Ryan Holiday On The Economics Of Book Publishing
Coins, Books, Ghost Towns, and Stoicism - February 8, 2022 (almost 3 years ago) • 01:12:10
Transcript:
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Shaan Puri | What what do you do with your money I know you got a ranch | |
Ryan Holiday | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | you you I think you live there | |
Sam Parr | but he he he lives far | |
Ryan Holiday | That was like my house. So, it's not like it was a hot, luxury property or whatever. It's like...
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Shaan Puri | Kanye having a ranch in Wyoming... You actually live there because you wanted to live there. Sam, I think, has some similar aspirations. But what do you do? Are you like, "I'm an investor"? Do you just do something boring with your money? What do you do with your money?
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Ryan Holiday | Money... well, I spent a lot of it on this bookstore. I bought two buildings in this small town of Bastrop. Originally, it was going to be a bookstore and a coffee shop. Now, it's a bookstore, and I rent out half of it to a record store.
But I needed a space to do all my stuff, so up top is like my office. My wife also wanted me to take all my books out of our house, so that was part of it. It was like getting all the... the stuff out.
But no, I don't really do anything with it. I invest it. I like investing in things that are very different from internet things, so most of it's in income-producing real estate. How...? | |
Sam Parr | do you describe yourself | |
Ryan Holiday | You know, I don't do it very well. You nailed it. If I had to say what I identify as, I would say I identify as a writer. I have these other things that I do that are somewhat related and somewhat unrelated. But if I had to pick only one thing, or what I feel like I was meant to do, it's writing. So, I identify first as that.
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Sam Parr | Sean, do you remember this? Did I ever show you this coin? I used to carry it around. I would have it with me a lot, particularly in the old San Francisco office. I had a coin.
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Shaan Puri | do you remember face of you no I've never never seen your coin what are you doing with this | |
Sam Parr | face of me no it was it said what did it say momentous | |
Ryan Holiday | momento word | |
Sam Parr | it say ryan yeah which means like you're you're gonna die you only live once right | |
Shaan Puri | By the way, don't you love that Sam carried it around for years and doesn't know what it says on it? Momentous.
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Sam Parr | it's I knew that it meant like you're all | |
Ryan Holiday | about momentum | |
Sam Parr | you have to live today like you're gonna die | |
Ryan Holiday | yes | |
Sam Parr |
Right, and I was thinking about it... I bought one for $26, and I was thinking about it. I was like, "This is the greatest business of all time." I just bought a fake coin from Ryan for $26. It cost them... it was just probably a post, like a stamp just to mail it to me, so only 50¢. There's not gonna be any returns, there's no... it's one size fits all. And it made me happy, and I carried it around.
I was like, **is that the greatest business of all time**? Selling coins?
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Ryan Holiday | It's been a nice business. It's better than the publishing business.
What's interesting about books is that with a new book, you spend two years of your life writing something that's about 60,000 words. You have to consider that the publisher is taking and managing all of it, so they're the middleman in the process.
That book is priced at $26, and if it were $32, people would be upset because there's a sense of what a book should cost. This is what people are willing to pay.
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Shaan Puri | And regardless of how good the book is or not, it's like exactly something of this shape. I pay either $9, $13, or $26.
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Ryan Holiday | right and so one of the things as as daily stoic which I started as this email list became sort of big the idea was like okay are we gonna advertise are we gonna monetize this via advertising or are we gonna like is there stuff we can sell that you know makes it a business to pay for itself and as we were thinking about stuff you could do because I came from the apparel business before I was a writer I was like we are not doing t shirts under no circumstances are we doing t shirts first off because t shirts are like are you know it's kinda cheap you know but t shirts are the worst business you can do so like bands become popular people build a brand the first thing they always think is t shirts but what I remember is just how fucking complicated t shirts are 1st off because you have to get someone to make them but if you sell 1 t shirt that's already at a minimum 3 skus right small medium large if you wanna do extra large and and extra small okay now 5 skus and then you're like okay we're gonna do white then we're gonna do black so now you have 10 skus right and it's and then then they don't fit there's quality control issues all so I was like we're not doing shirts and also like shirts even though all of that people will only pay certain amount for shirt because we don't value it as a thing so I was think I I was like I wanna make something that's better margins that's less work all of that so I was just really thinking about it and then one day I was at the airport I was at the austin airport and I was thinking about this idea of memento mori which is like if you look at a lot of old like renaissance paintings the philosopher always has a skull on its on his desk and so there was a it's a philosophical genre of like reminders of mortality and I was like it would be really cool to have a reminder of that what would that be I was like well I could get a tattoo and then I was like well I don't really wanna get a tattoo and so I was like what could I have and and the idea of the coin popped into my head and it turned out to be really cool we actually use this mint in minnesota that invented the the alcoholics anonymous chip like that you get at like 10 years or 20 years so they've been in business since 18/88 | |
Sam Parr | wow that's crazy | |
Ryan Holiday | I think we're their biggest customer now. That also is a really cool business that I've been fascinated with. But yeah, that was a close call.
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Sam Parr | I'm gonna I'm gonna ask you about the mints a mint in a second because I have another mint that I think you're gonna | |
Ryan Holiday | get a | |
Sam Parr | Can you reveal how many of those coins you sell a year, or do you not talk about it? | |
Ryan Holiday | About... I don't want to say exactly how many, but like tens of thousands. It's a lot of them. People, like, I'm giving a talk in Marble Falls next week, and they bought one for each of the attendees.
So it also became a really cool way to... what I'm interested in is not like tchotchkes or just random merchandise, but rather what are the physical manifestations of the ideas that I talk about that could actually provide value in some way.
So, I have this one on my desk, but then the other one that I have... this one says "Tempus Fugit," which means "time flies." This is like a parenting one; it's just a reminder to be present as a parent.
So, I kind of start with stuff that would be helpful to me, and then if it works for other people, that's good. I do think entrepreneurs tend to think about digital products first and not physical products that have good margins. So that's been really cool.
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Sam Parr | well how much does a coin cost you a dollar | |
Ryan Holiday | More than that, because there's also packaging and shipping, all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I'll just say it's a good margin. It's a good margin, not as good as a digital product, but good enough. | |
Shaan Puri | That business... I feel like, you know, I have this phrase: "You are what you admire." If you admire things enough, you end up moving in that direction. That's a type of business that I really like.
The little thing you just said gets the highest amount of respect from me. Like, okay, Elon can send a rocket to Mars. You know, Steve Jobs can wear his turtleneck and do his thing. But an entrepreneur who says, "Well, I wanted to create... I realized my interest in stoicism, so I created this free thing to give it away," and I didn't know what the business would be.
The traditional model doesn't really work. Ads... it would be like, you know, how kind of shitty would a stoicism newsletter be if it was just plastered with ads? But I did it anyway, betting on myself that I'd figure it out.
I figured it out first by having my little framework of, like, what's a thing that represents this belief that has high margins and low headache? I have a DTC business with over 3,000 SKUs. So when you're saying that, my body is just like, you know, inside just shriveling up and dying. I'm like, "Oh wow, how amazing would it be if I had one SKU that was just high margin and I could just make that SKU amazing?"
So hearing you pull that off, and the way it kind of... like Sam has it, and people at the conference buy it, to me that's like, you know, top-level respect. Because the creativity that that requires and the thoughtfulness that that requires is kind of amazing. I think most people would just kind of declare creative bankruptcy and say, "I don't know. I don't know how to figure it out," and just never... never.
