Ryan Holiday | The Stoics' Guide to Mindful Parenting

27:08And you basically say Jesus rarely told people what to do. He told parables and stories. Like the main character of this bestselling book was the best storyteller in history, perhaps. Yeah. I mean, a great example, right? Jesus doesn't go, okay, fathers, if you have a kid, you should be very forgiving of them and patient with them. And if they go astray and come back to you, you should definitely forgive them and accept them back into your heart and into your home. Right? No, he doesn't say that at all. What he does is he tells a story about the prodigal son that illustrates this. It's like the greatest, most universal writing rule is that you show, you don't tell.

27:58Right? And that's what Jesus does. He shows the virtue that he wants parents to embodied. He shows them what that looks like in the form of a story, as opposed to a lecture or a pronouncement or a commandment or whatever. And even Abraham Lincoln is a great example of this. He would illustrate his points through stories, through anecdotes, through funny little yarns. And that's basically what the book is. It's 366 little stories, each one illustrating like a slightly different way of thinking about parenting. That's basically what all my books are as I focus on stories. But it's a very powerful technique.

28:41And I think you've obviously been mentored by, but I have like enormous respect for Robert Greene, who's like the master of this. I mean, he has so many stories in his books. Like reading one of his books, you feel like your IQ is rising per page. Well, it's like reading like 50 different books. Yeah, it's amazing. Like even the footnotes have like three page stories in them. And, you know, it's, it's just phenomenal how he does it, but you do it very well in a way that's super appetizing. Like, oh, I didn't know this about some, you know, Lou Gehrig in your last book, or, you know, you have so many just, you know, stories in this book, like you say, it's 366 mini stories.

29:23and it does, each one, again, does make me think about my own role as a parent and parenting. And by the way, you said, oh, they're older, the ship has passed. The ship never passes, by the way. Like you're always their parents and they always need you. Now you have a story of somebody who, it was Sandra Day O 'Connor's husband who moved to Arizona to be, supposedly to be with Sandra Day O 'Connor, but he kind of was just honest and said, no, I really just wanted to get away from my mom. Get away from my mom, yeah. Yeah, and this is an interesting challenge as an older parent, which is that you want to make sure as a younger parent, and you point this out, that they're going to still want to be, the kids are still going to want to be around you and call you and check in when they're older.

30:14And that's a very important aspect of parenting, which continues into their 20s, 30s, and so on. You always have to be a good parent. There's never, people say, oh, it's empty nest now. My job is done. And it's just like you tell the story of Mitch Hurwitz, the creator of Arrested Development, where Pete Holmes congratulates him that he did it. The kids are out, they're safe, they're alive. And it's like, no, that doesn't work that way. And it really doesn't. Like I spoke to both white kids yesterday and they are always going through things and you have to be the kind of stoic philosopher in their lives that say, yeah, I went through things too.

30:54And it's hard. But I think that's a sign that you were a successful parent, that they are still coming and talking to you. It's either a sign that you were a terrible parent and you have a screwed up codependent relationship. They never left the house. Or it's a sign that you absolutely crushed it and they still want you in their life. I saw Noah Kagan did this interview with the founder of Kinko's. I'm forgetting his name. But Noah sort of asked him what it's like to be rich or something like that. And he said, you know what rich is? He's like, rich is your kids coming home for the holidays. He was like, how many people have lots of money and they never see their kids?

31:33And I really took heart in that because it struck me that, yeah, when you look at whether you succeeded as a parent or not, you're really not going to be like, oh, I succeeded because they went to Harvard, or, oh, I succeeded because they make$300 ,000 a year, or I succeeded because they had children of their own. You're going to be thinking about, if you're lucky enough to say, live to your 70s, are you still having Thanksgiving together as a family? Are you invited? Are they flying home? Is it actually a fun family experience or is everyone walking on eggshells and it's tense as hell. Success is going to be, is your family, when it is no longer financially and figuratively dependent on each other, is there still the voluntary time together, the connection, the bonds, et cetera?

32:32That's what success is going to be. And I think almost everyone would concede to that. And yet, when you think about what we do as parents day to day, what we measure, what we argue about, what we harp on, it's never things that are contributing to that. It's almost invariably things that are probably making that less likely in the future. Right. I mean, I don't think anywhere in your book, The Daily Dad, do you say, you know convince your kids to be uh you know to be a republican or a democrat or and argue with them until until they agree like yes that is just but and yet that's what happens in so many households and and look we all have opinions and we all want our kids to share our opinions but often i have to kind of stop myself and say you know what i argued just like this when i was a kid with my dad.

