The Daily Stoic - We’re All Playing a Part | 11 Ways Stoicism Can Improve Your Business

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

It can be hard to remember this when you see them on the news, lying through their teeth. It can be hard to remember when they cut you off in traffic. It can be hard to remember when they try to stop progress. It can be hard to remember when they say or do abhorrent things.But we do have to remember, we have to remember, as Marcus Aurelius writes in Meditations that “all of us are working on the same project. Some consciously, with understanding; some without knowing it. Some of us work in one way, some in others. And those who complain and try to obstruct and thwart things—they help as much as anyone. The world needs them as well.”_And in today's Daily Stoic video excerpt, Ryan outlines 11 ways stoicism can improve your business. Very few ancient philosophies can be traced back to an entrepreneur, but one can: Stoicism. Around 304 BC, a merchant named Zeno was shipwrecked on a trading voyage. He lost nearly everything. Making his way to Athens, he was introduced to philosophy by Crates of Thebes, a famous Cynic, which changed his life. Within a few years, Stoic philosophy would be born. As Zeno later joked, “I made a prosperous voyage when I suffered shipwreck.” Since then, Stoicism has been a source of guidance, wisdom and practical advice for millions. It’s been used by everyone from Marcus Aurelius and Seneca (one of the richest men in Rome), to Theodore Roosevelt, Frederick the Great and Michel de Montaigne. More recently, Stoicism has been cited by investors like Tim Ferriss and executives like Jonathan Newhouse, the CEO of Condé Nast International. Even football coaches like Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks and baseball managers like Jeff Banister of the Texas Rangers have recommended Stoicism to their players.✉️ 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 Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we read a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you in your everyday life. On Tuesdays, we take a closer look at these stoic ideas, how we can apply them in our actual lives. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy. We are all playing a part. It can be hard to remember this when you see them on the news lying through their teeth. It can be hard to remember when they cut you off in traffic. It can be hard to remember when they try to stop progress.

It can be hard to remember when they say or do important things. But we have to remember. We have to remember, we have to remember smarts, really, it's rights and meditations that all of us are working on the same project, some consciously with understanding, some without knowing it, some of us working one way, some and others. And those who complain and try to obstruct and swerve things, they help as much as anyone. The world needs them as well. As Emperor, a man trying to lead through a plague and a war and an empire and decline,

Marx really would have had to deal with his fair share of obstructors and liars and cheats and the selfish and annoying. He experienced a coup, he had political fights, he saw war, he had to preside over tough cases that showed people at their worst. Yet still, he said he tried to make up his mind to work with them with everyone in every situation. Quoted Herocletus in that same passage, you pointed out that those who are it's those who sleep or hard at work, meaning that everyone was collaborating, contributing, so to speak, to the butterfly flapping its wings

and making the world what it is. We said before here that everyone has a job. All the people you meet are doing their job. Like the Zen Master was once asked why evil people exist in the world and answered to thicken the plot. We have to understand that even annoying people, even the liars, the races, the criminals, the selfish, the whatever they are here for a reason,

the very least they challenge us, remind us who we need to be, what we need to be. We all play a part. Let's just make sure that we, the only thing we really control, play a good part. I told this story before, but the first Airbnb I stayed in was 15 years ago. I was looking for places to live when I wanted to be a writer, and we stayed at this house, I think outside Phoenix. And then when I bought my first house here in Austin,

I would rent it out when South by Southwest or F-1 or all these events. My wife and I would go out of town and we'd rent it and it helped pay for the mortgage and it supported me while I was a writer. You've probably had the same experience. You stayed in an Airbnb and thought, this is doable, maybe I could rent my place on Airbnb.

And it's really that simple. You can start with a spare room or you can rent your whole place when you're away. You could be sitting on an Airbnb and not even know it. Maybe you set up a home office during the pandemic and now you don't need it because you're back at work. Maybe you're traveling to see friends and family for the holidays.

