How To Forgive When They’re Not Sorry | It’s Not a Principle Unless It Costs You Something

It would be nice if they got it. If they understood why they did it. How they hurt us. What it meant to us. And maybe they will…someday. -- 🎥 Watch the full episode with Codie Sanchez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTRmrzSCbaI here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTRmrzSCbaI 👉 Follow Codie Sanchez on Instagram @codiesanchez https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez/?hl=en, onTikTok @Codie_Sanche https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchezz, and on YouTube @CodieSanchezCT https://www.youtube.com/@CodieSanchezCT 📚 Grab signed copies of Main Street Millionaire by Codie Sanchez https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/main-street-millionaire-how-to-make-extraordinary-wealth-buying-ordinary-businesses?_pos=1&_sid=c81c995fb&_ss=r at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com/ https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/main-street-millionaire-how-to-make-extraordinary-wealth-buying-ordinary-businesses?_pos=1&_sid=c81c995fb&_ss=r 🎟️ DAILY STOIC LIVE https://www.dailystoiclive.com/| Ryan Holiday is coming to a city near you https://www.dailystoiclive.com/! Grab tickets here https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ | https://www.dailystoiclive.com/ 🎙️ AD-FREE https://dailystoic.supercast.com/| Support the podcast and go deeper into Stoicism by subscribing to The Daily Stoic Premium https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ - unlock ad-free listening, early access, and bonus content: https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ https://dailystoic.supercast.com/ ✉️ FREE STOIC WISDOM https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail | Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail -- Stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. Visit ironwall.com/DAILYSTOIC and request a free Risk Assessment to see exactly how exposed your executives are. -- Wealthfront’s high-yield cash account: https://www.wealthfront.com/stoic This experience may not be representative of other Wealthfront clients, and there is no guarantee of future performance or success. Experiences will vary. Ryan Holiday, who’s a client of Wealthfront, receives cash compensation from Wealthfront Brokerage for paid testimonials in his podcast, creating a conflict of interest. More details available via the referral link. The Direct Deposit Plus Investing Program from Wealthfront Advisers LLC and Wealthfront Brokerage LLC provides eligible clients a 0.25% APY increase above the base APY on eligible Cash Account balances (up to an overall boosted rate of 4.30% for a limited time when including the three month 0.75% APY boost for new clients) when you direct deposit $1,000 a month, plus open, fund, and maintain an investing account. Wealthfront may change or end the program at any time and determine eligibility at its discretion. Terms apply. Full details at wealthfront.com/promo-terms. The Cash Account, which is not a deposit account, is offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC ("Wealthfront Brokerage"), Member FINRA/SIPC. Wealthfront Brokerage is not a bank. The Annual Percentage Yield ("APY") on cash deposits as of January 30, 2026, is representative, requires no minimum, and may change at any time. References to the APY for the Wealthfront Cash Account, including any APY increase, are to the APY paid by insured depository institutions that participate in our cash sweep program (the "Program Banks”). Wealthfront Brokerage does not pay interest. Wealthfront Brokerage sweeps cash balances to Program Banks, where they earn the variable APY. Instant and same-day withdrawals use the Real-Time Payments (RTP) network or FedNow service. Transfers may be limited by your receiving institution, daily caps, or participating entities. New Cash Account deposits have a 2–4 day hold before transfer. Wealthfront does not charge fees for these services, but receiving institutions may impose an RTP or FedNow Fee. Processing times may vary.. Fees & Eligibility requirements may apply to certain checking features. Investment advisory services are provided by Wealthfront Advisers LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Securities investments are not bank deposits, bank-guaranteed or FDIC-insured, and may lose value. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key Stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world.

• 0:15Ryan Holiday?

  How to forgive when they're not sorry? It would be nice if they got it, if they understood why they did it, how they hurt us, what it meant to us. And maybe they will someday. But in the meantime, are you going to keep carrying around that pain? Keep burning with resentment? Keep waiting unfulfilled? You don't control whether they understand what they did, the Stoics would say. You don't control if someone is really sorry or if they feel bad. You know what you do control? You control whether or not you understand them. You control whether or not you feel bad. You control whether or not you forgive and move on.

• 0:58Ryan Holiday?

