The Daily Stoic - Daniel Lubetzky on Making the World a Better Place

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Ryan talks to KIND Snacks Founder Daniel Lubetzky about the importance of culture and values in a successful company, empowering people through kindness, living out the values that you build your life on, and more.Best known as the founder of KIND Snacks, Daniel Lubetzky is a business leader, investor, and social entrepreneur working to build bridges between people and increase appreciation for our shared humanity.Through his startup investment and incubation platform Equilibra Ventures, Daniel partners with promising entrepreneurs building innovative enterprises with integrity.  Daniel was named a Presidential Ambassador for Global Entrepreneurship by President Obama. He is the author of The New York Times bestseller Do the KIND Thing and a recurring shark on Shark Tank.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I had a rough weekend with the kids. My son woke up and he was, it was like, what's just one of those, I said to my wife after

I was like, man, we just did not have a chance from the moment we woke up. Just a lot of craziness. And it culminated with, went to Whole Foods and wanted to, my son is obsessed with fish and he wanted to pick out some fish from the supermarkets we did that. They run around the crazy people and sort of just intersecting with nap time slash a late lunchtime because we've gone to a concert they party before that. Anyways, we're in line and we have like the world's slowest cashier of all time. And not just slow but like seemingly not getting that we're carrying

all the stuff that we need to set down. The kids are having a bit of a meltdown and my wife and I were getting stressed. We're trying to keep it together. It's hard to keep it together when someone else is freaking out. Anyways, I think at a different time in my life, I would have not handled it as well as we were doing which was our best. Anyways, as we're leaving, the woman in front of us in line who also had a little kid who seemed perfectly nice and may in fact be listening to this right now, she said, oh, hey, by the way, I just want to let you know I listen to your podcast and I love it, which was very nice and I appreciate her listening, but it was both my wife and I just sort of

love it, which was very nice and I appreciate her listening, but it was both my wife and I just sort of snapped us a little bit because we all go through the world, and of course we know we're in public, but you kind of feel anonymous in public, even if you are occasionally recognized, you feel anonymous. And it was like, hey, like there was a famous Greek who I'm actually writing about just now, he's a sort of public figure and someone offered to help him make his house more private. And he said, actually, I want you to make my house more public. I want people to be able to see what I do and I want that to hold their accountable. And it was just sort of a moment like that because in that second, let's say we'd acted rudely

or we lost it or behaved unstilically, we had no idea that the person in front of us would have obviously been able to tell the difference between, it would have been able to make the connection between how we were acting when we didn't think anyone was watching and what I talk about. And now it was just a nice reminder. when we didn't think anyone was watching and what I talk about.

Yeah, it was a nice reminder. I feel like I did my best. I don't feel like I have anything to be embarrassed about, but it's just kind of a reminder. When you're talking to customer service or whatever and that this call is recorded, if you really felt like it was being recorded and that people might hear it, how much kinder would you be? I'd like to think we'd all be a little nicer. There's a little story, but it ties into today's episode, because today I'm talking to Daniel

LeBetski, the founder of Kind Snacks. Not only is he a business leader and investor and a social entrepreneur, but I think you really pioneered something with Kind. First of calling it Kind, as we talk about in the episode, you know, what did that sort of mandate from him? And then, you know, he made this decision to have the wrappers of the package be clear. So people could actually see what was in it and the sort of incentives that that created or the changes that he had to make because of that. And I was really excited to have this conversation.

He and I talk about it at the beginning. We'd bumped into each other at a dinner party about a year ago here in Austin. I know kind snacks quite well. I eat them all the time, but I never really thought about who founded them. I just don't think I would have guessed that the founder of Kind Snacks was a Mexican-American son

of a Holocaust survivor from San Antonio, Texas, right? That's just not what my guess would have been. But that's who is the founder. And that's why I was really excited to have this conversation. I've also joined as an advisor or a fellow or something. This cool organization is created called Starts With Us, which is designed to foster empathy and empower individuals that move our culture away from extreme, divisive, and hateful positions.

He is a very successful businessman, a New York Times bestselling author of Do the Kind thing, a recurring shark on Shark Tank, and was a presidential ambassador for global entrepreneurship under President Obama. You can go to his website, DanielLobetski.com. I'll link to that rather than spelling it out. You can follow him, Daniel Lobetski on Twitter and Instagram.

And you can check out his organization, starts with us at startswithus.us. I think it's great and I'm excited to be a part of it and I'll just leave you with the episode now. I really enjoyed when we were together and I have barely spent any time with you so when I come back to Austin it would be great to organize a launch with a few awesome, how do you? I would love that. Well, that's where I was gonna start. It was that we were sitting next to each other

at that dinner, and it seemed like we were in agreement on a lot of things, and I knew vaguely who you were, but then I was looking you up after. I had no idea that you were like the ultimate symbol of the American dream. I mean mean man, you couldn't make up your story If you wanted to hit the note if you wanted to hit it more on the nose That's very kind of you

Well, I don't normally love sitting down with people that I just vehemently agree on because I like learning from others, but I found that we, not only was I agreeing, but I was like growing and learning, and you had some really good vantage points, or I just really, I look forward to getting to knowing. Likewise, so tell me about, tell me about that story a little bit. How does it happen? Because you seem to check a lot of different boxes, which I'm sure contributed to your business success because you had a bunch of different perspectives and experiences. But how did you end up even in Texas? Let's just start there. I mean, I think the American dream is a blessing and a lock, but I think I owe it to my parents.

owe it to my parents. My father, my story starts with my parents predominantly with my dad's really horrible experience as a Holocaust survivor. He was in the Da'Hawq concentration camp, but my American love story starts with American soldiers liberating the Tahoe concentration camp and rescuing my father. And interestingly, when I tell you this, right, you imagine you have an image of who were those soldiers, but they were Japanese Americans. Really? Yeah, they were all Japanese Americans from the most celebrated battalion.

