Speaker 1: I'm my Boris and this is strike talk.
Speaker 2: So the idea of philosophy be this way of living,
Speaker 2: this standard to aspire to strikes me.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting and really urgent.
Speaker 1: Ryan Holiday, Welcome to strike talk. Might tell me right
Speaker 1: back to when you first start thinking about this stuff.
Speaker 3: I was nineteen or twenty years old.
Speaker 2: If you had told me that philosophy was something that
Speaker 2: would be interesting, I would have laughed at you. I
Speaker 2: came to understand that wasn't this dusty, stodgy.
Speaker 3: And practical thing.
Speaker 2: It was ordinary and extraordinary people alike working to become what.
Speaker 3: They're capable of being.
Speaker 2: Courage, self discipline, justice and wisdom. Every situation in life,
Speaker 2: big and small, is this opportunity to practice those virtues.
Speaker 1: Ryan Holiday, Welcome to strike Talk.
Speaker 3: Mat Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Where do you come to me from?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 1: Where are we talking from?
Speaker 3: Right outside Austin, Texas?
Speaker 1: Wow, that's cool.
Speaker 4: Everybody wants to live in Texas eas day, I know,
Speaker 4: almost living in life for some reason was going on
Speaker 4: in New York and l A. Just emptying out into Texas.
Speaker 4: What's the deal? Is it tax? Is it bed tax?
Speaker 3: It's it's taxes, it's space.
Speaker 2: You know, it's a it's a bunch of things, some
Speaker 2: good reasons, some not so good reasons. But I'll tell
Speaker 2: you I'm I'm very excited to get to Australia this
Speaker 2: summer because most people I know that live here flee
Speaker 2: Texas during the summer.
Speaker 3: It's it's so freaking.
Speaker 1: Hot as in your summer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm coming our summer. I guess your winter.
Speaker 2: But it's gonna be uh. You know, last year, I
Speaker 2: think we had one hundred days over one hundred degrees fahrenheit,
Speaker 2: So it gets pretty hot here.
Speaker 1: So when are you arriving in Australia and what's and
Speaker 1: what's the deal?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Middle of July? I think I'm doing it. I think
Speaker 2: I'm doing Sydney the last day of July and Melbourne
Speaker 2: maybe the first day of August something like that. And
Speaker 2: this will be my first appearances there.
Speaker 4: And what and what what are you presenting to us?
Speaker 4: Like what's your program looking like? The thesis?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, just to just to really get people excited,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do an hour plus lecture about an obscure
Speaker 2: school of antion philosophy, you know, about as exciting as
Speaker 2: it can get.
Speaker 4: Well for me, that actually is exciting for me. So
Speaker 4: I quite like, I quite like what we're about to
Speaker 4: talk about. I mean, I've read the brief but and
Speaker 4: you're only a young guy, which is pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: It's funny. You know, many many years ago, I.
Speaker 4: Used to talk about a concept of virtues, used to
Speaker 4: go on talking tours in Australia to about virtues, and
Speaker 4: a lot of young people, like the younger audiences, didn't
Speaker 4: really know what virtues were. They don't even really understand
Speaker 4: the word. I mean, and stoicism is sort of somewhat
Speaker 4: related to that. Maybe you just take me back a
Speaker 4: little bit, and you're already young, but take me back
Speaker 4: to the period when you first started becoming interested in
Speaker 4: concepts of stoicism. But probably more importantly from my point
Speaker 4: of view, this concept of virtues.
Speaker 1: What are virtues?
Speaker 4: And you know, where's courage versus you know other things?
Speaker 4: Those types of virtues take me right back to when
Speaker 4: you first started thinking about this.
Speaker 2: I think that's a great question because I relate to that.
Speaker 2: You know, when I was nineteen or twenty years old,
Speaker 2: if you had told me that virtue was something I
Speaker 2: should care about, or if you told me philosophy was
Speaker 2: something that would be interesting, I would have laughed at you,
Speaker 2: you know. And so it wasn't until I read Marcus
Speaker 2: Aurelius's Meditations in my college apartment that I came to
Speaker 2: understand that philosophy wasn't this dusty, stodgy, you know, impractical thing,
Speaker 2: that it was you know, ordinary and extraordinary people alike,
Speaker 2: sort of working to hold themselves to higher standards, to
Speaker 2: become what they're capable of being. If there's a line
Speaker 2: in Meditations or Marx Shois talk, he says, fight to
Speaker 2: be the person that philosophy tried to make you. And
Speaker 2: so the idea of philosophy not being these abstract questions,
Speaker 2: but this way of living, this standard to aspire to,
Speaker 2: strikes me as really interesting and really urgent.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: I think when people hear the word virtue, they think, yeah, religion,
Speaker 2: Like car if you say the phrase the cardinal virtues,
Speaker 2: people think of, you know, a religious figure, right, they
Speaker 2: think of a cardinal. But cardinal comes from the Latin cardos,
Speaker 2: which means pivotal, So they're talking about the pivotal virtue.
Speaker 2: So that's the other thing. It's not virtue, it's virtues,
Speaker 2: and the virtues to the ancient stoics were I think
Speaker 2: pretty straightforward and pretty timeless. They were courage, self discipline, justice,
Speaker 2: and wisdom. And the idea was that every situation in life,
Speaker 2: big and small, was this opportunity to practice those virtues.
