#59: Mark Manson: 20 Million Books, an AI Startup, and Why Most Therapists Don't Actually Help

**Mark Manson** (0:00)
Happiness isn't even the right question to be asking.

**Derek Andersen** (0:02)
What is it?

**Mark Manson** (0:02)
Find something meaningful. Find something useful. Because it's like, generally, it's like if you're spending your time and energy on something meaningful and useful, the happiness is gonna happen as a side effect.
Like all the things that we know that actually drive happiness, like a sustained long-term happiness, they're very simple and mundane.

**Derek Andersen** (0:33)
This episode is brought to you by Google for Startups.
Today, we're in Los Angeles, California, with Mark Manson, the three-time number one New York Times bestselling author behind The Subtle Art of Not Giving a...
Well, you know. Mark started as a young writer online, far from traditional publishing, questioning dating advice, Fake confidence, the polished promises of self-help. And instead of selling easy answers, he built his work around honesty, responsibility, values, and pain to the problems worth solving. That voice became a global phenomenon. His books have sold more than 20 million copies. They've been translated into more than 65 languages. They've reached number one in 14 different countries. Now with millions of readers, over 3 million YouTube subscribers, and a newsletter reaching more than a million people, Mark continues to challenge how we think about happiness, success, love, and meaning. Hope you enjoy our conversation. Congratulations on your newest startup purpose. What is the problem that you all are solving?

**Mark Manson** (1:36)
The problem we're solving is twofold. One is that therapy, coaching, just high-quality life advice is way too inaccessible and difficult for the majority of people on the planet to access. And what is very accessible, which is kind of like airy, furry Instagram quotes is not very useful. And so it's, I believe very deeply that AI can potentially solve this problem. It can scale high-quality personalized advice across the globe to billions of people.
And then the second problem that we're solving is just that people are already using ChatGPT and Cloud for this use case and they're not designed for it. They're not very good at it. They're not properly trained for it. And the results have been pretty bad, in my opinion. So we're really just trying to fill that gap.

**Derek Andersen** (2:29)
The LLMs for the hard stuff, if it's not technical and mathematics driven, it feels like it's sort of better than nothing. But it can be really bad. And I feel like therapy is one of those, probably not a great idea.
To thoroughly mess up.

**Mark Manson** (2:50)
Yeah. And it's where the sick of fancy really becomes a problem, right? Because it's annoying, like, I don't know, let's say you're trying to vibe code an app or something, and it's already kind of annoying if your AI just keeps telling you like, that's a brilliant idea, like everything that you say.

**Derek Andersen** (3:05)
Yeah.

**Mark Manson** (3:05)
But if you're actually coming with a deep personal issue, like let's say you're having marital problems or something and the AI is kissing your ass and telling you everything you think is correct and everything you feel is totally valid, like that's actually a huge problem. That could actually really disrupt somebody's life in a profound way.

**Derek Andersen** (3:23)
What about these guys that people are calling in and getting advice and I'm like listening to somebody else talk about their marriage and their problems? Is that the best way? Is that a viable way for me to improve my relationship or do I really need to start with the fundamentals of what makes a relationship thrive?

**Mark Manson** (3:45)
Relationships and I would say just personal development in general, it is a stack of skills. I think a lot of people don't think of it that way. They think of their relationships or their happiness is something that happens to them, but ultimately it is a skill that you develop. Like any skill, it's one thing to intellectually understand it in somebody else. I could watch you with your partner and understand maybe some dynamic going on, but often we're very blind to our own lack of knowledge or errors that we're making.
It actually is very conventional in that the intellectual explanation is one thing, but the actual implementation and practice is a completely different ballgame.

**Derek Andersen** (4:32)
Yeah, I feel like a lot of times these just hit my feet maybe because I've watched some of them, and it's like, oh man, I'm so glad I don't have that problem. It's like, wow, that's wild. Those people are insane.
It's completely deflects all of my inefficiencies and all of my issues, which their list is long.

**Mark Manson** (4:54)
There's value in that though, because it's interesting. There's something that happens, particularly if we're particularly anxious or depressed, one thing that happens is that our the aperture of our awareness narrows. And everybody's probably, you probably experienced this at some point, that it's like, if you're having a really, you're going through a rough period, you kind of have this irrational feeling that you're the only one who's ever experienced this and nobody else really understands what you're feeling or what you're going through, which is just objectively completely untrue because everybody has this experience at some point.