YouTube is amazing for discovery. Uh, it's not great for monetization. Podcasts are great for monetization and engagement, but they're not great for discovery. you know, newsletters are amazing for relationship building, but it's
[01:01:47] Nathan Barry: pushing content on your terms.
[01:01:49] Mark Manson: Yes. And, uh, so it's like everything has a role to play. Um, like nothing is, is it, it's almost like, it's like, it's like a division of labor between all the different platforms. Like that's kind of the vision I have. Um, but the, the two core, the two big pieces, you know, the newsletter I feel like is already there.
[01:02:10] Mark Manson: The podcast is very close. The two big pieces that need to, Arguably the two most important ones is like getting the YouTube channel there, which I think we'll get there next year. Yep. And then just making sure this product's like,
[01:02:23] Nathan Barry: yeah. Yeah. Another way that I've heard it, um, uh, John Durant, who's a really great, uh, investor in the consumer product space and all of that.
[01:02:33] Nathan Barry: He talks about it as like the different, uh, divisions in the military. Each one has a different, you know, the Air Force says, you don't go and invade a country or, you know, like with only an army, you need it. The air support, you need all of these things. But then as you're talking about dividing up or like mapping out your business, what I get really excited about that when we think about longevity is the ideas that come up where you're talking to another creator or something comes up and you're like, Oh, that's really taking off.
[01:03:01] Nathan Barry: Yeah. And you have that tendency to be like, and now we're going to be. Posting on LinkedIn or you know, whatever, we're all in a tick tock now. You can take that and overlay it in your business, like in this whole ecosystem and go, Oh, that slots in right here perfectly. Or more likely, Oh yeah, that doesn't fit.
[01:03:17] Nathan Barry: That goes in the idea bin. Totally. You know, and the idea bin is either filed away or. Or it's the circular bin, like the trash can.
[01:03:23] Mark Manson: I mean, it's, it's also the ecosystem model is incredibly anti fragile and resilient, right? Because it's like if tomorrow, I don't know, let's say TikTok gets banned or, I don't know, not to scare you, but like, let's say the US government or the EU passes some crazy email regulation.
[01:03:44] Mark Manson: Yeah. Yeah. Which just like completely fucks the newsletter business. Right. Because we are, the audience is distributed across so many platforms and is engaged on so many platforms. Um, we're in a position we can pivot, like it's not going to wreck us. So like, and to me that kind of feels like an ins that it's an end stage creator business, right?
[01:04:05] Mark Manson: Like I, I sometimes think of it as like, A beginner, a beginner creator business is like usually one platform, one monetization. Then you go through this middle period where it's like usually one platform, multiple monetizations, uh, and then eventually you end up at like multi platform, multi monetizations, right?
[01:04:23] Mark Manson: So yeah, it's exciting
[01:04:25] Nathan Barry: to see. I just have to ask, how did the Will Smith, uh, book and all of that come together?
[01:04:30] Mark Manson: Uh, it was, I mean, it was cool that his team reached out. It's a great book. Thanks man. Thank you. Thank you. It, his team reached out, they were, he had wanted to do a book for a while and, and they were contacting authors and kind of putting them through a vetting process and everything and went through like a hilarious amount of interviews with his team and, and managers and stuff.
[01:04:54] Mark Manson: Uh, did like multiple phone interviews, did, did a in person interview out here in LA. And finally, after like six months of calls and talks and interviews and stuff, I got a chance to fly out and meet him in person. And, and they kind of said, they're like, we're just, you're just going to spend a couple days with him and you, you guys can, can chat.
[01:05:16] Mark Manson: You know, it's just to see how you get along.
[01:05:20] Nathan Barry: Okay.
[01:05:20] Mark Manson: And um, no pressure. Yeah. Right. You're back
[01:05:23] Nathan Barry: to
[01:05:23] Mark Manson: dating life. Yeah, I know. It was like, okay, sure. Um, but he, he and I really hit it off. I think the reason it worked is there's two reasons why it worked. One is he and I, He and I are similar in that we both bond through humor.
[01:05:38] Mark Manson: So, uh, my like anytime I'm kind of in an uncomfortable situation or nervous or unsure of myself or whatever, my, my like default reaction is to make a joke and he's the same way. And so like he just, he like loves connecting with people through humor. And so honestly, like for like two days we just like fucking joked around and just like laughed a ton.
[01:06:00] Mark Manson: And I think that, I think he liked that a lot. Yeah. Um, and then once we started talking about what he wanted and what the book was and everything, I, I think it, the, the fact that I was clearly just very nonjudgmental, like, I really don't give a shit who you are. Like, I just want to write your life. Like it's, it's cool.
[01:06:20] Mark Manson: You're famous and everything, but like, I want to tell a good story. And then, um, and then I think he and I, Our skill sets complimented each other really well. Like he's very, he can tell an amazing story, but he struggles with like the big picture, like organizing, like, okay, what should chapter four be and how should it lead in the chapter five?
[01:06:41] Mark Manson: And what's the main theme of like the first half of the book? And, and that's the stuff that I love. So it was a really nice marriage of What he could already bring to the table and then what I could like,
[01:06:51] Nathan Barry: yeah,
[01:06:51] Mark Manson: you know help him out with And honestly like that that project was just fun. It was just a ton of fun.
[01:06:58] Mark Manson: He's great He and I got along really well. His story is incredible And he put out he put a lot a lot of people who don't know he put a lot of work in that book It was funny when when we started my agent told me she was like, by the way, just to set expectations when it comes to celebrity books You if they read it, that's a win.
[01:07:21] Mark Manson: That's a win. Like if they look at a draft, you're ahead. I was like, wow. Okay. Um, but no, he was, he was involved. Like he was very involved with the outlining. He was, uh, he had a lot of like thoughts and strong feelings about like which story should, should make it into the book and where they should be placed.
[01:07:41] Mark Manson: And, um, he did a full revision. So the way I, we did the outline together, I did the first draft and then he did a full revision on my first draft and then we did a couple of, yeah, very
[01:07:53] Nathan Barry: involved.
[01:07:54] Mark Manson: So he was very involved. Yeah, that's awesome.
[01:07:55] Nathan Barry: Yeah. Yeah. I think that shows in the book when, when you have that back and
[01:07:58] Mark Manson: forth between two authors, it's like, I can't sound like him, right?
[01:08:02] Mark Manson: So there are, there are whole sections in the book that like he just, Brought to life with his personality and everything. Yeah. So
[01:08:08] Nathan Barry: yeah, I'm very happy with how it turned out. Yeah, that's awesome We could talk about all things created So we'll leave it there for now sure mark, thanks so much for coming.
[01:08:18] Nathan Barry: Thanks for having me man, this was fun I love it. Yeah, if you enjoyed this episode go to YouTube and search the Nathan Barry show Then hit subscribe, and make sure to like the video and drop a comment. I'd love to hear what some of your favorite parts of the video were, and also, just who else you think we should have on the show.
[01:08:35] Nathan Barry: Thank you so much for
listening.