How To Forgive When They’re Not Sorry | It’s Not a Principle Unless It Costs You Something

0:00Ryan Holiday: Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

0:14Ryan Holiday: How to forgive when they're not sorry. It would be nice if they got it. If they understood why they did it, how they hurt us, what it meant to us. And maybe they will, someday. But in the meantime, are you going to keep carrying around that pain, keep burning with resentment, keep waiting unfulfilled? You don't control whether they understand what they did, Stokes would say. You don't control if someone is really sorry or if they feel bad. You know what you do control? You control whether or not you understand them. You control whether or not you feel bad. You control whether or not you forgive and move on.

0:58Ryan Holiday: It's been said that forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. And this is exactly right. It's a transaction that in the best case scenario involves both parties. But truly only requires one.

1:22Ryan Holiday: Hey, it's Ryan. And welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. When people think business, when people think capitalism, they don't tend to think justice. If anything, we tend to lay at capitalism's feet all the injustices of the world. Exploitation, greed, pollution, corruption. It's true. These things are part of the history of business. they're part of the global commerce system right at this very moment. But at the same time, I have found running Daily Stoke, which is a business, as a fascinating opportunity to apply these very ideas. As a business owner, you have choices. Are you going to cut corners?

2:11Ryan Holiday: Are you going to externalize negative consequences that maybe aren't illegal, but aren't great for the world? Do you just tell yourself, oh, this is what everyone is doing. This is how the game is played. Or are you going to operate with integrity, with values? Are you going to do things that sometimes aren't in your best financial interests, but are how you would want to be treated as a customer, as a human being? One of the things about being a business owner is that you're no longer on the sidelines. You decide what people get paid. You decide what raw materials to use. You decide what vendors to use.

2:47Ryan Holiday: You decide what platforms to use. You decide where to sell your things and not sell your things. You decide what to price your things at. You decide even in the most basic customer service exchanges, right? How are you going to treat someone? And we get this at Daily Stoke all the time. You get an angry customer who's being fundamentally unkind. How do you treat them in return? So that's what I want to talk about in today's episode. how justice applies to business. Because if it doesn't apply to business, what good is this virtue, right? The whole point of Stoic philosophy is it's a thing that you apply, whatever it is that you're doing, wherever you are doing it.

3:29Ryan Holiday: If justice was only in politics, if justice was only the law, if justice was only for activists, then it would be letting the rest of us off the hook, right? If justice is just something we hold big, enormous corporations that employ thousands thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. Well, again, we're letting ourselves off the hook, but it's not about us. It's not about them. It's about us. And in today's episode, I am talking to Cody Sanchez, who is a investor, entrepreneur, probably seen her YouTube videos or her stuff on social media. She was formerly at Goldman Sachs and Vanguard, and now she buys and builds and invests in Main Street businesses.

4:07Ryan Holiday: And she wrote a really good book published by the same publisher that I have called Main Street Millionaire. And in today's episode, we're talking about ownership and business and entrepreneurship as a moral test, how being close to the people on both sides of the exchange affects and should impact your business decisions. And as I say in the episode, not that I'm the originator of this expression at all, but it's not a principle unless it costs you money, right? Unless it costs you something. So how does that apply to business? The stoic virtues are meant for real life. And you might have listened to some of our other episodes with Cody, where we are applying these virtues in different domains.

4:48Ryan Holiday: We did this long episode where we dived into all of them, but I wanted to break this up into little parts. So here we are talking about stoic virtue of justice in the business world. Let's get into it. You can follow her on pretty much all platforms at Cody Sanchez. I'll got an underscore, I think on YouTube, it's Cody Sanchez CT. But let's just get into it.

5:18Ryan Holiday: I'm doing a bunch of dates for this Daily Stoic live tour. Maybe you came and saw me in one of the previous ones. Chances are I was probably wearing something from today's sponsor, Quince. They make great sweaters. They make great t-shirts. They make great button-ups, great pants. Just a great company. Their clothes are built to last, made with premium materials, and they're the kind of stuff you reach for every day. Quince specializes in everyday staples that work harder. Ultra soft organic cotton tees, Mongolian cashmere sweaters, everything in between. Everything that Quince has is priced 50 to 80 percent less than what you'd find from similar brands.

5:57Ryan Holiday: Quince works directly with ethical factories, cuts out the middlemen, so you're getting premium materials without the markup. If you're still hanging on to the same worn-out basics, Quince makes it easy to upgrade. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com slash stoic. You can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash stoic. Every time you look at your phone, there's another chaotic headline. You almost feel like you have to be glued to your screen to keep up.