  It's been said that forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. And this is exactly right. It's a transaction that in the best case scenario involves both parties, but truly only requires one.

• 1:23Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. When people think business, when people think capitalism, they don't tend to think justice. If anything, we tend to lay at capitalism's feet all the injustices of the world. Exploitation, greed, pollution, corruption. It's true, these things are part of the history of business. They're part of the global commerce system right at this very moment. But at the same time, I have found running Daily Stoic, which is a business, as a fascinating opportunity to apply these very ideas.

• 2:07Ryan Holiday?

  As a business owner, you have choices. Are you going to cut corners? Are you going to externalize negative consequences that maybe aren't illegal, but aren't great for the world? Do you just tell yourself, oh, this is what everyone is doing? This is how the game is played? Or are you going to operate with integrity, with values? Are you going to do things that sometimes aren't in your best financial interests, but are how you would want to be treated as a customer, as a human being? One of the things about being a business owner is that you're no longer on the sidelines. You decide what people get paid. You decide what raw materials to use. You decide what vendors to use. You decide what platforms to use. You decide where to sell your things and not sell your things.

• 2:52Ryan Holiday?

  You decide what to price your things at. You decide even in the most basic customer service exchanges, right? How are you going to treat someone? And we get this at Daily Stoic all the time. You get an angry customer who's being fundamentally unkind. How do you treat them in return? So that's what I want to talk about in today's episode. How justice applies to business? Because if it doesn't apply to business, what good is this virtue? The whole point of Stoic philosophy is it's a thing that you apply, whatever it is that you're doing, wherever you are doing it. If justice was only in politics, if justice was only the law, if justice was only for activists, then it would be letting

• 3:36Ryan Holiday?

  the rest of us off the hook, right? If justice is just something we hold, big, enormous corporations that employ thousands or hundreds of thousands of people, well, again, we're letting ourselves off the hook. But it's not about us, it's not about them, it's about us. And in today's episode, I am talking to Codie Sanchez, who is an investor, entrepreneur. You've probably seen her YouTube videos or her stuff on social media. She was formerly at Goldman Sachs and Vanguard. And now she buys and builds and invests in Main Street businesses. And she wrote a really good book, published by the same publisher that I have, called Main Street Millionaire. And in today's episode, we're talking about ownership in business and entrepreneurship as a moral test.

• 4:18Ryan Holiday?

  How being close to the people on both sides of the exchange affects and should impact your business decisions. And as I say in the episode, not that I'm the originator of this expression at all, but it's not a principle unless it costs you money, right? Unless it costs you something. So how does that apply to business? The Stoic virtues are meant for real life. And you might have listened to some of our other episodes with Cody, where we are applying these virtues in different domains. We did this long episode where we dived into all of them. But I wanted to break this up into little parts. And so here we are talking about Stoic virtue of justice in the business world. Let's get into it. You can follow her on pretty much all platforms,

• 5:02Ryan Holiday?

  @CodySanchez, all linked to her in today's show notes. Sometimes it's got a underscore. I think on YouTube, it's Codie Sanchez CT. But let's just get into it.

• 5:22Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, let's talk about justice. So I think when people think business, they're probably not thinking justice, right? Because they're thinking the law, they're thinking legal standards. But I would say it's good that we live in a capitalistic society. It's this powerful engine. It unlocks creativity and there's more resilience to it than there is in central planning. But I've always believed that with that freedom comes the sort of voluntary responsibility, right? Which in a way makes it harder, because it's like, if you lived in a world where right and wrong was very prescribed by the law, then it would be clear what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do, and you wouldn't have to think that much about it. But a business world where you can basically do whatever you want

• 6:04Ryan Holiday?

  within some reason, means that the business owner has a lot of discretion about how they choose to run their business and their life. This is why I've always admired John Mackey at Whole Foods. Like, nobody, he's like as libertarian as they come. He's like, the government should not tell anyone how to do anything. But he's like, with my business, I want to pay my workers well. I want to make sure the, like, these are my environmental standards. These are my humane standards for like meat and stuff like that. This is the benefits I want to provide. This is how I want to give back. So he's saying, you, the government, don't get to tell me what to do, but I'm going to tell myself what to do beyond what you probably would have told me what to do if you had to say.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I think actually what's happened with our businesses is we become less just as humans every time we remove ourselves a little bit further from the hand on the fire. And so in my mind, one of the biggest things that's gone bad for business when it comes to justice is public stocks, third-party investors, and short-term incentives. And so I think most CEOs and business owners actually want to be John Mackey.

