Why You Should Do The Right Thing | Ryan Holiday Speaks At ACL Live

0:00The world is full of tours. But you don't choose a Toyota truck to follow the beaten path. You choose it to find the places in between. The detours, where each adventure pulls you toward the next. And wrong turns turn out right. So why would you ever take a tour when you could take a detour? Toyota Trucks. Look, ads are annoying. They are to be avoided, if at all possible. I understand as a content creator why they need to exist. That's why I don't begrudge them when they appear on the shows that I listen to. But again, as a person who has to pay a podcast producer and has to pay for equipment and for the studio and the building that the studio is in, it's a lot to keep something like the Daily Stoic going.

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2:00Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic Podcast. On Sundays, we take a deeper dive into these ancient topics with excerpts from the Stoic texts, audiobooks that we like here or recommend here at Daily Stoic, and other long-form wisdom that you can chew on on this relaxing weekend. end. We hope this helps shape your understanding of this philosophy, and most importantly, that you're able to apply it to your actual life. Thank you for listening.

2:37Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast. In my books, I don't talk that much about myself. I prefer to talk about the characters in the books or the ideas from the Stoics, but it's different when I'm giving a talk to a group of people or when I'm talking to you here on this podcast because you're hearing my voice or you're seeing me, right? And so I was lucky enough a couple months ago to give a talk at ACL Live, the famed music venue where they record the TV show and where some of the most storied bands in history have played. They've all graced the ACL Live stage.

3:14The folks over at Keller Williams, Gary Keller is a friend and a fan. He had me come talk to a group of his real estate agents, which was really, really cool. And while I was there, I was talking about the four virtues. I'd given a talk on how the obstacle is the way to this same group when they were out in Anaheim. And I think we may have run this as an episode, but then they wanted to have me come back. So I was like, okay, why don't I want to give the same talk again? So I want to talk about, okay, when we say the obstacle is the way, what do we mean? We mean that it's an opportunity to practice virtue.

3:44It's not always a chance to sell more houses or something, right? But it is a chance to practice virtue. And I wanted to tell, as part of that talk, that I did courage, that I talked about discipline, that I talked about justice. And I wanted to tell a story from my personal life, which I also tell in the afterword of Right Thing Right Now, which is about the virtue of justice. And thanks to everyone who pre-ordered it. The book's off to an awesome start. I would love anyone who hasn't read it to grab it. You can grab it on audiobook or ebook. And I think we still have some signed copies at dailystoic.com slash justice.

4:16Anyways, the point is, what I wanted to tell them was a story about building Daily Stoic as a business and how these stoic ideas informed what some business decisions that we had to make when all of a sudden we were faced with some supplier issues and some ethical quandaries. We have to remember that's what stoicism is. It's something you ultimately apply. You don't just talk about it, but you have to apply it. And look, we're not all running multi-billion dollar companies. We're not all heads of state, but our ethical decisions matter. They matter to us. They matter to the immediate people that they impact.

4:53And then if we all make better ethical or justice-based decisions, the world becomes better. So that's what I talked to the folks at ACL Live about, about why we need to do the right thing and how that can challenge us, but how we always have the opportunity to do that. So I'm excited to bring that to you here. Thanks to the folks at Keller Williams for having me out. And you can grab Right Thing right now and the bonuses at dailystoic.com slash justice. And of course, anywhere books are sold. I hope you enjoy this.

5:28The fact that you are allowed to do something doesn't mean that you should do it. The fact that everyone does it that way doesn't mean it's right. Mark Schmueless asks himself, what's my job? our job is not to make more money or grow our business or win the deal. That's part of it, but that's not our true job. He says, my job is to be good. And the Stokes would say the right time to do the right thing is right now.

5:54I think it says something about our world today that when people hear the word justice, we think legal. We think illegal. We think the law, right? We think the legal system. C.S. Lewis would reflect on this too. He said that it's much more than what happens when you're represented by an attorney. Justice is fairness and honesty, doing your share, truthfulness. It's keeping promises. It's doing business right. It's doing life ethically. So this idea of like what's legal, right, what we're obligated to do is the minimum. A couple of years ago, I bought the rights from my publisher for Mark Surrealis' Meditations.

6:33It's this book that changed my life. And I wanted to publish like a premium edition that could really stand the test of time. So I bought The Rights to Meditations, which I did this cool edition of. I bought even The Rights to My Book, The Daily Stoic. And I put out these really cool editions. I found this company. They were partially based in Texas. They're a Bible manufacturer. And they did their manufacturing in Belarus, where they'd been in business for many, many years. And we had this great deal going. The books looked great. They worked great. They sold great. And then a couple years ago, sadly almost a year and a half now, there was some trouble in the region, let's say.

7:11And there's a reason, it turns out, that Belarus, where the books were manufactured, has been complicit in Putin's invasion of Ukraine. It's because Kiev and this river here is how Belarus accesses the Black Sea. Otherwise, it is a totally landlocked nation. So the reason that Lukashenko is collaborating with Putin is because he wants this, right? This territory right here. He wants to carve out a little bit of Ukraine so he can have access to the Black Sea. Now, my handful of books I'm publishing here have very little to do with this geopolitical issue. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that I had to then make a decision.

7:50There are some sanctions on the nation of Belarus, not as many as Russia. I check with my lawyer. I checked with people I know. There's nothing legally wrong with me continuing to manufacture here, contributing to this economy, right? Running stuff through this active war zone. But it didn't feel right. And so I said, you know what? Why don't we find a manufacturer that we're a little more comfortable with? We'd already decided not to work in China. That's why we went to this company in the first place, even though it would have been cheaper there. But let's find someone else. We found someone in England, also a great family business.