6:30Ryan Holiday: But saving for your future doesn't have to be this hard because Wealthfront helps you tune out the noise and earn more with a high-yield cash account and sophisticated, easy-to-use investing products. Their cash account lets you earn up to a 4.3 % variable APY with fee-free checking features and free instant withdrawals to eligible accounts. When you're ready to invest, transferring cash into your Wealthfront investment account takes just minutes. For a limited time, you can unlock up to a 4.3 % variable APY on top of the 3.3 % base APY from program banks. You'll get a listener-exclusive 0.75 % boost for three months on up to$150 ,000 as a new cash account client.

7:16Ryan Holiday: And then you get an additional 0.25 % APY increase when you direct deposit$1 ,000 a month and maintain a funded investing account. Join the million-plus people already building long-term wealth with confidence. Start earning up to 4.3 % variable APY today by heading over to Wealthfront.com. Terms and conditions apply. This has been a paid testimonial from a current Wealthfront client, which creates a conflict of interest. Client experiences will vary. Wealthfront brokerage is not a bank. And the base APY is as of January 30th, 2026 and subject to change. For more information, please see the episode description.

7:57Ryan Holiday: Okay, let's talk about justice. So I think when people think business, they're probably not thinking justice, right? Because they're thinking the law, they're thinking legal standards. But I would say it's good that we live in a capitalistic society. It's this powerful engine. It unlocks creativity and there's more resilience to it than there is in central planning. But I've always believed that that with that freedom comes the sort of voluntary responsibility. Yeah. Right. Which in a way makes it harder because it's like if if you lived in a in a world where right and wrong was very prescribed by the law, then it would be clear what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do.

8:34Ryan Holiday: and you wouldn't have to think that much about it. But a business world where you can basically do whatever you want within some reason means that the business owner has a lot of discretion about how they choose to run their business and their life. This is why I've always admired John Mackey at Whole Foods. Like nobody, he's like as libertarian as they come. He's like the government should not tell anyone how to do anything. But he's like, with my business, I want to pay my workers well. I want to make sure the, like these are my environmental standards. These are my humane standards. for like meat and stuff like that.

9:06Ryan Holiday: This is the benefits I want to provide. This is how I want to give back. So he's saying, you, the government, don't get to tell me what to do, but I'm going to tell myself what to do beyond what you probably would have told me what to do if you had the say. Yeah, well, I think actually what's happened with our businesses is we become less just as humans every time we remove ourselves a little bit further from the hand on the fire. And so in my mind, one of the biggest things that's gone bad for business when it comes to justice is public stocks, third-party investors, and short-term incentives.

9:41And so I think most CEOs and business owners actually want to be John Mackey. Because you see it on the small business spectrum. They actually have pretty good compensation, market rates. By and large, these people treat their employees well. Small business employee happiness is 40, 60 % higher than big business employee happiness. So like the net normal, we are all some version, maybe less slightly altruistic than John Mackey. What happens then? Well, then you start to get people who are shareholders in the financial benefit of the company, but nothing else. And that, I think, is where capitalism's got a little screwy and why I like private companies and not public companies.

10:24Because public companies are beholden to four months. You know, they have quarterly goals and that's it. And every, you know, three-month session when the quarter comes, they're using the next quarter to think ahead about what the next quarterly call is. And so I'm curious to see because this is a little technical, but, you know, we've seen since basically the 1990s was the height of public stock market investing. That was also when most companies ever were listed on the public exchanges. Since then, we have had – that was about 9 ,000 companies were publicly listed. Now there's about 4 ,000 companies publicly listed.

10:57Why? because you get a colonoscopy nonstop because you have to have like three people in your mind, which is your shareholders, your employees and your customers. They're kind of all at war slightly with each other, but definitely the shareholders are at war. And then you have all this government red tape about what you got to do with your company overall. And so I think that what happened in our society is that public companies and the stock market created this false buffer between what happens to employees and customers and what happens to shareholders and Wall Street. And because of that, we have really bad incentives.

11:33And environmental standards are really hard to care about when you work in three-month cycles. And so all of that to say, when you run a small business, the great part, you can actually compete with the big guys in a lot of ways that they can't.

11:47Ryan Holiday: Well, I would also say that one of the perks of running a small businesses, it's both the perk and the burden of it, which is like, as a regular person, it's really easy to have opinions. Like, this is what I think the minimum wage should be. This is what I think outsourcing is gross or unethical, or I think people should do this or that. And then, yeah, then you have a business and you have to buy employee uniforms and making them in the U.S. costs$20 a t-shirt and making them in China costs$4 a t-shirt. And now all of a sudden this principle costs you money. And you might think, okay, so the business says, we'll obviously go with the cheaper one.

