Build Work That LASTS | Marketing Strategies from Ryan Holiday!

What's up everybody? Welcome to another YouTube Hangout. Super excited to be here with my friend and the author of a new book called Perennial Seller. What do we got here? The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts. Mr. Ryan Holiday back on the show. How you doing, Ryan?

I'm doing great. It's good to talk to you again, man.

So I met Ryan in New York when I was just about to launch my book, Your One Word, and he was telling me What's your goal? Is your goal to make the New York Times bestseller list, or is your goal to have something that kind of lasts? And like, you know, I would love to make a list, but really I want people to read the book. I want it to be evergreen content that in 10, 20, 40 years it's still applicable. And he said, you told me that's the way to think. That's the right thing. He's like, yes, it's great to hit the list, but you want work that lasts. And here's now his book on how to create and market work that lasts. So I love it. We're aligned on the vision. Let me put the book here so people can see it next to my new one coming out. Tell me and my audience just like quick story behind the book, what it's about, what you hope people get from reading it.

Well, so it's actually really interesting. If you look at the New York Times bestseller list, which the average person thinks sort of reflects, you know, the bestselling books in the country each week, and you go to the fine print, it actually says we exclude so-called perennial sellers. And the reason they do that is, you know, the number one bestselling book in the country every week would be the Bible. and then it would probably be Harry Potter, and then The Secret, and a bunch of other books. Some of these books are great, some of these books are not great, but the truth is the vast majority of sales in the book industry, some people have estimated as high as 90%, are books that are more than a year old. We call this the backlist. Even on the average website, if I bet I looked at your archive and then I was like, "Okay, what did the most traffic in a given week or a given month?" it wouldn't be your brand new stuff. It'd be things that you made a year ago or one year or two years ago, or even five or six years ago. And so we have this bias towards newness because that's what's exciting. But the truth is the vast majority of revenue and interest comes from the established, the so-called classics. It's interesting, right? In the startup world, we don't, we don't look at the startups that have been around the longest or that have made the most money. We look at the startups that have raised the most money, right? We want to look at who's announcing a new fundraising round on TechCrunch, we don't go, "Hey, look who's doing really well." And so what I was trying to do in the book was really sort of recenter people on the things that matter. It's like we all claim that we want to make a company or a video or content or a book that's going to stand the test of time. And then we measure ourselves against these, you know, we measure ourselves against the secondhand rather than, you the month or the years. I'm trying to get people to reset their expectations and think about it more in the long term because that's where I think meaningful work is done.

Got it. If we went to the New York Times list and found whatever was number 1 right now, that's based on the past week's sales, where do you think that book would rank in the actual books sold this week?

Well, it totally depends, right? I mean, even the New York Times bestseller list is filtering, you know, it heavily weighs independent retail versus, say, Costco or Walmart sales. It heavily weighs physical stores over Amazon. And then it also discounts bulk orders, right? So if you have a huge audience and you are doing an event in front of 2,000 people tomorrow and they each bought a copy at your event, those copies wouldn't count for the sales on the list. And so there's all these criteria that make the thing that looks like it's popular right now actually artificially, uh, seem artificially more popular than it actually is. And so even think about it this way, right? A book that sells 10,000 copies in a single week is considered a bestseller. but a book that sells 20,000 copies over the course of a year obviously sold twice as many copies, but it might not ever appear on one of those bestseller lists. So it's really important to know that most popular or bestseller does not mean it was the bestseller over a longer period of time. It doesn't mean that it's going to continue to sell. It just means in that sort of tiny snapshot of time, it hit some artificial criteria. And so, look, Star Wars gets beaten at the box office its opening weekend by Smokey and the Bandit, but clearly Star Wars wins over the long term, becomes one of the most valuable franchises in the history of art. I'm pushing people more towards that.

Right. I'm just curious that the relative difference, like if you sell 10,000 copies of a book, you're going to hit the bestseller list on average, yeah?

Probably. It's going to depend on the criteria. It's going to depend on what category your book is in. It also depends on who else came out that given week. So if your book— if you have the unfortunate timing to be released, you know, the week before Christmas, a lot of other books are going to sell a lot more copies. Whereas if that same book was released in June, you might debut at number 1. So you might not hit the list one month, debut at number 1 a different month. My point is, because these things are so arbitrary, and again, such a small measurement of time and sales, they really have no bearing on whether that work is going to continue to be relevant over— Who cares whether The Great Gatsby came out as a bestseller? I do not remember how much money The Shawshank Redemption made its opening weekend at the box office. What matters is that it is still good, that it's still relevant and that people are still talking about it.