Speaker 2: So if we think of every situation, instead of going
Speaker 2: through the life going what can I do here?
Speaker 3: What should I do here?
Speaker 2: We think, well, what opportunity do I have to practice
Speaker 2: one of these ideas or all four of these ideas?
Speaker 2: What is philosophy asking of me? I think that's a
Speaker 2: much more interesting way to approach these, you know, admittedly
Speaker 2: very ancient ideas.
Speaker 4: How did you get the Marcuisraelis Meditations book? Because I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm sixty eight and I more recently bought it maybe
Speaker 4: a year ago, and I just look at it every
Speaker 4: now and then. It sits on my bedside amongst seven
Speaker 4: or eight other books, which I'm sort of reading different
Speaker 4: books at different times depending on how I.
Speaker 1: Feel at night.
Speaker 4: And you know, so I'm sort of relatively speaking advanced
Speaker 4: relative to you when you're you're nineteen? Who who mentioned you?
Speaker 4: Or how did you become a cross? Looking at a
Speaker 4: book like Marcus Realist's Meditations? Because it's sort of fairly
Speaker 4: dense for a nineteen year old.
Speaker 1: That's what I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 2: I was at a conference and I went up to
Speaker 2: the speaker after and I just said, hey, you know,
Speaker 2: are you reading anything interesting?
Speaker 3: And then that's how I got pointed.
Speaker 2: To the Stoics. And I think, what was so great
Speaker 2: about that? I didn't realize that at the time, but
Speaker 2: this is how Stoicism has spread for twenty five centuries
Speaker 2: that It's been this process of Hey, I got something
Speaker 2: out of this. I think you'll get something out of
Speaker 2: it too. And that's one of the interesting passages in
Speaker 2: Mark Surrelis's Meditations. Marx rewis being the Emperor of Rome.
Speaker 2: He's thanking his teacher Rusticus for having lent him a
Speaker 2: copy of the writings of Epictetus, who is his favorite
Speaker 2: Stoic philosopher. So if we can think of, you know,
Speaker 2: twenty five centuries of people going, hey, check out this book.
Speaker 2: I think it's good. You know, that's what Stoicism is.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I don't think people are doing that with Heidegger or
Speaker 2: Kant or.
Speaker 3: Even Aristotle these days. Right.
Speaker 2: The idea of philosophy being something closer to self help
Speaker 2: is to me really really interesting and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: some people turn up their notes at that, but I
Speaker 2: think that's wonderful.
Speaker 4: Yeah, mean, a lot of people always searching. Some people
Speaker 4: in their life, they're always searching. They don't really know
Speaker 4: what they're searching for. Do you think that Macros surrealis
Speaker 4: is because given that you mentioned earlier on it was
Speaker 4: sort of going back to twenty five centuries. I mean,
Speaker 4: we probably can go back to the original writings of Stoicism,
Speaker 4: which I'm sure go back beyond this, but in terms
Speaker 4: of what's available to look at, you can probably go
Speaker 4: back to you know, Socrates and Plato and Aristotle back
Speaker 4: in the five hundred BC six BC, and I'm sure
Speaker 4: it goes beyond that. But this is just what's in
Speaker 4: evidence in terms of what's written down. I'm sure there's
Speaker 4: lots of other places. There's probably Asian cultures and Egyptian
Speaker 4: cultures would go beyond that. But the thing that's most popular,
Speaker 4: but it was a bit, it was a bit sort
Speaker 4: of complex, and sometimes this stuff could go on for
Speaker 4: hundreds and hundreds of pages, especially if you're go and
Speaker 4: buy some of the books, some of the writings of
Speaker 4: these guys, the thing that I really just did is
Speaker 4: that he made it pretty simple in terms of he
Speaker 4: gave it to invite sizes. It was sort of like
Speaker 4: a practical application of this little tweets. Yeah, that's perfect
Speaker 4: nearly yeah, yeah, like little tweets.
Speaker 1: Correct.
Speaker 4: It's a mod version of tweets, an old version of
Speaker 4: what is my version of tweets? So why do you
Speaker 4: think that is important to people? Though?
Speaker 1: Because? Is it because today.
Speaker 4: We don't want to sit down and read Plato and
Speaker 4: Socrates and Aristota would go on for hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 4: and hundreds of pages and it gets very very complex.
Speaker 4: Do you think today that we do only one of
Speaker 4: digestings and bite size amounts?
Speaker 2: You know what, No, I think Marcus Aurelius was doing
Speaker 2: the same thing that I'm doing, that that people have
Speaker 2: been doing for thousands of years, which is he was
Speaker 2: taking ancient philosophy. And that's kind of a mind blowing
Speaker 2: thing to think about. This was ancient philosophy to Marcus
Speaker 2: aureli He's writing in the second century AD, and you know,
Speaker 2: the founder of Stoicism was writing in the fourth century BC, right,
Speaker 2: and so to him this was already stuff that was
Speaker 2: thousands or hundreds of years old. Socrates to him was
Speaker 2: older than Shakespeare is to us. Right, And so you
Speaker 2: think about what he's doing is his reading this stuff
Speaker 2: and then he's trying to digest it and make it accessible,
Speaker 2: not to an audience per se. I think that's a
Speaker 2: little different, but to himself. He's what meditations is. These
Speaker 2: little bite sized sentences that you're talking about, they're they're
Speaker 2: his summaries and re articulations of the ideas and the
Speaker 2: things that he believes and the standards he's trying to
Speaker 2: live up to.
