The Daily Stoic - The Curse Of Success | Morgan Housel PT 1

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

Ryan speaks with author Morgan Housel in the first of a two-part conversation to discuss his near death experience as a teenager, the ephemeral and potentially toxic nature of success, his latest book Same As Ever, and more. Morgan Housel is the New York Times Bestselling author of The Psychology of Money and Same As Ever. His books have sold over 4.5 million copies and have been translated into more than 50 languages. He is a two-time winner of the Best in Business Award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers, and winner of the New York Times Sidney Award. In 2022, MarketWatch named him one of the 50 most influential people in markets. IG and Twitter: @MorganHouselGrab a signed copy of Same as Ever and The Psychology of Money from The Painted Porch!\If you want to check out the Q&A with Ryan and Morgan, go to dailystoic.com/wealthy. If you want to listen to Ryan and Morgan’s first discussion from 2022 click here.✉️ 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.

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 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. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I did it again. I did it again. Well, actually, I think when I did this week's interview, my ankle was pretty severely messed up

and then I wasn't feeling any pain on it anymore and I was back to running. I was taking it easy, but I was back to running and I thought all was well. Then I was walking down the stairs on my house on Friday and oh man, I rolled it so bad. I, I, I heard this pop and, uh, all these sounds started coming out of my mouth, uh, which I was no longer in control of. And, uh, I laid, I just sort of, I couldn't stand and I'm on the ground.

And then eventually my wife came on me and she's like, why are you laying on the ground shivering? You know, and I think I went into shock. I rolled it. I sprained it. Maybe the worst I've ever sprained my ankle in my life. And I had a talk. I'm taking the whole family to Kentucky to do this talk to the basketball and football

teams. So you know, immediate medical care was not a possibility. So wrapped it, flew, did the two talks, finished the dinner I was supposed to go to, went to urgent care. Thankfully, not broken, but I am out of commission for quite a while. It made me think, so there's a story of Epictetus where Epictetus is being tortured by his master and he says, I think you're going to break my leg. I think you're going to break my leg.

The master keeps doing it and, you know, he does break it. And Epictetus says, see, I told you. And I'm just not sure that's possible. Uh, maybe there was also some screaming and cursing involved, but I'm just not sure that was possible. Um, and so now I have the marathon of the recovery, which for me is not running. And I don't, it's too cold to swim unless I drive all the way to Austin. of the recovery, which for me is not running. And I don't, it's too cold to swim unless I drive all the way to Austin.

So try not to go too crazy. I'm trying to keep busy and I am. And I'm trying to learn a lesson from all this, which is that was my fault for not resting and recovering enough in the first place. You know, that's a painful lesson in more ways than one. Back to today's episode, one of my favorite authors, someone I've had on the podcast, I believe twice. I interviewed Morgan Halson, not just for the podcast back in 2022, and his wonderful book, Psychology of Money, but then he came on the wealthy stoic challenge that

we did, our course on what the stoics can teach us about money and finance, about how to be wealthy in the truest sense of that word, not just being financially rich. And he was in town. And so I had him out to the studio and we did a big two-parter interview talking about the decisions we make, the idea that we're in control of life or not, how we choose our identity and what success can and can't do to people. Morgan is a fantastic author. His book, the psychology of money is so popular in the painted porch. We are constantly running out. It sold millions of copies all over the world. And his new book, same as ever, is actually published by my publisher,

uh, portfolio, which is an imprint of Penguin random house. It's been off to an incredible start. Also, he signed a bunch of them in the bookstore. His books have been translated in more than 50 languages and he's a great writer. You can follow him at Morgan Housel on Instagram and Twitter. You can read his articles also over a collaborative fund and you can grab signed copies of his books, same as ever in the psychology of money at the paint and porch or grab the audiobook or e-book or physical books, anywhere books are sold.

If you wanna check out the Q&A with me and Morgan in the Wealthy Stoic Challenge, you can go to dailystoic.com slash wealthy. And I'll link to our episode from 2022 as well. If you want to focus more on your well-being this year, you should read more and you should give Audible a try. Audible offers an incredible selection of audiobooks focused on wellness from physical, mental, spiritual, social, motivational, occupational, and financial. You can listen to Audible on your daily walks. You can listen to my audiobooks on your daily walks and stillness is the key. I have a whole chapter

on walking, on walking meditations, on getting outside and it's one of the things I do when I'm walking. Audible offers a wealth of well-being titles to help you get closer to your best life and the best you. Discover stories to inspire sounds to soothe and voices that can change your life. Wherever you are on your well-being journey, Audible is there for you. Explore bestsellers, new releases and exclusive originals. Listen now on Audible.

We're still, we're just finishing. We still have to do a little construction. It's so cool. This is a barber shop. Wow, was it? So you bought this separately? You bought the bookstore and then this next? There's three buildings and they're the same building.

It's like in New York, you know, where like someone will do like, so, but those two over there are connected. So we did those and then this went on sale during the pandemic. And this had been in the people that built it still owned it. Yeah. Like the family, so it had been in, they'd owned, and it had been a barbershop since it opened in the 1880s.

Like different barbershops, obviously, but the guy, the reason they sold it to us is they were like, will you let the guy in the barbershop stay as long as he wants, which we did. And he had been in here since 1969. And then he passed away. And then we were like, what were we gonna do with it?

And I was like, it would be cool to keep it going. And then I was like, I don't wanna own a barbershop. So- So the next story is the bookstore and your office? Yeah, I'll show you the book store and the record store. And then upstairs is his offices. And then in the back is where we do like some of the daily stoic fulfillment

and then all the e-commerce for the bookstore. And then this is studio. I'm figuring out what to do in the front. And then it's gonna be my wife's office and then like the production stuff. Do you work here every day or you work from home? Most days. Yeah, I don't like,

I don't really work from home anymore because I don't know about you. When you start taking your kids to school, it's like you're already leaving the house. Yeah. So like leaving, I just come here. Cool, love it. I didn't know you grew up. Where did you grow up? Tahoe you grew up in Tahoe? Yep, truckie. Okay, so I grew up in Sacramento and then it's amazing I actually did to make it more specific then I grew up for half my childhood in Placerville Okay, and then and then truckie after that so I lived in plow

We were we are in Placer County technically on the far edges, and then my parents had a little cabin on the West Shore, so I would go to Homewood almost every weekend. Of course, yeah. So cool. I'm sure that was probably the same time. Yeah, when I saw it in the book, I was like, wait, I don't know why I thought you were like an East Coast person or something. I don't know why. I lived in Seattle now. I moved there four years ago. Before that, my wife and I were in D.C. for eight years. Okay, but yeah, I were in DC for eight years.

