Ryan Interviews Brent Underwood, Ghost Town Proprietor

On this special bonus episode of the Daily Stoic podcast, Ryan interviews Brent Underwood, a partner in Ryan's marketing endeavors and the owner of an actual ghost town, Cerro Gordo. They discuss the practice of Stoicism when you're the only person around for hundreds of square miles.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better. Follow @DailyStoic:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow along with Cerro Gordo, the ghost town, on Instagram at:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cerro.gordo.ca/Website: https://cerrogordomines.com/And Brent at:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brentwunderwood/Website: http://brentunderwood.com/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

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

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to The Daily Stoic, where each day we read a short passage designed to help you cultivate the strength, insight, wisdom necessary for living the good life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us at dailystoic.com.

• 0:28Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Today, we've got a special episode. I'm interviewing someone that you probably haven't heard of. His name is Brent Underwood, but he's someone that I talk to three, four, sometimes five times a day. I actually met Brent in 2011, 2012, before any of my books had came out. He actually started as my intern, and he worked at Brass Check, which is my marketing company for a very long time. And he proved himself to be so talented and capable and creative that he ended up becoming a partner in the company. And so when Brass Check started Daily Stoic, I was writing the book Daily Stoic,

• 1:11Ryan Holiday?

  and I had this idea, hey, what if we built out a website about it and an email list? And then maybe there could be products at some point or a podcast. It was natural that Brent would be a big part of that, because we were applying, for the first time, a lot of the advice that we've been giving to clients over the years. It was our turn to do those things internally. So Brent has been an integral part of Daily Stoic over the last three-plus years. And in fact, many of you may have heard of Daily Stoic through something Brent set up, whether it was an email funnel, or an article that he promoted, or one of the social media accounts that he put up. Brent is... I do the writing. I make the stuff. And Brent is the one who helps me bring it to the world. He helped realize our first products.

• 1:56Ryan Holiday?

  I remember I was walking through the Austin airport, and I'd been thinking about Momentum Mori, and I had this idea that I wanted to do a Momentum Mori tangible totem that you could carry around. And I called him, and I said, Brent, I have This idea, I want to do a Momentum Mori like coin, like a challenge coin, something you could carry in your pocket. And I was like, there's gotta be like a mint that makes these that you could get to make us something cool. And from that came one of the first products we did for Daily Stoic. And now, you know, tens of thousands of people carry this all over the world. So Brent is just been a great partner and collaborator of mine and a longtime fan and follower of the Stoics. Obviously, that's sort of a prerequisite

• 2:39Ryan Holiday?

  for working with Daily Stoic or with me. And Brent's got a lot of range. You know, we talked about David Epstein's stuff. When I, when Brent was my intern at Brass Check, he also had a backpacker hostel in Brooklyn. And then he moved to Austin and he set one up here, which I'm one of the investors in. We own some properties together. And then more recently, he took this big swing, crazy gamble, and he bought a ghost town near Death Valley called Cerro Gordo, which he's been in the process of specking out into this sort of resort. And I remember we were talking on the phone a couple of weeks ago, as the quarantine had sort of come to Texas,

• 3:22Ryan Holiday?

  and Brent was going stir crazy in his apartment. And I said, hey, you know, look, obviously, we can't see each other, but you're welcome to come sort of walk around on the farm anytime you want. If you need to get some space. And he's like, you know what? Would it be crazy if I just got in my car and I drove to Cerro Gordo? And I said, no, I actually think it'd probably be fascinating. And he did it. And so he's been there the last couple of weeks. He's actually just in the New York Post doing a profile on him because, you know, that's a weird place to be locked down. But you know, that's Brent's style. And so we've been doing more interviews. Brent was someone I wanted to talk to, as I think you guys will find his story relatable. I think it's sort of a peek behind the curtain on how Daily Stoic works. And he's just a

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  fascinating guy. So here is my conversation with Brent Underwood. I'm here in Austin, and he is out in Cerro Gordo, 8,000 feet above sea level, snowed in, running low on supplies. So I think it'll make for a great interview.

• 4:22Ryan Holiday?

  All right. Hey Brent. So you are talking to us from Cerro Gordo right now. What's it like?

