How Stoicism Makes Us Better at Money — ft. Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday, one of the world’s foremost philosophers of the modern era, joins the show to talk about how stoicism can improve our perspective on money. He discusses how to handle wins and losses in every situation and why limiting your options can lead to better decisions. He also advises on some healthy habits that can help improve your financial responsibility. Order "The Algebra of Wealth," out now Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice Follow the podcast across socials @profgpod: Instagram Threads X Reddit Follow Scott on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram and X Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:59Scott Galloway?

  Today's number eight. That's the age of this year's ugliest dog, a Pekinese named Wild Thing. True story. I was walking with a close, close friend, and he saw a dog licking himself and said, "I wish I could do that." And I said, "Well, why don't you try petting him first?"

• 1:24Scott Galloway?

  Welcome to Prof G Markets, Ed. Today, this is an exciting day. We're speaking with one of our favorite multi-appearance, kind of soon getting a jacket like on SNL, Ryan Holiday, one of the world's foremost philosophers of the modern era. We discuss how Stoicism can improve our relationship with money and whether justice can exist in a capitalist society. Very deep, very deep. I'd rather go back to the dog jokes. But here with the news is Prof G analyst Ed Elson. Ed, what is the palabra buena? I don't know if you know, but that's Spanish for, what is a good word, Ed?

• 2:01Ed Elson?

  I'm very well. I'm waiting for, waiting to get out of here and watch the Euros. It's England's final game. We're playing Slovenia in 15 minutes.

• 2:08Scott Galloway?

  Oh, tonight Slovenia. That's right. Oh, that's right. England versus Slovenia. Oh, my God, if Southgate, if we lose, literally, Southgate is going to have to leave the country and go into the witness protection program. For those of you don't know, Southgate is the manager of England and everyone's furious because he had the gall to tie. British fans are literally the worst fans in the world.

• 2:28Ed Elson?

  I'm so glad you think that. I totally agree. Yeah. I thought you were gonna rail against him. Everyone's shitting on him.

• 2:35Scott Galloway?

  What's he been like raping children? I mean, God, it's like, okay, they tied. They tied. They won one and they tied. And they tied. It's like, okay, we're gonna be fine, folks. People are just outraged.

• 2:48Ed Elson?

  Totally agree.

• 2:49Scott Galloway?

  Outrage. It's like, I tell you what, I tell you what, don't like, don't like cancel every economic agreement that raises prices and lower productivity. Be angry and pretend Nigel Farage didn't start Cole Palmer and then you'll kind of get it half right. And it was get to the news.

• 3:05Ed Elson?

  That's really good.

• 3:06Scott Galloway?

  Get to the news.

• 3:06Ed Elson?

  Let's start with the headlines.

• 3:17Ed Elson?

  Housing prices rose in May to hit a record high of $419,300. That's almost 6% higher than a year earlier. Sales of previously owned homes decreased 0.7% from last month due to both the rising prices and elevated mortgage rates. The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple and Meta were discussing integrating Meta's generative AI into Apple Intelligence. That report was swiftly denied by Bloomberg sources, however, who were unequivocal that Apple had rejected Meta's outreach because, quote, "It doesn't see that company's privacy practices as stringent enough." However, Apple is believed to be in talks with other AI providers, including Google and Anthropic. And finally, according to a Financial Times analysis, since the end of March, nearly all gains in the S and P 500 have come from

• 4:01Ed Elson?

  AI stocks and AI-adjacent stocks. Since March, if you removed AI stocks from the S and P 500, the stock market would be down 2%. Scott, your thoughts?

• 4:10Scott Galloway?

  Well, let's start with housing. So this is a bummer. So insufficient supply and elevated mortgage rates, actually mortgage rates are turning to kind of historical averages, are having a real impact. Nationwide housing inventory has decreased by more than 30%. About 28% of existing homes sold in May were purchased in cash. That's 3% higher than a year earlier. And some of the only people buying houses are people who are making You know, really good money or can can pay all cash, i.e. old people. I think this is terrible. It's a perfect example of our rejectionist exclusionary culture where, once you have a house, you put pressure on the local review board not to issue more housing permits,

• 4:51Scott Galloway?

  thereby artificially constraining supply, taking housing prices up, which is great for incumbents. It's just, it's literally pulling up the drop bridge behind you. I think it's really, the federal government needs to come in with some sort of program to build a massive amount of housing. It is happening more on a state level. But this is, I think this is, I think this is a big deal for a lot of reasons. And I don't, I think it's such a psychological tax on young people when they can't, when they make good money and they're working hard and they're saving. And housing is like a car they're trying to catch that keeps just slowly pulling away from them. What are your thoughts as someone who is a budding homeowner?

• 5:29Ed Elson?

