Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg
Speaker 1: Radio this week. On the podcast, I have a very
Speaker 1: interesting and not quite as controversial as his reputation uh
Speaker 1: makes out. Ryan Holliday is the author of really a
Speaker 1: very fascinating book about the entire Hulk Hogan Peter Thiel
Speaker 1: Gawker litigation called Conspiracy. He has really a fascinating, amazing background.
Speaker 1: I wish I had another hour because I had so
Speaker 1: many more questions. I'm a big fan of Robert Green.
Speaker 1: He was a research assistant for him who wrote the
Speaker 1: books on power laws. I didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: to talk about that, but we really delved into what's
Speaker 1: going on with the media, the whole problem with digital marketing, blogging, um,
Speaker 1: all of the sort of click happy so social media, uh,
Speaker 1: the filter bubbles that have been created by Facebook and
Speaker 1: Google and Twitter. Um. It really is an interesting question.
Speaker 1: He has quite an amazing story. Drops out of school
Speaker 1: very young, eventually gets a gig at American Apparel. I
Speaker 1: think he's twenty when he becomes their head of pr
Speaker 1: and here it is barely a decade and changed later,
Speaker 1: and he's five books or six books published, some of
Speaker 1: which have become extremely successful best sellers. Uh, just really
Speaker 1: an unusual, interesting, fascinating history for a writer. I found
Speaker 1: the conversation quite intriguing, and I think you will also, so,
Speaker 1: with no further ado, my conversation with Ryan Holiday. I'm
Speaker 1: Barry Hults. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: My special guest today is Ryan Holiday. He is an
Speaker 1: American author, marketer, and entrepreneur. He is the former director
Speaker 1: of PR for American Apparel. He is a media strategist
Speaker 1: and calumnist, and the former editor at large for The
Speaker 1: New York Observer at the young age of barely thirty.
Speaker 1: He is the author of multiple books, including Trust Me,
Speaker 1: I'm Lying, The Obstacle Is The Way, Ego Is The Enemy,
Speaker 1: Growth Hacker, Marketing, The Daily Stoic, and his most recent
Speaker 1: book is Conspiracy, Peter, Theel Hulk, Holgan, Gawker, and The
Speaker 1: Anatomy of Intrigue. Ryan Holliday, Welcome to Bloomberg. Thank you
Speaker 1: for having me. So we kind of threw this together
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. As soon as I saw the book was published.
Speaker 1: I've been fascinated by this entire tawdry episode. The new
Speaker 1: book is an inside look at the Gawker trial um,
Speaker 1: which we learned was backed by Peter Thiel. This is
Speaker 1: so different than everything else you've written. What what attracted
Speaker 1: you to this subject matter? I have the same reaction
Speaker 1: to the story. I mean, it feels like it's something
Speaker 1: that should have happened in the nineteenth century. It's what
Speaker 1: It's what Vanderbilt, a Rockefeller or Carnegie would have done
Speaker 1: to an enemy. The idea of this billionaire having this
Speaker 1: personal grudge for good reasons or batteriasons against the media
Speaker 1: outlet and then plotting secretly in the shadows to to
Speaker 1: destroy them sounds epic. In fact, it's not even the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. It's Shakespeare or tark or something. The Spanish
Speaker 1: American War, yellow journalism, all that sort of of behind
Speaker 1: the scenes manipulation. The most fascinating thing is you had
Speaker 1: written a couple of columns on Gawker and Field for
Speaker 1: The Observer. After this whole thing goes down, both Nick Denton,
Speaker 1: the founder of Glawker, and Peter Field, separately and unaware
Speaker 1: of the other, reach out to you to tell their
Speaker 1: side of the story. What what was that like? It
Speaker 1: was surreal? I mean, there was one night at the
Speaker 1: end of two thousand and sixteen, where I had dinner
Speaker 1: at Peter Teel's house, and then the next night I
Speaker 1: had uh I went to an event at at Denton's house,
Speaker 1: and it struck me that I was probably the only
Speaker 1: person speaking to these two mortal enemies. These two people
Speaker 1: had spent north of twenty million dollars fighting each other,
Speaker 1: that embarrassed each other in the press. What Nick Nick
Speaker 1: had only recently moved back into his apartment, having had
Speaker 1: to rent it out on Airbnb to cover the mortgage
Speaker 1: during his bankruptcy when all his assets had been frozen.
Speaker 1: And to bring everybody up to speed, feel wins a
Speaker 1: giant case, or I should say Hulk Hogan in in
Speaker 1: the guise of his real life persona wins a hundred
Speaker 1: plus million dollar litigation. It's bank, it's bankrolled by Peter Field.
Speaker 1: It ultimately bankrupts Gawker and forces Nick Denton and the
Speaker 1: founder and soul owner, a majority owner of of Gawker
Speaker 1: Ye into personal bankruptcy. So these aren't people just having
Speaker 1: a Twitter battle. These are really people at each other's throats. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is an epic conflict that it begins
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, when at at Nick's prompting,
Speaker 1: Gawker out's Teal is gay, So back up a sex
Speaker 1: So Gawker Properties owns Valley Wag, which was the Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley version of a gossip. So Gawker started, it's sort
Speaker 1: of like a a page six with no limitations, a
Speaker 1: high hitting, hard hitting in the way that you would
Speaker 1: need to be a celebrity to be on t M,
Speaker 1: to be on TMZ or page six, Hawker said, anyone
Speaker 1: doing something tawdry or provocative or unusual, or that has
Speaker 1: a secret of some kind is a potential sort of
Speaker 1: subject for one of our stories. And so so two
Speaker 1: thousand and seven, what was the title of the post
Speaker 1: that had come out in Value Peter Teal is totally
Speaker 1: gay people. And I think that in one there's a
Speaker 1: an early Gawker memo that said every post should have
Speaker 1: a glint of meanness. Yeah, I read that, and I
Speaker 1: think that that that headline perfectly encapsulates that. It's it's
Speaker 1: it's not just that you're taking a relatively private figure,
Speaker 1: someone who is certainly a well known investor, But just
Speaker 1: because you're an investor doesn't mean people get to know
Speaker 1: who you have sex with. Or not um. But wasn't
Speaker 1: by the way, let me interrupt you here, wasn't it
Speaker 1: the worst kept secret in the world. I mean, it
Speaker 1: wasn't that he was closeted. People knew, in fact, the
Speaker 1: author of that post was gay. And he said half
Speaker 1: of San Francisco knew Peter Field was gay. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: that that's what they claim. I think Peter would say,
Speaker 1: you know, my parents knew, my close colleagues knew. The
Speaker 1: people I went to college with new perhaps, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that it should be broadcast to an audience
Speaker 1: of potentially millions of people. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Isn't that sort of an odd distinction, because if someone
Speaker 1: out someone who's closeted, that's a terrible violation. Anybody who
Speaker 1: is gay should feel free to out themselves at a
Speaker 1: time of their own choosing. But what I find fascinating
Speaker 1: is this epic battle is started by not even taking
Speaker 1: something that was private making public, but taking something that
Speaker 1: was known but not publicized and saying we're gonna take
Speaker 1: this and spread it around a little bit and put
Speaker 1: a little glauk Er stink on it. Well, let's say
Speaker 1: that you and your wife have an open marriage. Obviously
Speaker 1: some people would know by definition of it being open,
Speaker 1: have you heard any Yeah, But let's say I had
Speaker 1: heard something. Does that mean at what point do you
Speaker 1: become a fully public figure the way a president or
Speaker 1: a celebrity or a rock star is a fully public person.
Speaker 1: And at what point are you sort of on the fringes?
Speaker 1: And and so I think I think there's some argument
Speaker 1: over whether it should be private or shouldn't be private.
Speaker 1: But what I think there's less argument is this is
Speaker 1: the sensitivity with which such a subject is treated. Right,
Speaker 1: So he gets blindsided by this article, and in to
Speaker 1: some respects, in some respects, it doesn't actually matter whether
Speaker 1: he should have been out it or not. What mattered
Speaker 1: is that he felt that it was a grave violation. Right.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, it doesn't matter if the Count of
Speaker 1: Monte Cristo actually was wrong. What matters is that he's
Speaker 1: doing in prison about it. So let's ask the question,
Speaker 1: is Peter Thiel Finskin, should he have let this be?
