Every Great Leader Has THIS Secret Weapon | Les Snead (Los Angeles Rams GM)

The difference between panic and power comes down to a few simple rules. In today’s episode, Ryan dives into Les Snead’s philosophy on “panic rules” and why it’s stuck with him ever since they first talked. Ryan and Les discuss how these rules help leaders stay calm under pressure, make hard decisions, and mentor the next generation. Then, they wrap up the conversation at The Painted Porch, where Ryan shares some book recommendations with Les and his wife Kara. Les Snead is an American football executive who is the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams of the National Football League. Snead played tight end for Auburn from 1992-93 and was part of the Tigers’ perfect 11-0 team in 1993. He also earned Southeast Region Academic All-American honors during his college career. Prior to joining the Rams, Snead spent 13 seasons with the Atlanta Falcons. 📚 Full list of books that Ryan gave to Les and Kara:Bittersweet by Susan CainSlow Productivity by Cal NewportLetters to a Young Athlete by Chris BoshIt’s Better To Be Feared by Seth WickershamThe Way of the Champion by Paul RabilLevels of the Game by John McPheeNotes to John by Joan DidionGrit by Angela Duckworth The Notebook by Rolland AllenSacred Hoops by Phil JacksonPlato and The Tyrant by James RommThe Second Mountain by David BrooksDie With Zero by Bill PerkinsFrom Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks On Character by General Stanley McChrystal 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Listen to Les Snead's first episode on The Daily Stoic Podcast🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:03Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal,

• 0:46Ryan Holiday?

  and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring.

• 0:54Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. So, back in 2022, I believe, I gave a talk to the Marines out in 29 Palms. And I was trying to think, like, where did I want to start this thing? What did I want to build this talk around? It was actually sort of surreal. I was talking to a theater of about 2,000 Marines. And then the next day, did the same talk, rotated another big group of Marines. And so I was like, what do I want to talk about? What would be interesting? How do I catch these young men and women's attention? Because they were all like 18, 19. Most of them hadn't gone to college.

• 1:37Ryan Holiday?

  Most of them were not excited to get to talk about ancient philosophy. What can I connect them with? And I decided I would, I would open with football. And here's what I opened with.

• 1:49Ryan Holiday?

  This is not the first time I've talked to a group of Marines, but it is the first time I've seen Marines eating popcorn while I talk. So this is quite a privilege for me. We're going to talk about ancient philosophy. And, and I know that sounds strange. Pretty much every audience I get in front of, well, they put the popcorn away real quick when they hear that I'm going to talk about ancient philosophy. Because it doesn't sound like the most exciting thing. In the world, I get that. It seems old and dusty and ancient. Couple of years ago, I had the opportunity, I went and I talked to the Los Angeles Rams at their training camp up in Irvine. And it was a pretty cool experience. And you might be thinking, again, what they were thinking, which is, what does ancient philosophy have to teach a professional football team?

• 2:30Ryan Holiday?

  What is an old dusty book from an obscure school of ancient philosophy possibly have to do with winning, with victory, with beating the shit out of someone else? I get that. But in fact, ancient philosophy in the ancient world, philosophers weren't like your professors or your teachers. They didn't wear turtlenecks. They were active people in the actual world. They fought in wars. They started companies. They ran for political office. Right? They did things in real life. The Stoics were athletes and generals, thinkers, writers. They did stuff, right? Philosophy was something that informed what they did. It shaped what they did. It made them better at what they did.

• 3:14Ryan Holiday?

  And as it happened, the Rams managed to turn things around. They had a bad season, then a pretty good season. They won a Super Bowl. They sent me a pretty cool Super Bowl ring. But I got to know Les Snead, who's the GM of the Rams. And we've become friends over the years. And when I was talking to Les, I interviewed him on the Daily Stoic Podcast not too long ago. One of the things we talked about, he brought up this idea of panic rules. He said, a panic rule is like what you do when you're overwhelmed, when things are falling apart, when you're flooded with information, with conflicting information. Right? What do you revert to in moments of crisis? Personal or professional? Right? The things that always stand true, sort of really short aphorisms, or epigrams, or slogans

• 3:58Ryan Holiday?

  that you stick to, that you go to in moments where you really need clarity. Some of his, he gave me some. There's a batting order for a reason. Nip it in the bud. Right? We is greater than me. Wake up sprinting. Don't be scared. Keep the main thing, the main thing. And he's got a bunch of them, just like every team has a bunch of them, just like you guys have a bunch of them. So this idea of panic rules, I think. It's pretty applicable. It's what I wanted to talk to you guys about today. The art of not panicking, right? Getting clarity. I know you guys have some of your slogans, right? It was kind of a weird experience for me because I'm actually a Saints fan. And after Sean Payton was suspended for the trumped up bounty gate scandal,

• 4:40Ryan Holiday?

  which we don't need to get into here, he put this large poster on the wall of the practice facility. He just said, do your job, right? This is a panic rule situation. Your coach is suspended. You miss him for a year. It's a bunch of penalties. What are we supposed to do? You're supposed to do your job, right? You're supposed to do your job in every situation and circumstance, right? In things big and small, glamorous or not, your job is to do your job, right? Whether you get credit for it or not, your job is to do your job, right? If you do it right, it doesn't matter if it's not fancy or special or recognized, right?

• 5:20Ryan Holiday?

  It's meaningful and important and significant and honorable if you do it well. As they say, how you do anything is how you do everything. You take the task, menial or not, and you do it with everything you have. This is what the Stoics are talking about. This is excellence, right? So when you're overwhelmed, when you don't know what to do, what you do is the most basic part of your job.

• 5:49Ryan Holiday?

  As I said, Les Snead had talked about this the first time he was on the Daily Stoic podcast. This is what he'd actually said.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  The really good teams, the really good coaches, right? They're able to teach and keep these simple principles, right? Simple during the chaos and lack of order that's going on.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  During a game in obviously life.

• 6:17Ryan Holiday?

