I think this goes to the question that you talk about in your books, which is like, I want to do something great, but I don't know what that is. And you just said you have a number of vague sort of passions or interests. Well, I think I think what I would do in that position is sort of first off, where do I have time that I'm wasting?

I'm Cal Newport, and this is Deep Questions, episode 215. I'm here in my Deep Work HQ, joined by my producer, Jesse. Jesse, one of the things I'm excited about today is we have a guest. Which has been a little while, but it's definitely been one of our ambitions to have more interviews on the show, so to help kick off a season in which we may have more of those coming, I sat down with our friend of the show, good friend of the show, Ryan Holliday.

Exciting stuff. Yeah, he has a new book coming out. Discipline is Destiny. It comes out this week, the week that this podcast comes out. He is on track to sell, and this is the official number I just got from Bookscan, all the copies, what that says there. He has quite the following, so I think this book's going to do quite well, but it was a good, good chance to good chance to catch up.

I'll say the long-term plan for guests, in case you're wondering, is in the future, what we would like, it might take us again a couple of months till we're really there, two episodes a week. Always the standard Q&A episode, like you know and love Deep Questions. It's us answering questions from you, taking calls from you.

Other episode each week, doing a deep dive with a guest on a particular type of topic that we would cover normally on the show. So guest, Q&A, guest, Q&A. That's ultimately where we want to end up. The other exciting thing about today's guest episode is the first time in the history of the show that we have, knock on wood, video of guests.

So that should be nice. I'm excited about that format. I can't wait to hear you talk to other people. Yeah. It's going to be great. Well, and I love the, you know, I love video. And so I like that we can also watch it. So at the youtube.com/countyreportmedia, we'll be able to release the video of Ryan and I talking as well as clips from our interview.

And there's a lot of cool people I want to talk to. For me, my goal here is not so much of, I just want to have a bunch of famous people on. I'm happy having people return again and again. What I want to do is bring in other interesting thinkers that tackle the type of issues that we do on the show, that we tackle on the show.

I want to bring in the most interesting brains, the people with the biggest experiences, the people who come at things from completely different angles. We could have certainly repeat guests. We tackle different topics each time they're here. We can have guests that are just here one time. I think there's a whole universe of interesting conversations to add into the mix.

So the Q and A is not going anywhere. And it might just be Q and A for a little while, more or less, but we're going to be adding more, more guests in the not too distant future. So, I mean, this conversation we had today was a great one.

We start by talking about, you'll hear the book, Discipline is Destiny. So we talk about discipline and why Ryan is writing about that, his main ideas. We do a little bit of advice by proxy. I say, OK, assume I'm a reader and this is my issue and I need more discipline.

I'm in this circumstance. What would you do? OK, assume I'm in this circumstance. How should I think about this? And then as often happens when I get together with Ryan, we end up veering off to get in the weeds and play a little insider baseball on the publishing industry.

His and I similar rise through becoming writers and having media companies and how to balance that all. So we we end up covering, I think, a fair amount of topics. We kept it tight, right, Jesse, because he had a hard out. Yeah, we got a good, I think, one hour.

Get in, get out, keep it tight. Yeah, it was a good conversation. No Joe Rogan style three hours here, but I think it's fine. I think it's good. So that's the plan. So what we're going to do is we'll cut to the interview and then after the interview, Jesse will join me again and we'll do a little bit of a post game analysis before we get the Ryan, though.

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It is time now to get to my conversation with author extraordinaire Ryan Holiday. works yes it's just I'm bored so the new book discipline is destiny it's coming out the same week that this podcast releases so if you're hearing this it's out or about to come out let's start there I want to get into the book so this is one of four books based around the four Stoic virtues it's the second one you had the first book was courage is calling so the stoic virtue it's it's often translated the relevant virtue is temperance yeah what's going on here what's the thinking behind discipline is the term you used for the title well the problem is in America because of the temperance movement around the turn of the 20th century which sought to forbid the sale and consumption of alcohol people think that temperance means not having any of something right temperance is is really rooted in the idea of balance or moderation like finding the right amount a better word for this a Greek word is soft for Sinai which means or self self mastery so when you see the Stoics talk about this one of the four virtues courage temperance justice wisdom you often see it rendered as self-discipline which I think is a much more accessible and practical and and I would say urgent of the topics and so I decided not to spend a whole book talking about you know how do you find the right amount of something and instead talk about what you do once you know the right amount of something which is be disciplined about it so the book pivoted around that which I tend to find is the critical question on all all book projects which is you have this general vague idea of something you want to write about but what is the handle that the book is built around or what's the shelf that it's on like when you wanted to talk about sort of devices and our relationship with screens etc I've got to imagine it wasn't till you sort of come up with the idea it's like this is about minimalism applied to technology that you sort of figure out what it is you're going to say and how you're gonna say it I mean that is interesting that that's a shift if it with this specific topic and you talk about it in the book and in you know various interviews you've done when you go back to let's say Aristotle yeah right we get a lot of the the mean that we go to the Nicomachean ethics it's all about trying to find the what you should be pursuing that middle ground between excess and and and paucity and there was a lot of focus on that and you're right that seems less relevant to people today it's not the I know this is what the amount of exercise I should do this is where I should be with drinking this is the actual self mastery so where the Stoics because I don't know him as well as you obviously so where the Stoics locked into that self-control self-discipline piece of this more than you would see in let's say the non-stoic ancient Greeks like you would see an Aristotle for example I think so yeah it's a good question I mean and for me what's interesting is so much of like the knowing what the right amount of something also to me that fits pretty neatly under the under the the discipline or the virtue of wisdom or prudence right and so I I have taken some liberties in moving separate I'll give you another example so the Stoics typically rendered endurance as one of the elements of courage right so like that when they were talking about all the the sub virtues of courage they would talk about endurance but to me endurance quite clearly falls under the virtue of self-control or self-discipline right it's it's how do you hang on how do you how do you last through something how do you push through something so I I haven't really felt any compunction about moving stuff around I feel more than entitled to do that especially when you're thinking about temperance as a topic that probably isn't on its own big enough or interesting enough to go the distance for someone for a perspective reader so I really wanted to talk about self-discipline which I think most people believe they don't have enough of do you differentiate between the different flavors of this because people and I think discipline there's these broad categories that come up there's physical obviously yeah there's self-control in terms of addictions and consumptions there's self-control in terms of productive focused application to effort what's the ontology that you find useful with this idea so I ended up splitting the book in three parts that's how I'm kind of doing each structure I'm kind of thinking in it even in the terms of like beginning intermediate advanced but the way I did it here was the first is sort of physical discipline so that's like what you eat that's what you do that's what your environment looks like then it then it goes into sort of temperament or the sort of emotional mental discipline so focus you know controlling your temper you know push it pushing oneself and then the third part is kind of a fusing of those together where sort of in the real world someone is has that sort of almost monk like or or transcendent level of self-discipline like kind of under fire so that's that's kind of the the structure I was thinking about and and you're right it's self-discipline isn't just not doing things it's also doing something so the epigraph of the book I have a quote from Epictetus and he basically is trying to sum up like two words that function as your advice for life these are two words that you should always follow and observe and he says it's persist and resist and so some