Speaker 1: The expression I grew up with, was water off a
Speaker 1: duck's let's call it back? Or or was this a
Speaker 1: real slight that wanted this sort of Because it seems
Speaker 1: like someone shot him with a pea shooter, and he
Speaker 1: took a bazooker and fired back. Well to that, we
Speaker 1: gotta go back into time a little bit and think
Speaker 1: about you know, in two thousand seven, Obama hasn't even
Speaker 1: come out in favor of gay marriage, so it is
Speaker 1: a different issue at the show time. And I think
Speaker 1: he had his own complicated relationship with his own sexuality.
Speaker 1: He's a he's a he's conservative, he he's he's private.
Speaker 1: I think he wrestled with that. I think really what
Speaker 1: it was is that this is his rude awakening, his
Speaker 1: rude introduction into this media outlet that operates with the
Speaker 1: glint of meanness that says the things that other people
Speaker 1: can't say, right, that that uh, that sort of attacks
Speaker 1: publishes first and verifies second. And and you got to
Speaker 1: remember he doesn't really actively begin to plot against Hawker
Speaker 1: until probably around two thousand eleven. So it's really this
Speaker 1: thing that's just sort of bouncing around in his head.
Speaker 1: And he's just dating. He's he's seeing things that are
Speaker 1: writing about other people. He's seeing them right about his businesses,
Speaker 1: he's seeing them right about complete strangers who did nothing wrong.
Speaker 1: And it's, as you said, it's just it's just it,
Speaker 1: and it's growing, and it's this thing that he can't
Speaker 1: stop thinking about. And that's really where this conspiracy is
Speaker 1: born out of. Let's talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: person who planted the seed in the mind of Peter
Speaker 1: that there was an opportunity to uh seek his revenge
Speaker 1: against Nick Denton and Glawker by exploring the possibility of
Speaker 1: of funding litigation against them. So how who is Mr
Speaker 1: A and how did he hatch up this whole crazy conspiracy.
Speaker 1: So in April of two thousand eleven, Peter meets with
Speaker 1: this young recent college graduate in in Berlin. And this
Speaker 1: is sort of his m O. He looks for talented
Speaker 1: young people, people he's going to invest in. People's gonna
Speaker 1: place at his startups. The PayPal mafia, which we now
Speaker 1: see as sort of one of the most powerful networks
Speaker 1: of investors probably in history, originates because of this habit
Speaker 1: from Teal. And so he meets with with this young man.
Speaker 1: I refer to him as Mr A. Um. I know
Speaker 1: the identity of the source, but my agreement with the
Speaker 1: sources that I wouldn't I wouldn't amask him. But uh,
Speaker 1: they meet and they're talking about Gawker and Tio's complaining
Speaker 1: and they're they're talking about this unfair coverage, and Peter says,
Speaker 1: you know, but of course there's nothing you can do
Speaker 1: about it. And Mr A looks Teal in the eye.
Speaker 1: It's it's remarkable that he would have the stones to
Speaker 1: do this, and he says, you know, Peter, what would
Speaker 1: the world look like if if everyone thought that way?
Speaker 1: And this is like the perfect thing you could say
Speaker 1: to provoke Peter into doing something, And then he goes
Speaker 1: into this pitch. He says, look, I think, I think
Speaker 1: buried within Gawker's archives is a number of UH posts
Speaker 1: that would be UH violation of some law or civil
Speaker 1: or or or criminal in one way or another. I
Speaker 1: think if you, if you put up the money, in
Speaker 1: the time, the resources, we could pursue causes of action
Speaker 1: in those instances and eventually be able to hold them accountable.
Speaker 1: What they did to you out in you is not
Speaker 1: illegal at least it's on the line, but they may
Speaker 1: have gone way over the line in other cases. And
Speaker 1: so they Peter agrees in this meeting to to budget
Speaker 1: ten million dollars on this completely insane project that ultimately
Speaker 1: culminates in a hundred and forty million dollar judgment and
Speaker 1: Gawker's so good. R O I on that in the
Speaker 1: at least from a venture capital perspective, and at the
Speaker 1: time just to put ten million dollars, which sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of money into perspective, he's worth. He's one
Speaker 1: of the early investors in Facebook. He's been extremely successful
Speaker 1: as a VC, not just PayPal but Facebook and go
Speaker 1: down a long list of successful investments. I believe at
Speaker 1: the time Facebook was about a billion dollar holding for him.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was still holding all of it,
Speaker 1: but yeah, Facebook is going to I p O about
Speaker 1: one year later, and he's gonna own ten percent of
Speaker 1: it at the I p O. This is a fraction
Speaker 1: of his net worth. Uh, this is you know, chump change.
Speaker 1: But it is also objectively a way more money than
Speaker 1: anyone has ever spent on something like this before. The
Speaker 1: assumption is, hey, if you had ten million dollars to
Speaker 1: burn through, could you find a more productive usage for
Speaker 1: it or is it just simply self indulgent revenge? Well
Speaker 1: that that is that is the question. But Peter has
Speaker 1: come to say that he believes this is the most
Speaker 1: philanthrop thing he's ever done. His point was he believes
Speaker 1: that we've sort of accepted this idea of technological determinism. Right,
Speaker 1: Blogging is invented Gauger's Gauger is an outgrowth of that
Speaker 1: of that that technology, and then we're as a society
Speaker 1: just sort of a slave to whatever this thing does.
Speaker 1: Right for Recruider much less genteel because of no holds barred.
Speaker 1: And you could argue we have the same attitude towards
Speaker 1: our cell phones, towards Facebook, towards Twitter, like this is
Speaker 1: what it is, right, it was invented with this is
Speaker 1: and and Peter Peter sort of rejected that idea. And
Speaker 1: he thought that Gawker was this sort of representation of
Speaker 1: everything he felt was wrong with the media. And then
Speaker 1: if you could do something about it, if you could
Speaker 1: hold them accountable in quarter, you could, you could wipe
Speaker 1: them off the face of the earth, that it would
Speaker 1: actually change the direction of culture. I think this is
Speaker 1: what so so it's ideological in addition to being deeply
Speaker 1: personal and and sort of revenge based, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: this complicated mix of motivation, and we should never underestimate
Speaker 1: the ability of of ideologus to rationalize any behavior in
Speaker 1: furtherance of the cause. Well, and probably never underestimate the
Speaker 1: ability of extremely wealthy people to rationalize whatever their preferences
Speaker 1: as being part of the greater good. So let's let's
Speaker 1: discuss the pushback to that. Some people have looked at
Speaker 1: this and said, hey, it's concerning that an angry billionaire
Speaker 1: has the ability to effectively close down a media outlet.
Speaker 1: Are we going to now have to start treating the
Speaker 1: point oh one percent and point o one percent with
Speaker 1: kid gloves? Isn't this a direct contradiction of the First
Speaker 1: Amendment and a robust free press in a democracy. So
Speaker 1: what Peter would say is that this case had absolutely
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the First Amendment. This was an
Speaker 1: invasion of privacy claim. And in fact, when they when
Speaker 1: he sits down with Mr A and then ultimately Charles Harder,
Speaker 1: the lo or that they hire to litigate these cases,
Speaker 1: they are specifically looking for cases that are not liabele
Speaker 1: in defamation. They're looking for copyright violations, UH, violations of
Speaker 1: of federal trade laws, violations of UH, you know, individual
Speaker 1: privacy that and so the reason they end up suing
Speaker 1: Gawker in Florida UH is that the they're running a
Speaker 1: sex tape of of an individual is is of a
Speaker 1: very sort of specific violation there uh that they can
Speaker 1: ultimately be held accountable for. So they picked Florida because
Speaker 1: of the state laws. What was anybody related in Florida? Anybody? Well,
Speaker 1: Hogan lives there and that's what what is his his
Speaker 1: terry Terry Balaya. So one of the things that strikes
Speaker 1: me about the book, And I was talking to you
Speaker 1: offline saying I didn't expect to like it, but I'm
Speaker 1: really enjoying it, and kudos to you. It's really well written. Um,
Speaker 1: having only read The Daily Stoic previously, I was not
Speaker 1: expecting this. But one of the things that struck me
Speaker 1: is everybody involved is just a wholly unsympathetic character. You
Speaker 1: you may be impressed with their intellect, but everybody here
Speaker 1: is a bad after in some way. And yet it's
Speaker 1: kind of a compelling narrative. Well, I think it's extremely compelling,
Speaker 1: just and almost unbelievable what actually happened. You know that
Speaker 1: it's these two Florida DJs and a professional wrestler and
Speaker 1: somehow Donald Trump ends up entering the story at the
Speaker 1: very end. The DJs not get ted because they literally
Speaker 1: stole property and then released it. You would think their
Speaker 1: liabilities on them as much as anybody. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: one of the weird arguments, and this is where it
Speaker 1: gets so sort of conspiracy theory esque, is that the
Speaker 1: FBI investigates the person who stole the tape, and the
Speaker 1: lawyer who was brokering the tape decide declines to prosecute
Speaker 1: despite having overwhelming evidence. And then that lawyer is the
Speaker 1: same lawyer who now represents those two porn stars who
Speaker 1: are accused of of gring secret deals with Donald Trump
Speaker 1: in the in the two at the end of the
Speaker 1: two thousand and sixteen campaign. So the whole story is insane.