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Ryan Holiday | Do that. Why do I think Shopify is going to be like the biggest company in the world? Because they let people do that. Do you know what I mean? You just come up with an idea, and then it plugs into a third-party warehouse.
Although I have a fulfillment center here in Austin where I do some of the stuff out of the bookstore, just like that, you can come up with things, make them, and sell them to people. To me, it's going to unlock so much potential.
Part of the reason I'm able to have the bookstore as a physical space is that most of what I sell online can subsidize in-person retail as well.
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Sam Parr | Right, Sean, have you heard of this story? It's going to come full circle, but not until the end. Have you heard of Stuart Resnick? Stuart Resnick? No? Alright, I bet you've heard... | |
Shaan Puri | of I think I know this guy they own the pistachio company right | |
Sam Parr | yes so when you go to the store and | |
Shaan Puri | juice or whatever | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, so they own this. It's a privately owned company. It's probably one of the largest. Linda and Stuart Resnick are probably some of the largest privately owned companies in America. They do multibillions in revenue.
He started like a security business that he sold, and he got some money. Now he owns Palm, like the drink Palm, and he owns pistachios and a bunch of other stuff.
Anyway, one of his first businesses after he sold his security company, he made a little bit of money and bought this thing called the Franklin Mint. I knew, Ryan, I knew you were gonna know what this was.
The Franklin Mint basically started out by selling coins. Eventually, they expanded to a bunch of other collectibles, but they started selling coins. Up until somewhat recently, they were one of the largest advertisers in both digital and print media.
So, if you would open up a magazine, like USA Today or a TV and news guide, they were always selling coins, and it was Franklin Mint. He sold it for like $200 to $300 million when he was done with it.
And you know who bought it recently? It was Tai Lopez.
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Ryan Holiday | oh wow didn't he buy radioshack also | |
Sam Parr | and a bunch of shit he's bought so much stuff | |
Shaan Puri | Hold on, I'm kind of confused. What is a mint?
Is the mint literally a coin factory? So they take metal and then shape it into a coin of your choosing, and then they sell it or provide it to you, who sells it? Is that the idea? Is a mint a coin factory?
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Ryan Holiday | Yeah, although the Frank Lloyd Mint is like commemorative quarters and dollars and stuff, right?
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Sam Parr |
But they don't... but they do. They do like a prince. Do that? No, but yes, they do. They actually got sued because they used like a Princess Diana coin. Or they've done like a... I don't know, some famous-ish person that middle American moms care about. You can buy like a coin with their face on it.
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Ryan Holiday | oh interesting | |
Shaan Puri | I've met this guy who has a very interesting path that intertwines with the Silk Road and other things. He said something like, "Yeah, what I'm doing now is I'm buying these email lists of like 100 million people, like the leaked Ashley Madison or whatever."
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Ryan Holiday | yeah | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, the email list for LinkedIn got hacked. Cool. I'll take all those emails.
You can't really even send to that big of a list; it's too dirty, and you'll get banned or whatever. But he had some expertise in how to send mass emails. I was like, "What are you going to do with this? Are you going to start a new thing?"
He's like, "Oh no, I'm just going to find people who like Trump, and I'm going to sell them coins. I'm going to sell coins and hats to Trump fans."
I was like, "Wow." And he's like, "Yeah, if 0.2% of my list, or 0.02% of my list, ever converts, you know, I'll just make a million dollars passively sending these emails."
I was like, "Wow, this is one of the craziest business plans I've ever heard."
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Ryan Holiday | There's an argument that Fox News basically exists for the sake of reverse mortgages, gold coins, and other forms of grift. If you watch Fox News, just the commercials give you a sense of how uninformed the audience is, to be perfectly honest.
Then you realize why the content is the way it is. It's almost as if I heard this great thing about spam. They were saying, you know, you get an email from a Nigerian scammer and you're like, "Oh, this is obviously spam." That's because it's not for you; it's for someone who's dumb enough to not be bothered by all the red flags that are there.
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Shaan Puri | They want people who, after they get scammed, won't really know how to have any recourse.
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Ryan Holiday | yes | |
Shaan Puri | so they they won't be able to get back at you and so they they filter out all the people who have like lawyers | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, and so when you watch Fox News, you get the sense that, "Oh, this exists to create the kind of customer that would fall for these obscenely high-margin, almost criminal enterprises." I know this is an exaggeration, but it's right on this side of what's legal or not.
These businesses tend to exploit not very smart or savvy people. That's why the content is what it is. It's to set up the commercial break where people won't buy real things. When you turn on pretty much any other form of entertainment, you're not seeing those advertisers because, right, that's not who it's appealing to.
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Shaan Puri | It reminds me of India. I don't want to do a deep dive on this, but India has this culture of gurus. In terms of gods, we have like 50 gods, and then the gods all have their gurus—kind of like saints who give genuinely good advice.
However, they also perform magic tricks to show that they are, you know, the "man of God." For example, they can produce something in their hand, but it's literally an illusion, like a magic trick. The way they work is by having this virtuous brand of being a person who only wears a white robe and claims to have no material possessions.
When you go to visit them, there are miles-long lines of people literally crawling up mountains to show their devotion to reach this person's place. Then, you donate your gold chains and other valuables. Inevitably, these gurus get raided by the government because they pay no taxes and are often involved in crimes.
When the authorities investigate, they find tons—literally tons—of gold in their houses. They also license brands, like chip brands and popcorn brands, and it's like the face of this guru is selling potato chips.
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Sam Parr | dude vikram yoga vikram yoga had ketchup I think | |
Shaan Puri | yeah it's crazy wow | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, no, it's very strange. Once you get into sort of the back end of how some of this stuff works.
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Sam Parr | do you know anyone ryan who's outselling you in terms of coins | |
Ryan Holiday | Selling more coins...
No, I mean, I do sometimes wonder, like, when we order a bunch of the coins from the mint, which is in Minneapolis. They'll be like, "Oh no, we're really backed up. Sorry, your order will be in a couple of weeks or whatever." I'm always like, "Who is ahead of me?"
But there is... I mean, I was thinking about it. I wanted a reminder of *memento mori*, and then I thought of a coin. It didn't occur to me because I had a bunch of them already, so I was probably...
But there is a genre of... there's a thing called a *challenge coin* that the military gives out, or police officers give out, or firefighters give out. Sometimes it's like a commemoration, like you visited this place. If you did, like, you know, this tour of duty in Operation Enduring Freedom or whatever, they'll often give you challenge coins.
I think a lot of them are for government clients or, you know, nonprofits or organizations. There's that. But I could get them done... when we're talking about margins, they would be much cheaper for me to make them in large bulk from China. But we haven't done that. We've always used this original place. I wanted to do *Made in USA*, but then, as it happened during the pandemic, it was great because we never ran out of stock of any of our products because everything we sell is made in the U.S.
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Shaan Puri | That's awesome! Now, Brian, I wanted to ask you because you've done a bunch of different things.
Okay, so you're a college dropout, correct? You worked for Tucker Max, you consulted with Tucker Max, and Robert Greene, who's the author of "The 48 Laws of Power" or whatever. You've written a bunch of books, you own an independent bookshop, you have your coin business, and you sell courses on that. You've done a bunch of different things.
So, I wanted to play a little game just to get to know you better. It's called "First, Worst, Best, Best, Last, Weird."