things you're resisting and then some things you're pushing through and doing and I like that sort of tension and to me it actually kind of does go back to the the origins of the idea of of temperance or self-discipline there's kind of a contradiction there it's this sort of paradox of like do some things don't do some things and you've got to know what which is what and when right and so do you think is the reason why you started with physical for approaching that whatever that that tension that dichotomy is physical the right entry way I mean because it's it's so clear you know yeah I'm exercising I'm whatever I whatever it is it's clear and so that is that meant to be foundational is that where people should start I think so I mean unless you're asking me a sort of an editorial question which it's too late for me to change if I should have moved that the part two of the book to part one which I certainly thought about but no I do like I start so I start with the physical and then I start with like just what time do you wake up in the morning or the idea of like starting the day sort of intentionally and deliberately I make a case for waking up early but I do think you want to start with with something very simple very straightforward something very clear you know if I say like master your emotions well what does that actually look like and what does that mean that's a vaguer that's a vaguer command then like wake up early go to sleep you know try to get eight hours of sleep every night or you know don't eat fatty foods or exercise regularly right like I wanted to talk about something very concrete very clear very tangible not just because I think it's simple but I also think momentum or sorry I think discipline is it's a muscle so the more disciplined you are able to be in I don't even want to call them trivial but in the these sort of straightforward parts of your life I do think it is transferable or the muscle once built allows you to be more disciplined in other facets of your life right I was thinking about this because we did a question on the show I'm only two weeks ago where someone was asking about being more disciplined and of course the short answer was get Ryan's book but it wasn't out yet so the longer answer was I ended up stumbling on this construction that that discipline is not it's not an adjective it's more an identity so instead of saying I'm going to I need to go apply discipline to this thing I'm doing it's an identity you build as I'm a disciplined person disciplined people are then able to actually go forward and do other things with discipline and if that is true then the obvious the physical the clear is probably a really good way into into identity building and the reason why I was thinking about this I want to get your take on this is there seems to be in the last let's say five years a pretty powerful online community I guess we could call it built around discipline and I'm talking about Cam Haines whose book I just read or David Goggins or rich role you know it's really how rich role got started before before he shifted more guru etc these type of characters who who demonstrate extreme physical typically that's right discipline and it's very popular is very popular and so what's going on is it what's this tapping into why is this so popular well I let's say a monk is equally impressive in terms of their dis let's let's say to be a monk you know you take your vow of poverty you detach from society where your robes you shave your head etc you meditate multiple hours a day let's let's let's stipulate an environment in which that demands as much discipline as running an ultra marathon perhaps more well one is much more cinematic than the other right one is much more followable than the other so I do think that's why you see sort of the feats of strength or the the sort of physical fitness influencers the sort of discipline manifesting itself whether it's hunting or running or lifting weights or what time you wake up this is easier to track and watch so I think there's some just sort of filter bias there but I do think it goes back to the idea that it is a transferable skill and you you want to build you want to build it up and and you know this is why the Stokes would talk about taking cold baths or you know wearing coarse clothing they were trying to build up a kind of a toughness right Seneca Seneca talks about treating the body rigorously so that it's not disobedient to the mind right like if you're the kind of person that can say when your body is tired and you're in the middle of a run and your body saying you should stop doing this it is hard and you have the ability to override that I think that is a skill that then when your phone says hey you should pick me up and tune out the world for the next 45 minutes ideally you have cultivated again the ability to be like no I decide what I'm gonna do not the impulse not the urge etc and to go to go to your point about discipline being an identity I think it's an identity but I would also argue that it is a habit and this goes back to Aristotle he says like if you want to be a jet if you want the virtue of say generosity he says you get that by being generous right this isn't like a state that you arrive at it is a thing that you do and so again if you want to be more disciplined it starts by being disciplined and insisting on discipline and making discipline a habit so you know what are you gonna quit what are you gonna push yourself to do persist and resist this is how one develops the identity of discipline I don't think it's something you assert just like call calling yourself a writer is not as important as regularly writing we've already talked about that before yes yeah yeah I have the pen I mean I think that all makes sense right like it's it's tractable to get 10% more disciplined than you were before for example as a tractable goal so if you start by being as disciplined as you can you can then be six months later 20% more disciplined than six months later 20% more disciplined than that I mean you that's tractable increasing by a modest amount whereas jumping from you know I'm out of shape I'm on my phone all the time I'm gonna be elk hunting you know marathon elk hunting or whatever for six days next week it's not gonna happen which it by the way I think this is I don't know what your take is on this but you know I know various people who have been involved in we could think of as like manhood or manliness style online communities where yeah they're into it was you know was weightlifting I think after Rogan's influence definitely into bow hunting like everyone's bow yeah right so they're working out their bow hunting and I think it's easy for people around here like suburban DC to kind of roll their eyes and like oh come on what is this what do you think you are caveman yeah something like this but what I'm observing and what I hear from the people who run these communities is yeah you get in the door hunting because you saw cam Haines do it on like the Rogan podcast and lifting out because Jaco yes does it but what you then get six months down the line is also now they're drinking less also now they're showing up more for their kids also now they're you know a better father is like this the the pornography is gone it was this this entryway it's like entry entry drug to to greater discipline you got to start somewhere and as you say it's cinematic I can have a drone shot of me trail run well you know what's funny about it too is like there is a certain amount of fattishness to it it's like you can as you just said you can trace it like exactly to what influencer popularized what activity but it's not like they're it's some fad that came out of nowhere like they invented it's not like pickleball which wasn't a game you know even just a few years ago right like it is these are timeless activities you could say they're timeless disciplines right like bow hunting it taps into something immensely primal about the human experience hunting being outdoors you know sort of getting the endorphins from exerting oneself like the Brazilian Brazilian jiu-jitsu which a lot of people do these are these are traits activities that would not only have not been unfamiliar but were in fact practiced by Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus and Seneca and like they talk about these things not in the metaphorical sense but in the real sense when Marcus really says you know you know you should face life like a like a wrestler dug in for sudden attacks like he's saying that as a person who trains in the discipline of wrestling and had his whole life so I I think there is something you know when you look at our very modern sheltered sort of unchallenging lives there's something refreshing and invigorating about these activities like I just again kind of a fad I just got like a cold plunge at my house and you know there's there's some part of me that feels a little ridiculous because it's like everyone's doing it and who actually knows what the health benefits are like they're there I think they're there but they're not like I would I would not be shocked to find they were overstated but like in a world where you have hot water on demand at all times a certain softness comes from that and the ability to do uncomfortable challenging things on purpose and subject yourself to it it toughens you up and then when you know the hot water isn't there because you're staying in a hostel in Europe while you're traveling or something you you have a layer of resiliency or discipline there that a person who gets everything they want all the time doesn't have right I mean this is what I always used to think about my parents like my dad for example way less affected by hardship than I think we were I would be at my current age like oh you got to wake up early to pick someone up at the airport at 5 a.m.

