You Can Either Change With The World, Or…

Back in 2008, I was running 20-person workshops in dust-filled lofts and coffee-stained budget hotel conference rooms.

Every day was a scramble. Post online every day, create a list of cities. When one got enough signups, I’d fly there and start emailing people like crazy to find and fill a room. Rinse and repeat.

I did this for almost two years, living month-to-month, always scrambling to find enough for next month’s rent.

Then, one day I met a guy who changed my life.

“Instead of traveling so much, you should record one of these and put it online and sell it.”

Six months later, my first course went online. Only about 100 people signed up. I suddenly had rent money. I could sleep in the same bed for more than a week at a time.

I could breathe.

At the time, online courses were seen as some mix of scam or joke. My friends bought me beers out of pity. My parents told me I needed to go get a real job.

But the world’s information was aggressively moving online. Distribution was becoming global. And you could either move with the world, or drown fighting against it.

I chose to move with it…

For the next 16 years, I would proceed to build out over 15 different online course offerings, five different communities, amass an audience in the tens of millions and reach more people than I had ever imagined possible.

About two years ago, people started telling me they were asking AI all of their life advice questions. I quickly saw the potential for AI in personal development was huge—perfectly personalized advice, infinite patience, immediate applicability, available 24/7—if only someone actually took the time to train a model properly.

Within months, I had co-founded Purpose, my own AI personal growth coach. When we launched, more people signed up for it the first weeks than anything I had ever created in my entire career, including my books.

It blew my mind.

As the months rolled on, the dynamism of the AI quickly started to make much of my old content feel… well, static. Frozen in place and time. In need of a constant update. Impersonal and inapplicable.

And for the first time in over a decade, I found myself in a real philosophical pickle. How do I best help the thousands of people in my courses and memberships, the lifeblood of my entire career the past 16 years, when I’m clearly not the best one to do it?

The world was moving again… and once again, I had a choice.

I have decided to close down my community and course offerings permanently. By the end of this month, I am going to be merging them all into Purpose so people can receive the benefits of both the content and the AI coach within the same product.

It’s a two-for-one deal of my life’s work, all in a single app, always available in your pocket.

I know a lot of people are ambivalent about AI. I know there are still issues with it. But I’ve been behind the curtain long enough to know this is where the world is moving for the next 20+ years. And once again, despite the eyerolls and ridicule, I have chosen to move with it.

Because one day, down the road, when our personal AI agents are in our ears 24/7, with perfect knowledge of everything in our lives and the world, delivering infinite information and world-class advice in every moment of every day, the only scarcity left will be face-to-face human connection.

And when that day comes, you can meet me back in that cramped budget hotel conference room. We’ll drink stale coffee and talk about practical wisdom. And we’ll laugh as if none of this ever happened.

See you Monday,
Mark Manson

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
My Website – My Books – My YouTube Channel – My Podcast – My App