8:23They do great work. It's almost three times as expensive per book to manufacture them here. Right. And so on paper, of course, I would rather not do business with Belarus. But when I'm thinking about a different kind of paper, maybe my opinion changes a little bit. Right. I love this line that it's not a principle unless it costs you. It's not a principle unless it costs you money specifically sometimes. So when we think about what we're allowed to do, when we think about what everyone else is doing, and then we have to go, well, what can I sleep with at night? What do I think? What do I want on my conscience?

9:00What am I going to be able to tell my kids? I think about this decision a few years ago, almost 10 years ago now, that CVS decides to stop carrying cigarettes. People thought, oh, this will cost them a couple of a billion dollars, and it won't matter, right? Because people would just buy the cigarettes elsewhere. In fact, it does cost CVS billions of dollars, but they find overall, across the nation, smoking goes down, period. One vendor deciding not to stock a product that is not good for you, that nobody thinks people should be doing, even the people that smoke. CVS makes this decision, costs them a lot, but it gains the world a lot.

9:39I actually had to go through this too. I own a little market called Tracy's Market in Bastrop, and it's been in business since the 1940s. 1940s, each week, like the number two or three product selling product is cigarettes, is a tobacco related product. And I had to go, is that something that I want to do? Is that money that I want to make? And the answer was no, right? And so you make these decisions that cost you something, not because you have to, but because you should, because you want to, right? I think about the companies that did COVID right. And then there's, of course, the companies that just thought about their own bottom line.

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11:50This is Admiral Hyman Rickover, the inventor of the nuclear submarine, one of America's great military and engineering minds. He would talk about this phrase, you know, people go, oh, I'm not responsible. That's not my responsibility. So we often hear this, he says, as an excuse for bad work. We go, oh, I'm not responsible for that. That's not my job. That's not my problem. But he says this is actually a semantic error. It's not just that, you know, they're arguing whether they can be held legally liable or not. He said, actually, they're right. He says, when When you say I'm not responsible, that's not my responsibility.

12:26He says from a moral and ethical standpoint, you're correct in that you are admitting that you are not responsible. He's saying you are admitting that you are irresponsible, that you are putting your interests, what's easiest and best for you, above the collective, what's best for others. My favorite moment in the history of stoicism, we talked about this plague that Marcus Rios is experiencing. It's a devastating, devastating pandemic. It hurts Rome not just from a public health perspective, but it hurts Rome from an economic standpoint. The treasury is bankrupt as they try to keep the country afloat.

12:58People are dying in the streets. And we hear from an ancient historian that Marcus sits down and hosts a two-month sale of all the imperial treasures on the lawn of the imperial palace. He sells his wife's robes. I'm sure she was quite happy with this. He sells all their jewels and gold and all the gifts that they've given. And he does this first, right? He does this instead of what so many leaders do, which is they are fine and they make it everyone else's problem, right? We talked about doing COVID right. How many companies laid people off in the early days of the pandemic, right? And then wondered why they were having trouble rehiring a few years later when things turned around, right?

13:38The decision is not just what's best for the business necessarily, but also what are your responsibilities? What are your obligations? What is the fair and right thing to do? Not to belabor COVID, but I found this photo of Queen Elizabeth at the funeral of her beloved husband so beautiful and sad and tragic at the same time. She's mourning the loss of this person that she had spent five odd decades with. And because of COVID protocols at that time, which she surely would have been exempted from if she asked, she did not. Right. She spent it in a box alone, the most painful day of her life. Meanwhile, we find out subsequently that the prime minister and all of the staff are having parties at 10 Downing Street because they think no one's paying attention, right?

14:27And so the question is, again, not what you can get away with, not what exemptions they'll make for you, but what's right, what does good behavior look like, what does discipline look like? And we stick with that. And we stick with it in the challenging decisions most of all. And in fact, as hard as these challenging situations are, We celebrate them because they're opportunities to do the right thing in a big way, right? We make these hard decisions, and we ultimately try to stick with our true responsibility, our true task and job in this life. Mark Shereles asks himself, what's my job, right?

15:00What's my job? Our job is not to make more money or grow our business or win the deal. That's part of it, but that's not our true job. He says, my job is to be good. He says, the fruit of this life is good character and acts for the common good. It's about the difference we make for others. It's about the standards we hold ourselves to. There's a track here in East Austin, about maybe three miles from here, that I like to work out in. I do sprints there. It was paid for by Hollywood Henderson. He went to high school at this school. And when he hit it big, actually not when he hit it big in the NFL, because he blew all that money.

15:38Then when he won the lottery, the first thing he did was pay for this track to be rebuilt at his old high school. And he puts this sign up. He has all these signs. There's a bunch of signs that say, like, if you see anyone littering, call Hollywood Henderson. He doesn't say how. It just says this. But the sign that struck me the most is this one. It says, leave this place better than you found it, which is to me what we're talking about when we talk about justice. we're talking about doing that now not later not when you're old not when you retire not when you've made a certain amount of money being cutthroat and cruel then you can be nice right the Andrew Carnegie strategy but you try to do good now for as many people as you can every day totally free we send out the daily stoic email it's the largest community of stoics ever assembled in human history and just one stoic idea one ancient lesson to chew on every single day I'd love to have you join us.

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