The Joe Walker Podcast - How Peter Thiel Destroyed Gawker - Ryan Holiday

Episode Date: May 3, 2018

In 2016, a Florida court delivered an astounding $140 million verdict against Gawker media for publishing a sex...See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

These two incredible personalities who had suffered so much and fought so hard to destroy each other. This was almost Shakespearean in how epic it was. From Swagman Media, this is the Jolly Swagman Podcast. Here are your hosts, Angus and Joe. Hello there, boys and girls. Welcome back to another week on the Jolly Swagman podcast. I'm Joe Walker, and today I'm coming to you live from Times Square, New York. Angus is on his way back to Sydney as I speak, so unfortunately he won't be joining me in

this episode. But I'm actually doing a few episodes like this because I'm on a little trip through the United States talking to some fantastic American guests, and I'm so excited to bring some of these interviews to you. But today's interview is with Ryan Holiday, one of my favorite authors. Ryan is such an interesting guy. He dropped out of college at the age of 19 and then was picked up as the Director of Marketing at American Apparel at the ripe old age of 22. He's authored multiple best-selling books, including Trust Me, I'm Lying and my personal favorite, The Obstacle is the Way,

which is a meditation on late Roman Stoicism. And his most recent book is Conspiracy, which is about the battle between Peter Thiel, the billionaire, founder of PayPal and first outside investor in Facebook, and Gawker, the salacious media empire, which was founded right here in Manhattan. So Peter Thiel brought down Gawker through a huge multimillion dollar lawsuit, which he secretly funded the lawsuit was actually hulk hogan suing gawker for publishing a sex tape of his but more about that in the episode as to why peter teal took this drastic action as to why he planned this conspiracy well you'll have to listen to ryan holiday in this episode to find that out so without much further, please enjoy my episode with Ryan Holiday. Ryan Holiday, thanks for joining me. Thanks for having me.

So it's very exciting to speak with you, one of my favorite authors. And your most recent book is a little bit different. It's a book called Conspiracy, subtitled Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue. So, before we get into sort of how you found yourself involved in the story and the writing of this story, maybe let's outline the events, which might be familiar to some people, but not everyone. And I guess the story really starts with Peter Thiel himself. And you know, Peter, personally, could you give us a profile of the man? Yeah, the events are almost unbelievable on their face. It's the story of Peter Thiel, who was the founder of PayPal, and then the first outside investor in Facebook, and then the founder of a company called Palantir, which is probably conservatively worth about $20 billion. And in 2007, Thiel was outed by the gossip website Gawker.

And they outed him not only because he was gay, but he was sort of privately gay. It was known to be sort of an open secret among friends and family, but in terms of the general public, there was no outward acknowledgement of this. They did it with relish as well. The title of the article was quite snarky. Peter Taylor's totally gay people. Right. It was a sensitive topic handled quite insensitively, at least from his perspective. And this is sort of the moment that kicks off the story. But it's really the next several years where Thiel is sort of following this website. He's seeing what they're writing about other people. He finds that there is essentially nothing that can be done about it. It's not illegal to out someone, although it is in very bad taste.

And he then, in 2011, hardens on this sort of conspiracy to destroy the website. He basically is pitched by this young, ambitious man in the way that he might have been pitched a startup idea. And the man says, look, I need $10 million in three to five years of time. And I think I can handle this problem for you. And Teal sets out together. They set out on this conspiracy. And at the end of it, in March of 2016, Gawker is destroyed in $140 dollar landmark privacy verdict that if that weren't sort of a surreal set of events uh in and of themselves it it was on teo had filed a number of lawsuits most famously on behalf of the professional wrestler hulk hogan who'd been illegally recorded having sex with his best friend's wife gawker had gotten a hold of the tape and run it even more insensitively than the teal outing. And that is, those are the major plot points of this basically unreal story.

And that's what the book's about. Awesome. So, you know, as an author, I mean, each of your books is very different in terms of its subject matter. You're very famous for The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy. Your first book was Trust Me, I'm Lying. Then there's Growth Hacker Marketing. And this book, again, is on a totally different subject matter. And I know a lot of the, I mean, I've heard a lot of people in interviews with you talk about how different it is, but I think it's actually fundamentally more similar to all of your previous books than it's different because what I think you do really well is you're a master of structure.