12:26Ryan Holiday: But if it's your business and it's your reputation and you have to justify and rationalize all these decisions, both to yourself and other people, then all of a sudden you have to, you get to decide, right? And you have a responsibility to decide. And so to me, there's something really empowering about running a business because it's like you don't control the world. You only have one vote in an election. But in your business, you get constant votes and says over how you think things should be done. And then you get to do them that way. Oh, it's... Or not. And turn out you're full of shit. And you get to see the consequences of actions.

13:01Ryan Holiday: Yes. Because a lot of times you can say things that sound great and are idiotic in life. Like, you know, there are lots of arguments to raise the minimum wage. And you could believe in that or not. But when you do it inside of your business, you go, okay, so when I raised it that much, now I can't hire these other 10 people. Yeah. So what is that good or bad? Yeah. I don't know. But there's actually data and math associated. You can't have everything all at once. Yeah. And so you get to start to play with the supply and demand economics. The other cool part about having a business is if you have a strong opinion, go put some money and work behind it.

13:32Yeah. And so I think these days, like I loved the line. God, I can't remember who it was from, but the line was basically like, oh, I think it's Jordan Peterson when he talks about like before you go try to change the world with charity, why don't you go try to make your first dollars? because dollars often move further than straight charity. Do I agree with that in every way? No, but dollars do move the world. I've seen it firsthand. It's one of the reasons we run businesses the way that we do because my belief is if we put more small businesses in the hands of local citizens, those businesses will keep money in the local economy, they'll hire from the local economy, and they will have happier citizens.

14:08Plus, like, I don't want to go to another Starbucks. I want to go to the coffee shop next to Ryan's store on Bastrop, right? I just like that local experience. And so I've put my money where my mouth is, which is I could very easily, the way we started our business was buying a bunch of businesses. And I still own many businesses, but I used to buy them outright. That's private equity. And at some point I was like, well, if I keep doing that, I am the thing I hate in the world. Yeah. And so I can't.

14:34Ryan Holiday: You roll them up, you create a centralized structure, you eliminate inefficiencies. You cut costs over time. So I could have kept doing that. And then I said, well, instead, let's go educate people about how to buy these businesses. Now, what's fascinating is we're so indoctrinated to the way that society works that people think private equity and running businesses like that is better than teaching people online. They think that if you teach people online to buy businesses, it's some sort of scam or shill or whatever. And I kind of understand that because there's a lot of people who shill things.

15:03But I go back to like, when did we get indoctrinated to that? That if I took two and 20, which is how they do expenses and private equity, of your dollars, that would be better than a one-time fee that will be one one-thousandth the cost of a business that you buy. And so you do have to pick. That was my stance.

15:20Ryan Holiday: Yeah. And I think the cool part about when you run a business, pick a stance and see what you're capable of holding the line of. How strongly do you actually believe in the things? I think every company should have a creed, a mission statement. There's lots of ways to do it. A lot of them are bullshit. I've seen them all. Everybody thinks you need to throw one up on the wall. I believe they deeply, deeply actually change how a business operates. And ours, we have a contrarian creed. There are 13 rules, 13 because we believe in making our own luck. And the first one is that those who believe that it's impossible should get out of the way of those of us who are doing it.

15:54And so like every single line on that creed says what we stand for. You know, you should tell the truth even when it hurts, maybe especially then. And then it gets to maybe, maybe you get to indoctrinate more people into your ideology in the world. And what a better way to do that than business.

16:12Ryan Holiday: Well, and it's, as I say, it's not a principle until it costs you something, right? And I told this story for many years when I would talk about the Stoked Virtues about this decision that CVS made like a decade and a half ago. They just decided that if we're like a health company, why do we sell cigarettes? Like that it's bad for people and we're going to stop. So they do. And it costs them, I don't know, a billion dollars a year or something in revenue. And people are like, why? Like the rationalization to sell it is lots of other stores sell cigarettes. And if people want to get cigarettes, they'll just buy them somewhere else.

16:45Ryan Holiday: And so they're like, look, if people buy this many cigarettes a year and CVS stops participating, the same amount of cigarettes will be sold. It'll just be distributed a little bit differently. But actually what happened is cigarette sales nationwide go down. Not like significantly, but just some percentage of those people that used to buy it from their neighborhood CVS or the one they would walk by in New York City just stopped. They smoked less cigarettes because they were harder to get. So they make this decision that's probably mostly about branding and reputation. And they got a lot of press when it came out.