Speaker 1: But I think part of that, the sordidness and the
Speaker 1: the the quickness with which you want to judge the
Speaker 1: person who you disagree with most has has actually blinded
Speaker 1: people to what happened. And I think one of the reasons,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons I wanted to write this story
Speaker 1: and why I was so focused on it, is that
Speaker 1: beneath all that there is a level of sort of
Speaker 1: extreme competence and ruthlessness and effectiveness. It's a triumph of
Speaker 1: planning and organization, that he did this thing that everyone
Speaker 1: thought was impossible, right underneath the noses of everyone who
Speaker 1: was supposed to be looking into it. And and and
Speaker 1: I think we've got to first understand exactly what happened
Speaker 1: before we make those judgments. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the media has done a poor job covering this story
Speaker 1: because they're either obsessed with the sensational aspects or they're
Speaker 1: so self interested in afraid that this could happen to them.
Speaker 1: The fact that first, for instance, I'm the first person
Speaker 1: to report on the existence of Mr. A not his name,
Speaker 1: but that he even existed in one of the most
Speaker 1: covered stories in the history of media, is in some
Speaker 1: ways incredibly alarming. It's like the media was so quick
Speaker 1: to jump to conclusions they thought Peter Thiel was the personally,
Speaker 1: you know, reviewing legal briefs in the in the ky
Speaker 1: which is absurd. And so I want, I want to
Speaker 1: we've got to understand how power works, because I think
Speaker 1: this is indicative or perhaps a sign of what's to
Speaker 1: come now that Silicon Valley is in some ways the
Speaker 1: power center of the entire planet. We were discussing earlier
Speaker 1: the role of the media in this book, and how
Speaker 1: they really kind of dropped the ball it. It seemed
Speaker 1: that the more salacious aspects lead to very sensational coverage.
Speaker 1: Tell us about how Mr a came about in your
Speaker 1: your understanding of how this whole a fair unrolled. I
Speaker 1: remember I was first interviewing Peter and he mentioned you know.
Speaker 1: I was like, how did you get this idea? And
Speaker 1: he says, oh, well, I was in this meeting and
Speaker 1: this you know this person. I was, what, there, there's
Speaker 1: someone other than you involved in this. This is unbelievable.
Speaker 1: Nobody had reported about it, Nobody had said not until
Speaker 1: after the book came out. I think BuzzFeed out and
Speaker 1: Mr Ray and I know you're not allowed to confirm
Speaker 1: or deny, but if you google the book and BuzzFeed,
Speaker 1: you could get at least one person's best guests, right,
Speaker 1: and and and and that story only breaks because my
Speaker 1: depending release of the book. Right. So it is it
Speaker 1: is incredible that this man's identity was able, not again
Speaker 1: not just his his actual name, his legal name, but
Speaker 1: that his role entire whole episode. And and in fact,
Speaker 1: that was what allowed the conspiracy to be so successful,
Speaker 1: is that there was at you know, three levels or
Speaker 1: three layers removed between Peter and whole Cogan, and that
Speaker 1: was able to separate these things. You know, I think
Speaker 1: Peter said to me one time when I was asking,
Speaker 1: he said, you know, I think what was so incredible
Speaker 1: to me. He's like, I was so paranoid people were
Speaker 1: right about to discover us. And then he said, in retrospect,
Speaker 1: I realized they weren't even thinking about what it wasn't
Speaker 1: even looking for. And he said this about his investment strategies.
Speaker 1: He says, it's not so much that people often think
Speaker 1: that I'm wrong about one of his big contrarian bets,
Speaker 1: is that they're not thinking about it at all. Um.
Speaker 1: And those are the opportunities that he actually looks for.
Speaker 1: And I think the media, even after this, even after
Speaker 1: his identity and Mr A's identity is broken again, is
Speaker 1: so focused on, you know, what this means for their business,
Speaker 1: rather than communicating facts to the public. Um. You know
Speaker 1: that that again we sort of get this weird sell
Speaker 1: this media bubble around these really important issues. And I
Speaker 1: think this applies as much to the coverage of this
Speaker 1: case as the coverage of Donald Trump or the coverage
Speaker 1: of any sort of controversial thing. We were told why
Speaker 1: we should be outraged, but we're not really fully explained
Speaker 1: to what the thing is, what the facts are, and
Speaker 1: this is a weird filter bubble that we're in. So
Speaker 1: let's let's talk a little bit about your background and
Speaker 1: how you ended up becoming, uh, this media scourge. You
Speaker 1: drop out of college to take a job at a
Speaker 1: Hollywood talent agency. That sounds like a risky plan. What
Speaker 1: were you thinking at the time? That was the question
Speaker 1: my parents, of course asked At the time. I I
Speaker 1: felt like this was you know, this is two thousand
Speaker 1: seven sort of media is in this uh, media and
Speaker 1: technology and cultures in this weird shift, we're embracing all
Speaker 1: these new trends, and I just thought, why would I
Speaker 1: stay in school when I have the chance to sort
Speaker 1: of do things in the real world, right, Like, why
Speaker 1: would I stay in school and then hopefully read about
Speaker 1: the things that I was going to be doing rather
Speaker 1: than you know, actually going out and doing them. And
Speaker 1: so I sort of got a you know, a jump
Speaker 1: on people of my age group. I you know, I
Speaker 1: skipped two years of waiting in line essentially, and and
Speaker 1: I happened to end up working for a number of
Speaker 1: really controversial clients, and I think it sort of showed
Speaker 1: me a wait, this is how the sausage gets made
Speaker 1: on sort of on the marketing side, on the news side.
Speaker 1: And then my first book ended up being this kind
Speaker 1: of expose of that, which was very controversial at the time.
Speaker 1: And then ironically, you know, given that I wrote this
Speaker 1: book about fake news, was probably five or so years
Speaker 1: early to the entire trend, you know, all about fake
Speaker 1: Twitter accounts and media controversy. So since you wrote that book,
Speaker 1: how many years ago? It's almost a decade ago. It
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand and twelve. Okay, so six
Speaker 1: years ago, seven years ago. Uh, fake news has become
Speaker 1: a presidential utterance all the time. Uh, Facebook, Google, Search, Twitter.
Speaker 1: There are all sorts of these accusations that not just
Speaker 1: the mainstream media, but the technology aspect of that completely
Speaker 1: dropped the ball in this How has the entire media
Speaker 1: landscape change society? And what does this mean for us
Speaker 1: in a democracy where you can almost argue that sort
Speaker 1: of an equivalent to the financial industry and that, you know,
Speaker 1: the financial crisis, there had been a number of warnings.
Speaker 1: They were sort of the writing on the wall. There
Speaker 1: were these people who are pointing out problems and then
Speaker 1: they sort of you know, greed and self interest sort
Speaker 1: of motivates people to sort of push past that, and
Speaker 1: then you get this sort of catastrophic failure. I think
Speaker 1: in in media, we've had a similar situation in which
Speaker 1: the incentives were toxic, uh and complicated the you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of paying people by the page, you the
Speaker 1: idea of of sort of most the news being filtered
Speaker 1: through these social networks where they have to either go
Speaker 1: viral and if they're not, then no one sees them.