  This is getting crazy now. Median home prices are now six times median income. That's the highest ever. Fifty percent of Americans are struggling to make their mortgage payments. Seventy percent of low-income families are spending more than half of their income on rent. More than half of Americans ages eighteen to twenty-four still live with their parents. And this one really shocked me. Seventy percent of Americans are saying that buying a home is just unrealistic. Now, I'm going to offer a cultural observation. If you go on Netflix, or you go on Macs, you go on whatever your streaming platform is, and you go to the reality TV section, you'll find that basically every other show

• 6:08Ed Elson?

  now is some series that follows the lives of luxury real estate brokers. So whether it's, and there are a ton of them, there's Million Dollar Listing, there's Buying Beverly Hills, Selling Sunset, Selling the Hamptons. So we have millions of Americans who are, according to the data, giving up on their dreams of buying a home and, at the same time, binge-watching luxury real estate porn every week. And all of this is to basically say, this is where we're headed now. It's like, housing prices have gotten so bad, we just hit another record, inequality is getting so bad, that Americans are now simulating their dreams of buying a home. The reality is just becoming borderline unlivable.

• 6:53Ed Elson?

  People cannot afford houses anymore. So I just think this housing statistic. Combined with what I'm seeing in entertainment, I think this should really scare people, especially young people.

• 7:04Scott Galloway?

  I see your point. When young people can form households and they're working hard, playing by the rules. I remember the house, the first house I bought with my girlfriend, it was really meaningful for us. It was a commitment to each other. It was starting to build something together. It just, you know, it has non-economic importance, if you will, or it has psychic importance. And when you're working this hard and saving money and trying to buy a home and it just slipping away from you, I just think it's another example of, of why we have more rage and shame. And then, and then the wealth born that's thrown up on everybody. It's, I think it's discouraging. The good news is we know how to fix it. We need more housing.

• 7:45Ed Elson?

  Let's move on to Apple Intelligence.

• 7:47Scott Galloway?

  I think what's going on here is pretty straightforward and I think it's genius. I think someone at strategy, whoever runs strategy at Apple, I think deserves a raise.

• 7:55Scott Galloway?

  I guess they probably make a good living. But he came back and said, all right, what, what strategy would drive the most shareholder value for us? If we go into the AI business, it's going to cost us tens of billions of dollars to figure this shit out and compete. Here's an idea. Let's sequester the billion most desirable consumers, i.e. iOS consumers, users from all of these LLMs and give them a taste of the crack cocaine. Let them offer applications on their LLM, which ChatGPT or Llama. I'm sure they'll do some sort of pilot project with Anthropic. And then slowly but surely, as the competition heats up between these players and the ones that pull away get trillion dollar valuations and the ones that are left by the side of the road get sold for scrap, they're positioning themselves

• 8:39Scott Galloway?

  similar to how they positioned themselves getting in front of them and search and saying, hey, Google, we could develop our own search engine. No, that would take us tens of billions of dollars to do something not as good as Google. So we'll just bid it out and Google gives us 20 billion, 19 billion hits the bottom line, P of 30, okay, $570 billion or, you know, 15, 20% of our market cap is this, this search deal. I think they are trying to position themselves to be in a similar position to at some point turn to all of these AI companies and go, fellas, who wants to be? The AI company, the LLM, that becomes the default for the billion wealthiest consumers in the world. Okay, it's going to cost you. And when they announced Apple Intelligence, what was interesting is since then, the stock's up 10%. And if you look at these

• 9:23Scott Galloway?

  features, none of them are really groundbreaking or that exciting. But I think analysts sense the same champagne and cocaine coming their way in terms of their ability to mature and close a search-like licensing agreement with one of these deals. And right now, they're giving them all a taste of those billion iOS crack cocaine. Oh, my God, I love this analogy. This is why you come to the prof. This is why you're here. Not for these hot takes from the young British at Alison. No, no, no. It's for these drug analogies about AI. What do you think?

• 10:00Ed Elson?

  Oh, yeah, I love that analogy. As it accords to the Lama LLM versus GPT, I think the most interesting thing about Lama is that it's one of the very, very few large models that is completely free and completely open source, which was a very interesting decision by Zuckerberg. I mean, clearly, his view was that the best method for AI was to take the Facebook method, and that is, we're going to open it up to everyone. We're going to make it free to use. We're going to make it open source. And then hopefully, with scale and with mass adoption, we'll become the best product and we'll figure out monetization later. Very different from GPT-4, which is closed source, meaning the

• 10:43Ed Elson?

  model is proprietary. No one actually knows how it works unless you work at the company. So I like this story because it sets up GPT versus Lama in a head-to-head. And yes, this is a story about Meta versus OpenAI, but on a larger level, it's an economic story about closed versus open source. Which one is going to win? And I think it'll be interesting to see if this does play out. Hopefully, it plays out that they're competing on the same device. But I would like to see which will end up winning as the stronger business model for AI, which is the most important technology in the world right now.

• 11:18Scott Galloway?