Okay, but yeah, I wasn't thinking like Tahoe. And then this all probably, that we both grew up, I was snowboarding, it sounded like you were skiing. This sounds much fancier now than it was then. Because when I was growing up, going to skiers was like $30 a day, $40 a day? Yes. Now it's like 250, I don't know how anyone does it.

It's really sad that it went from, you could be a lower middle class family, take your whole family skiing. And now it's to take a family of five skiing for one day, for one day is probably 1200 bucks. Yeah, since I mean, a ski pass at Homewood for a kid was like $300 or $400. And then you could go as many times as you wanted.

So yeah, it was a very middle class activity. I'm trying to think what an equivalent activity of it is now. I think a lot of that is for if you're in like competitive traveling soccer or lacrosse, whatever it is, then it gets pricey. I'm actually going to Tahoe tomorrow with my son. I'm gonna go skiing with him. We're flying into Sacramento and at Sierra Tahoe,

which is where I was just went my home mountain growing up. And when I was growing up in the 90s, a day ticket was 25 bucks and now it's 175. And granted, I think a lot of what's happened is most ski resorts used to be owned by families and there were rich families that just owned it because it was cool. None of them made any money.

Now they're all owned by corporations. And corporations were like, well, we gotta make money. So everyone just jacked up their prices by literally fourfold. Yeah, we're getting a little far afield from what we should be talking about. But I was thinking, like, you know, everyone's talking about inflation

and then they talk about just brands jacking up prices. I think it's also what brands have realized. As you get more and more data, you realize what the brands and big companies have realized is that there's a customer that is not price sensitive at all. And so just like the reason first-class seats in an airplane become more and more expensive is that they'll essentially pay an unlimited amount

for that thing. And so it just jacks all the price. Because you can't do what's expensive for some people and cheap for some people. Something like skiing, it just has to be expensive for everyone. And they just jack the price up because they know that the people

who are gonna do it anyway are just gonna do it regardless of what it costs. There's some people, if you have a $9 million house, you're not even thinking about what a ski lift ticket costs. So you just do it. There's a lot of those items too too where if the market is rich people, the inflation rate is very likely going to track the growth of their assets over time,

not the general inflation rate. So what has the stock market gone up in the last 15 years? About 12% per year. What is the inflation rate for skiing, education, those things that pandering to rich people, it's going to match that level, not the overall inflation rate. No, that's a things that pandering to rich people, it's gonna match that level, not the overall inflation rate. No, that's a really interesting way to think about it. Yeah, so if you have a middle-class hobby

that's also aspirational, you're thinking about it what it was to you then, but then as the difference in income inequality has gone up and up, that activity that used to be accessible to you is now insanely inaccessible. Yes, completely, it's sad. What do you feel like you learned

doing something like that that's translated in your life? I mean, skiing. Like I think about, I got a lot of independence out of it. Like the idea that my parents would just sort of let me go on a mountain all day and then be like, we'll see you at four o'clock. There's not that many things that kids do like that anymore. It was great.

And it also, we had a team and we were traveling around, but it's not a team sport. It's an individual sport. Sure. And it was, I think that was really good for me to just be like, you're on your own here. You can't rely on your teammates to make the goal. You're like, either you suck or you're good and that's it's all on you. Yeah. And to learn that independence mixed with,

as you just mentioned, like a lot of these races where we would go to New Zealand in our summer, they're winter, we were 15, 16, and technically our coaches were watching us, but they were at the bar, they were not. And so we were 15, 16 thrown into New Zealand or the middle of Colorado and just been like, go have some fun.

And that level of independence was extraordinary. So I feel like we grew up very quickly doing that because we were not in high school. We were not being driven around by our parents. We were just wandering around by ourselves at that age. And so that level of independence was great. Although it almost killed you. It almost killed me.

Yeah. So growing up in Tahu, one day it was February 2001, and my two best friends, Brendan Allen and Brian Richman, we were skiing together as we had since our childhood. And we would ski out of bounds, which is you duck under the ropes that say, do not cross, but that's amazing skiing. Out of bounds, there's no chairlift at the bottom, so we would hitchhike back. We would ski until it spit us out on this backcountry road and we'd hitchhike back. As we're doing this, this one day in February 2001,

we're going, the three of us are skiing down and we triggered a small avalanche. And it like came up to our knees. It wasn't that big of a deal. You kind of just like ride around. We were like, whew. We got to the bottom and we literally like high five, like, oh, do you see that avalanche?

So cool. And we hitchhiked back. We get back down to the bottom of the mountain and Bren and Brian say, hey, let's go do it again. Let's go do that run again. For whatever reason, I said, I don't want to do it. I was like, I think hitchhiking freaked me out. I always thought we were going to be abducted.

And so I said, hey, let's do this. You guys go do it again. And I will rather than hitchhiking back, I'll drive my truck around, pick you up and we'll drive back. Said great, parted ways. Brandon and Brian went skiing. I went to go get my truck so I could go pick them up. 20 minutes later, I go to where I'm gonna meet them

to pick them up and they weren't there. And I didn't think much of it. I thought that they probably had hitchhiked back and like they just got tired of waiting for me so they left. So I'd drive back down to our locker room at the mountain. I expected to find them there, but they weren't there either. And I still didn't think that much of it.

Like we didn't have cell phones back then. And so people were comfortable being out of touch. The hours went on and eventually later that afternoon, Brian's mom called me at home and she said, hey, Brian never showed up for work today. Do you know where he is? And I told her, I said, we skied out of bounds. I was gonna pick them up.