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What are the things that other people aren't willing to do that I am willing to do? How do I turn this into something good? Again, not focusing on what went wrong, not focusing on whose fault it was, not focusing on how unfortunate or frustrating it is, what I'm going to do with it, what I'm going to make about it. You don't tend to think of philosophy and business owners as being the same category, but it makes sense because running a business, it tests you, it challenges you. And going way back to the founding of Stoicism, Zeno is a merchant of Tyrion Purple,

an expensive purple die that was made into clothing, even cloak of Marcus Aurelius would have had Tyrion Purple in it. Zeno suffers the shipwreck, he loses everything. He'd later joke because losing everything connects him to philosophy, he says, I made a great fortune when I suffered a shipwreck. So business owners not only have to be philosophical

and think big picture, but they can actually apply these stoic ideas to their business. I'm Ryan Holliday. I've written books about stoic philosophy. I've been lucky enough to speak about it all over the world. I also run my own business. Not just because authors are self-employed, small business owners, but this is my book store,

The Painted Port, which I crazily opened during the middle of the pandemic. I own this little grocery store with my wife. I've done all sorts of different businesses and investments over the years. And that's what I actually want to talk about in today's episode, what the Stoics can teach us about business, about managing people,

about the ups and downs of life. And it turns out that you can teach us a whole hell of a lot. And in December of 2019, my wife and I fell in love In December of 2019, my wife and I fell in love with two 19th century buildings on Mainstreet in Bastrop, Texas, and we had this crazy idea to open a small town bookstore, which was probably a bad idea under ordinary circumstances, and then come February, March of 2020, it seemed like a really bad idea. The Renault took longer than expected.

It cost more than expected. We ran into sort of obstacle after obstacle and then the world melted down. And I had to think about the ideas, obviously, that I've written about. It's easy to say the obstacle is the way. It's easy to say in theory, hey, obstacles are an opportunity to get better.

Then you actually have to practice them. And you definitely have to practice them when you've written a book about them or you've tattooed this phrase on your arm. But we struggled with the immensity of what we had committed to and whether it was even possible. I wrote this little note to myself as I stared out over what felt like a monument to my arrogance, fully functioning, but totally empty bookstore that had no customers. And I said, look, this is a test. Will it make you a better person or a worse one? That's kind of how I think about life.

That's what the Stokes thought about. We have the opportunity to take what we are dealing with, can use it to grow and improve. No guarantee whether you'll be successful, financially, monetarily, whether your efforts or growth will be appreciated or recognized. You nevertheless always have this opportunity. What are the beautiful parts of owning your own business?

Is it suddenly you're in control? You get to make decisions and I don't mean like you get to tell people what to do, that's not that special. What I mean is we can sit on the sidelines and complain about outsourcing or the minimum wage or you know the excesses or the insufficiencies of capitalism. But when you run the business, you get to decide. I was saying how proud and excited and empowered I was by the opportunity to get to make business decisions, like to make our stuff in the US, to pay our employees fairly, to provide healthcare for employees. I remember a decision on the challenge coins that we sell when they would come from the manufacturer,

we used this mint in Minnesota, been in business for like 150 years. They would send each one wrapped in this like sealed little plastic bag. To be able to go, I don't want those plastic bags, they just get torn off and thrown in the trash. I wanna reduce the ecological impact that I'm having in that real way. And that that's my call.

It's my decision. And so I think one of the really cool things about stoicism and business, it's not just that stoicism can help you be more successful as a business owner, but it should make you a better business owner in the sense that you get to apply the ethics of the philosophy, the concern for the common good that the Stoics talk about. You get to actually make those decisions. You get to be the change that you want to see in the world as the expression goes,

but you get to be that person. You get to be the good ethical, hopefully, contributive member of society that you wish perhaps other businesses where bigger companies work, but you get to do that. That's a huge opportunity. businesses where bigger companies were, but you get to do that. That's a huge opportunity.

