204. Darius Lahoutifard | Leadership by Cyrus the Great: Unlocking Xenophon's Cyropaedia

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview Darius Lahoutifar, author of Leadership by Cyrus the Great: Unlocking Xenophon's Cyropedia. Darius is an accomplished entrepreneur, technology leader, and author. By the age of 28, he had become CEO of a $10 million business. Over his career, he has founded 5 companies, launched over a dozen innovative software and services, experienced failure twice, and successfully exited twice. Now dedicated to education, Darius founded MEDDIC, that's M-E-D-D-I-C Academy, a platform pioneering modern blended learning for leaders and business professionals in technology. His clients include all of the top 10 global software companies such as Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services. Born in Iran, Darius moved to France as a teenager after political changes in his country, which profoundly shaped his global perspective and professional path. After a successful career in France, he migrated again at the age 47, This time to the US. He was admitted under the Exceptional Ability Program. In this episode, you'll learn about his background and what his book is about, how and why leaders don't need a new way of doing things. We can simply look to and apply lessons from 2,500 years ago, how Cyrus the Great influenced America's founding fathers, what Greek philosophy has to do with modern-day leadership, why the best leadership is done out of love, not force, and how you can start to apply leadership lessons from the ancient Greek Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Darius Lahoutifar.

Darius, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. We're excited to talk about your brand new book today, but before we do, I'd love to give you an opportunity to tell everybody a little bit about you and how you came to write this beautiful book.

Hi, Nick, uh, and Luke. Thank you very much for having me. on your podcast. I was born in Iran, so a Persian heritage. I was raised in France and 15 years in the US. I have been an entrepreneur most of my life. I've been lucky, successful, don't know how I got there, but at age of 28, I became CEO of a $10 million company, but noticed that corporate America is not for me. So, I became a startup entrepreneur, started 5 companies and failed twice miserably, but stood up and restarted. And my last company is a focus on education. So I help executives at small and large, mostly tech companies from startups with a team of 10 salespeople up to Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services and Oracle and Salesforce and all those, all the 10 of the top 10 tech companies have somehow used my methodology of sales in order to sell to their customers. So, and in these, in this education, educational journey, or delivering education to these companies, I came across a lot of leaders, a lot of leadership questions. We have courses on leadership specifically. And so I am into it. Leadership is a bit of my thing. Now, seeing leadership in one hand and then Cyrus the Great personality and that is not necessarily known to the general public, I thought there is something to do, especially as the concepts by Cyrus have been appreciated by the founding fathers of the United States. 2 things were key for the United States from this book. Is that when, after the independence of the United States, the founding fathers wanted to build a country which was divided, the federal system that we know in the US, well, Cyrus had done that before. The satraps and these people from different ethnicities, religions, habits, different languages, coming together, getting united in one nation, that was what he had done. And it was maybe the only one in history or very rare one that we have seen in history. So that was one logical thing to do. And the second logical thing is the spirit of this union, getting united despite the differences, the diversity of the people, and they unite. being united. So freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of thoughts is literally in the Doctrine of Cyrus. So the Founding Fathers were inspired by that and said, that's necessary if we want to unite our federal system with our states. That's what we need. So all these connections, I thought, There is a few things to say about it and make it easier to read. So that old book, which was translated into English from Greek 200 years ago with a heavy language and a book with just text, no visual, no subtitle, not even a table of contents, something very tough to read that I actually started to read. My son's name is Cyrus. So 15 years ago, I bought the book, the original one, the hard-to-read one, and offered to him. And my son is actually a successful YouTuber who is into philosophy, Greek philosophy, philosophy for dummies, something similar to that. So, but he had a hard time reading it. And same thing for me. I had a hard time it was difficult to connect with the book. You know, when you're reading a book, we have to connect. So, and then I came across Larry Hedrick's edition, who had done it, who has done, and I'm grateful to what he did, a great job in making it easier and in more modern language. But there are also challenges with his book, which is he has transformed this into first person. So he's narrating from Cyrus' perspective. It says, I did this, I did that, and it appears a little bit unusual and for sure not realistic. So I wanted to fix those issues, add pictures and images, make it visual, and create the takeaway lessons in a more developed way. So these are the 3, 4 value adds that I had with my edition. It was a long answer, Nick. Sorry.