17:21Ryan Holiday: But actually, they affect nationwide the sales of cigarettes, which less people die from lung cancer as a result of this decision. And I would talk about that. And I always thought it was cool. And then a couple of years ago, there's this little grocery store down the street from here that's been in business since the 40s. And it went up for sale. My wife and I ended up, long story short, owning this thing. not our dream not what we expected we were going to be like silent partners in it and now it's ours and we're running it and as we're sort of doing the diligence after having bought it which is not how you're supposed to do i'm looking at what are the most popular like what are our most successful sales and month in and month out it's tobacco products and now i have to go okay um i don't like this i don't want this and so you you take them out and then what you're actually doing is just putting a giant hole in the P &L of the business.

18:14Ryan Holiday: And not only are you doing that, but people are coming in and going, what? You know, they're like mad at you for changing the place. But I had to go, hey, I can't just go around talking about this thing and saying that I believe it when somebody else does it. But then when in my own business, not want to remove 8 % of revenue or whatever it is, and then have to be creative and come up with a way to accomplish it. But that is what owning a business allows you to do is take these sort of vague, abstract notions or values or opinions that you have, and then you either have to put up or shut up. Yeah.

18:49You know what else is interesting too is when you put yourself out into the world, the world tests it. And so, you know, like I kind of always chuckle, we're pretty hardcore at my company. We're intense. We work a lot. I'm pretty intense. I give a lot of feedback. And I imagine at some point there will be a hit piece because that just tends to happen. It happens a lot with women CEOs.

19:11Ryan Holiday: You let go a certain number of people. Some percentage of them are disgruntled. 100%. And we're in it. And I always kind of chuckle at that because I go, when they say that, I'm just going to respond. I resemble that comment because the truth is that if you hang out with Cody over here and you hang out with Cody online, she's kind of the same thing. Yeah. At least, like, I don't try on purpose. I mean, less makeup, you know, not as put together, like those things, right? But the cool part about when you put yourself online is you really have to look yourself at the face because somebody will find you if you are not.

19:46And we have seen it. We have seen all the people who pretend to be X, and then one day that real self comes out and it will destroy you. It can absolutely eviscerate your reputation. and I always like the Warren Buffettism, which is you can make a mistake with a dollar, but you can't make a mistake with my reputation. If you do so, you'll be fired. And he says it more eloquently than that, but I believe that to the deep core of my being, you know? The only thing you can really do wrong in my businesses is if you lie, cheat, or steal, or you hurt a reputation. If you make mistakes, if you want to leave, if you give me hard feedback, you have a little attitude sometimes.

20:19Okay, that's fine. We can do all those things. But I do think business is a great mirror. Yeah. And money is a cool metric because scoreboard often can tell you, like, am I believing and doing the things correctly that I say I would in the world?

20:35Ryan Holiday: Yeah, I did a piece a couple of years ago that was you are what you won't do for money. So, like, where do you draw the line? Where you're like somebody is offering you X to do Y and money is a hard thing to say no to. Yeah. And I think early in my career, there were things I did for money that were not in accordance with my values. And the discomfort from that or the risk inherent in that, you learn over time that the best and the safest thing is to mean what you say and to not be a hypocrite and to try to genuinely do your best to bring how you operate in accordance with who you want to be. Mark Schroes has this line of not doing anything that requires curtains.

21:22Ryan Holiday: like anything that you wouldn't want like if your customers knew where your product was made or the conditions under which it was made or how you talked to people over email or whatever if you have this exposure to like hey if people found out about this that would be bad for me the market is giving you a really strong signal not to get better public relations or you know to enforce stricter NDAs, it's telling you you got to change. Oh, yeah. You know, I remember I had an employee, actually. That was an incredible employee. Really thought highly of her. She could have gone far at the company, but she broke one of the golden rules, which is she said really bad things about a client in a channel to our team.

22:08Yeah. And we just have a hard line. That is one of the fireable offenses.

22:12Ryan Holiday: Yeah. Yeah. And it's what if they saw it? And also, what if they realize that's what we think of them? Yes, right. Like, how could you go and spend your life trying to make our clients' life better if you think they are dumb and incapable and should never be in this? If that is what you think, then one, we should say, hey, you're not a fit for us because X. Or you should never say that about your customers. And it's actually a really good lesson in business that all of us have to remind ourselves about because a customer is going to drive you fucking crazy at some point. Well, and then it presents you, like when we say the obstacle is the way, the opportunity there is as expensive as that is and frustrating as that is.