or this is inconvenience like whatever like just do the thing you need to do and and my long theory had always been well he had the you know right after college Vietnam was going on and yeah the leave college and be in Louisiana at an army base you know sleeping on tarps and crawling through the through the jungle and when that type of stuff happens later in life you say whatever I'll wake up at 4 to pick you up like being tired for a day is not though it's not the worst thing so let me put on a put on the lens of I'm one of my listeners they write about this fun a lot to me what we'll try to extract some they write me about this one a lot so try to extract some some reasonable advice so where do you tell someone to start if I'm calling in saying Ryan I watch those videos they resonate I watch you know discipline videos I know I want this in my life I know I'm missing and I'm all over the place what do I do tomorrow yeah I guess it would depend on where that person is I don't mean like that's interesting geographically but I mean like where are you in your life right are you a hundred and fifty pounds overweight I might say let's start with a walk right if you're in pretty decent shape I might say let's start with the run right like so I do think it depends like if I walked into your office and it was a disaster I might say let's start by cleaning up your desk right if you were someone who was over committed and and overbooked I might say well let's start by eliminating one thing from your to-do list each day not doing it right but like what is a task that we're gonna delegate or outsource or eliminate from your purview so you know what do you know what I'm saying like I think some people the discipline is you've got to get off your butt and start moving and then someone else I was just reading about Tom Brady like Tom Brady had to have the discipline to start taking one day off a week right like so so those are very opposite ends of the spectrum right here's a person whose discipline has taken them incredibly far but perhaps endangered or jeopardized other things that they're they really care about and then you have another person who doesn't have the life they want haven't hasn't realized the potential they they have and so they need to start small and build and so I guess maybe the first thing we want to look at is like are you a person who you don't have enough discipline or are you a person who is perhaps too driven too active too busy I would I probably personally lean more towards that end of the spectrum and so when I have thought about discipline it's been more like I'll give you an example I'm working on this book now and trying to say hey how can I do this book at the level that I want to do it but do it more sustainably do it not not not hate the process so much but do it more enjoyably at the same time and so I think it really depends on where you are on that spectrum oh interesting okay so so let me give you a specific scenario I'll give you two all right so so scenario number one because I hear this one a lot 23 out of school has a job is you know like I don't know maybe it's what I want to do maybe I don't doesn't have any real serious hobbies but sort of just out there in the world on their phone playing a little bit too much video games and they're in there early early in life like okay foundation lane time I'm feeling type a I don't know what to do with my energy I have ambition I have no target well start with that scenario maybe that's an easy one yeah so I think this goes to the the question that you talk about in your books which is like I want to do something great but I don't know what that is and you just said it have a number of vague sort of passions or interests well I think I think what I would do in that position is sort of first off where do I have time that I'm wasting right and video you've mentioned video games so it's like okay I'm gonna make this decision instead of video games I'm going to read or instead of video games I'm going to volunteer or attend this class or well I think what that person to me is really needing it's not more discipline per se but exposure to or an avenue to go down that begins to direct that energy and effort towards something constructive or positive right like for me the pivotal moment in my life my development of as a writer and I was in that position where I sort of like talented interested wanted to do something that wasn't you know it's sort of a normal nine-to-five job and I I end up starting to write for my college newspaper and this college newspaper introduces me to a number of people allows me to develop my skills and and thus puts in motion that thing so let's say I was out of school well you know maybe this is an email to someone that you admire that you want to you know do so you want to intern for maybe this is you know committing to some sort of charity project or some sort of group activity or I think you you've got to find something that you're directing this towards and it it might turn out that you don't like that thing as much as you think you do and you end up going in another direction but you've got to stop this sort of idea of like I'm just sitting around and that task or that thing is going to reveal itself to me that's not how it's gonna go interesting I mean so you're saying you need a target for disciplined energy discipline can apply in a vacuum again just okay I'm disciplined today you need to have things that you're directing your attention towards that seem valuable but then that's something now that you can you can okay pursue all right so then here's the harder scenario I guess is like you and I and you mentioned this before but like think about you and I are in a similar situation we're writers that has sort of spun out into sort of media companies we have you have the painted porch bookstore I have my academic career we we have a lot going on our issue is not laziness but our issue might be lack of lack of hitting potential in one particular area because of crowdedness so how do how do you and I think about discipline as people who do a lot we're not short on accomplishment but maybe you're doing too much I think you met less need the GM of the Rams right I don't know if I connected you guys anyway see the GM of the Rams and I went and I spoke to them maybe two three years ago and he he was sort of going over with me like the rules of the organization and one of the rules of the organization is the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing which I love I just love I love that phrase and so I think for people like you and me as you have multiple things you're good at multiple things that produce revenue multiple things that produce rewards of all kinds you know it's it's it can be difficult to recall or remember or prioritize what the main thing is and so for me I've I like to do lots of things I have lots of interests but I have to sort I the discipline for me is the reminder of like what is the thing that drives all the other things what is the thing that only I can do right and so that's the actual writing of the books and the ideas right and so I've had that were you do you focus that your answer that question is just books I would you say it's podcast other things like someone else can't host your show but is it just books how do you answer it well it's someone else can't host the show but if I want to do the podcast then it's gonna mean organizationally or system wise I have to set up systems so the podcast takes as little time as possible right so it's like I have to hire a producer I have to hire a scheduler I have to hire this is one of the reasons that we were talking about this earlier why I did a deal with a network like I want to limit the imposition of that thing as much as possible so that it does not impede on the main thing which is me sitting down and writing but then also even that like okay what is a research assistant cost right what are the what's an office that I need to set up I just I just think about like how how do the decisions I make the schedule I have the priorities I have how are at the end of the day they facilitating the main driving thing and and I can't really compromise on that do you have a rule in terms of timing for writing is it this is what gets the time first it's it's this many hours it's the first mornings yeah I'll give you a good example of me not not falling being able to fulfill it completely so last week because of publicity for the book and because I had three different talks I had one full morning to write and I missed like five out of seven bedtimes or something like that right so like for my two main things which would be writing and family I I agreed to things that took me away from those main things and that's not how I want my life to be I also as an adult understand sometimes you're temporarily out of balance and you know it but I could I remember what I was thinking about as it was happening was how easily this could become the norm and how I'm going to have to be even more disciplined as fees go up as opportunities increase as asks increase that I don't allow that week to be the norm the week the norm has to be this