Speaker 3: That's what he's doing.
Speaker 2: It's his private riffing on these you know, timeless ideas.
Speaker 2: And so I think it's always been tough to go
Speaker 2: back to the original sources and get exactly what they mean.
Speaker 2: And so philosophy, just like music and art and uh
Speaker 2: and and all the mediums, is this process of remixing
Speaker 2: and rephrasing and re examining, and sometimes it comes out
Speaker 2: very close to the original, and sometimes we come up
Speaker 2: with something totally new when we do that.
Speaker 4: It's interesting you just mentioned music, and music is one
Speaker 4: way of conveying stories or important things to us. And
Speaker 4: if I go back, you know, and I don't want to,
Speaker 4: and I just.
Speaker 1: Want to stop. We'll stop off because I don't want.
Speaker 4: To sort of overload the whole discussion around this particular aspect.
Speaker 4: But for me, if I go back and to the
Speaker 4: stories of Homer, which predates all of the dudes, sure
Speaker 4: Homer had this ability to talk about the philosophical things
Speaker 4: that you're talking about, Like, you know, we talk about
Speaker 4: virtues and ways of life and things that get us
Speaker 4: get us closer to.
Speaker 1: Being better human beings.
Speaker 4: But I'm putting into stories like the Iliad and the Odyssey,
Speaker 4: and by individuals within those stories, let's call them the
Speaker 4: heroes and heroines. Usually they're heroes, but who were able
Speaker 4: to endure in terms of endurance for example, and endure
Speaker 4: terrible outcomes just to get to a certain point in
Speaker 4: their life. And the best one is the Odyssey of
Speaker 4: Odysseus trying to get home to his wife. But how
Speaker 4: important is it to either put this stuff in by
Speaker 4: sized tweet sort of versions, or alternatively, how important it
Speaker 4: is it because you're a writer, how important is it
Speaker 4: to put this stuff into storylines and an add a
Speaker 4: story around it so that people can become interested Because
Speaker 4: it can be a little bit dry. Ethan know what
Speaker 4: I mean to some people. To you and I we
Speaker 4: think is great.
Speaker 2: But well, I'm in the middle of reading the Artissey
Speaker 2: to my seven year old right now, so I've been
Speaker 2: thinking a lot about this.
Speaker 1: You're reading Robert Graves's version.
Speaker 2: No, there's an American translator who's actually a biographer of
Speaker 2: one of the Stoics. She wrote a biography of Seneca
Speaker 2: called her name is Emily Wilson. She did a new
Speaker 2: translation a couple of years ago, and she just did
Speaker 2: the Iliad as well. The Rabert Graves edition is quite good.
Speaker 2: Rapper Graves, I think the Fagels transition I've also read.
Speaker 2: But the idea is to me, what I try to
Speaker 2: do in my writing is take the ideas of the
Speaker 2: Stoics and then demonstrate them through story or illustrate them
Speaker 2: through story. So I feel like the Stoics already said
Speaker 2: it as good as it can be said. You know,
Speaker 2: they've distilled it down to its absolute essence as an
Speaker 2: idea or as a statement. But that's not typically how
Speaker 2: humans learn things. There's a reason Jesus spoke in parables.
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln probably the great you know, American communicator spoke
Speaker 2: in terms of stories, right, he would, he would tell
Speaker 2: anecdotes to make his point. There's something disarming about a story,
Speaker 2: there's something memorable about a story. There's something about the
Speaker 2: way we understand things that I think makes stories particularly powerful.
Speaker 2: And so what I try to do in my books
Speaker 2: is is take an idea from the Stoics, how they
Speaker 2: treated obstacles as opportunities, and then I'll write a book
Speaker 2: demonstrating that or or extrapolating that out in the form
Speaker 2: of stories from men and women past and present. You know,
Speaker 2: great and evil people who who who illustrated that idea
Speaker 2: or illustrated the perils of not living that idea. So
Speaker 2: that's that's what I try to do in all of
Speaker 2: my books.
Speaker 4: It it's interesting you just mentioned the word parables, and
Speaker 4: you know, there's been many great storytellers who tell a
Speaker 4: story about in parables. When I look at today's leaders,
Speaker 4: and I don't want to let's just concentrate on some
Speaker 4: two of your leaders in your country, one of the
Speaker 4: biggest nations of the world.
Speaker 1: They doesn't seem to talk in powables.
Speaker 4: They sort of seem to me, and I'm not mean
Speaker 4: to be mean, but they sort of speak in riddles.
Speaker 1: It's actually they're just confusing.
Speaker 2: They make a lot of statements, but they don't they don't.
Speaker 2: Not only do they not tell a good story about
Speaker 2: how they want things to go, but they tend not
Speaker 2: to tell real stories. So they'll go I'm speaking of
Speaker 2: Susie as uh uh, a single mother of three living.
Speaker 2: You know, they make up these stories about these fake people.