• 4:29Speaker 01

  It's hailing right now. I am in our card room, which is the room with a bullet hole and a blood stain on the floor. I have a small Vornado heater next to me to try to keep me warm and reasonable internet. So here we are.

• 4:44Ryan Holiday?

  So I think the question is, so you were in Austin and things were looking bad. And you said, hey, I'm going to make a move. Let me, let me get away from this. Did you, did you do your pre-Meditatsho Malorum that it might actually be worse? In a ghost town at, at 8,000 feet above sea level in early spring? Or is this catching you by surprise?

• 5:07Speaker 01

  No, a little bit. So I thought the worst case scenario would be I had the virus and I ended up here without access to adequate medical help. And I think that was the biggest concern for me. Two weeks passed and that was kind of out the window. So I was feeling pretty good. But I, no, I had not anticipated getting five to six feet of snow and not being able to get down our single lane road. To get groceries or anything like that. So that was not anticipated, but I guess I am practicing a more fatty and trying to enjoy the time as I can, use the time to, you know, learn new things and, you know, just think the best of it.

• 5:46Ryan Holiday?

  Well, sort of getting right into it, I think one of the things that would be strange, but also surreal and also maybe a little inspiring about your situation is it's like, you know, Marcus had this line is like, if it's humanly possible, like tell yourself you can do it. Like people have been surviving in Cerro Gordo in the winter for, you know, well over a hundred years. So like, you know, it's possible, right? Is it, is it weird thinking like, who has been there and what has happened in the buildings that you're in?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, definitely. I mean, it's it's impossible to escape the past here. The buildings are ones that have been up since eighteen sixty-five. You know, the corridor that I'm sitting in right now has been here since eighteen seventy-one. And like you said, guys that, guys have, at one point in time, there was five thousand residents here, and they not only survived harder winters, but instead of just doing things like podcasts and emails, they were mining underground for twelve hours a day. So it's it's certainly possible and puts things in perspective. And I think knowing that this town was here, like you said, since the Spanish influenza and will be here far after I die, there's there is a source of strength in that, I think.

• 6:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, like I was thinking of putting up a sign. As you know, our our offices for Daily Stoic are on the the main street in in Bastrop, Texas. And I was thinking about putting a sign up in the window that said something like, you know, this main street has endured the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the Spanish Flu, World War One, World War Two, the Cold War, you know, the Panic of eighteen seventy-three, the Panic of nineteen oh seven, the Great Depression, the financial crisis, Black Monday, the tech bubble. It's been through all those things, like it will get through this as well. But I could imagine, you know, I can feel that every day being, you know, in the building or or and you can feel that, you know, being in the ghost town.

• 7:41Ryan Holiday?

  But if you were in your, you know, two-year-old apartment building in in Austin, Texas, maybe maybe this really does feel like a totally unprecedented, unsurvivable event.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, if anything, it's been, I think, an incredible experience being up here. Because like you said, like, I think the last years I made excuses of why, you know, I wasn't getting as much John as I wanted or different things. And so I moved into the most brand-new apartment that you could get in Austin. You know, I got new couches, bedroom apartment like you do. And, you know, the things that I thought that might solve didn't necessarily go away. And then coming here, kind of the extreme is we don't even have running water here. This is a place that there's no running water. You heat your house by wood. You know, it's very uncomfortable generally. And I think for me, there was this. Two or three day hump where I was missing all these comforts that I thought I needed to do the things that I wanted to do.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  But then after those three days, you realize that like, I didn't need any of the stuff that I had put in this brand new apartment. I kind of felt ridiculous even having them and now. And I was able to get everything done that I wanted to do and and possibly even more being up here. And I think it is tying back to sitting here, like the men and women who lived here, lived a very tough life and they endured and their kin are still out there. And so thinking about that definitely, yeah, is is a source of strength in times like this.

• 9:06Ryan Holiday?

  Do you do you think being there, having worked on the project, having to go through this right now, is it like toughening you up in some way? I feel like like one of the benefits of having the farm for me is it's like, oh, I I know how to hunt for my own food. I know how to fix stuff. I have tools like I I I feel. E- even even though like it would be really bad if I ever got in a situation where I needed to do any of those things at any serious level. I I feel more confident in myself having knowing that I can kind of endure hardship.