33:30And rather than just having a good conversation, my dad and I would sometimes argue to the death of this issue. And I'm just not going to do that. I'm not going to have an opinion on this. There's this great quote from Marcus Aurelius where he says, remember, you always have the power of no opinion. He says, things are not asking to be judged by you. Right? And to me, that is such an incredible bit of parenting advice. Because I think about the fights that I've had with my parents as a kid. I think about some of the things that frustrate me to this day. I think about things that I hear about in other families.

34:08And you're just like, why do they care that you got a tattoo? Why do they care what color you dyed your hair? Obviously, there's a difference between caring about these things when your kid is 11 and when your kid is 26. but you hear about parents fighting with their children about their college major, or you hear about them disowning their kid because of their sexuality. And you're just like, why do you have an opinion about this at all? I remember, I'll share something that I think is both illustrated, but it's personal, but not super personal. My sister's husband is a vegetarian, right? Now my parents paid for, they had a small wedding.

34:51My parents paid for the reception or something like that. And they wanted to have vegetarian reception. They didn't want to serve meat on it. And my dad had really strong opinions about this. And there was arguments about it. And I remember my dad afterwards going, I really didn't think this was a good idea, but it worked out okay. Of course it fucking worked out okay. Why have a fucking opinion at all about food that someone else serves at a wedding, right? All you're doing is creating a source of tension that is going to get between you and the person that you say having a relationship with is the most important thing in the world, right?

35:34And so I think that the road that human beings go down and parents go down to their detriment is you just have too many opinions about things that do not matter in the big scheme of things at all. Yeah. And it's interesting because the different topics that you focus on in the daily dad, and again, for anyone reading this, whether you're a dad or not, or a stoic or not, or whatever, or a mom or not, it doesn't matter. These stories are great and universal. I found myself, I was bookmarking every page and I said, I can't do that because if you book, you know, if you're, if every page is worth bookmarking, you don't need to bookmark any of them.

36:17But well, just to be clear, it's called the daily dad. Cause I am a dad, right. As opposed to it is for dads. And I felt, I felt weird. I, there was something that didn't feel right about the daily parent, but that's really what the book is. So, right. So, but, but the things I think one should have opinions on is what you focus on in the book. Like for instance, you know, teaching your kids to be grateful or, or raising a reader is one of your chapters. You're a reader and obviously reading has benefited you so much. You want other people might disagree with you. Who knows? But you want your kids to be a reader.

36:54Yes. Help them become who they are. Don't neglect yourself. Character is fate. Put your family first. You know, So these are all opinions you have that you want to share with your, your kids, but they're broad opinions about character and being a better person and not necessarily like, okay, let's talk tonight about defunding the police. Like we need part of being a parent is forcing my kids to defund the police or whatever the latest opinion in the world is.

37:37you know we were talking about jimmy carter before where do you think you have not been your best where do you think you have not tried your best i mean we could spend the next like two hours on this but are you mean specifically as a parent where have i not been my best no i mean we could talk about specifically as a parent but i just want to know in general well i would probably say there, obviously, are there things I could do better professionally as a citizen or something? Sure. I'm sure there are. I don't wake up that often and go... I don't feel guilt about that, I guess is what I'm saying.

38:13So I would say that most of the things when I look and I go, I could have done better. I need to do better. That wasn't who I wanted to be. It's almost invariably parenting stuff. And I would say that the couple of buckets or themes or failings that I find myself repeating are usually, it's usually like I'm not being with my kids when I'm with my kids, right? So like I'm not being present. I was thinking the other day, like a way to express this is like the secret to being a great parent is giving your kids presents, but the other kind of presence, not gifts, but actually being present, like giving them all of yourself when you are with them, not thinking about other things, not checking the clock, not getting distracted on your phone, not trying to speed things along, but like entering their world and being fully in it.

39:09I think that's something I really, really struggle with. It's hard because you're consumed by your interests and you're always writing a book. So that's always top of mind. Now, in an ideal world, kids and family are always top of mind. But when you're writing a book, sometimes you have to make that top of mind. And even when you're not typing on a keyboard, you're still working on the book and thinking about it. It's a hard thing, which, again, I think is why it's bittersweet to read the book, because I always think about times when I wasn't fully present. And I'm heartened, though, by the story.