Speaker 2: And and what the great leaders throughout history did was
Speaker 2: draw on myths or commonly known stories and use them
Speaker 2: as as a way of illustrating ideas or principles. So
Speaker 2: so that that is a problem with the collapse of
Speaker 2: the teaching of the classics, of the collapse of the humanities,
Speaker 2: is we we don't We no longer have the same
Speaker 2: myths and ideas, you know. Like the last sort of
Speaker 2: thing that kind of pierced the cultural consciousness was probably
Speaker 2: like Harry Potter or something. And you can't have the president,
Speaker 2: you know, telling a story about Harry Potter.
Speaker 3: It just seems silly.
Speaker 2: But you need you need a common you know, you
Speaker 2: need a common sort of shared consciousness of figures big
Speaker 2: and small. Like that's what's so interesting the founding of America,
Speaker 2: that all the American founders were steeped in these ancient
Speaker 2: stories about the Greeks and Romans, and so they were
Speaker 2: kind of almost play acting. And so when they would
Speaker 2: say these things that sort of get written down in history,
Speaker 2: people who knew their classical history understood, you know, the
Speaker 2: plays they were referencing or the historical figures they were
Speaker 2: alluding to, and it sort of imbued everything with this
Speaker 2: kind of epic noss right, And we lack that today,
Speaker 2: and I think that it makes it hard for us
Speaker 2: to come together when we don't sort of share a
Speaker 2: culture in that way.
Speaker 4: And do you think it is that because the audience
Speaker 4: lacks the general knowledge so much so that the person
Speaker 4: speaking to them is no point talking to him about
Speaker 4: these epic stories, which, as you said, like Abraham Lincoln,
Speaker 4: his audience knew this history and generally speaking that we
Speaker 4: was toward the stuff at school. I guess well, parents
Speaker 4: talked about it. You know, parents probably told stories because
Speaker 4: you know, we didn't have all the other distractions.
Speaker 1: Do you think therefore it's impossible for current leaders to
Speaker 1: be able to.
Speaker 4: Do what say someone like Abraham Lincoln did and tell
Speaker 4: those to have stories, And therefore our current leaders and
Speaker 4: more talking about falsehoods and fakeness and all the short
Speaker 4: term stuff that we generally get out of social media.
Speaker 1: Is that the reason I don't.
Speaker 2: Think it's imposs I don't think it's impossible. I just
Speaker 2: think it's it's much harder, right. And so that's what
Speaker 2: that's what demagogues do or populists do, is they they
Speaker 2: they do tell a story which is like, they're those
Speaker 2: people over there, and those people are bad, and those
Speaker 2: people are the source of all of the problems and
Speaker 2: evils of life, right, And that is a very timeless story.
Speaker 2: The story of the scapegoat is a very sort of timeless,
Speaker 2: uh you know, universal.
Speaker 3: Sort of trope.
Speaker 2: And so I do think we're seeing some of the
Speaker 2: negative of it. But but I think it's been a
Speaker 2: while since since any of the major nations had had
Speaker 2: a really great leader who could tell a story about.
Speaker 3: You know where we're going.
Speaker 2: I mean even even even Trump. You know, Trump's saying
Speaker 2: make America great again. He's saying, like, make it like
Speaker 2: it used to be. He's not able to say, I
Speaker 2: here's how I think it should be going forward. So
Speaker 2: there there's just something there's something lacking about our ability
Speaker 2: to to sort of share ideas or or aspirations that
Speaker 2: I do think is a.
Speaker 5: Problem if I if I got back, because I'm trying
Speaker 5: to work out where you became.
Speaker 4: Two things, you developed yourself into a great rata, and
Speaker 4: that's a skill, thank you. The second thing is that
Speaker 4: what you're write about you also had learned about. And
Speaker 4: we've already you've already explained to me that NINETEENA started
Speaker 4: with reading the Marcus Releases tweets. But how did you
Speaker 4: become a great writer? Because that's a big skill. I mean,
Speaker 4: what is the process if you go back to when
Speaker 4: you're No. One in twenty how'd you start this process off?
Speaker 4: What was you and what were your influences?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: I was I became a writer in a very old
Speaker 2: school way in that I was the apprentice to a
Speaker 2: great writer. So I was a research assistant to a
Speaker 2: writer named Robert Green, who's one of the great nonfiction
Speaker 2: writers of the of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
Speaker 2: And I learned the craft from him, and I worked
Speaker 2: for him for many years. He showed me how books work,
Speaker 2: he showed me how to tell stories, he showed.
Speaker 3: Me how to research.
Speaker 2: I learned in that way and I think, you know,
Speaker 2: today people think it's you know, you throw something up
Speaker 2: online and he either finds an audience or it doesn't.
Speaker 2: I wrote every day on line for you know, several
Speaker 2: years between my first book and hitting a best selling
Speaker 2: you know, hitting the New York Times bestseller list was a.
Speaker 3: Period of several years. After that.
Speaker 2: It was a It was an apprenticeship literally and then
Speaker 2: an apprenticeship figuratively in sort of doing the thing over
Speaker 2: and over and over again and learning not just how
Speaker 2: to do the thing better, but also how to engage
Speaker 2: and interact with an audience. You know, comedians talk about
Speaker 2: you just got to get up on stage a lot
Speaker 2: of times.
Speaker 3: And that is one one advantage.
Speaker 2: That the internet, you know, offers people is that it
Speaker 2: is possible to get a lot of reps. And I
Speaker 2: got a lot of reps in my twenties just writing
Speaker 2: and writing and writing and writing, and you know, eventually
Speaker 2: that I think that paid off.