Speaker 1: These incentives were were there, and they were brewing, and
Speaker 1: you know, I wrote about it, and many other people
Speaker 1: were like, look, this is dangerous something. This is ripe
Speaker 1: for manipulation. Not only is this rife with miss manipulation,
Speaker 1: it's right for very serious manipulation. And they sort of
Speaker 1: slept walked on and and you know, Russia and you
Speaker 1: could argue, Donald Trump and and other people sort of
Speaker 1: figured out the loopholes in that system where the weak points,
Speaker 1: and they've hit them so many times that that that
Speaker 1: now where where we are. You know, whether it's uh
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of fake accounts by Russian bots, or
Speaker 1: whether it's Donald Trump getting two billion dollars worth of
Speaker 1: free publicity by sort of leveraging this constant controversy and outrage.
Speaker 1: And then we wonder why we're in the situation we're in.
Speaker 1: There's this old quote from a media critic, and he says,
Speaker 1: you know, America as a country governed by public opinion.
Speaker 1: So what governs public opinion governs the governs the country
Speaker 1: In the nineteen in the early he said this, it
Speaker 1: was newspapers, but now it's blogs and social media and
Speaker 1: and and the sort of online journalism. So let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about blogs. You you wrote, the business
Speaker 1: model for blogs and cars is publishers and writers to
Speaker 1: value the click above other potential goals like truth, accuracy,
Speaker 1: and fairness. So once that toothpaste is out of the tube,
Speaker 1: is there any putting it back? Or are we just
Speaker 1: stuck with this somewhat reckless, not quite mainstream form of
Speaker 1: of media. I think we're stuck in some ways, although
Speaker 1: there there is some you know, things to be optimistic too.
Speaker 1: I think, for instance, one of the reasons we're seeing
Speaker 1: this massive uh sort of land Russian podcasts is because
Speaker 1: podcasts aren't subject to those same toxic economics right, A
Speaker 1: podcast is this self contained unit. It's long, it's deep,
Speaker 1: it's thoughtful. There's no viral headline that makes people share it.
Speaker 1: It's you subscribe to this podcast and you listen to it,
Speaker 1: and you have this relationship with the host, and they
Speaker 1: have a reputation to a pold that's very different than
Speaker 1: the Huffington's Post trying to churn out as many articles
Speaker 1: as they can per day to get you to click
Speaker 1: on one thing, and whether they burn you, they don't
Speaker 1: care because they know in six months they'll get you
Speaker 1: on another one. I was gonna call this Ryan Holiday's
Speaker 1: sex tape escapade, but you're telling me that's just too
Speaker 1: clicking and not not what my listeners want to hear.
Speaker 1: I imagine for the most part, the titles have very
Speaker 1: little impact on whether the difference between your episodes probably
Speaker 1: has more to do with the guests than the provocative
Speaker 1: nature of the headline. It's the quality of the content,
Speaker 1: but that doesn't exist in web or print based media. Well.
Speaker 1: I do think you're starting to see some improvements with paywalls,
Speaker 1: for instance, like if you think about the I write
Speaker 1: about this in trust Me, I'm lying Tyler Cowen, the
Speaker 1: brilliant economist is yeah, he's the best. He was saying,
Speaker 1: you know, what are the what's the economics of of
Speaker 1: a paywall? It's saying, Okay, the first five articles are free,
Speaker 1: the first ten articles are free, and everything else you
Speaker 1: have to pay. So now they're incentive is to write
Speaker 1: at least eleven pay worthy articles, right, They they've got
Speaker 1: to get you. That's very different than I've got to
Speaker 1: write as many articles as I can to trick you
Speaker 1: into reading to get a halfpenny of advertising revenue each time.
Speaker 1: And some of the kids at glkers, and they were kids,
Speaker 1: were doing eight ten posts a day, seven days a week.
Speaker 1: It sounded like a relentless grinds. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: digital sweatshop in some ways. And and you know, for instance,
Speaker 1: is the headline. You would never you would never want
Speaker 1: a Bloomberg reporter to be writing about a stock that
Speaker 1: they own, right, that would be a conflict of interest.
Speaker 1: But what if the Bloomberg reporter is paid and this
Speaker 1: is how it was at GAKRA and it is still
Speaker 1: at many blogs. What if you're paid based on how
Speaker 1: many views your article does? Right now, your stock is
Speaker 1: the content, right, so you're not gonna You're not gonna
Speaker 1: write a complicated, nuanced piece without a strong conclusion. You're
Speaker 1: gonna say, uh, you're gonna simplify that issue. You're gonna
Speaker 1: try to make it as provocative or incendiary as possible,
Speaker 1: because these are the emotions that drive that kind of virality.
Speaker 1: And so the conflict of interest isn't in one stock.
Speaker 1: It isn't that they're writing about Google. It's that they
Speaker 1: want to slam Google or they want to praise Google
Speaker 1: because that's where the traffic is, and that's just as manipulative.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about what you've done outside
Speaker 1: of of writing books, and I definitely want to get
Speaker 1: back to the Daily dec But I have to ask
Speaker 1: you about American Apparel. You're a young kid, you're like
Speaker 1: nineteen or twenty, you're just dropped out of college. How
Speaker 1: on earth do you get hired as the head of
Speaker 1: pr for them? Well, they're right in the middle of
Speaker 1: a sexual harassment scandal with their founder of Charney and
Speaker 1: all sorts of other things. They had a very salacious
Speaker 1: advertising campaign. No one was really surprised by this. The
Speaker 1: timeline there is it's a it's a bit confusing, but uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I got hired as sort of a consultant.
Speaker 1: Early on, I was friends with someone who's on the
Speaker 1: board of directors, the author Robert Greene, And I come
Speaker 1: in as a consultant. Then I started cleaning stuff up, organizing. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the way the marketing efforts are done. There
Speaker 1: was no marketing department. I put one together and then
Speaker 1: I'm in charge of that. And then, you know, one
Speaker 1: publicity scandal after another. Uh it was it was an exhausting,
Speaker 1: chaotic company, I'll put it that way. But it was
Speaker 1: also sort of a crash course, both not in not
Speaker 1: just in corporate pr and strategy and all these things,
Speaker 1: but also in just seeing how these scandals are reported
Speaker 1: by the media, where there might be a lot of
Speaker 1: truth to to them, but that doesn't mean the reporting
Speaker 1: about them is necessarily accurate, right, And so there was
Speaker 1: and Cocker was a company that covered American appair all
Speaker 1: the time. So I got to really see how that
Speaker 1: sausage was made and it made me, you know, not
Speaker 1: want to eat any So, so the company eventually files
Speaker 1: for bankruptcy. They went through reorganization. Uh, the founder of
Speaker 1: Charnie gets forced out. Uh. The company now has an
Speaker 1: old woman board of directors. So what was that place
Speaker 1: like to work in? Was it as insane as it
Speaker 1: appeared from the outside? Was that just an image? I
Speaker 1: would say it was both less insane and more insane. Right,
Speaker 1: it wasn't the Playboy Mansion, but it was chaotic and
Speaker 1: dysfunctional and and and oftentimes sort of startups that are
Speaker 1: still run by the person who found them are are
Speaker 1: that way, right. Uh, oftentimes the genius of the creator
Speaker 1: is also their biggest weakness. But I think that's a
Speaker 1: good way to encapsulate what was what was wrong at
Speaker 1: American Apparel. So you effectively get a crash course in
Speaker 1: the art of manipulating the media. How on earth did
Speaker 1: did you find your way to that? And did you
Speaker 1: successfully help keep the company alive for long enough so
Speaker 1: that they could go through this re or bankruptcy. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really sad story in the sense
Speaker 1: that it was a company once worth a billion dollars
Speaker 1: and it was a great idea. Hey, sweatshop free apparel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was brilliant. I mean we sold millions, hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of garments. We had twelve thousand employees, we had
Speaker 1: stores in twenty countries. To me, it's evident. You can
Speaker 1: have the best idea in the world, you can totally
Speaker 1: resonate with your company, with your customers. But if you
Speaker 1: don't manage yourself, well, if you're not disciplined and organized,
Speaker 1: you don't bring in that adult supervision doesn't matter. Execution
Speaker 1: is everything. Yeah, and so it sort of tore itself
Speaker 1: apart both with scandals. But uh, you know, companies can
Speaker 1: survive scandals. What they can't survive as bad management. And
Speaker 1: I think that's ultimately what happened there. So you write
Speaker 1: a book after this cold trust me I'm lying? Yea,
Speaker 1: which in I love the title. So are you lying?