  No, that's a good, that's a good analogy for life because it's sort of like, you know, tell the truth, be a good person, do your best. These are like things we know, we say, and then life makes things really complicated. And now there's a, now it's not quite clear what your best is, or should you tell the whole truth? But, but there might be consequences for telling the truth, right? There's all these reasons where those simple rules, it, life is trying to sort of distract you from those simple rules. But if you just stick with what you know, if you stick with what you believe, General Mattis says, you know, know your flat ass rules and stick to them. If you just do that, you'll be fine. But

• 7:00Ryan Holiday?

  the problem is almost when we, when we overthink it, when we, when we allow ourselves to be sort of knocked off the, the job we've been assigned, that's where we get into trouble.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, going to, to General Mattis and circling back to what I just chatted about, really good coaches will talk about your, your panic rules, right? When there's chaos and your brain is panicking, okay, just go to your flat ass out rules. If a lot just happened, but slow down, go to, you got number three, you got the third eligible, there he is, one, two, three. Maybe it all changed before, but it's simple math, go to your flat ass panic rules, stay with three, it'll probably work out. But a lot of times, as you said, during the chaos and lack of order, you may even forget that you had three

• 7:52Speaker 01

  and now who is three and why is that three? And can I even count the three?

• 7:58Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I, I like the idea of panic rules. Do you have those as a GM? Like, I've got to imagine, like, you're thinking, hey, we're going to draft this person, or we're going to make this trade, or we're going to renegotiate this contract. And then all of a sudden, somebody says something on social media, then there's a report on ESPN, you know, now the fans, they think strongly about this, or you're getting, you know, owner, the, the owner is putting in their opinion. Do you have like, flat ass rules or panic rules that you revert to under pressure or stress? Like, here's what I, here are the basic assumptions I have as a GM, you know? What are those and how do you revert back to them under pressure?

• 8:39Speaker 01

  We definitely have panic rules and it's interesting when us in sports get a chance to to write, read, read books by people like yourselves, you know, those, we add to those panic rules because some of those simple rules, I mean, and the wisdom that, that you articulate and, and the examples behind them can, can go to the list. So there is definitely, and, and probably at the end of the day, somewhere along the way, keep the main thing, the main thing i- is a panic rule.

• 9:17Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  We say around here, we not me, and, and sometimes that means we is greater than me, even though we're well aware that the individual, the me's that make up the we are, are the heartbeat and matter because they're people, but it can, it can help you go back to, okay, wait a minute, we're here to do what's best for the whole. So how do we make a decision of, okay, maybe we're, we're making a more individual's decision that may set some precedence that these other individuals that are part of the we now, right, are disturbed by it and it's an unintended consequence. So and

• 10:00Speaker 01

  there's, there's many of them and, and, and one of them is when in doubt, don't act. When in doubt, think about it more, right? Because there's an element of doubt there that, okay, if we have to make the decision right now and there's more doubt than certainty, don't make it, right? Don't, don't make the.

• 10:26Ryan Holiday?

  Don't trade somebody under pressure, that kind of thing?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  And it, and it might, and, and making that trade might have been, right, the right thing to do, but we would rather have the, let's call it the fault, is that right? Is, we'd rather have the faults negative than faults positive?

• 10:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  So, uh, but okay, wait a minute, don't, tomorrow, we still have an opportunity to make that same trade. Okay, let's, let's think about it longer. We thought there was a timeline. There's not, so you, you just continue, right, analyzing decisions. So there's a lot of those panic rules.

• 11:00Ryan Holiday?

  No, I see, I see what you're saying. It's like you, it's better that you miss out potentially on a trade than to develop the habit of making decisions that you're not 100% sure about.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:16Ryan Holiday?

  So when he came back out to the painted porch this summer, I wanted to build on this idea of panic rules. And I wanted to talk more about football. As I said in part one, my relationship with the Rams goes back quite a ways. I've known Les quite a long time through his wife, Kara, who's been a big booster and supporter of the books. And actually, they got to see me talk twice. I gave a talk in LA with Robert Greene several years ago, which they came out to. That was awesome. And then I gave a talk at the NFL owners meeting. I believe this was in 2019, which Les was there. It was the owners, the GMs,

• 11:58Ryan Holiday?

  and the head coaches, and then the spouses. So it was a pretty surreal audience. I've talked about this before. But they helped sort of brief me and walk me through sort of what would be relevant and what would not be relevant to this audience. Couple years after I gave that talk, I had a meeting in Beverly Hills. The, the person asked if I would meet them at the Montage in Beverly Hills. It was a very fancy hotel. I pull up in my rental car, the valet, give the keys to the valet, and the guy goes, hey, are you Ryan Holiday? And I go, yeah. And he goes, oh, I love your books and I'm, I'm reading Meditations. And I go, oh, this is awesome. This is what I absolutely love to And I go, how did you hear about it? And he goes, oh, well, you know, Mr. Cronky, he spends a lot of time at this hotel and he told

• 12:43Ryan Holiday?

  me to read it. So Stan had heard about my books through Les and from my talk at the owners' meeting. And then here he is, passing it to the valet at a fancy hotel. This young kid is finding philosophy. I just, I love that. I love stuff like that. That's what lights me up. That's why I do what I do. Sometimes people are a little snooty about my work. You know, there's this popular bros in sports or whatever. But that's, to me, what it's about through sports that can find this large, wider audience, which is why I'm excited. My kids have now gotten into football and hopefully we can displace Alexander Hamilton a little bit in our rotation and maybe occasionally listen to some other things and do some other

• 13:28Ryan Holiday?

  things. It was fascinating to have Les out. We not only did this podcast, then we also went, did a long walk through of the bookstore and talked about books for quite some time. So I think you're really gonna like this. I split this one up into two parts because I thought it was important and very listenable. And I'm excited to bring it to you now. As I said, Les is the GM of the Rams. Position he's held for 13 years, which is an incredible tenure. He's got a Super Bowl in there, another Super Bowl appearance. He's just totally turned the Rams around. Before that, he was with the Jaguars and the Falcons. And here's today's episode. I think you're really gonna like it.