A lot of the people that they really... I just read a book about them. I just read a book about them. Did you read this book, The Boy Is In The Boat? Have you seen that book? A friend of mine literally just told me about it. And a lot of black American and Japanese American battalions were the most highly decorated during World War II. We don't tend to imagine that as liberating a concentration camp in Daqon.

My dad, when he saw Japanese Americans for the first time, he didn't know they were Americans. He didn't know what they were. He's never seen an Asian person. He was living in a stetally in an Eastern European village when the war started. It was in a concentration camp. And for a while, they, they, they felt that were the enemy. Unfortunately, they were, they're liberators and they were the kindest people. And my dad and my uncle maintained a contact with him, particularly my uncle was a few years older, till he passed away. And then I more recently reunited with a family

that were the descendants of Dr. Suito, who was a captain that helped liberate the camp. And it was a very interesting story. But I think it starts then. And then my dad immigrated to Mexico when he was 17. He didn't speak English, he didn't speak Spanish. He only had a third grade education

and he built himself up and built a small jewelry shop, eventually partner with four other Holocaust survivors and they built a beautiful business. He married my mom who was born in Mexico in the cattle country. Her parents had immigrated also from Eastern Europe the generation before. I was born in Mexico and when I turned 16 we moved to San Antonio, Texas to be closer to the business that might add on these partners and built on the border between Mexico and the US. Wow. No, I actually think that's even more the American dream story, not just because it involves

immigration, which to me, immigration is fundamentally part of the American experience. Both the grandparents on my mother's side were immigrants. But the contradictions of a Japanese battalion, who this is the book, by the way, the author's incredible. I just read it. It's called Facing the Mountain, and it's about the liberation of Dachau and that whole battalion. But what I think is incredible when you think about those

Japanese soldiers liberating that camp, their family was in a camp in America. So it's like you have the rest of America and the worst of America and the struggle, the individuals who decide to try to make the most of those contradictions and do their best as human beings within that to meet American story right there. Yeah, I know it's a story of redemption because these people that flew thousands of miles while their family is wearing a camp, not a concentration camp, but still a segregation camp, and they go and they act with so much heroism, but then the American spirit shows that we can apologize. And you know, there

was a Supreme Court case with the United States government, apologized to our Japanese American citizens for their internment during World War II. And it's a story of growth and self-reflection, and not just the character of the courage of those that went and helped liberate an entire continent from Nazism and Fascism, but also of us growing in America by learning from our mistakes, which seems to be one of the many things that are under threat today in our country. When I moved to the United States, what I was struck by, because I was raised in Mexico my first 16 years, and there was not the type of democracy that exists in the United States, you couldn't really criticize the president of Mexico in 1984 and get away with it.

You'd get in trouble. And in America, in the United States, as imperfect as our country is, you could say whatever you wanted and feel free to do so and express yourself. And you also could disagree with your friends and have people across the line, Republicans and Democrats chew each other out on intellectual bases and then go to dinner and have night and be friends.

And I'm also learned from each other. And all those things, I feel like now we all think we have the answers. Very unforgiving. We are very judgmental. We don't reflect about where we might be wrong or where our side or our tribe could learn from the other. It's very absolute, very rigid. I think that's a lot of what makes the United States amazing are all those soft skills of respect and kindness and self-reflection. And that's what then helps our democracy and our

innovative spirit be the best that they can be. But if we take these things for granted, eventually, although it falls apart. Well, and the other interesting thing that strikes me about that story is like, I grew up reading about that stuff in history books, but to you, this is the things you're hearing directly from your father, right? So we tend to think that these events, whether it's World War II or internment or the Holocaust

or, you know, that it was a long time ago, but it really wasn't a long time ago, like at all. It was very recently that these things happened, and they can also happen again. And I think the reason you said earlier, Daniel, you're like the American dream, and I mean, definitely from a financial perspective, and in every other regard, I'm just so grateful for what the United States has done for me. But for me, the reason that I'm fundamentally American is that I don't take any of this for granted. That I, you know, I saw that in Mexico, we did not have rule of law or a great democracy.

I saw what my father went through. I saw how amazing the United States is in contrast to other countries. And it's very imperfect and we have many areas where we need to improve. But we, you know, to paraphrase with some Churchill, it's the worst except for all others, right? Yeah. So, so I, for me, that's what makes me very committed to our country and to preserve it because if we screw things up in this country, there's nowhere else to go, right? This is ground zero. So, no, I thought about that a lot during COVID where it's like, obviously, America did

not do a great job, but there really isn't anywhere that did a great job, right? You know what I mean? We're all globally, we're struggling with a number of problems and there's some variations between the countries just like there's some variations between the states inside the United States. But really like, it's not like anyone's killing it. And so I guess that's also the opportunity is that

if we can get our act together, it's a pretty wide open field. Well, I think of the United States because that's where I live, but I agree with you that the things that concern me about our country also concern me about humanity. Yeah. about humanity. And they include partly because of the bad habits that we're developing on the internet and social media. We're developing this rigidity, like all sorts of social media algorithms

make us think that we have all the answers because they serve us only what we want to hear, rather than what we need to hear. And then we see all sorts of nastiness going on in online job groups and people being very, no nuance, very aggressive, lash out at others. We think that that's going to stay

in the dark creases of the internet, but guess what? We're human beings. We start developing all these bad habits online and then they translate offline. So all of the world is suffering from, and Rand, you're probably significantly younger than I, but I'm 53.