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Ryan Holiday | okay | |
Shaan Puri | And basically, it's on jobs. So, what was the first job? It doesn't have to be like a traditional job; it could be a side hustle you had. So, what's the first kind of dollar you earned?
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Ryan Holiday | I worked at a deli at a grocery store called Obexter's in Homewood, California, right on Lake Tahoe.
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Shaan Puri | and what were you doing at the deli | |
Ryan Holiday | I was making sandwiches and I worked in a place like that. I was just a kid; I was 15.
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Shaan Puri | 15 16 | |
Ryan Holiday | 15, you know, just like $6 an hour, whatever minimum wage was in California then. Just a kid who worked at a little, small-town grocery. | |
Shaan Puri | And what was it like? Because you can make $6 an hour. I don't know how many hours you're working, but you end up with a couple hundred dollars after a couple of weeks. That's a lot of money to a kid. Do you remember what you did with the money or how you felt about that amount of money at that time?
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Ryan Holiday | You know what? I don't remember what I bought. I was super into snowboarding, so I probably bought a snowboard or something.
But yeah, it occurred to me the other day that I've basically worked nonstop since I was 15 years old. I worked at Wendy's after that, if I remember correctly. That was a lifeguard job. So, I've had like a bazillion jobs, but that was the first one.
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Sam Parr |
And then I feel like at age 18 or 19 or something, you're like the boss of American Apparel or something just... ridiculous. Or like at 18, you worked for Robert Greene writing "48 Laws of Power."
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Ryan Holiday | Well, *The 48 Laws of Power* came out when I was like 11 years old. So, not exactly, but I did start working for Robert when I was 20. Then, I was the Director of Marketing at American Apparel in my early twenties. | |
Shaan Puri | so so you when you dropped out you dropped out because what you just hated school or you had something you wanted | |
Ryan Holiday | To do, I liked school, but I wanted to be a writer. I was going to UC Riverside, and I was working for Tucker, who was one of the first bloggers to have a book deal. I was working for him doing marketing and online stuff. Then he got me a job at a talent agency where I did like... | |
Sam Parr | yeech I could not see you fitting in there | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, I was answering phones and stuff, but I worked on new media. This was right when YouTube had just sold, so everyone was sort of interested in internet talent. That's what I was working on.
At the end of that summer, I was supposed to go back to college. Within one week, I got an offer to stay on at the talent agency. I was working for this movie producer there as his assistant. Then, I met Robert Greene. Robert Greene needed a research assistant on a book he was writing called *The 50th Law*.
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Shaan Puri | Did all these people like you? Why did Tucker hire you when you were 18? What did you do to get hired by him? Because at that time, he was writing basically like funny dating stories and sex stories, right? That was like his blog at the time, if I remember correctly.
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Ryan Holiday | I think I was very young, very ambitious, and very hardworking. I was just obsessed with the internet and what this sort of internet culture would become. I loved books; I've always loved books.
I think they sensed that I wanted to be a writer, and I sort of went under their wing as an apprentice in how to do what they did.
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Shaan Puri | did you just cold email them or both | |
Ryan Holiday | So, when I met Tucker, I was writing for the college newspaper. I wrote an article, which is what I was doing. I would write articles about people in the way that now you'd be...
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Sam Parr | like oh | |
Ryan Holiday | I want to meet this person. Will you come on my podcast?
Before the podcast, I would just interview people and write articles about them. That's how I met Tucker. I was a huge Robert Greene fan, so I met Robert through Tucker.
The talent agency, the guy I worked for, was producing a movie about Tucker's first book. So they're all sort of connected. Then it was through Robert Greene that I met Doug Charney, who is the founder of American Apparel.
So it all kind of was swirling about each other.
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Shaan Puri | And what was the first kind of personal hustle you did? Right? You're helping Tucker achieve his goals. You're helping Robert Greene achieve his goals. You're helping the talent agency find talent. When did Ryan go into business for Ryan?
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Ryan Holiday | That's a good question. I don't know what the first thing I would have done is. I mean, I started my marketing company in 2011 when I was writing my first book.
But I think the first big bet I made on myself was... I had done other little stuff before, but the first big bet in 2011 was when I basically quit at American Apparel to go write what was my first book, *Trust Me, I'm Lying*. So that was like the first big bet on myself.
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Sam Parr | and that was a hit I mean that was that was pretty it it seemed like it took off right now | |
Ryan Holiday | It got a ton of attention. I sold it for a good chunk of money, at least to me. Ironically, it sold well, but it will probably earn out its advance by this summer, which will be the 10th anniversary of it.
Looking at the royalty statement I will get in July of 2022, which will be the 10-year anniversary of the book, it will finally go from negative to positive on the advance statement.
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Sam Parr | what was your advance | |
Ryan Holiday | I was 25th at $250. I think it was $200 with some incentives. Although when I announced it, I stated that it had been sold for $500,000 because I knew people didn't actually fact-check press releases. So trust me, I'm fine.
The whole point of the book was to prove that the problems I was talking about in the media system were real. I promptly doubled the advance when I announced it, and nobody checked.
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Shaan Puri | That's funny. Did you... so you got a big advance? You didn't have that big of a following at that time. How did you finagle such an advance, let alone like a quarter of a million dollars?
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Ryan Holiday | **Advance for your first...** So, the bet on myself was that I left and I wrote the book first. Almost all nonfiction is sold with a proposal, and then you go write the book. But I didn't necessarily need to do that.
I wrote the book so I had what was like a good piece of property. I wrote something that was unlike all the other books at that time. I don't think there have been that many books like it. Maybe "Chaos Monkeys" would be another similar book that I thought was good.
So, I sold it that way. I wrote it, and then I had it. But it was mostly just all the authors that I knew. I sort of got in because I had worked for Tucker, I had worked for Robert, and I had worked for Tim Ferriss at that time. So, I had a pretty good rolodex of people who got me in the door when I sold that book.
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Sam Parr | are you still doing the deals now those type of deals now with all your latest books or are you self published | |
Ryan Holiday | I'm still at the same publisher. Actually, I've done all my books with the same publisher. I've self-published a children's book and then I've self-published two high-end editions of traditionally published books that I have.
I have a leather edition of *The Daily Stoic* and *The Obstacle Is the Way*. But other than that, everything's been traditionally published. I guess I own the audio rights to one of those.
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Shaan Puri | Because, like, from the outside, you know, I think a lot of entrepreneurs feel this way. It's like, "Oh, publishing, you know, record labels and book publishers, it's all just middlemen, and they take advantage." The authors see so little, you know, blah blah blah.
And someone like you, you have a lot of business sense. You now have a track record. You have an independent audience you could sell to. So there must be some reason that you say, "No, actually, people don't get it," that you do want a publisher for these reasons.
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Ryan Holiday | I look at it on a case-by-case basis. You're really doing the math: what they're paying for it plus the royalty. What are you thinking you will earn, you know, in a short amount of time or in a certain amount of time?
So, I just do the math on each project. Every time I think about a book, just because I have a publisher—if obviously no one was interested in publishing it, it would be a different story. But I conceive of what the book is, and then I take it out. My publisher has a first-look deal at my books, and I see what they think, what they're willing to pay.
Then, I have an agent, and we obviously try to get that number up as high as possible. Once I have that number, then I think, "Okay, what would this look like if I did it myself?" What would it cost me to do it myself? What am I likely to sell myself? How much work is that going to be? How much of a distraction is that going to be?