• 14:11Ryan Holiday?

  You guys were just talking about your assistant, your former assistant who just got hired as a GM.

• 14:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:17Ryan Holiday?

  Did he follow your advice? Like, just do the thing?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  You know, he, the answer would be yes. And it was interesting about him, I don't know if he ever, he's one of those, let's call it, probably rare. People that that that's how he was coded anyway. So he he was perfect for that in that he never tried to get the next job. He never tried. He he really just wanted to do his best at making, let's call it my life easier or making the GM jobs more impactful.

• 14:54Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  So that's what he went about doing. And by doing that, I think he he was very, let's call it proactive in in probably my idiosyncrasies. And also then, hey, maybe what the organization needed, desire, what would make it more efficient. So he he never came and said, I think we ought to do this.

• 15:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  He just, the next time, right, the phase of the calendar came around that he had already implemented all of that. And you were like, wow, OK, that's, I guess that's what's really good is is that we didn't, we never had a meeting. He just said.

• 15:29Ryan Holiday?

  He just did it.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  He just did it.

• 15:30Ryan Holiday?

  How long did he work for you?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  It was probably, it would be about nine years.

• 15:35Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's the other thing is people want the thing, but they want it right now. They're like, how can I be a GM or how can I be bestselling author? And how can I do it right now?

• 15:43Speaker 02

  You would you would appreciate this from his dad. So you get it. It's interesting, too. He he's he was 34. So he's 34, one of the youngest GMs, if not the youngest. And I remember when Jacksonville, they're one of their best players ever, Tony Baselli, was helping with the search. I remember him asking me, how old is James? I'm like, you know what, Tony? You can ask my staff. I'm not really a big birthday guy, you know, can't say I, you know, you got to believe in birthdays that happen, but it's just, I really don't know how old he is.

• 16:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  He's like, what do you mean you don't know how old he is? I'm like, I promise you, I don't. I mean, he's somewhere between 25 and 30. But you'd really appreciate his dad, but his dad, longtime high school football coach. And and probably James was on his path in St. Louis. That's where we first met and he coached my son in St. Louis. And that was probably going to be his path. I would bet he would be a head football coach and a principal of a high school and be one of the best at both. But his dad during this whole process, his question and advice, really his question, James, you know, you don't have to go be a GM if you don't want to be.

• 16:49Ryan Holiday?

  Wow.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  I want to make sure. That's what you want to do because James had never really ever articulated to anyone.

• 16:57Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Hey, I would like to be a GM one day.

• 17:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  He really basically articulated, look, however long we work together, I want, right?

• 17:07Ryan Holiday?

  Just be great at what I'm doing.

• 17:08Speaker 02

  And then we'll see what happens after that. So it was really neat to see a parent going, okay.

• 17:14Ryan Holiday?

  The opposite of pressure.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  This is one of 32, but you don't, if you don't want to do it, you don't have to.

• 17:31Ryan Holiday?

  There's a story about this Samurai master, the student comes to him and says, you know, I want to be a Samurai master. How long does it take? And he goes 10 years. And the student's like, no, no, I really want to be a Samurai master. I'm going to give everything. I'll be very dedicated. How long will it take? And then the master goes 15 years. And he goes, no, no, I don't think you understand. I'm in a hurry. I gotta be the master. I'm coming to you. I want you to teach me to be a master. And I need to do it in as short a time as possible. How long will it take? And the teacher goes 20 years. And there's something about patience there that if you think you can do it in a short amount of time, if you think you're the kid going places, if you think you can somehow speed it up.

• 18:12Ryan Holiday?

  Like the, the people who become the youngest to ever do something, I actually tend to find we're not that motivated to do a thing by a certain time. They were just totally absorbed in doing the thing. And then somebody else, very successful or experienced sees something in them and elevates them sooner than maybe they even think they were ready for it. That's how it happens. It's not something you can force or even like acquire for yourself.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  Perfect. Now, because you use that story, I was thinking, I was coming, okay, how are you gonna, how are you gonna be impressive on this podcast, right? There's pressure.

• 18:51Ryan Holiday?

  You're very impressive.

• 18:52Speaker 02

  My panic rules and the only thing I have is my new panic rule is you can't microwave life, but Samurai Masters-

• 18:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, that's what he's saying.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Is saying that. Now, it is interesting, someone like James, it seems like it was microwave, but maybe he was-

• 19:05Ryan Holiday?

  Nine years, it's not a microwave.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that is, still nine years, but point being is, he, he didn't try to do it in a day, didn't try to do, that was not his goal and he was, I think I, we made the joke as it was, as he was making news around the, the time he got the job, but not that an apprentice, this is all you do, but I really, really loved green tea and I always go, James, the first thing I want you to do is just make sure I got a green tea in the morning. Cause he had gotten a job and I'm like, there's gonna be times where I don't even know what to give you to do, but if I'm busy, just make sure you don't come look like one of those puppies. You got your puppy out there and they're kinda looking at you like, let's go play. And I'm like, I just don't have time to play right now. But I, I use the example, there was that moment of James just recognizing that even

• 19:52Speaker 02

  though I never asked for a green tea in the afternoon-

• 19:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Speaker 02

  He kinda knew that I really wanted to be-

• 19:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 02

  I wanted a green tea in the afternoon and then I probably wasn't gonna be the guy to go, hey, James, I know you're getting me a green tea in the morning, but you need to do it in the afternoon.

• 20:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:06Speaker 02

  So he, but he kinda recognized all of that. Then next thing you know, there was always the green tea there.

• 20:12Ryan Holiday?

  Interesting.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  And then next thing you know, I'm like, wow, this is great. And then, but the point being is, I know there's more to life than getting someone green tea, but he dominated that. And what I tell people is, everything after that, as he got more responsibility-

• 20:28Ryan Holiday?