39:44You have a story of Jerry Seinfeld in here. where he talks about, it's not about quality time. Sometimes it's about garbage time. Like just putting in the time and spending time with your kids is important. People always talk about quality time. Well, sometimes you might not have opportunity to have quality time, but you can always still, you don't have to be fully present is a little bit what he's saying is that it's okay to just be with them. And it reminds me of, speaking of Seinfeld and being a comedian, Al Franken wrote a book, I forget which one it was, where he talks about the time he spent with his dad, that at the best times when they were just watching TV and not talking with each other, that it wasn't quality time, it was quantity time.

40:28And there's a little bit of both of that. Like sometimes you want to be like, okay, I'm going to take my kids on a safari to Africa and teach them everything. And other times it's just like, hey, let's just watch TV together or take this ride with me to the supermarket or whatever. I was thinking about this recently. It's almost like there's some, there's almost like a cop-out quality to quality time, right? Because you're like, I'm planning this big trip. I'm spending this money on this big trip. And you're like, you're like congratulating yourself. You're distracted by it. It's in the future.

41:02You think that you're, you're, you're special. You're a great parent for doing it. And meanwhile, what you're neglecting is the fact that you're sitting next to them on the couch. you're driving to school together. You forget that also the drive to the airport and the flight is part of the experience. But actually, you're so looking forward to that, or you're so anxious or worried or stressed out during that, that you lose it, which is probably the other thing that I guess this is not great having written these books about stoicism. But I struggle with sort of two emotional issues. One is temper and two is anxiety.

41:39And they usually are related to each other. I get stressed because I get angry because I'm anxious. My anger is making me anxious about something. But I would say I've never been glad afterwards that I lost my temper, particularly anything related to my kids. And then 99 % of the things I've been stressed about, anxious about, you know, high strung about like 99 % of them have never happened. We've never missed a flight. We've always had the money we needed for stuff. Like all the things that I'm like, it's gotta be this way or everything will fall apart. Like that has served me well, 0 % of the time.

42:16I think that's a good exercise actually to kind of map out all the things you were not glad about afterwards. Like I've never been glad after I was angry. I've never been happy I was anxious about X, Y, or Z. I'm an anxious person, and one of my daughters, not both, but one of my daughters has a lot of anxiety and to the point where she'll be crying, like, what if this happens? What if this happens? And I always tell her to write it down every time because it's like a pattern. I always tell her, write it down exactly what you're anxious about, and then we can see later what your ability to predict the future is.

42:56Because I know from my own experience, it's going to essentially be zero. So yes. But again, once you have kids, there's a lot of... Did you want to have kids? How many kids do you have now? We have two kids. And did you want to have kids? I didn't not want to have kids, but I was nervous and scared to have kids. And I probably put it off longer than I should have or would have if I was doing it again, if that makes sense. I was worried, particularly from my relationship with my parents that I was worried that I didn't have the emotional range, the energy, the time, or like the, the, whatever the magical ingredient is to be good at it.

43:44I, I, I think I doubted myself. Um, and so I, I was intimidated by the prospect of it. Yeah, I think similar for me. I specifically did not want to have kids in part because of what you just said, but also because when they're born now, a new life is unleashed. And you look back at your own life, all the times maybe where you've been unhappy. And I just didn't want them to go through that. And that was one big reason I was just not happy at the thought of having kids. I didn't want to put another entity through that pain of being human. It sounds almost weirdly egotistical when I say it now because they wouldn't have been human if they were born.

44:27But that was my feeling. I totally get that. And then the funny thing is then you have kids and it switches, right? You go, oh my God, this thing is happier, sweeter, more innocent, more earnest, all of these things. And then you go, my job is to not corrupt this thing. Have you read The Road? Yeah, of course. He says, carrying the fire. I feel like your job is to help your kids carry. Your job is to carry the fire, to not let your kids, to not put it out in your kids, to not extinguish it or be so cynical or negative or whatever, or anxious or mean or, you know, busy or whatever, that that thing, that goodness and sweetness and earnestness that they're born with, like your job is to help ferry that to adulthood.

45:23You know, it's interesting you bring up the road as a, as a, I never thought about it. The road is a Cormac McCarthy's maybe most accessible book. It's a story about a father and son post apocalypse, you know, post the world having some sort of disaster and everything's sort of wild, like, like Mad Max kind of wild. And, but it actually is a book about parenting. Like totally he's firm. He doesn't, he doesn't yell at his kid he doesn't get angry but he's firm when he he needs the kid to understand something and yet he's also trying to protect the kid a little bit from the horror that's that's around them and well no we were talking about politics earlier that's the other one i you know the kid goes like because they have to do something they have to steal something or they have to fight someone who's trying to steal from them i forget exactly but then afterwards they're sitting around the fire and the kid goes are we still the good guys like uh and i think that's a question that as a parent you have to think about is like, where are you the baddies, right?