They never showed up. Nobody's seen them since. And we put together that this was, we skied out of bounds. I was gonna pick them up. They never showed up. Nobody's seen them since. And we put together that this was, there's a problem here. Several hours later, we got the police involved, missing persons report. We eventually got search and rescue involved. When search and rescue entered the out of bounds area where I told them we skied,

they instantly found the fresh scars of a massive avalanche that had just occurred hours before. So the search and rescue knows that this is, they understand what happened here. After about nine hours of searching, the search dogs homed in on a spot in this avalanche debris field. And rescuers found Brandon and Brian buried

under six feet of snow. And it didn't really dawn on me until a little while later, like how close I was to going with them on that second run. And that if I did, the odds that I would have died are 100%. It was massive out. You can't outrun these things.

And then so like, it's this weird thing of the most important decision I ever made in my entire life was this brainless dumb decision to not go with them. And I didn't weigh the pros and cons. I didn't think it through. It was just like, oh, you guys go do it. I'm going to go do something else.

Right. And nothing else. No other decision I've ever made matters more than that. And I think everybody, including you, everybody has had one of those decisions, at least one of those. Of course. A brainless decision that literally saved your life.

I wish we should talk about that. But one of the things that's interesting to me is I think people have this, we were just talking about like what your parents you still allow you to do We have this sense that like parents are way too protective these days But I think it's also a reaction when you look back each generation looks back The things that their parents allow them to do and you're like that's insane. Yeah, why would you do that? Why would you allow your kids?

To be in a position where as idiots, they could make stupid decisions that could potentially change the course of their life, one direction or another. And so on the one hand, yeah, it gets, the world gets safer and safer because things get taken off the table, but it's also because you have more, you have each generation, you have more and more data

and horror stories about how easily it could go the other way. How fragile the world is. And just hanging by a thread with everybody. It's not just true for individuals, but like the macro level too, how much the world hangs by a thread. I use this story in same as ever about during the Revolutionary War, during the Battle of Long Island, George Washington and his troops were cornered by the British. And all the British had to do was sail up the East River in New York. They would have wiped them out. The war would have been over. No United States. That didn't happen because the wind was not blowing in the right direction that night.

So they could not sail up the East River. And David McCullough, the great historian, was asked, he said, if the wind was blowing in the other direction that night, would there be a United States of America? Without hesitation, he says no, never would have happened. So the entire existence of the country was just relied on which direction the winds were blowing on some random night in August, 1770, whatever it was.

And so I think when you hear enough of those stories, you realize how fragile all of this is. And then to me, this was kind of the core of Same As Ever. It's like, stop pretending that you think you can know what's going to happen next in the future. Sure. Because it all hangs by a thread in your individual life and at the macro level.

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Yes, yeah, it is weird, right? So there's sort of a paradox in the book and I think in life, which is on the one hand, history is the same thing happening over and over and over again, nothing changes, right? And then it's also true that each one of those historical events could have easily been something else. Like I think David McCullough said the one thing that you can't forget as a biographer, as a historian is the people living those events didn't know how it was going to go. And he said that it always could have been otherwise. And so that's the weird thing is that there's this sort of deterministic,

like we're all just along for the riotness of life and history and fate. And then also this kind of both great man of history, like one person makes one decision, and then also the wind or the elements or the football bounces one direction. And that changes the course of everything. Yeah, it's tough.

There's a great book that I love. I think it's the greatest economic book ever written. It's called The Great Depression, A Diary. It was written by this bankruptcy attorney in the 1930s during the Depression. And true to what you just said, when he's writing this diary in real time, he doesn't know that the Great Depression is going to end.

And it was very common back then to think it would not end. And a lot of countries in Europe at this time embraced fascism in order to get out of that. And you have all of these things like in the 1930s, in America, good people, pondering in these diaries, like maybe fascism is the right way to go. Maybe that's the right thing to do. Because they didn't know what was gonna happen next.

And it's fascinating to read that relative to every other history book where the author knows how it ends. And that is gonna color what they write in every single aspect. It was the same in World War II. Now we know that Japan surrendered in 1945. That was not a foregone conclusion.

You were gonna invade, the United States was gonna invade the Japanese mainland in 1945. That was not a foregone conclusion. You were gonna invade, the United States was gonna invade the Japanese mainland in 1945. And there were estimates that could take years in addition to that and kill maybe half a million Americans in the process. So there's all these alternative histories that easily could have occurred.

Yeah, so you have this, there's this kind of, it's a powerlessness and then also a very empowering idea that history can turn on a single decision. Your life can turn on a single decision. And then also the idea that you're in control is preposterous. Yes. I also think about like in our lifetimes, more modern,

virtually everything that has occurred in the last, that's important, that's occurred in the last 25 years in America is tied to September 11th, whether that was like monetary policy that led to the housing bubble or the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that led to budget deficits, so many things tie back to that. Then you think, what if at Boston Logan Airport

on that morning, the guy working at TSA security would have said, hey, you can't bring that box cutter on the flight. And just like wiped everything out. Sure. Everything from monetary policy to recessions to wars would have been different. Yeah.

Like there was not a single thing in America that would have been the same today if 9-11 did not have happened. Well, so Admiral McRaven was sitting in that chair yesterday morning. And he was saying he was at the White House when Condoleezza Rice came out into the hallway to tell them that they'd made the decision to invade Iraq. And he was saying, you know, there

wasn't any like music playing. Like there was no sense that that was a dramatic pivotal moment. Like obviously it wasn't something anyone was taking lightly and they knew of course it was significant. But he was saying, we were talking about it, it's like if that's a movie, it depending on when that movie is for, and the moment it's, they probably would have thought it as this dramatic epic moment.

And then now we understand it as a tragic foreboding moment, but in the moment you don't know, you just think you're making a decision. Like a business decision that somebody whispered to each other in the White House. don't know. You just think you're making a decision. It's like a business decision that somebody whispered to each other in the White House. Yeah, and there's probably,

if you've ever made a life changing or what you think is a significant decision, there's just this sort of getting excitement of just like, we're gonna do this thing. Do you know what I mean? It's the same decision. And I think this is important. This gives you a sense of history.