Speaker 4: It's pretty cool that you got to sort of deal with,
Speaker 4: you know, someone write a book as powerful as a
Speaker 4: forty forty eight Laws of Power, Like, I mean, that's
Speaker 4: not necessarily saying that that book's are exactly my piece
Speaker 4: of cake. But none it is a pretty it's a
Speaker 4: pretty big deal and great a pretty successful person. Lots
Speaker 4: of people always ask me questions about mentorship, so maybe,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe you can tell us in a philosophical way,
Speaker 4: the philosophy and the philosophy around seeking a mentor and
Speaker 4: how you I don't want to use the word make use,
Speaker 4: but how you take advantage of what the mentor has
Speaker 4: to offer.
Speaker 1: What does it mean? Mentorship?
Speaker 2: It's a weird thing because a mentorship is something essential
Speaker 2: and yet it is also something that's a little bit ineffable.
Speaker 2: I sometimes I'll get emails from people and they'll say, hey,
Speaker 2: will you be my mentor? They say, what's the How
Speaker 2: can I find a mentor? And that's not really how
Speaker 2: it works, you know. In the old days, yeah, you
Speaker 2: would be attached as an apprentice to someone and there
Speaker 2: would be a contract and you're basically like an indentured servant.
Speaker 2: It doesn't work that way anymore. You have to you
Speaker 2: have to show potential, you have to have some momentum
Speaker 2: and somebody who needs someone. It's weird to say, like
Speaker 2: they'll find you, but that's kind of how it works.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You don't go around, you don't go to a bar
Speaker 2: and you just ask people, Hey, will you be my girlfriend?
Speaker 2: Will you be my boyfriend? Right, it's a process that ensues,
Speaker 2: and part of why it ensues is that you show
Speaker 2: yourself as someone who's going somewhere right.
Speaker 3: And so my.
Speaker 2: Relationship with Robert Green began because I was already working
Speaker 2: for another author and I was working for someone else
Speaker 2: and as sort of we were, you know, in the
Speaker 2: same proximity to each other, and he happened to need
Speaker 2: one at that time. And you know, I got a shot,
Speaker 2: and I think that's really important. You'll get a shot.
Speaker 2: It's just what do you do with that shot? And
Speaker 2: I think I managed to take good advantage of it.
Speaker 2: And then you have to understand, you know that the
Speaker 2: mentor is paying you with the most priceless thing there is,
Speaker 2: which is their time, their very hard one insights, and
Speaker 2: so you have to figure out what is it that
Speaker 2: you're trying to get out of this thing?
Speaker 3: How?
Speaker 2: How what is success to you? I find sometimes in
Speaker 2: young people that I've worked for, I see something in them,
Speaker 2: but I seem to want it for them more than
Speaker 2: they want it for themselves. And that can be you know,
Speaker 2: that's the death knell to a potential you know, mentor
Speaker 2: mentee relationship.
Speaker 4: How important is it do you think in terms of
Speaker 4: your career and and perhaps more importantly your opportunities, like
Speaker 4: you know, mentorship opportunities for example, you know green.
Speaker 1: Is it for you to show value?
Speaker 4: So you know, like one thing I know in my
Speaker 4: life is that the people that I'm attracted to is
Speaker 4: someone who's who's building an awareness campaign, maybe unnaturally not
Speaker 4: even realized in doing it, but that's something that's valuable
Speaker 4: to me. And as you say, I think mentors choose
Speaker 4: the mentee as a party exact.
Speaker 1: So how important because you're putting something you know, you're.
Speaker 4: Putting value out there, and obviously someone's will the value.
Speaker 4: Did you know you're putting value out there? Did you
Speaker 4: actually say I'm going to put value out there or
Speaker 4: this is a topic I'm really really interested and I'm
Speaker 4: going to become the best at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to find something that you're good at
Speaker 2: that maybe other people aren't good at yet that is
Speaker 2: a value.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: I'll get emails from people and they'll say like, hey,
Speaker 2: I want to work for you, I'll work for free,
Speaker 2: I'll do anything. And what they don't understand what you're
Speaker 2: saying when you say that to a busy person, is hey,
Speaker 2: i'd like you to figure out how you can help me, right,
Speaker 2: And I don't have time for that. But if someone
Speaker 2: emails me and says, hey, I notice you're doing this thing.
Speaker 2: This other person who's a successful writer is doing this
Speaker 2: other thing that I think you should be doing, and
Speaker 2: I can do that for you, or hey, why aren't
Speaker 2: you doing X Y or z? Or have you thought
Speaker 2: about doing X, Y or z. Now, me and that
Speaker 2: person might have a conversation because I'd be like, oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't think about that, or oh, sure, I'll give
Speaker 2: you a shot to do that. And so what I
Speaker 2: did are very early on. The reason I was able
Speaker 2: to work with all these different authors is I really
Speaker 2: I came to understand, you know, how internet marketing worked
Speaker 2: and how blogs worked at a time when this was
Speaker 2: still very very new. And so I there were so
Speaker 2: many things that Robert could teach me, but there was
Speaker 2: one thing that I could help him with, and that's
Speaker 2: where the exchange.
Speaker 1: And what was that?
Speaker 2: What was that I could help him with Internet stuff?
Speaker 2: You know, I was the young kid who understood how
Speaker 2: computers worked. And some of these authors whose work I
Speaker 2: really admired, you know, didn't have time to figure all
Speaker 2: that stuff out, and that's where the exchange happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it was so more of the reverse.
