Let Them Talk | The Discipline Nobody Talks About

If there is a point to the criticism, let’s learn from it. If it’s off base, then what do we care? -- Codie Sanchez is an entrepreneur, investor, and founder of Contrarian Thinking, where she teaches people how to build wealth through business ownership. After starting her career in journalism and later working in finance at firms like Goldman Sachs and Vanguard, Codie went on to buy, build, and invest in Main Street businesses. Listen to the full episode with Codie Sanchez: Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-stoic-masterclass-for-ambitious-people-codie-sanchez/id1430315931?i=1000772457396, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/0TliaFRnzVV0zGvvO3Fcm6, or watch on YouTube 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 Check out Ryan’s episode on BigDeal by Codie Sanchez https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-build-self-discipline-5-step-routine-ryan-holiday/id1736593333?i=1000743293433: Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-build-self-discipline-5-step-routine-ryan-holiday/id1736593333?i=1000743293433, Spotify https://open.spotify.com/episode/5cM8ovLGeTWHVzx7XW8GhJ, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBJu95bVYAA 💡 We designed our How To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) http://dailystoic.com/ecourse as a personal field guide —part book club, part masterclass, part daily practice. It’s designed to help you not just read the words of Epictetus, but live them—to turn his timeless wisdom into real change in your own life and the lives of those around you. And if you get the guide before August 27th, you’ll receive a private invitation to an exclusive LIVE Q&A with Ryan Holiday, where he’ll go deep on all things Epictetus, Stoicism, and how to apply these ideas right now, in today’s world. Head to dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse http://dailystoic.com/epictetuscourse to learn more and get your book, guide, and bundle today! 👉 Get How To Read Epictetus (A Daily Stoic Guide) http://dailystoic.com/ecourse & all other Daily Stoic courses for FREE when you join Daily Stoic Life | dailystoic.com/life https://dailystoic.com/life/ 🎟️ 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 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?

  Let them talk. You have work to do. Somebody at work is talking behind your back. Your cousin made a comment about your parenting. A critic writes something negative about your business. This hurts, feels unfair. It can have real consequences. But you know what? According to Epictetus, you got off easy. If anyone tells you that someone is speaking ill of you, he writes, tell yourself, if they really knew me, they'd have said something even worse. By the way, we're doing a deep dive in Epictetus this month. We'd love to have you join us. We're doing this awesome course. You can get a copy of Epictetus's work and take this module. And then we're going to be doing a live session at the end of it. I'd love to see you in there. I'll link to it in show notes.

• 1:00Ryan Holiday?

  But, but the point is, we all have flaws. There are things we could do better. And if anything, a real critic would be harsher. If our boss saw everything we did while we were clocked in, if people saw us when we lost it on our kids, they'd really have something to talk about. If there's a point to the criticism, let's learn from it. If it's off base, then what do we care? It's not in our control what other people say. It doesn't affect us. Either way, we don't have to take the bait. We don't have to stew. Let them talk. We have work to do. It would be wonderful if Epictetus was as popular as Marx realist, but he simply is not.

• 1:43Ryan Holiday?

  And he's intimidating to people and therefore a little bit more obscure. Well, we wanted to solve that. And that's what we're doing with our How to Read Epictetus, a daily Stoic digital guide. We're diving all into it and we're going to be doing a live Q and A call about it with thousands of other Stoics all over the world. I'd love to see you in there on August 27th, but that means you've got to sign up by the 26th. You can get a copy of discourses for 50% off. As I said, his work changed my life. I think it'll change your life. I can't wait to see you in there. Just go to dailystoic.com/epictetus to find out more. And we'll get into it. Talk soon.

• 2:36Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I think it's hard to find a domain, a practice, a craft, an industry, a job where discipline isn't important. You need it on the way up. You need it when things are good. You need it when things are hard. You need it when things are going real fast. And you need it when things are going real slow. It's not just working hard. It's not just abstaining. It's staying on the path that you're supposed to be on. It's not being distracted. It's not being provoked.

• 3:19Ryan Holiday?

