Ryan Holiday Reveals How Much Best Selling Authors Make, Crazy Peter Thiel Stories & More (#370)
Publishing, Content, and Life Balance with Ryan Holiday - October 4, 2022 (over 2 years ago) • 01:13:31
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Sam Parr | And then I googled "Mark Manson house" because that's always like the tell on whether someone is really crushing it. You can't really get a mortgage for a $15,000,000 house unless you're actually raking it in.
It said, "Mark Manson sells Tribeca condo for $14,000,000," and I'm like, "Damn, he... I thought the book business was a bad business. He must have crushed it. He must be making millions."
My man Ryan Holiday, how are you? Nice to talk to you.
| |
Ryan Holiday | it's good to talk to you too | |
Sam Parr | So, you asked to come here, and I'll just, because I just want to get it out of the way, I want to give you the love. You asked to come on here because, A, we're homies and I love you, and also because, B, you have a book coming out. What's the goal?
| |
Ryan Holiday | Discipline is destiny. This is the new one for the series, and yeah, it came out yesterday.
| |
Sam Parr | oh and how's it going so far | |
Ryan Holiday | Really good, really good. It should be significantly higher. It's already significantly higher than the last one.
So, I know where the numbers are, but I'm waiting. Well, the one thing you don't know until the end of the second week is audiobook numbers and where it may or may not land on the bestseller list.
| |
Sam Parr | what do you think this the outcome of this one's gonna be | |
Ryan Holiday | We'll probably come in a bit above 40,000 copies the first week. I would venture to guess it could be higher if they keep trending this way.
Because I have my own bookstore and I did the sales through my own bookstore, I probably won't hit the Wall Street Journal list. They've skunked me last time.
Then the New York Times list is, let's say, 50/50, all of which my publisher is very concerned about. I've decided that I don't care about that at all anymore. | |
Sam Parr | Because if you own your own bookstore, that means that if you sell 20,000 copies, do they not count all 20,000 in the rankings?
| |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, so I mean, just generally, if you sold 20,000 copies of a book through one bookstore, they would find that to be suspicious or unrepresentative. There's a chance it could get tossed.
If you ever look at the bestseller list and you see a little symbol they call a "dagger," which looks like a little cross next to certain books, that means there were a lot of bulk purchases or suspicious activity.
So there could be that, but the Wall Street Journal or BookScan, which is owned by Nielsen, just flat out told me they don't include sales from stores owned by the author anymore. This doesn't strike me as a big enough category to have a rule about, but I guess there's the potential for fraud. I could have theoretically inflated the numbers or something.
So, there's a chance it could get tossed. But as I have gone on as an author, I've cared less. Once you get it, I feel like you have it. You also realize how meaningless some things are. I care a lot less about the status or recognition of sales, and I care a lot more about, you know, did I sell as many copies as possible to as many people as possible? Right? Because the whole...
| |
Ryan Holiday | Of | |
Sam Parr | writing a | |
Ryan Holiday | book is for people to read it | |
Sam Parr | Does being on that list... when you say the bestseller list, are you meaning just the New York Times? Is that considered like "the list"? And does being on that help sales?
| |
Ryan Holiday | There are sort of three lists: there's the New York Times, which you probably rank as number one; the Wall Street Journal, which you probably rank as number two; and then USA Today. Those are the three.
You have to hit one of those three lists to be called a national bestseller. Those are the three national lists.
I think people tell themselves a story about how being on the list helps them sell more copies. But as someone who buys a lot of books and talks to a lot of people who buy a lot of books, I have never once heard of someone buying a book because they saw it on a list. Most people don't even know where they would find such a list.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, I was reading... is it News Corp? I forget the company. It's Rupert Murdoch's company, but he has two of them. I forget which one owns Penguin.
They did this whole section in their annual report on Mark Manson, basically saying, "This has been a breakthrough hit." The company is like a $20 or $40 billion company, and they're referencing Mark Manson. I'm like, "Oh wow, that must be a huge book for them to discuss this in a six-page section of a 100-page document."
Then I Googled "Mark Manson house" because that's always a tell. I'm like, "Is someone like crushing it?" You can't really get a mortgage for a $15 million house unless you're actually raking it in.
It said, "Mark Manson sells Tribeca condo for $14 million." I'm like, "Damn! I thought the book business was a bad business. He must have crushed it. He must be making millions."
| |
Ryan Holiday | It's actually a great business. The publishing industry, I think, is about a $40 billion industry. News Corp owns HarperCollins. HarperCollins publishes Mark Penguin Random House, which is my publisher. They are the biggest publisher in the world. Let's look at Penguin Random House.
| |
Sam Parr | I think they're owned by a parent company I forget the parent company though | |
Ryan Holiday | they're owned by bertelsmann or something like that yeah | |
Sam Parr | yeah yeah that's right | |
Ryan Holiday | But you know, let's talk about revenues. Their revenues, I bet, are €4,000,000,000 for Penguin Random House. So it's a very big business and always has been. There are multiple multibillion-dollar businesses inside that business.
Even Ingram, which is the distributor that sells books to most independent retailers, is like a $7 or $8 billion business. But Mark's probably sold, I think, "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" sold like 10 or 15 million copies.
| |
Sam Parr | and what did it cost $20 | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, so if you think about my books, I've sold 5,000,000 copies. If you said $20, that's $100,000,000 in gross revenues right there. | |
Sam Parr | crazy | |
Ryan Holiday | now now obviously there's a lot of middlemen even before it gets to the publisher right the publisher is selling the book at wholesale so right there that's you know cuts it in half and then you know blah blah blah blah blah it goes down but but there are if you think about how much a book sells for and the quantities of which successful authors sell a lot of books that that number gets very very high this is why jk rowling is is a billionaire right she's probably sold a 100 200,000,000 harry potter books not including licensing and all the other things you know different the the the different formats whether it's audio or ebook or physical or hardcover even hardcover and paperback is a big thing like one of the I bet mark for instance and I I know mark and he's amazing the distinction the the decision to put your book in paperback is actually a multimillion dollar decision for authors and and most authors have never even thought about this so for instance on a hardcover book the the standard publishing contract and pretty much everyone including the authors that are household names are on the same contract it's just this is what it is is 15% on hardcover price so an author makes you know 15% of $27 whether you as the customer get that book for $17 on amazon or for $27 at an independent bookstore you're making the same amount right your your royalty is on msrp but 15% of hardcover right a paperback sells for about 10 to $15 less than a hardcover right but and your royalty is 12 and a half% so my my agent very early who was in publishing he was like he was like I will never let your books go into paperback he's like you have to sell about as 3rd you have to sell a 3rd more books to make the same amount of money that you sold in hardcover and this is why tim ferris's books are not widely available in paperback good to great by jim collins which has sold tens of you know probably 10,000,000 copies still in hardcover even though it's a 20 year old book so there's lots of little decisions that | |
Sam Parr | what about audible and ebook | |
Ryan Holiday | So, Audible... I think it's the same as... I think Audible and eBooks are 25% of the list price. You make a higher royalty, but on a lower price. Audiobooks are like $15 or $9 for eBooks a lot of times.