week which is that I have written every morning and done every bedtime so it's it's really about I think it begins ironically you talked about the the sort of two different ends like a someone just starting and someone who's in it at the core it's like what it what are you trying to do what is the what is the important thing what's the target you're aiming at because if you don't know that it's really hard to be disciplined right well I mean how do you figure out this is insider baseball yeah but there's this this weird tension in both of our worlds between the writing is the main thing right that that's the core of our our success and the thing that can't be replicated the the online media the podcast etc really supports the writing in the sense of it it's what you know it's what allows stillness or courage to hit number one it's what allows the publishers will keep giving us money to write books or what have you and so then it's this weird tension and I haven't quite been able to figure that out so on the one hand I'm like the the online media company piece of it needs to be contained but it's very important because that's what will allow you to keep doing the books but there's this other counterfactual of what if you said no I'm just going straight care Robert Caro mode or McCullum only I'm just gonna think and write and put out the best books and some will sell better than others and I don't know what happened that counterfactual you I think that yeah I I think the key to being Robert Caro is to be born 90 years ago right like that's the key part of that strategy right like he comes from another like he has been putting out books since 1970 right he has a 50-year or I guess a 40-year head start on us so that is it it came out in a different environment it came out of a certain kind of scarcity it's like like if you want to be Steve McQueen like you're gonna have to find a different way to be Steve McQueen because the way Steve McQueen was Steve McQueen was from a different media environment right so I think understanding that some of the the just like people want to go back to living in the 19 you know America in the 1950s like that's not gonna happen right like fundamentally things have changed for the better right but one of the things I am sort of heartened by and it highlights the tension you're talking about which is like the number of people that I hear now that tell me they heard about me from YouTube is like probably it's probably the dominant way that I hear from people now or that people discover the work now what you're not just we're not subscribers now there it's high now right it's like 750,000 something like that and it wasn't long ago that it was a hundred I remember thousand yeah it was very low yes it's been it grew very very fast and that is the power of the algorithms and you know the immense size of those platforms so I understand that people are not walking through bookstores and randomly discovering authors for the most part that's that's a reality so so yes if you want the work to resonate and reach people you have to have these online tools or you have to access these different platforms it's just thinking about it in a way that you know the mask doesn't eat the face so to speak right like that that you don't it here's here's the weird thing YouTube is easier than writing right like the I've worked on a couple of books for people where we tried to take a YouTube channel and turn it into a book or a podcast and turn it into a book now you might think this would be really easy it's actually quite hard because the visual side of the medium does most of the work like if you think about like what a dramatic drone shot to go to the rituals and the Cameron Haynes of the world a dramatic drone shot in an exotic location you know inspirational music and you know a voiceover right that paints a scene that is extraordinarily difficult to do in just words and so I see people more often than not start with writing which is a tough medium and then get seduced by or stolen away from these other mediums and what gets relegated or abandoned is the hard day to day miss of sitting down in front of a blank page so I have tried to set up systems where I take advantage of the platforms and I benefit from them and I'm I'm agnostic as to what medium the message is getting out but as an artist or a creator what I love is the craft of the writing and that's the thing that I feel like I am world-class at so I want to be uncompromising on my protection of that space and that skill I mean I think that all is right I was I was thinking you know the other day that why don't fiction writers have this issue if you think about well-known fiction writers for the most part do not have large online platforms John Grisham does two weeks of publicity once a year when his book comes out he semi famously when his assistant retired didn't bother to hire a new one because he said no one has my number only my editor has my number you know yeah but on the other hand when I'm thinking about fiction it it looks like yeah but it's incredibly more narrow the past to actually being successful there so either you're a Grisham or a king or you're selected for a book club and so that's probably the price we pay to be nonfiction writers is we don't have the option that fiction writers have of I disappear and right I really don't do anything else except for the two weeks of publicity when my book comes out we don't have that option but many more of us I guess can make a living at this than fiction writers I mean you know the I think that's better but yeah I think that's right I wouldn't I wouldn't say that that nonfiction is more a meritocracy than fiction but I would say that the individual has more agency in nonfiction so like and I don't want to dismiss the the fiction authors who have been successful and say that it's luck but I would say that it is a industry in which breaking through is a side of publishing in which breaking through requires more gatekeepers more breaks going your way and more sort of institutional support or I feel like an interesting self-help author with a somewhat new or you know a unique message has a reasonable chance of breaking through getting a toehold and like developing an audience whereas like the the fiction world is littered with talented potentially brilliant authors or creators who their books sell 66 copies and they'll they'll they'll never get in front of an audience and there's really no and it's it's not because they're not working hard enough it's because there isn't the pathways that you're talking about to do that like for you and I like we write a book and then we can go make videos about the same ideas in that book and those videos can reach people in and thus sell the book if I wrote a sci-fi book about you know some planet in another solar system and it's this complex universe interesting characters it's a whole world it could be brilliantly done but I can't make videos about a world that nobody knows about and nobody cares about to draw attention to a book that nobody knows about and nobody cares about whereas me making videos about self-discipline you know there are people who are looking for help with self-discipline who then in watching the video might read the book and that that I I do think you want to as you seek out career paths obviously there's callings and you can't ignore a calling but I think you want to go towards places where you have agency it's like do you want to be the 50th Mexican restaurant in your town that's gonna be a hard way to break through and so when I think about what I'm doing I try to think like you know is is success here in my power or not right so so nonfiction right not meritocracy but many more paths many more paths to to non-trivial sales than fiction but you would almost say look if you want to be a fiction writer to face face the reality of this is how the gatekeepers work this is their credentialing that works if you want to be a literary novelist and be like well I have to have these proximate goals first of getting to the Iowa workshop or having an editorial position at in plus one or at Harper's I mean that's that's where you would need to be to get through the gatekeepers and and it's a world where you can't just say I want the world to be the way I want it to be so I want to just write my brilliant novel during National Novel Writing Month and and it break through you have to say oh here's the hurdles I have to get through and if I'm not making those hurdles then it's probably not going to work out where we're nonfiction writing right we do have we do it we do have more paths I mean I don't know what I hear from novelists you say like their their agents or their editors are really pushing them to be on social media and they don't want to be distracted they don't know what to do and and I don't really know how to answer because in my mind is like I don't think it's gonna matter either way right right they're just giving you general advice because they don't really there are no publishers gonna be like hey it's inherently a crapshoot let's hope that the gatekeepers you know anoint you it's funny because you know you