So you find sort of usually a tripartite overarching chapter structure, and then the titles of the chapters are all mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive and then you break those down in turn into sub chapters and then within each sub chapter you're so good at weaving in different quotes and historical examples and anecdotes which i'm not sure if you've got some immense research team of interns or what, but the examples are so varied and interesting that it's always a treat to read your books. And the reason I bring this up is I think conspiracy is very similar to all your other books in that way. And the structure you use for conspiracy is you look at the first, the planning of this conspiracy to bring down Gorka then the doing and then the aftermath of it and could you just tell us briefly where did you draw the inspiration for that structure that's very perceptive because I think my favorite thing on

a book is actually solving for that structural issue yeah So like, what, obviously, I like writing, and I love researching, but I think my where I really feel like the book is coming together, and I made real progress is when I've decided how it's going to be organized. And so in this case, the book is organized based on an observation from Machiavelli about conspiracies, where Machiavelli says that conspiracies have three parts, the planning, the doing, and then after the deed is done. And so I decided, oh, first off, I think it would be hard to find a conspiracy or really anything where that sort of set of three is not true, right? Everything's sort of got the before, middle and after.

And so, oh, okay, that gave me a way to sort of decide what's going to go in each part of the book. So now I can take all these events and put them in part one. And then that will give me a clear delineation between part one and part two. And then again, for part three, you know, between part two and part three. And then also like where I'm gonna stop, right? This isn't going to be, a book has to have, like every story, a book has to have a beginning and a middle and the end. And so that's why I like three-part structures. Although not all of my books necessarily have that,

but what I'm really trying to do is just find some way, some vehicle for organizing what is, in this case, I think 90,000 words. You can't just have them all strung together. They've got to be organized. And there's got to be sort of a framework that the reader can not only use to navigate what's happening, but then can, after they finish, remember what the hell they just learned. And that, to me, has always been really important in my books. Yeah, I really like Machiavelli. I've read a lot of his works back at school, and I've read his chapter on conspiracies in Discourses on Livy, which is not as famous

as The Prince, but probably a more important book. And as you just pointed out, Ryan, I mean, it's sort of truistic to say that a conspiracy has a planning, a doing, and an aftermath by definition. But I think the real insight on conspiracies was that Machiavelli says that danger attends each stage of the conspiracy. Yes. Not just the planning and not just the doing but also the aftermath and that actually applies really neatly to uh to this story of of uh what happened after gawker was was finally destroyed but i actually want to ask you about that but before we get there we'll leave that we'll leave that to the end let's just drill into some of the specific uh points or episodes in this incredible story. So firstly, how did you

find yourself in the middle of this? Because so many people would be dying to write about this, but you got away with the prize. Well, I sort of assumed like you that, yeah, so many people were dying to write about it that, of course, I would have been like 700th on the list, right? There was no way I thought this story was coming my way. And so in fact, when it kind of did first come my way, I was like, not that interested, because I assumed it couldn't, it couldn't happen, right? You could write about this story. And plenty of people had written really excellent New York Times articles and New Yorker pieces and, you know, big exposes on what happened.

But what I found they were all fundamentally missing is like the perspective of the person who had done it. Right. And so I had this unique access to Teal. Not only had I known him previously, but he had reached out to me having been a fan or, you know, a follower of my my various writings over the years. And so I also happen to have a somewhat loose relationship with Nick Denton, who's on the other side of the story. And so having this ability to talk to both the people was part of it. And then I think, again, I only wanted to do it because I felt like I had something unique to say that wasn't going to simply be the nuts and bolts of what happened. I wanted to get into, in a way, I was less concerned with what happened and more concerned with how it happened. And to me, this is something that journalists

get wrong often. They are obsessed with facts, but facts without context or facts without some sort of lesson attached are often to me just another word for entertainment. And so I wanted to do this story. I wanted to show how this incredible series of events happened. And tell us the story of, you know, the moment when you decided that you needed to write this book. I think you wrote a column for the New York Observer, and then that brought you to Peter Thiel's attention. But what were the series of events from there to deciding that you'd write the book? Yeah, it was a process. I mean, it was a number of conversations with people involved, obviously a conversation with my editor,

with my agent. There was a night in late 2016 where I was at Teal's apartment in New York City and actually saw a copy of Discourses on Livy on his shelf, which to me was sort of confirmation that this had the potential to be a really interesting book. And then on the other hand, the next night I was in Nick Denton's