Right. Do you know how many copies of the Bible or Harry Potter or, you know, 4-Hour Workweek are sold on a consistent basis now?

There would be many, many thousands of copies per week, and often they would be at places that don't— even the New York Times bestseller list, it's not as if there's some central database that records all book sales, right? If some You can buy the Bible at a gas station, right? They don't report to the New York Times bestseller list, right? If you grab that Bible out of the, the drawer of your hotel room and you take it home with them, does that count as a sale, right? I'm an advisor to a startup that's called VinylMe. They're the world's largest vinyl record club. They have about 30,000 customers who get one vinyl record every month, right? So whatever vinyl record that club buys for that month is the number one best-selling album in the country that month, but it doesn't appear on the Billboard charts because the Billboard charts don't recognize VinylMe as being a retailer of units. So, you know, the number one album in the country, uh, for vinyl might, might have reported sales of 4,000 or 5,000 copies. Meanwhile, you have this, this, this Jazz reissue from 1962 that Vinyl Me chose that sold 30,000 units and it's not reporting. So, so I— again, these things are very— obviously when you put out a book, you put out a book, the first thing you do is go, am I a bestseller? Am I hitting the list? Like, we do care about these things. It's very natural, but it's just important that you're not prioritizing that over the things that really matter, which is a year from now, is this thing still working for people and are they still talking about it?

Right. I mean, I love the idea. I'm totally aligned with it. It's one of the main reasons why I make the content I make on YouTube. I don't cover news topics. I don't go heavy on vlogs because it's, it's a really like short spike.

Yeah.

And then it falls off where I want the content I make, the Rules for Success, this video, you know, to last in 10 years, it's still applicable. Like I want, it's why I was slow to get into Snapchat. Instagram, because I don't like the expiring stories. I want the work I'm making to really last and live forever, and YouTube is a great content platform for that.

Well, no, I think that's a good way of thinking about it. It's like, look, making a, making a video is a certain amount of work either way, right? So if you're making videos that are responding to a breaking news story, that's, that's a certain amount of work. And then if you're making a video about 10 rules for success, That's a certain amount of work, but what work is likely to continue to pay dividends over time, right? If you're reporting on this breaking news and then it turns out that the breaking news was incorrect, no one is going to watch that video anymore. But people are still going to care about the rules of success from Tim Ferriss or Bill Gates or Elon Musk because those are huge people whose success isn't going anywhere anytime soon. And so Jeff Bezos, who's the founder of Amazon, he has this great rule. He says, "Focus on the things that don't change." He's like, "People always want cheap stuff and they always want it right away." And so he's like, "Those are the core principles of Amazon, not, 'Hey, fidget spinners are really popular right now. Let's sell more fidget spinners.'" You know what I mean?

Guys, we also have 2 top 10 rules for Ryan Holiday that you need to go check out. They're great videos that will last forever. Timeless wisdom. So the book is divided. You've got, it's even in your title, like making the work and then marketing the work. So let's divide that up. What are, so I wanna make something. I wanna make a video, I wanna make a book, I wanna make a record. What are some of the things I need to keep in mind to make something that will last?

So I see it as like two consecutive marathons, right? Making it is marathon number one and marketing it is marathon number two. You've gotta, and you've gotta finish both and you've gotta have enough energy to finish both. So the first thing is like, look, if you want to make something that lasts, you have to put in the work and you have to put in the ideas that are likely to make it work, right? One of the examples I have in Perennial Seller, it's a book, you know, there's a great author, his name is Guy Kawasaki. He wrote a book called Enchantment, and Enchantment was about sort of creating these dazzling, you know, love affairs with your customers. And that's a great book. It sold for many, many years. And then a few years ago, he did a book called What the Plus: Google+ for the Rest of Us, right? It was like a guide to Google+. Well, one obviously took a lot more time than the other, and one was a lot more timely than the other. And so which one is likely to continue to be selling a year from now or 10 years from now? Enchantment has captured something timeless. A book about Google+ certainly hasn't. And so I think oftentimes people are going, 'Oh, cryptocurrencies are really popular right now. I want to make something about that,' or 'Everyone's upset about Donald Trump. I want to talk about that,' right? And so they're always thinking about what's happening right now, and they're not asking themselves, 'Is this underlying factor still going to be true in the future?' Right? And then I think you have to go, 'Did I actually put in the work? Did I make something? Did I ask myself the tough questions? Did I put in the labor?' You know, Elon Musk has compared, I think he said, starting a company is like eating glass and staring into the abyss. It's really hard, right? And so if you did this, you know, on an all-nighter, if you rushed through it because you thought it was going to be easy or fast, I'm almost certain that what you've made isn't going to have the substance and the quality, there's not going to be the "there" there that you need to really endure. What's so great about Star Wars, for instance, is not that it's just that it's a futuristic movie filled with special effects, right? It's that it's the hero's journey. It's the timeless story of Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker's story is the same story as the story of Jesus Christ or the story of Odysseus or the story of Gilgamesh, right? It's an epic journey of one character who we follow and is tested and all these things, right? So when we're making whatever we're making, whether it's a startup or whether it's a book or a video, did we put in the ingredients that are necessary for this thing to endure? And that's much harder to do than people think. Marketing is fun and sexy often, but the work is where the heavy lifting is done.