And my entire life, it's been up until a few years ago, it's been progress, progress, progress, the advance of democracy, the advance of, progress, the advance of democracy, the advance of liberal democracy, the advance of rule of law, the advance of freedom, the advance of all these concepts. And just in the last few years, I'm like, wow, you know, be careful what you wish for because I always wonder why I'm so lucky that my generation got this. But now, if we don't get our act together, the next generation, our children's generation is going to inherit a much less perfect world and potentially

with very bad ramifications. And so I was writing a press release just a few minutes ago with my team about a scholarship program that we're about to announce to help Ukrainian students. And you know, this is what can happen with totalitarian regimes are in control and with their autocracy and you don't really have democracy. They can enter war for frivolous purposes and they can make your own people have horrible sacrifices and destroy other people's.

And it really is high time that all of us recognize in America and in the world that nobody else is going to fix this for us that all of us every single day with every single interaction with every single citizen that we talk to and we come in touch with. We have the power and the responsibility to move back our nation and our world and our humanity into what makes us a great species, which is be curious, be compassionate, be courageous, and adopt the skill sets that we aspire to. Yeah, there's one of my favorite quotes from Senaika, I wanted to share with you today because it seems like it fits exactly not just with your overall philosophy, but you're talking

about it now. Senaika says in one of his letters, he says, with every person you meet, there is an opportunity for kindness, right? And this idea that these aren't these abstract ideas like justice or discipline or courage, even wisdom. These aren't things that we just like demand of politicians or we demand of the world. Like they start with you individually and how you treat the person in front of you in this moment, whether it's a total stranger or someone you're married to, you always have this opportunity to decide how you're going

to act. Even when it feels like they don't deserve that, even when you've not gotten that back in return, even when that's going to cost you, like the idea that these individual interactions matter and that other people matter and their dignity matters. That seems to be, as you're saying, something that we've lost. It's not that we ever fully had a grasp on it, but we at least, we at least to use the monitor. We used to, at least, signal that that was a virtue.

Now, we're like openly embracing the opposite of that. We go, I don't want to be politically correct. I'm just going to call people whatever I want. Or we seem to be going away from even the ideal of treating people with respect and how you would like to be treated and all that. Yeah, and I think it's not to say that Ryan Holley or Daniel Lumezki don't make mistakes of sometimes

losing our temper or making the mistake, but to aspire, but most important, like you said, to remember that how you behave in every single interaction with yourself and with our human beings is ultimately who you are. Yes. is ultimately who you are. And the journey and the how is actually not just as important, but from increasingly what I think, more important than the destination. I used to think just a few years ago that where you're heading and achieving something and arriving at destination was who you are and who you become. And our society tends to see it that way, right? Like they see

the geochief that level, so it's just, did you get here? Where have you gone? They measure you. But the truth is that the more I think I'm at, the more I observe it, far, far more important is how you're acting at every moment and and and a accumulation of all of them because everyone obviously is going to get some wrong and like an act like an ass or make a mistake. But do you in those moments that try to reflect and try to just slowly every day try to remember that the world is what we make of it and that in all of those little interactions it's really ultimately how we all as a society choose what type of society we're going to live in and be and and for me one of our important moments related to this round was I was at a dinner with a very

very important humanitarian leader someone that a lot of people know, very highly respected, and who's done a lot of important things for society, and we sat down for the dinner, and this person was an absolute jerk towards the waiter. But just like demeaning and arrogant and patronizing, it was horrible to watch this. And I asked myself, how does this person think that they can be a Nobel Prize winner in their pursuits, but they not just make a little mistake, but act like an absolute ask for two hours to people that are serving you. to people that are serving you. And I think some people, including myself at times, getting the trouble of thinking that because you're doing something really important,

then those daily little things don't matter. That's just completely wrong. I mean, in fact, those things matter as much as or more. Well, because you don't know you're actually going to end up there, right? So I think I was just reading about Harry Truman, whom I'm writing about a lot in the book that I'm doing now.

And Truman gives a speech in the 40s, sort of railing against Andrew Carnegie. He's like, you know, you guys all remember him as building these wonderful libraries and as good that he did as a philanthropist. He's like, but those libraries, he said, are soaked in the blood of the miners that he paid these horrible wages to and he's sent down in these terrible conditions. Like I think people tell themselves, oh, I'm going to be good later.

Like after I make money, after I'm successful, then I'm going to give back what I think's interesting about the companies that you've found it, and I would consider you a peer of John Mackey in this sense, where I interviewed it not too long ago, it's saying, hey, I'm going to be a capitalist, and I'm going to try to be successful. I'm going to try to give back after I'm successful. But I also, I don't want to pursue my business success in a totally a moral fashion and then be moral later. How can we build those moral components into the business, into the day to dayness of what we do? Because who knows?

We don't know how successful it's going to be. We don't know how long it's going to take. The idea that you're like delaying doing the good seems misguided and kind of a little self-serving. Yeah, I've seen that a lot in business, but it goes further. It's not just that it's not the way you should live your life. It's also not optimal even for business.

