How Mark Manson Went from Broke Blogger to Co-Writing Will Smith’s Memoir

7 lessons from the self-help guru’s wild success story

Photo of Mark Manson from markmanson.net

In 2009, Texas-born Mark packed up a bag and unleashed himself into the big, wild, world. He was broke and didn’t have a clue what to do with his life.

For seven years he’d be on the road, traveling to over 60 countries.

Nearly a decade later, he’d go on to publish “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*”, selling millions of copies. In 2017, it became the most read non-fiction book globally. To date, it boasts nearly 60.000 Amazon reviews at a 4.5-star rating.

Mark’s blog now has 15 million annual readers and an e-mail list with almost half a million people.

In November, Will Smith published his memoir that Mark helped him write.

Mark isn’t fooling around.

How did he go from broke college grad living out of a backpack to one of the most read self-help gurus of our time, making millions from his craft?

Below you’ll find seven key lessons we can learn from Mark’s story. If you’re on your own creative journey, they’ll serve you both a dose of inspiration and realism. In Mark’s words, “you can’t build a better mind without challenging your own beliefs and assumptions.”

Years of Perfecting the Craft Precede Mark’s Success

The first lesson is one you’ll be intimately familiar with if you’ve ever read anything about how to be a successful writer.

Consistency.

You may not want to hear it. It’s the one thing that’s in your control. While you can’t influence how successful you’ll be, you can influence how consistent you are. Either way, it’s a prerequisite. I doubt you’ll find anyone who made it as a writer that hasn’t been diligently working at it for a very long time.

Mark’s story reminds us:

It’s very possible to make a living and reach an audience with your writing, but it’s very impossible that it will happen quickly.

Mark started his blog in 2007. Initially, he wrote and coached men on dating. Eventually, he got bored with the niche and pivoted to broader self-help.

Nearly a decade later he published his #1 New York Times Bestseller. It wasn’t his first. In 2011, he published “ Models: Attract Women Through Honesty” which sold a few thousand copies. Not bad, but nothing compared to the millions of copies his following book would sell. Even by the time he published his book on dating, he’d already been writing online for four years.

Manage your expectations: think in years, not in months.

To Be a Great Writer, You Need to Live Greatly

Mark lived out of his backpack traveling the world for almost seven years. That’s a long time to be nomadic.

After graduation, he actually had a job at an investment bank. He lasted for a full three weeks. After a manager complained that “he read too many books while in the office”, he abruptly quit.

For Mark, living greatly wouldn’t mean living corporately.

To live greatly also doens’t meant to live perfectly.

To live greatly means to experience vastly.

In order to write interesting things, you need to do interesting things.

There’s a saying that goes something like “in order to be interesting, you need to be interested.”

Mark was interested.

He traveled to over 50 countries, learned multiple languages. He was able to write about finding oneself because he had the courage to turn away from the matrix and lose himself.

Minimize Your Living Cost to Maximize Your Creative Freedom and Flexibility

Mark was a backpacker. He made a modest income from his early online business on dating advice. It was modest but it was enough. It was enough because he didn’t need much. He didn’t need much because he lived in countries that were cheap as f* to live in. This, in turn, allowed him to focus his energy on his creative endeavors.

Mark took a page out of “The 4-Hour Work Week”, the digital nomad’s bible. In it, Tim Ferris urges seekers to minimize their expenses early on.

Creative freedom is about doing things you really want to do, creative flexibility is about finding the time to do them.

You need both.

Mark also recounts early experiences with passion projects as a guiding force in pursuing solopreneurship:

“Around the time I finished college, I helped a few friends on a couple projects they were doing. It was fun, but I never thought much of it. Then I landed my first job in the “real world” and it was one of those nightmarish cubicle abyss type jobs. My life turned into a Dilbert comic where I would show up at 8AM every morning, refresh Facebook for eight and a half hours straight, and go home. Those little web projects I did with my friends suddenly seemed 100 times cooler. Then I read Four Hour Work Week and became convinced that I was going to live on a beach somewhere and sip piña coladas all day. So I got back in touch with those friends, came up with some rough business ideas, and abandoned ship.”

When you go full-time at your creative endeavor, you’ll get much further than when you side hustle next to your 9-to-5. Going full-time without real income is only possible when you have super low living expenses.