So, somewhere between $2.30 a book, you make across formats. So, how much for hardcover, eBook... and so you think Mark's...
| |
Sam Parr | book has sold 200 is I think did you say 200,000,000 in sales so | |
Ryan Holiday | no no 20 he's probably sold 20,000,000 books | |
Sam Parr | sorry in gross revenue | |
Ryan Holiday | Oh, was it 20,000,000 books times hardcover? You know, there's going to be a blend there of the price. The only thing that's worth pointing out—and this isn't a criticism, it's just a quirk of the business—is that Mark's books are very big internationally. His books are big in Brazil, and his books are big in India. I've experienced the same thing.
But as soon as you start selling lots of copies internationally, let's just say you start seeing a lot less money for those titles. For instance, somebody sent me a copy of one of my books from Iran recently. I emailed my agent and said, "Oh, I didn't know we did a Persian translation." He said, "We didn't. Iran doesn't recognize copyright; they just do whatever they want. You'll never see a penny from these books."
So, if you sell 1,000,000 books in Russia, you're not getting your standard royalty rate. You may never see a penny of that. You might get an initial advance, but as you start to get into, let's say, less transparency in the accounting, you can't simply go, "Well, what's the total number of copies sold by a person and then times that by a number?" You're probably going to be overstating the cash they have on hand.
| |
Sam Parr |
So you've sold $100,000,000 in books. Then, like, the estimate based off of the numbers you said would be around 13-15% take-home. I mean, how many authors are doing that?
| |
Ryan Holiday | Selling 5,000,000 books is very, very few. I mean, definitely, there are a lot of people who have done it, and there are people who have done much, much higher than that. But as far as people who write about philosophy, I mean, I'm not sure it's been done ever, certainly not in the modern world.
So, you know, when I went to my publisher and I offered them an obscure book about ancient philosophy in 2011-2012 for my first Stoic book, they offered me my advance on "The Obstacle Is the Way" of $75,000. They were not thinking, you know, that the series would sell 3 or 4 million copies. Do you?
| |
Sam Parr | I think that your life has, or will become, something significant. We were talking about Tim Ferriss, and we're like, you know, however much he's made on books, it probably pales in comparison. He's arguably worth, just guessing, maybe $150 to $250 million based off of his Shopify, Uber, and seed investments. He probably has done so many more things that I don't even know about.
Do you think that your business is going to be a similar thing? Where it's almost like the books are awesome, but they're going to be tiny compared to the other revenue streams?
| |
Ryan Holiday | I don't know... I don't do that many investments, but it is weird. I was an adviser early on to like ButcherBox, and they've done a few sort of private transactions that I took part in.
It is both humbling and surreal to get a check and think, "Shit, I would have had to sell a lot of books to get this same amount of money." This amount of money was, you know, a lot less work.
So, I think for someone like Tim, when you can invest in something that scales at that level, it does make you a little disinterested in the economics of publishing, even though they are quite good.
| |
Sam Parr |
Yeah, I mean... and everyone talks about writing a book. They say - I think he's the one who told me this - he's like, "It sucks." He's like, "It just... it stinks." He says, he goes, "I love it, kind of, but I also really hate it. It's very uncomfortable and it's a lot of hard work."
And I was like, "Yeah, I don't know why you'd write a book then, if you don't have... if you don't truly, truly love it." I have no idea if he does or not, but it's very hard. It seems almost impossible.
| |
Ryan Holiday | It is super weird, though, because a lot of wealthy people read books. The interesting thing about books is that they sort of punch above their weight culturally. It's like the opera or something, right?
You could be very famous on YouTube, and your average billionaire might not know who you are. But if you write a business book or a political book that sells reasonably well, you're going to have some name recognition in an elite group.
I've gotten to meet a number of very successful business people over the years, and as a rule, they all want to write books or talk about whether they should write a book or not. It was actually very helpful for me to learn that early on because every author I knew was trying to start a business or follow in Tim Ferriss's footsteps and invest in these companies to get really, really rich.
Then I would meet really, really rich people, and they wanted to write books. It was a reminder to me that doing stuff that's cool, that you like, and that means something to you is what people do with their money when they have it.
For example, I met this guy—you probably know him, but I won't put him on the spot. Anyway, he had written a couple of books and then started a VC company. He raised a fund—he raised like $100,000,000—and he had to put writing on the side to raise this fund.
I asked him, "Why are you doing this? What are you going to do?" I was like, "Let's say you really succeed. Let's say your fund crushes, and you walk away with like $20,000,000. What would you do with it?"
He was like, "Do you know who Alain de Botton is? He's an author who started this company called the School of Life. I think I would do something like that." I just burst into laughter because... like, let's...
| |
Sam Parr | do it now | |
Ryan Holiday |
He wasn't... Yeah, he was. It's like that story about the fisherman who meets the Western businessman who tells him, "You know, if you really scale up your company, blah blah blah... One day you can sit on a beach somewhere." And it's like, "That's what I do now."
So there is kind of this weirdness where people think financial freedom is this abstract good, and then you meet people who have it and they still have to wake up and figure out what they're going to do all day.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, I listen to your YouTube videos every single morning when I take a walk.
Oh, and good! It makes me feel so good about myself. Not maybe good about myself, but I feel like I'm getting so much from it. Whether it's education or just like you're helping me think differently, I don't know what it is, but I get so much from it.
You're the one creating all this stuff, or at least you're paraphrasing interesting people. Do you think that you are absorbing these lessons better than most others?
You just told this very simple story of like, "Well, why would you go and do this, this, and this when you're already doing that?" Now, are you motivated by money? Are you motivated by all these things that you talk about, like, "Look, this and this and this may not make you happy?"
| |
Ryan Holiday | I think I certainly struggle with it, like every single person does. It's not like just knowing it magically makes it easy.
But I would say a big lesson is: why are you trying to make all this money to get somewhere you already could be? I feel like I do a better job learning those big philosophical lessons, like where do you rein ambition in? How do you define meaning, happiness, or contentment in your life?
I probably am better at that than I am at some of the more basic stuff, like: you don't have to be anxious about this, or why are you letting this person get under your skin? Why are you losing your temper about X, Y, or Z?
So, I feel like the bigger stuff, the stoicism or the philosophy, sort of connects with me. And by the way, that story about the fishermen actually traces back to the 14th century, about a prince advising a king or an adviser advising a prince. So, the story goes way back. I feel like I get that better than I do stuff that might seem really easy for most people, which is just day-to-day emotional management.
| |
Sam Parr | How you said something really cool on the... I was listening to this the other day. There are two things that stuck out.
The first one is with Matthew McConaughey. You were talking about content and you asked him about how he chooses which projects to take on. Apparently, there was a whole part of the episode discussing how he had a $10 or $20 million offer, and he was like, "No, I don't want to do this. This doesn't speak to me. This is not how I want to spend my time." He felt guilt over that.