Like, if you ask kind team members that were there or are there now that during, you know, that I've known the kind culture for many years, they will all tell you, not 10% or 100% or 99% will tell you that the singular reason why we had the trajectory that we've had and this was right is because of the culture and the values that we instituted in our company. Like, yeah, we have an incredible brand,

and we learn how to be true to our brand, and we have a commitment to excellence, which is part of our culture. But first and foremost, it's, you know, we call it kind and hungry values. And the kind values that are about the how, and the hungry values about where you get it to. So the hungry values is like don't become placent

and you know, have a commitment to access try to achieve the most, have a standard of excellence and just, but the kind values are about team orientation, it's not about meets, about we approach everybody with respect, work together, it's the how that matters the most. And I think that's why people loved coming to kind away at such good ability to track the most amazing talent. And because it was just fun to work with other people that were all together pursuing an enterprise

doing an enterprise with those values. And I think it's not just that you, that it's kind of silly to make money now, and then donate later, you're actually not optimizing your organization. I have a friend that many years ago challenged me and said, no, you know, DCO of this company is always gonna not perform you, Daniel, because he only focuses on growing

the top line. Look at his financial trajectory. He's always going to beat you because you're achieving this balance and you want to have top line but you also want to have how ultimately he's going to always have a perform you. And when he said that to me, you know, I'm like, well, maybe it's true, but today that company tanked, because for a while they were doing that, and eventually they burnt everybody out and people left that company wet to their competitors. And they're still a much, much larger company than Kindes,

but you know, kind of achieved a ton and still maintaining that momentum and as a percentage of growth and continue to grow probably even nicer. But so what rates are you running? Are you trying to get there the fastest or are you trying? I think people sometimes, there's no one definition of success. The idea that the company that's most successful is the company that makes the most money. I mean, we'd all be in oil companies or something, right?

Like if you were optimizing primarily for financial gains to yourself, I mean, like even doing a consumer good, it's like you should have made a digital product, right? Like you already chose a bunch of decisions before you even started your company around that culture where you said financial success is not the most important thing to me in the world. I'm not a sociopath. 100%. 100%. And I don't think that the many people that were financial success is their sole motivator, primary motivator, our sociopaths. But I do think that they miss the boat and they

don't understand that we're putting this world. Like, you're not going to think that money, you know, once you die, like, yeah, and making this a better world is you know, once you die, like, yeah, but making this a better world is definitely what about gives me a lot more meaning or trying to and it's much harder by the way, Ryan. It's infinitely hard, you know, I've started many civic initiatives that want to empower moderate Palestinians and Israelis for the last 20 years and try to help resolve their Israeli conflict. Just simple issues like that. Yeah, yeah.

And we've tried projects. You know, you're part of a, we're very grateful that you're part of Stards with Oz, which is a movement we're starting to create here in the United States to try to help empower American citizens with a recognition that they have the power and the responsibility through their daily actions and their daily habits to make this a very world. But you know, engineering, that type of change is far harder than making great tasting products and, you know, and doing well. But it gives you so much more meaning without any doubt. I mean, there's no even a comparison. Ah, the Bahamas. What if you could live in a penthouse above the crystal clear ocean working during the

day and partying at night with your best friends and have it be 100% paid for. FTX Founder's Sam Bankman Freed lived that dream life, but it was all funded, with other people's money, but he allegedly stole. Many thought Sam Bankman Freed was changing the game as he graced the pages of Forbes and Vanity Fair. Some involved in crypto saw him as a breath of fresh air from the usual Wall Street buffs with his casual dress and ability to play League of Legends during boardroom meetings. But in less than a year, his exchange would collapse. An SPF would find himself in a jail cell, with tens of thousands of investors blaming him for their crypto losses. From Bloomberg and Wondery, comes Spellcaster, a new six-part docu-series about the meteoric

rise and spectacular fall of FTX, and its founder, Sam Beckman-Freed. Follow Spellcaster wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to episodes Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Yeah, it's sort of like what are you trying to do really? You're trying to have impact. We're all just trying to have impact.

And there's different ways of measuring that impact, but it's oftentimes the simplest measures of that impact miss the biggest things. So if you're like, who's the most successful entrepreneur in the world? You know, it's like who's made the most money or who's the best coach, right? It's like who's won the most games. But really the best coach is the coach who's influenced the most other coaches, right?

Or changed the game in positive ways, right? Or you know, who's the greatest baseball player of all time? You could look at the stats, but it's hard to beat Jackie Robinson because the greatness with which he played was it transcended just his on the field performance. I mean, if he had not performed, if he hadn't been an MVP, if he hadn't been a great base dealer, if he hadn't been great, it would be less impressive. It would still have been a pioneer. But I think you got to create a bigger scorecard by which you measure your life.

Think about some of the companies, the social media companies, and I'm sure you know the founders where the company has been an ordinarily successful, but it's probably had a negative externality on the world in a lot of ways. And, you know, at the end of your life, as you're again trying to philanthropically make up for that, you know, you're probably gonna wish that you've made some day-to-day decisions earlier than that that could have had a bigger impact. But it goes back to what you said earlier,

what your initial choice is, what? Because all of us as human beings have the challenge that we rationalize things to make them consistent with our financial or other interests. So if, if out the cake, you decided that you're gonna sell tobacco or e-sniggrets, and I had this experience

with people that I met that went into those industries and they found out, it's, well, e-sigrets are better than tobacco. I'm like that's bullshit, but people will you know in the social media companies will go through incredible pains to explain, but they're not actually disseminating information that they're just supposed to encourage free market and they will rationalize so much to try to convince themselves that they don't need to have more responsibility to set a better impact in society. So I think how you structure your business and what you end up choosing to do

will be really, really important because everyone was like, do I have the strength Do I have the strength and I've posited this to myself before? Like, if I were to find out that almonds are causing, excuse me one second. Yeah, I'm with you. If I were to, my son was coming in. I know, that goes. If I were to find out that

almonds cause harm to your body, and that's absolutely not the case to the truth. Yes, there's enormous evidence that people that eat tree nuts and particularly almonds live longer than people that don't. But if I were to see a data study that challenged that, would I easily accept it? And I wouldn't, I would try to find a way to convince myself that the other, so I chose at the gate to make healthy snacks with nutrition of the ingredients because that's what I thought was the opportunity. But had I chosen to, you know, make products where the first thing you were doing was sugar

and data came to show me that sugar's bad. Would I have this strength to change my course? So I think all of us are weak human beings. Well, have you heard that expression? It's not a principle until it costs you money, right? Like it's easy. You know, it's like I was just going through this. So I said, that's a really powerful statement.