It was a great answer. And listen, I think that you've done a fantastic job translating that book into something that a leader today, whether they're a leader of a household, a leader of a business, doesn't matter. There are so many fun lessons to learn from the book. I am a big fan of Stoicism. And so, over the last 5 or 6 years, I've read a lot of ancient Stoic philosophy written by people like Marcus Aurelius or Epictetus and Seneca. And those books are translated and expanded upon by authors like Ryan Holiday. And I think you have the opportunity and you, you are starting to do the same thing with a different philosophy, right? The philosophy of Cyrus the Great. And so why don't you tell everybody a little bit more about Cyrus the Great? When did he live? Where did he rule? And what are some of the things that he's famous for in terms of governance and military, etc.? I'm sitting here today with Ken Rusk, who has done hundreds of millions of dollars in business. He's also sold tens of thousands of books and changed countless lives. We're sitting here today because he is sponsoring today's episode. So, Ken, tell everybody about your course.

Well, thank you. I built a course called The Path to a Successful Life. It's designed around trying to get somebody unstuck. You know, sometimes you're feeling like you're kind of stuck in where you are. You're not really sure what you want your life to look like or how to go about getting it. Well, for the cost of about dinner and a movie, and maybe the time you spend on a weekend, you can exactly what you want your future to look like and how to go about getting it.

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Absolutely. So he was born as a prince. So his father. Was king of Persia. But Persia at the time for Cyrus was a region comparable to a small state in the U.S. in terms of geography, south of actual Iran, not even the size of the present Iran. The present Iran is probably 20% of the empire under Cyrus. So very small area. And And Cyrus' mother, Mandane in Greek or Mandanin in modern Persian, in Persian, was from Medes, which is another country or region a little bit further north, another equivalent of another state. So he was born into family of kings. So very comfortable life, no doubt about it. But also already a little bit multicultural because these two were different. It's not because here in the US we are close to Mexico, but the cultures are so different. Or even Canada where there are a lot of things in common, there are still a lot of things that are different. So that probably helped the fact that he was born from 2 parents, with 2 parents from 2 different ethnicities. From the very young age, he was considered as smart and talker. He was noticed by parents and grandparents as, you know, the kids who talk a lot. I know my son was talking a lot when he was a kid and you had hard time to stop them, you know? So, and he, because of that, very early, the book doesn't, Xenophon doesn't explain what age exactly. He never mentions ages, but it is understood. I mean, he does mention the age of 12 for hunting, learning how to hunt, learning, you know, riding horses, things like that. But when he started the first gathering and the first motivational speech, it is— my understanding is that he was in the age of 18 to 20-ish. And that's huge. That's huge. So that's one of his main characteristics, the ability to influence. And I define leadership as influencing people so that they go towards their goals with love, with desire. They are not forced to do anything. And that's where parenthood and even in a small family, in a couple, leadership does make sense because you want to define common goals and act in a way so that other people look at you in an inspirational way, want to follow you towards those goals. And it's amazing, Nick. You know, I am in contact obviously with a lot of tech companies, a lot of them in Silicon Valley. And all my career, I've seen this. There are some practices like something called President's Club. President's Club is once a year gathering all the successful managers and executives who have achieved their goals in a nice place, in a nice resort somewhere in the world, you know, Cancun or Miami or San Diego in California, somewhere nice, and to reward them, to spend 2, 3 days with their spouses and recognize their achievements. Cyrus was doing this every night in the camps. They were, you know, you can imagine 2,500 years ago, they were gathering, you know, a stop. The army was stopping somewhere and he was gathering people with good meals and chanting. And at the same time, he was having a motivational speech. He was recognizing those soldiers and those officers who had done great, you know, meritocracy with diversity. In today's world, we have these two as if they are opposing each other. You know, in our politics right now, you have the impression that those those who are fan of diversity are against meritocracy and those who are with meritocracy want to ignore diversities. No, they, these two match actually together. And that is where we can learn from Cyrus' spirit even today. So 2,500 years ago in present Iran, south of Iran, but the expansion went from south of Iran to northern parts of Iran first, and then into, you know, 2 of the biggest cities which were known as the top of the cream of the civilization of those years or that era were Babylon and Sardis. Babylon is today's Baghdad. And Sardis is west of Turkey, Izmir. But you should know that that region was Greek-speaking people. They were Greeks living there. So Sardis was famous because it was a port of merchants and it was considered as very wealthy city. And Babylon was civilization and so on. So the conquest of Babylon by itself is something amazing because he freed Jews who were slaves. 40,000 Jews were freed. And that's before the Bible. So in the Bible, Cyrus is called a messiah, you know, a prophet sent by God who liberated Jews from slavery. Slavery was practically banned. I'm cautious with this one because it never says this way. But he did liberate that. Or there's a very beautiful story of Panthea and Abradatas, a love story actually. We won't have time to get into the details of that love story, which is really beautiful. But this very beautiful woman, Panthea, who was Taken from the enemy was totally respected. No one had to touch her despite that beauty and, you know, appealing for the guys in the army at the time. Although she was taken as a—