You guys were talking about Bob Dylan, and I think it was you who said, "I want to make content like Bob Dylan," which is that quality and quantity don't necessarily have to be at odds with each other. I can output lots of really cool, great stuff, and you do that.
The Daily Stoic is an email, then you have The Daily Dad, another email, and then you have the books, which you have dozens of or a dozen of them. Plus, you have the podcast and the YouTube channel. I'm like, how on earth are you outputting all of this stuff? It's always awesome. I love all your work!
| |
Ryan Holiday | Well, thank you. I mean, I actually like doing it. There are some people who don’t enjoy it, and they do it because they think it will make money or because it’s what they have to do. That wouldn’t be a good reason to do it.
This morning, I got up and I wrote. Yesterday, when the book came out, I was excited—not to come into the office to see how the discipline did, but because I had saved a really good chapter for the sequel. I'm doing this four-book series, and I was just *pumped* to do that. That’s really what gets me excited: doing this stuff.
I think I tend to have more energy to create than there actually is time to put stuff out. That’s just how it shook out. I agree with the sentiment regarding Bob Dylan that quantity and quality don’t have to be opposed to each other. In fact, the more you do, the chances are you’ll sort of get something magical or important.
I really admire people who are wired differently and who painstakingly put lots of years into something. Although, if you asked Mark, he would say that following up a massive hit is really hard. I’ve been lucky in that my books have done well, but they haven’t done so well that my whole world changed when *The Obstacle Is the Way* came out. They didn’t offer me very much money. It sold well at first, but it took time.
| |
Sam Parr | it's like a slow burn | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, and not even slow, but just steady. It probably didn't cross the 1,000,000 copies sold mark. I know it crossed the 100,000 copies mark within the first year because there was a bonus attached to it. So, it took, you know, 12 months to sell 100,000 copies, but it probably took an additional 4 to 5 years before it crossed the 1,000,000 copy mark.
For someone like Mark or James Clear or other people, they hit the 1,000,000 mark in just a number of months. When you start to do that, everything changes. Expectations change, you know, inbound inquiries change, and I think it becomes hard to just do the thing.
So, I feel kind of lucky to have a niche, but to have a big niche that is still very much a niche. There are just more people who haven't heard of me than have heard of me, and that is a nice place to operate in. | |
Sam Parr | Dude, so many people... So, the hustle. We have a daily email, and then Sean and I do this thing three days a week. People are like, "Hey, how are you doing quantity?" I want to get started, but I'm like, "You know, I'm banking 21 episodes before I start," or "I'm perfecting this blog post."
You know, I'm going more for quality versus quantity. In my head, or sometimes I'll tell them, I'm like, "No, that's a false dichotomy. That's not true. Quality is the quantity."
You know, the output here, or like, if this were like quality + quantity, it would be like, you know, the total reach and how impactful they are, and the types of people you're impacting. To do that, you have to have something in there for quantity.
It's really just kind of an excuse to procrastinate further that you're making up for yourself. But, A, it gets easier as you get into it, so you need quantity. You need the swings to get better. And B, if you treat it like a job, you could have way more output than you think.
| |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, I have a couple of thoughts there.
So, one, it's like try to apply that logic to any other thing. Imagine if you met a comedian and they were like, "I'm really focused on quality instead of quantity, so I don't do a lot of stage time. I just don't go up very often." You'd be like, "You're a shitty stand-up comic." The way you get good at it is by doing it a lot, right?
It's very hard to get to quality without years of back and forth with an audience. It's just really hard.
Especially online, where you're giving the thing away for free, you should be focused on quantity. Quantity is how you get to a place where what you do is worth paying for at a premium level, like with a book or something.
So, I like... I've done a free email every day for six years, right? That's built a business. | |
Sam Parr | but are you writing that | |
Ryan Holiday | I write it every day. I mean, every once in a while, like let's say 10% of them are, you know, "Hey, I'll work with someone on my team and be like, 'Hey, I already wrote about this. Can you work this into a draft for me to approve or rewrite?'"
But like the vast majority of those daily emails were like 100% original ideas that I put out. A hundred percent of... I asked the dad or the... that make it easier, both.
| |
Sam Parr | you you oh I didn't know you're writing both of those every day | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, well, I don't write it. I mean, I write every day, but I don't write the email every day.
Currently, let's say I could pull this up. I have a document where I track them. I am scheduled out on *Daily Stoic* and *Daily Dad* through October 14th.
I have 10 written that are ready to record, 16 that are recorded but not unscheduled, and then 9 on *Daily Dad* that are ready to record and 8 that are recorded but not scheduled. So, like...
| |
Sam Parr | and that's your system | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, so I might sit down today. I have... I don't know where my to-do list is, but on my to-do list, I have three sort of one-sentence ideas for daily dad emails. I might bust that out in 30 minutes, and then that's, you know, almost a week's worth of content right there. | |
Sam Parr | are you writing the scripts to your youtube videos I think you're only doing 1 or 2 a week right | |
Ryan Holiday | Yes, so YouTube... I have a... I have a... actually, wait, let me come back to that in a sec.
The other thing I would say about the people who are like, "Oh, I really want to get to quality," is that’s why it takes so long. When I look at what those people make, I very rarely see the quality. Right? Like, they're like, "Oh, you know what? This book took me 5 years," and I'm like, "Where? Show me 5 years of work in this thing."
I'm not arguing with you that it transpired over 5 years, but I don't think you showed up and worked on this, as you said, like a job every day for 5 years. I think it either... because if that were true, I think it would either be a lot better or it would have come out a lot faster.
Right? So I think a lot of people are baking in a lot of inefficiencies and a lot of procrastination inside that, and then patting themselves on the back and saying that they're doing a thing that they're really focused on quality.
So that's just like a dispute I have. I think a lot of people take way too long to do things. When I see like a Robert Greene or a Robert Caro or, you know, one of these greats, I'm like, I see the 5 years. Like, it's obvious.
Robert Greene was telling me the other day he's like 7 months into a chapter on this book that he's writing right now, and when I read that chapter, I'll see every single day. Right? Because he's not lying.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, when I read Robert Greene and... what's his name? Carroll's book, "Moses."
| |
Ryan Holiday | yeah the robert moses book | |
Sam Parr | Robert Moses. I just got done reading *The Rise of the Third Reich*, which is like a 1,500 or 1,300-word epic. Pretty much, *Titan* is like this too. Anything Ron Chernow does... every sentence, to me, is like a life's work. If they're lucky, they can maybe get three of them.