I think it's just an expression, but all the great moments in human history, it's not a meaningless sacrifice. It's, you know, whether you agree with what Colin Kaepernick did or not, it cost him his career, right? And he could have, he could have given that up at any time. He could have said, I don't agree with it, right? Muhammad Ali, same thing, right? I think about this, I do a leather edition

of one of my books and we found this great, it was a small company, and they manufacture in Belarus and I've worked with them for many years. And then suddenly, Belarus is complicit in the invasion of Ukraine. It's basically a puppet state of Russia. And I was talking to a politician, I know it was more occluded.

And I was like, hey, what do you think? He's like, look, it's basically Russia. He's like, you're basically just doing business with Russia. It's not against the sanctions at this moment, but you're basically doing business with Russia. And I was like, great. Okay. Now, I have to think about what I do.

It costs a ton of time to find a new manufacturer. My manufacturing costs are twice as high, right? So it's a, but you have to ask yourself what is sleeping at night worth or what is, what are your principles actually worth? But I, like you said, neither of us are perfect. There are so many times in my life where maybe I was working for someone and they were doing something I didn't like. I didn't immediately march into their office and be like, if you don't change, I quit.

Right. We always find a way to not have to pay that price that is the principle because sometimes it feels selfish to do it. The humility that you have in sharing that is what we only have in both directions. Like when when Russia invaded Ukraine, I immediately advocated that kind cease selling in Russia. And we did. But it was an easy decision. We only had like three million dollars in sales, two team members that wanted to be evacuated. We only had like $3 million in sales, two team members that wanted to be evacuated. We evacuated them. It was not the most painful decision.

I felt that other CEOs should also do this, because you know, the stakes are very high. I mean, you cannot allow dictators and totalitarian leaders to get away with impunity, with destroying and invading the macrosies without expecting the little catch-up with you. But I didn't want to be overly judgmental about when and how and what good, because I didn't have a $10 billion business that I needed to close overnight. And I really commended and applauded those that did have the courage.

And so I think we need to have the humility to try to understand what people are, but also to have a principle for us to push ourselves and our fellow citizens to try to move in that right direction. And one of the biggest things around is when you said earlier about what are you choosing to measure? Because if all you're measuring are these external things about financial success, you're actually going to get caught with problems. And I had a philosophy professor when I was at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas.

I think his name was Dr. Steve Lupert Foy. If he's hearing this, I want him to know that I think a lot more often than he realizes. And he once told me that he was doing a dissertation on why having a commitment to excellence and to grow and to maximize things was not necessarily good. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like my economics professor, Dr. Bright tells me, you know, like, you know, trade to do the best you can in the time you can do it. And why would we not want to measure and maximize greatness and do the most we can? And his point was at some point, if it's all about

financial growth or all about maximizing your performance, you're living behind other things that you might not be measuring that are no less important. And I've reflected about that through the rest of my time because your children are not going to raise their hand as strongly to put themselves in the calendar like my son just came in as, you know, other pressing financial things. And so you need to really be mindful of like measuring the things that are harder to measure. And that's really good point, right? Like, you're success with kind that gets you

on the front page or the cover of a magazine. But being just a good father, nobody throws you a parade for that. Nobody even knows, right? Except for a much smaller group of people. But at the end of your life, which one, which of those achievements is going to mean more than you? Or if one of those achievements were to disappear,

if it were to be taken from you, which would matter more, of course, right? But then, but then when we look at our calendars, when we look at where we spend our time, you know, it's clear what our actual priorities are. Yeah, absolutely. And also you read a lot. I don't read as much as you do, but it strikes me and terrifies me that a lot of the most successful people were not the best parents. Yes.

And like, you know, my father was amazing because he was extraordinarily successful but he was just, he had no, I guess because he was living in a second life, everything. He was just so easy going, and he's probably where his children he never thought, he didn't seem to have an ego, which is so hard for me to truly understand

because I unfortunately have my share of ego. And I just aspire to try to be more like him, but it's not easy. Yeah, but isn't that interesting, the impact that he has through you by modeling those traits, it's now a thing that you're measuring yourself against all the time, right? So it's hard to measure, you know, there's not a lot of quantifiable metrics for like, what is no ego being a good father, etc., except the examples of the people around us. So we have an enormous impact by

what we were saying earlier by deciding to be good by treating people well by doing these things. It doesn't seem like it really matters not at this not like the scale of starting a company or running for public office or whatever but when we model good behavior, it actually gets inputted in the minds of the people who know us as a perennial example of either what to be like or what not to be like, and that's multi-generational impact right there. Remind me, your journey, how did you become a philosopher king

and how would you, where did, did your parents in that field or? No, not at all. Not at all. I was in college and I was at this conference and I went up to someone and I asked them what books they were reading. And he was like, I'm reading Epic Titus, one of the Stoke philosophers.