talk about you know be so good they can't ignore you I I don't think anyone means that in the sense of like just make something amazing and then the world will beat a path to your door as Emerson said it's it's also figuring out in like who is the they so you know so good they can't ignore you who is it and then what is it that they want to see and how do you get in front of them you have to have the ability to break down that world like it's like if you wanted to run for office okay what are the qualifications I don't mean like can you do the job because we all know that's not really a qualification these days but like front what are what are the filtering mechanisms what are the gatekeepers and what do you need to bring to them to stand out or to distinguish yourself from other people so they can't ignore you it's not simply just being what you think you want to be and knowing that that has something to offer the world you have to figure out the peculiar logic or you know roadmap of the thing you're trying to break through that that that is what's so key about it right you have to find find your entryway which is hard and it might take experimentation and you see this pattern a lot when something clicks and it might not be the first three things you try then being willing to do the battering ram model hey this is working now we have to smash through that that opening we have to put all of our energy we have to run with it so no when something is working you have to run with it I would this is the advice I was giving to a young writer the other day is I was saying it's two things it's a it's the search and exploration and exploitation it's hard to tell like what's the package of the what you're talking about who you are how you're presenting it that's going to catch and so you the thing you try might not work but when you do find something that catches then it's the exploitation part you have to then really with discipline pursue that and so let me ask you about that as long as we're getting sort of insider baseball down there needs and all the other metaphors here you're very good at that and and you know I've known your work forever I mean I remember I don't know if I knew you specifically but we had friends in common back then probably probably through Ferris I remember when word got around that Ryan holiday the marketer the author of hello online is going to write a book about stoicism and I remember having that conversations with someone thinking you were going to write a text but I don't know what you were doing but like this is never going to work and I don't know how that's an interesting story to get into but at some point I don't think was right away that's what I want to ask you about at some point when you realize bringing this particular philosophy alive was was clicking you yeah really got focused so the daily stoic became a brand it became a focus it became a structure you you had a format that people could anticipate for the book so maybe walk us through how your exploration exploitation story when it came to kind of coming across this and then how you disciplined and diligently built up this like really powerful Empire around it well I knew I wanted to write about stoicism that's what I was interested in that's what I was excited about that's the style of writing I liked but I also understood that you know people were not lining up to give book deals to you know at that time like 23 24 year old college dropouts who had not even studied philosophy right and so I knew that to break into publishing I probably had to do something else first to then have a little bit of leverage or power to transition towards what I wanted to write about and so I said you know what are my strengths and my strengths were I was a marketer and I had I had seen a lot of stuff I had interesting opinions about how marketing work and I had a lot of connections and a track record as a marketer so my first book was about media and marketing I did I like an e-book in between there but then the next book was this book about so philosophy and even then I was thinking look I want to really nerd out about philosophy but that is not what the audience wants but the audience wants is something to help them be better at what they do to solve their problems so the obstacle is the way you know the word stoicism appears like maybe once or twice in the entire book that is a book about overcoming obstacles I happen to be using and basing it on stoic philosophy but that is not what the book is explicitly about and that's for a good reason and so I what I was really doing was getting more and more power more and more leverage more and more control over an audience as I went and then got closer and closer to what I wanted the daily stoic happened to be a breakthrough both platform wise but also like process wise because it was a page a day in the book but then I started the email list which was also a page a day and the ability to just have somewhere to direct that energy something to be very disciplined about that was like huge for me well that's a good case study too for people or think about exploration versus exploitation is that for years and years and you still have it today it's one of my favorite newsletters you have this very high quality newsletter the reading list and I recommend that everyone sign up for that I guess at Ryan holiday net and it's where you would share what you read each month which is like a great concept it's on brand for you as someone who reads a lot and you sort of lives this intellectual life and but I watched it sort of slowly grow towards you know a hundred thousand people or whatever it was over years over years and when the daily stoic idea came out after a year that thing was it was a hundred thousand three hundred thousand six hundred thousand and and to me that really encapsulate there's there's there's two things that play I mean just having a really good idea isn't necessarily going to explode it's the the right idea push there's some concept of sort of feeling out what's working what's working with with my audience and then same thing with your YouTube page it's built around the daily stoic not around like it was before Ryan holiday and there's something if there's a clarity in that that works for people and it's hard to predict in advance what structure is going to work with people but but when they do I mean you pushed on those with a lot of effort once they were working so to me that's a really valuable case study that I'm studying when thinking it comes down to your network really and if you think about like let's say you really love investing you you trade stocks on the side you're building up this small portfolio you know you're you're learning and then you know one day you want to strike out on your own right it can't be the moment that you strike out on your own that you're like oh I should meet people who might be interested in investing you know in my fund that you have to be doing these two things simultaneously which is you have to be developing your competence and your skill and your confidence but you also have to be developing a network of colleagues of patrons of you know resources of potential investors etc and then it's there's a moment where you transition you you call you call all those chips in and so for me like the the daily stoic was as you said like I had written about so philosophy I had an online audience etc and then I wanted to launch this daily newsletter but that newsletter didn't start at zero right that that newsletter I emailed the hundred or so thousand subscribers to daily to the to the reading list email maybe it's 50 I don't know where it was at that time but let's say it's in the high five figures low six figures I told them about the daily stoic the day that it launched and I believe we started the daily stoic in let's call it September of 2016 with roughly 10,000 people right so that 10,000 is now about 500,000 and you know it's like almost 2 million on Instagram it's almost a million on YouTube it's different on different platforms but I wasn't starting at zero I was starting with a large number of which a percentage were interested in betting on me on this thing and that was enough to jumpstart that process so you have to you you can't just be developing the so good they can't ignore you thing that we're talking about you can't just be developing the discipline of how to do it you also have to be cultivating the resources in the relationship and the audience and the platform that you're gonna need to support you when you go do that thing right but there's a discipline to the idea yes daily stoic I want to be more I want more stoicism in my life I like Ryan holidays writing about stoicism if I got an email about this every day it would help me accomplish the goal of remembering to be more stoic in my everyday life so that there's a the properly disciplined idea so what I'm doing now is basically taking the concept of your book and stretching it in the places that is inappropriate but I just a plain idea yeah I would just say but the the actual discipline of the daily stoic the real beneficiary of it is me like the having to make a