Yes, I read those things, and they make me depressed because I just think, "I can never do anything this detail-oriented, this beautiful." I think it's mostly history books; every single sentence is amazing. I don't understand how you could do that for so long. | |
Ryan Holiday |
Yeah, this is the William Manchester series on Churchill, which I would highly recommend. This is the Taylor Branch series on Martin Luther King, also incredible. In the acknowledgments of the last book in the King series, Taylor Branch talks about how his youngest son was born like the day he started the series, and then [the son] took a break from college to help him finish the last book.
| |
Sam Parr | that's crazy man it is so nuts those are really like life's work | |
Ryan Holiday | They are, and it's not just that every sentence is perfect, but like we don't see that. If you think about the iceberg, we don't see the research, the interviews, or the on-location observing that went into forming one of those sentences.
So, yeah, like there's definitely a reason some people only do two or three things in their lifetime, and then there's everybody else. Chances are, you're everybody else.
As far as the YouTube videos go, I do a couple of different ones. I think the easiest YouTube videos we do are compilations of reels or Instagram clips that I create. There's not a lot of script there; it's just the intro. It's like piecing together sort of meditations on a larger idea.
But if it is a "how to read Marcus Aurelius," "how to read Seneca," or "let me tell you the biography of this Stoic," I have one coming out next week that's about the relationship between Marcus Aurelius and Antoninus Pius' stepfather. That's a combination of having somebody give me an outline and then me usually drawing on something that I wrote somewhere else.
For me, the writing—particularly of the books—is what generates the vast majority of the content. I have people who help me, just like I don't do the Spanish edition of my books. I have people who help translate what I've done into different mediums.
| |
Sam Parr | are you using Google docs | |
Ryan Holiday | yeah for the for the most part yeah | |
Sam Parr | and how big's the team | |
Ryan Holiday | like 10 people now probably if that includes that includes the bookstore | |
Sam Parr | and also does it include daily stoic and daily dad | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, I'm saying that I probably have 10 employees... maybe 11 or 12, but less than 15. | |
Sam Parr | dude that is crazy man the output is just awesome I I I think that's amazing | |
Hubspot | Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot?
See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best.
**HubSpot: Grow Better.**
| |
Sam Parr | I was messaging you the other day because someone said, "Hey, you should start a book club." I thought, well, I read a lot, but like, you, Ryan, should really start it.
So, I looked into a company called "Book of the Month." It's been around for like 50, 60, maybe even 100 years. It's been traded hands a ton. I think right now, the last I heard, they're in the $70,000,000 range of revenue, which is a big business.
But I don't know if it's growing, and I don't know if that makes a profit. I don't know what the situation is. Have you looked into these Book of the Month businesses? I think Reese Witherspoon had one too that I believe was profitable.
| |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, there are a couple of different ones. There's another company called Literati, and then there's Book of the Month. The Book of the Month concept definitely goes back quite a bit. It used to be a way to guarantee a book's success if you were selected to one of those clubs because they might buy 100,000 copies or something.
Then there's the "Next Big Idea Book Club," which I think Malcolm Gladwell is an investor in. There are a handful of them. The problem with the business is, first off, not that many people read, unfortunately. Second, the logistics of it are tough.
At the very best, you're going to be able to get those books at, let's say, 50% off from the publisher if you're doing physical copies. So, if you start to get into subscriptions, your subscription is already more than Netflix, which gets you unlimited access to the best, most entertaining content in the world.
The really tough part is getting to a place where you can move a lot of books and have high revenue. I started this newsletter about 15 years ago where I just recommend books.
| |
Sam Parr | you have like 250,000 people now on it | |
Ryan Holiday | Something like that, yeah. I just prefer to... look, if you want to buy the book from my bookstore, I make a little bit of money doing that. If you buy it from Amazon, I get the commission.
But I'd much rather just have that list and that audience than try to monetize a book club itself. Because the bundle of including the book, fulfilling the book, customer service, and all that other stuff... I think it's just hard to make the business itself work.
| |
Sam Parr | how much revenue can you make on one send | |
Ryan Holiday | From the reading list newsletter, I don't know... I don't know.
| |
Sam Parr | actually 10 or $20 maybe | |
Ryan Holiday | Or, yeah, that would be a lot. Because the other thing that I found is that the people who read the most—who, like, really read—at least the kind of readers that I attract are... I don't want to say they're lone wolves, but they're more like... I don't know about you, but the way I read is I just have at all times a long list of books I'm going to get around to reading. I'm not like, "Oh, you're reading this book right now; I have space for you in my life."
So, if I think about the impact that the list has had as far as moving copies for books, it's not like, "Oh, we sold this many copies of this book this month." It's more over time. Although, I did invest in this company. Do you know the company Vinyl Me?
| |
Sam Parr | I think I introduced you to them. Matt Fiedler, the founder, is my... did you know he's my high school friend? Yeah, he's my very, very close college friend.
For those listening, Vinyl Me, Please is awesome. I don't know how many subscribers they have—20,000 or 30,000—but they send out a record, a piece of vinyl. I remember he was complaining to me, saying, "Man, whenever someone gets selected for our vinyl, like when we pick an album, it becomes the best-selling vinyl in the country because we're the biggest." But now they're not counting it anymore. Same as right.
| |
Ryan Holiday | It's the same thing we're talking about with the bestseller list. They would be the number one vinyl album in the country each month, but they just get skunked from the Billboard charts.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, and I haven't asked Matt about the business lately, but it's been around for 10 years now, and it seems to be doing good. | |
Ryan Holiday | I think that's a different experience, right? So, I’m one of the advisers. I got some early shares in Vinyl Me when it came out, and that's been a surprisingly big business. When I see the numbers, I'm always like, "Whoa, that's bigger than I would have guessed." You wouldn't think, "Oh, maybe 1,000 people a month," not 20,000 people a month.
| |
Sam Parr | yeah that's a lot of people | |
Ryan Holiday | But I think music is something people consume more than they do books.
| |
Sam Parr | right and you can do it over and over again with a bunch of people | |
Ryan Holiday | It's a passive experience, and the art of discovery is different, right? You want to be suggested random things on a regular basis.
I think with a book, people have so little room to read in their lives that I don't know... I like the idea of the business, and it would be amazing to make it work. However, I have struggled to actually see it work.
I think there's probably just ultimately better ways to monetize that attention than a list of subscribers you have to surface each month for a specific kind of book.
| |
Sam Parr | You said something earlier about how you get access to all these amazing people. I follow you on Instagram, and I've talked to you a bit. I follow your content, and you are hanging out with athletes, billionaires, business people, celebrities, and all these interesting individuals.