A prisoner.

war slave, theoretically. So these are some of the very important things about it.

Darius, there are so many questions that I have, so many things I want to unpack. But first, I want to ask, you know, so you're a CEO at 28, you have— and you're just— you have a wealth of knowledge, and it's just such a joy listening to you. And I can see your passion through the camera, and it's just been— it's just So great. I feel like I'm soaking up all this amazing information, so I love it. And thank you for being here. I'm so curious, how did your— you know, you exited 5 companies.

How did you—

how was your leadership style influenced by Cyrus the Great? And is this something that you found later on down the road, or is this someone that you studied early on? Like, how did you find him as a good example for leadership? Hello, Book Thinkers family.

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Well, that's great. First of all, I learned about his leadership style much later. But I came across great managers, leaders during my career. But, you know, when you have some interest in something and belief in something, you notice those and develop those. One of the things that I explain in my courses, in our workshops before even getting close to writing the book is that there are 3 steps in a new concept. And this, I think, is something I'm sure you guys relate with it every day because you're the specialists of the books. When we read a book or when we notice something that is worth learning or adopting? There are 3 steps in my opinion. Step 1 is understanding why this is a thing, why this style of leadership is a thing, why is Cyrus doing this. Second is learning how to do it, learning the way to do it. So, let's say we wanted to say Encouraging people. So, it's important to encourage because people need to believe in themselves and move towards the goals with love. So, that's the understanding. How to do it? Well, you talk about these things in this way. That's the learning. And third, which is sometimes overlooked, is transforming this into habits. How do I learn this today? How do I transform this into a habit? Because if we don't do that, we just forget things that we read and they are gone. They are past. Nothing remains. They fade. So that in mind, there are things that Sometimes they are. I'm also a contrarian. When I am seeing— and analytical, obviously. When I'm seeing different things, you know, we mentioned the contrast in the actual society, the present society between diversity and meritocracy. And I, being myself from a— have always lived as a migrant in France and then in the US. So diversity is something that I touch. It's in my life. But how can we ignore meritocracy? Why should I be advantaged to someone else because I am different? I shouldn't. On the contrary, It, it, I don't like it that someone is dealing with me or promoting me because of my background, not because of what I'm able to do. So that those are the things that resonated with me from Cyrus the Great, because this is exactly what he's doing, giving these opportunities, respecting everyone's rights and individualities and ethnicities and religion and cultures while sticking to the fact that you need to do that. You will see, I mean, you have seen it, at least Nick, that in the book Cyrus is very generous in promoting and giving away wealth and the gains from the wars, et cetera, to the most successful. But he's also tough with those who don't perform. He's very tough with them. So, these two are how we human beings get to do something. We, you know, it's not about encouraging laziness. Being nice and generous is not about encouraging laziness.

Yeah, I remember there were lessons in the book where He would give everybody equal opportunity, but then he would really praise and reward the people that demonstrated courage or went over the top in their duties. And on page 86, it was one of my favorite takeaways, also talked a lot about gratitude. You got to be grateful for the people on your team, and you need to praise them and reward them for the great work that they're doing. Because again, that is a— it is an incentive. So, yeah, so many great lessons in there related to those subjects.