thing every day and I have for four years wait no six years so that's basically a free book every year that I that I write that process and then doing the videos about it and doing the the daily podcast version of it like my game has exponentially improved as a result of the forcing function of the output or the thing that I signed up for so like you know the discipline like one of the one of the great stoic lines is well-being is realized by small steps but it's no small thing I have gotten so much better I think one of the problems with writing compared to a lot of professions it's probably maybe it's similar to like being a movie director is that you only get so many reps like I've written more books than most people and even I only have like a dozen at bats right like that's it's hard to be great at something when you only get to do it so many times yeah you're doing the little pieces of it but you're not like actually getting the stage time the way a comedian would or an investor would or a you know a leader would you're not getting like the day-to-dayness of it and so I I have very much benefited from the function or the process of like having to be disciplined about making this thing all the time well those reps was the exact word a friend of mine who's a magazine editor former magazine editor when I was first deciding whether I was going to sign my first contract with the New Yorker and I was like well it's going to be a lot of writing to do that was exactly his terminology is no no you need to do that and actually put a pretty big word count in the contract because it's reps like yes and that was the way he conceptualized the the advantage of of that writing setup is you're going to get reps to editing it has to be at a high level or you know they're not even going to sniff it and you can do it again and again and again then when I was deciding should I do a column for four or five months where it was every twice a month again it was all about reps so yeah I hear you on that is and then you're doing you're doing the work again and again yeah so that's interesting well sorry audience to write like from an audience yeah the the the tightrope of like if it doesn't work like you know very quickly whether it's not working or not and that that makes you better because you have to be alive and alert to it yeah so it's interesting so we're getting some nuances here around different applications of discipline so like an idea being disciplined meaning that it's it's very clear but then the discipline as a means of actual career development it means of reps as a means of actually you know building out skills there's a lot that comes out of this so I know we're getting short on time so I know you have a another interview coming out but I would be remiss if I did it on a podcast we talk a lot about the deep life and making radical decisions to affirm things that are really valuable to you you have to tell us about you're in what year one year in or one and a half years into owning your own bookstore which yes to me as a writer is very romantic so so are you going to fan the flames of my romance here or crash crash think down the reality I don't know which way you're gonna go with this but tell us about being a writer who now owns their own small-town bookstore I I love every every part of it so I will I will perpetuate the the romanticism of it I have no regrets so far but that that may well be because it's it's gone well so far I mean it was certainly difficult the pandemic made it more expensive take longer the elements have not been particularly cooperative we had to you know spend a bunch of money putting on a new roof and new ACs and all sorts of stuff but I would say the bookstore as a home base HQ sort of multi-use space has been one of the best not even decisions but investments I've ever made in myself and I think it's helped me up my game across the board so I guess I'm not saying everyone should open a bookstore but like in a world where everyone tends to default to doing digital things at scale I've actually really liked having something physical tangible rooted in a place that is my base of operations for for all the stuff that I do I would say the the if if I am trying to in effort of full disclosure the hardest thing has been actually the success of it you know people come from like all over and they they want to see me and so I kind of have to like hide out a little bit like it's not the the first year and a half from the pandemic was wonderful because it was like I had this huge space and then I had a reason why it was empty and now you know like even my wife because it's in this small town you know my wife will come to work and she'll be like I didn't get anything done because like everyone kept coming to say hi to me not like fans just like people who live here and so having to be disciplined and set boundaries has been you know one of the the lessons that I've been learning you know the last couple months for sure that we love you the rain oh sorry sorry what was the last right at you are right at saying having to set boundaries oh yeah so so having to set boundaries and be disciplined about you know protecting personal space protecting workspace like protecting like the bubble so to speak for both of us has been a challenge that I think we're getting better as a result of having to do and and that's that's part of being you know public in your work but it's also just like somebody working at an office right now has to be like look I can't say hi to you every time I walk to go fill up my water bottle like I'm never gonna get anything done so what are you say home base so what are the different activities is it is it writing podcasting videoing like when you says your home base for everything you're doing what what happens there yeah I mean my it's my office where I write it's where all the employees that work at my company have office have offices in it's right down the street from my house so like it's you know when it's where I get packages delivered or you know it's it's like it's the HQ which was helpful also you know I think we may have talked about this last time but like getting this stuff out of my house has also helped me be more have better boundaries at home right so like I'm not coming home from work and then getting lost in work because work is here and home is here and and so I just I think that there's something there's a reason that you know you don't want your desk to be in your bedroom you don't you want to separate these things yeah well I mean we talked about this last time but I definitely blame you for the HQ where I work because again it was you early pandemic yeah see me photos I was like man you have a place to go yeah and and even pandemic aside like you have a place to go that's not your not your house and yeah you corrupted but it's been great I love this notion it has worked for me you know my producer Jesse who's here will tell you we're only now because it's post pandemic more people are coming through only now really doing the serious renovation we should have done a year ago but every church painted we've re we're re hanging things you know professionally this afternoon Jesse and I are building tables that should be fun and it feels on the one hand it feels like a huge indulgence yes on the other hand it feels like what a necessary investment for this particular type of life I mean yeah you you invest and I think the podcast helped me segment things financially because I just think oh I'm just taking ad money from the podcast and reinvesting it into the space right through the podcast so it can be sort of conceptualized it doesn't feel like I'm taking money out of the you know kids college fund or something like this and so that that is helpful but but that was yeah that was your influence and I think that's been that's been great so place matters is basically the lesson there yeah the experience the place matters for your work yeah it's like a vibe or a headspace that you get into and I think it just it creates some separation that's required also to be balanced into it to have to have boundaries too so like like for instance like if I was walking down the street and someone said recognized me and said hello I'd be like hello but when when someone comes to the office and tries you know they're like hey is Ryan here can I see them I actually don't feel bad saying like you know passing a message no I can't because like I'm at work right like I'm working this is where I go to work it's not a it's I've hung out here before but it's not a hangout space right and so the ability to sort of know what each thing is for I also think is sort of a function of discipline yeah exactly I mean having the formal location having the formal address having the formal office and people's expectations yeah expectations are different well Ryan I think we're at the we're at the top of the the hour so it's promised we'll wrap it up but but this has been a pleasure as always so the book is discipline is destiny I'm gonna I'm gonna list the places I tell people to go for you and you tell me what I'm missing okay so okay so you have the daily stoic newsletter which