Speaker 1: Why should people trust you? You? You raise the question yourself, Yeah,
Speaker 1: trust me I'm lying. Is the liar's paradox. If someone
Speaker 1: tells you the lying, can you believe them? Uh? And
Speaker 1: my answer to that is, you know, if I was
Speaker 1: intending to manipulate people, I probably wouldn't write a book
Speaker 1: where I gave away exactly how all this works. You know,
Speaker 1: that's first thinking. Second level thinking is, oh, I'm going
Speaker 1: to show them so nobody really believes this. The idea
Speaker 1: for I thought I was look, I I sort of
Speaker 1: had grown disillusioned and disgusted with how all this worked.
Speaker 1: And I had this sort of premonition that some manipulating
Speaker 1: the media to sell T shirts is not the world's
Speaker 1: worst sin, right, but I had this sense that the
Speaker 1: same things could be done for much more ominous ends.
Speaker 1: That's really why I wrote the book, and I think
Speaker 1: that's ultimately why it resonated, why it's taught in all
Speaker 1: these journalism schools. Uh And And the sad part was
Speaker 1: that people who really needed to listen to it didn't
Speaker 1: listen to it, and they didn't wake up to the
Speaker 1: sort of uh, you know, the the exposure there until
Speaker 1: basically after Donald Trump was elected and and then they said,
Speaker 1: oh wait, this is real serious, there's real cost to this.
Speaker 1: So I can tell if this Times review is a
Speaker 1: compliment or a slight quote. He is like a snake
Speaker 1: oil salesman who swears he is abandoned the snake oil,
Speaker 1: but not the highly effective snake oil sales tactics. So
Speaker 1: how do you respond to something like that? First of all,
Speaker 1: is that a compliment or is that a a dig
Speaker 1: on you? Well, that's sort of your typical Times sort
Speaker 1: of looking down their nose at you and and uh, overall,
Speaker 1: that article was not a bad piece of pr No,
Speaker 1: But you know, profiles are filled with these sort of
Speaker 1: subtle digs get you too, that that you walk away
Speaker 1: thinking that obviously the writer is period to the person
Speaker 1: that they're writing about, and there's a little bit of
Speaker 1: that in the piece, which the territory. That's the nature
Speaker 1: of all criticism and reviews. Yeah, right, you you can't.
Speaker 1: You don't outwardly attack them. You undermine them with the
Speaker 1: anecdotal details. Right, Um, But I think, uh, I I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's snake oil tactics. I mean the
Speaker 1: the you write a book, you have an idea, you
Speaker 1: have something you have to get out in the world.
Speaker 1: If you don't sell it, how will anyone ever find
Speaker 1: out about it? And I think that's how there. You know,
Speaker 1: you could say that the shelves grown under the weight
Speaker 1: of undiscovered, brilliant books. And I think what I bring
Speaker 1: to my writing is stuff that resonates with people. The
Speaker 1: vast majority of mysels sales come from word of mouth.
Speaker 1: But I also know how to how to create a
Speaker 1: stir around that book when it comes out, and and
Speaker 1: to and to get a discussion going, which is what
Speaker 1: the job of an author is so conspiracy, you know
Speaker 1: it's gonna sell itself. Given the content, the details, and
Speaker 1: a lot of the never before discover details the daily
Speaker 1: stoic about a two thousand year old philosophy, I have
Speaker 1: to pivot and ask you a what motivated you to
Speaker 1: write this? And be how does such a what sounds
Speaker 1: like a dry I mean I found the book because
Speaker 1: in college I studied a lot of philosophy and I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated by a ton of people from Marcus Royalist, go
Speaker 1: down the list. So this was one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's like, oh, that's a surprising title. Let's let's try that.
Speaker 1: How did this become such a fireball in Silicon Valley? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I fell in love a stoicism when I
Speaker 1: was in college. It was it was it was like, oh, wait,
Speaker 1: this is how you're supposed to live right And and
Speaker 1: I would say it was very helpful amidst the chaos
Speaker 1: of American apparel, not wanting to get implicated in it
Speaker 1: and sucked into it. So so layout for for people
Speaker 1: who may not be philosophy majors lay out the details
Speaker 1: in a few bullet points of what Stoicism is about
Speaker 1: what's a philosophy of sort of inner strength and discipline.
Speaker 1: It holds that sort of virtue and and and constancy
Speaker 1: or the highest goods. And then I think my sort
Speaker 1: of definition to it to lay people is like a
Speaker 1: stoic says, you don't control the world around you, but
Speaker 1: you always control how you respond, and you got to
Speaker 1: respond well, and that you you see everything good and
Speaker 1: bad as this sort of opportunity for that response. Right.
Speaker 1: You can't make it stop raining, but you can remember
Speaker 1: to bring an umbrella. Is really the oversimplified version. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that which people, by the way, you find hard to
Speaker 1: grasp sometimes. Right, And and you know, most of what
Speaker 1: was happening that American apparel was outside my control, but
Speaker 1: I did control, you know, the direction of my own career,
Speaker 1: the direction of my own life, the decisions I was
Speaker 1: going to make personally right, and what I was going
Speaker 1: to learn from what was happening and all these things.
Speaker 1: Did the residents in Silicon Valley come as any sort
Speaker 1: of surprise to you? I mean that it really seemed
Speaker 1: to have caught on there. The Silicon Valley residents surprised
Speaker 1: me a lot less than its residents in professional sports.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are dozens of major league franchises in
Speaker 1: every sport that are that read the Day the stock
Speaker 1: on a daily basis, of politicians that read it in
Speaker 1: the Senate dining room. It's been this very absurd, sort
Speaker 1: of surreal experience. And so when people, you know, talk
Speaker 1: to me about my controversial books, it's it's always I
Speaker 1: sort of smile and laugh, because they've sold a fraction,
Speaker 1: uh of the copies that my serious books on silk
Speaker 1: philosophy have sold, and the impact, and none of those
Speaker 1: people care who I am, and those books have essentially
Speaker 1: marketed themselves. I'm one of those people who I had
Speaker 1: no idea you had authored this book until I started
Speaker 1: researching Conspiracy. And I'm like, wait a second, I have
Speaker 1: not one, but two copies. I have one in the
Speaker 1: office and one at home. You're telling me the guy
Speaker 1: who wrote Conspiracy wrote this all right? Now, I'm intrigued
Speaker 1: by this person as an author, because these two books
Speaker 1: could not be further apart in terms of subject matter,
Speaker 1: and and Peter Thield could have used a little stoicism
Speaker 1: in his life, and certainly Nick Detton, actually Nick Detton
Speaker 1: is a fan of the Daily Stoic as well, and
Speaker 1: that's one of the things we can because that's that's
Speaker 1: what you turned to when you're forced into personal bankruptcy
Speaker 1: by a secret vendetta from a person you didn't even
Speaker 1: know you'd upset, right, Um, but but you know it's
Speaker 1: it's weird too. And I remember talking about it with
Speaker 1: that New York Times reporter you're mentioning, you know, I
Speaker 1: was saying, like, look, I'm a good marketer. I can
Speaker 1: sell anything. Why would I have chosen a two thousand
Speaker 1: year old philosophy that that has the sort of stereo
Speaker 1: emotionless uh dry, uh without joy? Why would I have
Speaker 1: chosen stoicism unless that's what I'm actually interested in, Unless
Speaker 1: I really felt like it could make a difference if
Speaker 1: if if I was financially motivated, I'd be working in
Speaker 1: cryptocurrencies or you know that there's any something a little
Speaker 1: hotter than than stoicism, right right, And and and it
Speaker 1: really is something that has been deeply impactful in my life,
Speaker 1: that's helped me through my own sort of difficult circumstances,
Speaker 1: and and and something I I felt like was worthy of,
Speaker 1: you know, sort of making my my life's work. And
Speaker 1: is it true you read the meditations four times in
Speaker 1: a row as a college student or is that just
Speaker 1: it would have been? I mean four times in a
Speaker 1: row is probably an understand I probably read that book.