And 90% of the time, the math tends to go towards traditional publishing, in my experience. The kids' book that I did, the publisher just wasn't in their wheelhouse; they didn't totally get the project. But I did it myself, and it's been great and really fun and artistically fulfilling.
However, it's also just an incredible amount of work. I mean, like the coins I sell directly from my store: the manufacturer makes them, they drop them off at the warehouse, and they get shipped. Fulfilling books through Amazon is like... and then also the 1,000 independent retailers in the United States, plus every international edition, you know, is extraordinarily logistically difficult.
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Sam Parr | And I remember you gave this talk one time that was awesome, where you showed a chart of the sales of your book versus the sales of a normal book.
For a normal book, you get a peak, and then it pretty much just kind of goes away. But then for some of the classics, you get a peak, it goes down a little bit, but then it kind of quickly comes back up.
That’s pretty steady throughout, like *Catcher in the Rye* or something like that. Sometimes, it’ll suck early on and just slowly get better.
Your books, if I remember correctly, they popped just like everyone else's. They went down a little bit, just like everyone else, but then they raised and were pretty steady with daily sales. You said, "That's because I make stuff that can last a long time."
This was actually for when you were running *Perennial Seller*, I think you were proving this.
Is that still the case? Considering all of your other businesses, is making books still where you make the majority of your income? Or are you just using that because you love it, and it happens to make money, but you make the bulk of your money from other things?
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Ryan Holiday | Yeah, it's... most nonfiction authors make more money from speaking than from books. That's because speaking can be more lucrative, but it's also because most authors don't sell very many books.
I'm in an unusual space where my books do sell consistently, and I have a lot of them. So, I make a good living from that, but I probably make more money from stuff other than books than from books, all in.
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Sam Parr | Dude, that's crazy that you're like the man, and yet still, it's like the other.
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Ryan Holiday | Well, that's another reason to traditionally publish. A publisher does not take any percentage of speaking engagements, film or TV adaptations, or any ancillary products, including merchandising. So really, the book is not a loss leader because people pay for books, and books have value to people.
The ideas in the book are everything else downstream from whether that takes hold or not. Does that make sense? If the book doesn't land, all the other stuff doesn't really matter. But if the book works, all the other stuff happens, and then the success of the book is slightly less significant.
In publishing, there's the front list and the back list. The front list is anything within one year of release, and that's considered a front list title. After a year, it becomes a back list title. Most titles stop selling when they leave the front list and become part of the back list. However, almost all of the income in publishing comes from the back list.
For me, it's about trying to create that in my own catalog—titles that sell every year—rather than having a big book that comes out, gets a lot of attention, and then three or four years later, I have to write another new book because the other one is no longer relevant.
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Sam Parr | It's like Michael Bublé or Mariah Carey running a Christmas song. You know, you want that Christmas hit; you want that annuity.
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Ryan Holiday | Yeah, I mean, so like my book, *The Daily Stoic*. When my agent was like, "We should do a page a day about stoicism," I was like, "I don't know." And he was like, "It will be your best-selling book." I was like, "There's no way, that doesn't make any sense." He's like, "Yes, it will."
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Sam Parr | every news | |
Ryan Holiday | Like it will, and he's right. The book sold more copies this January than last January.
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Shaan Puri | Amazing! What do you do with your money? I know you have a ranch. Yeah, I think you live there.
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Sam Parr | he he he lives far | |
Ryan Holiday | that I mean that was like my house that that so it's it's not like it wasn't like a hot like a luxury property or whatever it's like | |
Shaan Puri | Kanye having a ranch in Wyoming... Do you actually live there because you wanted to live there? Sam, I think, has some similar aspirations. But what do you do? Are you like, "I'm an investor"? Do you just do something boring with your money? What do you do with your money?
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Ryan Holiday | Well, I spent a lot of it on this bookstore. I bought two buildings in this small town of Bastrop. Originally, it was going to be a bookstore and a coffee shop. Now, it's a bookstore, and I rent out half of it to a record store.
I needed a space to do all my stuff, so up top is my office. My wife also wanted me to take all my books out of our house, so that was part of it. It was like getting all the clutter out.
But no, I don't really do anything with it. I invest it. I like investing in things that are very different from internet things, so most of it is in income-producing real estate.
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Sam Parr | in which state | |
Ryan Holiday | texas and florida | |
Shaan Puri | and you're just buying like what like multifamily | |
Ryan Holiday | I have some multifamily properties, mostly single-family homes, and then some vacation rentals.
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Shaan Puri | and you have a manager who what | |
Sam Parr | would it | |
Ryan Holiday | be like | |
Shaan Puri | how do you are you hands on with that is it headache for you | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, I try. I mean, I try to have it be as little of a headache as possible. Most of them are managed by property managers.
But I like the idea of my decision to write "Trust Me, I'm Lying" and not having to think about needing to sell it upfront. There was a similar situation when, after I wrote "Trust Me, I'm Lying," I was like, "Hey, for my next book, I want to do this book about ancient philosophy." They were like, "Are you sure?"
So they gave me less than I got—$75,000 for "The Obstacle Is the Way," which has sold many, many more copies than "Trust Me, I'm Lying." Obviously, it set up all these other things. But when they came back with that offer, I was like, "Okay, sure, whatever."
It wasn't that I had to think about whether I could live on $75,000 for however long it took me to write the book because my life wasn't set up around needing it. That's really like when people hear a book advance, it can sound like a lot of money. Even, you know, $200,000 for "Trust Me, I'm Lying." So...
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Sam Parr | it's just like a salary right for | |
Ryan Holiday | Over two years, but even worse than that, right? So, I had to... let's say I left my job, and then 18 months later, the book came out from when I left.
So, the $200,000 over 18 months—that's pretty good. But, like I said, it hasn't earned another dollar for 10 years. So, over 11 and a half years, $200,000 is not great.
But I really wanted to write that book, and obviously, it opened up other business opportunities. I like to be able to do my creative work and not have to think about whether it makes sense in dollars.
This is how the entertainment business works as well: almost all the money is in the catalog, in owning the intellectual property over the long term. But you can't do that if you are dependent.
You get paid as an author every six months, and you're getting paid for the previous six months of earnings—not like, "Okay, it ended yesterday, here's your thing." You're essentially getting paid from a year ago.
So, that's like... you can be living hand to mouth that way, even if you're a very well-known person who's in the media all the time. I want to be in a position where that's not the case. | |
Sam Parr |
Shaan, do you remember, like, maybe 2014? I think it was basically when you and I were just getting to know each other. There was this article that went viral, and it said you can buy a ghost town in California for like... $1.2 million. Do you remember that? It was like you could buy an old mining ghost town.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, and people did a group, did it right. I think, yeah, I saw your note today that Ryan was involved in that.
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Sam Parr | I think ryan and his ryan so ryan correct me if I'm wrong you I've never met brent | |
Ryan Holiday | brent's in the other room | |
Sam Parr | my best buddy | |
Ryan Holiday | yeah | |
Sam Parr |
Oh, really? Okay, so listen to this, Sean. Neville is good friends with Brent, so I've heard all about him. If you go on YouTube, Sean, and you type in "Ghost Town Brent," you'll see this channel where this guy named Brent... He's this really cool dude who's got like 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube.
He started living in this ghost town that he bought a while ago, but just when the COVID pandemic hit, he just moved there and it *went to the moon*. It's the best YouTube channel I've watched!