46:25Are you the good guys? Or have you let your own interests or your own, you know, self-preservation instincts about your family, you know, like, are you, are you part of the good guys or not? Yeah. And I remember him asking that question and it's hard to answer. We all, you know, again, what's good and what's bad. We all, uh, what's moral and what's not. That's, that's a definition that's constantly shifting, which is why kids wonder, they're trying to figure it out. And it's hard to teach them that it's more ambiguous than, than it seems. I thought of an example about that the other day. I live in this town in Texas and they're, um, Texas, you know, the outskirts of Austin, like San Francisco and places in California, a housing shortage, right?

47:10And it's hard to afford things. And so they wanted to build this sort of big apartment complex down the road. And some of those units were going to be low-income housing, right? It was all going to be affordable, but some were going to be low-income housing. Now, most people, if you ask them, they'd be like, yeah, of course, everyone should have a place to live. No family should be cramped. Kids deserve their own room. If you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to afford to keep a roof over your family's head, blah, blah, blah. And then here you have all the nice people in town besieging the city council.

47:51How dare you build this near us? Blah, blah, blah. The essence of NIMBYism is basically, I have mine. I care about my family? How dare you do anything for anyone else that would decrease or hurt my property values? Right. And so the result was they didn't end up building that thing. And those people have to live somewhere and they live somewhere that's not as nice as they could live in this thing. Right. And so, you know, obviously the road is about, you know, the terrible choices you would have to make if you're fighting for your children's literal survival. But I think as parents, we have to ask ourselves, you know, this is a great story, and I forget who it was from, but they were saying that, you know, in the old days, if you heard someone say, let's build a pool for our kids, right?

48:45They meant build a pool for the community, right? And today they mean build a pool in the backyard that no one else is allowed to use, right? And And so, you know, it can be so easy as a parent and as a person in the world to think about protecting yours, pulling up the ladder behind you, so to speak. And how much are you thinking about how the decisions you make or the way that, you know, you protect your family? How are you thinking about the consequences or implications of that on other people and their families, particularly less fortunate families? also and and and in the context of being a parent what's the message you're sending to your kids yes their kids are very simple right yes they're usually smarter than they think than we think and they're dumber than we think so they're looking at they they think in very black and white the kids brains don't think in nuances yeah and so the message they might be getting is that the other is not good to live near me yes yes as opposed to the much more nuanced thing which is oh, there's a lot of nuances in that argument and where you come down on it.

49:58Like I can't judge those parents. I can't judge people on the opposite side of that. It's a very complicated issue, but kids will judge. And you have this great story or one page. I looked at this page in particular today because, well, yesterday, because it was April 27th. So this is your April 27th page. All right, let's see what it is. You're the voice in their heads. Yes. And this is a very important concept. This is maybe the one concept I took into parenting. Like I always remembered when my dad was yelling at me and how disappointed I was in him later from that. And I never wanted to yell at my kids, but sometimes they need to be told that something maybe wasn't wrong or wasn't appropriate.

50:44And my method for doing that was to be calm and basically tell them I was disappointed in something they did. And here's the reason why. And that might be a story. The reason why that turned out to be effective. So you can either make them cry by yelling at them until they cry, or you can make them cry when they see what they did in terms of your disappointment. Not that you want to make them cry, but that's also the way that they remember a lesson you think is important. They're going to remember the times they cried. I heard a really good test. I think I saw this on Instagram or something, But they were like, okay, you're a kid in your house many years ago, and you hear the garage door opening downstairs, right?

51:28Your parents are home. What is the feeling that you get in your bones or in your stomach when you imagine that, right? Yeah, that's a good one. So happy dad's home, mom's home, awesome? Or is it, oh, shit, right? And I would say, sadly, often for me, the feeling was, oh, shit. Right. I got to go do all this stuff. I got to go hide this stuff. You know, I got to I got to mentally prepare for what's about to come. What stuff would you have to hide? I just mean like, oh, I was I I was eating chips in the wrong room of the house. You know what I mean? It wasn't like I got to I got to hide this gun and this heroin.