A friend of mine, Mark Ecko, the creator of Echo Industry, he has a story like this, where he flips a problem on its head that I really like, who's telling me that they've been known for throwing these awesome events each year at a conference called Magic, which is where like 80% of all wholesale orders are placed for fashion brands. They threw these big parties, these big booths every year. That was what they were known for.

And they run out of money just a few months before magic. And so all is lost. The accountant says, you're probably going to go out of business and they go, okay, what are we going to do? We can't get our deposit back. Don't have enough money to actually put on anything close to what we've done in the past. As they think, they realize that maybe inside this obstacle

is in fact the solution to that problem. And so what they do is they pass out these flyers all over the event that just say where's Echo? Where's Echo? And their booth was empty. It was just a chair with a sign on it that said where's Echo? So instead of being the big event, they were the event that everyone was talking about not happening. Where were they? What was happening? What was going on? What did they have planned? And it ended up being the sort of viral marketing event that launches the brand to the next level.

There's the most talked about brand at the conference, even though they're not technically at the conference. And it becomes this springboard event. So I always think, what can I do in this situation? What actual advantages are in my position? What, how do I turn this around? How do I flip it on its head? What are the things that other people aren't willing to do

that I am willing to do? How do I turn this into something good? Again, not focusing on what went wrong, not focusing on whose fault it was, not focusing on how unfortunate or frustrating it is, what I'm going to do with it, what I'm going to make about it. One of the things that souses him teaches us is that we always have to focus on what's in our control.

And one of the things you learn as a business owner is that the vast majority of things are outside your control. What your employees do, what the weather is, what's happening in the world, what's going on in the economy. So I think about it as like a resource issue, right? If you have a hundred dollars to spend,

you don't wanna waste 80 of it on things that don't make a difference. And the same goes for our energy, our focus. If you you have a hundred dollars to spend, you don't want to waste 80 of it on things that don't make a difference. And the same goes for our energy, our focus. If you only have a hundred energy points, you're going to spend that on things that you don't control that are not up to you, that are pointless, that you're impotent over, or are you going to focus that energy on stuff that makes a difference, that moves the needle, that is in your control. So this decision to focus on what we control, it's not just a philosophical issue, it's a business decision. It makes you better as a business owner, it makes you better as an

employer, it makes you better at everything you do. You focus on what you control, you leave the rest, everyone else to everything else, but maybe after you succeed it, after you've accomplished everything you need to accomplish after money does it matter, after your business has been sold, maybe then you can focus on the things that are not in your control. But for now, docesances put all your energy from the things that you control. One of the things that docesism can teach us

as business owners is already encapsulated in that idea of Murphy's Law that what came to wrong will. Last year, when Texas froze over, we had problems with the roof. We knew that by the time this storm happened, here I am in 2022, dealing with

a freeze again, worries of the power of growth collapsing. Like they are underway putting on a new roof on the building. And that was in expense. It wasn't fun, but I'm investing in it one for a piece of mine and two because I saw the damage that it caused last time and the inventory damage. And so deferring the expenses of something I couldn't afford. So I had a contingency plan in place for exactly this, the idea of preparing for what life has in service, not worrying about it, not being anxious about it, but taking tangible concrete steps to improving

your situation so that when the next thing goes wrong, can it inevitably will? You're not as vulnerable to it as you might otherwise have been. All success in life is a lagging indicator. When I sit down to write to do my job today, that's only possible if I did my job the day before, the day before, and months before. If I laid the ground, if I set myself up for success,

when I walked by the mirror and I like how I look, that's a lagging indicator of two things. The work I've done on myself, not be superficial, but at the same time, also, have I been hitting the gym, have I been sticking to the diet that's important to me. Confidence is a lagging indicator of having done the work. Nothing comes from nowhere. Not success, not inspiration, not a great day of writing. Everything is a lagging indicator. So you think about the interchanges and the connections. You think about all the other companies doing what you do, going in similar directions, think about what's happening