  We shall see. So. The last thing, the stat, it just blows my mind. Excluding big tech and chip companies, the S and P 500 has declined 2% since March. The three largest companies in the S and P 500 make up a record 21% of the index. In 1999, the three largest made up 12%. Excluding AI, nine of the S and P's 11 sectors are down since March. I mean, last week, there was another great stat. Nvidia was down, I don't know, 3%, 5%. It had, you know, a down day, not a terrible day, but it was down. And it lost more market cap in that day than like 420 of the S and P 500. Half a trillion in three days, yeah. So that was, what was that, like a 16% decline in three days? Yeah.

• 12:02Scott Galloway?

  This is, I don't think this is healthy. This isn't a robust market. And what it's becoming is that, one, it's an ad for index funds because to try and pick stocks is impossible when it's three or five companies. It's just in the largest economy, in the largest stock market, the largest asset class, there's a handful, maybe you can count on one finger, at the companies that are moving and supporting the markets in the world's largest economy. I just don't, that's just not a good thing. This feels very fragile because, I mean, if Nvidia goes down, and this could happen, 80%, right? Keep in mind, Amazon down 90% from 99 to 2001. You gotta think the S and P is going to go down. What would that mean?

• 12:47Scott Galloway?

  12, 15, 20% if some of the other ones follow them? Nassim Taleb has this thing called fragility, and he talks about the importance of anti-fragility. And essentially what he says is a robust market is no one company can have too great an impact on an industry. So I would argue the banking sector is somewhat battle-tested and somewhat stress-tested. But I think the reality is if Jamie Dimon called President Biden and said, oh, God, I'm really embarrassed, but there was some 26-year-old who compliance missed in Singapore, and he went long credit default swaps and figured out a way to leverage them up 40-fold, and we're going to have to be out of business at the open of market tomorrow, and I need a massive federal bailout.

• 13:30Scott Galloway?

  Otherwise, JP Morgan going under could start a global panic, and we could all be collecting guns and butter. I think the government would bail them out. If McDonald's calls and goes, oh, no, someone fucked up and, you know, bought beef futures, and we're out of business tomorrow, they're like, fine, go out of business. The McDonald's can't take the global economy down. So. It can't even threaten fast food. You could still get really, you know, really high calorie, low cost food that will, if you did it long enough, will give you colorectal cancer. So what we have now is an economy that's becoming less robust. And while business startups, business permits, new business permits are up, a lot of that is pent up demand. It just worries me to have companies that as they go, so goes the market. What do you think, Ed?

• 14:14Ed Elson?

  I just want to point out that last week, you recommended to employees in video was to sell. And but I want to point out that that week Jensen sold. That's why the stock came down because, I mean, I'm sure he followed it earlier, but I just love the timing on that. I think that came out on Thursday. I'm pretty sure that the filing was revealed on Friday or at the end of the day on Thursday, Jensen sold some of his stock. I think it was $90 million. And that's why the the stock came down.

• 14:45Scott Galloway?

  19 million?

• 14:46Ed Elson?

  90, I want, I want to say.

• 14:47Scott Galloway?

  Oh, 90. Okay, that's something. That's probably about what 1% of his holdings? I like Jensen. We should roll with that guy. Let's have him on the pod.

• 14:54Ed Elson?

  100%. Just one, one personal final headline from me. Our listeners might remember, we have my uncle, the professor of corporate governance on Charles Elson a few months ago, and he's been critical of Elon's compensation package. We had a whole discussion about it. You can hear that on our episode. But here's the headline. I was scrolling on Twitter yesterday. Elon called him out on Twitter this week, and he called him, quote, "such a creep."

• 15:21Scott Galloway?

  Such a creep.

• 15:22Ed Elson?

  Such a creep. No reasoning.

• 15:23Scott Galloway?

  Are you sure he didn't think it was you? Are you sure he didn't think it was Ed Elson? And he'd been, and he'd heard from some ladies at some tacky Brooklyn bar where they play shuffleboard and have two for one papst or something? Isn't that what they do? Isn't that what young people do?

• 15:37Ed Elson?

  Oh, I wouldn't even know.

• 15:38Scott Galloway?

  They drink papst beer and play shuffleboard. That is my impression of every millennial. That's my, that, isn't that what you do?

• 15:44Ed Elson?

  Yeah, that's exactly what I do. It's so fun.

• 15:46Scott Galloway?

  You know what? To be called a creep by Elon Musk is a badge of honor. He can retire now.

• 15:51Ed Elson?

  It's almost as good as being cold and numbskull.

• 15:53Scott Galloway?

  No, no, no. Insufferable.

• 15:55Ed Elson?

  Insufferable.

• 15:55Scott Galloway?

  Numbskull. Although you say he tweeted about me recently. He's such a fucking idiot. He wrote, he retweeted my TED Talk, and he wrote, he wrote, "I'm..."

• 16:05Scott Galloway?

  I'm a fan of Scott Galloway, but he may have a point. What he meant to say was, I am not a fan of Scott Galloway. So he wrote, I am a fan of Scott Galloway, but he may have a point. And he retweeted my TED Talk.

• 16:19Ed Elson?

  Oh, he's an idiot.

