An Honest Review of Mark Manson’s Paid Membership Program

For a night of great entertainment, I recommend watching one of the events during the CrossFit Games. It’s great to see the competitiveness, energy, ridiculousness, drive, and the beautiful, fit women.

Here’s a video of the “Individual Assault Banger” event, for example. They have to smash a 175-pound block with a big red hammer through their legs and across the field.

Other than random CrossFit videos, I like to spend my time improving my earning potential, happiness, relationships, health, and work towards my dream life — and that’s why I purchased Mark Manson’s membership program.

If you’re not familiar with Mark, he’s one of the top personal development bloggers, with a site that attracts millions of readers every month and a new New York Times #1 best-selling book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving A Fuck, which has already sold over a million copies. He has a blunt style of telling you how to improve your life — and he backs it up with science and case studies of successful people.

I bought his paid membership, which features a few full-length courses, premium articles, and bonuses. Here’s my honest review of it…

If you prefer watching or listening, here is my video review and demo of the membership site and a behind-the-scenes peek of what’s inside.

Mark just released a new course (which he didn’t have to considering all the sales he’s made from his books) called The Better Your Life Course. Here’s my review on the course after completing it:

There are a couple of points I want to highlight. First:

The price is a bargain.

Mark used to sell his courses individually for high prices (hundreds of dollars each),to but he recently packaged everything together for $6 a month ($4 a month if you choose the annual plan). Frankly, I think he’s pricing it too low, but that’s good for us. I emailed him asking why he priced it so low and he responded by saying he wanted to reach as many people as possible.

Right now, in the internet marketing world, most people selling online courses seem to be pricing them for ridiculously high amounts of money ($1,000 to $10,000). There are only a few places, like Udemy, where you can get cheap courses for $15 to $100,l but the quality is lower, and you sometimes get what you pay for. What do you expect when you’re taking a course made by a stranger you’ve never heard of before?

I’ve taken expensive paid courses — sometimes, they’re worth it and sometimes they’re not.

His membership also includes all his eBooks, courses, “Ask Me Anything” Q&A sessions (he’s released two so far and answers the highest voted questions), and tons of premium articles he writes only for members. Mark mentioned in a subscriber Q&A that he did this because he realized most people only wanted to pay him to write more articles, and that’s what he liked doing most anyways. It was a good way to simplify the business.

His courses hit on most problems people have

Other than the Better Your Life Course, there are full-length Dating, Anxiety, Travel, and Connection courses. There’s also a Blogging course, but part of is is just a resource list of podcast interviews he’s done and a couple random one-off videos/e-books.

I think these courses are great for most people who want to improve in self-development because they hit on the main issues (anxiety, connection, shame, trust) that hold many people back when it comes to happiness, relationships, love, dating, living their dream life, minimizing regrets, and mental health.

Plus, most people’s #1 desire if they didn’t have to worry about money is to travel the world (believe me, I’ve asked a bunch), and Mark offers some solid, comprehensive tips on how to do that on a budget based on his experiences.

They are pretty good at giving you new insights and exercises that you haven’t heard before. And that’s saying something coming from someone who is a junkie for this topic.

Whether you’re married or single, most people can benefit from the courses because they tough on topics we all struggle with: from arguing with your spouse to living your dream life traveling the world even though you make a modest income to improving your anxiety so you don’t choke when you want to talk to a girl or make a presentation to your boss — it’s covered.

How the courses are like (structure and content)

I also love that the courses aren’t overwhelming, too long, or too complex. Some courses seem to go on for months, and you feel like a failure if you can’t complete it and feel like it was useless since you didn’t complete it.

These courses are easy to complete. They include around 6 to 8 lessons, and each lesson takes 10 to 20 minutes to read or listen through and another 10 to 20 minutes to complete the exercise. If you do one or two lessons a day, you’ll finish in no time.

Mark draws from a large body of research, personal experience as a coach, and literature on anxiety management, cognitive therapy, communication skills, travel hacking, attraction, couples therapy, and more. You’re likely to get better advice than you can from most other places.

What I Like, Don’t Like, and Wish Was Better

What I don’t like about the course is that I’ve heard a portion of the tips already. I could tolerate that, though, because there were many tips I didn’t hear before.

But what I really wish he had was a lot more citations and sources to back up what he says in his courses. None of his courses had any citations or traceable references to specific concepts or scientific articles. He names a ton of concepts and principles in the course, such as the fact that the three pillars to a strong relationship are trust, respect, and empathy, yet I wish he’d be more clear on where he’s getting this from.

You had to trust him on his word based on the thorough, useful articles he had written for free where he does sometimes cite sources and the introduction to his course, where he briefly mentions he has read countless scientific books to create the course.

There were slight moments where his advice on a topic was fairly shallow, and I started to wonder if he really had any scientific to support to say that the source of my anxiety or problems was because of a simple X, Y, and Z — but I’m more skeptical than most people typically are, so you should be good.

The simplicity and minimalism of his courses and articles are a good or bad thing, depending on what you’re looking for. I liked it because I could complete them fairly easily and feel accomplished rather than only have time to complete a portion of it and feel like I didn’t get any value from it since I didn’t finish it.

But if you’re looking for a super thorough, extensive course with 50 lessons and specific action steps that cover every tiny area of your issue, that’s not what you’ll get here — he focuses on the top problems you may have.

E-Books, Premium Articles, and Other Bonuses

You get access all his e-books he used to sell, an archive of all premium articles he releases only to subscribers, and other bonuses like a “Ask Me Anything” session for subscribers and a short commentary on his two published books.

The E-Books were shorter than I expected. Many of the tips in there I was already familiar with since I’m well-versed in the popular scientific studies and stories around personal development. To a newbie, I think they’re a good read but on the shorter side (it may take 10 minutes or less to finish each).

One of the best feature’s to his program is his premium articles. There are a few gems that can really help you improve your writing and effectiveness in relationships. But there are also a few that were a little underwhelming — they weren’t bad, but they weren’t what you would consider better than free material. That’s a high bar to beat since his free articles are so good already.

The Verdict

Mark’s membership is well worth it, especially given the low price. I don’t think anyone can’t afford it even if they’re broke. If you work for an hour at a minimum wage job, you can earn enough for it every month. And you don’t have to be committed for months or years if you don’t want to. If you want to go through just one course, you can invest in one month, and that’ll be more than enough time to complete it.

Mark didn’t sponsor this post. I’m just sharing my honest thoughts on what I purchased.

Hope this helped,

Will

Have you heard about Mark before this? What do you think of him? Let me know in the comments below.