52:09It was like it was it was like stuff that, again, in retrospect, you know, matters so little to my parents. But we were just, that was what we ended up talking. We ended up arguing about shit that didn't matter all the time, right? And so, you know, thinking about how do you, when your kids think of you and your presence, when they think of you coming home, you know, are they happy or are they sad? And this isn't, oh, you got to be your kid's best friend. But it is, are most of your interactions with your kids positive and pleasant? Or are they authoritarian and negative and critical, right? And when I think about the times that my parents yelled at me, I don't think back and go, oh, they were so right.

52:54I just think, why were they such dicks? Like, I was a child, right? And if you think about, like, you know your kids are wonderful, right? You know that they're inherently good and sweet and have potential and are doing their best. You know all these things. But then when you think about the tone that you talk to them, when you think about the tenor of your interactions, how obvious is that, that you think that? Would they know that? I'm not sure that they would. Let me ask you this. On the opposite side, what are the things that were best about your parents when you were growing up? my parents, they afforded us all sorts of opportunities to do cool shit.

53:38We were always traveling. We were always going places. We were always doing things. It was a very active childhood. So I traveled, my parents saved money so we could go on cool trips. Like my dad was a police detective and my mom was a school principal. But even the day I graduated high school, I never traveled again. I'd have seen a good chunk of the world and had a good sense of, you know, how the world operated from the experiences and things that we were exposed to. That was a huge gift that I feel very grateful for. Now, did they ever put any pressure on you to get good grades or go to the right school or major in this?

54:27Or were they upset when you dropped out of college? They were livid. I mean, our relationship had a lot of trouble recovering from how they handled that decision. And in retrospect, if my parents had had very clear and articulated expectations, like almost the immigrant experience of you need to be a doctor or a lawyer or whatever, that almost would have been more helpful. I think my parents, not quite sure what I should do or what was possible. They just kind of compared me to other kids. And so for me to drop out of college was very hard for them to swallow because I was the only child of any of their friends who had done such a thing, right?

55:17So they weren't able to see the decision in the context of me and what I wanted out of my life. and what my talents were and how that might or might not pan out. I think it was a lot about them. Do you know what I mean? It was a lot about how this reflected on them. And that's a really bad way to judge anything related to your kids is how it reflects upon you. Yeah. And it's related to another chapter in your book, or I should say page in your book, because every page is a different chapter and different story, but it's do not get in the way of their primal inclinations. And I think this is a very important concept.

56:00Like, yes, you can expose them to who you are. Like, this is my favorite music. These are my favorite shows. This is something that happened to me that influenced me a lot as a kid, but they're going to have their own thing going on in their mind and their heart. And it's going to change quite a bit too. So if you, any influence you have on telling them like, no, you need to be this, it's just not going to work because A, people's passions change throughout their life. So no matter what you tell them to do, maybe they'll want to do it for a split second, but that's the longest they'll want to do it for.

56:37And you kind of have to let them be wrong sometimes too. Wrong meaning whether that's an objective wrong or a subjective wrong. Yeah. I heard a good way of thinking about this, that you're a gardener and not a carpenter. So your job is to water and prune and provide resources for, as opposed to construct and build. I'll give you an example. This is a minor one because my kids are pretty young. But we tried baseball with my son. We tried soccer with my son. We tried a bunch of different outdoor activities, like different sports. And he has just not thrived in any of them. And so I took him to a jujitsu class and he is obsessed.

57:26He goes three days a week. It's all he talks about. It's the first time that anything lit up for him. And that is what you're looking for. You're looking for the things that light your kids up. And then your job is to facilitate, encourage, and support them in that thing. Now, he's super into it now. I also have to come to terms with the fact that it could stop doing it for him tomorrow. And then my job will be to help him find the next thing, not to bully or criticize him for being a quitter or whatever, because he decided to stop doing this thing that he did like. And by the way, all of these things, kids are almost a metaphor here because all of these things apply to all of your relationships.

58:21Yes. Whether your relationships with your spouse, relationships with employees, relationships with your friends or people, you know, readers, for instance, for you and for me as well, people you don't know. But you can't, you know, if your employees want to move on and do something else, there's only so much you could kind of persuade them to not do that before they build resentment and not like you and so on. Like I always, you know, from my very first company, I always wanted my employees to eventually quit to do something better than what they were doing for me, except for Jay, who's not allowed to quit at all.