apartment. And so just the juxtaposition of these two incredible personalities who had suffered so much and spent so much and fought so hard to destroy each other. I just felt like this was almost Shakespearean and how epic it was. And that I, I, I just couldn't not write about it. And was Peter aware of, of on conspiracies? Did you talk to him about that? Yes. Yes. Uh, so he was obviously aware of sort of historically where this all fit in. I think that in some ways sort of motivated and inspired him. And then he was, he was, he could quote from memory passages from, from Discourses on Libby. And so, you know, he is, you know, he's sort of this walking human encyclopedia philosopher type. I mean, he's a really incredible person. And I think you can say that and believe

it without necessarily agreeing with what he did or even deeply disagreeing with many of his politics. Both he and Nick are these extraordinary figures, almost throwbacks to a different time. And in some ways, that's probably why it was inevitable that they would find themselves in conflict with each other. It's almost as if, you know, the town sort of wasn't big enough for the two of them. Yeah. So what is Teal like? You know, there's parts in the book that almost seem to indicate that you have quite a strong personal relationship with him. I remember towards the end, you mentioned that he sends you an email of him at the Mercer family Halloween party, and he's dressed up as Hulk Hogan, I think. But what's he like in person? Because he's a billionaire.

Yeah, he's a sort of a singular individual. I mean, I haven't spent much time... There's no one that I would say, you know who Peter is like? he's just like, blank. Like, and I think it would even be hard to find a historical analog. You know, there are many, many brilliant people, but few brilliant people become as wealthy and as powerful as Peter, there are many sort of incredibly powerful, wealthy people, but few of them, you know, oftentimes that power or that wealth is much more intuitive. You know, Peter is almost like your sort of college professor type in that he's like this sort of big walking brain, you know what I mean? And he sort of revels in theoretical ideas more than anything else, right? And so again, typically,

this sort of ambition or desire to power is often very unlinked to the obsession with interesting ideas, right? They're not normally as connected as one would hope, I guess. And so Peter is unique in that way yeah i've always thought that zero to one was more of a philosophical treatise than than a book on business management or startups yeah and i one i think that's why it sold so well but two i think you know if peter had not ever started a company i think he would still be a well-known public intellectual. And so that is an interesting, you know, combination. I'm reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt right now, and it's talking about, it's like, you know, had Theodore Roosevelt never run for political office, he would have almost

certainly been one of the towering literary figures of his time. And I think Peter is similar. He'd probably have discussed, you know, advanced some theory about the universe or made some scientific discovery or written some landmark book. Even if he had never done, you know, what, what he does now.

That's fascinating. And also the other thing to, to truly understand Thiel's worldview, you also need to understand René Girard, the French philosopher who was almost a mentor to him at Stanford. But Girard's most impactful book is Things Hidden Since the Foundations of the World, which introduces this idea of mimetic desire, which is that we derive what we want in life from what the

people around us want. You know, we're like lemmings. And so Peter has always looked to, and he writes about this in Zero to One, looked to do things that are contrarian, that are secrets, truths that no one else believes. And I feel like that makes itself out for a conspiracy. I mean, in a way, you could say that it's not that Peter is contrarian, it's that he's anti-memetic, right? So, it's that Peter questions why people... It's not so much that Peter does the opposite of what everyone else does. It's that Peter thinks things up from sort of independent of what other people think.

And that often has the effect of being radically opposed to everyone else. But it's not necessarily just the opposite for opposite's sake. So, yeah, he ends up having a lot of very provocative or difficult or, you know, contradictory ideas about the world. A lot of people are threatened by of, you know, impenetrable, unstoppable force in media. And Thiel sort of did the math and he studied it and then found his way in to sort of bringing his strengths, namely his incredible financial resources, against Gawker's sort of previously undiscovered weaknesses. Let's talk about Gawker now and start with Nick Denton. So Teal describes him as a sociopath. You know Nick Denton himself. Does he come across as a sociopath to you? Okay.

You know, sociopath is hard because I think, you know, you could probably make the same argument against Teal. I would say both of them are actually considerably more thoughtful than their sort of outside critics would suppose. They are certainly very self-absorbed. And again, that's not a criticism, but they're sort of very much in their own heads. They're very, they're very astute readers of human motivations, and, you know, sort of other people's strengths and weaknesses. And they, they exploit those, that's their job, whether they're a journalist or an investor. And look, I don't think I think one of gossip and sort of, you know, being the bad guy or playing the bad guy overrides the better parts of his nature. And I would say that's probably good, or probably true. You also describe Nick Denton as almost nihilistic in the book. Yes, I think that was a part of Denton's personality for a very long time. You know,

he told himself that it wasn't his job to think about other people's feelings, and that other people's feelings did not matter. And that there was no sort of higher goods or higher truths, you know. And, you know, he said that Gawker provided people what they wanted as evidenced by the data, you know. And to me, that is kind of the definition of nihilism. It's saying like, there's no good or bad journalism. There's just what people click. And how does that filter through to the different the different media entities under gawker because i mean they published some pretty horrific articles in their time yeah i mean i think what i think what gawker did was they sort of it they've created a financial culture that said hey hey, look, you know, you were paid based on how much how much traffic your articles do.