in the industry in the world. It's very easy to get distracted, right? When I was in American Apparel, I watched to destroy a billion dollar company because instead of doing what he did well, what the company was meant to do, started doing whatever 21 was doing and urban outfitters doing, and H&M was doing. Right? He lacked the discipline to stay on his path. He got distracted by the paths of those who crisscrossed him, even when some of those companies ultimately also were headed towards bankruptcy,

or having to reinvent themselves. So it takes a lot of discipline to know what you do, right? What makes you great, what your principles are, what your place in the market is, and to stay on that. And to not get distracted, right? To not get distracted by every shiny other thing. And so euphemia is not just a recipe for personal happiness, tranquility, but it's also a recipe for success, right?

Staying in your land, staying on your tracks, doing what you set out to do if you're into your strategic plan, your mission, your principles, this takes an enormous amount of discipline. The reason to do it, whatever it is, should be because you're the only person that can do it. You're the only one. If someone else can do it, let them do it, whatever it is, should be because you're the only person that can do it. You're the only one. If someone else can do it, let them do it.

If other people are already doing it, let them do it. I love the book Blue Ocean Strategy. The idea is, you don't want to be competing with other people. You want to have the space all to yourself. Peter Tiel has this great line that competition is for losers. And that's a really good way to think about it. We're all utterly unique. We're born with completely unique DNA,

unique circumstances brought us to where we are. So to do things like other people, to do the same things as other people is insane. It's to reject the gift that you've been given. It's to reject the monopoly that is inherently yours. So whatever it is, they're thinking about doing, be the only one doing it. There's a great line that only is better than best.

Be the only one doing it, do it the way that only you can do it, leave everything else to everyone else. What's the best way to do it? One of the things you learn running a business is that even though you're in charge, you're not really in charge at all. You can't make anyone do anything. It's part of the daily you learn running a business is that even though you're in charge, you're not really in charge at all. You can't make anyone do anything.

It's part of the Daily Stoke Leadership Challenge. We interviewed all these experts, generals, heads of NBA franchises, head coaches, people who have seemingly real power over other people. And I said, can you make people do stuff? And they said, no, you can't make people do anything that's not how life works. It's a great line from Eisenhower. I said, leadership is the art of making people do things because they said, no, you can't make people do anything. That's not how life works. It's a great line from Eisenhower. I said leadership is the art of making people do things because they think they want to do that.

You don't force anyone to do anything. And so the stoic dichotomy of control is ultimately a critical lesson when you're running a business. You control what you do, you control what you say, you control the rules that you said. Of course, you control the principles, you control the culture. But ultimately, you don't make anyone do anything. You can try to lead by example. You can lead a horse to water. Force isn't going to work. Commands don't really work. At the end of the day, you don't make anyone do anything. You can try to convince them. You can

try to create a culture, a momentum. But if people don't want to get with the program, if people aren't on the same page with you, it's not about forcing them, it's not about incentives, it's about saying, hey, you're not a right fit here. Let's find someone who is, you should go off and do something that's good for you. Where you want to do the things that the business needs you to do. And so I think ultimately, and this is a critical lesson because so many of the stokes were in positions of power, is that ultimately you don't get to tell people what to do. That's a fantasy, it's an illusion, it's a shimmer up. You can try to convince them, but ultimately all we control as stokes is ourselves, our

own actions, our own decisions, our own emotions. By the way, that's plenty to keep you busy. People talk a lot about influencers these days. Influencers are just word of mouth times 100 or times a thousand, right? Most people become influencers because they're super fans of stuff. I have given away tens of thousands of copies of my books,

athletes, creatives, people with followings, and they post about it, not because they're doing me a favor, but because ultimately they like the book. And what I often do is I'll find someone who has liked one of my posts or liked one of my books or read them. And I just make sure that they get every single thing I publish after that. I don't let the process just happen again on its own. I encourage it, right?