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, a hundred percent. I think, you know, being up here, there's been lots of things that I don't necessarily know how to do, but you're forced into. And you realize they're not maybe as difficult as you imagine them being. Building things is one thing, like you mentioned, the other day about a deck. I don't know anything about building a deck, but.

• 10:00Ryan Holiday?

  You built a deck?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're on our little cabin on the backside of the property. You know, that little one that is removed from the town.

• 10:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  I thought that would be a good place to start. So I took some old wood from the the church, brought it over there and and built a pretty nice deck that I don't know, I'm proud of. And so like you said, now I'm confident to maybe tackle bigger projects back in the town where maybe the the stakes were a little higher because the buildings were a little nicer. But if I hadn't have come up here, I wouldn't know how to build a deck. So I hate that's that's a positive thing. And then I think as far as the confidence thing goes, like. We've been snowed in, so I, I, I literally been eating like rice and beans for the past seven to 10 days. And I, I know that's kind of like one of the stoic exercises that Tim Ferriss likes to do and different people do, or is like kind of this practicing hardships, but I'm fine. Like I'm talking to you fine. I, I'm still able to carry out my daily tasks. I, I

• 10:50Speaker 01

  still feel good. And so, you know, worst case scenario, I know that, uh, seven days of rice and beans isn't, isn't the end of the world. It's, it's, so that's, you know, I've drawn straight from that as well, I think.

• 11:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, it's, it's, I think that's what Seneca was doing when he would do these sort of days where he'd practice poverty, or, you know, Musonius Rufus was saying like, look, the reason we expose ourself to cold and hunger and blah, blah, blah, is because, hey, you could get exiled, you know, uh, things could go south. Rome could burn to the ground. You could be, you know, run afoul of the emperor, all, all these things that could happen. And, and what you realize, not that those things are fun, you wouldn't choose them, but I think the idea is getting to a place where you can go like, yeah, I can, I, I know I can do this. Like, I mean, it, it's like, uh, we, we just did that for the daily so challenge. One of the days was sleeping on the ground. There, there's not really any, maybe there's some,

• 11:45Ryan Holiday?

  some sort of pseudo health benefits for your back or something like laying on the ground. But the point is, it's like, if you, if you are someone who goes out and camps a lot, you now don't need to live in as fancy of a house because you are, you know, you can be perfectly comfortable, like sleeping in the dirt or on the ground.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, I mean, I'm not necessarily sleeping in the dirt here, but to take it to an extreme, like, it's very cold in our buildings and it's a bit spooky. This is a town that like, not to get into the paranormal or anything, but a lot of murders happened in, you know, anytime you hear a weird sound at night, you get a little bit disturbed or, or kind of freaked out. So I'll, I'll try to lean into that. I even the other, the other night, I very much dislike going into the bunkhouse here. I just think it's creepy. I don't like walking down the hallway at night. And so I like forced myself to go to the bunkhouse at night, walk down the hallway and sleep in the back room. And it's a little bit different of kind of like discomfort, but like a comfort of that kind of like, Marcus has that quote about like a rock standing still, things crash around you. Now, if I'm back in Austin

• 12:47Speaker 01

  and I hear like a weird noise in the middle of the night, it's not going to faze me at all. At least I don't think it would, you know, there's like, uh, a conditioning that's happening up here as far as a comfort level that. I'm really, in a lot of ways, grateful for him.

• 13:02Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I want to talk about the ghost thing for a second and, and maybe I'll tease a little bit because there's a ghost story in, in Lives of the Stoics, which is the next book we're doing. But I was curious too, in, as far as like deprivations go, there, there's not running water, right? So how are you showering? Are you just like jumping in the snow? Or you like, that seems like the, the cold would, would sort of, you'd be rudely reminded of the cold just doing like some sort of basic day-to-day functioning.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you're, the thought of not going with running water for a number of weeks would just be unfathomable for probably most people, for good reason, you know? It's, it's certainly, there's a level of disgustingness there that you grow to ignore, I think, just being up here. Particularly being up here with nobody else really around. So you're not worried about the social norms of walking out in public, having not showered for a number of days. But like, in practical terms, there's a lot of wet wipes, you know? Let's say like day-to-day, like hand sanitizer to wash your hands, wet wipes to wipe down your face or something. We have something called like a surf shower, I don't know if you've ever seen these things, but they look like a cooler and the cooler has a pump on the top and you can pump the cooler. And there's like a spray nozzle to essentially just like get yourself wet.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  And so when I feel the need for showering or something, the, the, the cooler pump surf shower does, does the trick pretty good. And I don't know if it's a good or a bad thing, but like, I feel more comfortable having more days passed, not showering each day, being up here. Again, I, again, not, not sure if that's a great thing, but it's something that I'm, I'm going to be more comfortable with as well.