• 7:10Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Because you see it on the small business spectrum. They actually have pretty good compensation, market rates. By and large, these people treat their employees well. Their small business employee happiness is 40, 60% higher than big business employee happiness. So like the net normal, we are all some version, maybe less slightly altruistic than John Mackey. What happens then? Well, then you start to get people who are shareholders in the financial benefit of the company, but nothing else. And that, I think, is where capitalism's gone a little screwy. And why I like private companies and not public companies. Because public companies are beholden to four months.

• 7:54Speaker 01

  You know, they have quarterly goals and that's it. And every, you know, three-month session when the quarter comes, they're using the next quarter to think ahead about what the next quarterly call is. And so I'm curious to see, because this is a little technical, but you know, we've seen since basically the 1990s was the height of public stock market investing. That was also when most companies ever were listed on the public exchanges. Since then, we have had, that was about 9,000 companies were publicly listed. Now there's about 4,000 companies publicly listed. Why? Because you get a colonoscopy nonstop. Because you have to have like three people in your mind, which is your shareholders, your employees, and your customers. They're kind of all at war slightly with each other, but definitely the shareholders are at war. And then you have all this government red tape

• 8:38Speaker 01

  about what you got to do with your company overall. And so I think that what happened in our society is that public companies and the stock market created this false buffer between what happens to employees and customers and what happens to shareholders and Wall Street. And because of that, we have really bad incentives. And environmental standards are really hard to care about when you work in three-month cycles. And so all of that to say, when you run a small business, the great part, you can actually compete with the big guys in a lot of ways that they can't.

• 9:12Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I would also say that one of the perks of running a small business is it's both the perk and the burden of it, which is like, as a regular person, it's really easy to have opinions. Like, this is what I think the minimum wage should be. This is what I think outsourcing is gross or unethical, or I think people should do this or that. And then, yeah, then you have a business and you have to buy employee uniforms. And making them in the US costs $20 a t-shirt and making them in China costs $4 a t-shirt. And now all of a sudden, this principle costs you money. And you might think, okay, so the business says, we'll obviously go with the cheaper one. But if it's your business and it's your reputation

• 9:54Ryan Holiday?

  and you have to justify and rationalize all these decisions, both to yourself and other people, then all of a sudden, you have to, you get to decide, right? And you have a responsibility to decide. And so to me, there's something really empowering about running a business, because it's like, you don't control the world. You only have one vote in an election. But in your business, you get constant votes and says over how you think things should be done. And then you get to do them that way. Or not, and turn out you're full of shit.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  And you get to see the consequences of actions. Because a lot of times, you can say things that sound great and are idiotic in life. Like, you know, there are lots of arguments to raise the minimum wage. And you could believe in that or not. But when you do it inside of your business, you go, okay. So when I raised it that much, now I can't hire these other 10 people.

• 10:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  So what, is that good or bad?

• 10:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  I don't know. But there's actually data and math associated. You can't have everything all at once. And so you get to start to play with the supply and demand economics. The other cool part about having a business is, if you have a strong opinion, Go put some money and work behind it.

• 10:56Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  And so I think these days, like, I loved the line, God, I can't remember who it was from, but the line was basically like, oh, I think it's Jordan Peterson, what he talks about, like, before you go try to change the world with charity, why don't you go try to make your first dollars? Because dollars often move further than straight charity.

• 11:11Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Do I agree with that in every way? No, but dollars do move the world. I've seen it firsthand. It's one of the reasons we run businesses the way that we do, because my belief is, if we put more small businesses in the hands of local citizens, those businesses will keep money in the local economy, they'll hire from the local economy, and they will have happier citizens. Plus, like, I don't want to go to another Starbucks. I want to go to the coffee shop next to Ryan's store on Bastrop, right? I just like that local experience. And so I've put my money where my mouth is, which is, I could very easily, the way we started our business, was buying a bunch of businesses. And I still own many businesses, but I used to buy them outright. That's private equity. And at some point, I was like, well, if I keep doing that, I am the thing I hate in the world.