Well, anyway, Ryan, weren't you like... you and Brent were like the mind, the brains behind it? You were just kind of the quiet one?
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Ryan Holiday | I was one of the investors. There's a bunch of investors; I think we know, you probably know, like half of them at this point... or more than half.
To be perfectly honest, I thought it was a terrible idea. I was like, "You're gonna lose all your money. This is not gonna work." But I mean, I've known Brent for so long. I just sort of was like one of the small token investors.
I didn't see it becoming what it was becoming. I should have... I was thinking about it in terms of real estate because Brent and I have invested in real estate in Austin before. So I was thinking about it in real estate, and you know, being from California, I was like, "That area is like a pit."
Anyways, I didn't think about it as a content play, and that's obviously what it ultimately probably will become.
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Sam Parr | I mean, you could make more money off the YouTube channel than any money you can make off just turning it into a hotel.
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Ryan Holiday | Well, that's one of the things I found with the bookstore. That's kind of where it clicked for me. I realized that opening the bookstore, making money from selling books might be the third or fourth least important revenue stream or use of the property.
The office is number one, the space to film and make content is number two, real estate is number three, and then the actual brick-and-mortar retail business is like four or five.
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Shaan Puri | That's amazing! So, you basically bought a set. The set actually just kind of functions. It's like... if, but you know.
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Sam Parr | It's like, dude, it's like three coffee... it's like 300 acres in the middle of the mountains.
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Ryan Holiday | yeah | |
Sam Parr | have you seen it sean | |
Shaan Puri | no no I'm not no I'm talking about the bookshop | |
Ryan Holiday | I'm not very much the same thing, though. I mean, the ghost town is an enormous set. It's a set piece to film and create content, and have a life and a brand that people care about.
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Shaan Puri | You know, and so... hold on. It's been many years now. So what's actually happening today? Is there, I don't watch the YouTube channel, is there like a functioning town? Do people come visit?
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Ryan Holiday | What about the pandemic? It obviously made a hospitality business not very viable.
So right now, it's mostly just in the rebuilding phase. They're rehabbing all these different cabins, and then he films videos there. They also do merchandise and stuff like that.
It's really interesting! My son, who is 5, watches one of those videos every night before bed. He's obsessed with it.
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Sam Parr | it's beautiful it's like a beautiful youtube channel it's and brent is very endearing he's awesome | |
Ryan Holiday | And it's, I mean, it's crazy that the quality of stuff you can make with just one person, a drone, a GoPro, and like, you know, one decent Sony camera. You can... I mean, he was putting out like a 45-minute video a week. He was producing a television-quality show for 1,000,000 people, you know, for like a couple thousand dollars a month. It's crazy what you can do.
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Sam Parr | And it went from like 0 to about 1.5 million subscribers in like 18 months. I forget the exact number.
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Ryan Holiday | I mean, he got tons of media attention. It's done like **hundreds of millions** of views. I'm very bullish on YouTube as a social network. I'm like late to YouTube, ironically, considering that's what I left school to focus on.
I saw at this found agency, I signed their first YouTube client. I remember this agent coming up to me and he's like, "What are you gonna do? You're gonna commission their advertising revenue?" I was like, "I guess, yeah." And like, that's like, of course, that's way better than commissioning checks from, you know, a television series because this way you actually own the stuff.
But I've seen it even with Daily Stoic. As an author, you get recognized like every once in a while. It's actually been weird for me in the pandemic because I haven't done that much stuff. So every time I go out or I do something, like I saw someone in Austin a couple of weeks ago, and then I was just in New Orleans. Because of YouTube and Instagram Reels, the amount of fans I see in person is exponentially different than what I was getting from who I was before.
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Shaan Puri | I see you on tiktok like every day you're in my tiktok feed every day | |
Ryan Holiday | oh well I'm sorry to hear that | |
Shaan Puri | telling me to like you know | |
Sam Parr | I think marcus aurelius said | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, the thing... telling me something some ancient dude just, you know, said about remembering I'm going to die or, like, not being anxious about the future.
And I'm like, "Yeah, actually this guy's talking some sense. I like it."
And the video quality is really good. I don't know if you're... I don't know what you're doing for that, but like...
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Ryan Holiday | It's like a GoPro. That's a GoPro 9 Hero. It costs $600, and you can shoot in 4K video with it. It doesn't even have an external mic. It's crazy what you can do! | |
Sam Parr | but you could do a 4 k video on your iphone but when I upload on 4 k my shit never looks | |
Ryan Holiday | The GoPro, I think, corrects... but I don't know. The GoPro does incredible work. The lighting in the building, I have to say, is quite good, and it's not something I control.
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Sam Parr | well it looks like you're on like a farm and you're leaning on the boat like you're in | |
Ryan Holiday | the middle of the you're | |
Sam Parr | like in the middle of | |
Ryan Holiday | The GoPros are better for outside stuff. But yeah, you just put it there and it shoots super high-quality footage, and then somebody cuts it up.
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Shaan Puri | do you edit or you just hand that off to somebody who's | |
Ryan Holiday | I like to shoot for a week, and then I try to think about what I want them to make while I'm shooting. Sometimes I'll give notes, like, "Okay, cut this here" or whatever. But mostly, I just shoot in small blocks.
The idea is that if I'm shooting in chunks of between 30 seconds and 1 minute, that content can go on Twitter, Instagram as a reel, Facebook video, and TikTok. So, you've got four bites of the apple there.
Then, that content can be packaged together to make videos on YouTube. I'll take about eight of those clips, and that can become an 8-minute YouTube video. By shooting these little things, I get lots of different platforms that the content can go out on.
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Sam Parr | So basically, well, Ryan, I made a living with a daily email. Sean just released this new business that he's working on, which is amazing. Sean, I gotta reply to your email. It's called "The Milk Road." It's pretty hilarious, and it's like a crypto daily email that he's working on with his partner, Ben.
But you have "The Daily Stoic," which is awesome, and you have this new-ish thing that seems to be working out really well. Honestly, I think it could be one of your bigger businesses. I also think it could be bigger because you could sell it. It's not exactly like the Ryan show, but it's called "The Daily Dad."
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Ryan Holiday | is that right I do 2 daily emails / podcasts daily dad and daily stoat | |
Sam Parr | who's who's writing all the daily dads | |
Ryan Holiday | I write them all I write daily dad and daily stoked yeah | |
Sam Parr | how big is that business or how big is the email | |
Ryan Holiday | Daily Dad has like 60,000 people. I think it's weirdly not as big as I want it to be. I actually thought it would grow faster than Daily Stoic did, and it's actually been a little bit slower.
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Sam Parr | how big is the daily stoic | |
Shaan Puri | 400 | |
Sam Parr | oh my god yeah really holy shit | |
Shaan Puri | Do you advertise to grow these, or do you just use content? Then you capture... you make videos and...
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Ryan Holiday | I make content that drives a lot of the sign-ups. The book, I mean, it sold well over 1,000,000 copies. But yeah, I write both of them, and it's mostly organic.
However, I'm having to get more serious about it. I think some of the low-hanging fruit has probably been picked, so I'm starting to think more seriously about it as a business, not just as content that I make.
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Sam Parr |
Man, you're killing me! Why weren't you advertising like 3 or 4 years ago? It was so much cheaper. You could acquire an email for $1.50. Now it's like $5, $6, $7.