• 14:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's hilarious. The, the ghost story I was going to say is, and we have this in Lives of the Stoics. It's either Athenodorus or Arius Didymus. I think it's Athenodorus, but, but basically the, the story is he, he goes on to be the, the mentor and the, the tutor of the, the emperor Octavian. But before he does that, he's, he's out in this Roman countryside and he's rented this big mansion and he's doing his writing there and, and, and everyone is told in this mansion is haunted. As he tells the story, he's sitting there one night writing and this ghost comes and he's dragging these heavy chains and he's making all these noises and Athenodorus is sitting

• 15:24Ryan Holiday?

  there writing and he looks up at the ghost and he motions like with his fingers like, you know, one minute, excuse me. And he finishes writing and then he gets up and, and he says to the ghost like, show me the way. And the ghost leads him out into the yard and he points to a spot and Athenodorus marks the spot and then he leaves. And in the morning, he fetches a work crew who goes and digs up the spot and sure enough, there's the bones of the ghost who, who had been haunting the, the mansion. And so they re-bury it and the ghost is never seen again. And, and what I, what I take from this story is that it's actually supposed to be sort of not saying, oh, ghosts are real. It's supposed to be saying that there,

• 16:07Ryan Holiday?

  there's a root cause of all ghost stories. You can't be afraid of them. You can't be intimidated by them. You have to get to the bottom of it and then it solves the situation. And so I, I was, I was somewhat imagining you doing that as you walk through the, the bunkhouse where I know you've supposedly had some supernatural encounters before.

• 16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the creepy. So, but yeah, that, that is a good point. Like by forcing myself to go there at night and lean into it, then it's almost that other quote, like you suffer more imagination than a reality. Like whatever was gonna happen by going into that building and going to the back room, I was gonna solve that night instead of having months of just like worrying about that building. And now at this point, like, nothing happened. Nothing, you know, I didn't get hurt. I wasn't terrified out of my mind. And so I was able to like dismiss that as a thing that was like existing in my mind for, for no real rational reason.

• 17:00Ryan Holiday?

  So how are you going through everything you're going through, you know, the, the sort of life disruptions? I'm curious, both as a, as a person and as someone who works with you, how are you keeping a schedule? How, how, how's your life just not sort of chaos and weirdness, you know, with, with all the stuff you have going on?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, in a strange way, it's it's less chaotic and it's it's I found it amazing. Not amazing, I found a a routine that I like potentially more than I had in Austin where, you know, a lot of our days are centered around the computer, email and being online and doing things. And I imagine there's a lot of research about the benefits of going out and doing things with your hands. And here, it's it's pretty difficult to sleep in. I don't know if it's the altitude or just my excitement of being here, but I wake up pretty early and I try to do a little bit of the email stuff in the morning. We have somewhat reliable satellite internet for at least emails and stuff like that. And then I try to wrap up the day in the maybe like three or four P M. And then go out and this property is one that's never

• 18:06Speaker 01

  a shortage of projects to do. And so I try to go out and like use my hands and build something and do renovation work that needs to be done on the property no matter what, even if that's just moving wood out of an old building or something to that effect. And I find at the end of the day when I'm sitting down and reflecting like the combination of the like, I guess, like mentally taxing stuff of the morning and the physically taxing stuff of the evening combines in like a very, very satisfying way.

• 18:30Ryan Holiday?

  Is there some a live time, dead time in in that for you in the sense of like, okay, obviously, ideally, someone would have been there doing this for you. Ideally, the the projects there would have been proceeding on on schedule, but they're not. And so one of the outcomes of however long you're there is that the list of projects to complete is however many projects shorter because you tackled some of them each day?