58:59He's... No, I talk to my employees about this all the time. I go, what do you want to do with your life? Because working for me is probably not going to be something you do for the next 50 years. I'm not even going to be doing this in this form for 50 years. So where are you trying to go? And how does our time together help you get there? You're doing a tour of duty with me. And I expect certain things from you out of that tour of duty. but you should expect certain things from me as far as setting you up to do and become that thing. And I am going to support you in that. I'm going to help you in that.

59:39That's what we're doing here. And by the way, I think that's the best you could do. Yes. Like there's this whole question, nature versus nurture, how much effect do you really have versus their peers? And by the way, at different ages, you're going to have minimal effect compared to their peers. at different ages, you're going to have maximum effect. Your financial situation is going to have a big effect. There's so many factors into being a good parent and understanding the kind of different rollercoaster ride of it. Let me ask you, this for me is probably the saddest moment of being a parent.

1:00:14I remember my kids were very young and my ex-wife and I had to tell our kids we were getting a divorce. You know, it was a kind of buildup. And then we told them and my youngest started crying. And she said, I don't want to be one of those kids. Meaning she had some impression of kids who were divorced. They were a little different maybe in her mind than, you know, other kids. And now suddenly she was in that category. And sometimes there's nothing you can say. Like there really, she was going to be one of those kids. And, you know, other than just saying, look, we're both here for you the same way we always were.

1:00:53And we love you very much. We're still your parents. Nothing's changing in that. But sometimes you just have to let them have their experience. There's nothing you can do, even if they're crying. Yeah. There is this instinct, because you care about them so much, to never want them to suffer, never want them to feel pain, to want to take everything that is hurting them away from them. And obviously you would never inflict anything on them on purpose. And I imagine you did literally everything you possibly could to not get divorced first, right? Like it's not like that was your first option. But then life, you know, life is.

1:01:36I'm going through this right now. We're having, actually today, we're going to have to put our dog down. This is a dog. Thank you. My wife and I have had this dog for 16 years. So it's been there the entirety of both of my kids' lives. And, you know, we're having to navigate this difficult thing that's making us sad, but also make them sad. And, you know, my son, who honestly I did not think was that close to this dog. They've kind of had a not that great relationship. So it kind of came out of nowhere that he was so kind of broken up about it. But, you know, My first instinct was like, it's okay.

1:02:19You don't need to be sad. Like, let me distract you from your emotion. And like, I was, it was like, it was upsetting to me to see him cry. It was more than crying, to bawl his eyes out at the thought of losing this dog. And then, you know, I kind of realized like, I have to let him do this. And in fact, my job here is to encourage him to do this, to not like, where do boys lose the ability to be in touch with their emotions, to feel sadness, to articulate how they're feeling? It's because when they were six years old and their dog was dying, their dad was telling them to get over it. You know what I mean?

1:03:02Or their parents were hiding this experience from them. And so we've kind of, and again, this might sound weird from someone coming from Stoic philosophy, but we've actually been talking to them about like, like let it all out, dude. Like everything you're feeling is, is totally fine. And you're, there is no right or wrong in how you feel something like this. But I think that is very Stoic in the sense that you can't, sometimes you can't change the way people deal with things. They just have to sort of, you know, they have to experience their experience and not try to manipulate the experience.

1:03:47And I think that is a very stoic approach. I mean, you would know more than me, but that actually brings me to a question about you and stoicism, not from a philosophical point of view, but this changes gears a little bit. you're obviously an excellent marketer. You start off as a marketer. Your first book was about marketing. And it was a great book, by the way. Trust me, I'm lying. Fantastic title, fantastic book. I wasn't even going to mention the title, but I decided to mention the title. But you've taken, again, this ancient philosophy, which nobody even gave a shit about for centuries. and you really, I mean, there are lots of books about stoicism, but you really popularize it.

1:04:33And it's almost become like this modern religion. And, and you use what I've written about and called the spoken wheel approach, like stoicism is the wheel. And then you have many spokes, including books and videos and an email newsletter and so on. So how can someone, what do you do? What, what are the techniques you do to kind of build up your brand, which is significant. I mean, you were just on The Daily Show, for Christ's sakes. Build up your brand, build up this idea that you've been popularizing. I mentioned a few things, but just in general, what's your philosophy about it and how do you do it?

1:05:10And how can other people do it? How can other people learn from what you're doing? Yeah, it's a weird thing. So I think this happens in investing too, where someone makes a bet or they go in on something that they think is going to work. They're like, hey, it seems like it could work. They think it has an upside of X. They think the downside is minimal. So they make the bet. And then sometimes that works out and they look very smart. Sometimes that thing turns into a Facebook or a Google or an Uber, and they look much smarter than they actually were in that moment. Right? Right. And the stuff with Stoicism has started to verge into that territory.