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Ryan Holiday | I I should have asked you | |
Shaan Puri | So, you're hanging out with people all the time that are, you know, super successful. I know a bunch of people who know you, and I think you're respected in the business world and the entrepreneurial world. But I feel like the... | |
Sam Parr | matthew mcconaughey world | |
Shaan Puri | I feel you. You are pretty grounded, and I don't get the vibe from you that I get from a lot of people I hang out with, which is just like "more, more, not enough."
I'm not there yet; I gotta go bigger, bigger. Really, it's just kind of like, "I haven't succeeded enough yet. I haven't earned enough yet. I want more money, more success."
I don't get that vibe from you. Are you just hiding it, or is that the case?
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Ryan Holiday | I mean, I definitely have... there's definitely a part of me that's in that. I mean, I've written 12 books in 10 years. If I was just like, "Oh, I'm good," you know, clearly there's a drive there, or even some might say a compulsion. I think so.
So there's a part of it, but I have... I've been with my wife since I was 20. We met right as all this stuff was happening, and then I had kids 5 years ago. So I've always been a little bit more of like a normal person. I don't mean that in a messed up way, but I haven't been like, "Oh, I'm a digital nomad," or "I'm gonna go live in Puerto Rico for 2 years."
I've been more of just like a regular... I don't want to say a 9 to 5 person, but I've just been more rooted in like regular people life than I think a lot of creative entrepreneurial people I know, who I tend to find are a bit more chaotic. It sounds judgmental, but it's just a different lifestyle. So I think that's a part of it. | |
Shaan Puri | No, I know what you mean. For example, right now, a whole bunch of my friends are either, you know, like you say, they're crypto rich and moving to Puerto Rico so they don't pay taxes. They're going to Miami because I heard the action is there right now.
I'm doing this, doing that, and I'm just like... but, you know, I just got two little babies. The idea of moving, like, I mean, the idea of getting the kids into the car to go to the park is overwhelming. Let alone uprooting my life in some way or taking massive risks now just is not appealing to me.
When I was 24, I remember I picked up and moved to Silicon Valley. I didn't know what I was going to do, but I was like, "This is where the action is. I'm just going to move to Silicon Valley." Then I ended up getting this job working with this billionaire dude.
The office he had was dope, and I remember I slept in the office like 232 days out of the 365 days. I was just loving it. It wasn't like I was being forced; nobody forced me.
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Sam Parr | to work the the office had an apartment right don't feel | |
Shaan Puri | bad for me it was like | |
Sam Parr | It was like it had $2,000,000 worth of furniture. It was a love... it was a billionaire's office. Imagine Peter Thiel's office.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, I wasn't sleeping in a garage. The bathroom floor was heated in the morning, so your feet, your toes, weren't cold. It wasn't super rough.
Nonetheless, I basically was choosing to obsess and go all in. I was excited about that and able to do it in a way that I couldn't when real-life stuff layered on, like relationships and kids and things like that.
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Ryan Holiday | I remember when Clubhouse blew up, like a couple of months ago or six. I was like, "What?" I was like, "I don't even want to go to a real conference, let alone be in an internet room conference." It was just totally inconceivable to me that anyone would want to do it or have the time to do it.
So, that's sort of not been... I actually like writing, you know what I mean? The other part of it is not just wanting to have more of a normal, sort of rooted life. Although I feel like I do weird, unusual things—I take risks in other ways, like living on this farm and stuff.
But for me, writing is a calling. That's a little bit different than, I don't know, making money in crypto or something. It's a blessing and a curse, right? It's a blessing in that it's fulfilling, it gives you purpose, it's artistic—it's like a thing you master.
There's also, I think, a ceiling on it, you know? You can be good at it. There's obviously the J.K. Rowlings of the world, but like, you know...
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Sam Parr |
But there's not a ceiling to being famous. I mean, you know, we're both friends with Tim Ferriss, and his fame allowed him... I don't know what he's worth, but he's probably worth 100 or 1,000 million dollars because of his investments.
Yeah, I mean, there's not a ceiling on being well-known and getting access.
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Ryan Holiday | To something, but I mean, you sort of end up in different niches, right? If you're called to be a poet, you obviously would be more lucrative to write business books. But like, you are where you are.
You know, there's a certain amount of... you don't choose what muses visit you. I know that sounds a little mystical, but like, sometimes people have been like, "Oh, he's writing about stoicism to get rich," which I always laugh at because, again, if being rich was what was motivating to me, I would do literally anything but this, right? This is the worst possible thing to have picked.
But I guess my thing is, I really like the routine and the ritual of sitting down to write, which is also, I think, inherently a bit grounding in a way that some of these other pursuits maybe aren't. | |
Sam Parr | what is your normal work day look like I mean are you are you doing like a 9 to 5 | |
Ryan Holiday | Not 9 to 5. I wake up early. I go for a run or a walk with the kids, whether we're at my farm or my place in town. I don't check my phone in the morning. I don't eat in the morning. I usually journal in the morning, and then I write for usually 2 or 3 hours.
The rest of the day after that is for business and other work stuff. I'm done by 4 almost every day, so I probably work from 8:30 to 4.
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Sam Parr | seems like a good ass | |
Ryan Holiday | I like it. I try to... but I like it. It's important. There are also... I don't know, to me, being really great at what you do and somehow managing to be like a somewhat normal person is actually a rarer thing to do than just being great at what you do.
I think if anyone decided to be like Tom Brady, he is Tom Brady. But there's a cost to being Tom Brady. If you choose to be that singularly dedicated to what you do, it's easier to be better at what you do than to say, "I'm going to work 9 to 5 and be great at what I do," if that makes sense.
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Sam Parr | So, you used to work for Tucker Max. You then became buddies with him, and you had a business together. But I've never asked either of you about this.
You've probably seen some of the stances I know you've written about, like your letter to your dad about voting for Trump. I know that you're against a lot of these statues, and you've donated money to that. Tucker, I think, has gone the other way. I wouldn't want to call it the opposite because, of course, he's probably against a lot of the things or for a lot of things you are, but maybe different.
He actually recently came out with this article that Sean and I talked about. It's called "Doomsday Optimism," and it's about how, very bluntly, he thinks the American government is basically going to collapse in 2 to 4 years and how he's preparing for doomsday. It was crazy fascinating.
But I want to know, what is your opinion on that? I've been eager to ask you what you think about it and if you have an opinion on it.
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Ryan Holiday | Tucker was very good to me early in my career and set me up for the success that I've had. So, I feel very grateful for that.
In a lot of ways, he and I live in very different realities now. I think... I don't know exactly what caused that or what the driving force behind it is. I mean, I have some theories, but a lot of the stuff that I see and read probably has nothing to do with whatever he's talking about.
It strikes me as driven by something else, which I've seen a lot of. I think the pandemic brought it out in a lot of people that we both know. I've noticed a kind of radicalization or an untethering from people that otherwise I would have assumed were in alignment.
I've just noticed an untethering that I don't know where it's going, but it certainly worries me. Is that a diplomatic answer?
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Sam Parr | Yeah, and I don't really like that answer because I understand what you're trying to do. I think you could disagree with his opinion and still be respectful towards him.
But I understand that you're trying to keep it cool. In one regard, I could see Ryan thinking something similar because he lives in the country and he likes privacy. You're so high IQ that high IQ people typically are quirky and have weird opinions.