Yeah, I like to think of it as like, am I creating work that I want to show my grandkids?

Yes, is this the legacy you want to leave? Yeah.

And it's timeless.

Yes, no, no, that's a great way to think about it. I mean, here's a, and it applies to every part of the creative process, right? So I don't know if you've heard of this company Wealthfront, right? It's a big wealth management startup. You put some of your retirement money in there and then it has this algorithm that invests it in different index funds. It's a great company. I use it myself. Their original name was Kachingle, right? Like, would you put your retirement money in a company called Kachingle? Like, of course not, right? And so even the name and the title on a book, the COVID the logo— like, you're wearing the— you've got the logo on your sweatshirt right there. These all— all the branding and the theme and everything you're building around the product has to be to the highest quality, and you can't settle And if you have partners, whether it's a publisher or a business partner, an investor, you can't let them rush you and get you to compromise. You have to fulfill that creative vision that's going to stand the test of time.

Got it. So that kind of transitions into the marketing side. So we've created this great product that we're proud of, we want to show our grandkids. You know, I want my grandkids to watch this interview with Ryan Holiday. How am I going to market it for the next 60 years, you know, so that happens?

Well, so I think people sort of fall into two camps. On the one hand, there's like the, the natural marketers who want to like rush through the creative phase to get to the sales part, because that's what they're really good at. And then you have other people who love the creative process, and then they think marketing is somehow like scammy or it's beneath them, you know, and both attitudes are really problematic. So I think what I want to tell the, the people who love the creative side of things is, look, The world is not a meritocracy. There are plenty of brilliant, genius works of art that have been completely forgotten or that were never even seen, right? So if, you know, if you build it, they will not come. You have to make them come, you know, you have to bring them to the work. And so I want people to be willing to treat the marketing side of things with the same amount of energy and creativity that they that they treated the writing or the editing or the building and the programming. And so, um, from, from a marketing standpoint, what I'm thinking is, okay, the end of the day, people read things or watch things because other people told them it was good. So let me make sure that my marketing is getting this work in the hands of those early adopters so they're passing it to the people that I, I, I need to see it. Does that make sense? Yep.

So, like, tactical. So, like, take my book as an example, right? It's coming out December 6th, "Top 10 Rules for Success." Guys, these are the top 2 books of 2017 right there. So, okay, so, like, how do I market this? What advice does Ryan Holiday have to market that book?

Well, so, number 1 thing, you're already in a position to succeed because you've built a huge platform, right? How many people want a platform but they haven't put in the time or the years to build one. So when they go to launch something, they actually have those group of hardcore fans who are interested, right? So my first, like the first 50% of my marketing for you would be like, how do we take advantage of this platform? And I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean, how do we get the people who have already said, I'm a big Evan Carmichael fan, how do we get the people who have watched your videos millions of times to check out this book, right? So probably what I'm going to be thinking about is like, how do I make this— how do I make this cheap and accessible? How do I, how do I market to them over email? How do I create compelling offers of bonus material to get like your, the people who subscribe to your YouTube channel, they're the people who are most likely going to be the first readers of this book and then they're going to recommend it to other people, right? So that's going to be a huge percentage of my time. And then the second part of the things is like, okay, what podcasts can I go on? What articles can I write? What extra videos can I make? How can I take the content that's in this book that's clearly proven to work and get it in front of people? Like, one of the interesting things on books is like, it's almost crazy that anyone buys books, right? Like, you're like, hey, here's this book. It costs $20. Uh, You don't know what's in it until after you've already bought it, and it will take you a week of your life to decide whether you like it or not, right? Who's like— who does that? That's crazy. So, so oftentimes I try to be as generous as I would say that of my books, even Perennial Seller, huge chunks of it are available online. Even in this interview, I'm walking people through step by step almost everything that's in the book because though it's It's only once you go, oh hey, I agree with that, or oh hey, I think there's going to be value in that, that you decide to give someone your hard-earned money.