22:49Ryan Holiday: It's also a chance for you to say to everyone else, hey, this person, I don't want to lose this person. This person does drive value for the business, but they acted in a way that is in violation of our values. And I'm willing to take the hit. This is the problem that Uber got in before the sort of turnaround, which is like they would make these exceptions for the star performers. Right. And what that created was a sort of culture where sexual harassment was prevalent and that people were saying things that like, by the way, when the lawyers discovered them in Discovery, there was a vulnerability to it.

23:26Ryan Holiday: Right. Like you the decision to go, hey, I'm going to let this person go, even though they drive values to the business because they don't follow the rules or they do X, Y and Z. That's a really it's a hard thing to do, but it's also a really powerful thing to do inside the company. Yeah. You know, and the other thing, it's also OK for you to pull this stuff up and show it to your boss. Like, I think too seldom people don't hold the person who is ahead of them in line, too. Oh, sure. And so like, you know, if you're an employee and your boss has rules and the boss doesn't stick with the rules, if you're an employee and you're being held to a standard, but they're not holding the standard, I think you might be surprised at what happens when you bring that boundary up to them and say, hey, I am happy to do that.

24:11But I just want to note because I know that you as the head are the representative for everybody else at the company. And you care more than anybody else what happens here because you want to make more money, more success. You're such an incredible leader. A little flattery goes a long way. And then you can say, but you're doing this and I don't think that's in concert. Like you can say that to your boss. And in fact, if you're in a place where you cannot say that to your boss, you should leave.

24:33Ryan Holiday: Yeah. Hey, I thought our value is we only we only make stuff in the US. But like here we are, the people who make our boxes doing it cheaper X, Y and Z. Is you like I'm bringing this contradiction. It's ultimately your call as the boss. But like I'm going to present this contradiction to you. A good lesson to learn. I remember I was having to talk to my agent about something and I was like, I was talking to my wife about it. I was like, what if he gets mad? You know, what if I what if if I think, hey, I think this part of our arrangement's unfair and I want to change it. And I was like, what if he gets mad?

25:07Ryan Holiday: And she was like, that's such an insight into your childhood that you you're concerned about doing something that's right and getting yelled at for it. She's like, if if he doesn't respond well, he shouldn't be your agent anymore. and like that's a really bad sign and and so i went to him and i was like hey i don't think this is fair and he was like you're totally right let's fix it and i was like oh okay so that's exactly what you would want to see and so yeah this is also why you want to do business with ethical people as well yeah and i think there's nothing wrong with you bringing up the truth in business to people around you and more often than not it's really hard yeah and there is someone right now that you're picturing who doesn't treat you right in business who doesn't treat other people next to you, right?

25:50And I think like it's a very powerful thing to just lean into them. And I always like to do it this way and say, hey, I don't know if you're open to feedback, but if you are, have a little thing that I think might be helpful for you. Who's going to say no to that? Very few people. So you say, they say, okay, yeah. You say, well, I've noticed that the way that you've treated Samantha kind of demoralizes her. And it doesn't seem like it's working. And I only know that because it's happened a few times to me too. I think that it might be more helpful if you did it like this. Are you open to trying a different way?

26:22And what you're doing right then, you're sandwiching the tough feedback with two open-ended questions that are very kind and hard to say no to.

26:30Ryan Holiday: And if they do say no, they've told you a lot, right? If they say no, you say, that's not for me. Or you do like one of the things my mentors taught me back in the day, if they say no, you do something very simple, which is, you know what? That doesn't work for me. And a lot of times there's not a way to argue for that doesn't work for me. And so you might have to leave, you might have to change, but you might also be shocked how often it works. Yeah. No, I talk about this in the Courage book. I had a moment like that where I went to my boss when I was at American Paralyze to ask me to do something I thought was unethical.

27:01Ryan Holiday: And I was like, I don't want to do that. And I was nervous about losing my job. And it's like, why would I be nervous about losing a job that's asking me to do something unethical? In fact, that should be very clarifying, right? It could be, the answer could be disappointing, but it shouldn't be something you're afraid of because if you don't get the answer you want, you did get the answer you want to another question, which is, should I continue to be a part of this? Or you might even have something happen, which is you didn't understand the whole picture. You know, so I might be like, why do you keep demoralizing Samantha?

27:34She might be like, Samantha's on her fourth performance review and we should probably let her go and she stole last month. And you're like, oh, fuck. OK, well, maybe I'm maybe I'm wrong. There could be some likelihood, you know.