Mark Manson

About Mark Manson

Mark Manson was born on March 9, 1984, in Austin, Texas.^[2][3] He lived in the Oak Hill neighborhood until he was nine years old. When his father’s business grew more successful, the family moved to a larger home in Great Hill, an Austin suburb.^[4]  

Manson briefly attended Canyon Vista Middle School but was expelled in eighth grade for marijuana possession. After that, he was briefly homeschooled before attending a private high school in South Austin. While in high school, Manson’s parents divorced. While Manson no longer has a good relationship with his father, he gets along well with his mother and recently purchased a home for her.^[4] 

After high school, Manson briefly attended a small music college in Denton, Texas, before transferring to Boston University, where he earned a degree in international relations and business. After college, he worked for three weeks at an investment firm but soon quit. In 2009, he decided to live abroad and spent the next seven years traveling. He visited more than 65 countries^[5] but spent the majority of his time in Argentina, Colombia, and Brazil.^[4] 

In 2012, Manson met his future wife, social media influencer Fernanda Neute at a nightclub in São Paulo. After getting engaged in 2015, the couple married in 2016. Together they bought a 5,475-square-foot penthouse in New York City but quickly regretted the decision and sold it for over $13 million. They downsized to a 2,800-square-foot house in Santa Monica.^[4] The couple enjoys traveling together often, visiting places including Berlin, Tokyo, Qatar, Ireland, and Iceland.^[6]  

Career

Early in his career, Manson started a business called Practical Pickup. He sold video courses, hosted boot camps, and coached men on how to pick up women. While his business never became a primary source of income, he was earning between $500 and $1,000 a month.^[4]  

Manson started blogging in 2007, originally writing about psychology, dating, personal growth, and relationships. In 2011, he rebranded his blog to be called Post Masculine.^[7]  However, after realizing his writing appealed to both men and women, in 2013, he again rebranded. He moved his blog to markmanson.net, which is the website he still uses today. 

By 2014, Manson’s blog was successful enough that he was able to hire someone to help him.^[4] The success of his blog is what ultimately led to Manson’s book publications, allowing him to become a three-time New York Times best-selling author.^[8]

Manson has been a speaker or guest lecturer at several companies and universities, including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Blackstone, the University of Utah, and the University of Southern California. He has also been published in New York Magazine, GQ, The Guardian, BBC, TIME, The New York Times, New York Post, USA Today, Buzzfeed, Vice, and Variety.^[5]

Mark Manson Books

Manson self-published his first book, Models: Attract Women Through Honesty, in 2011. In 2016, Manson published, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, which was based on a 2015 blog post of the same name.The book, which focuses on embracing negative emotions and experiences, quickly became a New York Times bestseller and has sold over 12 million copies worldwide.^[4] 

Manson published his next book, Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope, in 2019. It debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list for “Advice,” “How-to,” and “Miscellaneous.”^[9]

In 2018, Manson co-authored the autobiography Will with actor Will Smith.^[10] Manson’s latest writing project is an audiobook called Love is Not Enough, published in 2020.  

Mark Manson Today

Today, Mark Manson continues to write for his blog, develop online courses, and work on new books. His weekly newsletter, Mindf*ck Monday, has over 500,000 subscribers. His site, markmanson.net, receives over 15 million visitors annually, and he has an Instagram audience of 1 million followers.^[11][12] He says about his work, “Finally, life advice is most effective when it’s fun and unpretentious. Therefore, my goal is to entertain as well as sustain. To amuse as well as advise. To disseminate potentially life-changing information to millions in a way that is not only ethical and transparent, but at the same time, also hilarious.”^[13]