is very popular you get the email every day with this touch of stoicism to keep things going and that's daily stoic net dot-com dot-com there we go dot-com there's a daily stoic podcast where it's a daily most days a short podcast and then you have interviews once or twice a week that are longer fantastic podcast YouTube is daily stoic and there you have videos it's Ryan against like the email but visual you get the videos pushing on different parts of stoicism a lot of aspirational views of your ranch of your bookstore and then there's a whole mess of social media that you know you can all ignore do I have that about right is that yeah you know you're so sure though I do point you by the way is my example of social media done right I mean you you post things on there it's a good way to reach people but you're not on there battling with people you're not on your phone trying to see what your mentions I always point to your Twitter page when authors ask me what they should do on Twitter I was like do what Ryan is doing it's very clear it's a stoic quote it's once a day it works well with how people use Twitter and he doesn't have to be in battles with you know QA of all the networks the one to personally spend the least amount of time on it's definitely Twitter yeah yeah it's the one that's the one that will break your brain yeah Twitter will break your brain Instagram will just melt your brain into like not very useful I'm just watching these videos yes but Twitter is going to make your make you feel like the apocalypse is here you need to fight someone or you're about to die I mean Twitter has a dynamic I love your Twitter approach which is I don't even know if you even touch it I mean it's just these quotes I imagine you have a document somewhere with these quotes and there's someone who's putting them out there and I love to imagine all the people who are angrily I don't know the terminology for Twitter but you know replying like well Ryan blah blah blah and then like so yes I like yeah when he sees that that's really gonna get him and then when they realize you never see it I get a little bit of joy out of that no even like I've been doing Twitter threads recently where I'll like I'll take an article or an idea and I'll try to break it down into like a 20 tweet thread like I write that in in Google Docs I never see Twitter you know I don't even upload it into the thing that then posted on Twitter because it's a toxic cesspool that you should spend as little time as possible and but if people are there I'm happy to deliver up some ideas yeah just follow Ryan get me Ryan's yeah once a inspiring quotes and and and never ever just as able to send button yes or whatever I don't know the buttons I don't know how it works people have learned them don't look at me for advice about social media all right well Ryan thank you very much this is this is great I know the books going to be the monster my audience loves this topic so appreciate it as always and we'll talk again soon thanks man all right and that was my conversation with Ryan holiday I'm back here now with Jesse we're gonna talk about some of our main takeaways from that interview before we do let me first mention another sponsor that I am excited about and that is notion this ad almost seems superfluous because I know there's so many hardcore productivity practitioners of my audience that no notion and love notion so they already will know what I'm talking about here but for those who don't if you have any interest in building better smarter systems in your workplace or in your personal life to organize your work to get things done in a way that avoids messiness and unnecessary distraction you have to know about notion now formally we can call it an all-in-one and I'm reading their text here all-in-one team collaboration tool that combines 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target so like if you want to be more disciplined what you actually first need is activities that you care about which can then be the target or receptacle for the discipline that you're going to build up so you need the right things to become disciplined about at first that that made a lot of sense to me also what made a lot of sense was this idea that discipline is cumulative that it is a reasonable goal to say I want to be 20% more disciplined than I am right now but it's not a reasonable goal to say I want to be David Goggins next month and so getting started somewhere reaching a certain level then moving to the next level to move to the next level that's how you work your way up to be a very disciplined person not just going from from zero to 60 yeah I don't think it really ever ends either I think it just keeps on going you know yeah and I think it's also interesting that we we ended up discussing for a while a notion of discipline that was actually about doing less and I don't know if that's just unique to me and Ryan I think it's probably not I think there's a lot of people in a similar situation but you Ryan and Tom Brady baby me Ryan and Tom Brady who was mentioned also in the interview we all share many things the three of us including needing to be disciplined about not doing too much and focusing on the things that matter I mean between the three of us it's not that we haven't been successful between the three of us we have like what six Super Bowl rings seven seven yeah so between me Ryan holiday and Tom Brady seven Super Bowl rings I don't know how many league MVP so you know we know what we're talking about - I think - league MVPs you know that he's got a 30 million dollar year for an ouncer after he stops playing did you know that is it really yeah he's making bank what's he what was his a Tampa Bay he always takes a little bit less so he's probably making 40 this year I would think right so he's gonna have to cut back his life Roger signed one for 50 he's so he's making bank - I think he's the highest right now so Brady okay so Brady's got to cut back his lifestyle is what you're saying when he becomes an announcer exactly you go from 40 to 30 million between here's what I'll just say I mean between me Ryan holiday and Tom Brady we're averaging more than 40 million dollars a year salary right now so like we know something something's going on between the three of us we have over 30 million dollars worth of media contracts next year so again let's just use that as social proof but I thought that was interesting because you know Ryan and I have very similar trajectories he's a little younger than me but I got started writing a little younger so we we line up pretty well so we've gone through a lot of this together coming up in writing building out these other things around writing really desperately trying to make sure that the writing itself is protected because without it nothing else matters but also recognizing that without the other stuff you're gonna disappear as a writer it's a really hard tightrope and you guys have the same publisher right yeah yeah we both are portfolio which is an imprint at Penguins we're both portfolio writers yeah I had four things I wanted to kind of ask you about from the interview all right one is cold bass what do you do you take cold showers are you doing that you hear people talk about all the time yeah I know it's big now or like cold plunge and then like sauna cold punch sauna or just even cold shower some people do that if they don't have the access to the other facilities and stuff well you're more up on these type of things to me is any of this in your routine yet yeah I started taking cold showers but then I didn't really like it Gonzaga just got brand new weight room with new cold tubes plunges so I'm gonna start going on that well so from what I understand and from what I understand let me let me cite my sources here I have one source so I just coincidentally like the other day was reading my friend Steve Magnus who's been on the show before he's a Brad Stolberg's the co-host of growth EQ podcast together and he's a athletic he's a running coach and was a high-level runner he did a Twitter thread about cold plunges because they're so popular and basically the takeaway from his thread seemed to be okay the and Huberman he timed in on this thread was interesting data is accumulating but we still don't completely understand it Steve's best guess is yes there are some these various benefits exist they're probably no different than what you get from like any sort of exercise mm-hmm so there's like some so if you do both yeah like it but but it's probably not doing something special I know if you hear like Laird Hamilton talk about it I think Laird has really influenced like how Joe Rogan talks about it they have a lot of claims yeah I think where it's like a very specific reaction that's causing all this and and Steve was saying maybe but like the best evidence they have now it's probably like it does you know it releases some chemicals to feel good there is a stress response that that you know all these things are kind of positive but you get the same thing running for 20 minutes you get the same thing from doing your your workout probably a lot of it is psychological but I think Ryan was