  It's keeping your expenses, your needs in line. It's all that, right? And sure, a lot of things require discipline, but oftentimes that discipline is enforced on you, right? You know, the drill sergeant yelling at you, the coach or the boss telling you what to do. But when you work for yourself, you are your own boss. No one is enforcing that discipline on you. You have to enforce it on yourself. And that's really the virtue as it pertains to Stoicism. We're talking about self-discipline. And so I wanted to talk about discipline today. And I wanted to talk about its connection to the business world, entrepreneurship. And I think it's essential in business because a business isn't built in bursts of enthusiasm or motivation.

• 4:02Ryan Holiday?

  It's, I think, largely built on consistency. It's doing the boring things well. It's about staying locked in. It's about hanging in there for the long haul. It's also about modeling this discipline for the other people in the team. A couple of months ago, I had Codie Sanchez out. She's an entrepreneur and an investor. She wrote a book called Main Street Millionaire. And she built this really interesting career and platform around buying businesses, usually kind of like small businesses, Main Street businesses, not like private equity in the, let's buy a big company and sell it for parts. But actually, let's buy a bunch of little businesses in a town and turn them into something, build a portfolio of businesses

• 4:46Ryan Holiday?

  that do real things for, for real people. And, and so we wanted to talk about the discipline required to be successful at whatever it is that you are doing. I've talked about this before, like when we opened the painted porch or we started opening the porch, started construction in March of 2020. So we needed a lot of discipline. We needed a lot of perseverance because it got much harder than we thought it was going to be very quickly. But then, as it succeeded, it's required different kind of discipline, a different kind of hanging in there. Not hanging on for dear life, but hey, what do we want to do more of? What do we want to do less of? What's moving the needle? What's draining us?

• 5:30Ryan Holiday?

  You know, people coming around, hey, you should open a second location. Nope, we're not going to do that, right? This is, I think, another side of discipline that people don't talk enough about. And it's what Cody and I are talking about in today's episode. And I think you'll really like it. As I said, you can check out her book, Main Street Millionaire. We have the same publisher. It's a great little book. She signed copies while she was here at the painted porch. Probably seen her YouTube videos, Codie Sanchez CT, maybe on TikTok, Cody underscore Sanchez, or on Instagram, at Codie Sanchez. And let's get into it. The next virtue for the Stoics is this idea. Sometimes it's rendered as temperance, which is moderation.

• 6:12Ryan Holiday?

  I prefer to see it as self-discipline or self sort of ownership in the sense of being in command of your emotions, your desires, your urges, your, your envy, all of these things. So, so talk to me about why that's an important skill as a, as a business owner.

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Well, the business will fall to your level of activity, not your level of desire. And so, you know, you have to be the ultimate standard in your business. And your team, like children, will not listen to what you say. They will watch what you do and then do a little bit less than that. And so that is the hard truth. And so if you want to win in business, you have to be unreasonable in your level of activity, at least for quite a while, so that your team aspires to a level that is less than that. And that is, by the way, very reasonable for them because they don't have all the upside that you do. So you're always going to work harder and care more than most of your employees. Now, the great employees, the ones that I turn into partners over time are the ones that care just as much as I do. And then I want to travel through time with them.

• 7:12Speaker 01

  But I find that a lot of people want to get into business or want to be really successful with money, but they aren't willing to do the absolute boring mundane work that is the game of business. Like business to me, more than anything else in life, is who can handle doing the most monotonous boring things for the longest period of time, far past when it's reasonable or when you could at all want to. And if you can do that, you'll actually be really, really successful because it's not the really bright moments. It's, it is the moment again and again and again where, you know, I go to like some of the people that I admire a lot in business at least, which would be like an Elon Musk, who's like, I'm just going to sleep on the factory floor until I get this rocket built

• 7:56Speaker 01

  and I'm going to work right alongside you and we're going to stay in this misery. And it's not my desired state to sleep on a factory floor.

• 8:03Ryan Holiday?