Speaker 1: You really? Yeah? Wow, that's that's fascinating. We have been
Speaker 1: speaking to Ryan Holiday, author most recently of Conspiracy and
Speaker 1: previously of The Daily Stoic. If you enjoy these conversations,
Speaker 1: be sure and check out the podcast extras, where we
Speaker 1: keep the tape rolling and continue to discuss all things
Speaker 1: conspiracy related. You can find that at iTunes, Overcast, Bloomberg, SoundCloud,
Speaker 1: wherever your finer podcasts are sold. We love your comments,
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. Check out my daily column on
Speaker 1: Bloomberg View dot com. You could follow me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at rid Holts. I'm Barry Ridholts. You're listening to the
Speaker 1: Master's in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast. Ryan,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this this you know
Speaker 1: a little inside baseball. Um. I prepare these daily reads
Speaker 1: for Bloomberg every day, and as I'm and always, as
Speaker 1: soon as I hit send, twenty minutes later, I find
Speaker 1: something interesting and I find Derrick Thompson of the Atlantic,
Speaker 1: who wrote the book. Um, I want to say hit Makers, right,
Speaker 1: who was previous? Yeah, wonderful, he's the previous guest of
Speaker 1: the show. I find his conversation with you and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, this is so much more interesting than
Speaker 1: I ever expected conspiracy to be. There's so many questions
Speaker 1: we didn't get to. I have to give you a
Speaker 1: few quotes of yours and have you push back them.
Speaker 1: Blogging is a digital blood sport. Explained Well, it's not
Speaker 1: just uh, this sort of battle inside a company for clicks, right,
Speaker 1: Who who's the best writer, Who's getting the best scoops? Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's this juror. It's this intense battle between journalists
Speaker 1: and all these different outlets. You gotta be first, you
Speaker 1: gotta you gotta brand your story the best, you gotta
Speaker 1: have the best headline. All these news sources are competing
Speaker 1: with each other for a finite amount of attention. So
Speaker 1: it's a blood sport that way. But then also we
Speaker 1: could say we take a as a as the view
Speaker 1: in public. We take a great deal of pleasure and
Speaker 1: watching people it particularly well known people get torn apart.
Speaker 1: So it's this blood sport I think in both directions.
Speaker 1: Isn't the history of that sort of tabloid journalism and
Speaker 1: that really gossipy celebrity rag type of approach to media.
Speaker 1: Hasn't that been around for forever? Yeah? I think Oscar
Speaker 1: Wilde said, we used to have the rack and now
Speaker 1: we have the press. That's how we used to torture people,
Speaker 1: and now we do it. Uh you know, now we
Speaker 1: do it digitally. Um. So, So I think it's just
Speaker 1: an an escalation or a growth in a trend that's
Speaker 1: always been there. Another quote, and this one was from
Speaker 1: trust Me on lying my job was so easy that
Speaker 1: it scared me. Yes, and you're obviously referring to the
Speaker 1: media and your ability to manage the coverage they were doing.
Speaker 1: Explain why it scared you. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 1: When I was putting out and trust Me, I'm lying. Um,
Speaker 1: I thought, what can I do that sort of proves
Speaker 1: this book right? And so I I put out a
Speaker 1: press release where I announced the size of the advance,
Speaker 1: which I doubled. Uh wait, so let me. Let's so
Speaker 1: you claimed the two fifty advance. Now I claimed that
Speaker 1: to fifty advance was a five dred thousand dollar advance
Speaker 1: because nobody fact checks press releases. So so it was
Speaker 1: a two fifty you claimed five hundred, and people bought it,
Speaker 1: immediately picked up. No One became tremendous amount of buzz
Speaker 1: about where is this who is this person? How do
Speaker 1: you just get a half a million? And he said, hey,
Speaker 1: this guy is writing a book about lying to the press.
Speaker 1: Maybe we should fact check what he saying. Yeah, nobody said,
Speaker 1: let's call the publisher and get the size of the advance. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's the first thing, and then us So it
Speaker 1: starts to get picked up. And then I I send
Speaker 1: an anonymous tip to Gawker, a writer named Hamilton Nolan,
Speaker 1: and I say, how could this person have gotten a
Speaker 1: half a million dollar book deal? It must be a
Speaker 1: celebrity tell All about his clients. And you just basically
Speaker 1: read me. He sends me an email. Uh, and I say,
Speaker 1: I can't answer this, no comment right, and uh manufactured
Speaker 1: buzz Right. Five minutes later, you know, is Ryan Holliday's
Speaker 1: new book A Celebrity Tell All? You know Boom, that
Speaker 1: story to this to this day has not been corrected.
Speaker 1: And this is the same website that you know would
Speaker 1: attack me for writing this book or that would say that,
Speaker 1: you know, Peter Thiel destroyed a venerable institution of journalism
Speaker 1: in his in his lot, and it's like, actually, no,
Speaker 1: this was in many cases a rumor mill, right, a
Speaker 1: clearinghouse for rumors and gossip up in poorly fact checked information.
Speaker 1: And and we this revisionist history does not quite encapsulate
Speaker 1: how the system actually works. And so my point is, look,
Speaker 1: I did that as a joke for a book to
Speaker 1: prove a point. But what could I do if I
Speaker 1: wanted to propagate some racist theory or if you had
Speaker 1: a more nefarious intense Exactly? Wow, that that is just astonishing.
Speaker 1: Who was the media editor at The Observer when you
Speaker 1: were there? Uh? Well, Ken Kerson was the editor in chief.
Speaker 1: That's who edited my columns. The one thing I didn't
Speaker 1: get to about conspiracy earlier was U M b TA.
Speaker 1: That was Peter Thiel's acronym, Yeah for for Gawker tell
Speaker 1: us about they called his acronym stands for Manhattan based
Speaker 1: terrorist organization. And that's that's what he believes. This is
Speaker 1: not just a hey, I'm annoyed that they did this.
Speaker 1: He's really looking at them as a very significant um
Speaker 1: problem for or anybody who's potentially in the public eye. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think he deeply believed that, right or wrong,
Speaker 1: But it is the predilection of anyone in a feud
Speaker 1: or in a conflict. You label your opponent as evil
Speaker 1: and it allows you to justify the lengths to which
Speaker 1: you're going to demonize them, and they're no longer a person.
Speaker 1: So we we have the Hulk Hogan sex tape. That
Speaker 1: wasn't the only sex tape, didn't um was it Fred
Speaker 1: Durst of Limp Biscuit. And they run a number of
Speaker 1: sex tapes and what was so and and leaked celebrity photos.
Speaker 1: They've done a number of things. And what was actually
Speaker 1: so remarkable of the act actress cell phones with all
Speaker 1: the nude selfies on them. What I mean that was
Speaker 1: that was in the press for like six months, a
Speaker 1: different one every day. What was so remarkable was that
Speaker 1: no one had actually taken doctor to trial before. And
Speaker 1: that was Tell's insight, right, He felt like, no, not
Speaker 1: only did most people not have the money, but most
Speaker 1: people didn't have the determination or the stamina to take
Speaker 1: it that far. And so there's this remarkable moment in
Speaker 1: the trial that I talked about her pre trial where
Speaker 1: in the depositions, you know, the first question you're asked
Speaker 1: that a deposition is have you ever been deposed before?
Speaker 1: And the answer from the folks at Gawker's universally no,
Speaker 1: all the most controversial media outlet on the planet that
Speaker 1: had been never sued, and so they were in uncharted territory.
Speaker 1: They didn't know how dangerous the predicament they were in
Speaker 1: actually was. Because would you like writing this book? I
Speaker 1: could tell you really loved writing Daily Stoic. You could
Speaker 1: see this is a very personal book for you. Yes,
Speaker 1: this one. I get the sense that you may empathize
Speaker 1: more with some parties and others, but this felt like
Speaker 1: there was a little bit of an arms length distance.