It's the same decision your family made. It's the same energy your family had. It's the same energy your family had. Are we gonna buy this car? You know what I mean? Or are we gonna move or should I take this job? And the people who are making the decisions at the level of like, are we gonna invade this country? Or are we gonna launch this bomb?

Or are we gonna put in place this, announce this economic policy? It's not that different. It is different policy, it's not that different. It is different, but it's not that different. It's just fucking people using imperfect information. Sign to manage uncertainty. Yes. And that's like, yeah.

And I feel like that, you're right. Like when I think about my wife and I's decision to have kids, to buy this house, to move to this city, most of those were more or less snap decisions in the moment. And I wanna think that like, we thought these things out and planned alternatively, like, weighed the pros and cons.

The truth is we didn't. It was like, oh, let's try this one. Well, that's the tricky thing. You know, Mark Manson's talked about that idea of like, hell yes or hell no, or fuck yes or fuck no. And I think it's good. It's a good rubric if you're just like, do I wanna have lunch with this person

or do I wanna go on this trip? People are going like really minor things. But when I actually think about the decisions that changed my life, when I think about dropping out of college, or I think about the decision to write my first book, you know, when I think about this investment or that, like big things that I've done,

the decision to do this bookstore, I was not, and anywhere close to fuck guess is the greatest idea. it's obviously gonna work. And in fact, that kind of certainty is probably a sign that you're a maniac. You know what I mean? It's almost always 51, 49. Yes, I did not wanna write psychology money

and I paid off for years and years and years. And even when I finally signed a contract to do it and I had one year to write it, I basically started writing it 10 months into that process. It was just delayed, delayed, I didn't want to do it. And of course, looking back, it was the most meaningful thing I ever did in my career and I never did not want to do it.

And then I can probably name a couple other things that I was so adamant that I wanted to do and were the right decisions and ended in hindsight I shouldn't have done. Right, I remember my agent, my agent had the idea for the Daily Stoke. I've had the idea for all of my books except for Daily Stoke. And my agent said, you know, here I'm thinking

like there should be this book of stoicism that people could start with. He had done a couple of daily books when he was a publisher, like he did The Daily Drucker and a few other books. He's like, I think you should do it. And he's like, I think it'll be your bestselling book, which wasn't, that's not how I make decisions

about what I do or not, like was this gonna be my bestselling or most financially renumerative thing. But I was like, okay, like, you know what I mean? Like, I didn't believe him in the set. Like that seemed like hyperbole to me. And then in retrospect, it was true or close to true. But what happens then when you hear something like that or you make decisions like that,

then you can take a really wicked lesson from that, which is that the prediction was correct. But in fact, the prediction and the outcome are two independent things. There's some correlation there, but there's not necessarily causation. And you can learn the wrong thing from having been, quote unquote, right.

When you wrote Daily Stoic, in your mind, what did you think it was gonna do in terms of sales and response? I mean, I can remember very vividly, I wrote the whole book, it's an unusual project to do to do a daily book because you're just doing a bunch of rent. You know, you're not thinking about it as a book until later.

You have to write. You're not like, what do I want to do on January 2nd? And then what's March 14th? Right. You can't. That's weird. There's no correlation between the entry and the day at first. So, so first I decided to sit down and first I had to pick like 366 quotes, then I had to write 366 entries

and then I arranged them and then I came up with themes. So it was kind of, it wasn't until later that I even got a sense of like what the book was. But then I remember the day before I was supposed to submit it, I sent it to the editor that I worked with, not at my publisher. And I was like, is this even good? I was like, should I do this?

I was like, I don't know how I feel about it. Like, I feel weird about it. Like, I wasn't, because it was so different and it wasn't a style I was super familiar with. And I, so I, and he was like, I don't know. Like he wasn't like, no, it's the best thing you've ever done. So there was what I remember from the writing to the up until publication.

And then even like for a while after publication, I remember the ambiguity of it. And I try to stay in the ambiguity of it because that's authentic and real and representative of where I was at the time. Not, okay, it spent two or 300 consecutive weeks on bestsellerless since, or it sold millions of copies since.

And it became this whole other thing with the email and the videos and pocket. I try to remember what I thought about it at the time because that's true and what is true after is independent or it's a made up narrative that connects a different conception with a different impression now because one, I think it's not honest so I'd try not to do it that way,

but two, it can bestow upon yourself a sense of prescience or brilliance or whatever that's not conducive to being right again in the future. Yeah, I think it's very true in venture capital as well. That the companies that make it and go on to be huge, at the time when the VC made that investment, it was not clear at all that this was gonna be a winner. And there were several companies in their portfolio

that the VC was like, this company has got it and they go out of business. It's always the case. When Uber went out to raise money, I mean, it sounded like a joke. It's the same, like most of these companies that do well sound like a joke when you pitch them at first. Uber is like, we think everyone should be a taxi driver.

And you're just gonna get in a car with it. It sounds ridiculous when you go out to pitch it. Well, people do this, they go, oh, the first time I laid eyes on my wife or my husband, I knew that was the, and no, you had an, look, there are some people and there's documentary evidence of it, which is, you know, that's unique and weird.

But no, what you had was the same flash of attraction that humans have when they find people attractive. And then it evolved into what it is now, and you're finding a way to make that consistent as opposed to something that changed over time or grew into something. And I do think it's important as you think about your success that you tell yourself

the humblest version of that possible. With The Obscores Away, when The Obscores Away came out, first off, it didn't hit any best seller list the week it came out. It probably sold three or 4,000 copies. No one was disappointed with it. I don'm not, I don't want to present it like it was some failure, but like it was, you know, like what most books do.

And then I had this idea that there was this thing called Bookbub, which had come out then, which is like an email that sends out a blast about deeply discounted e-books every day. And it had just sort of come out and a bunch of people I knew were using it and I was like, let's wait a little bit and then let's discount the ebook.

