No One Can Put This On You | What is Stoic Advice for Entrepreneurs?

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1:03Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. Well, on Thursdays, we not only read the daily meditation, but we answer some questions from listeners and fellow Stoics who are trying to apply this philosophy just as you are. Some of these come from my talks. Some of these come from Zoom sessions that we do with Daily Stoic Life members or as part of the challenges. Some of them are from interactions I have on the street when there happened to be someone there recording. Thank you for listening. And we hope this is of use to you.

1:44No one can put this on you. No one likes to be insulted. No one likes to be attacked or slandered. Feels great to be praised. We like being celebrated, renowned, and recognized. But the Stoic in us has to remember that these things are not worth very much, don't mean very much, one way or another. Why? Because they're not in our control. When the rapper and music mogul Birdman demanded that the radio host and Daily Stoic fan Charlemagne the God put some respect on my name, he was asking for something outside his control, however powerful he was in the business. More important, what would it have been worth anyway?

2:19What matters is self-respect, not obligated acknowledgement. The Stoic understands that deserving a good reputation is what we strive for. Actually getting it matters so much less. It cuts the other way, too. Another music reference in her song, But Daddy I Love Him, Taylor Swift, no stranger to gossip and criticism, sings.

2:47We should remember that no one can demean or harm us with their insinuations or expectations. No one can truly damage us with scandal or controversy. Our name is ours. Can we disgrace ourselves, though? Absolutely. You're only harmed, Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself, if your character is affected, not impugned, but affected, meaning only you have this power. So remember, they can praise you, they can insult you, they can raise you up or tear you down, they can spread your name far and wide, they can ignore you, they can love you or hate you, but really the only thing that matters is who you are to yourself.

3:25What matters is whether you are living up to your standards, whether you are following those virtues of courage and discipline and justice and wisdom. Are you putting respect on your name? Are you disgracing your name? That's what counts. Not what anyone else says or says you do.

3:52Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. There's lots of great book clubs out there. I like anyone that gets other people to read. I like it anytime people come together to read. I mean, this is what reading is all about. Finding something you love, sharing with other people, talking about it. Over the years, I've been asked to speak to a lot of different book clubs. I'm always very flattered. It's cool. It's something you dream of when you're an author. But obviously, most of the time, I can't. I can't just swing by everyone's house and chat about the book. And a lot of times they're at night.

4:24And so I can't do it because I want to be with my family. But a couple of months ago, I got reached out to by someone who had a somewhat unique book club. He was a colonel in the Army Reserves at the Military Intelligence Readiness Command. They have about 8 ,000 soldiers. It's the largest intelligence command in the Army Reserve. And they were doing a book club. And basically, the idea of the book club is that leaders are readers. There was an army reservist named Harry Truman, talk about him in Right Thing right now. You know, he said, you know, not all readers are leaders, but all leaders have to be readers, right?

5:03That's the idea. So I love that. So I decided I would hop on and they asked a bunch of awesome questions and they recorded it and were nice enough to send that recording over to me to run on the podcast. Now I'm going to bleep out their names just for privacy safety reasons. But I think Stoicism resonates with soldiers because it's those sort of four virtues of courage, discipline, justice, wisdom are at the core of what they do. And I would say no more so than the intelligence community. I think you'll like this episode. It was an honor to talk to these men and women. And if you want an interesting episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, I interviewed General Stanley McChrystal, retired Army General not too long ago.

5:41Also, I interviewed two-star Air Force General Dan Cain is part of the Daily Stoic Leadership Challenge. That one's awesome, too. I'll link to that one. And I've been doing this series of address at the Naval Academy, which you may have heard here on the podcast. So I'll link to that also. But in the meantime, let's get into some Stoicism questions from these fine men and women. What did our ancient Stoics say about balancing between personal and community trials? What I take from that question is something I think is important to point out, is that the Stoics were men and women who were in the arena, right?

6:22They're not what would later be called pen and ink philosophers, although many of them do write great works. They were active in life, in the problems and conversation of their time. Stoicism starts, you know, like a lot of the schools, just sort of this individualistic, it has its roots in the cynic school, sort of this sustain for public life, pretense, people, whatever. And over the centuries, it becomes integral to the running of the empire and to the functioning of the polis and the state. Seneca would say, you know, the difference between the Stoics and the Epicureans is that the Epicureans retreat to their garden and pursue their individual self-development.

7:11And it says the Stoics get involved in politics unless something prevents them. And Seneca would be involved. And then, you know, probably in a situation General Mattis could relate to, he finds himself stuck in Nero's administration. And he's forced to sort of be the adult in the room and do the best he can in serving a person he almost certainly disagreed with on like every major issue. But eventually, you know, Nero sort of goes insane and Seneca leaves. And it's there that Seneca, you know, retreats from public life and does much of his best writing. So I see the Stoics as people who are active and engaged, trying to contribute to public life.