Then, on the other hand, they created a culture in which the journalists were trying to one up each other. And, you know, to be who could be funnier or meaner or attack, you know, attack people the hardest. So it was this culture and this business that did not bring out the best of anyone. And it got worse over time. Yeah, almost as they realized that they were totally unaccountable. Yes, yes. Yeah, almost as they realized that they were totally unaccountable. Yes. Yes.

As they got, the longer and longer they got away with it, the harder and harder it was for them to check themselves. Yeah. And ironically, the longer they got away with it, the more the tail risks built up for them. But Teal had a moniker for Gawker, the MBTO. Yes. It stood for theattan-based terrorist organization so yeah and and uh and that's how he saw it so for to teal it was you know this sort of epic battle between good and evil i I'm not saying that that's true, but that's what he thought. And I think that's what motivated him, you know, to take this to such extremes. So I have a question for you on that. If Teal wasn't personally vilified by Gawker and someone

had just approached him independently and said, hey, look, this is a terrible organization. Look at all these articles that are published about other people. Would you fund me to find cases through which we could bankrupt them? Do you think he would have embraced that idea? Yeah, I don't think it would have worked. So first off teal had a pretty good rejoinder he was saying like look uh that's what gawker wanted me to do which is probably why it wouldn't be the right thing to do if i was trying to shut them down does that make sense yeah and um and and i i think i think And I think he kind of realized that this was a problem beyond talking, that, we should all get together and file a bunch of frivolous lawsuits to destroy him. If you were successful, people wouldn't necessarily respect the results or or it would it would make it harder for those cases to be taken seriously

in a court of law because the agenda that to which they were attached was so clear. Whereas Teal wanted this to seem as if it was organic and legitimate. And in a way it was. But I mean, I think his point was he wanted these cases to be taken on their merits, not as, you know, part of this public campaign. And also it's easier to defend yourself against a series of lawsuits if you know who they're coming from and what their outcome is supposed to be. We'll be back with Ryan Holiday in just a moment. But now a word from our sponsor, Globite. Globite has been providing travel products since 1911 traveling is so much fun

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travel adapters neck pillows you name it they've got it and if you enter our discount code SWAGMAN you'll get 15% off those items before your next trip so thank you and back to the show so from 2007 till about 2011 teal sort of floundering he knows that he doesn't like

this organization gawker but he doesn't think that there's any way to do anything about it until he meets Mr. A. Can you talk about the man who's described as Mr. A in the book who gives Teal the very specific conspiracy that they engage in, which is to file, uh, a number of lawsuits by proxy, um, against Gawker, you know, to, to, to sort of pursue them in, uh, in, in court until they eventually collapse under, under the pressure. And this was, you know, the idea of a 26 year old um who uh who had never really done anything before so it's pretty incredible one that these two people connected and three that that the teal saw the the germ of the idea that would be successful um so from this from this source.

And there's a moment in the book where you describe a dinner meeting that they have in Berlin. Yes. But even up to the very end of the dinner, Thiel's still a bit reluctant. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Thiel has obviously thought about this before and just doesn't think that it's going to be possible and he says this to mr a says look there's nothing you can do about it and and teal says uh sorry mr a says look if everyone thought that way what would the world look like and he's totally right um you know if if everyone took every if if everyone took the status quo for granted, there would be very little change. That's pretty ballsy from a 26-year-old.