  How you do anything is how you do everything. If you, if you treat that as serious, you'll treat all the other things as serious, you'll be great at that. I know in the NFL, like, if another team wants to hire someone, they have to, they have to like, ask the team if they can interview that person, right? Like-

• 20:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:43Ryan Holiday?

  So is an assistant in a position that, that the Jaguars had to message you to ask if they could interview your assistant?

• 20:48Speaker 02

  Now the rules- Rules are a little different where if you're going to, if you're going to interview someone for their number one football executive.

• 20:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Then you don't have to ask for permission. You just gotta notify.

• 21:01Ryan Holiday?

  So did you get notified?

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Definitely got notified.

• 21:03Ryan Holiday?

  What was your reaction like? Because I think there's two different types of bosses. There's the sort of possessive resentful boss, right? This is what Robert Greene talks about and don't outshine the master. There's that boss. And then there's like the sort of coaching tree boss. There's the, you look at like an organization like the Spurs, which is basically a coaching and GM clinic for the NBA at this point, right?

• 21:22Speaker 02

  At that point, I called it sweet bitter. So the bitter being wow, we got a chance to lose.

• 21:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Speaker 02

  A very valuable human being. The sweet is he's definitely earned this. He's ready. Wasn't totally surprised because I started in Jacksonville. I knew a lot of people in that building. They had hired Liam Cohen, who had worked with us as our offensive coordinator. Now, he was coming from Tampa Bay at the time.

• 21:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  So there was this, when Liam was interviewing, there was.

• 21:49Ryan Holiday?

  You sent semi.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  He definitely discussed, hey, if I, if I were the head coach here, I'd love to set it up like we had it set up when I was in Los Angeles. So there was a lot of discussion about how we did things systematically in LA with the Rams that, so it wasn't, it wasn't like, wow, there's all of a sudden we get a notification and.

• 22:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. They discovered James. So you somewhat knew it was coming based on that. But so more Spurs, more sweet bitter.

• 22:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  But definitely sweet first because it was.

• 22:20Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, I see what you're saying. Sweet bitter because it's more sweet than bitter. Like you're, you're happy and then you also understand like shit, this is going to cost me at some level. And then also now you have to, you're in competition.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  But happy for James.

• 22:31Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 02

  And all he had done for myself, the Rams, more happy than bitter is.

• 22:37Ryan Holiday?

  And that's also, I think that's the obligation. Like very few people, when you hire them, you're like, this person's going to work for me forever. Like you're part of the arrangement, part of the, the payoff for getting the green tea is that you're not only not going to stand in this person's way in the future, but you're actually going to help them get to where they want to go, which is again, almost certainly not getting green tea forever. Like, like it's an exchange. You have an obligation and I think a duty to like pay forward the door opening that other people did for you.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  That's the fortunate thing being, maybe it's going in it. Started in my first year as a GM was 2012. We're going into the 25 season.

• 23:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Right. So what is that 14, 13, whatever.

• 23:19Ryan Holiday?

  Pretty good run.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  It was, I would have never, I would have bet the under.

• 23:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 02

  So point being is when you sit back and realize the only way you, as an individual, have that kind of run is a lot of people like James and a lot of others, right? Dominating their roles and it's all compound, the Rams are successful and here I am. But at this phase in the career, in the journey and the adventure, there, there's that, that, let's call it paradigm framing that, you know what?

• 23:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  You definitely want to give back to those that are, give back to the game. People did that to myself and now it's, it's really cool to be in this position. Wow. You can really impact.

• 23:57Ryan Holiday?

  At the end of your career, you're not going to be like, can you believe like in 2026, I made X, you know, or, or you're not even probably going to be thinking of the Super Bowls. You're probably going to be thinking about the impact that you had on other, like, I think at the end of your career, you're going to be thinking about other people. You're thinking about your family, but you're also going to think professionally, did you leave the game better than you found it? Did you help other people do what you're doing? I think about your legacy is ultimately measured, not just in what you do, but in what the people you helped go on to do. And that's how you have a much bigger outsized impact. And there's some coaches that don't have good coaching trees, you know? And then there's some coaches that we don't think of as being that great, you know, they didn't

• 24:40Ryan Holiday?

  win a Super Bowl or they didn't win a championship. But then you sort of zoom out and you go, oh, but seven of their assistants did, you know? And you go, oh, wow, that's actually almost more impressive.

• 24:49Speaker 02

  Yes. We've lost a lot of people, coaches, Brad Holmes, who's in Detroit, worked with us and went on to become a GM. That what's probably is called very fulfilling when you sit back. It's one thing to help someone, let's go either get the interview, help someone get the job. But we've had a lot of people leave our building and actually, right, have success.

• 25:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  And I think Sean and I will even say, we, it's not like we sat down and had these, right, classes and said, okay, this is how you become successful. It's, it's a lot, it has a lot to do with who they were.

• 25:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  We were just fortunate to, hey, ask them to get on the boat.

• 25:26Ryan Holiday?

  For a passing moment. Yes.

• 25:27Speaker 02

  But we all got together and. And as we said earlier, tried to be good.

• 25:32Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  We tried to help the Rams be good or better. And it worked. And then when they go on, but to see them have success. I was calling it's one of those fulfilling, almost surreal moments like, wow. There was a tree that went out and now it's it's thriving somewhere else.

• 25:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 25:49Speaker 02

  And you really didn't set out to do it. It just it can be overwhelming at times like, okay, that's. It goes back to what we said earlier. Best advice, at least there's a lot of advices. There's a lot of philosophies and systems, but wow, let's just. Especially if there's a collective and there's a collaborative, let's let's try to make the we. Let's try to go help the we be good, great.

• 26:10Ryan Holiday?

  Help the league, help the people. I think that's the thing that actually people, because it's not totally selfless. Like, people don't understand kind of the genius of the way the Spurs have done it too, which is interesting. So all these coaches have gone on, coaches and players have gone on to do other things. But what's also interesting is how many of them have come back to the Spurs for stints. You know, like a coach gets fired and then you'll notice, oh, whoa. Like you'll go to Spurs game like, is that who I think it is like at the, you know, sitting behind the bench? Or is that who, you know, in the owner's box? And you realize, oh, yeah, this former head coach came back and spent two years as a consultant in San Antonio. Or two years is like they they've created a culture where it's a safe place. So, yeah, people, people go on and do other things that get poached.