Speaker 4: It wasn't so much you wanted to ask him to
Speaker 4: be your mentor. It was more like he wanted you
Speaker 4: to become his mentee because there was something valuable in
Speaker 4: exchange for what he needed as well, and because you know,
Speaker 4: lots of times. I recently was talking to some real
Speaker 4: estate agents and they were saying to me, you know,
Speaker 4: how do I become valuable to you know, how do
Speaker 4: I get more listings in Australia. You got to get listing,
Speaker 4: that's how you make money as a real estate agent.
Speaker 4: And I said, well, if maybe you've got to present
Speaker 4: yourself as something valuable to these individuals, I suppose just
Speaker 4: another transaction that they're all put.
Speaker 1: You know, there's every real estate agent, does.
Speaker 4: You know what's valuable to people in your in your
Speaker 4: district and just write about it, you know, and publish
Speaker 4: it somewhere wherever. It's on Instagram, I don't care where
Speaker 4: you do it, but just get to your audience and
Speaker 4: they will select you. I mean, people get selected.
Speaker 2: That's how I That's how I got my start as
Speaker 2: a writer, before I published a book, before I was
Speaker 2: even writing anything publicly, I started an email list where
Speaker 2: I just recommended books that I thought were good, and
Speaker 2: over time I developed a small audience of people who
Speaker 2: loved books, and at some point I was able to go, hey,
Speaker 2: I've recommended hundreds of books to you over the last
Speaker 2: several years and you like some of them. Is there
Speaker 2: a chance that you might like this book that I wrote?
Speaker 2: And that's what kicked off my career. And so I
Speaker 2: think whether it's mentorship or building a client base or
Speaker 2: you know, an audience, it's all rooted in this idea
Speaker 2: of where are you providing value? And you start there
Speaker 2: instead of which is you know it's funny one. That's
Speaker 2: one of the laws of the forty eight Laws of Power,
Speaker 2: Robert Green says, always appeal to self interest, never mercy
Speaker 2: or gratitude. And so when you say, hey, help me,
Speaker 2: I really need something from you, that's not a compelling offer.
Speaker 2: But when you say, hey, look what I can do
Speaker 2: this is valuable, that's a very that's a much more
Speaker 2: compelling thing to say.
Speaker 4: And no doubt you've read these the letters of Mackievelli
Speaker 4: to the Prince, which when I used to set up
Speaker 4: my business as many many years ago, any young guys
Speaker 4: just to come and iced to give them the book.
Speaker 4: There was a book with all the let not all
Speaker 4: the letters, but some of the letters in and I
Speaker 4: used to talk about, Yeah, I used to just say
Speaker 4: read this because we used to take over other businesses.
Speaker 4: And Mackievelli was about trying to say to the Prince, look,
Speaker 4: when you take over another territory, this is the way
Speaker 4: you've got to be a lot of people attribute Machiavelian
Speaker 4: principles as been quite evil and manipulative. An actual fact,
Speaker 4: I don't find him that way. I find them quite
Speaker 4: practical practically outcomes. How how do does how do you
Speaker 4: see Machiavellian principles sort of panning out? Let's say, for example,
Speaker 4: for importance of a business person to have read those principles,
Speaker 4: someone who goes and makes buyers business and bill's employment
Speaker 4: people and employees, bills, audiences. How important those principles to you?
Speaker 1: Do you think that reallyvant?
Speaker 2: I mean, I think they're very principal. I think they're
Speaker 2: very principal. And I would actually say Machiavelli was a
Speaker 2: very principled game. And this is a guy who's tortured
Speaker 2: for his belief that that that Florence actually should be
Speaker 2: a republic. He was, he was actually anti prince, but
Speaker 2: he was he was smart enough to see how how
Speaker 2: a powerful print should operate. But I think a lot
Speaker 2: about this a lot with my books. Look, I love
Speaker 2: ancient philosophy. I'm a nerd for these things, but I'm
Speaker 2: also very realistic, and I understand that most people are not.
Speaker 2: So I spend a lot of time thinking about how
Speaker 2: to build my platform. I spend a lot of time
Speaker 2: thinking about the titles, the positioning, the pricing, the approaches
Speaker 2: of the books, because I'm doing exactly what Machiavelli and
Speaker 2: Robert Green talked about, which is, I want to make
Speaker 2: it clear that this book is what you need. It's
Speaker 2: not what I think you need. I want to make
Speaker 2: it clear that this is this is valuable to you,
Speaker 2: This does something for you, as opposed to coming at
Speaker 2: it the way I unfortunately too many people do, which
Speaker 2: is they go, this is really important, and you're an
Speaker 2: idiot if you don't know about it right, And No,
Speaker 2: you have to meet the audience where they are and
Speaker 2: the audience is busy, the audience is distracted, the audience
Speaker 2: preconceived notions about things, and you have to find a
Speaker 2: way in. And if you can't be strategic, and I
Speaker 2: would say a little bit Machiavellian, you're probably not gonna
Speaker 2: make it.
Speaker 1: Would you?
Speaker 4: Would you mind explain to the audience, our audience. I'm
Speaker 4: given what you just said. What do you say the
Speaker 4: difference between some like Machiavelio, not the one of us
Speaker 4: knew in but what he's led us said to the
Speaker 4: prince versus, for example, the stall and the process of
Speaker 4: say resputant.