1:05:53Right? Like, I was really interested in Stoicism. It's the philosophy that's changed my life. I love talking about it. I love writing about it. But it's worth pointing out, like, The Daily Stoic, which is the book that kicked a lot of that off, was like an idea I got from my agent. and I was skeptical about it, right? I was like, okay, I'll try it. And then I had the idea, I said, but you know what, I'm gonna keep it going. I'm gonna make a daily newsletter because I knew newsletters really were great. And I didn't have a good reason to have made something daily or weekly before. And I thought, well, maybe I'll do the Daily Stoic email.

1:06:31And so I had this idea of doing that in 2016. it would have been preposterous if in 2016, I said, look, by 2023, all have been on The Daily Show. These books will have sold 6 million copies in 30 language. That would have been preposterous, right? I just had a sense that this philosophy was something that there was a lot of material in, that it was very tried and true, that it was something I was deeply earnest and excited and interested in. And it was well suited to a bunch of different mediums. That's a handful of the reasons I had some sense that it was worth putting time to taking a turn in my life away from what I was doing, which is my marketing company towards this.

1:07:24That was why I made that decision. I could not have predicted millions of Instagram followers. YouTube now, I think we just crossed 70 million views on YouTube. I could not have predicted any of that. But it's not, you couldn't have predicted, but it's not random. You, you, well, like, let's take YouTube as an example. I have never really focused on building up a YouTube presence, which is sometimes confusing to people. Like my podcast is so much bigger than YouTube, but people sometimes wonder it's equivalent. What's advice to me? Like, what did you do to build up your YouTube presence? Cause you, you are very particular and strategic about it.

1:08:01Well, I do use the technique you talked earlier about the hub and spoke or whatever. Basically, I like writing about stoicism and I particularly like writing about it in book form. That's what gets me excited. That's what I am most talented at in my view. That's what's most meaningful to me. But over the years, I've come to understand that that is not where most people are. And that is not the best entry point to pretty much anything, right? And so books were where I started. And then I started the newsletter. Then I started an Instagram account where we'd post it. So the newsletter was one email a day.

1:08:40And then the Instagram was one photo a day. And then Twitter, one quote tweet a day. And then what I did was I brought on my team to say, okay, what are other mediums that we can make this same content in? We can take these ideas and reach people in. And YouTube was one I got serious about maybe four or five years ago, and then got really serious about in 2020, because there was so much time on my hands. The way I think about it is, what is stuff that I have written about or talked about that's resonated with people in these other mediums? And how do I translate that to get it to work in, let's say, YouTube, I kind of think one of the reasons I really doubled down on video was that social media also doubled down on video.

1:09:30So if I make a one-minute clip, I can post that on Instagram, I can post it on Twitter, I can post it on TikTok, I can post it on Facebook, I can post it on LinkedIn, and I can post it on YouTube. So for one minute of content creation, I have five or six different places, different algorithms, different audiences, different platforms that I can spread that content to. And so, yeah, we really invested in YouTube about three or four years ago, and it's grown super fast. In terms of these videos, how often do you think about production value? Like, oh, let's get some additional footage other than me talking, or I need to be talking really close to the camera as opposed to far from the camera.

1:10:15Like, it seems like you've made some conscious decisions. Well, what I think about, like, first, what is the easiest way to start, right? What's the easiest way to get started? And the first thing we started with were, you know, podcasts or TV spots or press that I had done, right? So we cut all those up and posted them. The next thing was, what's audio? I can record audio, and then we can mash that up against footage that's in the public domain. So it takes five minutes of my time to record a script, and then I give that to a video editor, and they make that. And that did okay. And then each step of the way, I was getting not just validated, but the audience was getting a little bit bigger.

1:11:00And then I said, okay, well, what's the easiest way to shoot stuff? And a GoPro with a microphone will shoot in 4K, like what you watch a movie on, a GoPro can shoot. So for 500 bucks, I got a really good GoPro and a tripod and stuff. And then I shot a lot of stuff myself. And then that did really well. And then I brought on a full-time person to shoot video. And then And it's like, hey, if we get this really cool drone, we can add, you know, exciting B-roll. So I basically just, I'm just always thinking, how can we take what we're doing and make it a little bit better? So I start with something accessible and practical to see how it works.