And so I've given away when I sit down with my publisher and we're prepping for a launch, I say, how many copies can we give away? Is it 1000, is it 10,000? And we'll give them away. We'll send all I will pay the shipping because we know what it's getting is the media attention that drives the sales. This happened actually one coach

for the New England Patriots read the obstacles the way a couple months after it came out And then I said him a large case of books and every coach key-light a large case of books And now that has spread that book through all domains in professional sports and sold millions of copies of that book Right on the one hand it was organic and natural But I put a lot of gasoline on that fire, right, which is ultimately what marketing is. So one of the decisions I made a couple years ago was I wasn't going to focus on publicity. I wasn't going to focus on media. I was going to use the money I was making, use my time and energy, not on

Facebook ads or marketing or whatever. I was going gonna use it on making good stuff. I was just gonna put lots of stuff out in the world, all of it for free, and I was gonna let that direct people back ultimately to the books if they wanted to buy them. Ultimately across all the different platforms we put out about 50 pieces of content a day, that's almost 300 a week, or 10,000 pieces of content,

a month, that's tweets, that's podcast's tweets that's podcast episodes that's videos that's articles but creating all this content creates inventory that inventory can be sold to advertisers right to support the creation of more content or I can use that inventory myself Say hey, I have a new book coming out or we're launching of course this week, right? Content creates inventory and then inventory moves inventory. The Daily Stoic email as I said is 500,000 plus people all over the world. My daily dad newsletter is almost 100,000 people every morning. So these two daily newsletters are the main driver of what we do. The podcast does five or six million downloads a month also, right? We're reaching people through the content we're creating. And all of this actually started, even the bookstore,

happened when I started an email list more than 15 years ago where I just recommended books that I like. That started with 50 people. I would copy and paste them into the BCC field and Gmail. And it's now also hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. The idea as I was sitting there with the team trying to come up with these stoic inspired challenges was to set me up to set them up to set you up

so that whatever happens in 2024 and beyond, you can say, this is precisely what I trained for. And that's what we have been training for, right? For the last five years, thousands and thousands of stokes all over the world joined me in the new, new challenge that we do here at Daily Stoic. We started it way back before COVID-19 was the thing, before the world was as crazy as it is right now. And the idea was like, how do we set it up

to the first three weeks of the year? 21 consecutive challenges. One per day, built around the best and so it was them could set us up so we could make better decisions next year. So we could be tougher for next year. So we could have plans for the next year. We could have better habit. We could we could just be who we want to be in the year. And so as we sit here on the eve of this new year, which is going to be here before you know it, think about the downsides of not taking control of your life. Think about what it would cost you to not live up to your potential next year, but not changing your ways. Think about all the things that are out there that you are not prepared for. And what just a little investment, a little effort towards rectifying that could bring you. Don't let it happen. Run some more games, seek out some challenges, have some fun with me and fellow Stoics. Keep growing.

Don't stay the same. Don't portray your potential. Demand more of yourself in 2024. And one of the ways you can do that is by joining me in the Daily Stoke New Year, New You Challenge. You can head over to dailystoke.com slash challenge. And remember, if you sign up for Daily Stoke New Year, New Year Challenge, and you can head over to dailystoke.com slash challenge and remember, if you sign up for daily stoke life now at dailystokelife.com you get this challenge plus all the other challenges we're going to do in the year plus all our old ones plus a bunch of other awesome stuff you get that totally for free. So I'll see you soon. We're going to start on January 1st.

So sign up now, grab your spot, dailystone.com slash challenge. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode. 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 Plus in Apple Podcasts. We can't see tomorrow, but we can hear it. Tomorrow sounds like hydrogen being added to natural gas to make it more sustainable.

It sounds like solar panels generating thousands of megawatts. And it sounds like carbon being captured and stored, keeping it out of our atmosphere. We've been bridging to a sustainable energy future for more than 20 years. Because what we do today helps ensure tomorrow is on. Enbridge. Life takes energy. Helps ensure tomorrow is on. Enbridge.

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