Got it. Now bringing this to the YouTube world, I get the YouTube world a lot better than the book world that I know you are the master of. I've always focused on the content, and YouTube becomes its own distribution channel for you. And I've done collaborations with channels that are way bigger than mine, and we'll get a spike. Right now we're getting upwards of 2,000 subscribers every day. Okay. Sign up for the channel.

Sure.

If I do a collab with somebody who's bigger than me, I might get a quick spike to like 4,000 for the day, and then it quickly drops back down.

Sure.

You know, 50 Cent has tweeted me out, and Floyd Mayweather has shared on Facebook, and a bunch of people that we've covered have then shared it to their audience. And again, like quick hit spike and then back down. Yep. What I default to, and tell me my thinking is wrong.

Okay.

What I default to is it takes so much time and work to get the attention of those people. If I was trying to do it like outwardly, like, hey, can you please, you know, listen to me or work together? Versus if I just keep creating great content, I'm going to keep getting 2,000, 3,000, like just keep getting that daily subscriber growth. So I default to just make better content and the YouTube platform and community, like it takes care of itself.

—yes—

is that wrong?

No, I don't think it's wrong. As a writer, I think that often the best way I can get attention for my books is to write really good articles, right? Articles that are— because what's different online is that the content and marketing are fused together because it's so easy to share, right? Like, if I was— if you— if your YouTube videos were for sale, I don't think just making more videos would be marketing, right? Right. But the fact that the videos are so easy to share on social media You can embed them, you know, search engine, you know, search engine is gonna drive traffic, etc. It's different, right? But I think when you're selling something, then you've gotta be more active in the marketing because there's, you're asking people to do something that's more difficult. So in your case, what you're doing is you're constantly building up and building up the platform, which you monetize occasionally with a product or, you know, with ads, but your product online is your marketing. So I think that makes total sense.

Got it, okay. Well, that's what I've been preaching and it's what has been working.

Well, look, it's not just doing it once, but it's doing it all the time. Like you've built a machine, so you're always growing. Maybe if you were, if you'd started your channel yesterday, more collaborations would be a way to build your base. Right.

So, so let's go down the funnel. So, you know, I've got a book, it's around success, entrepreneurship. I have a platform, and for other authors, they're going to have their platform, may not be as big, but they have their own whatever, Twitter following, YouTube. Great. We're going to market to them. That other 50%, podcasts, interviews. What do you recommend in terms of the strategy and the outreach to say, okay, here's a book about entrepreneurship. Yeah. Who am I going to reach out to? What is my pitch going to be? How do I make it so that I maximize the effort that's coming out?

Well, so I get a question a lot from creators where they go like, look, I'm starting a blog about fitness or I'm starting a blog about entrepreneurship or whatever it is. And they go like, what influencers should I reach out to? And my answer is always, if you don't know, then you haven't done your research to even justify making this web— you know what I mean? Like you, I imagine, you know, all the influencers in your space that you want to reach out to because you live and breathe this stuff, right? And so it can't, like, if you don't know your own space well enough to know who the right influencers are, I would say you're making a huge mistake. So I really want people to know like, who are the movers and shakers? And have you studied the space that you're in to really see who makes a difference, right? Like, it's like if you're a comedian and you didn't know that The Tonight Show is where you go to break out as a comedian, It's like, dude, what are you doing? And so, so you have to live and breathe your space to the point where you know who all those influencers are. And you shouldn't just be cultivating relationships with them because they can help you sell your stuff. You should know those people in your space because they're your peer group, right? James Altucher has talked about the importance of having a scene, right? Like, who are, who are the people that are doing really similar work as you? And how are you pushing each other? How are you making each other better? How are you helping each other? It can, it can go that way. And I would say the other thing I would think about is like, don't just think about it as like, what can these people do for me? One of the best ways to develop relationships and to grow your work and to get fans is to, is to be a supporter of other people, right? I built my platform as an author, an email list that's now about 85,000 people, by recommending other authors, right? I started a reading list where I recommend books. It's just a If you go to my website, it's ryanholiday.net/readinglist, and it's just recommendations of books that I really like. And so I've met hundreds, if not thousands, of authors over the last 10 years that I've done this, as well as contacts at publishers, agents, editors, etc., because I've been a champion of other people's work. And I think your channel is a testament to that too. Very few of the videos are about you. They're all about other people and how you've translated their work and brought it to a larger audience.