  I would disagree. I think he creates a lot of the misery by, by being impulsive and emotional and by making somewhat irresponsible decisions, which he then has to, I think he sometimes glamorizes the life or the grind. He calls it like demon mode or whatever. Whereas like someone with a more of a plan or more of a corporate structure around them or could delegate better, wouldn't have to do that. But I get, I get your point, which is like, you gotta do the work.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  You, I think it comes down to what do you want to build? You cannot be corporate and take society to the moon and to Mars faster than the government and all corporate institutions and even beat Jeff Bezos. Like Jeff Bezos, to me,

• 8:48Ryan Holiday?

  Also pretty driven.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Is very driven, but probably much more corporate, reasonable, time-bound, decision-based, hyper-successful. Elon is in many ways, not in my opinion, as much of a business builder as he is a mission-driven leader. So it is emotional and it is chaotic because nothing like that has ever been done before in history. But do I think you have to be Elon? No, in fact, I think it would be miserable to be him. I couldn't even imagine.

• 9:14Ryan Holiday?

  You said it's pretty miserable to be him.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Right. So, so I don't think you have to be that. In fact, I think you should love the business that you built. And because most people don't want to be him. Most people don't want to build billion dollar businesses. Building a billion dollar business is miserable. I mean, we're on the path and, you know, our business is worth a couple nine figures and we do a lot of revenue a year. And there are many days where it's miserable. But the one benefit, I think, to the way we run businesses at least, is because we are so systems oriented, you have what you just talked about, which is, we just kind of know every single day what foot to put in front of the other, how to hire, how to train people and how to processize it. Where our self-discipline, Clones in the organization.

• 9:55Ryan Holiday?

  I just know it's like you crash the car in a ditch and then you rally the troops to pull it out of the ditch. That you don't, I don't think you get credit for the long hours.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:04Ryan Holiday?

  Like, I just spent Christmas pulling the car out of the ditch. It's like, okay, but you were drunk when you, when you drove it in there and that's on you.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:11Ryan Holiday?

  I, I do think there's this, um, there's this idea of people want to be their own boss. They want to be in charge. They want to control their own destiny. And I think they think that that somehow exempts them from like anyone getting to tell them what to do. And that's like, there's this line from Seneca where he says, um, no one is fit to rule who is not first ruler of themselves. And so they think like, I think they think that being in charge, running a big business is like, it's awesome because nobody's bossing you around. But it's actually no, you have to be the boss of yourself. You have to boss yourself around and you don't have the benefit of anyone checking in with you and going like, hey, did you, did you make sure to do that thing? Like, hey, did you get up early? Did you stay up late? Did you work harder than you want to work?

• 10:55Ryan Holiday?

  And so there is this, I think glamorization of working for yourself, being the boss, being the leader. And what people are forgetting is it's actually forcing you to do the job you were doing before and your boss's job, but just of yourself.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I have two sides to the coin on this. I've really been thinking about it a lot lately. One side is if you want to be in charge, you are going to have to work harder than anybody else in your company for longer than anybody else. And there is no other way around it. You can also make more money than anybody else. You can probably have a bigger impact than anybody else and you can see what you're actually made of.

• 11:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  You can see what you're capable of. It's incredible. On the other hand, I think that we have really started to obsess on this trauma bonding around being an entrepreneur.

• 11:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  And it's almost like, it's so miserable and hard. And if you don't think it's miserable, you're lying and you're not in the game. And I'm a little bit lately, like my life's pretty fucking rad.

• 11:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  And do I just have a baseline level of kind of happiness? Yeah. But also it's really sweet to be an owner of business and not in like hustle, you know, Lamborghini Ferrari, private plane type. But in that you do get to be your own architect. And so, I don't know, I'm going back and forth with this real pushback to can't you be really quite successful, running a business that does a couple million dollars a year, doing it your way. Maybe it's in a small town. Maybe it's with a small team, but you are in charge and the CEO is on the door and that's your name. But you simultaneously still get to go to the kids' events and you still get to have your activities. And I think that is totally doable and we don't have to have this hustle porn misery

• 12:38Speaker 01

  addiction to trauma bonding over being an entrepreneur.