And that book recommendation changed my life. So it's the same thing, right? Like you never know the kind of impact that you can have on a person's life and it's like, like he could have said, hey, I'm busy, I'm between talks, leave me alone, like I don't wanna talk. You know, he would have been really lost

in the major, what were you studying? I was studying political science. I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but it ended up opening up a whole sort of different direction of my life from this one, you know, sort of singular encounter. Why have you done so effectively? What is it that makes you be so accessible because philosophy pivots a lot of people, but I find that what you're doing, I need more and more people like, yeah, no, no, I love

it. It's really digestible. What is it that you're doing to make it accessible? I think it's two things. One, I picked a philosophy that is about practical application, as opposed to theoretical and abstract. But I was a research assistant for this writer, Robert Green, for many years. Robert Green wrote the 48 laws of power andy and a bunch of other wonderful books.

But what I learned from Robert was the power of story to illustrate ideas. So like the first law of power in Robert Green's 48 Laws of Power is never outshine the master. He doesn't just say, hey, here's why you shouldn't outshine the master. He illustrates stories. I think it's, I'm forgetting the guy's name, but it's somebody who worked, it was this character in France who survives like the French Revolution and all the counter swings because he never makes himself bigger than the person he's working for, right? And he figures out how to play that. The point is, Robert always illustrates things with stories. And I think that's why my books have been successful is that I'm

not explaining the stoic philosophy. I'm showing the stoic philosophy. And that that mantra of show don't tell has sort of informed my approach to writing. And then I think the other part is my books are very short. My daily emails are very short. I just try to keep things very tight and simple because I realize most people are very, very busy and they just need a little thing to help them. They don't want a 2000 word essay or whatever. But I think it was Benjamin Franklin that said, brevity is the soul of wit.

And somebody else I don't know who said, if you need to page, I can give it to you quickly, but if you need to pay, I'll say it'll take me a few days. It's much harder to be concise. Is that for you, too? Does it take you longer to edit yourself down? Or that's just how you are now, you poor? Oh, that's a good question. I think I generally try to write short and tight, but then when I edit,

like I have a book coming out in September about discipline or temperance, we were talking about this a while ago last time you and I talked. But like the process of editing for me was a process of cutting and cutting and cutting. You know, the Steve Jobs thing, he would go around and be like, what have you said no to?

What did you get rid of? I think about it in terms of subtraction or addition by subtraction as the expression goes. It's mostly about you want whatever the minimum that you could have, that's what you wanna have and that's better than too much. Yeah, and I learned that at Kine that initially we wanted to tell every feature we had in

our products and it became impossible to relate to our package. The more we became minimalist, the more that we like each line speak for itself and each the design became more and more and more and more minimalist and more that ourselves would grow. Obviously we'd show the product and that was a predominant And obviously we'd show the product, and that was a predominant thing. And we didn't want to distract people with all sorts of logos and designs. It was very simple.

And it worked. It took us longer to design packaging that quote unquote, sad less. But it actually said, far more by saying less. And I feel like the decision to show the bar. Like, that's pretty common place now But I don't think that when I'm trying to think about whenever the first time I had a kind bar that wasn't a common practice When you did it was it no correct. It was very

Controversial to and everything we were doing at kind was very back then people felt were crazy to Show all of your knots and people when I would go even to my friend John Machia, all those ones, I didn't pitch to John, but to his team. I originally showed the kind bar product and they're like, I don't know where I would merchandise is it look, put it with your nutritional bars, your health is, I was like, well, no, I really can't because that's not what an nutritional bar looks like. And I'm like, what do you mean? And they will open it. And it looked like astronaut food.

And I'm like, that's the point. I'm simplifying to give you products that we nature intend. They would whole nots not master a data beyond recognition. And but initially a product with a transparent wrapper and with what you could see, a minimally processed, holy craft of bread, seemed to the natural store buyers to not actually fit. And then, but once we put it in there,

the consumer told us, no, that's what we want, that's what we need. We need nature, we need real food, and we, you know, started working from there. I have to imagine that decision also keeps you a little bit honest too, right? Like, so you're making decisions that are essentially forcing functions.

Like, you call it kind, so now you can't, you know, you can't be an asshole boss, because that's in the name. You know, you can see the product, it can't be covered in sugar. Like, the decision to be transparent is I think an underrated decision because it then obligates you or forces you to do things that maybe, you know,

there's the Bible verse, evil hates the light, right? When you deliberately shine light on something, there's two things to be recognized. In terms of the transparent wrapper and the transparency, without any doubt what you said is true. And when competitors started copying us, sometimes they said, all transparent wrapper, this church is by wrapper.

Then they would spotlight a horrible looking breath and that would be work. And they would go back and they'll pay wrapper. But transparency is a philosophy. I think you're right, it's very important, but you're setting, then you're setting up a high bar that you need to live up to same with the main curve. I cannot tell you though, when I launched kind,

I had understood the implications of our what I was getting into. We were trying to come up with a brand that had a human adjective that would speak to the three pillars of the product, kind to your body, body, kind to your taste buds and kind to your world. And so kind to your body was about nutrition, dense ingredients, kind to your taste buds was about delicious and kind to what was about spying to kindness. But I hadn't connected the dots that by calling it kind,

when I would be introduced to someone, I say, oh, you're the kind guy, and they would expect for me to be kind. And sometimes it's extraordinarily intimidating because I am a human being. I'm as fragile and can make as many mistakes as anybody can. But I know that my kids wants to come in. But it actually in the long run while maybe it's calling not just me, but all of my keen to higher standard. And sometimes we're going to disappoint

people because they're not perfect. It is actually one of the best things that has happened to kind and to the team. Like if you ask team members, I keep hearing, do you know, I do every three months and meet all of the new people that we've hired at kind because it used to be that we were seven people. I knew everybody and I think it's important