Yeah, I think about in my YouTube experience, the first two collaborations I did with kind of bigger channels than me at the time were Tim Schmoyer and Derral Eves, and they both have like how-to YouTube kinds of channels. And I was already a fan of their channel, and I already subscribed, and I knew their content. I think if you are a fan already and you know you know, you're already aligned. Like, you like them because you like their message, and they're more likely to want to do some kind of work with you.

Yeah, I mean, so I get an email probably once a day, and it's like, uh, dear sir, uh, I'm so-and-so, uh, I would like to suggest a guest post on your website. I'm a big fan. And it's like, I've never done a guest post on my website ever. So I know by nature of sending me this email that you're not a fan. Right. You know what I mean? And so, so it's like, if you don't know the people's work, it's really hard for you to fake that and they can see through it immediately. And so like, don't look for these hacks and tricks, like do the work, you know what I mean? Actually live and breathe what you're doing. That's the way to break through.

Yeah. And I think it's finding the angle that you can bring a perspective to their audience, you know? Yes. For me with Tim and Derral, they both knew YouTube way better than I did at the time, but I said, hey, I have a venture capital background. I have an entrepreneurship background. Can I bring some of that to help your audience? Yeah, that's a cool idea. So you're contributing. And I knew that because I'm a fan of their content as well. Right, right, right, right.

Yeah. If you can send a template, you're doing it wrong. Do you know what I mean? Like, um, it's like I say, my relationship with influencers should be like, if I'm asking them to promote something of mine, It should be like we're as familiar as like me asking them to like water my plants while I'm out of town. Like that's the kind of relationship that I want to have where I've done things for them. And then so if I'm asking something of them, they don't, they don't feel like that's an imposition. They feel like this is what we do for each other.

Right. How do you, how do you maintain the relationships with all the people that you kind of want to stay in touch with? Because I think about We worked together like way back when you were part of American Apparel and we worked on a small project together. And then, and then, you know, we lost touch. I'm not great at staying in touch. And you shot me an email saying, hey Evan, I forget what you're working on, like, hey, if you're ever in town, I'd love to meet. And then we connected in New York and reconnected. But that's like years later. So I imagine you multiply that over how many people who have influence, like, how do you maintain those relationships?

I'm not as good at it as some people, or as I could be, certainly. Like, when I saw your— when we had reconnected, it was literally like I was just watching videos on YouTube and I was like, I remember this dude, we talked like 8 years ago. And but I think the difference is, as soon as I had that reaction, I didn't go like, hey, I should say something to him. I said something to you, you know what I mean? Like, I sent you an email like right then. And like part of that though is that I wasn't thinking like, oh, what can I get out of Evan? It was like, I'm going to reach out to this per— like, like I like doing that. Right. So you have to, you actually have to love it. Like if you're thinking about this like transactionally, I think it's not going to be fun and you're not going to do it right. Like, like for instance, there's services like Contactually and other apps where like they sort of monitor your email and they go like, Hey, you haven't sent Evan an email in 6 months, like send him a note. And like, I clearly get those from other people and I can spot when they're doing it. You know, like, like I got this email out of the blue from someone that was like, hi Ryan, uh, I just wanted to see how I could help you today. And like, that was all it said. And I was like, no human would ever send this email. Like, that's such a weird thing to say, you know? And, and like, so it just made me feel like I was like a part of that person's to-do list. And I didn't appreciate that. So maybe my system isn't perfect, but I do feel like it's authentic and real.

And so I try to do it that way. I think that applies to much more than just business relationships too, like to your team, to your family, to your friends. I've tried to get in that habit too. Like if I'm thinking about somebody, I will tell them. And even yesterday as an example, or 2 days ago, I was in the shower thinking about somebody on my team. It's a dude. And I wrote to him and said, hey, 'Hey, hey, hey Jason, I was thinking about you in the shower this morning, LOL.' And then I did like my thoughts. Yeah, sure. And like it's even more authentic and more human and more funny. And I've never had those things backfire. And sometimes it's like 2 in the morning, you just have this random thought, like I'm thinking about Ryan, I'm thinking about somebody, and you just shoot out that email, shoot out that message right away, uh, because you're gonna forget the next day. And you're also in that authentic moment thinking about them.