• 12:42Ryan Holiday?

  There's two sides of the idea of discipline. So discipline isn't just, I work harder, I sleep less, I push my, my boundaries more. It's also the restraint to go, this is what we're doing this year.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:55Ryan Holiday?

  No more and no less.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:57Ryan Holiday?

  Right? Or these are the hours that I operate in, these are my priorities. One of the things you find when you have, um, like we opened this bookstore a couple of years ago, the first thing people do is like, are you going to open another one? No, the discipline to say, the project was to do one thing and that this is what success on that thing is like. Now, it's not the end of my ambition. There's other things I want to do, but that's the culmination of that particular ambition. And that reminding myself that my dream was not to have a chain of bookstores, which would be a distraction, both from what I actually want to be doing and what I want my life to look like. And so you have to have the restraint to go, hey, uh, I'm going to keep my head down. I'm going to do what I'm supposed to do. I'm not going to go to every conference that invites me.

• 13:41Ryan Holiday?

  I'm not going to jump on every problem that comes up. I'm not going to do every interview that comes up. That, that was one thing that happens if you're a public facing person is you go, hey, I got here, I built this brand by jumping on every publicity opportunity, by doing every project and then go, I don't like that pitch. I'm going, I'm going to let that pitch go by and I'm going to wait until there's one I can really get behind. And that requires restraint. It's this two sides of like drive and ambition, but then also restraint and a sense of, of what your limits are.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's a great point. And also the discipline, like if you want to be successful long-term, I'm pretty sure you can't do it by yourself. I know that now lots of people will say, well, there's a billion dollar business built with one person and that's going to happen. I think that that is fake and I do not believe that. And I do not think that will ever be true.

• 14:30Ryan Holiday?

  That's what you would tell a New York Times reporter because you want them to write a story about you.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Yeah. And we would both know because we've written titles before. Like that's just not reasonable. So like what you actually have to do is one, you have to hold your own boundaries and then two, you've got to bring along other people who are super disciplined, your disciples in your same discipline. And so, you know, this idea, and you talk about it all the time with the Stoics, but of the great leaders of men. And so your best discipline, I always believe is really pouring into your team and getting them to be these disciples that go out and do the things for you. Theoretically, if you actually wanted to, you could have a chain of a hundred bookstores, but you'd have to have an incredible team to make sure that Ryan could still write the books that tens of millions of people read as opposed to spending time on the invoices of the books in the stores. Right? And so, um, I do.

• 15:17Ryan Holiday?

  Well, the discipline to, to bring people on is like so sharing. And like, if you're like, no, this is all for me. It's all about me. It's like the, the discipline even to like, let go of some of the control. These are all, we tend to think of discipline as just working harder and doing more.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:31Ryan Holiday?

  And it's, it's much more subtle than that.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Oh, no. I mean, God, if you want to win, you have to say no to so much, it feels uncomfortable.

• 15:37Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  And I do it non-stop. I mean, the, the idea that doing more is going to make you win is I think why so many entrepreneurs are miserable.

• 15:45Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Because they have bought into the idea, if I just do one more, I will become better, bigger, richer, et cetera. And in fact, it's usually, what are the 10 things you need to stop doing right now?

• 15:56Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  That are burning up time that you can't even picture? And what are the two things that if you did them would make everything else meaningless? And if you find those, then you really win.

• 16:06Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. And, and the, the discipline to, to understand, um, there's an infinite amount of money in the world and a finite amount of time. And which do you value more? What is the point of being successful if you can't use it to buy time and you can't use it to live the actual life that you want? There is this kind of insane, like to be an entrepreneur, you have to have a good sense of delayed gratification, but you'll end up missing the whole point if you endlessly delay gratification. Right? Like, uh, if you never get to enjoy it, if you're sort of in harness your, your whole life, or if you're like, yes, it's miserable. I hate this thing, but at some point I'll sell it and then I'll be happy. You don't know that that's true and, um, you might not get to that, that point.