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I think that ties into it too, because then like, the entire day kind of feels like a live time for that reason. Like, these are tasks that I'm moving the ball forward at least. I might not be moving as quickly as our star contractors would have, but the church property here is now usable to when I was up here before it was not usable. And so it it was strange because during my time up here is when we were putting together that a lot, the a live time, dead time challenge for Daily Stoic. And so I was thinking about it with myself is, how do I want to leave Cerro Gordo? And so leaving Cerro Gordo, like, less projects are still on the to do list. And also, I've tried to learn new skills. Like, it's it's a beautiful sky here, and I have our camera, you know, our camera that we use for all the Daily Stoic videos. Matter of fact, I have that with us. And so I got

• 19:39Speaker 01

  really into like, taking photos of the stars. I don't know, it's not, I've never done it in my life.

• 19:44Ryan Holiday?

  You're like a legit good photographer now.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, and like it was crazy because like the, well, I appreciate that first. I won't just agree that I'm a legit awesome photographer. But the, the first night they were like, they were terrible, you know, that I had to throw them away. Or not throw them away, you know, delete them from the camera. But over a matter of even like two or three days, I feel like I got to the point where I'm happy with it. I'm very happy with how the photos look. I enjoy sharing them. I've kind of discovered this new passion that I'm going to walk away with Cerro Gordo with at least like a decent understanding of how to take astro photography photos, you know, which is something that had I been in Austin would have never existed. And I think that was directly due to me trying to think through that exact quote, like, is this going to be a lifetime or dead time? And so maybe part of the reward of being here is that a larger percentage of my day feels like a lifetime,

• 20:31Speaker 01

  whether, no matter what type of a lifetime that is, but I've, I've found that really rewarding.

• 20:36Ryan Holiday?

  I think that's one of the things I get out of the farm is that there's all, like, I work a lot because as you know, we have a lot of projects in the works and, and I'm someone who doesn't seem to stop, uh, which is probably exhausting for you as well. But by having other work to do, that's not my work. It's a good outlet for that energy that forces me to step away. So instead of micromanaging or fine tuning or, you know, continuing past the point of diminishing returns on whatever the thing is, I'm also sinking my teeth into other projects, you know, not building decks, but it is, you know, hey, how can we fix this pasture? How can we fix this fence or, you know, I need to go feed the cows today.

• 21:16Ryan Holiday?

  There's like, and the upside, I wondered about this for you, is, is just getting outside. Are you taking like lots of walks? Are you watching the sunrise? Are you getting connected with, with nature a, a bit more?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Big time. I think, you know, it's 400 acres here, so I was trying, trying to take different hikes every day. And the outside projects bring me outside and by force of having to walk to a lot of these remote buildings, I'm, I'm walking a lot more. And there's, you know, a sense of stillness that exists up here that is impossible to replicate in somewhere like Austin, just because we don't have neighbors for 20 miles in any directions. You just feel. A bigger connection, you know, like it's it's sympathetic, it's just everything. You're just like at night being outside looking at the stars here. You see every single star in the sky and just feel so insignificant, but significant at the same time while looking up at it.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  And I think that was something that it didn't come right away. I think, you know, I came up here thinking that I was gonna slow down a bit and get back to like my roots and different things. But when I first came up, it was it was like, oh, I gotta go to archery. Now I gotta go look at this building. Now I gotta go do this. And I I was filling my schedule still while they weren't the same tasks I filled in Austin. I was still not allowing myself to like reflect, you know, if that makes sense. Where I was still filling it with all these little tasks, even though they weren't real tasks. I didn't need to go do archery right then, but I felt like I needed to be doing something rather than just sitting. And so actually it was like, I have stillness up here. Stillness is the key of the book. And so I I remember I was like going to throw knives or something, because I thought that was important for me to like get good at throwing knives, which makes no sense.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  And I saw the book and I was like, no, I I could just sit here right now. You know, that's okay, too. That's part of something. And I think remembering that, it's it's easier in a place like this, I think, to me at least, but remembering stillness and like trying to actively put it into my day every day has been been something that's been really rewarding, too.