• 26:52Ryan Holiday?

  But it doesn't always work out and nobody is outside the organization forever. But if you've created a place that people want to be, that feels safe and is a is a home base. You can get access to those people again. And I'm sure that's just the visible part. I'm sure there are texts and phone calls about, hey, we can't draft this guy. But you might want to take a look and I bet it comes back to you. You put enough good shit out in the world, it comes back to you.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  What's neat is I'm sure a lot of people, let's use the Spurs of example. They've, and what I've always felt was one of the probably more impactful things you can do is if you're somewhere good. You know, especially when you're, let's, I always call it, instead of trying to climb.

• 27:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Right. Try to be good at what you're doing. But in that moment where you have some downtime, journal why you think, right? This ecosystem sustained success.

• 27:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  So that's the positives. But in the other column, go. If I ever had a chance to take this philosophy somewhere else,

• 27:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  Maybe I would add this to it.

• 27:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 27:53Speaker 02

  And what's neat is you probably see, let's call it a spur system. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But as it moves on,

• 27:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  there's a chance that it's actually evolving.

• 28:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  And getting stronger.

• 28:04Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:05Speaker 02

  And sometimes when you're in charge, so if you're R.C. Buford, if you're Greg Popovich, and they're going through their changes now, right? Because they have the responsibility of sustaining this, you often don't have as much time to journal.

• 28:20Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  You're just, hey, the next day on the calendar, trying to sustain it. And I do think that's why really good people, right? Underworking within the ecosystem do have that time.

• 28:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 28:31Speaker 02

  To journal and go, ooh. And it's awesome if you can sit down and download after-action view, how do we get better from within? But when someone takes it and I call it adds their fingerprint to it, like you said, Steve.

• 28:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, they go out and maybe they can experiment and try things that you can't do in your organization. And then if they come back, you can apply, or you can just learn from what they're doing. Yeah, you should want your assistants and your coworkers and your employees to go off and do things and report back, like the exchange continues, even if you're not technically colleagues or, you know, coworkers anymore.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  No doubt.

• 29:06Ryan Holiday?

  You want to go check out some books?

• 29:19Speaker 03

  You know what's great is this is the whole stalking section, right? Like, all the people that we've stalked.

• 29:25Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, so.

• 29:25Speaker 03

  And you use football as a way to kind of,

• 29:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  get them in the net like yourself. I don't know if you remember, that's how we found you. It is, it's Jim Collins, it's Annie Duke, thinking in bets become, and then Annie ends up hooking us up with Susan Cain, who I'm sure is somewhere around here.

• 29:42Speaker 02

  Bittersweet is over here. I changed her book.

• 29:45Speaker 03

  Angela Duckworth.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  That's what, okay, I was like, is she saying that wrong?

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Can I read Bittersweet? It's very good.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Oh, Bittersweet's amazing. And, and, you know, this is how, and Quiet has changed. Quiet changes.

• 29:56Speaker 02

  This is my favorite. She has the Ten Commandments in here. So this is when I moved out as an introvert. She has one that basically said, are you the person who will, let's call it, if I see you coming there, instead of going across the street, I'll take the right and avoid you?

• 30:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  It was in there, oh yeah, it's okay to cross the street to avoid making a small talk.

• 30:20Ryan Holiday?

  Of course.

• 30:20Speaker 02

  So number seven has been my entire life.

• 30:23Ryan Holiday?

  That's you, yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  No, totally.

• 30:25Speaker 03

  So now, that's been probably, I think that's been the most fun thing for us. And now Austin, obviously, is perfect for it, right? Like, it's the intersection of sports and big ideas, because every single one of these books ends up having a sports chapter in it.

• 30:41Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Great Angela Duckworth, right?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  Yes, she could spin that.

• 30:44Speaker 03

  And then we end up helping Susan Cain find a kicking coach for her amazing kid. And he's now, he's now nailing fifty-some-odd yard field goals.

• 30:53Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 30:53Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 30:54Ryan Holiday?

  Really?

• 30:55Speaker 03

  So that's the random cycle of things.

• 30:57Ryan Holiday?

  And how funny must it be for her, like, she's this sort of literary introverted author person, and then she has a kid who's like a star athlete, probably very opposite personalities?

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Well, and if you've met her husband, he's obviously very, he is a, he's a force of nature too. So it shouldn't surprise you when the apple doesn't fall too far.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  But she's...

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Right? But she loves it.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  She blames us on the, obviously genetically.

• 31:21Ryan Holiday?

  You find it?

• 31:22Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:23Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  She blames us. Who came to?

• 31:26Ryan Holiday?

  Alright, so here's the point, his point is that like, most things require long bits of concentration, but that that concentration isn't necessarily like sitting at a computer deliberately thinking. It's long walks, it's, we go here for the summer and I just kind of think and work on stuff and fiddle around. You know, it's, it doesn't always look like what you think it's gonna look like.

• 31:50Speaker 02

  I...

• 31:51Speaker 03

  I also think too, it marinates in the back of your head, right? If you've ever learned...

• 31:54Ryan Holiday?

  That's why hobbies are so important.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  Oh, like, I'm learning to play guitar, and learning is very difficult.

• 32:00Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  At this point.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  I...

• 32:01Speaker 03

  But it's amazing when you take time off, you struggle, struggle, struggle. You take time off for whatever reason, a couple of weeks, and you come back and your fingers can do it.

• 32:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  It's, it's working in the background somewhere. It's very strange.

• 32:14Speaker 02

  Would I?

• 32:14Ryan Holiday?

  Totally.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  Growing up in New Fall, Alabama, and they had the similar to Nashville, they had the sidewalks, but there was a park I call green space in the middle.