• 11:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  And so I can't-

• 11:58Ryan Holiday?

  You roll them up, you create a centralized structure, you eliminate inefficiencies.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  You cut costs over time. So I could have kept doing that. And then I said, well, instead, let's go educate people about how to buy these businesses. Now, what's fascinating is, we're so indoctrinated to the way that society works, that people think private equity and running businesses like that is better than teaching people online. They think that if you teach people online to buy businesses, it's some sort of scam, or shill, or whatever. And I kind of understand that, because there's a lot of people who shill things. But I go back to, like, when did we get indoctrinated to that? That if I took two and 20, which is how they do expenses in private equity, of your dollars, that would be better than a one-time fee that will be 1/1,000th the cost of a business that you buy. And so you do have to pick. That was my stance.

• 12:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  And I think the cool part about when you run a business, pick a stance, and see, see what you're capable of holding the line of. And how strongly do you actually believe in the things? We, I think every company should have a creed, the mission statement, there's lots of ways to do it. A lot of them are bullshit.

• 12:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  I've seen them all. Everybody thinks you need to throw one up on the wall. I believe they deeply, deeply actually change how a business operates. And ours, we have, we have a countering creed. There are 13 rules, 13, because we believe in making our own luck. And the first one is, that those who believe that it's impossible should get out of the way of those of us who are doing it. And so, like, every single line on that creed says what we stand for. You know, you should tell the truth, even when it hurts, maybe especially then. And then it gets to maybe, maybe you get to indoctrinate more people into your ideology in the world. And what a better way to do that than business.

• 13:36Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and it's, as I say, it's not a principle until it costs you something, right?

• 13:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good.

• 13:40Ryan Holiday?

  And I told this story, and for many years, when I would talk about the stoic virtues, about this decision that CVS made, like, a decade and a half ago, they just decided that if we're like a health company, why do we sell cigarettes? Like, it's bad for people, and we're gonna stop. So they do, and it costs them, I don't know, a billion dollars a year, or something in revenue. And people were like, why? Like, the rationalization to sell it is, lots of other stores sell cigarettes, and if people want to get cigarettes, they'll just buy them somewhere else. And, and, and so, they're like, look, if, if people buy this many cigarettes a year, and CVS stops participating, the same amount of cigarettes will be sold, it'll just be distributed a little bit differently. But actually, what

• 14:21Ryan Holiday?

  happened is cigarette sales nationwide go down. Not like significantly, but just some percentage of those people that used to buy it from their neighborhood CVS, or the one they would walk by in New York City, just stopped. They, they smoked less cigarettes because they were harder to get. So, so they make this decision that's, that's probably mostly about branding and, you know, reputation, and they got a lot of press when it came out. But actually, they affect nationwide the sales of cigarettes, which, you know, blah, blah, blah, less people die from lung cancer as a result of this decision. And I would talk about that, and I always thought it was cool. And then, a couple of years ago, there's this little grocery store down the street from here, that's been in business since the 40s, and it went up for sale. And my wife and I ended up, long story short,

• 15:04Ryan Holiday?

  owning this thing. Not our dream, not what we expected, we were gonna be like silent partners in it, and now, it's ours and we're running it. And as we're sort of doing the diligence after having bought it, which is not how you're supposed to do, I'm looking at, what are the most popular, like, what are our most successful sales? And month in and month out, it's tobacco products. And now I have to go, fuck, okay, I don't like this. I don't want this. And so you, you take them out. And then what you're actually doing is just putting a giant hole in the, in the, in the P and L of a business. And, and not only are you doing that, but people are coming in and going, what? You know, they're like mad at you for changing the place. But I had to go, hey, I can't just

• 15:46Ryan Holiday?

  go around talking about this thing, and saying that I believe it when somebody else does it.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:51Ryan Holiday?

  But then, when it, in my own business, not want to remove 8% of revenue, or whatever it is, and then have to be creative and come up with a way to compensate. But that, that is what owning a business allows you to do, is take these sort of vague, abstract notions or values, or opinions that you have, and then you either have, you have to put up or shut up.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know what else is interesting, too, is when you put yourself out into the world, the world tests it.