Let's do a one week promo where we discount the ebook from whatever they were, 9.99 then to 1.99. And so the publisher did that, I don't know, two or three months into the thing. And I don't know why no one's explained it to me since, but what happened was Amazon just like left it there. Like it just stayed at $199 or $290, at some deeply discounted price.

And I remember going, are you gonna ask Amazon to like, you know, increase it? And they were like, you know what's weird is like they're choosing to do this and they're paying the same, the same, it's not a discounted royalty to you, so you shouldn't care. And I was like, okay.

And it stayed that way for 11 months. And- Probably increased sales of the physical book too. Yeah, of course. So when you look at it, it's like it came out, it did like this and there was kind of like this. And then there was this sort of spike from the e-book. And then it kind of just went like that.

It was, so what happened was an idea which is not super marketable, an obscure book about ancient philosophy or a book about an obscure school of ancient philosophy comes out and then it's subsidized by the biggest retailer in the world, which creates, which lowers the barrier to discovery and it gives that book a chance. So that's ultimately why everything I've done since had a better chance of succeeding because I got that thing. And so the lesson I try to take from the obstacle

is the way is not I'm a genius, I wrote a book that popularizes school of philosophy and sold lots of copies. I go, actually I wrote this book and then I understood it had a certain barrier to entry and then I proposed a unique marketing idea that happened to be far more lucky or successful than I could have ever imagined.

And that's where the success comes from. Where it came from, yeah. I think in general, most book sales, particularly for big, big sellers, come from word of mouth. And therefore, what you need to do early on is just get it in as many hands as you possibly can. And if it's a good book, as your books are,

any book that sells that much is a good book. But you get it in as many hands as you possibly can. And if it's a good book, as your books are, like any book that sells that much is a good book. But you get it into people's hands so that they can go recommend it to their friends. And it's just like a virus. If for every person who buys your book, if they recommend it to more than one other person, it's just gonna go and go and go and go. And then so I think early on,

it's just like waving your hands as much as you can, getting into as many hands, discounting it to $1.99, so those people can go recommend it to their friends and their siblings, whatnot. Well, I've just been very cognizant of it because when I was at American Apparel, what I ultimately realized is, so Dove, who's the founder of this company, the idea on its face is absurd, right?

He's like, I'm going to make clothes in the US. They're not going to have branding on it. I'm going to run my own stores. I'm going to pay the workers a fair way. All these things that at each step of the way, people were like, that's a bad idea. That is economically impossible. That's not how we do things.

And then it succeeded, right? And so what he took from that, what a lot of entrepreneurs take from that kind of success is, I know what I'm doing. I'm a genius. I saw what other people didn't see, right? And so that's the curse. That's why so many successful people fail

to replicate that success. It's ego, it's hubris, it's this sort of narrative fallacy of I saw it and so I am a seer. And then that's what kills you. Almost the worst thing that can happen to you in investing is you're 19 years old, you open up a Robinhood account and you do really well. Because then you're like, I'm the next George Soros.

I'm good at trading options on penny stocks. It's the worst thing, it's the worst outcome you can have. One of the best things you can have is you open up a Robinhood account and you lose half your money. And then you're like, okay, this can be dangerous. I need to figure out how this actually works because what I just did doesn't work.

And it's this weird, I think a lot of kids in 2021 who opened Robinhoods accounts and doubled their money in a month, day trading, SPACs and whatnot. It was like the worst thing you could possibly happen to them because every one of them thinks they know what they're doing at this point. Yeah, it's the same worst thing you could possibly happen to them because every one of them thinks they know what they're doing at this point

Yeah, it's it's the same if you're like Genetically gifted in athletics early on right you think you're good as opposed to you have an advantage You haven't been so you don't actually develop the fundamental skill or the mastery of the or the mastery of the specific sport, how it works, you don't develop the ability to see the love of the game. What you love is being great at the game, right? I was talking to Shaka Smart about this, and he was saying, he's the head coach at Marquette,

he was at Texas, and he was saying that, the athletes say stuff like, I don't love it anymore. And he's like, what you don't love is, what you love is being great at it. You love being the best. You never loved it. You loved it being easy. And so if you don't, being successful early at something

develops this sort of false sense of what that thing is. What it is, yeah. Whereas if you're bad at it for a while and you stick with it, then you actually probably do love, you're loving the independent of the rewards, which is ultimately where you wanna be, whatever you do, you do it because you like doing it. And then the fact that you're paid well for it

or recognized for it or celebrated for it, that's like this little bonus. This is cool from George Sorrell. So where somebody asked him, he says, George, how old were you when you learned that you love investing? And he says, love investing. He's like, I hate investing.

I'm just good at it. And I think that's probably why he quit once he got rich enough too. Another thing on this topic that I always think about, so I grew up ski racing in Lake Tahoe. The two greatest ski racers from my era were Lindsey Vaughn and and and Julia Mancuso. Both of them by age five you could tell where they were going. It was

obvious and by the time they were 10 it was like they're gonna be the best in the world. There were a million miles ahead of everybody else. Another amazing skier from my era was Ted Leggety who in up until he was about 18 years old was good not great. He was like a good regional skier. And then he became by the time he was 25, the greatest giant slum skier to ever exist in history. And that like, I always think about that.

Like did Julia and Lindsay have just an absolute natural talent? So the time they were five, it was just like, they were so good. And was Ted more just like hard work. He just figured it out. And like the different skills, and both of those are like really admirable skills. But it's, I remember from Julia and Lindsay, I remember always thinking,

if you're gonna be a good skier, it's obvious by the time you're five. But then Ted just like completely broke that mold and shared like, no, you can become great 10 years into what you're doing. Yeah, or that it's basically a crapshoot for everyone. And if you're thinking it has to be a certain way, you're sort of missing the point.

And I think Ted gave so many 18 year olds hope that like, no, like I've been ski racing for 10 years and I'm not that great. But that was true for Ted too. And he became the best in the world. One of the things you talk about in the book that I thought was really interesting that I don't think we talk enough about,

especially people who write books for people who wanna be successful, is that a good chunk of these people are like just maniacs. Like they're either fundamentally broken or wounded in some way, or that actually the success is a byproduct of some profound dysfunction, and that you would not wanna be these people at all.