On the other side, I know some of the things that you stand for, and I could see you just laughing at them, being like, "What? Are you ridiculous?" But it's... it's in...
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Ryan Holiday | It's weird. I've noticed this sort of trend in tech entrepreneurial people where I don't want to say fads, but it's almost like these idea viruses enter the community. Some people end up taking them to very strange extremes.
For example, polyamory was one a few years ago, and then crypto became another. I'm not anti-crypto; I think there's a lot in crypto, and I've invested in it too.
Then, during the pandemic, there was this sort of anti-vax, anti-lockdown, and anti-COVID denialism. I'm very alarmed by some of the people I know in that space who are now going in a direction that's worse than a Trumpian one. It's more like a January 6th, end-of-the-government, toxic direction.
It's like, "We gotta buy guns," and I have guns, but there's this almost doomsday, disaster cultish direction that it's going in. It strikes me as coming from somewhere other than what they're actually saying. Does that make sense?
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Shaan Puri | Do you mean that the belief is coming from some other reasons or motives? Meaning like...
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Sam Parr | like they're trying to make money | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, like if we perpetuate this, we'll get more notoriety, we'll get more money, we'll get more attention. You know, there's some people—like clickbait is, in general, is that right?
Like, I may not believe this, but if you watch a sports talk show on ESPN, they don't necessarily think that LeBron James is better than Michael Jordan. But they know if they say it, it gets clipped and it gets shared.
So there's like this... yeah, I do perform versus... do you think that the belief has come from somewhere? Or the motive might be driving them to extreme, you know, radicalize?
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Ryan Holiday | think it's both those things so I think number 1 all these people are are very smart right and so if you've built your whole career being smart and being a contrarian it can put you in an uncomfortable position where you're like rejecting things that make sense because that's instinctively where you go like this is what happened with with with dove at american apparel his whole everything he did was fucking insane I'm gonna start a usa apparel company I'm not gonna use professional models I'm gonna pay a living wage none of that makes any sense that was all those individually are very bad ideas but he somehow built a $1,000,000,000 company out of it so then when people were like you need to hire a professional operator inside you know you need to hire a real cfo and a real cmo and all this stuff he was like no right so he just got used to rejecting everyone's advice and it it it led to this downward spiral so I think that there's a little bit of that I think there is I think there is this sort of as people become like I think there's you know what audience capture is where you sort of get used to telling the audience what they wanna hear and so the algorithm is very seductive it tends to reward like obviously controversial things it rewards you know polarizing things and so I think what happens as certain people's relevance slips they are more prone to it's like you know you're always putting stuff out and if what you've put out in the world hasn't been working and then suddenly you like you chance upon something as as compelling as like anti vaxx or this or that then it it's you it's like you're getting it's like a a blast from the past you're like fuck this is it right so I think there I think there's some of that that that's taking that's spiraling people I also think just the pandemic fucks with people's head it's been a lot like we're not meant to live like this I think it's that the other thing like in like a joe rogan or some of the intellectual dark web people I'm also noticing that just like when you've been very mistreated by like say the media or just like elite culture it's very hard for you to agree with those people even when they're right so you end up going back to the contrarianism you end up like going against things that ordinarily you wouldn't agree you would totally agree with but from a tribal perspective you know you you it's imagine if trump had gotten reelected like how many liberals would have trouble with the vaccine because you would have to then agree with a trump thing I think I think we're seeing you that I think this is why in a lot of men who have been sort of not media darlings are going towards some of the direction of things we're talking about it's just a sort of like I'll die before I agree with those people on anything | |
Shaan Puri | Right, there's this chart I saw that was amazing. It was in a crypto annual report, and it said, "What are some of the underlying things that drive this?"
Crypto is like a religion; it's like a cult. It's very, very strong. It's not just the same as saying, "I like this business; I'm going to invest in this asset." People don't feel the same way about Bitcoin as they do about a piece of property in Dallas.
So, it was this chart, and the chart basically had the Y-axis labeled with "Do you believe?" It was about institutions. It asked, "Do you believe that institutions are credible or not credible?" meaning, "Are they honest or dishonest?" I think that's the way they put it.
On the other side, it was about whether they are competent or incompetent. As I ranked these institutions, it was like the U.S. government, which is seen as dishonest and incompetent. Then it was the CDC, and it showed how they've been moving over time.
Basically, every institution you could think of—whether it's universities, health organizations like the NIH and WHO, or the CDC—whether it's the U.S. government, they are all sort of trending towards being viewed as dishonest and incompetent by the general public.
This has a bunch of implications. For example, people are rejecting institutional beliefs. You see Joe Rogan just explode in popularity; his show is bigger than "mainstream media." He is more mainstream than mainstream media, but his brand is not an institution. He doesn't look like them, and he doesn't read off a teleprompter.
So, he has this appearance of higher honesty and higher competency. The same thing is true with crypto, which is non-government money, and so on. All these things are trending right now, and that doesn't necessarily make them more honest or competent, but it is the perception.
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Ryan Holiday | Yeah, and when I was listing the different things, the other one I put in there is, I think, like psychedelics. It's another one where it just becomes like this idea virus.
I'm not saying that I have a disagreement about it; I'm just saying it's very interesting how these things sort of infect different subgroups and become almost a new identity. Their identity is primarily in that.
It's very tempting to fall into a mindset where you're smarter or better than other people—that sort of outsider mentality. So, I think I'm just very wary of how that's affected people that I know.
I'm worried it's taking some of the more fragile people into a dark, potentially dangerous direction where they're just... they're messing with things that, once you mess with, are very difficult to "un-mess."
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Sam Parr | And speaking of psychedelics, we'll wrap up in a second here. I saw, I follow... So we've talked about Aubrey Marcus on the podcast because Aubrey has a crazy story. His dad invented the Fleshlight, and then he kind of parlayed that into building this awesome supplement empire.
But I got this Instagram ad, or maybe I just saw it on his page. So, Sean, I don't know if you saw this. Aubrey Marcus, the guy we talked about, he has this documentary where, somewhat recently, he spent, I think, 7 days in complete darkness. I heard maybe it was in Cerro Gordo. Am I getting the details right?
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Ryan Holiday | No, I was definitely not at Cerro Gordo. Oh, I know she has a ranch and thought of Donut. Maybe it was there.
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Sam Parr |
Oh, okay. Well, for some reason I thought it was out of yours. Okay, I'm wrong then. But am I right though in that it was like 5 or 3 or 7... like multiple days in complete pitch dark?
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Ryan Holiday | I have I have not heard about that but I am | |
Sam Parr | oh man | |
Ryan Holiday | I I like aubrey a lot I've known aubrey a long time but he's I I I'm a little worried about him | |
Sam Parr | he he he's a wild man sean you didn't see this so what was | |
Shaan Puri | that idea why did he be | |
Sam Parr | Doing this, so basically, he had a night vision camera looking at him. He was in a small room with a bed, and it was basically pitch dark. After about 24 hours or something like that, he kind of starts hallucinating and goes a little crazy. He's talking to himself, and the whole documentary is basically showing the night vision camera of him talking to himself, along with a voiceover and some flashbacks of what he was experiencing.
He was trying to go through almost a psychedelic experience because I guess there's something—where I don't know the science behind it—that when you're in the dark for a long time, you start going nutty and have some realizations. I don't know if it's true or not, but it was insane. It was crazy.