• 16:22Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back after the break with our conversation with Ryan Holiday.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  Are your ad campaigns lighting up the dashboard? But not the pipeline? That's bull spend, and marketers are calling it out in. Dashboard Confessions.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  My boss asked for results, so I opened my dashboard for the only positive sounding metric I had: impressions.

• 16:53Speaker 00

  Cut the bull spend. See revenue, not just reach. LinkedIn delivers the highest return on ad spend of major ad networks. Advertise on LinkedIn. Spend $250 on your first campaign and get a $250 credit. Go to LinkedIn.com/campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

• 17:07Speaker 05

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• 17:37Speaker 06

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• 18:07Ed Elson?

  Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Ryan Holiday, philosopher and New York Times bestselling author. Ryan, thank you for joining us.

• 18:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 18:17Ed Elson?

  So let's start with Stoicism, which you're sort of an expert in. For those who don't know about this philosophy, could you just give us a brief summary? What is Stoicism? And where did it come from?

• 18:28Speaker 07

  So it's a philosophy that comes to us from ancient Greece, makes its way to Rome. It's a philosophy, I sort of say, it's based around this idea, we don't control what happens, we control how we respond to what happens. And then it's built around these sort of four key virtues: courage, self-discipline, justice, and wisdom. And the idea for the Stoics is that every situation demands or presents the opportunity to act with those four virtues. So this little philosophy that originates from a shipwreck in Athens in the 4th century, ends up having an immense amount of resonance 23, 2400 years later

• 19:13Speaker 07

  with people all over the world. It's pretty incredible.

• 19:15Ed Elson?

  What was that shipwreck you're describing?

• 19:17Speaker 07

  So Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, was a merchant. He was a dealer in what was called Tyrian purple. It's the dye that would make the cloaks of the fanciest Greeks. So he suffers this shipwreck and he ends up penniless in Athens in a bookstore and he hears the bookseller reading some of the dialogues of Socrates. And this turns him into philosophy. And he would joke later that he makes a great fortune when he suffers a shipwreck. Because although he loses all his money, it turns him on to an entirely different way of thinking and living. And I mean, he ends up changing the trajectory of Western civilization as a result of how he responds to this thing that if you'd asked

• 20:00Speaker 07

  him, do you want to suffer a shipwreck and lose everything that you have? He of course would have said no. But what he makes of it is, to me, what Stoicism is about.

• 20:10Ed Elson?

  It's funny, because I feel like this philosophy, people often think about it as applying to mental health. But it's interesting to hear that the origins of this philosophy, it really has mostly to do with money, which is what we dedicate this podcast to. So I'd love to get your take on how has Stoicism helped you when it comes to thinking about money and how could it help other people?

• 20:33Speaker 07

  Yeah, look, what I think is interesting about Stoicism, the two most well-known Stoics are Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor of Rome, and Epictetus, who was a slave about a generation before Marcus Aurelius. So you have this, what I love about Stoicism is here you have it encompassing both extreme ends of the social spectrum and hierarchy. And yet, they're both talking about the same thing, which is how does one find freedom and self-command inside either extreme powerlessness or extreme power, you know, extreme adversity or extreme success. And so the Stoics, I would say, as a rule, Epictetus is the exception. Most

• 21:16Speaker 07

  of the Stoics are quite successful and quite wealthy. But they understand, as I'm sure many people listening do, that just because you have money, you know, we say, you know, it'll set you free, and it doesn't. Many of us are sort of slaves to ambition, slaves to status, slaves to maintaining, protecting what we have or growing what we have. And so Stoicism is really about finding sort of freedom within whatever circumstance one happens to find themselves in. I think it's interesting how many people for whom wealth and power actually decreases their autonomy rather than increases it. And that's kind

• 21:59Speaker 07

  of how, that's something Stoicism is very helpful for me with, is like, if I'm getting more successful, why do I have less control of my schedule? Why am I, why is the reward for my success, less time to do the thing I actually want to do, which is right, or spend time with my family? And so I think Stoicism has a lot to teach us and talks a lot about that.

• 22:21Scott Galloway?

  So we have a chapter in our book, The Algebra of Wealth, where we talk about the four virtues, courage, temperance, justice, and wisdom.

• 22:29Scott Galloway?

  Break down for us those virtues for our listeners, and particularly how they relate to our relationship with money.

• 22:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, what's interesting about the virtues is that it's hard to define each one of them, but we kind of know it when we see it. Courage, I think we all understand is running into battle, but it's also the moral courage to stand up, to speak truths, to take risks as an entrepreneur or a creative. Self-discipline is sort of what you put in your body, how you treat your body, the habits you practice. Wisdom is the decision to become a lifelong student, to always be learning, to sort of push ego away. To me, the virtue that's most interesting, that I think is kind of the north star for all the others, is this virtue of justice.

• 23:16Speaker 07

  Because to what end are we pursuing the other virtues? If your courage is about taking risk after risk after risk to just create a ginormous pile of money

• 23:32Speaker 07

  that came at the expense or the cost of other people, the environment, ethics, et cetera, I don't think the Stoics would consider that a virtue. So what I think is interesting about these virtues is how interrelated they are and how interconnected they are. Again, with self-discipline, I think some of us have a problem, we spend too much money. Then there's other people, I'm sure you've met these people, Scott, where they have more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime, and they've become addicted to sort of frugality or growing the money.