• 32:24Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, like a tree park?

• 32:26Speaker 03

  Just a strip, like a strip with big trees down the middle.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  So, okay, there would be an art show there. It seemed like an Oktoberfest or one of those deals. But I remember always being, it would be, it would kind of be when the football, the whole cycle of football was over and it was kind of the first of summer. I would always go back to my hometown and I would take walks kind of where I grew up.

• 32:46Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 32:47Speaker 02

  And, and basically just walk all day. But that's where I would get some of my better, let's call it innovative, creative ideas. And I would just think, oh, weird. Well, why can't I think of that at work at the office?

• 32:59Ryan Holiday?

  I try to do a walk in the morning and a walk at night. And that's usually, that'll give me what I'm supposed to work on during the day. And that's how I think about the thing that I was working on all day. And I go, oh, that's, and then I'll come back, I'll solve whatever that thing is. I did do a couple of sports books in my life. And I don't know, did you, did I ever send you this Chris Bosh book that I did?

• 33:17Speaker 03

  You know, it's really hilarious. We, we blame you. For some reason, we get Chris Bosh's Christmas card every year. And we have no idea why. We've never met.

• 33:26Ryan Holiday?

  It just runs.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  So I think it's your fault.

• 33:28Ryan Holiday?

  Did you get this one?

• 33:30Speaker 03

  No.

• 33:31Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, his, his wife, Adrian, is like on top of it. She's a maid and that's probably why. That's Tom Brady's favorite sports book.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:38Ryan Holiday?

  And then the, do you care that a four, uh, oh, I worked on, do you know who Paul Reblis?

• 33:43Speaker 03

  No.

• 33:43Ryan Holiday?

  Paul Reblis is like the greatest lacrosse player to ever live. Just like totally dominant.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  We didn't do lacrosse in New Fall.

• 33:52Ryan Holiday?

  Belichick tried to get him to, the, the opening story of the book is that Belichick sees him and tries to convince him to become a tight end. And then he's thinking about it and then Belichick's, you know what, he goes like, you know what, actually, you have a chance to be the greatest lacrosse player ever. Do that instead. But it's like, you know, it's probably a $50 million decision, you know?

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Well, and the, the other answer is you can do both, right? Like there's this kid at Notre Dame who is one of their best receivers or was, I don't know if he got drafted to the cheerleading team.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  He comes back.

• 34:21Speaker 03

  He won all these national championships now and he's, he's incredible on the football field too. That book's great.

• 34:27Speaker 04

  This is one of the best.

• 34:28Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  There was this was.

• 34:30Speaker 03

  He's in love with Phil Jackson as a concept, you know.

• 34:33Speaker 04

  It was probably nineteen ninety-six when I was with the Jacksonville Jaguars and I lived. I mean, Phil Jackson wasn't Phil Jackson.

• 34:39Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  It is.

• 34:40Ryan Holiday?

  That'd be before all the Lakers.

• 34:42Speaker 04

  This is.

• 34:43Ryan Holiday?

  I think it's one of the best.

• 34:43Speaker 04

  Very philosophical book on life.

• 34:45Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. His Eleven Rings is pretty good, too. Have you read, uh, Levels of the Game by John McPhee?

• 34:52Speaker 03

  Oh, I love John McPhee so much.

• 34:54Ryan Holiday?

  He's great.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  That, that's, I'm buying that one.

• 34:58Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, that book's incredible. It's about Arthur Ashe.

• 35:01Speaker 03

  Oh, that's cool.

• 35:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I love John McPhee. What's the one I just read that's, um?

• 35:07Ryan Holiday?

  You've read that?

• 35:08Speaker 04

  Have listened to that.

• 35:09Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, he was on, he was on the podcast a long time ago.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's, that, that explains a lot and explains a lot, too, why, you know, this generation of kids is a little more difficult to, uh, in football.

• 35:23Speaker 04

  I mean, this is, these are just people who've been on the show recently. Oh, right here?

• 35:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:28Ryan Holiday?

  You've heard of that?

• 35:29Speaker 03

  I love this. I love these.

• 35:30Ryan Holiday?

  He was here a couple of weeks ago.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  These two books I, I, I think of a lot.

• 35:34Ryan Holiday?

  Are you a Springsteen fan?

• 35:36Speaker 03

  Not necessarily. I mean, no, I, I don't dislike him, but.

• 35:39Ryan Holiday?

  I like this book about the Navy of Nebraska. I give that to a lot of people.

• 35:43Speaker 04

  Nebraska?

• 35:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  Ooh, tell me about Plato and the Tyrant.

• 35:46Ryan Holiday?

  No, no, the album, Nebraska.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  Okay, good.

• 35:48Ryan Holiday?

  If, if you're asking that, it's not, this book is not for you.

• 35:52Speaker 03

  Plato and the Tyrant. Tell me about that.

• 35:54Ryan Holiday?

  Uh, so Plato, obviously he's a writer about philosophy and government, it's a republic. But then, um, he feels like he needs to sort of get in the game and like actually advise people in politics. And so he, he starts working for this, uh, this guy.

• 36:09Speaker 04

  He was just here at the O'Leary.

• 36:11Ryan Holiday?

  Um, he starts working for, what's his name? Uh, Dionysus.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:16Ryan Holiday?

  And, uh.

• 36:18Ryan Holiday?

  The guy sucks. He's just like bad. And Plato is sort of like in this trap, you can't see it. He kind of, it's like, it's like people now who like, they see what they want to see in Trump. And they think they can reform him and use him to their own purposes. And it goes badly for all of them. That's what it's, and so it's about Plato and that. He wrote another book that I love, it's more connected to the Stokes, which is like Seneca is Nero's teacher. And so how does this really smart man creates such a horrendous protege? And why didn't he leave sooner?

• 36:51Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:52Ryan Holiday?

  And it's all, it's all about that.

• 36:53Speaker 03

  About just seeing what you want to see and not.

• 36:55Ryan Holiday?