Speaker 1: Am I am I overstating that? No? No, I would
Speaker 1: say Conspiracy was harder to write, and I enjoyed it
Speaker 1: as the artistic challenge that it was. I would say
Speaker 1: it's not personally fulfilling the way that writing the obstacles
Speaker 1: away and he goes the enemy, and and and the
Speaker 1: Daily stock have been from me because they've challenged this
Speaker 1: book challenged me as a person, no question, but they
Speaker 1: challenged me as the person I want to be in
Speaker 1: everyday life. They challenge challenges me to be better and
Speaker 1: ask tough questions. This was this was much more challenge
Speaker 1: as a as a creative person. So in response to
Speaker 1: to what you're saying philosophically, do you find, given your
Speaker 1: history with places like American Apparel, does that interfere with
Speaker 1: the way people perceive you? And and as a stoic
Speaker 1: does it matter? What matters is your response to them? Right? Well,
Speaker 1: I look, if I if I was writing my own
Speaker 1: life story for the purposes of getting credibility of total strangers,
Speaker 1: of course my experience with controversial clients is not what
Speaker 1: I would put in there, right, And those are mistakes,
Speaker 1: are not mistakes, So those are choices that I live
Speaker 1: with and have learned from. Uh huh. But you are
Speaker 1: very you know, I mean to be fair to you.
Speaker 1: You are twenty at American Apparel. At twenty, I was,
Speaker 1: you know, going to Kegger's in college and getting high
Speaker 1: all the time. I can imagine having a real job
Speaker 1: at that age. Yeah, And and there are things I
Speaker 1: would do differently, uh if it made me who I am.
Speaker 1: But there are things I would do differently. But I think,
Speaker 1: you know, historically it's a strange argument, right, because Seneca
Speaker 1: is Nero's tutor, So I think anything on the right
Speaker 1: side of that, it's pretty safe, do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying? Like he was the advisor to the worst
Speaker 1: emperor in history, a deranged psychopath, and he still felt
Speaker 1: that was consistent with stoicism. So I feel like it's
Speaker 1: pretty respect if you you weren't advising the person who
Speaker 1: led to the full of realmes for you. Um, let's
Speaker 1: get to some of my favorite questions, the standard things
Speaker 1: I ask all of my guests. And this is a
Speaker 1: tough question to ask you because I don't know if
Speaker 1: there's the answer to this. What's the most important thing
Speaker 1: people don't know about you? That's a good question. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think people tend to think I'm not a person, right,
Speaker 1: Like I'm either the sort of machine that turns out
Speaker 1: books or that I've worked for these controversial clients, so
Speaker 1: I must be this horrible person, and you know, I'm
Speaker 1: just a normal person who writes books. Pretty reasonable. I try.
Speaker 1: I try to be That's that. I would like to
Speaker 1: be a successful normal person. That's my goal. Good, good girl.
Speaker 1: Tell us about some of your early mentors who who
Speaker 1: uh sure affected who you are and your philosophy. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the most trying things in American
Speaker 1: apparel watching this company collapse and implode, is that Dove
Speaker 1: Charney was this great friend of mine, this person who
Speaker 1: had seen talent and promising me, who would groom to me,
Speaker 1: wo had given me many opportunities. It's very alarming when
Speaker 1: someone who says I see some of myself and you
Speaker 1: catastrophically implodes, right, and you start to question things. But
Speaker 1: you know, Robert Green, the writer uh the forty forty
Speaker 1: A Laws of Power and Mastery, I was his apprentice
Speaker 1: on the side as all this is going on, I'm
Speaker 1: also a research assistant to Robert Green, and and that
Speaker 1: was my sort of crash course in how to be
Speaker 1: a writer? And and he's like sort of the model
Speaker 1: for how I try to live my life. Not I
Speaker 1: don't try to live my life by the forty Laws
Speaker 1: of Power. I try to live my life the way
Speaker 1: that the author of the forty at Laws of Power,
Speaker 1: who is this sort of disciplined, kind, generous person, happens
Speaker 1: to live his life in the profession that I'm also
Speaker 1: in How did you find your Way? To Robert Green?
Speaker 1: He's such a fascinating character. I was an enormous fan,
Speaker 1: and I was working for a different author who happened
Speaker 1: to know Robert, and I just wouldn't would Yeah, huh,
Speaker 1: that's interesting. So who else influenced your approach to media
Speaker 1: to media? Well, one of the books I would suggest
Speaker 1: everyone read who Who's looking to sort of understand media
Speaker 1: as a book by Upton Sinclair called The Brass Check
Speaker 1: actually the name of my marketing company as well. But
Speaker 1: he writes this book after the Jungle. He writes an
Speaker 1: expose of journalism in the in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 1: and it's just as disgusting as the meat packing industry.
Speaker 1: And it's you could replace You could take the exact
Speaker 1: same book, replace newspaper with blog and it would be
Speaker 1: equally true today. So funny you say that there's this
Speaker 1: book from the early twenties something I'm trying to remember
Speaker 1: the name of the author, how trade stocks, And you
Speaker 1: could replace any of the dot coms with any of
Speaker 1: the telegraph companies and everything is exactly the same. It's
Speaker 1: it's amazing you said that's name exactly. Well, that's what
Speaker 1: the Stokes say, is that history is just this constant
Speaker 1: repetition of the same people doing the same Human nature
Speaker 1: is unchanging. It's it's no surprise. So you mentioned, um
Speaker 1: that book. Tell us about some of your favorite books.
Speaker 1: That's ah that It's always hard to give general book recommendation.
Speaker 1: By the way, this is the one question I get
Speaker 1: more emails about what was the book that he recommended
Speaker 1: more than any single thing. People want good recommendation. So
Speaker 1: it doesn't have to be general, or it could be
Speaker 1: general or specific. It's what books do you think are
Speaker 1: important to you and if people enjoy it or not,
Speaker 1: that's on them. So I'll give you a couple. So
Speaker 1: one I would say everyone should read Robert Green forty
Speaker 1: Laws of Power and Mastery, incredibly important books. I'm a
Speaker 1: big Rich Cohen fan. Uh. He wrote Tough Jews. He
Speaker 1: wrote The Fish That Ate the Whale about Annuals of Murray,
Speaker 1: the founder of United Fruit. One of my favorite books
Speaker 1: of all time, The Well, Yeah, it's a it's an
Speaker 1: incredible story of of of financial operations and entrepreneurism. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and you know government and Rich Cohen as I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of Rich Cohen. Um, I'm a big
Speaker 1: William to come to Sherman fan. He's one of my
Speaker 1: favorite I love Sherman and Grant, so I both of
Speaker 1: their memoirs. I would strongly urge people have I've read
Speaker 1: so many biographies of Grant that I feel guilty about
Speaker 1: reading another thousand page But I love churn out. His
Speaker 1: book on Rockefeller's fantastics. I think his book on Andrew
Speaker 1: Hamilton's is as good as you would expect. His book
Speaker 1: on Washington is fantastic. I'm a big biography fan. I
Speaker 1: think biography is how we learned. And then I would
Speaker 1: say Plutarch's Lives. Uh, there's a reason that almost every
Speaker 1: great historical figure is either in that book or obsessed
Speaker 1: with that book. Um, and then of course the Stoics.
Speaker 1: If you the most powerful a man in the world,
Speaker 1: Marcus Currelius sat down every night and wrote in a
Speaker 1: journal notes to himself about how to be a better person,
Speaker 1: and that survives to us. Yeah, you would be an
Speaker 1: idiot not to read that book. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: an incredible years old and it just persists ongoing exactly
Speaker 1: that that is for someone said, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I have any books. That's a nice list of books.
Speaker 1: What excites you right now? What are you looking out
Speaker 1: at and saying that's really interesting. I mean, I do
Speaker 1: think cryptocurrencies are interesting that I think someone will solve
Speaker 1: someone will find a practical use for blockchain. Uh And
Speaker 1: and I think it's a race to find there is
Speaker 1: the speculative bubble of cryptocurrency to separate things, the technology
Speaker 1: and the trading there, and someone will solve it. And
Speaker 1: I think that will be really interesting. So I'm interested
Speaker 1: in that. You know, I live in Austin. I live
Speaker 1: on a small farm. I think I was just reading
Speaker 1: this article. Elon Musk's brother was saying he thinks millennials
Speaker 1: will move to farms. He thinks that they will flee
Speaker 1: the city, not to the suburbs, but to keep going
Speaker 1: the land. And uh that mac that that lines up
Speaker 1: with my experience. And and I'm bolish on that. Although
Speaker 1: cities continue to attract young people and ever greater numbers,
Speaker 1: especially now that jobs have become fairly plentiful. Yes, but
Speaker 1: I think, like if my own career is somewhat ahead
Speaker 1: of the curve because I started early and got lucky
Speaker 1: in many ways. It's that you go to the city,
Speaker 1: you make your money, you build a business, a reputation,
Speaker 1: and then you can work from wherever you want. And
Speaker 1: then you go, why am I living in New York City?