• 24:10Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, courting.

• 24:10Speaker 07

  And so they lack the Epicurean insight of, hey, you only live once. How are you going to spend this time that you have on this planet?

• 24:18Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, it's so funny. Spending money is really a skill, and that is, you want to spend less than you make when you're a young person so you can establish an army of capital. But then, as you get older, if you're blessed enough to have economic security, I don't understand why people don't spend it. I don't understand why they don't enjoy themselves, why they don't do amazing things with their family. And I think it's just hardwired into you that, or they get so focused on, so focused on having more, not recognizing it's really not going to do much. For you, what do you, let's focus on justice for a minute, since that's the subject of your latest book. It strikes us that in capitalism, there's no such thing

• 25:02Scott Galloway?

  as fair. I always say fair is a dangerous word. Despite that, how do you think we can practice the virtue of justice within a capitalist society?

• 25:11Speaker 07

  Yeah, I mean, look, how you, what you're allowed to do in a capitalist society, how you are legally able to run a business, I think is different than the choices that you're going to decide to make as an individual. So, yeah, look, life is not fair. If you think things are going to be fair, you're going to be rudely disappointed. But I, I, I struggle to understand why one would not strive to treat people fairly. So to me, the essence of Stoicism is like, what's in your control? How other people treat you is not in your control. What other people do, how other countries operate, how, whatever

• 25:54Speaker 07

  the standard business practices are, that's not in your control. But how you decide to operate your business, how you treat people inside it, what you choose to do or not do, to me, this is where this virtue of, of justice comes in. So I love that we live in a society that gives individuals an immense amount of freedom to do what they want. But, but I think the expectation, and the founders who were all steeped in Stoicism, I think would have agreed on this, the expectation was that private virtue would govern the choices that we make as individuals. And in fact, the whole system doesn't, doesn't

• 26:34Speaker 07

  work without that willingness to go, hey, I, I don't care if I can do this. I think it's wrong to, you know, do X, Y, or Z, so I'm not going to do it.

• 26:45Ed Elson?

  Yeah, just following up on, on that idea of justice, you describe in, in your new book, Right Thing Right Now, you define justice as holding the line. Can you explain a little bit more about that? And perhaps how that might relate to spending and saving?

• 27:02Speaker 07

  Well, I'm referring to, you know, if discipline is sort of enforcing the rules, justice is like, what are those rules? What are the standards that you set for yourself about the things that you're willing to do and not willing to do? What you think is okay and what you think is not okay? You know, the decision, it's like, keeping your word doesn't just demand the sort of ethical virtue from us, but also requires the discipline virtue to do the thing that maybe you don't want to do anymore, or to do the thing that's hard, or to do the thing that's uncomfortable, or to do even the thing that is expensive. And so, again, these virtues are all related, but I think if you are not doing it towards what we would, I think, call the right thing, if there isn't an ethical component, a moral

• 27:46Speaker 07

  compass to what you're doing, then yeah, you're just piling up, you know, dollar after dollar, success after success, you know, follower after follower to what end?

• 27:55Ed Elson?

  Yeah, it sounds like it's not necessarily that you're prescribing a code of ethics. It's just that that one should exist and you should recognize that.

• 28:04Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, look, I'm not, the book isn't a bunch of policy arguments and sort of political arguments, but it's saying that if you don't have kind, here's what I found. If you don't have a North Star, like if you don't have, here's what I'm trying to do, here's what's important to me, here's the positive difference that I'm trying to make, here are my values. What you, what often ends up happening is that you default to money. So you do the thing that pays the most, you do the thing that is safest, you do the thing that everyone else is doing, instead of being able to evaluate each individual choice in accordance with these values.

• 28:46Speaker 07

  And so you can end up one day very far from where you wanted to end up, or the kind of person that you want to be, because you were making a series of rational decisions along the way. Do I take this job which pays this amount, or this job which pays, you know, 10% more? Or do I go into this industry versus that industry? You kind of end up just getting guided around by these less than stellar values, you know, money just being a proxy for other things. And, and I think you're going to end up in a, in a place that isn't particularly fulfilling or meaningful.

• 29:21Ed Elson?

  Do you think the Stoics valued money? I mean, it feels like sort of the direction where you're going in is like, you know, money is great, but it's not everything and it maybe it doesn't even matter. And this guy got shipwrecked, he lost everything and he was still okay. Is part of the learning that that we should learn to live without caring about money? Or is there a way to live a Stoic life while also wanting to get rich and wanting to be financially successful?