Isn't it amazing, guys, that things that we think are something that we discovered nowadays were already totally a thing 2,500 years ago? You know, that's huge. And it's something interesting for your readers. Look at this. We built mobile technology, to give you a recent example, in the past 20 years because our parents built great computers. And our parents built great computers because our grandparents built great electronics. So there are areas in science, especially, you know, exact sciences like math and electronics and engineering and technology, that our progress stacks up. We are not born starting with— from scratch. We start where our parents stopped in terms of progress in technology. But in many other sciences, like human sciences, it's not true at all. And the best example is Babies start walking and talking about the age of 12 months, more or less. And it was the same for our parents. It was the same for our grandparents. It was the same at the time of Cyrus and Aristotle and everyone. So there are things that are not transferable and we need to experience it ourselves. We need to learn it ourselves. So What does this mean? It means that people 2,500 years ago were as smart as we are in those areas. Now, statistically, there is a much higher chance that during all these years, someone much smarter than our era have figured things like that. So it's not a coincidence that we have found this in Cyrus or Greek philosophers, or anyone in between who has ideas on anything related to human sciences, psychology, group motivation, things like that. We have a higher chance to find it, this wisdom from history, rather than trying to invent the wheel now.

Yeah, and that makes perfect sense. I'm curious on your take. You know, you talked a little bit before about, you know, there seems to be like, oh, there's the divided, There's the side that stands for the diversity, and then there's the side that stands for control or whatever else. What is your take on why we, especially the US, and maybe it's elsewhere too in the world, why do we feel so divided right now?

Oh, I think it's the evolution of this society. I think it's directly, and I'm not against social media, we are learning. I think the social media brought the individuality and the individualism into a public global space exposed to 8 billion people all of a sudden. And we individuals had different opinions. And, you know, when you have a post on Instagram and just one person makes a comment, which goes into a different direction, that person impacts and influences hundreds of thousands of people. So the expression of the individuals is making this, which existed, has always existed, the difference of opinions. But we are divided that way. What I see people talk about World War, I do believe that actually the world war has started, but it's not a worldwide like the previous world wars. It's a war, a cultural war, which is global. So it is a world war, but inside nations. Within nations, people have bipolar disputes on different matters. And in many countries, like in China and Russia and Iran, is freedom seekers against a dictatorship. And in other countries are slightly different with preference in some areas versus some other areas. And I think the book is a great help in seeing that these concepts, some of these concepts, some of these concepts are not contradictory. Exactly like the example that we mentioned. It is possible to come together. And that again is leadership. We can come together as a nation with the right leadership who brings us together. So hopefully it will happen sooner or later.

A little bit of a pivot back to an earlier point that you made. I wanted to talk a little bit about this. Why do you think that this book was more popular, or the original book, Cyropadia? Why do you think that was more popular hundreds of years ago, maybe, than it is today?

That's a great question, Nick. It goes up and down. And if you look at Some other very famous books, Shakespeare's literature, or if we want to stay in the Persian one, Khayyam's literatures in the Western world have had ups and downs. There are these trends and fashions, you know. Can someone explain why this style of of, you know, fashion, wearing ties or not wearing ties comes and goes. They are cyclic. I don't know. And there are a series of influences that make these things happen, in my opinion. Very hard to know which are those pieces of influence that come together. At this— at the given time.