Speaker 1: And so I think that I think it will be
Speaker 1: interesting to see how millennials chade. Our millennials going to
Speaker 1: move into the suburbs, back into the suburbs they grew
Speaker 1: up in, or they're gonna piety or their own thing. Right.
Speaker 1: The answer to the question is the food is while
Speaker 1: you live here, you can't get good Chinese food on
Speaker 1: a farm or if that's not yes, if that's if
Speaker 1: that's or Vietnamese food or or go down the list,
Speaker 1: pick your favorite cuisine. Um. But at a certain point
Speaker 1: it's hard living in a city versus having little elbow
Speaker 1: space and a big sky. That's a very different lifestyle
Speaker 1: that that I think suits you once you work through
Speaker 1: your twenties and theories hy hypothetically, Um, So we've been
Speaker 1: talking a lot about the media. What do you think
Speaker 1: the next set of changes are that's gonna wash over
Speaker 1: the media landscape. I think we're going to see more
Speaker 1: and more subscription based content, especially as millennials get older
Speaker 1: and their time is worth more money. Uh. The idea
Speaker 1: like the reason people pay for Bloomberg terminals is because
Speaker 1: those the time and the information is extremely valuable to
Speaker 1: those people, right, and uh, you know millennials originally pirate
Speaker 1: and music. We were never downloading anything, and now we
Speaker 1: pay monthly for Spotify, right because our time gets more,
Speaker 1: or Amazon Prime or Apple iTunes are going down the
Speaker 1: list you have. It's a there's a wealth of of everything.
Speaker 1: I'm not I don't know if you've discovered this, but
Speaker 1: I grew up in an era where you would actually
Speaker 1: get videotapes or DVDs. That's done. Everything we watch on
Speaker 1: video is either Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu going out in
Speaker 1: the list. Nobody is buying this sort of physical stuff anymore. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I I do think you're going to see in
Speaker 1: the information space people realizing that free information is very expensive.
Speaker 1: Free information it's worth what it costs you, Especially so
Speaker 1: the Washington Post behind a paywall, The New York Times,
Speaker 1: the Wollster Journal has always been beyond the pay and
Speaker 1: they haven't. I was just reading about their technology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how much should we charge you? How likely are you
Speaker 1: to pay? And I think that technology is only going
Speaker 1: to get better, like they do with selling airline seats.
Speaker 1: In other words, that's quite that's quite interesting tell us
Speaker 1: about a time you failed and what you learned from
Speaker 1: the experience. That that's always the tough question. I feel
Speaker 1: like I've been lucky in a lot of ways. Uh My,
Speaker 1: my failures have been slips rather than falls for the
Speaker 1: most part. And so in some ways, you know, the
Speaker 1: stoic exercises to think constantly about the next like to
Speaker 1: to be prepared for some big setback, some big correction.
Speaker 1: So I do think about that a lot. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know, when I was building my marketing company, I'm
Speaker 1: I was. It was going well, and then I decided
Speaker 1: I really wanted to scale it and build it in
Speaker 1: a in a big way. And you know, I took
Speaker 1: on some partners and some investments and investor money and
Speaker 1: hired a bunch of people and and and I remember
Speaker 1: my wife saying like, why are you have the perfect thing?
Speaker 1: Why are you doing this? And I didn't listen to her,
Speaker 1: which is always a mistake, and it went horribly wrong.
Speaker 1: It sort of blew up my relationships with a bunch
Speaker 1: of people. I ended up being miserable. It was it
Speaker 1: was working way more and making probably less money. Um,
Speaker 1: and so it was it was a good failure for me.
Speaker 1: And that sometimes you've got to figure out what you
Speaker 1: don't want to clarify what it is that you actually
Speaker 1: do want. That makes that makes perfect sense. Um, tell
Speaker 1: us what you do for fun? Uh? You write an
Speaker 1: awful lot. What do you you to just relax? I
Speaker 1: would say when I'm not writing, that's what I'm having
Speaker 1: the least amount of fun. Like, I don't have a
Speaker 1: book that I'm in the middle of right now, And
Speaker 1: it's weird, right I'm like, how do I fill all
Speaker 1: this time? Like it's that's that's where I dedicate a
Speaker 1: lot of my energy. Uh, but you know, I I'm
Speaker 1: a big I run and swim every day. Those are
Speaker 1: my like two that's my two favorite parts of the day.
Speaker 1: Or if I'm doing both, that's my favorite thing to do.
Speaker 1: And the new iPod has a waterproof feature. You can
Speaker 1: actually listen to music in the pool. I reject that entirely.
Speaker 1: I think the pool is the I say the pool
Speaker 1: is the last quiet place on Earth, no screens, no noise.
Speaker 1: It's I love swimming precisely because it's one hour of nothing.
Speaker 1: You're in the pool for a solid hour and try
Speaker 1: I try forty five minutes to an hour. I tried
Speaker 1: to do. I'm impressed. If a millennial or a budding
Speaker 1: writer were to come to you and ask for a
Speaker 1: career advice, what would you tell them, Well, I'd give
Speaker 1: the writer the advice that that I got, which is
Speaker 1: that you have to go do interesting things, right, don't
Speaker 1: go learn how to write, well, go learn things about
Speaker 1: the world that you can then communicate in the writing.
Speaker 1: So when you were asking me about some of my
Speaker 1: controversial choices career wise, or things I've got myself in
Speaker 1: trouble with or whatever, on the one hand, you know,
Speaker 1: those might not be great for my brand, but they've
Speaker 1: also been the few I wouldn't have written my first
Speaker 1: book done that, and it's given me a perspective at
Speaker 1: an angle and a you know, material, and so a
Speaker 1: writer needs material more than they need anyone can write
Speaker 1: like you know. I'd read Keith Richard's biography. It was
Speaker 1: written in cran you know, and was filled with misspellings
Speaker 1: because he's lived an incredible life, right, And so a
Speaker 1: writer has to go have experiences that fuel their writing.
Speaker 1: That's quite fascinating. And our final question, what is it
Speaker 1: that you know about the world of media and literature
Speaker 1: today that you wish you knew ten fifteen years ago
Speaker 1: when you were first getting started. The incentives make it
Speaker 1: almost impossible for it to have the traits that we
Speaker 1: want to have, right We we want media to be
Speaker 1: empathetic and truthful and reasoned and balanced and fair and
Speaker 1: all the all the things you would explain, You're like,
Speaker 1: I'm describing what I would want to see in the
Speaker 1: ideal media outlet are essentially economically impossible, right there an
Speaker 1: economically impossible, and then worse, there's a culture on top
Speaker 1: of it that that that exacerbates it, uh, rather than
Speaker 1: corrects or mitigates it. Are you referring to digital, prince, electronic,
Speaker 1: all the above? I would say all of the above. Like,
Speaker 1: I'm biased, but I think books are one of the
Speaker 1: few safer mediums right because you pay for books, they
Speaker 1: take a long time to make their design to last
Speaker 1: for a long time. So the only mediums I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm a fan of right now are books and podcasts.
Speaker 1: Quite quite fascinating. We have been speaking to Ryan Holliday,
Speaker 1: author of the book Conspiracy, Peter Teel, Hulk Hogan, Glocker
Speaker 1: and The Anonomy of Intrigue, as well as several other
Speaker 1: books including the Daily Stoic. If you enjoy this conversation,
Speaker 1: be sure and look up an inch or down an inch,
Speaker 1: and you could see any of the other, let's call
Speaker 1: it hundred and eighties seven such prior conversations that we've had.
Speaker 1: We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us
Speaker 1: at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. I would
Speaker 1: be remiss if I did not thank my crack staff
Speaker 1: for helping to put together this podcast each week. Medina
Speaker 1: Parwana is our producer. Slash audio engineer. Taylor Riggs is
Speaker 1: our booker Slash producer. Michael bat Nick is our head
Speaker 1: of research. I'm Barry rid Hults. You've been listening to
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.