• 16:19Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  And so, you know, like, I kind of always chuckle, we're, we're pretty hardcore at my company. We're intense, we work a lot, I'm pretty intense, I give a lot of feedback. And I imagine at some point, there will be a hit piece.

• 16:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Because that just tends to happen.

• 16:34Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Happens a lot with women CEOs, too.

• 16:36Ryan Holiday?

  You let go a certain number of people, some percentage of them are disgruntled.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  100%. And we're in it, blah, blah, blah. And I always kind of chuckle at that, because I go, when they say that, I'm just gonna respond, I resemble that comment. Because the, the truth is, that if you hang out with Cody over here-

• 16:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  And you hang out with Cody online, she's kind of the same thing.

• 16:55Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  At least, like, I don't try on purpose, I mean, less makeup, you know, not as put together, like, those things, right? But the cool part about when you put yourself online, is you really have to look yourself at the face, because somebody will find you if you are not. And we have seen it. We've seen all the people who pretend to be X, and then one day, that real self comes out, and it will destroy you. It can absolutely eviscerate your reputation. And I always liked the Warren Buffett-ism, which is, you can make a mistake with the dollar, but you can't make a mistake with my reputation. If you do so, you'll be fired. And he says it more eloquently than that, but I believe that to the deep core of, of my being, you know? The only thing you can really do wrong in my businesses, is if you lie, cheat, or steal, or you hurt a reputation.

• 17:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  If you make mistakes, if you want to leave, if you give me hard feedback, you, you have a little attitude sometimes. Okay.

• 17:44Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  That's fine, we can do all those things. But I do think business is a great mirror.

• 17:49Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  And, and money is a cool metric, because scoreboard often can tell you, like, am I believing and doing the things correctly that I say I would in the world?

• 17:59Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I did a piece a couple of years ago, that was, you are what you won't do for money. So like, where do you draw the line? Where you're like, somebody's offering you X to do Y, and money is a hard thing to say no to.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:12Ryan Holiday?

  And I think early in my career, there were things I did for money that were not in accordance with my values, and the discomfort from that, or the, the, the risk inherent in that, you, you learn, you learn over time, that the best and the safest thing is to, like, mean what you say, and to not be a hypocrite, and to, to, to try to genuinely do your best to bring, like, how you operate in accordance with, like, who you want to be. Mark Schurloos has this line of, of not doing anything that requires curtains. Like, and, and, and anything that you wouldn't want, like, if, if your customers knew where

• 18:54Ryan Holiday?

  your product was made, or the conditions under which it was made, or how you talked to people over email, or whatever. If, if you have this exposure to, like, hey, if people found out about this, that would be bad for me, the market is giving you a really strong signal, not to get better public relations, or, you know, to, to enforce stricter NDAs, it's telling you, you gotta change.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You know, it's, I, I remember I had an employee, actually, that was incredible employee, really thought highly of her. She could have gone far at the company, but she broke one of the golden rules, which is, she said really bad things about a client in a channel to our team.

• 19:33Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  And we just have a, a hard line, that is one of the fireable offenses.

• 19:36Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, it's, what if they saw it? And also, what if they realize that's what we think of them?

• 19:42Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, right.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  Like, how could you go and spend your life trying to make our clients' life better if you think they are dumb, and incapable, and should never be in this? If that is what you think, then one, we should say, hey, you're not a fit for us-

• 19:55Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  -because X, or you should never say that about your customers. And it's actually a really good lesson in business, that all of us have to remind ourselves about, because you're, somebody, a customer's gonna drive you fucking crazy at some point.

• 20:06Ryan Holiday?

  Well, and then it presents you, like, when we say the obstacle is the way, the opportunity there is, as expensive as that is, and frustrating as that is, it's also a chance for you to say to everyone else, hey, this person, I, I don't want to lose this person. This person does drive value for the business, but they acted in a way that is in violation of our values, and I'm willing to take the hit. This is the problem that Uber got in, in, before the sort of turnaround, which is, like, they would make these exceptions for the star performers, right? And what that created was a sort of culture where sexual harassment was prevalent, and that people were saying things that, like, by the way, when the, when the, the lawyers discovered them in discovery, they

• 20:49Ryan Holiday?

  were, there was a vulnerability there, right? Like, you, the decision to go, hey, I'm gonna let this person go, even though they drive value to the business because they don't follow the rules, or they do X, Y, and Z, that's a really, it's a hard thing to do, but it's also a really powerful thing to do inside the company.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, and the other thing, it's also okay for you to pull this stuff up and show it to your boss. Like, I think too seldom- People don't hold the person who is ahead of them in line, too.