• 23:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, I remember when we first when we first got a swimming pool, the farm had a swimming pool in it. And I remember we were, I was in the pool with my wife. This is before we had kids. And this is Samantha, obviously, whom you know, but I I was like, oh, we should like swim laps or something. And she was like, you know, we can just like be in the pool, right? Like, she was like, we don't have to be doing anything. The thought had literally never occurred to me. That seemed crazy. And I couldn't sort of figure out why that was. And then like, you know, a couple of years later, my. Months, I don't remember when I was, but my parents came to visit, right? And so my, and we did have kids then, and my dad was in the pool with my son and my mom. And the next thing you know, my dad's like gotten this mask and he's like swimming around,

• 24:00Ryan Holiday?

  like inspecting the pool. And he's like, you know, you've got a real algae problem over here. You know, he's like, does that sound, you know, the pump seems like it's making a weird sound. And I realized like, oh, I picked up from my parents, like the inability to just be in the pool. I must have seen this as a kid. And now I actually do have to go like, no, no, like the activity is just being where I am. I don't have to do anything.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that that nails it. I was the same like I, I need to go look if the padlock is the same key as the other building, like that becomes a task, you know? So it's like, I don't need to do that, but it's like, I find things to make it so. I guess in a way it could be resistance to do things I don't want to do, or maybe whatever it could be. But, uh, no, I completely understand that.

• 24:46Ryan Holiday?

  Well, that's the interesting thing, right? Because there's a tension with a lifetime, dead time. On the one hand, you, a lifetime, dead time is saying, don't waste time. Always be productive, always focus on what you can do. But that, I think, I think, at least for the Stoics, they're thinking about that at the larger level. They're, they're, they're not meaning you can never have a second where you're not doing things. They're, they're saying like, you should always be moving towards the larger goal. So whether that's learning how to do something or centering with yourself or, you know, they're saying like, don't just sit and watch Netflix and waste, you know, however long this quarantine goes. That's what they're saying.

• 25:28Ryan Holiday?

  They're not saying, you know, you have to account for every second you've spent. And if it's not spent on projects, like you're a piece of shit.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that's a good way to do it. I, when you said Netflix, that's another thing up here. A side benefit of having extraordinarily slow internet is that I have no way to stream anything. So maybe that forces me into a little bit more stillness or a live time. But, um, that's another. Part of having a ghost house, I suppose.

• 25:54Ryan Holiday?

  The the upside for me, like if I leave my house, if I go more than like a hundred yards from my house in any direction, I no longer get cell signals. And so it's like what what that's become is there's really no reason to take your phone with you when you go on a walk and and that sort of thing, which which going back to the photo thing, like when I when I go for the walk each morning with my son, I don't take my phone. There's often very pretty things that I see and I go, oh, it would be fun to have a picture of that. And then I can't, but I actually have to experience it. You know what I mean?

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, definitely.

• 26:31Ryan Holiday?

  Okay, so so one other question I thought maybe maybe we can sort of wrap wrap up with this. But I I was curious, knowing that you have your hands in a in a bunch of different projects, some of which I'm involved with, some of which I'm not, you're sort of a hustler entrepreneurial type of a person. How how are you handling what must have been a number of sort of economic setbacks or frustrations? Or I mean, even Cerro Gordo itself, like you guys had very ambitious plans. You were about to to to raise a bunch of money for it. I mean, I know you're still in the middle of it. But like, obviously, this can't be good for that. And so how how are you thinking about all of that? And and maybe is there anything Stoicism is you you're relying on from Stoicism to sort of process it?

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I mean, it's tough. It hit all of them. They're the backpacker hostel in Austin. Nobody's jumping to stay in a room with a bunch of other people right now, nor should they. Um, so the hostel has been vacant for a month. It could be vacant for a number of months more. Cerro Gordo, we were originally planning to start having Airbnb and overnight accommodation in May. That's obviously out the window. And both of these have pretty large carrying costs. You know, there's there's substantial mortgages. There's a lot of financial stress. But I think what I kept going back to is just, you know, control what you can control or separate things into what you can and cannot control. And so with Cerro Gordo, I can't control that. The coronavirus has hit the world in the way it has. I can't control that we can't bring contractors up here right now.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Or that fundraising might be drying up and it's difficult to continue doing things like that, or that people don't, aren't going to be able to come and stay in May. But I can control these other little projects, you know, I can be up here, I can be understanding more, you know, like what we need to be doing. I could be refining our offering even further. So when we are able to actually have people up here, it's just that much better. So I think, just going back to that, like, I think guiding principle of Stoicism of controlling what I can control has been really, really comforting in a lot of ways.