• 16:51Speaker 01

  It's actually a good like frame, that idea of are you in harness or are you out? Are you free in the field or are you under plow? And, and I think, you know, if you're an entrepreneur and you're, you're thinking about that, it's like, how much time do you actually spend under tension, you know, in that harness? And then how much time do you spend on long walks, on vacation? Um, one of the most useful things I ever did to have better discipline about enjoying life, because that's not my natural state, is, is getting married. And like, I think partnership and marriage is one of the best ways possible to.

• 17:22Ryan Holiday?

  Cause you're balanced out by another person. They're like, what are you doing?

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 17:26Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. This is crazy.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, it's, everybody talks about, oh, the old ball and chain, or they hold me back or they don't. I go, that's the point.

• 17:34Ryan Holiday?

  Well, they tether, they also tether you to reality.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 17:37Ryan Holiday?

  You're sounding like an insane person right now.

• 17:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:41Ryan Holiday?

  And then they're also saying like, well, what about me? You know, what about, when are we going to live this life that you promised?

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so I actually think, I know that a lot of people today are like, well, you know, the best partner is the one that supports everything you do unequivocally all the time. And being married to an entrepreneur is such a blessing. No, it's not. Being married to an entrepreneur can be extremely miserable and extremely self-focused. And the, you know, spouses that sign up for that, uh, like they need a medal too.

• 18:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  And so, and you know, my husband is in the game with me, but he is also the very first one to say, uh, life is way bigger than this. And he has actually seen life or death and to pull you out of the moment where you're obsessed about something like a P and L or a spreadsheet that you're not going to remember in 50 years.

• 18:23Ryan Holiday?

  The chances are, if you are driven, if you're talented, if you're successful, if you've built something, chances are you, you need more of a check than you do an enabler.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  It's so true. That's a good point, actually.

• 18:35Ryan Holiday?

  You don't need encouragement. You, you, you have plenty of that.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. But that is sort of the advice, I think by and large these days, is that your person should agree with everything you do politically. They should agree to everything you do work-wise. They should support both unequivocally. And if they don't do that, then, uh, they're holding you back. They can't see your vision. You know, they're not a real partner. And I think we have to kind of question that and go, is that true?

• 18:59Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 19:00Speaker 01

  Or is this person actually the person who's going to allow you? I mean, things go a lot faster. We, we call them the two O's at my company, but if all you do is roll, row a left O on a boat, you go in a circle.

• 19:09Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  You have to row left and then right and then left and then right. And that is the beauty of partnership.

• 19:14Ryan Holiday?

  People think you want a board of directors that, that lets you do whatever you want. You think you want complete corporate control and, and that tends historically not to go. Well, that's actually not the role of the board of the directors. The board of directors, yes, it's a committee and committees can be short-sighted, but committees do tend to prevent you from driving off of a cliff or burning yourself out or doing something that is illegal or, you know, very irresponsible. Their job is to be like, that's not a good idea. You need that.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  So funny. We actually, we created something called the boardroom at Contur and Thinking. And the reason why is because I needed in my business, a group of people around a boardroom who would help me make non-stupid decisions and talk me out of the singular focus I can have when I am driven. And we started it because I didn't want to give away equity in the company. I didn't want a real board.

• 20:03Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  And I was scared of the downside of boards, which is that they can be not a cent of a life, conservative, blah, blah, blah. So I wanted somebody who I could listen to, but couldn't run everything.

• 20:14Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Speaker 01

  For me. Like I was the skin in the game because I realized most entrepreneurs, they don't have that. I mean, your, your friends are often your competitors, so you have to be a little careful of that. Um, you know, your family is sometimes a little tired of hearing from it. Your employees are going to tell you what you want to hear, or they're going to tell you what is the least amount of work for them. And so you need this group of peers around you, uh, sometimes. I, I really think you need three. You need, you need peers, you need advisors, and then you need people that are like 10 or 20 years ahead of you. And, um, and with those three things, you can just move faster because you can steal people's 10,000 hours.