And in fact, they're not really these people. They can't help themselves. Yes, I mean, the most stunning example is Elon Musk, where it's like he has achieved some of the greatest success of any entrepreneur. He's going to Mars, he's building cars and whatnot. But the same personality characteristics that let him do that also have these negative sides

that people hate. His views on Twitter, his manners, whatever you want to call it, but that's all the same personality. And I think what people want is they're like, no, we want Elon to be the crazy engineer, but we want him to be nice and civil and polite. And you're like, no, that doesn't exist. It's the same person.

Bill Gates was the same. Walt Disney was the same. Walt Disney was the same. Steve Jobs was the same. They're all maniacs at their core. That's why they were successful. And there's this other element that comes from it. So you could say, if you read Steve Jobs' biography, he was an absolute devil of a boss.

You did not want to work for him. But that was why he was successful. So you can't separate those things. And I think a big takeaway from this is like, be careful when you are admiring someone. If you're like, I wanna be an engineer like Elon Musk. Well, the only reason he was able to do that is cause he's also has this kind of a jerk side

that's attached to it and you can't separate that. Well, also that it's not a choice. Do you know what I mean? It's like saying I wanna be like someone that's seven foot tall or I wanna be like someone that has cancer. Like, you know what I mean? These are not things that they had anything to do with. And in fact, it's on net,

probably more negative than positive. Yes, I also think if you take someone like Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, if they, let's just say that Mark Zuckerberg inherited a billion dollars when he was 18, hypothetically. That would not have slowed him down at all. I think he still would have been as successful as he was. They were not motivated by money. They were like, I have to build this product.

I have to go out and do this. And I think a lot of those people, even today when they're worth $100 billion or more, they wake up every morning terrified. And like, I have so many problems I need to go solve and they have to do it. Musk gave this interview like a month ago where he was like, you might think you wanna be me,

the richest man in the world, but you don't. Like it's a mess inside of this head. You do not wanna be inside of this head. And I think it's true for all of them. Yeah, there's a Wright-Thompson profile of Michael Jordan. It's called Michael Jordan at 50. And it's one of the most haunting, incredible pieces of journalism you'll ever read.

And it's basically, at this point, I think Michael Jordan is basically just the GM of the Hornets or the owner slash GM of the Hornets. And you would expect he's got the greatest life in the world. You know, he's made this, great basketball player of all time, biggest shoe brand, owns a basketball team who can do whatever he wants, but he's sort of just haunted by this ability,

the sense that he can't do the one thing he's meant to do, which is play basketball. And that he had the thing, the part that made him great, but also made him a maniac was this competitiveness, this need to win at everything. And he says something to write Thompson like, you get this gift and it makes you great,

but you can't turn it off, right? And that, it sounds like something that would be in like a Shakespearean play or in a fable by ASOP where the gift comes with the inability to not utilize the gift or not maximize the gift. So it's actually a curse. And he just can't not be competitive. And so, yeah, when you're a professional basketball player

at 26, being competitive is an asset, right? Because it makes you better, you compete for a living, but now you're a 50 year old billionaire who should be enjoying everything that you have, but you can't because all you're doing is comparing yourself to other people. And an impotent to express the competitiveness that you feel in a reality or a world

where you don't have the ability to be what you want to be. Yeah, I think that's true. I think it's especially true in sports where you can't do it forever. Warren Buffett's been investing for 75 years. You can do that forever. But what was it like when Kobe retired, when Jordan retired, when LeBron is going to retire someday? What do they do the next morning? I imagine that is a sense of torture waking up and saying, realizing you can't be doing what you were born to do. That's gotta be a really tough thing. Well, but the problem is you weren't born to do it.

Do you know what I mean? Like the amount of therapy and work you have to do as a person to go, I was, I'm not born to do anything. I don't have to do anything. There is, do you know what I mean? So the asset is not just the genetic ability or the blessing is the genetic ability and the skill and all the stuff.

And then the curse is the belief, what we make up, which has like to be worthwhile as a person. I have to maximize this gift. That's it. And you don't. I mean, it's good too, and it feels good too, but you don't. You don't have to do anything.

I really admire athletes and business people and authors who quit while they're ahead. It seems like a weird thing to admire, but I really like people who are like, I'm at the top of my game and I have so much more potential in front of me, but I'm gonna pass a baton to somebody else and I'm gonna go spend more time with my family,

whatever it be. Like I think that's so admirable to do. And it shows that like they're in control of that demon inside of their head that I think probably people like Jordan and Kobe and LeBron are not in control of it. The demon is running them. But people like Jerry Seinfeld who are like,

I'm just gonna quit the show. It's on top of the world, but like, eh, like I've had enough. I think they're in perfect control over that demon inside of their head. The fight for humanity is far from over. We have something the enemy does not. We have heroes. Halo, new season now streaming,

exclusively on Paramount Plus. Hi, I'm Anna. And I'm Emily. We're the hosts of Wanderer's podcast Terribly Famous, a show where we bring you outrageous true stories about our most famous celebrities. And our latest season is all about the one and only Katie Price. You might think you know her, you might have an opinion, but there is way more to the former glamour model than just her cup size.

Yes, this is a woman who's gone from pin up to publishing sensation. We all have teenage dreams, and for Katie, it was simple, massive fame, and everlasting love. I just wanted to kiss a boy. Just one boy. Well, she does kiss a few boys, but there are plenty of bumps along the way.

And when I say bumps, I mean terrible boyfriend choices, secret dates with spiky-haired pop stars and a tabloid press that wants to tear her apart at every opportunity. And she surprises even herself when suddenly she becomes a role model for a whole new generation of young women who want to be just like her. Want to hear more? Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and add free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery App. Well, you realize that that's a rarer thing, right? So being, you know, 0.001% in your profession is a very rare thing. And then among those people,

like people who are considered great, or not even great, just or a goat, like just people who are considered elite at their thing, how many of them have the ability to turn it up or down intentionally and more rarely turn it down or walk away or feel good or be enough or have happiness inside it. That is the far rarer thing. There's ultimately, there's lots of people

who become generals, who become billionaires, who become MVPs or champions or best sellers. Ultimately, it feels rare because at any one moment there's not that many people doing it. But every year there's more of those people. So humanively lots of people have done it through history. How many of them have had some semblance of control over it and themselves while they did it?