  Totally. I mean, you see this, like, how many, how many teams think, oh, we can, we can fix that guy. Or we can change him, or it'll be different here.

• 37:03Speaker 03

  The inside view, right? Like, that's what we always say.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  So many years now, I've realized you can't.

• 37:08Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  You're not fixing anyone.

• 37:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 02

  You're either putting up with it or managing around it.

• 37:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 37:14Speaker 03

  I will say that's what their, their culture.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Sometimes the goal is, if the goal is to fix, if we, if the person can be useful.

• 37:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  That's one thing, but.

• 37:23Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  To fix someone then to become useful.

• 37:25Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Usually they never become useful.

• 37:27Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, that's a really interesting distinction. Right. If, if you're like, hey, I think we can absorb them into the culture, we'll get something out of it. That's different than they're broken and I can fix them and then they'll be what I want them to be.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:39Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  That's usually where.

• 37:40Speaker 03

  And I think what they're really good at is.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Success story on that.

• 37:43Ryan Holiday?

  No, character is fate, as they say.

• 37:45Speaker 03

  And they, what they're really good at is, we're not bringing you on, Ryan. But you can only bring part of yourself with you.

• 37:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  Right? Like, we know what we're dealing with. So bring your whole self, as long as this part, which is the football part.

• 37:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Speaker 03

  Is right, then we don't care what you do, I'm sorry.

• 38:01Ryan Holiday?

  But, and also the.

• 38:02Speaker 03

  Like, that's a big deal.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Within reason.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  Within, I mean, yeah.

• 38:05Ryan Holiday?

  The lie people tell themselves though is like, it'll be different here. Cause our culture's so good.

• 38:09Speaker 03

  Right.

• 38:09Ryan Holiday?

  Like, you know, we're gonna have these guardrails in place, we're gonna do this. And it's like, it always goes the same.

• 38:16Speaker 03

  But it is interesting, there's a, there's a kind of an offshoot of it. So somebody like Baker Mayfield.

• 38:21Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 03

  Who had gotten deflated for whatever reason when he was in Cleveland. And he comes into our culture. And because he is such a high-energy guy and all he had to do was think about football, which is what he wanted to do. And he wasn't the first overall pick, he was not in. Two days later, he leads one of the great comebacks in, right? He revitalized his love for football.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Let's just say we're in football. This is our task list of how to help the Rams be good today. So we say whoever we bring in, just give them the task list. We all work together, count towns to good. Not okay before that person can execute his or her task. We now have to change these, what we would consider maybe, you know, flaws inadequacy that we're having. So it's never about changing the person. It's more about inviting the person in.

• 39:18Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Give them our task list and we all.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  But it's also true. You've changed over time over where now you you really look at it as like you're selecting people into almost like special forces. It's an elite thing where you're not, you know, bringing somebody in.

• 39:36Ryan Holiday?

  Careful.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  Try to develop.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  You might can change. A culture probably can influence by degrees.

• 39:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:42Speaker 02

  But not by time.

• 39:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, right. You're not going to, they're not going to become someone totally different. Like Kyrie Irving is always going to be Kyrie Irving, which is to say

• 39:53Ryan Holiday?

  a problem. You know what I mean? He's always going to be, yeah, I did say that. It's like, hey, how many teams is this guy going to blow up before you go? He blows up teams. That's what he does because he's.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Or they have a shelf life and you and you have to know that. And know what going in and not think to your point that it'll be different here.

• 40:11Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, right.

• 40:12Speaker 03

  That's a great name of a book. It'll be different here.

• 40:14Ryan Holiday?

  It's different this time. It's the thing.

• 40:19Ryan Holiday?

  This book, you would like this about the history of notebooks.

• 40:24Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, and then I told you I'd give you the Joan Gideon book. We were sitting at her table about.

• 40:29Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. I mean, Year of Magical Thinking is one of like just the most.

• 40:34Ryan Holiday?

  So you're magical. Devastating beautiful. Blue Nights is about the death of her daughter.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  I read that too, which is amazing.

• 40:40Ryan Holiday?

  This is so what she never talks about in Blue Nights is her daughter didn't just drop dead. She's an alcoholic.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:45Ryan Holiday?

  And so they obviously struggled with it as a family for a long time. And this is every week she would go to therapy and trying to work on herself because that's all you can control. But then also what did they do about the situation with their daughter? And after each session, she would write this. Like basically write up verbatim what happened in the session, what she learned.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 41:07Ryan Holiday?

  And then she kept it in a little envelope or in a manila folder next to her desk and just says, Dear John, it was just addressed to her husband. And then nobody knew about it until after she died and they found it next to her desk.

• 41:18Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 41:19Ryan Holiday?

  It's kind of this like, it reads almost like, you know, like a novel where the novel's like letters. It feels like the letters of one parent to another as they're both dealing with this.

• 41:29Speaker 03

  So you're getting only one side of it and you know it, but it's also just you filling in the gap.

• 41:34Ryan Holiday?

  And you, but the tragic, the terrible part is you know how it ends and she doesn't. Not yet.

• 41:39Speaker 03

  This session, you need like something where people can just crawl up in a ball from the floor. I mean, death be not proud. Are you kidding me?

• 41:46Ryan Holiday?

  Have you read Eighty Four Charm Cross Road?

• 41:48Speaker 03

  No.

• 41:49Ryan Holiday?

  So speaking of like books of letters, okay. So this woman, she's an American writer who's trying to get a hold of this rare book. And this is right off a rule or two. And so she writes to this British bookseller at Eighty Four Charm Cross Road. And they start up this friendship and it's just a collection of her letters between her and this family over about 10 years of history. She's becoming a successful writer. They're living through like rationing and all this, it's, it's a beautiful book.

• 42:16Speaker 03

  Here's my, here's, I love ideas. So here's my new idea that we, we start letter writing again.

• 42:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  There's got to be a little desk where people can write letters here. And we're going to start the art of letter writing again.

• 42:29Ryan Holiday?