I mean, the way that I see it is like, I don't care if I'm an outdoorsman. If I see a huge epic mountain, I'm going to be in awe. That's how I was with Aubrey Marcus in this documentary. I'm like, I don't care about drugs; I don't care about...
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Ryan Holiday | this guy out of the | |
Shaan Puri | or you just saw the ad | |
Sam Parr |
I just saw... I watched parts of it. I started watching parts of it because he released like 5 minutes at a time on his Instagram. I started watching parts of it. He is... it's the **craziest** thing I've ever seen. The guy's insane. You have to watch this! It is wild.
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Ryan Holiday | he come out okay at the other side or you haven't gotten to the end | |
Sam Parr | well this was filmed like a year ago | |
Shaan Puri | like he's | |
Ryan Holiday | not at the end | |
Shaan Puri | so so we we assume it all worked out okay | |
Sam Parr | Well, the reason I didn't buy it is that I'm kind of afraid to watch it. But, like, he's a wild man because I watch his Instagram and I see some of the stuff he does, and I'm like, "This..."
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Ryan Holiday | I'm just very concerned that these people are messing with their brain chemistry in a way that's hard to come back from. You know, I am not a fan of this sort of prescribed medicine for yourself to heal unnamed traumas. I don't think it's going to end very badly. Maybe I'm a little conservative and I'm missing out on something, but I don't think you should mess with your brain the way some of these people are.
I think we're starting to see some of the ramifications of it with some of the stuff we're talking about here. I believe this is hard to put back in the bottle. | |
Shaan Puri | yeah this is this is wild this is I it is | |
Sam Parr | are you looking it up | |
Shaan Puri | yeah I'm reading about it right now | |
Sam Parr | and what does it say is it 7 days it was like days | |
Shaan Puri | So, there's a part of this I can get behind, which is, you know, people trying to challenge themselves. Whether they go to climb Mount Everest or Wim Hof getting in a cold bath every day, it's like... there's a form of meditation, for example.
He said, "My thinking was this: if the prospect of sitting in the dark with just your own thoughts frightens you, maybe that's exactly where you need to be."
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Sam Parr | oh my god no rattlesnakes scare me too I don't need to get bit by rattlesnake | |
Shaan Puri | And so, for me, there's a part of this that I actually like. I get part of that, which is like, I think the more comfortable you can be with yourself and by yourself, not needing stimulation, not needing others, and not needing constant entertainment, I do think that is a direction personally that I would like to go in.
Where I can be at peace and happiness without something going on. Now, in this context, I think it's less scary than, like, being like, "Yeah, I'm gonna start microdosing LSD," or "I'm gonna go on this ayahuasca trip in the fucking forest because I heard Joe Rogan say that it was transformational." To me, that's like way higher risk and maybe not necessary compared to, you know, I guess this darkness thing feels a little bit less permanent for me. But I mean...
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Ryan Holiday | is it that's what they do | |
Shaan Puri | to people | |
Ryan Holiday | I also just... to like break them. I don't think it's something you want to be messing with. But again, this...
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Shaan Puri | is yeah maybe it is like deeply traumatic I'm not sure | |
Sam Parr | hey you know what the phrase is whatever doesn't kill you makes | |
Ryan Holiday | you weaker seriously man I don't I don't know | |
Sam Parr | I don't whatever doesn't kill you fucks you | |
Shaan Puri | Up really bad. I always read these as, to me, these are like content stunts. This is no different than "Jackass" and a bunch of other things. Maybe some people come from a good place, and I'm just kind of skeptical about all the stuff.
For example, I'll make it personal for you, Ryan. When I saw the Daily Stoics, I was like, "Oh, that's smart." Stoicism is this growing trend. He probably likes stoicism, but you can like it without having to do all the work of creating a daily email and content around it. That is the opportunistic side of this kind of cool niche thing that's clearly growing.
And I've said, I don't know you, right? So I'm just thinking from afar. I'm thinking, "Oh, that's smart." He probably recognized this growth and said, "Okay, I could build a cool brand around this thing that I like and I see is growing."
So when I see, for example, you making a TikTok every day about stoicism, I think to myself, "Well, I don't know how much of that is like, 'Well, this content is gonna work, so I'm gonna do it,' versus 'I really just needed to get this off my heart and share this with the world.'"
Similarly, when I see these stunts, I think to myself, "Well, they know this is content that's gonna hit, and they can get a bunch of attention from it. Did he really need to do this and want to do this? I'm not sure." Those motivations get mixed. I know for myself they get mixed because, you know, I've had a bunch of tweets go viral. I added 200,000 Twitter followers last year. It's very addictive.
And I don't know if you saw the stand-up special that Hasan is doing right now.
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Sam Parr | but he | |
Ryan Holiday | did you see him when he was in austin | |
Shaan Puri | he has this part in it did you see | |
Ryan Holiday | him when he was in austin | |
Shaan Puri | I saw him in san francisco | |
Ryan Holiday | I live | |
Shaan Puri | In San Francisco, I saw him when he was here. He has this whole part where he basically says, "You know, I challenged this dictator who was doing this thing, and then boom, that clip goes viral."
"I made fun of Trump at this thing, and boom, that clip goes viral." The likes, the views, the followers, the comments—he's just like, "F***ing inject this into my veins! I need that next hit."
So, he went after the next big dictator and then the next big fish. All of a sudden, there was a price to be paid for it. He talks about how he received something in the mail that looked like anthrax, and it got on his kid. It turned out to be all okay, but his wife was like, "Dude, you have..." | |
Ryan Holiday | to figure out how to keep that | |
Sam Parr | on a leash | |
Shaan Puri | shouldn't be poking the bear | |
Ryan Holiday | important to you | |
Shaan Puri | and that's kinda what you're talking about right there's a price | |
Ryan Holiday | Figure out how to keep that on a leash. I think about that a lot, even with what I do. I remember I was on some big morning show, and I thought, "I know what I could do to make this national news." I have an audience of several million people right now.
But then I just thought, "Life is too fucking short." I also want to continue to live in reality. What happens is that certain people get desperate, or maybe their judgment isn't good. They might not have someone in their life who can say, "You know, that could work, but what about this, this, this, and this as a consequence?"
You can become unhinged very quickly, especially if there are any comorbidities with mental illness. Most of the people who want to be in the public eye are already a little... you know, like that. So, you have to be really, really careful. I'm worried about where some people I know are going.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, Sam, as a fitness influencer, I've been wanting to talk to you about your excessive exercise and what this might be leading to.
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Sam Parr | hey man | |
Shaan Puri | I got you. You might spend 3 days in darkness, only doing squats, just to, you know, hit those views.
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Sam Parr | I'm in a good place, my friend. I'm doing everything right at the moment. We'll see how long I like it to last.
Ryan, this has been awesome, man. I appreciate you coming on. This is fun. Thanks for coming in.
We didn't even say the name of the book: **"Courage is Calling."** It's awesome! I haven't read that one yet, but I'm going to buy it.
I've read everything else: **"Perennial Seller," "The Obstacle is the Way,"** and **"Trust Me, I'm Lying."** And then the middle two... what are they?
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Shaan Puri | there's the stillness one I haven't read that one | |
Sam Parr | stillness is the key | |
Ryan Holiday | the key and then ego is the enemy is the one I think you're missing | |
Shaan Puri | ego is the enemy is very good and obstacle is always very good those are both both great | |
Sam Parr | well and hugo you're awesome I appreciate you thanks for coming |