for me to connect with every new team member. So, you know, I meet 30, 40 people every quarter. And many of them tell me, or people that have been there for a while, that they find themselves, try to let them do it. They find themselves holding themselves to that standard. And because we're all on bass,

others we need to represent. And they find themselves finding aspiring to try to have kindness as a state of mind. And it's a really beautiful thing. It actually makes us better human being. So it is dangerous because you're setting yourself to potential criticism where anybody can remotely see that you didn't live up to that,

but net, net, I think it's a better way to live life. Well, I think about that as far as stoicism goes, because I came to stoicism as a person who is interested in it, and then I succeeded in it as a writer, right? That's my job. My job is to write about things and to communicate ideas, the struggle of having to, and I have a little note card next to my desk that just says, are you being a good steward of stoicism? Like the fact that I'm now recognized as being a face of or a part of this thing, it's wonderful.

It's also an obligation, right? Or a responsibility that like you can't possibly live up to, but if you don't aspire to it, then you are, you are, you are failing. Do you know what I mean? In particular friction points, and now, do you show me yours and I'll show you mine? My name is a parent. I feel like I often don't live up to the kindness

that my dad showed me. And it also comes to what you were alluding to earlier. My father was a great coach. He taught me by showing me and by asking me questions comes to what you were alluding to earlier. My father was a great coach. He he taught me by showing me and by asking me questions and you know I just he's level of parenting was just so much superior to mine. I'm very efficient and very impulsive so I when I want to teach my kids a lesson I just tell them rather than asking the questions for them to figure it out and And I keep striving to become what my dad is,

but I'm just a long ways away from it. And so if they, I just don't, I think like I'm, what do you call it? Is it called a fake or a farsante in Spanish? Farsante, how do you say, imposter? I feel like I'm an imposter, particularly when I think about whether I'm being, you know, as great as I could be.

I strive to it, but I, that's an out of opportunity to me. For me, you seem like you're falling short on your stoic pursuit. The two big ones for me are sort of like temper, frustration. Like when you're strict with yourself and you have high standards and you expect and want things to be a certain way it's hard to tolerate Things that violate those standards even though they're not from you and those people didn't sign up for it So like being hard on people is a big one for me and letting things go and and sort of just I want them this way

This is how I need them and then they're not that way. And like, not being kind in that, you know, communicating, how do we get from here to there? That's the big one. And then I think the other one, I have very much admire people who make pure ethical decisions who live by a very clear ethical code. But like we were talking about earlier,

you can know what you want in or who you want to be in theory. You can have the code, but the, but the doing it, even when it costs you, or when it's inconvenient, I'm very much in awe of people who seem to be able to do that without ever coming up with reasons, without ever, you know, doing the wrong thing. You know, like I very much admire people who are just like, like, oh, this, this, this then came my way, but I don't agree with that. So like I'm turning it down.

I'm more like, let me ask you two questions. Let me ask you two questions. First, in terms of stoicism, the stoicism as a philosophy also allow you to aim for excellence and to try to not tolerate mediocrity. In other words, it's okay for you to demand that from your team members because you're aiming for excellence or those toysism discourage that way of thinking. I think it does.

So there's two instances in Marcus Aurelis' life. So one, he writes in Meditations Align, which I think about all the time. He says, tolerant with others strict with yourself, which is I think a great set of rules for life. But as emperor, he was well known for, it is said that if someone was sent his way, or you inherited disappointment or that appointment or this person, he would use what was good about that person and accept or make the most of what was bad about that person, right? Like Lincoln, he was a pragmatist and that he could have people that he disagreed with or work with imperfect people.

And his stepbrother, his co-embror was a good example of this as well. They couldn't have been more different, but he talks in meditations about how much he loves this person, how much he learns from him, how much his flawed character improves his own. So, I like to think that Stoicism works for that way, but it's hard. I was reading about Kobe Bryant. Kobe Bryant couldn't deal with the fact that he was not surrounded by Kobe Bryant. But there's only one Kobe Bryant, that's how it works. But it's hard when you want things to go a certain way and people can't get it there.

What about the balance in you were talking about this also earlier, and I've been lately thinking a lot about I'm struggling a lot with, I am a consummate moderate. I really believe in temperance, I believe in balance, I believe in listening, I believe in being compassionate towards, and I find myself very frequently, my wife and I are like, oh my God,

I can't believe this couple, that this in their decision, it might be family members, my siblings, my friends, and then we find ourselves in the same situation. I redo the same thing and like, you know what? Don't judge till you're actually leaving to it. Like you said about like the, you know, it's only principle once you have the cause. When you are actually in that situation, will you act differently? It's so much easier to judge. But in terms, the one thing that I've been struggling a lot

is people that are like purest, and then they have this set of standards that they live by. But then they're maybe judgmental. They're not pragmatic enough. And at starts with us, I have team members that are like, very, very progressive, very, very conservative. And then I'm trying to encourage us listening to the other.