That is the rarer thing. It's like the point zero1 of the.001. Like they're already in the.001 by their talent, but then only.001 of them will be able to like take control over the demon and say, I want to quit while I can. Yeah, I mean, look, so you sold millions of books, right? You put out a book and first off,

to write a book is a rare thing, right? Then to write a book that sells, it's a rare thing. Then to write a book that sort of reaches escape velocity, right, what you've done, I've done, that's a rare thing. And then for how many people can that be, what percentage of those people does it not become this sort of thing that either they're always trying to surpass, right? Or, you know, this thing that either they're always trying to surpass, right?

Or this thing that they're trying to do more and more of. For how many of them are they just like, that's what I did. And I keep doing it because I love doing it, but it's not a great burden in some way. It's actually, it's surprisingly rare thing. Two things come right here. It's hard work. is not a great burden in some way. It's actually, it's surprisingly rare thing. Two things come hard here. It's hard work. Yeah, it's tough.

Paul Graham's idea of keep your identity small is really important. Anytime in life where you say, I am a blank, whatever it is, I am a Republican, I am a best-selling author, I am a blank, you are tying yourself to that to something that may not last. And if it doesn't last, then your identity is broken once it's gone.

That's a tough. The other thing I read recently from Arthur Brooks, which I thought was interesting, was don't keep your trophies on display because those are your past successes. And if you are literally walking into your office every day and being like, I used to be great, this trophy shows I used to be good.

And then it prevents you from moving on to some other phase of your life. It's a reminder of what you used to be good. And then it prevents you from moving on to some other phase of your life. It's a reminder of what you used to be and that can be a tough thing for people. I don't know if I totally agree with that because I could see a world where you're like, I did it, I feel good. That's the recognition of having done it.

Yeah. And then a version where you're like, it's Jeff Bezos said it's day one, it's always day one. That's also a way to keep yourself from never feeling like you did it, which you did do it. It's not day one. You know, the company's been around for 15 years. Pat yourself on the back.

Do you know what I mean? And so I can see a world where- I can see both ends of it. I do think there probably are people in sports, whatever it would be, who are haunted by their trophies as a reminder of the body that they used to have, the skill that they used to have that they don't anymore. It's a first world, I mean,

I remember the first time I was like profiled in something and the first time I had a best seller list. And then also like, you know, like the publisher will send you something or you know, you'll, you'll, like someone has a gift, we'll get it framed. And you go like, I did it, you know know? Like, and then, and it's cool. And then what happens is if you keep doing it,

if you keep doing good work, then you get more of them. And then you're like, now I just have a lot of this shit. Right? And what are you supposed to do with it? Because you don't want to get rid of it because it feels like it means something, but it doesn't. And it's just like another framed thing

that only has significance to you. And so to me, it kind of the, as I've done this now a long time, the accumulation of like mementos or commemorations, it's kind of the physical embodiment of the baggage that the ego picks up, you know? And the stuff is just kind of rattling around physically when you move, but then also mentally in your head.

And yeah, it's not super conducive to just like being present and being content and just being a person in the world. I think choosing your identity is really important too. I consider the core of my identity to be father, husband, and not author. And I think I would be okay at some point in the future, not in the near future,

but at some point being like, I'm done writing books. That was like, I'm not an author, that's not core to my identity. It's a thing that I did, that I'm proud of, and I like doing it, I'm glad I did it. But my identity is father, husband, and that's the core of who I am. So I think no matter what you do,

I think everyone has their identity, but choose what you wanna be very carefully. I think if you tie yourself to things that you either don't want to or can't do indefinitely, you're setting yourself up for some phase of misery. Cheryl Strayed once made this distinction between writing and publishing, which I think is really important.

So if you're, and then my friend, Austin Cleon, has talked about this, like, are you the noun or the verb? And so if your identity is the verb, that's great, because you can keep doing it professionally or not, right? If your identity is that you love basketball, well, you can play basketball a long time. If your identity is NBA All-Star. I win championships. Yeah. That is a, that is much less in your control. And in the Stokes, the whole point of socialism is like, how,

where are you in relation to things that you control, first things that you don't control. Yeah. And so, yeah, sure. Look, the identity of a basketball player can get taken away by an accident. And so, yeah, sure, look, the identity of a basketball player can get taken away by an accident, but that's more rare. And also, there's still ways you can relate to the game. You can still be a dude in basketball, whether you're playing or not, because you can participate in the universe of the thing.

But if you have associated your identity or your self-worth with the recognition for the thing. if you have associated your identity or your self-worth with the recognition for the thing. You're getting it, yeah, that's really core. But let's say, I'm not saying this is gonna happen, but let's say in 30 years, you're writing books and they're selling 2,000 copies, nobody's paying attention. Would you still enjoy writing it?

Well, that's the question. Do I like writing? Do I write because it brings me some sort of satisfaction or relief? Does it help me figure things out? For the most part, yes. I mean, would I write differently if no one was reading?

Probably a little bit. It was just a diary, wasn't it? Yeah, I would, but I also journal every day. Like I have been sitting down and trying to arrange words in an order that makes sense to me since I was in my room in high school, right? Like it's always done something for me. It's done different things for me in different ways

and at different times. But yeah, fundamentally I like doing the thing. And there's probably some universe where if you're selling 2000 copies, you're telling yourself, oh, it's gonna be appreciated. Like I'm sure the mind finds a way to rationalize that it's different. Yeah. But I do think I would still be doing it. And one of the things I think about when I make decisions, I go, one of the benefits of this profession is that you can do it forever. It's like investing. It's not like music or like sports where the public is judging you

harder as you age, right? Or the environment is harder to keep up as you age. You could, I could literally do this till I die. So I've tried to make better decisions about how I can be more sustainable in what I do with the idea that I do wanna do it for a long time. I mean, you're on, at that rate, you're on track to write roughly 17,000 books.