  You will like this, this notebook book is incredible though. You will like that a lot. Uh, I'm trying to think what else we might find. Wait, do we have so good you can't ignore, they can't ignore you? I'm surprised that we don't.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  Here's a good question for you. Is it James Madison?

• 42:44Ryan Holiday?

  It's James Madison.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Is there a good book on James Madison?

• 42:47Ryan Holiday?

  President?

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 42:49Ryan Holiday?

  Hmm, not that I've read, but I'll give you this one. So this is, uh, it's called A Slave in the White House. Not many people know about this book, but um, it's a biography and then a sort of a memoir from this guy named Paul Jennings, who was a slave in the Madison household. And he writes about his time working in the White House for them. He's the one that's, you know, Dolly Madison, she saves a painting. Do you think this?

• 43:16Speaker 04

  Southern lady was cutting down a painting and rolling it up like he did it.

• 43:19Speaker 03

  That's cool.

• 43:20Speaker 04

  Yes. But I had a good James Madison book. That's an interesting one. Someone was just in here the other day, like some random person, and they did a biography on Henry President.

• 43:29Speaker 03

  Where did you hear about James Madison?

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Well, it was on a podcast.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  It was on, someone has written a book and it's about how we need to, he's a homosexual atheist Jew, writing a book about that the basis of our society is Christianity and we need to be called back up into it. And he talked about it.

• 43:49Speaker 02

  But it was interesting, Madison's philosophy on how, let's call it a country's ecosystem naturally handles factions and then the ambition. And it was, I was like, wow, that was pretty brilliant. And then I was like, where's the Madison book?

• 44:07Speaker 04

  I would not read one, but I'll do that.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  It will start with his.

• 44:10Speaker 03

  You would like that book less? Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman? I just read a, it was a letter that he wrote to his wife.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 44:20Speaker 03

  And she had been dead already for several years.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  I have a better Feynman book. Let me see. Uh.

• 44:26Speaker 03

  Look, Les.

• 44:27Speaker 04

  Lacy, where's Feynman's Rainbow? I could have squeezed it.

• 44:30Speaker 03

  If you want to trigger Les, you show him this.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  You don't like that?

• 44:34Speaker 03

  He doesn't like this. We, we.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  That book or that?

• 44:37Speaker 03

  Concept of, he's like, I'm not dying here. I'm like, I might.

• 44:40Speaker 02

  What are you saying that for? For the next day?

• 44:43Speaker 04

  If you like trying to case out like this. This is Feynman as he's dying, speaking of apprentices, apprentices, and it sort of has this grad students, this kind of exchange between student and teacher. It's really, really.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  That's cool. Have you found, because it's interesting, especially being around Austin, a lot of these people are first, like, they did it themselves. They bootstrap. They didn't have somebody paving the way. And they're trying to now, like, get onto that second arc and, like, give back. And it's really interesting. The Arthur Brooks book made me think of it.

• 45:14Speaker 04

  Strength, strength. But have you read The Second Mountain?

• 45:17Speaker 03

  No.

• 45:18Speaker 04

  Uh, I don't think I have that. Uh, The Second Mountain is by David Brooks and it's about what you do in the second half of your career. It shouldn't be just more of the same thing. Their second mountain is sort of more.

• 45:32Speaker 03

  The first book we ever, um, read together was David Brooks, The Social Animal.

• 45:37Speaker 04

  Social Animal.

• 45:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:39Speaker 04

  Stanley McChrystal's new book on character, very good.

• 45:42Speaker 03

  Oh, that would be cool. I was thinking about him. So when you were talking about, when you guys were in the podcast and you were talking about that you can tell if somebody's writing something, doing something, and there's bad intention behind it. He said on something, and I can't get it out of my mind, intention has a smell.

• 46:04Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 46:05Speaker 03

  And so you know when somebody wants something from you, or you know when somebody's doing something that's, um, so when football season comes around and everybody wants tickets?

• 46:16Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 46:16Speaker 03

  You, you, and all of a sudden they're inviting you to lunch?

• 46:19Speaker 04

  Hi.

• 46:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, you could smell it on people like a bag of lunch. So same thing with writing books, that you're trying to accomplish something instead of just writing a book.

• 46:28Speaker 04

  No, I can tell too when people want book, or.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  And we just connected with him and.

• 46:33Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, he lives here.

• 46:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I just saw him the other night and Les had to, had to email him because he now has the second lowest cholesterol in the history of the Rams, thanks to Peter and Tia. He's very excited about it.

• 46:47Speaker 04

  That's, that's quite an achievement. I win competitive mode, so I get paid credit for it. Are you still eating only sardines and your friends or whatever you're eating? I go in phases, so sardines are not a regular anymore, even though they're still good.

• 47:03Speaker 03

  You would, and you guys got into it some.

• 47:05Speaker 04

  I think fraud is a movie. It is. Oh, yeah. Never.

• 47:09Speaker 03

  That, that to me is another thing, playing it, yeah. And, and we talk about it a lot, like.

• 47:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, if you're in sports.

• 47:17Speaker 03

  If you're in sports, it's like, what are we doing? Are we trying to win? Or are we trying to?

• 47:21Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 47:22Speaker 03

  You know, just not get fired. And you do feel, I hear him on the phone, I'm not naming names, but I hear him on the phone with other general managers and you're like, difference between people who are. A, you're stable because you're in a good ecosystem. So you're not worried about your job. But also, like, some people make bold moves and some people, that's just not how they're wired.

• 47:44Speaker 02

  With sports, I might be, I even take it to another level. We're really trying to do something special.

• 47:50Speaker 03

  Hey Les, be honest about something. You ready?

• 47:52Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  Okay. At the end of your career, are you going to be most excited about the people you helped? Or your Super Bowl ring?

• 48:00Speaker 02

  I'll answer that by saying, because we have the Super Bowl ring.

• 48:04Speaker 03

  It's easier to say?

• 48:05Speaker 02

  Yes, I can be jacked about helping.

• 48:08Speaker 03

  Here.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  I'll show you guys my house.

• 48:15Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.