Speaker 2: I don't know that that's not my uh my area
Speaker 2: of expertise historically, but but I think you know what's
Speaker 2: interesting about Machiavelli is that Machiavelli was trying to look
Speaker 2: back at history and deduce some patterns, good and bad
Speaker 2: that we can learn from. He's not saying you should
Speaker 2: do all these things, but he is saying that you
Speaker 2: got to be aware of all these things. And that
Speaker 2: is a thing I talk a lot about in the
Speaker 2: new book, this idea of how having some a pragmatic
Speaker 2: streak that if you just think that because you're right,
Speaker 2: if you just think that because your cause is just
Speaker 2: it's going to succeed, you're going to be sorely mistaken.
Speaker 2: At the same time, if your cause isn't right, if
Speaker 2: there aren't if there isn't something behind it, if there
Speaker 2: isn't some real principles to it, you know, you may succeed,
Speaker 2: but I don't think it's going to be a particularly
Speaker 2: meaningful and significant success. And so there is a balance there.
Speaker 2: I think the Stoics tried to strike it well, you know,
Speaker 2: they tried to They tried to understand the ways of
Speaker 2: the world and try to inshit a little bit closer
Speaker 2: to where they thought it should be. And I do
Speaker 2: think we need more people like that. You know, just
Speaker 2: tweeting about a problem doesn't do anything about it if
Speaker 2: you don't have the power to bring it into existence,
Speaker 2: and that is a really important, you know, aspect of
Speaker 2: all of this.
Speaker 4: You said something really interesting about, you know, how you
Speaker 4: set your title, and in twenty twelveies you put out
Speaker 4: of the book trust me, I love this one.
Speaker 1: I love you. Trust me.
Speaker 4: I'mlyining Confessions of a Medium manipulate. He's plain what the
Speaker 4: book was about and obviously gets our attention. The headline
Speaker 4: gets the attention, but obviously the headline's more pisstike as
Speaker 4: not really what the book's about.
Speaker 2: I guess no, I was doing an expose of the
Speaker 2: media system. But what I looked at is that there
Speaker 2: were a lot of really interesting books of media criticism,
Speaker 2: historically and contemporary, but they tended to be read only
Speaker 2: by people in the media and therefore had almost no
Speaker 2: impact and did not sell well. And so as I
Speaker 2: as I thought about how I was going to position
Speaker 2: and write that book, I thought, I want to reach
Speaker 2: a bigger audience than that, and so I, you know,
Speaker 2: I decided to put some of the ideas in the
Speaker 2: book to practice. And you know, to me, if it's
Speaker 2: one thing to talk about something, but you've also got
Speaker 2: to be you've also got to have some proof that
Speaker 2: you know what you're talking about. And that's what I
Speaker 2: was trying to do that book.
Speaker 4: But was it did you learn something in particular? Because
Speaker 4: it's not really philosophical as such, but it's is it
Speaker 4: more like a.
Speaker 2: Although that is trust me I'm lying. Is the thing
Speaker 2: we call the liar's paradox, which is can you trust
Speaker 2: someone who's told you they've they're lying? So it's you know,
Speaker 2: I was supposed to be provocative, but but but the
Speaker 2: idea in that book was, look, these are the forces
Speaker 2: that are acting on the information that you are consuming.
Speaker 2: And and I'm not saying it should be this way.
Speaker 2: I'm saying this is the way that it is. And
Speaker 2: I know this for a fact because I've not only
Speaker 2: seen it, but I've done it. And you know, it's
Speaker 2: funny that book came out and and it did do
Speaker 2: very well, but there were a lot of people, particularly
Speaker 2: people in the media, that said, you know that they've
Speaker 2: kind of played a game of shoot the messenger, and
Speaker 2: the result was they were slow in making a lot
Speaker 2: of the changes that you know, we have needed to
Speaker 2: make as a society, and that we're still dealing with
Speaker 2: the consequence. So, you know, I have a mixed, you know,
Speaker 2: feeling about that book, you know, twelve years after it
Speaker 2: came out.
Speaker 3: But what it did what I wanted.
Speaker 2: It to do, which was it it made public things
Speaker 2: that I felt like were kind of open secrets in
Speaker 2: that industry.
Speaker 1: So your new book, what's your new book called? Which
Speaker 1: you are about to release?
Speaker 2: So I've been doing this this series on the Cardinal Virtue.
Speaker 2: So I did a book on courage. I did a
Speaker 2: book on self discipline, and this new one is about
Speaker 2: the virtue of justice. It's called right thing right now,
Speaker 2: good values, good character, good deeds.
Speaker 4: That's a very interesting one given the American situation politically
Speaker 4: at the moment in terms of justice. Can you give
Speaker 4: me a little bit of annoyed about the thesis in that
Speaker 4: particular book that won on justice?