• 28:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, is it, is it also, like, for me, it's like, okay, so I have these, like, I, I always thought, like, okay, look, uh, writing is unpredictable, it could go away, speaking is unpredictable, it could go away. I wanted to have other forms of income outside of this that I could sort of depend on, that were diverse, sort of diversified. Well, I, I guess I just never wrapped my head around a global pandemic that would also make it impossible for people to stay in vacation rentals. That would, you know, screw up the apartment complexes that I've invested in, that would throw my stock market portfolio, you know, down, you know,

• 29:09Ryan Holiday?

  erase, you know, years and years of gains in a stock portfolio and even make it hard. And I'm very sympathetic to this. So it's, you know, it sounds like I'm fighting, but like, you know, even tenants and properties that I own are having trouble coming up with the rent because the restaurant that they work at is not able to open, or the insurance company they work for is having to furlough their employees. Like, I didn't really conceive of a scenario in which income could essentially go to zero. And these investment things, these things that I had that were supposed to be sort of like lifelines are now not, not lifelines. They're, they're like worse than dead weight. Like, you know, as you said, there's carrying costs to these things. But, and, and so that, that causes me some anxiety. And then I try to remind myself, like,

• 29:53Ryan Holiday?

  I I don't actually like, you know, the stoats sort of go like, do you really own this? Like, or is it just sort of yours in trust? Like, I could just cut them loose entirely, right? And like, I don't actually, I don't actually need them. That's just something in my head. Do you know, like, so do you, do you kind of go like, hey, look, like, it would really suck if I lost the hostel? Or if, if, you know, this rental property went away or whatever, but like, you'd figure it out? Do you, do you think about that at all?

• 30:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there is a lot of strength there. And then I think the other thing, so a couple of days ago, I was cleaning out the general store. And this is a store that was originally built in eighteen ninety-one. And I went behind a counter and there was a blanket, and in the blanket, I pulled out this briefcase. And in the briefcase, there was just this entire miner's life. There was, he was taking out leasing, he was leasing mining claims to try to find silver. He was in lawsuits, you know, he was in, there was love letters in there. There was divorce settlements in there. There was just everything in between. And it was basically this entire guy's life and dream. And so like, I don't know, it's, it's momentum more, it's impossible to escape death in a place like Cerro Gordo. And that, there's like a centering element to that when you're looking at this.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  And like, this guy had all these dreams and hopes and different things, but like, you know, he's still dead. And so to me, it made me reevaluate what was important in a lot of ways. And like you said, like, I do have a lot of projects and like, this guy had a lot of projects in this briefcase, right? But he's still dead. So it's like, if somebody was opening my briefcase, let's say I have a briefcase that's tucked away here at Cerro Gordo, and somebody finds that in a hundred years, what would I be like, most proud or most excited to be reflected within that? And I don't know, that, that's been the other thing that's hit me pretty, pretty hard recently, being up here.

• 31:38Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, it's like, an entire life only amounts to a briefcase, you know? And that, that's like very humbling. And even if, even if it was John D Rockefeller, it only would have been a slightly larger briefcase. Or maybe it's like a room full of briefcases. But like, that's all that it, that's all that it is in the end.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think that's why, when you said like, I get so stressed out with some of these projects not going good, but like, In the end, it's maybe a piece of paper in the briefcase to use the analogy, right? And so it kind of calms me down, taking that perspective a little bit. And that's, I think, deeply tied to stoicism. And also, I have a bunch of Remont and Morty coins out here that are always on my desk, which help as well.

• 32:21Ryan Holiday?

  No, I'm working on an article about, like, I was just, I was like, what were people worried about in December, in January, in February, in March? And like, one of the things we found, like, I guess there was like, some malfunction in like, early March or late February on like, Robin Hood. And a bunch of people were upset because they missed out on a market rally. Like, they weren't able to invest in the market as it was going up. And it's like, how fast things turn, you know? And so, yeah, like, when I, I think one of the things that this last couple of years, sorry, this last couple of weeks puts in perspective is like, what did I take really,

• 33:04Ryan Holiday?

  really seriously nine weeks ago or 10 weeks ago? And how preposterously insignificant that now seems in light of not only what's happened, but what you've taken from what happened, which is like, a reminder of what truly is important.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 33:26Ryan Holiday?