Yeah, of course, of course. I mean, it's absurd, but he totally read the moment right because it's exactly what someone like Teal would want to hear and he's i mean i know that you had to protect mr a's anonymity in the book but he his identity has since been revealed um i'm not sure if you're if you're still so so some some places have purported to uh reveal his identity i i won't confirm or deny who it is okay um but but and part of the reason for that aside from it just being my agreement with the source but the person that that they said is mr a uh you know replied to the outlet and said look i've been getting death threats about this like this is insane um and so you could see why uh if it is the person or if it isn't the person, why they would want to keep their

identity quiet. Yeah, fair enough. Well, I won't go any further then. Okay, so then Mr. A persuades Thiel and Mr. A begins running almost this startup company whose job is to seek out potential cases against Gawker to bankrupt them effectively. And as you mentioned, Ryan, they wanted to explicitly avoid First Amendment cases. And so they were going after sort of privacy cases. And the one that they struck gold on was the Hulk Hogan case. I know you mentioned some of the details, but could you tell us a bit more about the handful of characters involved in that? It's pretty insane. So Hulk Hogan's best friend was a guy who legally changed his name to Bubba the Love Spun. She was a radio shock jock in Florida. He had an enormous audience,

and he also happened to be in an open relationship with his wife at a sort of a low point in his life. Hogan, let's just say, enters their their relationship. They have a number of encounters. But what he does not know, although he has his friend's permission, his friend does not have his permission to secretly record these encounters. And later when those tapes are stolen and leaked, they appear on Gawker and Gawker sort of runs them unthinkingly, not particularly concerned with the legal, you know, the potential legal issues with running something like that. when uh hogan is approached by teal's operatives um they're they're they're quickly able to to file a hundred million dollar lawsuit against cocker the rest is history i guess they they win the case i vividly remember being at work in 2016 and i was just perusing the

the i think the city morning Herald website and seeing this article and then hearing the news about Gawker being brought undone. And I thought this is quite incredible. And then soon after it was revealed that Peter Thiel had funded it all. And then about a year after or two after that, I saw an article saying that Ryan Holiday had written a book about it and it was all too good to be true. No, I mean, look, as someone who followed the case as it was happening, I had no idea that someone like Peter Thiel was behind it. It never even occurred to me to think that someone like Peter Thiel might have been behind it. And so, you know, no one knew what was happening. And I think

to me, that's kind of the message of the book. I wanted people to think about how these things do happen and what does go on behind the scenes and how does power operate and work and how might this again, if you disagree with what Thiel did, you can't argue that he didn't achieve what he set out to achieve. And and in a time where, you know, this idea of these sort of bullies and extremists and unaccountable government or cultural figures, you know, are there lessons here? Are there things that we can learn from Thiel's sort of, they call this playbook lawfare, when you're using, you know, if sort of politics is warfare by other means, then lawfare is sort of a cultural war by other means.

And that's really what happened with Gawker. And I think there is something to learn from that. And that's what the book's ultimately about. Yeah, well, let's talk about the aftermath then. as we were talking about earlier, Machiavelli astutely notes that the dangers don't end after the action part of the conspiracy is over. What sort of fallout was there for Peter Thiel once his identity was revealed as the financial backer? Well, before he is revealed, the sort of precedent, what people believe the precedent in this case was, was somewhat limited. But as soon as you find out that if you hear that a website was destroyed for running an illegally recorded sex tape, you go, oh, okay, maybe there's a lesson there.

But if you find out that a billionaire brought this all about, it does change your view of what happened. And I think that that was something that Thiel didn't expect. What did you make of the outcry that this represented a dangerous precedent of a billionaire trying to shut down a media outlet and that it had broad implications for freedom of speech in America? Well, I mean, I think that the original read before we were biased by our understanding of a billionaire's particular role, and it is probably the correct legal view of the precedent. or Mark Zuckerberg or whomever did not amass billions of dollars of wealth to then not put it to use as they believe it should be used. And so I think you can make a nonpartisan prediction that this is a sign of things to come, which is the sort of flexing

of the Silicon Valley muscle in ways that are going to have large implications for our future. Moreover, I also think, Ryan, so the whole idea that this represents a threat to freedom of speech is a little bit absurd because theoretically, at a legal level, Gorka was in the wrong. At least according to that jury in Florida, yes. Yeah, according to that court. And, you know, if the only thing that's stopping Hulk Hogan from getting an outcome in that matter is that he doesn't have the funds to do it, then arguably you could say that far from representing a threat to freedom of speech, Peter Thiel is actually, you know, this is a matter of access

to justice for Hulk Hogan. And if you have a problem with the outcome, then you should have a problem with privacy laws, not with rich people helping fund other people to bring about legal outcomes. Yeah, look, if the ACLU managed to effectively get a verdict for someone, no one would say, oh, this is a miscarriage of justice because outside funding was what brought it about. You'd say, look, good. This person would have lost their rights without the aid of this outside source. So yeah, I find that argument to be compelling. I mean, there's some flaws with it, flaws to it, but I do generally, I do generally find that argument to be at least thought provoking. And it's something I try to talk about in the book. So I just have one more question. And then I want to ask you some,