1:11:46And then once it works, I'm just elevating it and elevating and elevating it. And then, you know, if you're getting 1 % better every day or every week, you know, you get a lot better really quickly. That's very true. And so, you know, there's this book, Measure What Matters, I think it's by John Dora, the venture capitalist. You obviously measure the success of the different things you're doing. What has worked the best? Like, let's say across YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, what do you do that you know, if I do this, because of the statistics that I've measured about all my content is going to really work the best?

1:12:24Yeah, the two kinds of content that seem to work best are stories and lists. I think the highest performance video we've ever posted was me telling a story that Kurt Vonnegut tells about him and Joseph Heller. This story is the best. I've used and reused this story so many times, but go ahead. You tell the story. I want to hear you tell the story. Basically, Kurt Vonnegut is with Joseph Heller. Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five. Joseph Heller wrote Catch-22. And they're at the house of this billionaire, which is a thing that happens when you're a writer. You get invited to fancy people's houses as candy or as a status symbol.

1:13:02And so they're at this billionaire's house, and Kurt Vonnegut is teasing Joseph Heller. And he says, this guy made more money this week than your book will make in its entire lifespan. And Joseph Heller says, well, I have something he will never have. And Kurt Vonnegut says, what could that possibly be? And Joseph Heller says, I have enough. That's such a great story. It's such a great idea. It's such a perfect way of encapsulating the idea that there's two ways to be rich, right? There's the one who has a lot of stuff, and then there's the one who has enough, right? And in fact, actually the Stoics say this, one definition of poverty is wanting more than you have.

1:13:39So anyways, I told that story on Instagram or TikTok, and it did a couple million views. It just popped. And that kind of blew the accounts up in a new way. But it also, it was funny because that's also one of the most popular stories that I've ever written in one of my books. It's in Stillness is the Key. And so it was just a reminder, oh yeah, I tell stories for a living. I identify as an author of stories, but really what I do is I tell stories. And my job and what my team helps me with is find out how to translate each one of those stories appropriately to as many mediums as possible. And the crazy thing about YouTube and social has been, it's been two things.

1:14:24One, I've heard from a ton of people who told me that's how they discovered me, which is what you're always looking for as a creator is how do you reach new people? So people who didn't know who my work didn't know my work before found me there and then they read the books, et cetera. And then the other part in it, it's a blessing and a curse, which I now get recognized a lot. Pretty much any time I go out, I will get recognized. It doesn't matter where I was. I took my family. We had a tour of the White House a couple weeks ago. And it was like, the Secret Service officer letting us into the White House was like, oh, I watch all your TikToks or whatever.

1:15:04You're like, whoa, okay, this is crazy. And so that happens all the time now, which is, like I said, good and bad. It's a little awkward. But the point is, what I'm interested in is how do I use new technologies and platforms to reach people that I wasn't previously reaching? Yeah, this is really great advice. It gives me a lot of food for thought. Obviously, I think you've been on the podcast for every single one of your books and then a few extra times even beyond that. We've had so many great discussions, stories I've written about conversations we've had in private have also blown up for me.

1:15:42Likewise. The conversation we had about jealousy we had over dinner once has been a very powerful story. I always appreciate you coming on the podcast, Ryan. You've been a great friend, a great guest, and so on. Look, The Daily Dad, very moving book, 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and raising great kids. I'll say it again. It's not just about kids. Kids are almost the metaphor, but it's about communication and the stories you tell are each one a fascinating story, really eye-opening story. And even if you're telling a story I've heard before, you always tell in unique ways. And your advice about marketing, great.

1:16:21So once again, Ryan, thanks for coming on the podcast. I look forward to the next book because I know you'll come on again and I appreciate it. Well, thanks for having me, man. And I miss you. I feel like I haven't seen you in forever, but I'm glad. One of the things that's great about podcasts is you end up having conversations at a length and at a depth with people that for whatever reason, I think men just don't tend to have for no reason, although we possibly should. It's very true, actually. I would say doing a podcast is the main way I socialize now and keep up with my friends. If you called me, we wouldn't spend an hour and 20 minutes on the phone.

1:16:57I'd be like, I got to get off this phone call and do stuff over a podcast. You're like, this is what it is. Yeah. Well, and I know today's going to be a big day for you. Again, I'm sorry you have to put your dog down. So good luck. And look, hopefully we'll get together in person sometime soon. I'll let you know next time I'm down there.

1:17:29Thank you.