So the weirdest thing happened to me when I wrote this book called The Obstacle Is the Way. And as after it came out, it started to make its way through professional sports, sort of a total accident. I didn't plan it. I didn't know it. And it was the weirdest thing. I started getting emails from like coaches, like big coaches for big teams, like the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks and stuff like that. And, and at first I was like shocked. Like, I was like, why are these people emailing me? This makes like, It's cool that they're reading my book, but why are they emailing me? And then I realized that they had the same habit that you and I were just talking about. If they read something and they liked it, they shot the person an email. And so, and that's how they've built up really valuable networks of experts and allies and donors and supporters and reporters and all these things, right? It's like, if they see something they like, so, So that's a habit that I've tried to cultivate. Like, if I'm reading an article in the New York Times and I think it's really good, I'll shoot the reporter an email. I'll just be like, hey, look, I thought this was really good. And like, they don't— I don't say like, hey, you know, I have a big email list, we should be friends or something. Like, I just send them this note. And then who knows, maybe in 7 years I'll be watching the YouTube video and I'll be like, hey, remember we talked 7 years ago and we should do something, you know, like Right. You, the relate— these things aren't so transactional. They're like little investments, little bets, you know? And you never know how things are gonna turn out. And so I think you wanna be as generous and friendly and authentic as possible.

Do you know Brian Grazer? Yes, the filmmaker? Yeah, yeah, so—

I mean, I don't know him, I'm a huge fan, but—

So he's a behind-the-scenes guy, right? Like he's with Imagine Entertainment, with Ron Howard, they've won like you know, dozens of Academy Awards and all that. So his team reached out to me and said, hey, Brian would like to meet you. Really? Come to LA and, and have a half, half an hour sit down with Brian. It's like, okay, sure, happy to go down. I had something else happening there, so I popped in. And, uh, he explained to me that, you know, he liked my channel, uh, he, he shows his son the videos, and he just wanted to meet. He's like, I don't, I don't know what to talk about. I have no agenda. Yeah, when I came to Hollywood, I knew nobody, and I just met people and said, hey, I'm curious about you. And now he, he kind of knows everybody in Hollywood, so he's expanding beyond other creatives. And there was no agenda, just to meet and connect. Do you ever want to do a TV show or movie? I'm like, I don't know, I'm a YouTuber, right? So like, that curiosity, that reaching out, that forming connections with no agenda is interesting.

Yeah, no, and, and I— from what I've read about Bryan Grazer, some of his biggest movies have come from lunches like that. You know, like, I think that he met Eminem that way, and that's how the movie 8 Mile happened. You know, it's like he would meet interesting people who's— it's like you have to have that flicker of interest and then you have to pursue it. And I think a lot of people just sort of leave things on the table that way. Interesting.

Well, Ryan, it's crazy how quickly time flies. We're already at the mark. I want everybody to check out Perennial Seller. Check it out on Amazon, go to perennialcello.com. I'm going to give it to Ryan for one final message. Ryan, my grandkid's going to watch this video. I'm going to make her go to this part in the video to start with. What's the final message you want to deliver to people that my grand— my granddaughter is going to watch?

So, so here's what I would say. I think there's lots of ways to make money in life, right? You can make money on Wall Street. You can make money as an entrepreneur. You can make— there's lots of ways to make money. And some of the money, some of those ways are surprisingly easy, right? And I think we actually make it seem harder than it actually is. So my point is, if you're gonna make art, right, you're gonna make videos or books, or you're gonna be a writer, or you're gonna be a creator of some kind, don't do it just to make money. Do it because you wanna make something meaningful and important, 'cause you wanna leave a legacy, 'cause you want something that can last for more than one generation. right? And so if you're going to do it, I would say do it right, right? Like, don't decide to be an author because you heard lots of people are making money in ebooks. That's a really crummy reason to do it. Do it because you can't not do it, because it speaks to some part of your soul. And I think you'll be— you'll not only be happier, but I actually think you'll be a lot more successful.

I love it. Ryan Holiday, ladies and gentlemen. Well, Ryan, thank you for your time. Thank you guys all for watching. We'll do this again soon. We believe in you. Hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Thank you, Ryan. We'll see you soon.