just some short general questions that I've always wanted to ask you, but what did you learn about life or how to be an effective person through writing this story? Well, I mean, look, I think two of the more strategic lessons from Teal here are about patience and strategy. You know, Teal waited, he simply waited a very long time to do this. And he did not attack where it might have been most easy or most immediately satisfying. But instead, he looked for a weakness to exploit. You know, he went through the back door and found that the back door was unlocked and that the owner was not home, rather than sort of knocking

repeatedly on the front door and then telling himself there was nothing that could be done about it. And he was willing, you know, to sort of extend this metaphor. He was willing to sit out and stake out the house for an extended period of time, not to sort of just rush in out of anger. And so I think those are some interesting strategic lessons there. Such a fascinating tale, and I'm glad that you did it the justice it deserved. Thank you. So, just some quick questions then, Ryan, before I let you go. So, I actually, I think I may have mentioned to you before we started recording, but I first came across your name back in, I think it was 2016. I think I might've heard you on the Tim

Ferris Show podcast. And then also I started just doing a personal blog where I endeavored to read one nonfiction book per week and then summarize a couple of the actionable insights from the book. And someone who was following the blog said, you should really check out Ryan Holiday's blog because you are more voracious than me when it comes to reading. And you have a personal blog where you summarize the things that you learn from all sorts of books. Eventually, I had, I guess, a change of heart when it came to the quantity of the reading I was doing. And I feel like if you read everything, all your knowledge eventually cancels to zero because there's so much noise in the world and just a little signal. And what I've come to now is really selecting books that I think are high quality books that have passed the test

of time, that are source books. If you want to learn about ethics, read Peter Singer and Derek Parfitt. If you want to learn about economics, read Adam Smith, etc., etc. If you want to learn about evolution, read Darwin and Dawkins. And that's more my approach now. So do you ever worry that you're ultimately just confusing yourself, I guess? No, I don't. I don't. I don't. First off, I generally agree with the theory that you should, it's not about quantity, it's about quality. However, my job is, as a writer, is to communicate, is to take immense amounts of material and synthesize it down into digestible, accessible theories or insights about the human condition.

That's my job. So I have both what I read for me as a person and then what I read as part of my job. And these are related but somewhat different. So I don't read millions and millions of books for my own personal edification. I read what I think will make me a better person and I sort of leave it there. I also happen to read fairly aggressively for my job as a writer. So, Ryan, we mentioned the briefcase technique, which Mr. A used to impress Peter Thiel. And essentially, it's the idea that you go to an older, wiser mentor and bring out a pre-prepared plan for something that could solve a problem of theirs.

And you almost just blow them away with the sheer effort and attentiveness that you've shown. They're so impressed that they nearly feel obligated to bring you on as an employee or a mentee or whatever. So you were fortunate enough to have Robert Green, the author of 48 Laws of Power, as a mentor in your life. Did you use the briefcase technique to work with Robert? I didn't use the briefcase technique. And part of me writing that article was a reflection of how different my life might have been had I been more prepared. I had a meeting with Robert. I did not have anything prepared. Again, I probably should have. But when he told me that he needed a research assistant, I sort of left at the opportunity. But I would say I had been preparing in one way or another for that potential outcome for some time. I was obsessed with his writing. I'd researched it very

deeply. So when I got my sort of first assignment for him or my first couple of assignments, I was far ahead of the curve of where an ordinary research assistant might have been. So there's both the sort of explicit, you know, briefcase technique of sort of here's what I've prepared. And then also just generally being prepared, you know, being able to open the door when opportunity knocks and sort of seizing it. And so I didn't use it as much as I would have liked. And who knows, maybe things would have gone faster and better for me.

But I generally now try to think about that. It's not about, hey, I'll just wing it. It's, you know, what do I want out of this encounter? What can what am I prepared to offer? What work am I going to put in? And that's the difference, I think, between sort of okay returns and extraordinary returns. Great advice. Awesome. Well, look, Ryan, thank you so much for your time. Thanks so much, man. I appreciate it.

And yeah, all the best. All right. I'll see you. Well, there you have it. How good is Ryan Holiday? Make sure you pick up some of his books if you haven't already read them. As I said, my two favorites are Conspiracy and The Obstacle is the Way. But we'll link to those as well as everything else we discussed on our website so you can find those links on the episode page there. And yeah, I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did.

I will speak to you next week. Ciao.