All right, Jesse, that was our first videotaped interview we just did. I think it was a great conversation. We've had Ryan on the show before. It's been a minute since, since we've had them. Uh, so it was good to catch up. I'm curious about your main takeaways. I would say one of the things I really picked up out of this interview was this.

I have two ideas, but first this notion of discipline needs a 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. Uh, 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. Uh, 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, then moving to the next level, that's how you work your way up. To be in 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 was 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, uh, focusing on the things that matter.

I mean, between the three of us, it's not that we haven't been successful, but 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 too.

I think two league MVPs. Yeah. You know, that he's got a $30 million a year for an ouncer after he stops playing. Did you know that? Is it really interesting? He's making bank. What's he, what was his, uh, Tampa Bay? Uh, he always takes a little bit less, so he's probably making 40 this year.

I would think. Right. So he's going to have to cut back his life. Aaron Rogers signed one for 50. He's. And so he's making bank too. So 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 a year salary right now. So like we know something, something's going on between the three of us. We have over $30 million worth of media contracts next year.

So again, let's just use that as social proof. Uh, but I thought that was interesting because I, 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, we line up pretty well. Um, so we've gone through a lot of this together, but 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 going to disappear as a writer.

It's a really hard tight rope. And you guys have the same publisher, right? Yeah. Yeah. We both are a portfolio, which is an imprint at, at Penguin. So we're both portfolio writers. Yeah. I had four things I wanted to kind of ask you about from the interview. All right.

Um, one is cold bass. What do you, do you take cold showers? Are you doing that? You hear people talk about it all the time. Yeah, I know it's big now. Or like cold plunge and then like sauna, cold punch, sauna, cold punch, 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 types 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 a brand new weight room with new cold tubes, um, plunges. So I'm going to start going on that.

Um, 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, I just coincidentally, like the other day was reading, uh, my friend, Steve Magnus, who's been on the show before he's a Brad Stolberg's 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. Cause they're so popular. And basically the takeaway from his thread seemed to be okay. The, and Huberman chimed in on this thread. It was interesting. Um, data is accumulating, but we still don't completely understand it.

Steve's best guess is yes, there are some, these various benefits exist. There, uh, probably no different than what you get from like any sort of exercise. 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. I think where it's like a very specific reaction that's causing all this. Um, and, and Steve was saying maybe, but like the best evidence they have now it's, 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. So probably a lot of it is psychological. Um, 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, 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, or non-obvious.

They get some sort of benefit out of it. There's probably a huge psychological room to it. Um, we have no space. My, my wife's interested in the idea of a sauna, et cetera, but we just don't have space at our house. Right. Um, 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 the 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. Uh, when you make the, when he, like he made us leap the daily stoic.com for 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, that's an interesting point that, you know, part of what you want to do as 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, um, 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 going to be most effective. Not like I feel upset about this and 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 twenties.

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. And it's one of the things I've learned about publishing, by the way, is like that makes a difference.

And editors can write it 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 going to publish his books. But I do think it makes an epsilon difference. That eventually over time, your network gets bigger. It's bigger. Yeah. Yeah. I'd be willing to pull from it. The next takeaway is I loved how you mentioned the Rams, GM and the NFL.

I'm just a huge NFL fan. So I always love hearing about. I know. Did they? They won the Super Bowl last year, right? Last year. Yeah. Yeah. So they've been at 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. They traded for Stafford. That was a big deal. So he, he helped. Trading for Stafford and Ryan Ryan's talk. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think those two, I do this two things. I was telling Jesse off off air. Uh, deep work is more popular, I guess, in the NBA than the, 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 they 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 are some of them can have a tendency to be lost.

And then 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? Mickleroy actually. Yeah. Mickle Roy's the Mackleroy Mackleroy. Sorry, Rory, but he's the digital minimalism fan. Yeah. Yeah. And he was saying it made a big difference at the outside, not just during the game, but the outside of the game.

Yeah. 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 and talk about discipline too. These are disciplined guys. Yeah. So, um, 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 was him. That theory of his have a space. If you can afford it, spend the money on it. Mm. 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.

Uh, 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, 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 of weeks ago. And it was like, cool. Cause then you get motivated, you're in there, then you leave.

And then you're done. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Keep it, keep this place separate. So I think that's cool. That's definitely something he's, 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 richer, 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, uh, the bookstore offsets some of the cost of that, but it's, but also he just loves the, the main benefit I think he gets from the actual selling of the books. It's just that he loves bookstores 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, uh, painted porch as a source of income, I'm sure in the Ryan holiday empire.

That's like way down, way down towards this, down there with the Minto 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. You can make the Republic of 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. Um, 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.

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. Uh, we do need a bookstore in Tacoma 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. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)