Who are some of the people you've met where you thought, "I want to emulate this particular attribute" or "the way that they've done this, this, and this"? I admire this so much, or this person is just wildly impressive. Who do you admire of all the people you've met?
| |
Ryan Holiday | oh that's a good question you know I actually talk about this in the in the end of of discipline as I was sort of struggling with the book kind of early in the process like one I was just fucking tired because I've done a lot of books in a very short amount of time and like the idea it just I don't know it just wasn't gelling and I had lunch with with manu ginobili who just got inducted in the hall of fame this month and we were we were having lunch at the at the bookstore he he'd come out and we were hanging out and it just sort of struck me like this dude has 4 rings like he has 4 championship rings and he has 2 gold medals and is a hall of famer and he was like I I don't wanna say he's a regular person because that sounds like that almost minimizes it but the. Is when you think about someone who has 4 rings I think you think more of like a jordan character who is fundamentally out of balance right like so there's no disputing jordan is jordan is like one of the greats if not the greatest like basketball player maybe athlete as a as a whole right but but we tend to think that that to be that good requires like fundamentally some fundamental trade offs about what kind of person you are and what your day to day life looks like like tom brady right comes back to football he can't walk away and it may well cost him his marriage right and and people see that and they go that's what it takes right I'm not sure that that is what it takes that might be you know what it took in that specific scenario but like I the more I meet really successful people I become less impressed by like how much money they made or like you know whether they have the most rings or the second most rings or whatever it is and I go like is this person like a good parent do they seem like they live in reality you know are are they like are they actually able to wake up and enjoy like what they have today or is it like they're traveling here and there and they're just always doing stuff right I think like to me what the the journey that I've tried to go on inspired by people like that is I want to be world class at what I do and and like be a somewhat of a normal person like who else it's almost easier to be great than it is to be good if that makes sense | |
Sam Parr |
Yeah, that's awesome. Who else have you met? So you know him and Chris Bosh are interesting. I've read... I listened to a bunch of content that you made with those guys. I felt the same way about Chris Bosh when I was listening to him. I'm like, "Oh man, this dude's like kinda..." Yeah, maybe "normal" is insulting, but that's what I was like. You're... I'm never gonna be 7 feet tall, but like, you know, your mentality is achievable. You know what I mean?
| |
Ryan Holiday | Well, it's kind of funny. I do feel the same way about Chris, his wife, and my wife as friends. But every once in a while, I'll mention one of them to the other, and then I forget that they... Chris said something to me actually when I had him on the Daily Stoked podcast. He said, "You know, he's elbowed me in the face a lot."
It was like realizing that their best and worst moments came at each other's expense. For instance, Manu goes up for a rebound that Chris tips back to Ray Allen, who makes a three-pointer to basically win the series.
It is also weird to think that here are these two people that I admire, and their careers were on a collision course with each other.
| |
Sam Parr | are they buddies now | |
Ryan Holiday | I don't think so. No, I don't think so. Even though they live not far from each other, right? One's in San Antonio, and one's in Austin. I do not think that they see each other socially. It might take some time; maybe in 20 years, that rivalry fades away. | |
Sam Parr | Is there anyone else who you've met and you're like, "Man, the way that you're pulling this off or the way that you're playing life, I just admire so much?"
| |
Ryan Holiday | well you know it was I had a weird one a couple weeks ago I I I don't wanna say who it is I not because I I feel weird dropping the name but anyways let's just say I met this musician and he'd read the books and he reached out to me through someone we know and he was like hey you know next time you're in new york you should come see me let me know I'd love to have dinner with you so I was like hey I'm actually gonna be in new york like next week and he's like oh alright my assistant will like send you the details and the details were like go to this helipad and then the helicopter took me and his son and our mutual friend to their house in the hamptons where we had dinner and then it flew us back to manhattan after dinner what yeah it was fucking nuts it was super nuts but like talking to this person he was like I was like so what's going on with you he's like well you know my youngest just went away to college so we're empty nesters like we're gonna spend an extra couple weeks here in the hamptons and it was like again I think at the end of your life and when you reflect on whether you were successful or not you're gonna think like what is do my kids want to spend time with me or not like am I what it am I on my 4th marriage or am I on my first marriage and he's he's been he's still with his high school sweetheart right despite selling a 100,000,000 albums in between meeting and like the day that I was there he's he has a business that he founded with his son like I I like to me when I see stuff like that I'm like okay this is fundamentally not normal and that like we just flew on a helicopter to have dinner and that was like you know like a wave of the hand for you but that fundamentally you still worked very hard to remain rooted in some semblance of normalcy where your kids are not monsters and you're you like spending time together | |
Sam Parr | One of my favorite books is *Conspiracy*, which is by Nick Denton. I believe that's his name—Nick Denton, yeah. He’s the founder of Gawker, and then there's Peter Thiel.
There are just so many moments in that book where I've thought, "Oh my God, I cannot believe that’s true." Basically, the fact that Peter Thiel plotted and had people on staff for like some amount of years—5 or 10 years, like a long time—in order to say, "Hey, when you see Gawker screw up, you tell me and we're gonna pounce. We're gonna sue them because they outed me as being gay."
He also told another story about how Peter Thiel had a black Mercedes everywhere he went that was just ready to roll in case anything bad happened. I don't know if this was in the book or if I'm making this up, but I'm almost positive there was like a plane to New Zealand that he knew about or something like that. Is that true, or am I making that up?
| |
Ryan Holiday | The Mercedes thing is in the book. The New Zealand plane thing sounds true, but I think his New Zealand citizenship came after I finished the book.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, just like all this crazy stuff. What was it like getting to know that guy? I mean, he's one of those guys where, like, I actually don't think there is... I don't know him, but where there actually is no balance. He is just really quirky.
| |
Ryan Holiday | Well, I think it's both very understandable and very inexplicable. Right? Like, if you had made a billion dollars and you were very powerful, I don't think you would like to be picked on.
People might wonder, "Why would he do this?" It's like, this bully came along and humiliated him in his eyes. As a non-gay man, I can't fully understand what the reaction would be to being outed. A number of people I interviewed for the book who were gay didn't even understand it.
So, let's just stipulate that his explanation of his experience was that this was humiliating and he found it to be very frustrating. I think when you're at that level, one of the feelings that doesn't sit well with you is impotence. When people were telling Peter, "There's just nothing you can do about it," he was like, "Then what the fuck is the point of everything I've done?"
In that sense, I think it's very understandable. The problem is, if you're the kind of person who is like, "I'm going to spend 10 years chasing down this media outlet when everyone is telling me not to do that," you're also the kind of person who can get sucked into other things that I think are going to pay off less well. Whether it's backing J.D. Vance or Blake Masters or some of the other political bets that he's made, I find this sort of anger and resentment to be driving that. I have trouble understanding it.
| |
Sam Parr |
Dude, I don't have trouble understanding that. I get it... I don't... it just comes from, at least for me, like I would have done the same thing. If you have a lot of money and power and someone wrongs you, I want... I have that same mentality where I'm like, "I wanna crush them."
Typically, I've got my wife saying like, "Dude, chill. This isn't worth it." And so, like, I listen to her. But if I didn't have her, I'd be like, "No, no, no. We're gonna... let's destroy them." It comes out of my way, it comes...
| |
Ryan Holiday | From what I get, I understand that's "The Count of Monte Cristo." That's the oldest revenge story in history.
I'm saying more about the other thing: the problem is when you start to feel like you can bend the world to your will, that you can do anything and everything. I think you get sucked down other avenues.