  What, I'm just curious, as someone who's known you a long time, what have you come away feeling is more important to you?

• 33:34Speaker 01

  Um, I think family has been something that like, it's easy to, to, I don't know, not return a call from your mom or dad in different circumstances, but I think that this pandemic is bringing families closer together across the board, and it's certainly done that so for me.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Less products that I'm more interested, that I'm more passionate about. So like, the hostel is a good example. The hostel is something that five years ago I was extraordinarily passionate about, and I'm not as passionate now, but you can still rationalize why it should stay open for a variety of reasons, right? I don't think it's. Getting me closer to maybe what I, what I think would be important. And then also just like.

• 34:12Ryan Holiday?

  So you're gonna take, you're gonna take that page out of your briefcase?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  I think so, or at least not let that file within the briefcase grow anymore. If that makes sense, you know?

• 34:21Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  That it be, let it exist as the chapter it is. Don't try to like carry out a, an article into a book, right? That should just be an article.

• 34:29Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  For another analogy.

• 34:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Uh, and so that, that chapter, I think is one that I'd like to close and focus on. You know, the place that I'm sitting, Cerro Gordo. It's pretty, it's pretty beautiful here.

• 34:40Ryan Holiday?

  Nice. All right. Well, uh, last thing I was thinking while you're there, are you gonna pick out? Cause, cause when I invested in Cerro Gordo, what I, what I wanted was a, a spot to put a, a riding cabin. Are, are you gonna find my, my, my lot while you're out there?

• 34:55Speaker 01

  So this is crazy. So, uh, maybe crazy is the great, the best word for it. But yesterday I went on a hike towards Death Valley. It's five miles from Cerro Gordo to Death Valley. And I thought I knew how far the property went. This shows how much research we did going into this. Uh, I thought I knew how much further the property went. The property goes so much further than I thought it did. We have this like beautiful backside of the property that's heavily wooded with this pinion pines. They're thousands of years old and back there.

• 35:21Ryan Holiday?

  Is this down, like down when you go to the, like the Chinatown area?

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:26Ryan Holiday?

  Like, okay.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  If you keep going that way, it's much more heavily wooded because the miners chopped down all the pinions around Cerro Gordo to use them as firewood. But over there, they still exist. But there's these beautiful bluffs that overlook Death Valley. And yesterday we found this mine that was just insane. I, I've, I've gotten into the like somewhat questionable hobby of just like going into old mines. And yesterday I went into this mine, um, and I had a bunch of different floors and it was insane. And there was all these pickaxes and stuff in it. But coming out of it, you just overlook all of Death Valley. See this contrast of like heavily wooded into like the lowest peak in, in the US of this desert. So that's the spot. That's the inspiration. I feel like if you're gonna have a writer's cabin, that's the spot. Next time you're up here, I will, uh, take you on a little hike and we'll, we'll check it out.

• 36:12Ryan Holiday?

  Awesome. Can I get electricity or no?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Uh, solar is progressing pretty quickly. I think there's some great options that we can make a little off the grid spot for you over there, but um, I think the trade off is definitely worthwhile for that, the peace that's over there.

• 36:29Ryan Holiday?

  Is there anything that people are interested in Cerro Gordo they can check it out? Are you raising money for it? Is there, is there anything you want to point people towards uh, for, for what you're doing outside Daily Stoic?

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, Cerro Gordo, we're, we're, I think cerro.gordo.ca on Instagram right now, trying to change it. But uh, that's where a lot of the updates are put. And you know, once this, this, this crisis hopefully dies down a little bit, if anybody wants to visit, we have a caretaker, Robert, who's been here for 21 years. It just gives amazing tours about the history of mining, the history of America. And uh, if you really want to get in touch with some Stoic principles, come on up or we'll show you around.

• 37:10Ryan Holiday?

  Awesome, man. Well, thanks. And uh, give me a call before you have to go full Donner Party if we need to airdrop you any supplies.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  I will, I will.

• 37:19Ryan Holiday?

  All right. See ya. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes or your favorite podcast app. And if you don't get the Daily Stoic email, go to dailystoic.com/email.