7:56Some were soldiers, some were generals, right? Some were lawyers and some, you know, were powerful politicians in the Senate. But Cato, the famous Roman politician, his daughter, Portia Cato, is the wife of Julius Caesar, or sorry, is the wife of Brutus, the assassinator of Julius Caesar. And she plays a role in that. So it's not just, you know, the sort of men of the time, but the men and women of the time were engaged in the big battles and fights and conversations and, you know, roles and positions of their time. And so there's a tension. Sure, the stoic focuses primarily on what they control, which is ourselves.

8:38But that doesn't mean the stoic retreats like a monk into a monastery and just sort of works on their own private perfection. I think the stoic is trying to be engaged and trying to make a difference in the world. Hey, Ryan, I'm a longtime fan. I'm actually in the process of starting my own business. So I just wonder if you had any advice for a new entrepreneur. Yeah, talk about one obstacle after another. You'd think that we'd make it easy for people to start businesses and it's basically just, you know, one problem after another. And so you sell it or it closes, right? That's just how it is.

9:20um number one i think um people are and maybe your military background will help you with this but i think people are trying to do a lot of things at the same time and they don't stop and get really good clarity about what they're doing and what their definition of success is so obviously look part of part of business is adapting and improvising and you know you you iterate you change a lot but uh but you ask people they go i'm starting a business and go oh what's your business? And then, you know, cue like a 10 minute confusing answer. And you're still not sure by the end of it, what exactly it is that they do, or, you know, how one would support it or whether it's going to succeed or not.

10:01So I really think sort of clarity and conciseness and strategic prioritization, like we are an X that does X for X, you know, to be able to answer that question. This is something I talked to authors a lot about it. You know, I'm writing a book. I go, what's it about? And they're like, well, it's a little bit like this. And then it's a little bit like this. And then I'm talking about this and then this, you know, and all of a sudden I'm like, I have zero idea what you're talking about. And, uh, I'm not sure how you're possibly going to write it if you don't know what you're talking about. So, uh, to me, that, that's, that's the first thing is some real clarity about what we're doing.

10:39Um, and then the second, the second thing, which I think people mess up on a lot of projects is like, What does success look like? So you can really keep your eye on the ball and you can really judge, you know, between two choices or decisions. You know, if you're like, hey, I'm doing this because I want it to be small and fun and make a difference, you know, probably don't take a bunch of money from investors. If it's like, hey, this is supposed to be the next big thing, you know, then maybe that is it. Right. So I think having some strategic clarity helps not just so you can describe it and talk about it, but then you can actually know what you're supposed to do day to day.

11:22Thank you for your time today, Mr. Holliday. I just wanted to ask you, why do you think that philosophy emerged that we still use today in Rome versus maybe out of the Germanic tribes? I know we have a lot of religion that's preserved out of the Germanic tribes, but we don't hear a lot about ancient German philosophy. I don't know if I have a good answer to that question. Look, philosophy, as we know it, comes to us from ancient Greece. The joke is that Socrates brings it down from the heavens to the common man. But it begins in Greece, specifically Stoicism begins in Athens also shortly after the time of Socrates.

12:10Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, washes up in a shipwreck after losing everything. And he later joked, you know, I made a great fortune when I suffered a shipwreck because it turned him on to philosophy. So there's something about, you know, Athens, probably it's a great military power, but it's also a trading and a naval power. So it's the sort of source of all these ideas from all over what was then the known world. And then, you know, Greece is conquered by Rome, but you could argue that Athens wins the peace. Stoicism makes its way to Rome, you know, not long after Zeno's time as part of a diplomatic mission.

12:53And it just becomes part of the sort of the toolkit of Roman leaders and Roman military personnel and politicians and artists. Just becomes part of the toolkit. So that's all I really know is how it came from, why it didn't come a different way. I don't know. Stoicism and many of the sort of Greek and Roman virtue ethics get absorbed into Christianity. Then we lose touch with a lot of this stuff during the Dark Ages, and we're lucky that a handful of sort of lovers of antiquity preserved these works. We're also indebted to Middle Eastern scholars who preserved and translated and propagated these works again.

13:41And we have sort of a rediscovery around them in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. And then ultimately the Enlightenment brings them back. This is how they make their way to America. that's the course that it goes. Why it didn't go a different way? I don't know. Rome obviously conquers the Germanic tribes, Mark's really sparts in the Marko Manic Wars. It may just be, you know, that the victors write the history and it's their philosophy that sort of worms its way into where we are today, the sort of the descendants of those civilizations.

14:40Thank you.

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