Some of the political bets he's made, you know, even Trump himself—like the fact that it worked doesn't mean that it made rational sense.
| |
Sam Parr | But how do you not feel like that? I mean, with my very, very small amount of internet fame and my mediocre to small financial success, I'm like, "Oh, I just... I bent the... you know, in a... I'm a big fish sometimes in a small pond, and I'm a small fish in a big pond."
But I'll be like, "Oh, sick! I just bent the world to my reality." I just made my truth—the thing I wanted to be true—I made it true. And that is incredibly intoxicating.
I think that there are lots of ways to do that. If you wrote a book and millions of people read it, there's a way to do that. If you become powerful in politics, there's a way to do that.
The easiest and most practical way for most people is if you learn how to make money on your own. Then you're like, "Oh, whatever I want, I turn into reality."
I have a joke: I call myself a "manifest cowboy." I just make the things that I want, the things I think of. I am not a business person; I am an expert at making things that I think of be real.
Even at a small scale, I get intoxicated by it. Do you not?
| |
Ryan Holiday | I I have seen up close I I I feel like very lucky that up close and personal multiple times particularly early on my career I saw people who who had the ability to do that also destroy themselves right so like I direct doug charney was my direct boss right like he would call me 5 times a day and I watched a guy who built a multibillion dollar company that made 50,000,000 t shirts a year you know start something I mean I didn't seem to start it but let let let's put it this way the the the arc of the entrepreneurial journey the the beauty and the danger of it is that you have an idea for something that is insane right like people are like that will never work here's all the reasons you will fail do not do that you will regret it right and then you do it and it works right that's that's the definition of what entrepreneurship does if everyone knew how to do it or if it was easy it would have already been done you were able to create something from nothing you know that violates everyone else's conception of what's possible the dangerous thing you take from that is you now as you said see yourself as a person who does that and you see people who tell you that you can't do it or shouldn't do it or criticize you for doing it you see them as the enemy right so when doug charney is like I'm gonna start a made in usa sweatshop free fashion company that doesn't print its brand on things doesn't use professional models and owns all of its own stores and I'm a sell all those products for an enormous premium like that's that's fucking nuts right like no part of that should work so then he does it and then people are like okay you did it but you should really have seasoned operators around you you know you really shouldn't overexpand too quickly you know by the way it's not proper to have sexual relations with your employees right all these things that they told him he was like fuck you who are you to tell me look at what I've done right and so he crashes and burns as a result of this exactly what you said like I'm a manifest cowboy the rules don't apply to me I can bend reality to my will like do you ever heard that expression the political expression about the reality based community do you know that no | |
Sam Parr | no what's that | |
Ryan Holiday | So, as George Bush was contemplating the invasion of Iraq, I think it was Karl Rove, but one of the officials in the Bush administration was responding to all the people who were saying, "It's going to be an enormous quagmire. You're not going to get the support you need. Right now, you have no international support. It's going to cost this," and so on.
He said, "Look, there are two kinds of people. There are the people who live in the reality-based community and then there are the people who believe in America." It basically refers to those who believe in American exceptionalism—who believe that America creates its own reality and bends the rules of the world to its will.
So, they believed, as they went into Iraq, that yes, it was a bad idea for all these reasons, but that could be changed through force of will, confidence, firepower, etc.
| |
Sam Parr | But they're not always wrong. True, but it's not true maybe in that case. That feeling is cousins to... yeah, cousins to the other, to it working. Do you know what I mean? Totally, totally. Where's Ginobili from?
| |
Ryan Holiday | argentina | |
Sam Parr | Like this Argentinian dude is going to come and be the boss and kill it. You know what I mean? Like, they're cousins.
| |
Ryan Holiday | Yes, but here's the thing. When you look at Manu's story, he did not wake up one day in Argentina and say, "I will be a Hall of Fame NBA player."
He makes his way; almost all those journeys are much smaller and humbler than that. He makes the Argentinian team, he's pretty good, and he gets an opportunity to play in Europe. He gets drafted very late, a total surprise. He had not actually even entered the Spurs, who let him play in Europe for like three years before he comes over. Almost nobody believed in him.
I mean, he knew he was good and he was confident in his abilities, but there were not these delusions of grandeur. He was not Kanye West going around saying, "I'm Steve Jobs."
In the Churchill book, they talk about this: Churchill did not, at the time when Britain was standing alone, know for certain that he would be able to bring America into the war. What Churchill does is buy some time.
All of these things start small and they build. When a person has this vision that they can clearly articulate and know to be true, that, to me, often leads to disaster more than the prophecy coming true. | |
Sam Parr | Dude, that's crazy fascinating to me. I gotta keep thinking about that.
But another thing that you're associated with that I find equally impressive, even though it's much smaller compared to all the other things that you've done, is the ghost town Cerro Gordo, which I'm a very, very, very small investor in.
But the reason why it's awesome is... no, you're not a small investor; you're the guy! The reason why I asked you is because I view you, Brent, and Nathan [Nathan Barry] as like, you know, the guys.
So basically, in 2015 or 2014, you guys got some money together and bought this town that went viral because it was like, "You can buy a whole town for $1,300,000!" A ghost town! You guys bought it, and it was doing okay, whatever.
Then the pandemic hit, and Brent spun up this YouTube channel. It felt like, in a matter of six months, it got a million subscribers. I remember being in my apartment in San Francisco, miserable that I was trapped in this place, and I saw these videos of him. It felt like it got me through the first 12 months of the pandemic.
Watching those videos made me feel so much better. They were like 20 or 30-minute videos of this charming, cute dude named Brent saying, "Hey, so here's this old mine that I just found in my town. Let's just walk 100 feet into this mine and see what we find."
When you think of a mine, you think of a cave, but this was like a crawl space. He just goes deep into these places, and that was amazing.
What's your feeling on how everything's going with that, and what's the plan?
| |
Ryan Holiday | Well, I mean, **100 feet** in a mine... one of the mines is **900 feet** straight down that he regularly goes in. It's **insane**.
| |
Sam Parr | It's crazy! His videos are so good. Did you advise him, or were you guys partners on something? Did he get the content bug from you? Are you advising him? How is this shit so good?
| |
Ryan Holiday | It's an amazing story. It actually goes to what we're just talking about. The idea, as an outsider or in retrospect, feels like a guy makes a brilliant investment, buys a town, and turns it into a YouTube channel. He makes these amazing videos in...
| |
Sam Parr | the and it seems obvious now | |
Ryan Holiday | Blows up. Yeah, but that's not how it went at all. Right? Like, first off...
| |
Sam Parr | by the way what's the name of the channel | |
Ryan Holiday | ghost town living | |
Sam Parr | okay | |
Ryan Holiday | When he first told me about it, I was like, "Dude, that's a horrible idea. Not interested at all." I came in at a very small level at first because I didn't think it was a good idea.