Yeah, I would be probably two, but I actually think about that. Like when I open like an academics book, for example, and there's like 500, you know, it's like, also by books that they burn, yeah. I go, these can't all be good. You know what I mean? And so I was like, at this pace, I'm gonna be that person.

Fiction is probably an exception to that. I think there are people who've written 50 fiction books, James Patterson, John Grisham, that can all be great. If you need to do deep research and be some sort of expert on your topic, hard to write 50 nonfiction books that are all great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I was like, okay,

I should probably slow down a little bit. And so I do think about it that way. So now you're at one a year instead of two a year, whatever it be. I'm pretty. Yeah, probably. I took an extra year on this one I'm doing right now. But yeah, that is the question.

Do you do it because you love it or do you love what the thing brings you? Yeah, you and I have talked about JD Salinger before. And my understanding, I might be getting some of this wrong, but he was a very mentally disturbed person. A lot of it was PTSD and alcoholism, but he was, I also pedophile. All kinds of, all kinds of brokenness. My understanding is he was, you know, one of the best selling published authors, but

then after he got kind of sick and just like went off the reservation, got sick of the industry, he kept writing for himself. Yeah. He just never published it. Yeah. But he kept writing maybe every day, just loving, putting words together. And that's like, that is really fascinating to me, that he's an example of someone who loved writing,

but got sick of writing for other people. Just wanted to tell some stories. He also kinda hated, seemed like he hated his family. And you know what I mean? He was broken anyway. It was this escape from reality, which is probably not healthy. I just read this book called Furious Hours,

which is sort of a true crime book, but it's also about Harper Lee, who wrote To Kill a Mockingbird, and the sort of, she was gonna write her next book about this murder case in Alabama, where this preacher was killing everyone close to him for insurance money. It was just like wicked in the same case,

not far from where she grew up. And the writers just talking about this sort of crippling perfectionism that besets Harper Lee, plus probably some alcoholism. Plus she had this weird like aversion to paying taxes. And she was like afraid if she made more money, she'd have to pay more taxes.

Which is again- That's a tough mindset. Something people should never think about as a stoic say you pay your taxes gladly. But the curse of being so successful right out of the gate, it sucks from her the love of being able to do the thing. And to do the thing not always at your best, right? Like the curse of perfectionism says that this is the standard

and anything below the standard is worthless. And that's not true. To kill a Mockingbird is one of the great novels of all time. Something half as good is still really good. And so you like part of doing anything sustainably is being kind enough to yourself to not expect you to be anything other than a human being.

Yeah. I mean, if you think about the authors who have written 30 or 50 books, John Grisham, Janice Patterson, there's a very clear hierarchy in there, whether it is sales or just your own opinion. If you've read all John Grisham's books, you're like, some are amazing, some were duds. Yes. That's true for everybody. I'm sure with you, you don't have to name them, but there's a hierarchy within your own books, within your own head. And maybe it doesn't correlate with the sales. It might correlate with your own view of it. James Clear and I

were talking about this recently too, that like, yeah, if you write a lot, there's going to be a natural hierarchy. And you just have to put up with that, that some books are going to sell better than others. You're going to be prouder of some than hierarchy. And you just have to put up with that, that some books are gonna sell better than others, you're gonna be prouder of some than others, and that's just a reality of what you're doing. You can't write smash hit after smash hit after smash hit that are of equal quality, of equal reception, of equal sales. Well, I bet it's probably hard for him.

James is already a perfectionist, right? And just putting out his first book was very hard for him. Like it took longer than it was supposed to. It took longer than he probably wanted to. And I know sort of right up until the last minute, he was tweaking, that's how he, so for it to then come out and set an impossible bar. Like I heard one, someone go,

that song wasn't a hit, they were like, it was a freak. Right? And there's actually, that seems like it's dismissive, but there's actually a lot of freedom in that. So to go that book or that project or that company that I did, that wasn't a hit, that wasn't a success, that was a freak. Is a way to free yourself of the impossible expectations

and burden of what you did the first time and to go, okay, I'm just doing it again. And there's zero chance that we'll even approach where I was before, but it's still worth doing. And so I can imagine following up something like a Tom and Cabbits, it's like impossible. And so you can't, you can't try to. And I've been lucky in that a lot of my books popped

in many cases, well after they'd come out and I was already onto the next thing. So what they represented or the success they had, it not only was a conclusion slow incoming, it wasn't even something I was thinking about because I had a contractual delivery date that was more important. Which is also what someone like John Grisham does.

John Grisham, I've worked with his agent before and actually I did a marketing on one of his books many years ago. He's like, I start a book and I forget what it is exactly but it's like I start a book in June and I turn it into the publisher in August and it comes out in March and that's my life. That's just what he does.

And so when you're like summer, great summer or not, it's like in lined up in 2016 and in 2017 it didn't. And then 2018, 2019, 2020 he was on fire. But it's a process that is independent of him as a person or as identity as a person, or as identity as a person. And that is how he is able to do what I think would otherwise be crippling,

or you'd be too self-conscious about. Yeah, I know F. Scott Fitzgerald is another great author who was just mentally crippled, at his own success too. And I think there's a lot of that early success, having it early on. And if you have the kind of personality that you're like nothing short of what I did the first time is gonna be good enough. A lot of founders fall for this too.

If you're a first time founder and your first company is a big success, and then you're like, I'm gonna start another company. The odds are never in your favor. Even if you are successful the first time, your second company's probably not gonna work. No matter who the founder is, no matter what you're doing, that's always the case.

And I think it ruins a lot of them. It gets back to like big success early on, either early on in your age or the first time you do something can be like a hidden curse. It's a very first world problem to have, but it is kind of a hidden curse to have. and leave a review on iTunes. That would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. We'll see you next episode. Hey, Prime members,

you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus and Apple Podcasts. The all-new Hyundai Kona All-Electric SUV isn't inspired by the future. It's obsessed with it because we look forward and see more, more beauty, more technology, and more possibilities. Welcome to the future of Urban SUVs. The all-new Hyundai Kona. We made it more, more.