• 29:50Speaker 07

  One of my favorite stories from the Stoics, there's a Stoic named Musonius Rufus. And he was in this position of of local leadership and there was this particularly obnoxious man that everyone hated. He was obsessed with money. And so ultimately, the story goes that he awards this guy, you know, a grant, a large chunk of money. And people said, why would you do this? This man's horrible. And he said, I know he's horrible. Money's exactly what he deserved. And so the idea is, you know, is this money that you're after? Is this success that you're after? Is it going to make you better or worse? And I think for some people it makes us worse and for other people it makes us better. And and the idea for Stoicism was that, look, as long as it makes you better,

• 30:32Speaker 07

  as long as you respond to it well, you know, it's neither good nor bad.

• 30:37Scott Galloway?

  You wrote in, "The obstacle is the way." And I think we quoted this in our book, "There is no good or bad without us. There is only perception. There is the event itself and the story we tell ourselves about what it means." Can you? Can you talk to some of the people who are earlier in their careers about that way of thinking? To remain balanced as they start to experience real wins and real losses?

• 31:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, one of the great lines from Marcus Aurelius, he says, "You have to be able to accept it without arrogance and let it go with indifference."

• 31:09Scott Galloway?

  If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it, isn't that, isn't that Brokeback Mountain?

• 31:12Speaker 07

  I think, I think what he's saying is like, look, when you wear the success lightly and you bear the adversity with with sort of fortitude and perseverance. And I think sometimes, especially early in your career, you're like, is this a good job? Am I getting paid enough? Am I being respected? You, you have All these like opinions about this, the situation that you're in, instead of thinking about how to get the most out of it, how to learn the most, how to get closer to where you ultimately want to end up. And these opinions, I think, kind of get in our way of us, you know, we hate our boss. And instead of thinking about what can we learn from this person, good and bad, right?

• 31:55Speaker 07

  Or we, we think that we're in a position that isn't, you know, up to our standards or isn't fully taking advantage of our skills. And instead of, again, thinking that this is a temporary position. And what can I get out of it while I'm in it that can move me closer to what I want to get? So, so again, this, this power of sort of indifference is the ability to be where you are in a given moment and get the most out of it. It's not this kind of passive resignation and you're just there forever. But it's the ability not to be so emotional about something and thus actually be able to take advantage of it.

• 32:35Scott Galloway?

  What are some of the healthiest habits or healthy habits you've developed throughout your life when it comes to money? How do you, how do you think about, you know, what, what in addition to being happier? What habits have you adopted that you can relate back to the Stoics? That you have found have been really helped you professionally and economically?

• 32:56Speaker 07

  I mean, I, I think a big one is, you know, obviously the Stoics are big on self-discipline. And so, uh, discipline is important, you know, delayed gratification is important. As you said, like the, the key to wealth is sort of early on to, to accumulate capital, invest it and, and then be able to, to, to spend it later. So this is, you know, the marshmallow test 101. But I, I, I think sometimes we think of discipline as this active thing. When really it's, um, it's, it's, it's about making good decisions. So like if, if saving is this daily active discipline for you, you're not going to be that good at it.

• 33:35Speaker 07

  But the more you automate things, uh, the, you know, you're, you're just making one disciplined decision one time. You know, the, the more automated your finances are, the more it takes the day-to-day discipline out of it. And you don't have to be that smart or that strong.

• 33:52Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, I'm convinced that 99% of us will spend 99% of whatever we get our hands on.

• 33:58Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 33:59Scott Galloway?

  That's a really interesting insight that. Yeah, discipline is one thing, but the easiest discipline is to make it, make it easy, right? To, to start from a position of, start from a position of victory. So Ryan, the last time we talked, you said that if you hadn't been on a track to getting married when you had your success in your early twenties, that you would have spun off the planet. That stuck with me.

• 34:21Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 34:21Scott Galloway?

  Like what, well, let's go back to that. Would have spun off the planet had you not been on a track to getting married. What did you mean by that?

• 34:29Speaker 07

  You know, it's, it's probably similar to the, the four savings thing that we're talking about. Like when you limit your options, you tend to make better decisions, right?

• 34:38Scott Galloway?

  Oh my God. I love that.

• 34:40Speaker 07

  Having someone to come home to that's like, hey, when are you going to be home tonight? Means that you're not going out and getting into trouble, right? It means you're not, uh, it means it forces you to practice some, some kind of boundaries or balance. Like, I think for me at 23, to have been in the positions I was in, to have the opportunities that I, I was in, and to be responsible only for myself and to answer only to myself. I, I don't think I would have had the self-awareness to make good decisions, to delay certain kinds of gratification. I, I also wouldn't have had the ability to deal with both success and failure, right? Like to, I, I can't imagine going through

• 35:25Speaker 07

  some of the, the things I went through alone, good or bad. And so, um, there is this, uh, you know, sometimes people ask me like, what the secret to, uh, you know, a long-term relationship is. And I, I say it's, um, it's not breaking up. There, it's not like this magical thing. It's the decision to, to, to not go always to greener pastures, to not take the easy way out, to, to, to stick with your commitments. And, and you, you benefit from that in, in many, many ways. Uh, but I, I think having some checks on my personal life and having another person who I trusted and loved, who saw me from outside me, helped

• 36:11Speaker 07

  Keep me sane and healthy and reasonable and a whole bunch of other positive traits. What did it tie me down a little bit? Sure, but I would say it tied me down to reality in a positive way.