But Brent's idea was to buy this place, build a hotel on the site, and make it some sort of luxury resort. They failed to do that for like 2 years, maybe even 3 years. He had no intention of living up there; it was losing money hand over fist.
| |
Sam Parr | how many acres is it | |
Ryan Holiday | It's 300 acres, but it backs up to thousands of acres of government land. It's also located in the mountains.
| |
Sam Parr | like 4 hours outside of la | |
Ryan Holiday | It's about 3 and a half hours from LA. It looks down on Death Valley at about 8,500 feet. It was once the largest silver mine in the United States. | |
Sam Parr | but there's like no water and electricity right | |
Ryan Holiday | there I was just up there he he like I took a a nice warm shower there's water now | |
Sam Parr | oh but there wasn't I guess is what I mean | |
Ryan Holiday | There was not... I mean, historically, there were some springs, and then those dried up. It has always been a battle of the elements.
But it's funny that you bring up how you liked the videos during the pandemic. My 4-year-old fell in love with the videos during that time, and that's part of the reason I ended up investing more money in it. My son is obsessed! He knows... he had trouble.
So, Brent started as my intern like 12 or 13 years ago, I think. My son has met... I mean, he's known Brent his whole life. He got so enthralled with the videos that he had trouble conceiving of the fact that this was a real person he knew. This was different than the YouTube channels of other people that he watches but doesn't know. And so, it's been like...
| |
Sam Parr | He's so charming in these videos, and he's so endearing. I don't know, I've not really hung out with him; I've only chatted with him a couple of times. It seems like he just kind of turned on this charm and charisma, and it was like intoxicating.
| |
Ryan Holiday | He's always been like a behind-the-scenes person, and I think that's what's so interesting. He didn't just randomly start a YouTube channel one day. He started the Daily Stoic YouTube channel and the Daily Stoic podcast. He was the one who built out the systems and created the universes for me. I am obviously the face of it, but he was the one who said, "Here, I think we should do this."
He's the one who figured it out. We probably had 100,000 YouTube subscribers when he went to Cerro Gordo, so he had experience that he learned on the job, so to speak, working with me.
The funny thing is, we had shot some videos for Daily Stoic in the first week of March 2020, or maybe the last week of February. He had taken the camera home to upload some stuff. So when he went to Cerro Gordo, he just took my camera, or our camera. Cerro Gordo was started with equipment that he had gotten for Daily Stoic and then used skills that he had developed with Daily Stoic.
Ultimately, it blew up into this thing that I definitely would not have predicted. People often underestimate how long you have to spend developing a baseline of skills before, you know, sort of the man meets the moment, so to speak.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, I read that in *Mastery*. *Mastery* changed my life. I remember exactly where I was when I read it, and I was like, "Oh, this is called apprenticeship."
That totally resonated with me. You know, I got turned on to you because I was... or maybe I don't remember if you got me onto Green or him to you, but I remember reading *Mastery*, and that was a life-changing book because it talked about that.
But Sara Gordo...
| |
Ryan Holiday | Think about that. Do you ever consider the fact that the hustle and this podcast could actually be the apprenticeship for a company you start in your fifties? That's a thought for free. | |
Sam Parr | It's going to be... and people are like, you know, "Alright, so the hustle." We sold for, let's say, tens of millions of dollars, which is, I think, by most people's standards, objectively successful. I was 30 or 31 when we sold it, so that's six years.
But compared to others, like the company that bought us, it's nothing. Sure, they bought us, but a lot of people were like, "Well, you know, you guys only did that in four years." I'm like, "Yeah, we did it in four years." I also spent four years before that studying, writing, blogging, reading, and being a student.
I learned a skill, which was copywriting. That skill led me to this other thing, which led me to this other thing, which led me to this other thing. I often tell people, "Everyone says overnight successes aren't true." I'm like, "Well, in a sense, actually, they can be."
You could be a Mark Manson or something, write a book, and it could get really big really fast. But more likely than not, that could happen... like hitting the lottery is real. Look at Instagram. However, learning the skill for five or ten years in advance is often necessary. | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, to give Mark credit though, Mark doesn't hit the lottery. I mean, Mark was an online copywriter and marketer and had a platform for a decade before he wrote a book, right? But what I mean is like the step functions and...
| |
Sam Parr |
Growth is real, yeah. You know, it could be like:
"It's going okay, it's going okay, it's going okay..."
And then, in a matter of like a month or 3 months, it's like *boom* - something just changed. That is real, and I think people actually don't like acknowledging that because the story of "slow and steady" is preferred. There's more character to that. But step functions exist.
You have to work a certain amount of time, typically, in order to get that step function. That's what I mean.
| |
Ryan Holiday | No, I think about Michael Lewis in that regard. Michael Lewis is a fantastic writer; he's been a great writer for 40 years. He wrote *Liar's Poker*, which is about finance. He wrote *The Blind Side*; you know, he wrote a number of these books that were big. He was a leading nonfiction author.
Then, 2008 happens, and it's the most inexplicable but widespread financial event since the Great Depression. He is uniquely suited to write *The Big Short*, which was his big transformative, you know, huge book. Like *Moneyball* and *The Blind Side*, the other movies that come out, I believe they come out after *The Big Short*.
Michael Lewis today looks like he's always been huge, but you don't realize his career was sort of like this [gestures up and down] and then like this [gestures upward].
I think about that. I am very proud of all of the books that I've written, and I continue to write them and work on it every day. But I don't want to say I hold out hope; I feel like there's some part of me that thinks all of this is training for, like, the book at the moment. Maybe it happens, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's the moment, but the book only sells 10 copies.
But I do feel like it's building towards whatever I'm meant to do.
| |
Sam Parr | are you not satisfied with your career | |
Ryan Holiday | No, I'm very satisfied. I was just writing about this in my journal this morning. When I'm looking at the sales numbers of this book, this isn't just what I dreamed of; this is like 10 times what I even conceived of as being possible.
I'm just saying, I want what I'm working on to set me up for something truly challenging. Something so challenging that it is perfect for my skills and my worldview that I can't even think of it yet.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, consistently I've said, "Once I hit this wealth number, I likely won't want anymore." And then I always do.
Once I lift this much weight or do this type of athletic feat that I've been really working hard towards, like, I'll be happy. Then I get there and I'm like, "But we could go a little... we could do a little more."
So, like, I think that's just unilaterally true with at least people who are driven to achieve anything interesting. It's just like, I've just settled with the fact that it's just never enough, and that's okay.
| |
Ryan Holiday | I've never heard of someone getting to the number... like actually getting the number because the goalposts always move.
So when it always moves, people say there's a number. Like when I talk to an author and they're like, "My goal is to sell a million copies" or whatever, I go like, "I don't have goals."
Why would you even put a ceiling on it, right? You should just try to sell as many copies as it's capable of selling.
| |
Sam Parr | Do you have, other than like "be a good dad" and "be a good person" and all this stuff, any professional goals for the next 5, 10, or 20 years? Where you say, "This is what I want," or any people who you say, "I want my career to be similar to this type of person"?
| |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, I mean, so like I sold this four-book series. To do four interlocking, interrelated books in ostensibly four years—that's the mountain that I'm climbing right now.