It doesn’t mean you have to move to Bali. It could mean, however, that it makes sense for your to downshift if you’re serious about writing full-time.

Don’t Shy Away from Crowded Spaces, But Make Sure You Create Your Own Niche Within Them

The self-help space is one of the most crowded spaces in non-fiction writing.

Yet, Mark was able to leave his mark (wink). He shaped the space not by occupying an existing niche, but by creating a new one: counter self-help.

Or, in his words, “self-help that doesn’t suck”.

You’re always told to niche down as a writer, which is critical, but let’s not forget:

If you want to reach a lot of people with your writing, you need to write about things that concern a lot of people.

Mark managed to simultaneously niche down and cover topics that virtually affect every single person on this planet.

He had a three-fold approach to creating his niche.

Firstly, he specifically targeted millennial readers with his self-help advice, an audience he felt wasn’t catered well.

Secondly, his writing style flies in the face of most fluffy, touchy-feely positive psychology advice. His approach is practical and research-based. He curses a lot. Two of his books have the word f* in their title, for f*’s sake.

Finally, Mark attributes “injecting more personality into his writing than most self-help authors” to his success. This maximizes authenticity and makes people more interested in you as a writer.

It’s possible to still breakthrough in crowded spaces, but only if you’re creative about it. Nicolas Cole writes a lot about creating your own category, if you’re looking for more inspiration on this.

Interact With Readers Early On To Get a Feel for What’s Most Relevant

At the beginning of his solopreneurship, Mark coached men on dating for nearly three years. This taught him how similar people’s problems were. It also gave him a solid glimpse into what those key problems were.

You can only grow a big audience by consistently adding value to your readers, and you do so by writing about what’s most relevant to them.

Early reader engagement taught Mark to consistently nurture his relationship with his audience. He invites readers to e-mail him, to which he used to frequently respond, on occasion publicly on his blog.

He still invites people to e-mail him today, and while he may not be able to answer anymore, he’s still collecting valuable information on what’s most relevant to his readers.

This, in turn, helps him tailor his writing. It helps him stay relevant. It helps him grow and maintain his cashcow, his blog.

Stick to a Simple Monetization Strategy (Ad-free Subscription Models for the Win)

Mark was one of the first online writers, along with Maria Popova, who went (and stayed) ad-free despite substantial audiences.

In 2015, before publishing his bestseller, Mark launched a paid subscription model. This model has since been adopted widely by the online publishing industry. Substack is aggressively publishing paid subscriptions for writers.

These days, Mark has replaced his coaching practice with lucrative public speaking gigs. But they’re side income, the cherries on top.

The bread and butter is still his blog.

To monetize effectively, you focus on growing your “cash cow” with 80% of your time and explore new income sources with the remaining 20%.

If you go on Mark’s website, everything neatly leads back to the newsletter, which promotes the paid extension of his website.

For $4/month, readers get access to exclusive members-only content, five online courses, several e-books, and a host of video and audio material.

It’s a simple but effective strategy.

Dream Big, but Manage Your Expectations

As an entrepreneur and creative, it’s indispensable to have a vision. It’s equally important, however, to be realistic.

In Mark’s words:

“Grandiose dreams are normal and healthy, but grandiose expectations is just narcissism.”

Mark acknowledges that when your visions turn into expectations, it’s easy to drown in pressure, inadequacy, and anxiety. All you hear about are the successful entrepreneurship stories. You rarely hear about the ones that involve decades of grind and failure without substantial success.

It’s very possible you’ll not be super successful.

In fact, it’s not only possible, but likely.

Whether you’ll fail or succeed is not just a matter of motivation, intellect, and consistency, but also one of timing and luck. You can’t control those.

Dream big, but expect little.

Manson practices what he preaches. He’s aware that it’s unlikely he’ll ever write something as widely written as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F* again. So much so that he wrote his following book about the topic. Exploring hope helped him process his fear of living in the shadow of his own success.

Mark’s story is one for the books. It’s every blogger’s fairy tale.

It proves that with persistence, originality, and discipline, it is possible to make a living doing what you love.

Yet, Mark also teaches us to be realistic and not expect too much.

Practice your craft, live your life, maximize for creative flexibility, connect with your audience, and create a niche for yourself.

You might be the next Mark Manson.

Probably, you’re not.

But you can always hope.