And they're like, well, you're sacrificing basic principles that we cannot sacrifice. And so I don't know how to answer to that because, you know, I say everything in moderation, including moderation, because some type of moderation is not the answer. There's a really good book called Lincoln's Virtues by William Lee Miller that I think you might like. They really changed how I saw Lincoln, because we tend to see Lincoln as this ideologically pure man, right? He's eradicate slavery, he fights the Civil War, he's this, he is like what we want our politicians to be. But it's ironic that we think that because we forget that Lincoln was a politician, he wins elections,

he loses elections, he compromises with radicals and also essentially traders, we forget, like we go, oh, they're just playing politics with this. But that's the job of a politician, right? Like we forget that the political system that we have is designed around compromise, not the compromising of principles exactly, but about everyone not getting exactly what they want, right? And like we sometimes, we admire these, there's in the Stoic Lord, there's this figure Cato who refuses to compromise. And there's this moment where he's approached by Pompey, this is

before the rise of Julius Caesar, he's approached by Pompey who says, hey, like I have a young daughter, you have a young son, or conversely, I have a young son, you have a young daughter, we should marry our families together. It'll be a political alliance, right? And Kato looks at him and he says, you cannot buy me through my children. He like refuses this, this, you know, bribe essentially. But the result is that Pompey goes and does the exact same thing with Julius Caesar instead. And what Plutarch, the historian says, you says, the tragedy of Cato is that by being so pure, he brought about the exact kind of political corruption he was standing against. And I think about that a lot.

Obviously, you want to be principled and clear and you want to be willing to sacrifice for that. But if that becomes sort of obstinacy or self-righteousness, the whole system breaks down. Can I ask you another question? I perhaps because I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor and perhaps you could say I'm a Jewish Mexican and I'm always worried about everything. I see the world we're entering and I'm terrified. You know, we talked about how politicians lately are just so nasty to us.

They basically have lost that like, they punched down, you know, years ago, a political leader wouldn't start attacking a 17 year old in a speed, like now they punch down like anybody. It is, for me, it's very scary because when you control the instruments of state, you should have the dignity to, for sure, don't put a teacher level. And for those reasons and many other reasons, I'm very worried about the state of our country. But then some people are saying, Daniel,

this has been here before. The United States has always been very imperfect. This is not anything different. Don't worry, don't sleep. We're gonna get it. Yes, we can work on it, but it's gonna self-quake. You being a student of history, do you see, do you sleep well at night?

Because you're like, you don't get it? Or do you're like, oh no, this is on charity territory? It's attention, right? I think stoicism would say, even if it is getting terrible, you have to sleep at night because it's not entirely in your control. But I do worry for the same reasons that you do. There's that, there's that quota when the dogs of hate

are loose, none of us are safe, right? And I think what alarms me is not just the punching down, but the embracing of really abhorrent ideas and language. I won't name names, but I think you and I both know to young, talented, otherwise brilliant men who are running for political office in this country, who share similar backgrounds to us, probably similar ideology to us, who probably would be quite competent in office and probably competent running companies also.

And when I see how they're running their campaigns, the things they're willing to say and do to curry favors with certain, either gatekeepers or parts of the electorate. I really get nervous that we are unleashing forces that once they're unleashed, they look a lot like those forces we saw on January 6th, right? That are really hard to round back up. Like we're politicians that preceded them normalized, really, really important behaviors.

And some of us have rationalized to say, well, that's okay because you need to change this. This is the game. What you don't realize is that what's made America at such an extraordinary country is that we do have those boundaries of respect and kindness and that's what's allowed. Like democracy doesn't work if you don't have it. Like you see, you know,

they're legislatures have its front plan to do it. You see, yes. We don't want to become that. So I think it's right. Hopefully, if all of us stand up and say, that's not acceptable. We're not going to accept that. We don't want that for our children. We wouldn't accept that in our schools. We're not going to accept that from our politicians, but it all was needed to start really living a little bit closer to the values that we

aspire to live by. That's, and that's the great moment in, in, there's two great moments in John McCain's life. I would say political life, actually a handful, but when it, when he's running against Obama and that, that woman at the campaign rally calls him an Arab and McCain stops the rally and he says, no, you can't say that my opponents of fine man and a great American. That was, that's, to me, that's what America is. It's not illegal.

Today, in many, many segments of our population, that would be perceived as untowerable weakness. Yeah. It would be political suicide. Yeah. No. And like, to me, though, that moment is America in the sense that there was no law that said, you can't call your opponent in Arab, right? There's no law that says you can't play dirty and be gross and do all this stuff. But he's choosing as a man of honor to exercise self-restraint. You know what I mean? Not to say that's how right.

It takes a normal strength. Yes. To stand up to your supporters and have a one, one, one moment and say, I'm sorry, with all your respect, that's exactly. You and I have been in circumstances in public where you don't want to be mean to your supporter and the supporters. And so it actually, it's not a sign of weakness in the norm.

It's courage and strength and I think we just need to try to move in that direction. I think that's so right. I told this story before, but to me the moment of John McCain's life, the two, when he votes to uphold the ACA, even though he campaigned against it, because he felt like not because he didn't agree with getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, but because as a matter of principle, he felt that that was not how it should be done. The last act of his political life, one of the last major acts of his life was to was was that incredible act of principle. And then you think about the fact that he could have left that prison camp in Vietnam.

He could have skipped, he could have gotten special treatment, but he chose not to. You're ending our conversation with John McCain because he's one of my favorite favorite figures of all time. And I supported him. and I really, really think he's just one of those epic examples of greatness that today, sadly, many people don't recognize that. And I hope that we are able to get back to plotting and embodying and celebrating that type of self-fulence and courage. It takes just a ton. I agree.

And you're putting your money where your mouth is there. So I accrued those to you, and I'm happy to be a part of it. I really like this conversation. And you know, it is fair to say that there's a lot of people left behind that want to change the system. I totally agree that we cannot just engage in these conversations without bringing those left behind. Yes.

But we need to do it with kindness and respect and compassion and an action. Ryan, I look forward to seeing you soon and hanging out with you. See you soon. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stoke podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's amazing to us that over 30 million people have downloaded these episodes in the couple of years

we've been doing it. It's an honor. Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.