saying there's a discipline aspect to it yeah I like this line treating the body rigorously so that it's you're not disobeying your mind and that's where I think there's probably the big advantage yeah like you're like I do the sauna I do the cold plunge it's part of it's part of the identity of being a disciplined person like I am the type of person who takes care of takes care of my body's willing to do things that are that are uncomfortable or non-obvious they get some sort of benefit out of it there's probably a huge psychological mm-hmm to it we have no space my wife's interested in the idea of a sauna etc but yeah we don't have space at our house right the second thing that I thought was really interesting is when he was talking about the network and I would actually ask this follow-up question to you because you asked him a question about discipline for like a 23 year old you know that scenario yeah so how would you talk to the 23 year old about you know creating that discipline but also establishing a network yeah that was interesting right because he was saying it's really important when you make the when like he made us leap the daily stoic calm like what he was doing before it helped that he had an audience but he knew all these people he had all these contacts the the pull on that I think that's it that's an interesting point that you know part of what you want to do is you're coming up is accumulate people who are on your side or on your team and I think a lot of that honestly is deliver be a good person be an interesting person have integrity deliver to stuff you say you're going to deliver be organized like be be a man a character a woman of character basically people remember that and it's actually pretty rare like most people they can't help themselves there's you know I'm just hung up on this or I have to mention this or get upset at someone about this and there's all that type of stuff that comes out if you're in the 10% of people who is just very reasonable and is able to be upset about something without making a big deal about something who's able to approach a social situation from the context of like what's appropriate here gonna be most effective not like I feel upset about this I can't not mention it or I have to brag they need to know I did this thing because you know and it just comes across terribly so there's probably something about in your 20s being a person that people like to be around yeah like authentic with integrity deliver you don't drop the ball you just do good work people want to work with people like that it's one of the things I've learned about publishing by the way is like that makes a difference mm-hmm and editors can write in and see if this is actually true or not but I've heard this time and again if you're a writer or a musician definitely for athletes I've heard this being someone that people like to work with or be around actually does make a difference you know I mean you could again if you're great at something Stephen King is if he was a jerk people are still gonna publish his books but I do think it makes an epsilon difference then eventually over time your network gets bigger it's bigger yeah yeah be willing to pull from it the next takeaway is I loved how he mentioned the Rams GM and the NFL I'm just a huge NFL fan so I always loved hearing about I know did they won the Super Bowl last year right last year yeah so they've been in it twice with McVay so Ryan spoke to them like three years ago all right two years later they win the Super Bowl I don't want to say trade for Stafford that was a big deal so he he helped training for Stafford and Ryan Ryan's talk yeah I think I think those two I do this two things I was telling Jesse off off-air deep work is more popular I guess in the NBA than the NFL but I did have an opportunity that I was not able to take advantage of just because I wasn't around we're one of the assistant coaches of an NBA team that was here to play the Wizards in DC who liked my book was like hey could you just come over to the team hotel and like talk to them about deep work and I couldn't do it I wasn't there well I think it goes hand in hand I mean you have a lot of golfers who are fans of your show and I think that you know even when we've talked you've answered some of the questions about time blocking as an athlete I think it goes it's really important because I mean they have certain things mapped out for them in terms of practice and lifts and whatnot but then when they're outside of that realm there some of them can have a tendency to be lost and yeah I think it helps hearing your message I mean that's what types of scenarios that's what a Mickelson was saying or no who was it Mickle Roy actually yeah Mickle Roy's the Mac McElroy sorry Rory but he's the digital minimalism fan yeah yeah and he was saying it made a big difference yet the outside not just during the game but the outside of game yeah yeah Ryan was great about that Ryan definitely did more with professional sports teams and kind of got the word out more that he was doing things with professional sports team and I think that helped yeah definitely expand expand his message because a lot of those athletes they want to like learn you know they're very like motivated yeah and they want to learn about discipline to these are disciplined guys yeah so yeah and then the fourth takeaway I found was I really liked his line about knowing what each thing is for you know he was talking about the office and like distinguishing work from home and that sort of thing yeah well that that's why we have the HQ with him that theory of his have a space if you can afford it spend the money on it have a space that's for the work it's different than home and you know now I have three spaces because I I have a space for writing at the home and then here is all for business so that gives me actually a separation between writing and all the business around our media business to me that's really important I know Ryan writes at his HQ I write in our study at home that we kind of custom built to be centered on writing and then I come here for the business side of things yeah and the writing where I write at home is a room that's kind of you know so it's all each place has its own place I think it goes hand in hand with your concept of time blocking too because you say a lot of times go to different areas for different spaces so and that that's important you know like I I think I gave you this example how I just went to like a different area for like a one of my online Spanish classes like a couple weeks ago and it was like cool because then you get motivated you're in there then you leave and you're done yeah yeah yeah keep it keep this place is separate so I think that's cool that's definitely something he said before about his bookstore too is it's not a super profitable endeavor to run a bookstore so like if you want to become rich or this or that but I really think the way he thinks about that whole thing is he he has a building in which lots of things that is useful to his life happens they sell books he records podcast he writes he has his staff is there and the bookstore offsets some of the cost of that mm-hmm but it's but also he just loves that the main benefit I think he gets from the actual selling of the books it's just that he loves bookstores yeah and like I have a bunch of books in here and I can bring books to people and curated and I love that and I think the space of a bookstore is highly motivating and it was really interesting way to think about it so if you just were doing a dollar and cents analysis on painted porch as a source of income I'm sure in the Ryan Holiday Empire that's like yeah way down way down towards this down there with the mint Oh Mori coins or something like that but if you see it as the bookstore as the center of his professional existence and a home for all the existence then suddenly it makes a lot of sense mm-hmm you can make the Republic a bookstore and it already has a bar built into it we just this is the thing if only if we had a bigger podcast we talked about it before a big enough podcast to be able to take over that space that's what that's what we'd have to do it's a big bar for a bookstore we'd have to cut that in half yeah it's a big bar for a bookstore maybe a book bar like you just have this would be so non-profitable if you had like multiple people behind a bar to like to help curate book selections for you it's like the the opposite we do need a bookstore in Takoma Park so look if someone is looking to start a bookstore and needs a partner let me know I think we need one I just can't do that work on my own all right well we should probably wrap this up but uh there you have it Ryan holiday by his book or check out his book discipline is destiny if you're near boss drop Texas you guys stop in on the painted porch bookstore we will be back next week with what should just be a standard Q&A episode so keep those questions coming you can find a link to submit questions in the show notes of this episode if you want to see video of today's episode go to youtube.com slash Cal Newport media until next time as always stay deep