I'll, uh, I'll throw out a hypothesis, or just maybe, maybe a guess is a better word. I think that now where we're experiencing information overload and hundreds of new books come out every single day because of Amazon KDP and its instant publishing capabilities, we look for things that are, are tried and true, that stand the test of time. We look for ancient knowledge. You know, everybody now is reading, uh, Meditations, Marcus Aurelius's private journal that was written almost 2,000 years ago. Why? Well, just like we highlighted earlier, same case with Cyrus the Great, we realized he was experiencing some of the same problems that we experience today. How do I get motivated to get out of bed and do my work today, right? It's like we've always been dealing with that, and there's some sense of, okay, it was written 2,000 years ago, it's still popular today. That's a book I should be paying attention to. And so I think there will be a really— I think this book, I mean, I genuinely believe this, it has a very large opportunity to sell very well into the leadership and business and personal development space because I've been studying a lot of ancient Greek and Roman philosophers. But, you know, I hadn't heard of Cyrus the Great really. I mean, not that much. And now I love the story. I mean, I love everything that you've done with this book so far. So, here's my last question for you. For somebody that's on the fence, right? They're 30 minutes into this conversation. They've enjoyed what they've learned so far. Why should they buy this book? Why should they buy, consume, and implement this material?

Because it has proven through history that it has helped a lot of people and not just the regular Joe. It has helped a lot of big shots. And it's not a boring leadership from Harvard Library book. It's a biography of someone fun, you know, from hunting in the forest through the chitchat with the grandpa, that conversation there. Mom asks Cyrus, who is more handsome, your grandpa or your dad? And the 12-year-old answer is amazing how he, you know, says good things about both. And in a nutshell says, Grandpa is the most handsome in his environment, among Medes, and Dad is the most handsome or the best in Persia. So very political answer and positive, you know, from the young age. So these are lessons that we that are pleasant. You know, it's like watching a movie. I'm reading a novel, a fun novel. So those are the reasons I think that make this book not just the leadership thing. It's that transition from a very pleasant story, biography, novel into what I can learn from it.

Yeah. And as I pass the baton over to Luke for his wrap-up here, I also wanted to add that I have the sort of like the coffee table version of the book. You can get it, you can get a less expensive version, or you can get this big hardcover version with beautiful full-color images. And just like you said, it reads like a movie, but, you know, and it also kind of, it reads like a movie because of these beautiful images. So I had a lot of fun reading your book. I think you did an amazing job.

Thank you.

transforming Xenophon's Cyropadia into something that's more applicable for today. So anyway, kudos to you and fantastic work with the book.

Thank you so much. Yes, I have these 2 editions side by side, the paperback, the regular paperback, and then the coffee table luxury edition.

Oh, such— this has been such an amazing conversation. And I just, I love your knowledge. I love your passion that you have for this, for history, and it just comes through. So Thank you so much. I have 2 final questions, and the first one is this: where can people go to find out more about you, buy your book, and all that fun stuff? And of course, we will link it all in the show notes.

Absolutely. There is a website for the book, cyrusthegreat.com, and there is also cyropedia.us. For internet marketers, I'm testing both URLs, so we'll see which one is most used. So that's the site of the book. And I hope that during the months, weeks, months, and years coming, the site will develop into a more educational site, not just information about the book, but everything around these subjects as we go. And of course, it's available on Amazon. And I got lucky in the first few days. It was after launch, it was the first, that ranked first in the Greek biographies in 3 categories. So it is under— now there are a lot of books, obviously, as you can imagine, about Cyrus the Great, and there are a lot of editions of Cyropedia as well. So this one's title is Leadership by Cyrus the Great, where you can get it.

Amazing.

Amazing.

All right. This is my final question. I love to ask all of our guests it. All right? It's, you pass away and all the information that you put out, the book, unfortunately, the courses, everything that you put out disappears, but you can leave the world with a single piece of advice. What would it be?

Learning. Learning. Really, really learning. I personally love learning. After sex is the best pleasant thing in the world. Just kidding. Learning gives you joy. It gives most people joy. It's practical. And you understand things around us. Why? The why. Simon Sinek has this book, The Why for Everything, asking the why for everything. Well, that's directly learning.

That's my final—

I love it. And I totally agree. And I think just one more wrap-up note with— I have 3 kids. And what I didn't realize as I was growing up, learning was kind of difficult for me. But What I realized is that learning is also— it's a natural state that kids are in, and we can tap back into that by finding things that we're curious about. And something like this, a book like yours, is amazing for leadership because not only are you teaching great lessons, but you're also telling a beautiful story. So I 100% agree with you. I've so enjoyed this conversation. This has been amazing. It's been great learning from you. I appreciate you. Thanks for coming on.

Thank you very much.

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