It's unlike the mountains that I've done before. I don't have a certain number of books that I'm trying to write or a certain number of copies that I'm trying to sell. But I do... there's a part of me that thinks about maybe writing one of those biographies that we were talking about. And doing it from that place.
| |
Sam Parr | anyone in particular | |
Ryan Holiday | I do have a person, but I don't want to say because someone might steal it. However, I have thought about doing a big book like that. There's a part of me that thinks being able to do it and not care financially—like if it takes 5 years or 10 years—would be great.
I have a couple of ideas like that where I'm like, "That would be a cool thing to do." But I have this weird sensation, and I'm sure you have this too, of feeling like I'm playing with house money. That's both really fun and a little unnerving because you're like, "Shit, I thought I was running with everyone else, and now I'm just by myself. Am I going fast enough? Am I going too fast? Did I take...?" | |
Sam Parr | All the resources are there. It's like, that's a weird feeling where you're like, "Well, I have what I wanted." I thought that I'd be willing to spend this much to invest in my idea, and then it's like, "But I don't want to lose this." And that also exists.
| |
Ryan Holiday | Well, you think that being successful will make you more courageous because you are more secure. But actually, the rational response to having a lot is to become more risk-averse because you know how hard it was to get it.
So there's a tension there. How do you continue to push yourself without being reckless? And how do you protect what you've built without being complacent?
| |
Sam Parr | Wait, but you just said something that reminded me of the fisherman story you started off with. You said, "I want to write this biography, and I hope I'll be at a place where, like, financially it doesn't matter." Do you not feel that you're there already?
| |
Ryan Holiday | No, no, no. I mean, I feel like I'm there. I just have to get through these two books. I'm already creatively committed to an idea. It's like a director saying, "Hey, I've already attached to these two movies."
Once my plate is cleared, and I'm not trying to put it off into the future, I don't feel rushed to do it. I'm just saying that when I have a clear plate or an open road in front of me, I think that's probably something I might mess around with.
| |
Sam Parr | any topics that we didn't cover that you think need to be covered | |
Ryan Holiday | You know what? Actually, yeah. I mentioned it to you in text. You were like, "Whoa, can we talk about how much money your books have made?" I... I... I... | |
Sam Parr | That's not what I said. I go, "How much money have you made? How big's your dick? And what's your social security number?" | |
Ryan Holiday | No, it's funny. Like, on my first books, obviously, books as a market are less interesting to people than the movie business. But whenever I would sell a book, like your agent or publisher would ask, "Should we announce this deal?" There are trades, right?
Sometimes, my first book got a ton of publicity because I was a kid who came out of nowhere and sold a book for a bunch of money. I was always like, "I want a press release! I want to put this out!"
Then, probably starting with *Stillness*—it might have been after, but definitely with this series—I realized that there was no advantage to doing that. When you start talking about what something is sold for, I had two thoughts.
First, telling people how much money I made from it makes you a target. It makes you weird, you know? It could somehow be seen as selling out or something.
But then the other part I thought was, I don't want people to know this is an idea that's going to take me 4+ years to get to the end of. Why would I want to give people who might be writing in the same niche a heads up about what I'm doing?
So, I don't think I've announced when I did a podcast deal or when I've sold other projects. I see no benefit to putting out specific figures; I only see downsides to that. I don't know.
| |
Sam Parr | Who'd you do a podcast deal with?
No, I do agree with that. At first, you know, it's like that song, "Damn, it feels good to be a gangster." They said real gangsters don't flex nuts because they know they got them.
| |
Ryan Holiday | and yeah and and that's how you you make the police come after you right like yeah | |
Sam Parr | But I used to feel that way, where I'm like, "Yeah." I mean, I'm still insecure, but then when I was even more insecure, I would be like, "Yeah, I need to rub this into my high school friend's face."
| |
Ryan Holiday | yeah I and | |
Sam Parr |
Then now I'm like, "I don't wanna get sued. I don't want to be a target." I don't want people to pretend... because we get all these fake people on Twitter or Instagram pretending to be me. Or like, people threaten to sue you when you're not wrong at all. Now I'm like, "I don't want any of that nonsense."
| |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, I did a podcast deal with Amazon Wondery like maybe 3 months ago.
| |
Sam Parr | how big is the pod now or do you measure it in podcast downloads or youtube views | |
Ryan Holiday | YouTube isn't included in the deal, so it's separate. But the podcast is fantastic! I think we crossed 100 million downloads.
| |
Sam Parr | that's crazy | |
Ryan Holiday | Yeah, we should do that. We're getting close to being able to do that annually. Not quite, but to me, that's where the numbers are. | |
Sam Parr |
We're at... our monthly downloads on the podcasts range between 1.5 to 2 million, and then the YouTube episode views are another 1 or 2 million. So we're in the range of 2 to 5 million on any given month. Our next target, I'm like, "How do we get to that 5 to 10 million?" Sounds like you're there.
| |
Ryan Holiday | Dude, I think YouTube is the... it's weird to say, like, YouTube's the big thing because it's been around for 15 years and it's already huge. But, like, the growth I'm seeing on YouTube stuff, especially now even with Shorts.
| |
Sam Parr | It's crazy, dude. People our age and older are like, "What? YouTube?" I'm like, "No, dawg, YouTube's TV!" You know, YouTube is where it's at, and it still has so much room. I only watch YouTube as my TV. Yeah, it's the best.
Well, dude, you're awesome, man. I asked you who you admire and who you want to steal from, and I have a short list of maybe 3 or 5 people. You are on that list. I just think we're like... you know, I'm a family guy like you. I don't have kids yet, but I see you raise your family. I see you with your wife. I also bought a kind of farm inspired by you. I live in Austin most of the year. There are so many things that you've done where I think, "This guy's nailing it," and I want to steal little bits and pieces of how he's doing and how he's living life.
I admire your confidence and your drive. I mean, I'm on the Ryan Holiday train. I've been on it since the first book. So, media confessions.
| |
Ryan Holiday | well we gotta hang we gotta hang out when you're back | |
Sam Parr | Man, you and I are almost a little bit similar. We have our toes in the New York world and in the LA world. But you know, I lived in Tennessee for a long time. I live in Texas, just like you.
I like doing the bougie stuff, and I like the redneck stuff. Man, I like it all!
So, I'll holler at you when I get back, and I appreciate you coming on. Man, this is awesome.
| |
Ryan Holiday | I wanna see the farm | |
Sam Parr | and say the book name again | |
Ryan Holiday | Oh, **discipline is destiny**: the power of self-control, as part of the Stoic virtue series. The first one is **Courage is Calling**.
| |
Sam Parr | where do you make the most money where people buy it | |
Ryan Holiday | oh if you buy it from from dailystoic.com or my bookstore the painted porch | |
Sam Parr | awesome well I appreciate you man this is awesome thank you dude thanks |