Speaker 2: Well, I agree with your sentiment about the American situation,
Speaker 2: but I very much wrote a book that's not about
Speaker 2: legal justice. I tried to write a book about about
Speaker 2: the more personal form of justice, the standards we hold
Speaker 2: ourselves to, the principles we act with. That Mark Suwas
Speaker 2: said that basically the purpose of life was good character
Speaker 2: and acts for the common good. And to me, that's
Speaker 2: a much more urgent definition of justice than the one
Speaker 2: we think about, which is, you know, what did the
Speaker 2: jury say, What did the judge say, what does the
Speaker 2: law say. It's not that these things aren't important, of
Speaker 2: course they are. The justice system is the cornerstone of
Speaker 2: a free and fair society. And yet just because something
Speaker 2: is illegal or not illegal doesn't mean it's right or
Speaker 2: it's wrong. There's something above and below that the sort
Speaker 2: of standards we hold ourselves to that I think are
Speaker 2: much more important.
Speaker 4: And I mean, I have a view that the law
Speaker 4: is just legal fiction. It's fictions turn into legislation by
Speaker 4: parliaments precedents, which you know should actually reflect the sorts
Speaker 4: of philosophical points that you're making. So justice and legal
Speaker 4: system should reflect what's your book and justice talk about.
Speaker 4: But unfortunately it's forever failing us these days.
Speaker 1: I want to go back to the first book, the
Speaker 1: book I think it was on courage.
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, it's a very difficult concept courage, And I
Speaker 4: remember reading once and I think it was Aristotle said this,
Speaker 4: but courage sits somewhere between recklessness and cowardice, but not
Speaker 4: in the middle. So how do we how do we
Speaker 4: work out what courage is, particularly at a personal level?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Aristotle was that's the famous Golden mean or the
Speaker 2: Aristotilian mean, the idea that the virtues often set between
Speaker 2: two vases.
Speaker 3: And I think is right.
Speaker 2: Look, the virtues are inseparable from each other, right, because
Speaker 2: courage in pursuit of in unjust gore is not courage
Speaker 2: as a virtue. Right discipline, disciplined commitment to the wrong
Speaker 2: idea is also not wisdom, right, and so so the
Speaker 2: virtues all kind of balance each other out. But but
Speaker 2: I agree, you know, courage isn't just recklessly charging into battle.
Speaker 2: It's not putting pushing all your chips into the middle
Speaker 2: of the table. On every hand, it's it's knowing what's important.
Speaker 2: It's knowing what the right amount is, and it's knowing
Speaker 2: when you're going to put you know, your ass on
Speaker 2: the line, so to speak. And so when when we
Speaker 2: think about courage, it's easy to think of courage and isolation,
Speaker 2: but of course what that courage is pursuing is where.
Speaker 3: Justice comes in.
Speaker 2: So it's been an interesting series to do because it's
Speaker 2: hard to say where one virtue begins and the other ends.
Speaker 1: And it becoes.
Speaker 4: You know, some we are younger people in particular, but
Speaker 4: continually continuously confronted with that person is being aloki to
Speaker 4: the at least being said they're courageous. It could be
Speaker 4: an an NFL player, it could be a rugby league player,
Speaker 4: it could be a basketball it could be a business person.
Speaker 4: You know, and we get these iconic people up there
Speaker 4: that we sort of in social media sort of does
Speaker 4: this to us, tries to force the young people to
Speaker 4: look to that individual as someone who represents all forms
Speaker 4: of courage. Yeah, we don't know anything about their their story,
Speaker 4: and I find courage to be one of the most
Speaker 4: challenging things to explain to younger people. And your book
Speaker 4: doesn't go through it like in a in a deep
Speaker 4: storytelling way.
Speaker 3: It does, it does.
Speaker 2: I tried to look at examples of of, you know,
Speaker 2: just overcoming simple fear. I tried to look at it
Speaker 2: as you know, sort of taking severe risks in the
Speaker 2: endurance required to sustain that courage. And then I wanted
Speaker 2: to look at that sort of true selfless courage, you know,
Speaker 2: when when people give everything in pursuit of an idea
Speaker 2: or a country or a cause. So yeah, I think
Speaker 2: courage it's hard. It's hard to distill courage down to
Speaker 2: a tweet. That's why I wrote a whole book about it, right,
Speaker 2: It's it's a tough thing to wrap your head around,
Speaker 2: but it's hard. It's also hard to find, uh, a
Speaker 2: country or a cause or a tradition that doesn't hold
Speaker 2: courage up as one of the most important of the virtues.
Speaker 2: So I think courage is is this, you know, courage
Speaker 2: is one of those things that you you can't give
Speaker 2: it a simple definition, but we also seem to know
Speaker 2: it when we see it.
Speaker 4: Well, we're looking forward to seeing you in July when
Speaker 4: you come out to Australia's any Melbourbrisman and I'm sure
Speaker 4: the dates all be coming up shortly and we'll be
Speaker 4: able to put up on our website just quickly. Your
Speaker 4: one hour talk. Are you going to talk about your
Speaker 4: last the last the latest book in the previous two books?
Speaker 4: Are you going to just give us a full rundown
Speaker 4: of the the you know, the four sort of categories
Speaker 4: you want to talk.
Speaker 3: About I want to talk about.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about all the ideas in Stoic
Speaker 2: philosophy and how we can apply them to our actual lives,
Speaker 2: which to me is what what philosophy is all about.
Speaker 4: Well, it's going to be awesome and and I'm going
Speaker 4: to try to get one of those three because I'm
Speaker 4: always traveling around the joint. So I'd love to hear
Speaker 4: you and good luck, Jan Thanks very much for coming
Speaker 4: on today. It's been awesome.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much, Mark, I appreciate it.