• 36:26Scott Galloway?

  So I think one of the biggest takeaways from spending time with one of the great domain experts on Stoicism is that Ed is spinning out of control. Ed, Ed, it's, you've got to, we've got to rein you in. This is, this really isn't a podcast with Ryan Holiday. This is an intervention.

• 36:47Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back.

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• 38:29Ed Elson?

  We're back with Prof. Markets. Just to shift gears here, Ryan, you know, Marcus Aurelius is long gone, but you probably know him better than anyone else today. If Marcus Aurelius, if we brought him back to life today and just sort of took him around America, what do you think would be his greatest concerns? What would he be most critical of that we're doing wrong in our society right now?

• 38:54Speaker 07

  I think he would be appalled at the lack of time and space for reflection that each of us have. You know, what Meditations is, is the most powerful person in the world, taking a few minutes every day or night to have a little conversation with themselves, to remind themselves of their values, to sort of interrogate themselves, push themselves to improve. And, you know, everyone's just busy all the time. And the idea of taking that time and space to think, to practice philosophy, you know, that seems like this preposterous luxury.

• 39:35Speaker 07

  And I think because we're always doing and doing and doing, we don't have the ability to kind of get in touch with ourselves in the way that he was.

• 39:46Ed Elson?

  Do you think he'd want to regulate social media? Do you think he'd want to ban phones for kids?

• 39:50Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, that's what I was going. I can't imagine he would think much of the like button. And I've read a bunch of stuff you've written and I've thought, I need to be less concerned with what people I will never meet think of me and more concerned with what the people in my life feel about me. And it feels like social media, talking about things you can't control, it really don't matter very much, having a big impact on your mental health. I gotta think he would have hated Facebook.

• 40:17Speaker 07

  I think that obviously the ancients did not have social media or sort of mass media culture in any way, but there was such a thing as the mob. You know, there was the tens of thousands of Romans getting together in the Colosseum and people were intimately familiar with like sort of surfing the crowd, like figuratively, like. Taking the energy from the crowd, performing from the crowd. And there's a, there's a line in meditations where Marcus is sort of chastising himself. He says, you know, you're sort of up at the podium. And he's like, they're, they're really cheering and clapping for you. And, and then he goes, yeah, you're, you're, you're giving them what they want.

• 41:02Speaker 07

  And he says, but they want an idiot. You know, he's, he's like, you're, you're, you're performing. I think the equivalent of this is be like, you're performing for the algorithm. You're giving people what they want. You're doing what, what drives engagement. But you know, that's not good. You know, it's not good for them. You know, it's not good for you. And I, I think the, the Stoics would have seen what happens to people every day. You know, these people that just sort of get consumed by performing for this audience. And it changes them, this audience capture. But there's also just like what fame does to a person where you become kind of addicted

• 41:44Speaker 07

  to the endless validation and attention seeking. The Stoics would have seen that very human trait all the time. And the idea that we would, we would create a way for everyone to do that at every second of the day, I think they would have been horrified.

• 42:01Scott Galloway?

  Do you have any hacks for? I think a lot of people look at your life and think, I would love to do what that guy's doing to find a topic I'm really interested in. And then figure out a way to use it as a platform and, and develop economic security and do something I'm interested in, I'm passionate about and become influential in a positive way. Are there hacks and advice for a young person thinking, I want some of that? How did, what surprised you to the upside and the downside around your career path?

• 42:32Speaker 07

  I think I got lucky in that what I really wanted to be was a writer. I loved books and I wanted to be an author. And, and I, I went at it a somewhat untraditional way in that I was, I was a research assistant for a great writer, a guy named Robert Greene, who wrote The Forty Eight Laws of Power. So I really learned like how to do, of all the sort of like intellectual sort of thought leadership things, I started with like the hardest, least sexy of the mediums. So I think people see podcasts or they see TikTok or, you know, a 60 second clip that gets millions of views or whatever, and they're like, I want to do that.

• 43:13Speaker 07

  And in many ways, that's the easiest part of it, or it's, it's the least intellectually rigorous of the mediums. And so if you start there, you don't actually have the goods or the skills. And I'm not saying you have to start with books, but I'm saying we, we often see people that get blessed by the algorithm, they blow up in some way on some medium. But because they don't have like an actual point of view, an actual skill set, like a thing that they do, they just become like a person who chases more and more on that particular platform. Like I write books. That's what I was doing before I did this. That's what I'm going to go do after I close the laptop on this, is I'm going to go back

• 43:58Speaker 07

  and sit in my chair by myself and work on a chapter in the book that I'm writing now. Now, what I generate there ultimately can be translated and can do well on social media, on podcasts, on, you know, news media or whatever. But, but it starts from the core originating thing. And people oftentimes don't want to do that work. They, what they, what they, what attracts them to like being an influencer or whatever is not just the, the fame and attention, but that it, it seems easy. Like it seems like they're just, they're just turning on the GoPro or the phone or whatever and riffing to millions of people.