• 21:19Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, sure.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  And so like, you know, if you're an employee and your boss has rules and the boss doesn't stick with the rules. If you're an employee and you're being held to a standard, but they're not holding the standard. I think you might be surprised at what happens when you bring that boundary up to them and say, hey, I am happy to do that. But I just want to note, because I know that you, as the head,

• 21:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  are the representative for everybody else at the company. And you care more than anybody else what happens here because you want to make more money, more success. You're such an incredible leader, a little flattery goes a long way. And then you can say, but you're doing this and I don't think that's in concert. Like, you can say that to your boss. And in fact, if you're in a place where you cannot say that to your boss, you should leave.

• 21:58Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. Hey, I thought our values, we only, we only make stuff in the US. But like, here we are, the people who make our boxes, doing it cheaper X, Y, and Z. Is you, you want like, I'm bringing this contradiction. It's ultimately your call as the boss, but like, I'm going to present this contradiction to you. A good lesson to learn, I remember I was having to talk to my agent about something. And I was like, I was talking to my wife about it. I was like, what if he gets mad? You know, what if I, what if, if I, I think, hey, I think this part of our arrangement's unfair and I want to change it. And I was like, what if he gets mad? And she was like, that's such an insight into your childhood that you, you're concerned about doing something that's right and getting yelled at for it.

• 22:39Ryan Holiday?

  She's like, if, if he doesn't respond well, he shouldn't be your agent anymore. And like, that's a really bad sign. And, and so I went to him and I was like, hey, I don't think this is fair. And he was like, you're totally right. Let's fix it. And I was like, oh, okay. So that's exactly what you would want to see. And so, yeah, this is also why you want to do business with ethical people as well.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think there's nothing wrong with you bringing up the truth in business to people around you. And more often than not, it's really hard.

• 23:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  And there is someone right now that you're picturing who doesn't treat you right in business, who doesn't treat other people next to you right. And I think like, it's a very powerful thing to just lean into them. And I always like to do it this way and say, hey, I don't know if you're open to feedback. But if you are, have a little thing that I think might be helpful for you. Who's going to say no to that? Very few people. So you say, they say, okay, yeah. You say, well, I've noticed that the way that you've treated Samantha kind of demoralizes her.

• 23:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  And it doesn't seem like it's working. And I only know that because it's happened a few times to me, too. I think that it might be more helpful if you did it like this. Are you open to trying a different way? And what you're doing right then, you're sandwiching the tough feedback

• 23:50Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  with two open-ended questions that are very kind and hard to say no to.

• 23:54Ryan Holiday?

  And if they do say no, they've told you a lot, right?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  If they say no, you say, that's not for me. Or you, you know, do like, one of the things my mentors taught me back in the day, if they say no, you do something very simple, which is, you know what? That doesn't work for me. And a lot of times, there's not, there's not a way to argue for that doesn't work for me.

• 24:12Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 24:13Speaker 01

  And so you might have to leave, you might have to change, but you might also be shocked how often it works.

• 24:18Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, I have a, I talked about this in the courage book. I had a moment like that where I, I went to my boss when I was at American Apparel. He'd asked me to do something I thought was unethical. And I was like, I don't want to do that. And, and I was nervous about losing my job. And it's like, why would I want to, why would I be nervous about losing a job that's asking me to do something unethical? In fact, that should be very clarifying, right? It could be, the answer could be disappointing, but, but it shouldn't be something you're afraid of. Because if, if you don't get the answer you want, you did get the answer you want

• 24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:49Ryan Holiday?

  to another question, which is, should I continue to be a part of this?

• 24:53Speaker 01

  Or you might even have something happen, which is you didn't understand the whole picture. You know, so I might be like, why do you keep demoralizing Samantha? She might be like, Samantha's on her fourth port performance review and we should probably let her go, go when she stole last month. And you're like, oh, fuck, okay. Well, maybe I'm, maybe I'm wrong. There could be some likelihood, you know?