• 44:43Speaker 07

  And that's not really how you do it.

• 44:46Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, there's a, when people ask, what was the, what was the fulcrum or the moment or the single point of leverage where your career really took off? The honest answer is it's a series of little things that accumulate and add up. But if there is one thing where I look back and think that's where things really took off, it was also the hardest thing I've ever done, and that was my first book.

• 45:07Speaker 07

  But wouldn't you say the hard, wouldn't you say the hard work for you before writing the book, though, was the years of experience that you had starting your companies? Like, so it's even, it's not that everyone just has to write a book, but you do have to develop, like-

• 45:23Scott Galloway?

  Something to say.

• 45:24Speaker 07

  The competence. Yeah, the competence first.

• 45:27Scott Galloway?

  Yeah, well, I worked my ass off for 35 years to become an overnight success. Ed, bring us home.

• 45:33Ed Elson?

  One last question. Do you care about what people think of you? Like, when you put your work out there and that, you know, you're on social media, you're on TikTok, I'm sure people are criticizing you or not. But I feel like part of your philosophy is to not focus on that stuff, yet at the same time, you have to balance the priority of, I need to sell books, I need to say things that people like. How do you deal with criticism and feedback? Do you care about it?

• 45:59Speaker 07

  Well, it's a preferred indifferent, like we're talking about. Obviously, I want the book to sell more copies than less copies. I want people to like it more than they dislike it. At the same time, I understand my job is not to tell people what they want to hear, or else I'm very replaceable. And so it's a balance, there's a tension. You know, I think a lot about, what is it that I have to say? What is it that I need to say, like, needs to be said? And then what is the way that I can get that to people? So when I'm thinking about what people think, it's not in the generative side of things, like, what is my message? What do I think the truth is? I think about it, like, like I did this book on justice, which just came out, which I was lucky enough, it debuted at number one.

• 46:44Speaker 07

  If I had called this book- If the packaging and the titling and the marketing and all this book had been about justice, I guarantee it would not debut at number one, right? Like, I had to spend a lot of time thinking about how you take a topic that people are not interested in hearing about and have a lot of preconceived notions about. And I had to figure out how to make that palatable, interesting, exciting, relevant, all of that. So it's in the messaging, but not the message, that you want to think about what other people think.

• 47:18Ed Elson?

  Ryan Holiday is a philosopher and New York Times bestselling author. His books include The Obstacle is the Way, Ego is the Enemy, The Daily Stoic, and Stillness is the Key. Ryan's latest book, Right Thing Right Now, is available now. Ryan, thank you so much for joining us.

• 47:32Scott Galloway?

  Thanks, Rob.

• 47:32Speaker 07

  Always a pleasure, Scott. Thanks.

• 47:43Ed Elson?

  Algebra of Wealth. Scott, we discussed this idea with Ryan, that a person should decide on a code to live by and try to hold that line. In your book, The Algebra of Wealth, you wrote, quote, "The gap between your intentions and your actions is a decent forward-looking indicator of your future success emotionally and financially." Can you say more about how you've attempted to close that gap in your own life? In other words, how have you held the line?

• 48:07Scott Galloway?

  Well, look, there's two things. There's, I want to start a business and I'm gonna go to business school before I start a business. I'm gonna get some credibility. I'm gonna save some money before I start a business. And that is fear. That's thinking that if I just get more credibility, more money, more experience, then I can start a company. And that's, I've never been qualified to do anything I've ever done. And especially, so I started a strategy firm with two years' experience in fixed income and an investment bank. Entrepreneurs are kind of, quite frankly, they're born, not made. But the thing that gets in the way of really oftentimes achieving real success is fear.

• 48:49Scott Galloway?

  You have desires, but they don't translate to action because fear gets in the way. Fear of shaming, fear of public failure. You see someone you're drawn to or you want to speak to, you're attracted to. The fear of rejection. Your intention would be to go up and establish contact with someone or say, I'd be interested in being your friend, or you're interested in finding, introducing yourself to potential co-founders. Fear gets in the way. Your intentions don't match your action because of fear. On the flip side, something that has really haunted me my whole life is I have a lot of nice thoughts about people, a lot of positive emotions. And I think that they're telepathic, that if I care for them, or I think that they're doing a good job, that somehow they register that telepathically.

• 49:34Scott Galloway?

  And what you realize is that you have to articulate things, you have to express appreciation, affection, concern for people, admiration. Otherwise, you are spilling the most valuable resource in the world, and that is your good intentions and your emotions. And articulating these things makes you much happier. So you're missing out on a huge opportunity when you let these good intentions, these good emotions, these ambitions, just lie fallow in your head. When they're in your head, it is a resource in the ground. It never gets pulled out. It never amounts to much.

• 50:09Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our executive producers are Jason Stavas and Catherine Dillon. Mia Silverio is our research lead, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to Prof G Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We'll be back with a fresh take on markets on Monday.

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